Page 57 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“You… see things?” I asked, the words feeling stupid, clumsy, as I spoke them, but what else could I say?

“Have visions you mean?” She nodded slowly. “Come inside. We don’t discuss such matters on the temple steps like a group of fishwives.”

And so we were swept into the temple. But while my feet had me drifting towards the training rooms, she just shook her head and indicated we were to go to another part of the temple. We followed her and were ushered into what appeared to be her sanctum.

The walls were covered with bookshelves and dusty tomes filled every inch of them, spilling into piles on her desk.

“I’d apologise for the mess,” she said with a wave of her hand, “but that indicates a willingness to change that I don’t possess. The Crone has her claws in me now. It’s too late for such things.”

“You mean the Morrigan?” I asked in a low voice.

“The personification of women’s power over life and death,” she replied with a slow smile. “Because that’s our power.” She smiled then and the bones of her face seemed to push taut against her skin. I shivered reflexively. “Yes. I’ve been a girl for the Maiden, then Mother Aeve for petitioners, but now I’m shifting into the last phase of my life. Wisdom I can give you, but as always, it might not necessarily be the kind you want.”

“Can you help me to see more visions of the Reavers and their commander?” I asked.

“If it’s in you, you can find it, if you’ve the will,” she said, her hands crossing in her lap. “I cannot bring forth anything in you that isn’t already there.”

I looked at my mates then, all of us seeking each other’s gaze at in frustration at not hearing what we needed to.

“But I can teach you techniques to allow what’s in you to bubble up,” she amended, and that’s how we ended up in quite a different training room.

This one was much smaller, an intimate space seeming even more reduced in size by the hazy loops of incense wafting smoke into the air. As we stepped inside, I’d been hit by the scents of patchouli, of amber and sandalwood, the floor of the room, soft and cushioned, giving under our feet as we walked in.

“Sit, young wolves,” Aeve ordered. “As the pack that you are.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, but my men did. Axe took up position by my right hand, Weyland at my left, but it was Gael at my back who got the closest, his breath ruffling the small hairs on the back of my neck. We sat down then, clustered close.

“Take each other’s hands, make a connection,” Aeve ordered, “then close your eyes.”

I heard the muffled thud of her walking stick as I obeyed her, then felt the massive palm of Axe’s as he took my hand, Weyland doing the same on the other side. Gael’s hand slid up my spine, stroking the bumps of bone there.

“Now, to open yourself to what lies within, you must become present. You think you are now, for where else could you be? You do not walk in the past, nor fly forward into the future. But in many ways you are. We dwell on past responses, assuming they will still hold true today, or our minds race ahead to tomorrow and beyond, looking, seeking a better future or a different one. To be present is to make yourself so very vulnerable, so that you abandon the lessons of the past in favour of trusting that you will do your best when you are fully present for the conditions of today, and you let go of your dreams for the future. You allow yourself to just be.”

My brow wrinkled as I considered what she was saying: it all seemed important, yet I had no idea how to do what she said. She let out a long sigh, as if sensing that, then said, “Bring your focus to this room, this moment. What can you feel, smell, hear, taste and see? Focus on that.”

The incense made sense now, because, as I brought my attention to it, I caught the wafts of the scent, growing smokier and more intense before being carried away by small breezes which I only felt now that I was focussing on the play of them on my skin. My lungs expanded as I took in a deep breath of it and when I exhaled, it felt like my breath had become perfumed. But as soon as I allowed myself to focus on the now, my awareness registered so much more.

The press of my legs, my buttocks, into the soft flooring and the way it gave beneath me. The tension in my thighs as I sat cross legged, the hard soles of my boots as they dug in. The fluid length of my spine and the heat that radiated out from Gael’s touch and, at that, even more sensation.

The calluses, thick and striating across Axe’s palm. The heat of his massive hand and the way it dwarfed mine. The small shift of his thumb, back and forth, back and forth, across the back of my hand, the firmness of his grip.

Weyland’s grip was much tighter, as if he feared to let me go, and his fingers more restive, stroking down my fingers, turning the skin there sensitive under his touch. It created a referred flush of pleasure that radiated out from where he touched me, a sharp clench inside forcing me to gasp aloud. The moment my lips parted felt exquisitely, as did the little flutter of pleasure. Something that was only built upon as I focussed on Gael’s hand.

I could loosen the muscles of my back under his grip, the burden of keeping me upright shared now. His palm slid up my spine, then down again and it felt like my focus rose and fell with it.

“When we are here, now,” Aeve said, her voice cutting through the intense focus. “We can allow other things to come. What we need to know, what needs attention, what has been shoved aside in favour of what we think we need to attend to. Take a breath, young wolves. Take a breath together.”

We did it all the time, synchronised or not, yet in this space the action seemed to take on a different import. When we sucked the smoke into our lungs, somehow each one of us aided the others to draw in more. And when we exhaled, that’s when it came.

A vision of her.

This wasn’t what we were looking for; it wasn’t showing us the place where the Reaver king had settled, where he would attack next. But it came anyway.

She rushed into a palace I recognised well, though it looked brighter, newer than the one I knew. She hurried down the carpet-floored corridor, only slowing her steps when a group of other women came across her.

“Majesty,” they said, sinking down into deep curtseys and she was by necessity forced to pause, only a small wrinkling of her brow indicating what that cost her. She completed her own curtsey, much briefer than theirs, and all of the women rose, letting her past. She picked up her pace then, not as fast as before, but still swiftly navigating the palace, coming to a room with massive gilt doors that she cracked open, before slipping in through the smallest of gaps.

“There you are, Eleanor,” a man said, and that’s when I gasped. He was younger, so much younger here.

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