Page 94 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

When we arrivedat the door of a massive room that looked like it was devoted to training, Aeve stopped. Women moved across the floor, performing different manoeuvres that looked like a cross between a dance and a fight. I found it hard to tear my eyes away from them: the combinations, the cadences, plucking at me.

“Normally candidates for the Wolf Maidens come to us in the winter,” the priestess told me. “They have half a year to decide whether or not they belong among the order. During the Festival of the Triple Goddess, they either return to their families, sure that the order is not for them, or…” I frowned then, tearing my eyes away from the women. Aeve smiled as a result. “Or they devote their lives to the hunt, to the kill, to the ever-present vigilance. To a life of fangs and claws.”

She fell silent then, but for some reason the quiet wasn’t a comfortable one. She was waiting, but for what, I didn’t know. I was ready to move. My eyes followed the steps the women performed, somehow knowing I could do the same.

“But during the festival, the daughters of the noble families in Snowmere come to practise as well. They have a role to play in the proceedings and the Maidens take over their training.”

“You’re warning me,” I said, looking her over more closely now. If I’d been pressed to answer, I’d have thought that Mother Aeve was the queen’s pet, but now?

“I am,” she replied evenly.

“Malia?” I scanned Aeve’s face, as if all the answers in the world could be found in her scored skin. “And others… Of course, there’d be others. The queen had them all matched up, didn’t she? All of her sons.”

When I stared at the performers now, it felt like my gaze had become sharp as a knife, slicing through each one of them, sidelining some as unlikely. Some seemed to be the serious practitioners, more focussed on the steps than the others. Then I saw Malia, standing there with a disgruntled look on her face as an older woman in a severe black uniform lectured her and a group of girls.

“You’re going to put me in there with her,” I said, my voice sounding echoey in my ears. “You’re going to put me with all the women who were supposed to marry my princes.”

“Your princes?” Aeve’s question was gentle, but the interest was plain. “Then you’ve decided to accept the pack’s offer to become their mate?”

“I…”

All the certainty I’d felt dissolved.

What was holding me back? What stopped me from walking out of this temple and marching right back to the suite, baring my neck, my body for them to take, to mark, to claim as theirs? I liked them a hell of a lot more than I had when they had come to my father’s house and, as that thought formed, I saw Gael naked, but for the drying cloth wrapped around his waist and…

As I watched the women in the black uniforms, something tugged at me, pulled me right away from the princes, from any other man. I’d spent my time idolising my father’s knights, knowing I’d always be forced to hide what I learned from them, keep it locked down. But as three women went pirouetting across the floor, gliding, twisting and twining, the swing of their legs, their hands, like knives through the air. All that momentum, all that precision, it could be deployed on the battlefield, and I could just see how it would work.

Just like when I had visions of the golden headed crow and her Reavers, the world faded away, the sounds transforming into the whistle of the wind, then the discordant clash of warrior against warrior. These women would wear armour light enough not to hamper their movements, weapons that were an extension of their limbs. They would skim through the combatants caught in the grim grapple between life and death, slicing their way through, cutting down the unworthy like the Granian goddess, Hrist, she of the bow.

“I want the princes,” I said, my voice sounding distorted and strange. “They are mine.” Yes, that felt right. “But I need more.”

I went to articulate that, to explain what more was, but just as when I was training with Nordred at the barracks, too much rushed up when I said the words.

“You’ll get your wish here,” Aeve said wryly. “More than you could possibly want, I fear. The Maidens, they are pitiless in their preparation of their acolytes. You’ll be pushed harder than you have ever been in your life.”

And with that, the discussion was over. She preceded me into the room, people looking up as we passed, only to be reprimanded by their black-clad tutors. But Aeve had one in particular in mind for me, cutting through the room to bring the two of us to the woman who had been lecturing Malia and her friends.

“Holy Mother Aeve,” the woman said, bowing before the priestess, making me wonder if I should’ve done the same. Then her eyes came to rest on me.

I was being measured as surely as if I was in front of Linnea, ready to attend a ball, but it was not my dress or demeanour that was being judged. The woman’s keen blue eyes took in my stance, my musculature, the quiet readiness that was always present in my body.

“This is the woman who can maintain a hybrid form?”

“She can. I have witnessed it myself.” Aeve then nodded slowly to Malia who stood just off from us, her face screwing up into a scowl.

“Then you will train with us, and we’ll discover just what you’re capable of. I am Selene.”

She bowed then, her fingers linking before she held them out from her. I did the same.

“I’m Darcy.”

“I’ve heard.” That was the only acknowledgement I got before she turned to the others. “Go, train harder and perform the steps perfectly or be sent back to your families in shame. You are lazy, indolent, which may serve you just fine in the castle, but not here. I have more than enough Maidens to carry out the rite. You’ll be excluded if you cannot master the steps.”

“But my father—!” one of the women said, pushing herself forward, her blonde braids limp with sweat.

“Your inclusion in the ritual is a courtesy, not a right.” Selene didn’t say the words with any kind of acrimony. They just were. Like a slab of granite that felt the beat of rain and the whip of wind and remained as it was, impervious, and I couldn’t have been more envious than I was right then.

I knew that my involvement with the Wolf Maidens led me into a trap being set for me by the queen, but I had to admire her then, because it was a very carefully laid one. The bait was so very tempting. And as I watched the girls draw back, frowns very evident, but no further arguments forthcoming, my need to possess that kind of power virtually had me salivating.

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