Page 27 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

Like most women in Grania, I’d grown up surrounded by the opinions, the ideas of men. They told us what it was to be a woman, each message slightly different, depending on their predilections, but the thing that couldn’t be ignored was the absolute right they felt in projecting these ideas upon us. Woman was made to serve man, and so they worked hard to shape us into exactly the right kind of servant. Be graceful, be quiet, be demure, be dainty, be whatever the hell they wanted, and I hadn’t realised what a weight that was until we went across the border to Strelae.

That’s why I’d felt like I was shuffling through so many different versions of myself, because out from under the monolithic pressure of masculine opinion in Grania, I’d finally been able to consider what I might want to become.

So to hear Dane’s words, to hear the fervour in his voice, it was a betrayal of sorts and one that hurt all the more for its unexpectedness and I jerked physically in response, the weight of his expectations feeling like actual physical blows.

I wasn’t ready for this, for someone else to put their idea of what I should become upon me.

I didn’t want his visions, his ideas, infecting mine.

We needed a way out of this situation. Strelae was my home now, better or worse and I’d seen enough of its people not to want it to suffer but…

Queen?

As soon as I heard the word, I felt that heavy weight, pushing me down, muscles in my neck straining to keep my head up, the drag of the ermine robe making each step harder to take.

But I could push past that.

I whirled around and strode, no, ran towards the door, jerking it open and not feeling like I could take a full breath until I did. I went careening out into the hallway to the sound of Dane shouting out my name, consulting each direction before sprinting off.

Where was I running? I didn’t know and it didn’t matter. I got lost in the pump of my blood, the thunder of my heart, the rasp of my lungs. I ran down one corridor, then another, going left, right, straight with no real rhyme or reason. But as I ran, I heard it, heard her.

The rustle of wings as the wind streams through them, the harsh caw reverberating out across the treetops as she flew over a forest. And between the trees, I saw them, those fucking running wolves. They sprinted, mouths slavering, their legs pumping just like mine did, but their jaws, their fangs were matted with blood and gore and all they wanted was more. I slowed then, seeing the dark stone walls in front of me in the gloom, and them. They were swarming now, coming running up a hill before massing on a rise, panting as they stared down at the valley below.

See what’s coming… a rasping, whispery voice said inside my head.

This place, the next one they would attack was no Wildeford. I saw the spread of paddock after paddock of livestock and crops, but that wasn’t all. Houses attached to the small holdings dotted the landscape, smoke rising lazily from their chimneys, then more again, more closely packed together, the closer they got to the grand manor at the centre of it all.

“Darcy!”

My hand shot up, holding Dane off, having no idea how he’d found me, but unable to care about that right now. I didn’t see him, I saw them. All the people who were about to face a Reaver attack. The gold headed raven rose up then in my field of vision, cawing out her challenge to me and that’s when I realised what this was.

It was day in the vision, whereas here it was night. This was either a memory somehow, gifted to me by the Morrigan or it was a foreshadowing of what was to come. I studied the landmarks, trying to store away every little detail. The river that snaked through the valley and the design of the manor, it possessing a distinctive pitched roof, the building forming a T shape.

“Darcy—”

“No,” I snapped when the vision faded away. “Where is this?”

I hurriedly described the place I could still see in my mind, adding more and more details before it faded.

“That’s Aramoor,” Dane said, his face going pale. “That’s where they’re going to attack?”

All I could do was nod weakly.

“Lord Walter isn’t a complete idiot. I’ll be able to talk to him, see if we can mobilise some men.”

But as the vision finally disintegrated, I saw one last detail, one that struck fear deep into my heart. A familiar face emerged from between the buildings of what I assumed was Aramoor.

“Nordred?” I whispered.

“Time to ride or die, lass,” he told me, before everything went black.

15

We’d returned to our bedroom and slept fitfully. I had no further visions to plague me. Well, not of the gifted kind. Instead, my mind raced, able to fill the gap left by the vision, imagining over and over exactly what the Reavers would do when they hit the town. I twisted as I saw the beasts tearing through flesh like butter, slashing open cows and ripping the throats out of sheep, before turning to much worse prey. My fingers tangled in the sheets as I saw dark wolf men approaching women and children, blood dripping from their claws.

“Shh…”

Dane pulled me tight and something strange happened. I usually felt waves of physical pleasure when any one of them touched me, but this was different. Rather than something that set my nerve endings afire, leaving me panting for them, a warmth flooded into me, much more like sinking into a hot bath. My fingers relaxed, my muscles unlocked and so my breathing evened out. Comfort, that’s what Dane was sending down our bond, pure unadulterated comfort. The weight of the day hit me hard then. It had been such a very long one.

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