Page 53 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“What’s behind the door, Pep…” Dane’s voice trailed away as he realised that name was only ever a ruse. “What do we actually call you?”

“Pepin was what my mother called me when I was born,” she said with a small smile. “Things progressed differently for us than they do for you. Granny came first, then she gave birth to Mother, who then gave birth to me. Of course now, Granny’s trying to contract things back to the way they were.”

She grabbed the keys from Dane’s lax fingers, undoing the locks in a series of swift movements, but as her hands moved, a golden light followed them. One that only multiplied once she pushed the door open. Because it revealed radiance.

I stepped forward, something that drew comments then cries of admonition from my mates, but I couldn’t seem to stop. A hazy cloud of golden light drew me closer. And as I moved into it, I felt it, that wash of warmth, just like walking into a pool of sunlight on a cold day. It soaked into me, all the way down into my bones and lit me up inside.

“This is…” I heard Axe’s voice beside me, little more than a gasp, then his hand took mine.

“Gods, I feel…” Gael took my other side, then he let out a gusty exhale, but it was when he looked at me that I saw the difference.

“Gael?”

His eyes shone then, bright, bright blue, but it was more than that. His fractured eye seemed to absorb the light from around us, creating a gold filigree in each crack in the iris.

“It’s…” His throat worked as he tried to explain. “It’s…”

“It’s her power,” Pepin said, stepping forward.

“By your logic, it’s yours as well,” Dane said, struggling for calm and failing.

“I’ve always been granted greater freedoms due to my youth,” she replied, “but that comes at a cost. I have access to some of this, but not like she does. Anyway, theological musings are for another day. This is just the entrance to the complex. We need to go further in.”

We followed Pepin like a band of lost lambs, walking through a golden mist until the space opened up.

“Gods…” Weyland hissed, staring at the space and that’s all that could really be said about it, because the golden light faded somewhat in here to reveal a cave, the rocky walls covered in glittering spikes of clear quartz crystal. The crystals bristled all the way up to a ceiling we struggled to see clearly, the vast space having the air of a cathedral about it. Pepin walked up to one, pausing for a second before pressing her finger to the tip. Light pulsed in response, then rippled through all of the crystals, filling the space with light and that revealed... her.

I stepped closer to the stone carving. It was massive, towering well over the two of us, her form worn down and abraded by elements that I couldn’t even imagine would make it down here, but there she was. A naked young woman, her limbs carved inordinately slim, a great wolf’s head where a human one should’ve been.

“They used to bring us offerings here,” Pepin said, pointing to the variety of stone, and clay dishes that littered the ground by her statue’s feet. “Before the city, before the castle, this was a place of pilgrimage where women came to receive our blessings.”

“And what did they leave?” I asked, feeling some sort of need rise inside me.

“Food and drink, which was very nice, but not needed.” She shrugged then. “But that wasn’t the point. They gave us something precious, sacrificed it to us, and therefore the ritual was complete.”

My hand went to one of my swords, pulling it free.

“You don’t need to…” Pepin started to say but I pressed my finger to the sharp point until a bead of blood formed there. She huffed, but watched the blood fall, one drop, then another, then a final one, splashing into the stone bowl beneath the statue’s feet. I watched as her complexion changed, colour blooming in her cheeks, her eyelids fluttering. “You made your obeisance,” she said finally. “Blood for blood, remember.”

Her eyes flicked to Gael and both of us flushed as a result.

“Every maiden who takes her pleasure, with a man or a woman or on her own, and sheds blood the first time, she gives me my due.” She nodded slowly then. “It’s why the Maidens are so terrified of taking a lover. They think that holding out forever, staying always a maiden, shows me the greatest of respects.” Her mouth thinned. “But we all move on. We have to. We can’t stay maidens, not forever. Our bodies age, our experience changes us and the first flush of womanhood transmutes into something else altogether.”

She jerked herself away from the statue then, striding through the space and down another tunnel, leading us further and further on.

“If you manage to beat the queen, if you slit Aurora’s throat, then you’ll need to come here. The old queen dying? That was always part of the ritual, though it was usually on the battlefield or on her deathbed. It won’t matter,” Pepin insisted, standing in the entrance of the next cave, blocking our view of it to ensure we listened to her. “The pretender queen will be dead and the true-born one will take her place. I show you what to do, because it will need to be done, whether I’m here or not. Things are… changing. I may need to leave the city. The war, the fight, it draws me away.”

She snarled then, her fangs flashing.

“It’s what I was made for, to protect this land. But you…” Pepin stared at me, her eyes phosphorescent blue now, boring into mine. “Granny has her means to sweep through the world, to be either the gentle hand on your forehead as you pass, or the knife driven deep into your guts, taking you down screaming. But Mother?”

She stepped away then, and we saw another cave, the same crystals crawling all across the walls, but this one was filled with a golden light, which swirled up, up, in lazy curls towards a point in the ceiling we couldn’t see, it was so bright. That light bathed a figure that was all too familiar.

The woman in the statue was sweetly rounded, no longer the slender attenuated form of the maiden. Her hands cradled her stomach, holding its weight, protecting it, her downcast eyes seeming to endlessly regard the potential of her child.

“Mother doesn’t walk in this world,” Pepin said as she gazed up at the statue, as if begging her to change her gaze and notice her. “She doesn’t need to. Every time a birth happens, a womb quickens, there she is. But mostly because the role is to be held by another.”

I flinched when she looked sideways, her gaze settling on me.

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