Page 125 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

My mates protested, shouted their denial, Axe leaving off what he was doing to rush over, cutting down a Reaver who sought to insert himself in this conversation, but I barely heard them. Right now, there was only me and her.

“You want me. You’ve always wanted me. Pepin sent Nordred to train me. You sent my mates across the border to strike a deal, but they found me. You made sure I would come back with them…” I sucked a breath in, my brow knotting as I wondered at just how far this plan went. Did Kris…? Did Father…? “You brought me to Strelae, to Snowmere. You forced me to see what the Reavers were doing at Wildeford.” My voice broke on that. “You forced me to care about this bloody country. And now that you’ve achieved all of that, it’s going to burn.”

I saw Eleanor stepping down into the cave with Nordred at her side, each step feeling like it carried with it the weight of thousands. Her hand instinctively to her stomach, as if it needed protecting from that burden, or perhaps the child that lay within did. There was no hope in her. Each step she took was as a failed queen, a failed sister, but she had one more option left to her.

She lifted her hand from her stomach and took the missive bearing the imperial seal, reading the option set out in it. If she surrendered. If she came to the Empire’s representative of her own free will. If she told her army to stand down and married the general of their choice, she could end the slaughter of her people. They would install a king anyway, one loyal to the Empire, ready to pay tithes and put in place preferential trade deals, so she could either be the wife of that king, the mother to future generations of monarchs, or she could die with the rest of her people, pushed out in favour of the Empire’s colonists. The paper crackled between her fingers.

“I’m the sacrifice you need,” I said, feeling my lips move, seeing Eleanor’s mouth moving, saying the same as she stood in front of the Mother’s statue. “So take me.”

I thought the Morrigan had accepted the bargain, because the pain that had been wracking me since I woke in Ulfric’s tent roared to life inside me. I was forced to my knees, my hands slapping down on the stone, a gods’ awful groan escaping my lips as it felt like I was torn in two.

“NO!” Dane’s voice echoed out across the wall, but it made no difference. I sobbed between rapid breaths, twisting, turning like a fish on a line.

“What the fuck did you do to her, you old witch!” Gael snarled, standing over me, sheltering me with his body.

“I accepted her sacrifice. Retreat now, little consorts, collect up the form of your lady love and scurry off through the mountains. My power will last as long as the blood seeps from her womb. Retreat and regroup to fight again and see who is worthy of ruling Strelae.”

Her words, they were important, somehow I knew that, but my focus was shattered by the agony I was forced to endure. I couldn’t stand, couldn’t move, but I couldn’t stay still either, thrashing on the battlements with the force of it, my cries pushed out between gritted teeth. And with them came the hot seep of menstrual blood.

“I have you, lass.” Gael’s voice was ragged, broken, but his arms were like iron, scooping me up and clasping me to his chest. “RETREAT!” His voice cut through the air, his order making us obey. “Signal the retreat!”

61

The citadel was in an uproar. People milled around in the courtyard like startled cattle, exclaiming at the sight of their loved ones returning, though some wailed when they learned others hadn’t. But none of them were doing as they needed to.

“Head downstairs!” Dane shouted. “Into the caves below!”

But this wasn’t like before. No crowd accepting a victorious prince, not a people looking for a leader. They were on edge, terrified, listening to the sounds of the battle beyond, and now we were running through the gate, nothing they saw beyond it reassured them. I heard their frantic shouts, their cries, felt their terror as my own as they caught glimpses of a black cloud forming on the battlements care of Mother Aeve and her priestesses.

But yelling, crying, wailing wouldn’t help. None of it would. We had to run, but they hadn’t seen enough, experienced enough to do this. They clung now to those the cared about, struggled to process what was going on, but we didn’t have time for them to come to the same realisation that we did.

That we needed to escape.

I needed to do something. I don’t know how Eleanor had escaped this, a bone deep sense of duty, of knowledge that it was my job to do something about this situation, even as I curled up in a ball in Gael’s arms. But as my shaking hand slid low, my fingertips slipping through the blood that had soaked through my armour, my lips moved.

I wasn’t a wizard like Nordred. I had never thought I possessed the gift of magic, until now. Back on the battlefield, Gael and I had spoken those words, dark and strange in a language I didn’t understand, when we turned everyone into wolves. I said them now. My hand fell limply as Gael shoved his way through the crowd, but I felt the moment my blood dropped onto the flagstones. My blood, this land, they came together in a way that was explosive.

“Darcy! Darcy!”

Del’s voice was a sharp wail above the reactive growl of the mob, one that should’ve been lost. But as the blood soaked in, the words seemed to take ahold, spilling from my lips, tangible now, spreading out through the masses and transforming them.

I was queen and I would command my people and my first act was to force them to shift.

We wouldn’t have need of clothes, of keepsakes and pots and pans where we were going, so they all fell to the ground, discarded now because every single person living in Snowmere had become a wolf. And that pack, it looked to us.

“How the….?”

“Questions later, brother,” Weyland said, clapping Dane on the shoulder. “We must close the gates and get downstairs. Into the caves?”

“Do we know where those caves go?” Axe asked.

“Does it matter?” Gael snapped. “We can’t fucking go back there and whatever death magic they’re unleashing, it’ll only last while Darcy bleeds.”

“Then we go and find out.” Dane retrieved the keys from his belt and then led us inside.

The entire population of Snowmere came with us in wolf form with all of the discipline of an established pack. They knew who their alpha was and they followed. A sea of black fur and grey, white fur and sable tipped, ran down, down, down until we reached the door.

“Quickly now and gods, I hope that door will hold,” Gael growled.

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