Page 127 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“Eleanor, like many of her generation, had lost their way.” Pepin’s eyes bled black then, her smile curling in a way I’d never seen her do before. “They’d grown soft and used to the largesse we bestowed upon them. If she’d rode into battle, you know what would’ve happened.” Her head cocked to one side, a curiously bird like mannerism. “She would’ve died, just like everyone else did. Better she went across the border, took the one thing she could do for her country with her. Give us a daughter.”

I saw girls then, so many girls, all dressed in proper Granian dresses, modest and meek, right up until they came to me.

I stared into my own eyes then, seeing a wide eyed innocence, despite the brutality I’d had to suffer through and wondered how we could be the same person. This other me, the younger me, she lifted her boy, a look of determination on her face, her arrow aimed right at me. My mouth fell open, a scream freezing as she let the bolt fly.

When I jolted in Gael’s arms I was shoved right back to that battlefield, catching sight of the moment when Callum dropped to his knees. A knight in black armour galloped across the battlefield, sword outstretched, ready to make his kill, but Callum didn’t seem to notice.

“Why…?” He breathed the word out then, it appearing to take life, curling in the air, before being whisked away. “Why?” he asked again, the breeze shifting in response and with it came the sound of raven’s wings flapping, their beaks cawing. “WHY?”

He threw up his arms, creating a perfect target for the knight, the Granian smiling as he rode faster. But any victory he might think to claim was going to stolen from his teeth.

Every raven on the battlefield rose as one, becoming a dense black cloud that obscured the knight’s path and all of the other Granians.

Yess…. The Morrigan hissed inside his head, inside mine.

“Why would you forsake us like this!” Callum’s voice echoed like the rolling of thunder, the crack of lightning. “Why would you let us die for nothing?”

He got no answer. People rarely did when facing down the dark night of the soul, so he was forced to provide it himself. He stabbed his sword down into the ground in the middle of the flock of ravens, piercing the dead chest of a fallen Granian soldier as he did so.

“Give me the means to drive back these interlopers. Gift me this, dark goddess, and I will be forever your slave.”

The birds went berserk, pecking at Granians and Strelans alike, the battlefield disintegrating into a bunch of men batting away birds and for a moment, I thought he’d win, that he’d use this power to drive back my people.

But of course, I knew that couldn’t have happened. I knew the end of this story, or at least up until the modern day. The knight appeared through the cloud of ravens, scattering them hither and thither before driving his sword into Callum’s chest.

I went completely rigid as I saw the prince fall back onto the bed of corpses, great gouts of blood erupting from his mouth. But when he fell, she came with him, her laughter echoing across the battlefield as the raven’s descended upon him.

His arm was thrown across his face, as they pecked and pecked, a squabbling, cawing, rabid cloud of ravens, all looking for a piece. But when he took his last breath, they fell silent and so did the battlefield.

Blood, I saw, more blood. Always blood. Blood that sprayed out of Callum’s lips hours later, as he sucked in a new breath.

“Twins are always a problem.” Pepin flickered now, shifting between her form, my mother’s and another much darker one. “Too many mouths to feed at the same time, the resources for one being shared by two.” I saw Eleanor walked into the tent of the Granian general, just as I saw a wavering Callum drag himself to his feet on a now empty battlefield. “The power that the queen usually wielded was split between the two of them. One chose the path of life.”

Eleanor sat down at the table, signing the terms of peace even as her eyes strayed to Nordred as he stepped back.

“The other, death.”

Callum moved like the walking wounded, stumbling over dead bodies and mud as he left the battlefield behind. He walked and he walked, through forests and fields, past sleepy towns, yet untouched by the invaders, and then to the mountains. The Eaglefell range, I realised. He clawed his way up the cliff’s sides, dragging himself onto a plateau, only to begin again, climbing and climbing until the air grew thin. Climbing unto there was nothing left to climb.

He walked now, towards a small town in the foothills in whatever country lay beyond the mountain range, swaying as he approached. Men passed him by, joking at the state of him, holding out a skin of wine as he went, but he ignored them. Then when he reached a tavern, he pulled out a long knife.

“Two bids for our power, two destinies,” each phase of the goddess said. “And only one will succeed. Which, is yet to be determined. He is a man, limited in what he can access, but you?” Pepin’s nose wrinkled, then my mother’s. “You’re just an untrained child. An interloper. What can you do?”

“Wait…” I rasped out, as the goddesses faded, as the cave reasserted itself, it taking my mates a moment to respond. They’d marched past the Maiden without so much as a by your leave, but I stopped then when we came to the Mother.

“Set me down.”

“Darcy, we can’t!”

A small wolf cub trotted over to me, nosing me with his soft muzzle and I stared into a familiar pair of blue eyes before I looked up at her.

“How? I asked, in the time old way people have been asking gods and goddesses for centuries. “How do I win?” A scream escaped my lips as another stab of pain felt like it tore me in two, my bloody hand slapping down on the statue.

Each statue had an array of dishes below her feet, where offerings had been placed. But my hand? It petitioned the Mother directly, though the form she took confused me.

“Darcy?” Weyland’s question was a valid one, because there I stood, back before this had all started. Hair long and loose around my shoulders, unmarked by blood and grime, I stared down at myself with a quizzical expression, my eyes blazing blue.

At the application of my blood on the statue of the Mother, she transformed, coming to life. My mother stood before me, then Annis, then Lannie, and the women of Wildeford. All of the women who’d dared to bring a babe into a cruel world, then fight to get the best for their child.

---