Page 111 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“Bound and gagged in one of the tents, awaiting my judgement. They’ll either meet a swift end, have their heads cut off by one of the men loyal to me or…” The king thought he was pausing for dramatic effect, letting the tension build, but he didn’t realise the part of me that felt fear was burned out, scoured clean by the death of my mentor. The man who’d been as my father. All I felt now was black, molten hate. “Or you’ll be thrown in with them, beaten, tortured, perhaps raped, if that’s what will amuse my men, but you’ll meet the same fate as my sons in the end. There is no saving them.”

Somehow, after everything I’d been through and every ability I’d developed, I was right back dealing with the same shit I’d been forced to in Grania. Helpless before a man not worthy of breathing the same air as me. Just like Father, Ulfric had to bind me, take me unawares, because neither of them had any chance of succeeding if the playing ground was an even one. This very act proved to me something I had difficulty getting my head around.

That I was powerful and Ulfric was weak.

I just stared at him then, intently, in a way that drew the attention of the lordlings, the lot of them shifting nervously in response. I didn’t know what I was about, what I could do in this situation, but the pain that burned in my heart and lower down, it felt like it fuelled me in some ways. It was a caustic fire, burning away all of the niceties that had been beaten into me, freeing me. I heard the flutter of wings again, as always, the avian flap a sound that seemed to punctuate my life. But as I stared at the king, watching his lips move in slow motion, hearing the words come out in long, drawn out noises, I felt something shift. Just a little snap coming from somewhere, something that was quickly followed by a rush of blood.

“Majesty!”

Ulfric’s monologue stopped, and thanks be to the goddess for that. But there was more. His hand went to his nose, touching the blood there, then pulling his hand free to stare at the scarlet smear there.

More, I urged the Morrigan, or whatever power dwelled within me. More.

His body responded, a stuttering burble filling the room before a gout of bright red rushed out of his nose, spattering over the carpets.

“Sire, take my kerchief,” a lord said, brandishing an utterly inadequate square of white cloth, something that just earned him a glare.

“Her…” Ulfric’s words came out as a wet gurgle as blood trickled down the back of his throat. He coughed out some of it, staining the carpet further. “It’s her.”

“The Granian woman?” Lord Hale drew his sword. Such a brave boy. Approaching a bound and unarmed woman with a weapon. But I guessed the unarmed part wasn’t exactly true. Whatever it was that hurt inside me, it twisted tighter as he approached. “I knew we were wrong to throw our support behind her. A—”

“A what?” I let out a sigh when I heard Dane’s voice, that frigid tone, that sharp bark. I sagged against my bonds, suddenly feeling like I could let go of some heavy load, when it cut through the air. “What exactly were you going to call my mate, Lord Hale?”

“And what the fuck did you think you were going to do with that dagger, you bloated sack of shit.” Gael strode across the tent, entirely unencumbered, General Rath joining him with some of the other officers and yet more men at his back. He yanked the knife free from the lord’s limp fingers, then came over to me.

“You alright, love?” I needed to hear his raspy voice more than I needed my next breath, but I could only reply with a short groan, that insistent pain driving itself deeper. “I’ll get you free, and if those bastards have laid a hand on even a hair—”

“They’ve laid a hand.” Weyland’s voice was utterly flat, devoid of all humour. “They took the woman that gave us this day and then they bound her up while she was still unconscious.”

“And proposed to rape her until she was big with Father’s child.” Axe’s voice was distorted as his beast rode him hard. “Ulfric’s child.”

“No father of ours,” Dane agreed, striding forward and grabbing the small coronet from the king’s head and tossing it to one side. “No king either.”

“Dane… Son…”

I watched with dispassionate interest as Ulfric’s hands clawed at his throat while I rubbed at my hands, Gael dropping down to cut my feet free. Once he was done, he took my wrists in his hands and inspected them closely, his fingertips sliding over the reddened skin.

“He deserves to be slowly butchered over days for doing this to you,” Gael snarled. “Longer.”

“But we won’t do that.” My voice was curiously gentle, even though I felt anything but, because I couldn’t be anything else with them. “That wouldn’t be good for you.”

“Wouldn’t it?” My eyes jerked up to see Dane standing over his father, his eyes so bright a blue they appeared to light up the gloom of the tent. “But there’s so much to be worked through. The impregnation and abandonment of your mate, Gael’s mother. Letting that fucking bitch you married brutalise your trueborn son. But most of all the venal, sniping snake’s pit you created of court, full of facile self-serving fools who stood by as someone tried to burn all of Strelae to the ground.”

His gaze jerked up and the lords gathered were forced to stiffen their resolve or flinch back. Some were more successful than others.

“None of you are fit to wield power. None of you.”

“And you are?” Hale looked Dane up and down with insulting slowness. “How will you hold the throne without our support?”

“Because he has ours.” Rath stepped forward then, and with him came several very heavily armed soldiers. “The army stands with Dane as king.”

“Darcy as queen,” Dane corrected. “No matter what happens, my father will pay for the crimes he proposed to inflict on my mate today, but the only pathway to succession I will support will be of my mate taking the throne. She is daughter of the royal line of queens that ruled Strelae for centuries. When Queen Eleanor crossed the border into Grania, she took that power with her, but now it has returned. You’ve seen evidence enough of what she can do. You heard this usurper king trying to co-opt that power for his own reign. Darcy will not be a figurehead to support a man’s claim. She will be queen.”

For a moment, there was simply silence, for so many reasons. I just stared at him, unable to comprehend that we’d be engaging in the machinations of statecraft right now, as we faced certain doom. My body tensed, then twitched in time with the pain that wracked me. The lords just gaped for a moment, and then went to protest all at once, but Dane drew his sword and pointed it at the lot of them.

“I don’t agree with sword point diplomacy, but I think you’ll find me more than ready to engage in it right now. You will not keep your positions, going forward.” More splutters, right up until the sword-point rose. “Not one of you is fit to hold a position of privilege in Darcy’s court, or any other. Your lands will go to your stewards, those of your families who actually care and look out for the land they oversee. Rath?”

“My men will see to them,” the general replied, nodding his head and I watched with a strange feeling, one of disbelief that it was happening, as soldiers moved in, hauling away the protesting, shouting, or screaming noblemen until there was none left to remove. Then he stood, regarding the now downtrodden king who kneeled before us, spitting up blood while trying to gasp in breaths. “But what do we do with Ulfric?”

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