Page 85 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

She reached out then, extending one perfectly pale hand, and I stumbled into the wheat after her. But the thunder grumbled out its warning, forcing my eyes up in time to see the dark birds whirling above. And when I glanced back down, she was gone again.

I stood there in this bloody wheat field, looking around me in alarm, feeling my real, actual body shift and turn in our bed, strong arms reaching out to hold me close. But I fought his grip, their grip, because didn’t they know? Couldn’t they see? I needed her.

Come.

Another command, one I would’ve obeyed willingly if it had the promise of bringing me another moment with my mother, but it didn’t. I froze when I saw who stood before me, a much harsher voice ringing in my ears.

It was the same woman as before, the one in the homespun cotton, a kerchief in her hair, but it was what was under her hand that had me stiffening. I moved like a wolf facing a challenge, every muscle locked down and vibrating with repressed power as my eyes raked over a younger Del. A boy with eyes wide with fear, something he was trying to repress if the stark lines in his face were anything to go by. A boy who pleaded mutely for me to come get him.

I moved in a run then, feeling my wolf soul take over. She planted my feet, moved my legs in the long, effortless lope of her kind, bringing me closer and closer. Except, in the way of dreams, I actually didn’t make any ground towards them. I pulled up as the thunder growled its response like a dark laugh that mocked my efforts to do exactly as I was asked.

The voice told me to come and I was trying. I shook my head, feeling my real body stiffen, my mind beginning to pull away from this confusing dream. But the figures in my dream wouldn’t allow that.

“Come, Darcy. You promised!” Del’s cry sliced through me so thoroughly it was as if a knife blade of lightning had struck me from above.

“I’m coming! Del, I’m coming!” I shouted, in my dream, in reality.

“Darcy?”

A groggy voice that had no place here threatened to tear the dream to tatters, so that I was forced to hold the pieces together. I had to stay in the dream, because there on the horizon I sensed a dark presence lurking. Pieces of the darkness filtered through the trees in the forest that ran along the edges of the field, bleeding out like a foul blight, ready to poison the land. And he came with them.

Prince Callum. It was easy now to see his noble lineage. Had any commoner sat a horse with such a proud bearing? Had any peasant surveyed the plain before us with an eminently possessive eye? He saw this, all of this as his and he was here to take it back. Then his focus shifted.

Thunder rolled and lightning cracked as those sharp blue eyes narrowed down on Del and his mother. His true mother.

“No…” I whined that like a child, because that’s what I felt like right now. A helpless participant, one forced to just stand by and watch. Callum made one small gesture with his hands and then his Reavers threw back their heads, to a man, howling their intent to the skies, right before they leapt forward.

“No!” I barked, slapping my hands down on my hips to reach for my swords, but I didn’t find them.

One hand landed on the voluminous folds of homespun cotton, the other was squeezed tight by Del as he shrank into me.

“Darcy…” he ground out between locked down teeth. “Mum…”

Dreams can be torture, our subconscious minds shifting and turning, stripping us of every means of agency, reviving the moments of helplessness experienced during the day. But I wasn’t helpless. I thrust Del behind me, feeling my chest fill with a golden light, one which mimicked the ragged bolts of lightning above, sucking in a breath full of electrically charged air in one moment, then calling my beast to me in the next.

Come.

She stood there before me, before the Reavers, a golden beacon, with all of the same opulent white carved curves of the statue and more. She was tall, in the way that all our mothers appear to be to us when we are children. She was immense in her power, her reach the whole world. And she stared down at me with a terrible intensity, so bright my eyes streamed tears with the effort of it.

Come and serve me, she ordered. Or lose it all.

Del was no longer in my grip, suddenly appearing in the vulnerable open space between the Reavers and me. He turned to run then, but when he did, he wasn’t alone. Children everywhere ran towards me, along with their parents. Old people and young, men and women, but even as they sprinted, using every muscle in their bodies, the Reavers were faster.

“No!” I shouted, trying to move, trying to shift, trying to fucking do something and failing, failing, because I was rooted to the spot. I looked down in alarm, seeing a familiar carved rock plinth locking my feet down, a scattering of bowls, ceramic and stone, arrayed about my feet.

I tried to pull free but my limbs felt heavy and laden down, the beat of my heart slowing rather than speeding up, as cold, cold stone pumped through my veins rather than hot blood.

Is this what she is forced to do? I thought, right before my brain was solidified too. Watch the world’s pain?

And so I was made to watch a massacre play out, my only salvation coming from the fact that I saw everything. The tearing apart of my people, turned from living, breathing, loving human beings into riven flesh by a bastard prince ruled by death dreams fed to him by a raven that perched on his shoulder. But also this.

I marked all the geographical features of the place with a cold, stony precision so that when the dream finally released its hold on me, I was able to spill them all out to my mates who were crouched on the bed around me, staring at me in horror. But once I’d solidified the observations by uttering them, I was up and out of the bed, wrapping a robe around me before I sprinted down the hall.

“Darcy…!” Gael hissed as I went to the children’s door, cracking it open, my eyes raking over the small lumps under the covers, illuminated by Weyland’s lamp. I crept inside, silent as a thief, and then sidled up to each bed, unable to move until I heard the gentle whistle of Jan and Del’s breaths. For precious seconds I just stared, soaking the peace; them in. But I wouldn’t be allowed that for long, would I? Not with what I knew.

Was it a true vision? I didn’t know and wouldn’t until I was there, so I turned on my heel and ran out of the room, winding my way down the hallways, my mates in pursuit, my name on their lips until I reached Dane’s office door. As I placed a hand on the wood, Weyland snapped, “What the hell is going on, Darcy? You had a nightmare?”

“She had a vision,” Axe said grimly, nodding slowly.

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