Page 28 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“Sleep…” he whispered. “We won’t get much, but we must snatch what we can. Aramoor is a good day’s ride from here if we go hard.”

My body seemed to accept his advice, even if my mind wasn’t entirely on board, but sleep came anyway, swallowing me in its depths.

“Lord Walter—” Dane started to say.

We’d hurried over to the man’s suite as soon as first light came.

“I got your message, Your Highness,” a big, gruff man said, getting to his feet and bowing to the princes. “How reliable is your intelligence?”

“Very, milord.”

“Damn it all to hell. I can’t leave here now to deal with this. I’ll send a bird to my steward and tell him to stay alert.”

The man seemed curiously satisfied with that train of thought.

“The information we received indicates that the force likely to attack will be much larger than your own men can handle,” Dane said. The five of us clustered closer to him. “If something isn’t done, it’ll be a massacre.”

There was something satisfying about watching Lord Walter go pale. Before he seemed slightly irritated by everything we were saying, but not now. He sank down into his chair, staring at his desk.

“All of your people will be slaughtered like sheep,” Dane said, his tone curiously gentle, which just seemed to make the horror of his words seem all the worse. “Your crops burned, your cattle killed, the manor your family has maintained for time immemorial will be razed to the ground.”

“This is these Reavers I’ve been hearing about?” Walter asked. “It’s all anyone can talk about when I visit an alehouse. I thought it all scuttlebutt but the man who supplies my wine introduced me to his cousin who lost his entire family…” His brows jerked down and then his focus shifted back to us. “And what’s your father doing about this? He’s the one who commands the army. He needs to send them in.”

Dane grinned then, a perhaps impolitic response, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.

“Perhaps he just needs to be asked?”

“Reavers?”

King Ulfric slouched on his throne, a slow smile spreading across his face. He rested his temple on one finger, but I couldn’t pay too much attention to him, it was her I stared at. A cat can look at a queen, right? Well, I stared her down, meeting those icy blue eyes, unable to unsee those finely boned hands and the way they brutalised a boy and his dog.

The king looked around though as he smirked, looking for similar responses. There were some mocking titters from the peanut gallery, but many more were silent. Deathly so. The king’s smirk faltered then and he straightened up as a result.

“And what has this to do with my sons?”

“Father, we were the ones who alerted Lord Walter to the threat,” Dane replied.

“Did you, indeed?”

“And we want to ride out with a contingent of the army to ascertain whether or not this threat is a real one. I understand your concern. The Reavers have been a bogeyman used to frighten children for so long. Surely if we see things with our own eyes, we can provide you with an intelligence report you know you can trust.”

“No,” Aurora said, her face screwing up. “No, send a small scouting party, but not my sons. This is—”

“Hush.”

As Ulfric raised an imperious hand, the queen’s mouth snapped shut.

“You wish to ride out to meet an armed force that seeks to raze Aramoor to the ground?”

There was wonder in the king’s tone as well as suspicion, but as he spoke, something odd happened. He scanned his sons as if seeing them for the first time, searching for something, but I wasn’t sure what. But once he’d inspected them, his gaze came to rest on me.

I didn’t want this. There was something leonine about Weyland, with all his golden beauty, but in the king I was much more conscious of a big cat’s claws. They were sheathed right now, as he looked me over oh so closely, and I couldn’t work out why. But as the king sucked in a breath, ready to deliver his verdict, a man rushed into court.

“Your Majesties.” He dropped a hasty bow, a piece of paper clasped tight in his hand. “I apologise for barging in like this—”

“What is it, General Rath?” Ulfric asked.

“We’ve just had word of a possible attack. A force of unidentified wargen have been spotted just outside—”

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