Page 29 of The Wolf Queen

I didn’t want to. The wolf couldn’t find the use in any of this talk, just seeing all of it as yet more convoluted human rubbish and dismissing it out of hand. But the cold, hard part of myself that knew I needed to find a way to bring an army to fight for my people, it saw this: My grandfather was one of the most powerful men in the northern part of Grania, which was why my father had married my mother. Father didn’t do much with that alliance, but it had been attractive enough to my paternal grandfather to make the match. But if the Duke of Freeling was willing to extend an olive branch, especially when he saw my mates and didn’t burst out into a sermon against the ungodly heathens, I had an obligation to explore what this connection could do for us.

Which is what I told my mates as we were ushered into a grand bedroom.

“Perhaps he can help us,” I said, as I approached a grand four poster bed. “Perhaps we can feel him out, get a sense of the opposition we’ll face when we reach court. My grandfather is the leader of a powerful faction…”

But not the one my father was a part of, I realised with a frown. What had caused them to be so divorced from each other? My father was notoriously close with the king and…

“And it’s a faction at odds with the one my father leads,” I said, turning to face them.

The room was pretty, airy, even as the sun fell below the horizon. The walls were painted white, broken by accents of gold and pink. I looked around me for evidence of the mother I’d not known. This was where my mother laid her head each night, until whisked off to my father’s estates. Had she lain awake the night before her marriage, dreaming of a long life filled with love and laughter? I wasn’t sure she got much of either. As I mused on all of that, I stepped closer to stare at the portraits on the wall.

They were of my mother, I quickly realised. Linnea had kept one in her room, the small watercolour forming almost a shrine, but more than that. I’d seen that slope of a cheek, the full bottom lip—in the mirror when I bothered to look at it.

“She looks like you,” Axe said, appearing at my shoulder. “I see none of your father in you. But who’s this?”

A small portrait had been placed on a bureau, the artwork contained within a gilt frame that had lost some of its lustre from being held, from being cleaned over the years. But it wasn’t that which had me picking it up. I stared at the painting, of a woman, not a girl, her proud stance at odds with her expression.

One I’d seen before.

“Eleanor…”

“The queen?” Dane strode across to me and stared at it over my shoulder. “Why would your mother have…?”

But we all knew. The stories of the Strelan queen, forced across the border into Grania and submitting to the first of our kings, was told over and over in schoolrooms across Grania. It was symbolic to my former countrymen, the first sign of their defeat of the savage wargen. But they didn’t know that when the queen came, she brought with her a child unborn. Nordred’s child. My forebear, somehow, because her blood and his pulsed in my veins and— I set the painting down abruptly and then stepped away.

“Nordred knew.” I felt like I’d been saying that my whole life. My father’s stable master had been the font of all wisdom when I was a child, and that hadn’t diminished as I’d grown older. Instead I’d learned more and more about exactly what he knew. I frowned slightly and then turned to the others, sharing what I knew.

“He said he’d been through the same process with other girls,” I told them, my voice cracking with emotion. “That he’d trained them. Over and over.” My eyes flicked wildly around the room, as if searching for a sign of him in it. “That I was the last, because I was…” I gulped in a breath. “He said… He said…”

Dane took my hands in his and pulled me close to him, holding me when I fought him, then cradling me against his chest when I surrendered. I wanted it, wanted this, his strength and certainty, because they were things I didn’t feel at all, hadn’t felt once since Nordred had died.

“He said what we knew the moment we met you,” Dane said in a low voice. “That you are the one both our countries need. The one to unite us.” I shook my head, my throat working as I thought of just how we’d failed at Snowmere. I’d lost the first real battle in this war. “The one that will deliver us.”

“Dane…” I managed to get out.

I forced my eyes up to meet his, staring into those blue depths and not seeing a hint of doubt there. I wished his belief in me could be enough. For now, it would have to be.

“You don’t have to win a war; reclaim our country,” he told me, gently stroking my face. “You don’t have to…” he swallowed as his eyes slid down, then he forced them back up again, “make these kinds of sacrifices. A general directs his troops in a battle, and we are yours. You’ll have all the blood in my body, if that’s what’s needed next time—”

“And mine,” Gael broke in as he stepped forward and then smiled somewhat ruefully when he caught my eye. “Whatever I have, you know it’s yours.”

“Mine as well.” Weyland managed to inject some heat into that promise, then he grinned. “Though I admit, I much prefer mine staying in my body for as long as possible.” His smile faded then. “But not if it means you have to shoulder the burden.”

“I’ll give you anything you want, lass.” Axe’s hands went to the hilt of his weapon, then he forced them back again. “Cut down any of your enemies. Give in to battle fever and get lost in the thrill of killing in your name. Whatever you want, just tell me, Darcy. Please, tell me.”

When his voice cracked, I pulled away from Dane’s embrace, feeling the reluctance to let me go in his grip, but I couldn’t leave Axe hurting.

“Axe—”

“Let me slay it for you.” How could such a big man make such a plaintive plea? “It’s been killing me, watching you shoulder one burden after another.” His outstretched hands tightened into fists, betraying his frustration, but I walked into his arms and cupped my hands either side of his face. “You don’t deserve this, Darcy. History’s fucking mistakes are not yours to right.” His hands covered mine then drew them down to hold them over his heart. “I’ll fight the battles; take on every single one of these fucking southern lords who won’t recognise what I know.”

I nestled into his chest, closing my eyes and allowing myself to take in his energy, just like I had with Dane. Regardless of what they said, I found it hard to believe in the idea of me as queen. I had been raised to become some border lord’s wife, not a ruler of a country. But then, as I pondered it all, I corrected myself. Linnea, Father, had informed me of my duty, but Nordred had known all along what I would become.

“There is a reason for my name, because I am your axe. I’ll have them kneeling at the feet of Darcy, Wolf Queen,” Axe growled. “Or I’ll lop their fucking heads off.”

“You are.” I barely whispered that. “Mine. You are mine.”

I opened my eyes, lifted my head, then reached up and brought that mouth down on mine.

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