Page 97 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“But you don’t.” I stared into his eyes now, watching them flare brighter as he returned my gaze, his expression becoming serious. “That’s your strength, your restraint. You could be a bully, pushing everyone around and coercing them to do your will.” For a split second I could see him as my father, switch in hand, but my mind utterly rejected that. “You’ve been gentle with me. You seem to know just what it would do to me if you used that strength against me. Instead, you deploy it for me, protecting me, and despite the fact I’m strong enough to hold my own, it makes me feel…” I blinked, knowing what I needed to say, but finding it hard to get it out. “Precious.”

“You are, lass, in ways I still need to tell you.” He stopped himself then and smiled, but it was much more fragile. “But I will, once we beat this bastard in the battle.”

“But how does sharing this help us do just that?” Dane asked, and that’s when I smiled.

“Always looking out for us,” I said. “Never able to let that feeling of responsibility go. As if the minute you do, it’ll all fall apart.”

“We’re going to war, Darcy,” Dane said in a terse tone. “That fear is not entirely unfounded.”

“Because you’re terrified if you do, you’ll lose the lot of us,” I continued. “Because you love us.”

That hawklike look on Dane’s face intensified and I could see how, with so many people, he would be as intimidating as hell. He looked damn near terrifying right now, right before he spoke.

“Gods damn me, but I do. Everything I learned at Mother and Father’s knees showed me the stupidity of loving, but while I learned everything I could from them, that particular lesson didn’t take. Because what is any of this without love?” He studied each of us in turn. “I can’t bear to lose a single one of you, ever. I’ll challenge that bastard Callum to single combat if that’s what it takes to keep you safe. You’re mine!”

It felt like my heart skipped a beat with joy when he growled the last part, but I didn’t get long to enjoy that sensation. Those keen eyes found Nordred’s seconds later.

“We are a pack. We’re still in the process of formalising the links between us, but that is undeniable. But how the hell does that help us tackle a mad prince and his legions of feral Reavers?”

“The queen expands her heart, her consciousness, her power to encapsulate her pack as the first step,” Nordred explained. “Something Eleanor missed out on by having me as her mate. But from my studies I have reason to believe that that expansion of her mind, her heart, her soul is but the first step. The Mother does not interfere in the world like the Maiden and the Morrigan does. She uses the queen to do so as her avatar.”

49

Silence fell over the circle, the stillness quiet enough that I could hear the far off calls of ravens. To my ear they sounded like low snickers from the goddess, mocking Nordred’s nebulous plans.

“That’s what you want us to go into battle with?” I said, voicing what I was sure were everyone’s concerns. “The power of love?”

“Love is only one part of it,” Nordred continued. “It’s about connection. A tavern wench and her employer may not love each other, but they are connected through a combination of necessity and obligation. A queen cannot love each individual member of her people with the kind of devotion she shares with her pack, but she must be connected to them. Otherwise, you get the kind of rarefied elite that currently reigns in Strelae, utterly divorced from the general populace.”

Nordred straightened then and that’s when I saw the youthful court advisor emerge from the horse master.

“The king exists in an echo chamber: the only voices heard are those of his lords. In some ways Eleanor was the same, seeing only me and her brother and those within her retinue, not the whole country. But it isn’t the king or the lords and ladies of court that are going to fight this battle, it’s the people. That’s what Callum wants, what he’s always wanted. To control the country, the people he was raised to serve and to do so in the way he thinks is right, without input from anyone else. And if you do the same when you fight him then you’ll be no different to Ulfric or Callum. Just another bloody autocrat, dictating to the people.”

“So what do you propose?” Dane replied, stung. “We take a vote on the best possible course of action?”

But as he spoke, I felt it, the ghost of something I’d gone through before. The man who’d had his throat ripped out by the Reaver. The one who’d had his head bitten off. I didn’t know them, their names, who they were or what they’d hoped for, or dreamed. All I’d known in that instance that they were connected to me and I’d been forced to endure all of their pain.

I looked out on the field, seeing it entirely differently now. All that good grain would be trampled back into the earth, given blood and bone as fertiliser during its brutal replanting period. But there were thousands of men right here, right now, and what Nordred was proposing…

“No.” I got to my feet and my mates’ eyes followed me as I did. “I can’t. It nearly took my knees out from under me at Aramoor. I need to be at my peak. This obviously the battle you trained me for—”

“Anyone can wield a sword or a bow,” Nordred replied, rising too. “Many far better than you can.”

I baulked at that. It was true, but somehow it hurt to hear Nordred say it.

“I’m here to fight, to be just like any other soldier.”

“Then we will lose and the deaths of many will be on your head.” Nordred’s voice held all the weight and portent of a prophet.

“Now hang on!” Weyland snapped.

“The Strelans don’t need a woman on the battlefield,” Nordred said, no gentleness in him.

“You’d say that?” I shot back. “You?”

“Your reach is shorter, your arm not as strong. You’ll shoot many arrows and well, but your arm will tire before the professional bowmen do. If you go into battle, you’ll do so as a smaller, weaker adversary.”

“I hold my own,” I growled. “I did at Aramoor where—”

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