Page 126 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“Somehow I don’t think anything gets past this door that She doesn’t want to.”

“The goddess has given her favour to fucking Callum as well as us, so I don’t think she’s to be trusted,” Gael said.

“And why is that?” Dane asked, all of his usual analytical cool back.

“Because he holds the blood as well,” the Maiden said

I gasped as the door opened, Pepin appearing in all that golden light. But in that radiance, something dark shifted.

“Pepin…?” I rasped.

“Where’s Pepin?” Gael snapped. “I’d like a bloody word with her about all of this! We’ve been led around by our noses and that needs to stop.”

“Pepin?”

She smiled as she stepped closer, but as Gael’s eyes raked the golden light, I could tell he couldn’t see her. Only I could. So he didn’t catch the moment when her eyes dropped down, catching the way the blood seeped into my armour, when her hand pressed down on mine, the whole world dropping away when she did.

“In the beginning it was blood. Always blood.”

I heard her voice, but saw the cave, this cave. But not after the door had been built, nor when the citadel was. No, this was from before, many thousands of years before. That girl, with her mates, who’d crawled into this cavern, their eyes widening as they saw the triple forms of the goddess before them. The obsidian knife, put to the dead deer’s throat, it’s still warm blood splashing into the dishes at the feet of the Maiden’s statue.

“They worshipped us,” Pepin told me, my eyes sliding over each person in the cave. “But only she could command our powers.”

The girl stood tall, watching with pitiless eyes as her male companions shifted into wolves, fangs appearing in her mouth when she smiled. She held out an imperious finger, directing the wolves to go out into the snow and go they went.

“Through her, we could shape the world. In her hands, our power could be used to strengthen crops.” The cave fell away and instead a great expanse of cleared land appeared, and in it, people painstakingly put seeds in rows, then covered them over. The girl with the goddess’ power walked through the rows and instantly they transformed. Wheat grew and corn, vegetables, swollen with nutrients, ready to nourish the people.

“She could usher in new life, ensure that the next generation would grow.”

What I saw shifted again, the girl was bent down between the legs of a pregnant woman, my own hands pressing down on my aching belly. She eased the child out of the crying woman, then waved her hands, stopping the flow of blood that rushed out after it.

“She could heal the sick.” The imagery shifted faster now. More hands placed on feverish foreheads, others on broken bones. “Or ease those at the end of their life, into the next.” A tiny woman, shrunken with age, took one last shuddering breath as the girl held her hand, a small smile forming on her face as it became apparent it was her last.

“She and her descendants used our power to build a community, a city.”

I saw the small village shift and grow, hundreds of years flicking by in a moment. Huts formed, then more spread out. Huts were replaced by stone buildings, then the architecture of today appeared. Snowmere grew and grew until I saw the city as it existed now.

“She had the power and she passed that down to all of her descendants.”

I saw the girl much older now, with a little girl playing at her feet as she nursed her own baby. She reached out, smoothing the girl’s hair out of her face and that’s when she shifted. That girl grew, as did the baby and when they became women, they deployed the same powers for the betterment of Strelae.

No, they created Strelae.

Pepin nodded, the vision fading away again.

“There was no Strelae without her, without us. When we had no conduit, we were trapped in our cave, mute and alone, unloved and unremarked. She changed that. She created a town, a civilisation. She created a religion. People worshipped at our altars.”

I saw people coming into the cave, one by one, laying down sacrifices at the feet of each statue. Fruits and vegetables. Bags of grain. Small shells and feathers. Then a bleating baby goat, drawn closer, his throat cut with the same obsidian knife, his blood pooling in the dishes and then out on the floor, the sea of red swelling in my field of vision, washing away everything else.

“It’s the blood that allows you access to our powers,” Pepin said, then looking past me to where all the wolves milled around the caves. “And it’s blood that lets Callum do the same.”

I’d read much about the mighty Granian army and the way they conquered bestial Strelae, but the view I saw of the battlefield didn’t mesh well with those stories. There was blood, shit, mud and ravens, just like any other. Some knights rode across the wasteland in shining armour, on the back of valiant war horses, but just as many were crumpled up and thrown away, like disused toys, the ravens pecking at the staring eyes through the gaps in their visors.

Then there was the Strelans.

Callum waded through mud and blood, his proud visage a mask of agony as he looked around him. Men he’d known, fought beside, lay dead now, but worse were the ones who screamed in agony, waiting for the end. He’d ridden into battle, thinking he had the right of the fight, sure the goddess was on his side…

“Eleanor should’ve ridden into battle,” I whispered. “She should’ve been the one to lead the fight.”

---