Page 87 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

Sure enough, Jan was scrunched up in a ball on her bed, the covers completely pulled over her.

“Jan?” A small gap in the blankets let me know she was there. “Can you come out?”

Little hands appeared and drew the blankets foff over her head, but she remained otherwise cocooned in their depths.

“Will you tell me more of the story?” she asked.

I blinked. What I’d told her was most of what I’d seen when I was at the Mother’s statue. But as she stared at me with hopeful eyes, I couldn’t help but nod. She launched herself at me, giggling when she drove the breath out of me, before I settled on the floor, a little girl held in my arms. I could make more of the story up, I decided, as soon as I saw her smile.

“Now, where were we…” I began.

“The queen was in love with the wizard, but her brother was bossing her around.” Jan shot Del a dark look. He scowled back.

“Right…”

I sucked a breath in, ready to turn the wolf queen’s story into something more child friendly, when she came: Eleanor. I could see her clearly in my mind’s eye and right now, she wasn’t happy.

Eleanor smoothed her hands down the folds of her blue velvet dress. This was a different day, a different time, but the dress had become one of her favourites and was worn often. Because Nordred complimented her one day when she was wearing it. Admittedly, they would be going over the lists of potential mates together today, but still. The moment when he looked up as he leaned over the list. When he stopped and stared, unable to look away. When he’d told her how blue her eyes looked when she wore the dress in a low desperate tone…

“Gross!” Del said with a groan. “Is there a war in this story? I want fighting?”

But Jan tucked herself down tighter in my arms at the sound of that idea. War. She recoiled from it instinctively.

“There will come a day when you’ll meet someone special,” I said. “You’ll be struck dumb at the sight of them.”

“Good,” Jan said firmly, then looked up at me. “Was that what it was like when you met the princes?”

I smiled then, seeing them appearing out of the mists on the moors, and me bloody-handed and wild.

“In a way,” I said. “But I don’t think I’m the kind of girl that stories are written about. Now, Eleanor…”

Despite the armour of her favourite dress, she walked towards the large meeting room with a feeling of trepidation, the golden doors getting larger and larger with each step. Because when she pushed them wide, there they were.

Pack Armstrong.

They lived up to their names, the men getting to their feet were covered in the furs of animals they’d caught with their own two hands, she’d been reliably informed. They had acres of rippling muscles. Her maid, Maisie, had swooned dramatically as she described the burly men who ruled lands to the north of the capital. The men approached as a pack, the four of them forming a massive wall of masculine flesh, but as one stepped forward, offering her his ham-sized hand, she found herself wishing for something, someone else.

As if summoned, Nordred appeared at her shoulder.

“Your Majesty.” Her address was used pointedly, particularly as the Armstrong men had made no sign of obeisance at her appearance. “This is Duncan Armstrong and his pack.”

“My Queen.” Duncan sketched a hasty bow, not deep enough and not held long enough to show respect to a queen of whom he’d just made his acquaintance. Those blue eyes seemed to soak in her dress and everything it revealed as he straightened up. “It’s good to finally meet you.”

The northern lords tended to keep mostly to themselves, being a hardy, insular lot. The lands to the north were rich with minerals but not much else.

“And you, Lord Duncan,” she replied with a nod, then turned to the others.

Duncan introduced them all, but their names, individual characteristics, just blurred together, like they always did. Her grandmother had schooled her on the process of taking a mate, describing what she might feel if she walked into the presence of her gods-given intended. A curling in her stomach or a rapid fluttering feeling, like she’d swallowed a flight of butterflies. A sharp intake of breath, along with feeling like she couldn’t take another. A hot flush or a cold one. She’d memorised the list of signs because that was what her grandmother had insisted upon, but it ended up not being something she needed to work at remembering.

Eleanor turned to Nordred then, nodding to him in greeting, smiling like a queen would when one of her courtiers does her a service, but all of that masked what she felt inside. She had experienced every single one of her grandmother’s signs in the presence of the court advisor. From the moment he’d appeared in her grandmother’s court at the end of her life, to now. She felt breathless, on edge, and utterly exhilarated by him.

She’d been forced to endure the Armstrongs’ attentions. They took her on a turn around the room, obviously wanting to get her away from her chaperone, but that just destroyed what little focus she had. Any kind of distance from Nordred hurt and she couldn’t help but hate those that induced that in her. The lout, Duncan, mumbled a feverish stream of bawdy and avaricious dreams at her, expecting her loins and heart to be set alight by his vision for Strelae. She kept her face schooled into a polite expression that a stupid man might interpret as quiet receptivity, fighting to keep the mask in place right up until he took his leave of her.

“Not the Armstrongs,” she said when the doors were closed, the most awful sigh escaping her. Her whole body sagged in ways she’d never allowed herself to do in the presence of others. Her grandmother had demanded she have a ramrod-straight spine at all times. She must look like a queen before she could act as one.

“No, I could see that plainly,” Nordred replied, and I was shocked by this mental image of him.

He looked so young and… boyish. It felt strange but I could understand Eleanor’s infatuation with him. He was everything the Armstrongs weren’t. Caring, conciliatory and perilously aware of everything that was going on around him, but more than that. When she dared to look up and meet his eyes, when her gaze strayed down to his lips, then back up again, she felt seen in ways no one else seemed to.

---