Page 32 of The Wolf Queen

It occurred to me that I shouldn’t be doing this on my own, but caution was quickly smothered by curiosity. Admittedly, there were several reasons to be cautious. I didn’t have my sword with me, the lack of that weight on my hip now sorely missed. I was about to step into a darkened space I was not familiar with, following a man I didn’t know, whose identity I questioned. Whatever he was up to, surely I had time to scurry back upstairs and retrieve my mates? With them at my back, I could walk into hell; a cold, dark cellar in the dead of night would be a walk in the park. But just as I had almost convinced myself to overcome my curiosity with a healthy dose of self-preservation…

“Darcy, it’s time,” my mother urged.

“Time for what?” I hissed, not wanting to alert Rake, but I needn’t have bothered. She just floated further away from me, toward the cellar. “Mother, time for what?”

“Time to reclaim the power stolen,” was all the explanation I got, so onwards I went.

How the hell had he found his way down here? I wondered as I took the first step. It was daunting, because in that velvety darkness, only the threshold was visible. Perhaps he waited below, aware already that I had followed him, and was about to lure me to my death. Perhaps I’d fall headfirst and break my neck, ending whatever prophetic dreams Nordred had for me. But my mother walked with me, a silent, radiant presence. Where she stepped, I saw light, so I followed it blindly. The further down we walked, the more I felt like a child clinging to her mother’s hand, despite it being an experience I didn’t remember. The darkness felt like a massive maw, ready to swallow me whole, and she was all I had to keep it back.

Was this what it would’ve been like if she had lived? I stared at the ghost with hungry eyes. When I’d cried at night and no one answered? When I shrank back in my bed when Linnea did? Would my mother have brought light to my darkness, coming and sitting on my bed, holding my hand, assuring me that everything I feared was untrue? Her ghost turned and smiled at me, then pushed forward. Past racks of wine and stores of grain and root vegetables, it was like any other cellar in Grania, of that I was sure. Although I was willing to bet none of the others had anything like this in their depths: a familiar looking massive heavy door, complete with intricate bands of iron to strengthen it. Another point of illumination appeared, a crystal in Rake’s palm coming to life as he raised it up, then pressed it against the lock mechanism. Something clicked and the door swung open.

“I was first brought here when I was born,” my mother told me. “Then again, when I was old enough to understand. Over and over, my mother, my father, brought me here, to bathe in Her light.”

My focus jerked sideways, back to her, and she smiled at that.

“You will have thought that all Granians hate the wargen, the two-souled. They do so in your father’s keep, certainly. The priests do, preaching from their pulpits every Sunday, but…”

She blinked.

“Why do they expound forth so violently about the sin of seeking other gods, of the dreaded wargen, of the Mother’s grace, if not because they fear this? Not every Granian believes that the Strelans are evil. Not everyone who attends church believes what is preached there. Some, indeed, believe something else altogether. Eleanor bore her husband many children, but only the eldest boy could become king. What then, of the others? Did they follow the faith of their father or… their mother?”

The answer came as the door clicked open and I saw a familiar hazy radiance.

“No…” I barely whispered that, moving my lips more than my vocal cords. “No…”

My mother’s ghost was saying something and I should’ve been hanging off her every word, because we had spoken more tonight than in all of my memories of her combined. She had history here, knowledge of and a sense of this place that I did not, but it didn’t matter. Gael had healed me, with the help of his brothers, it was true, but as my hand slid lower, I felt a phantom ache there and I recalled the cost, the blood, the last time I had been before such an altar. I didn’t have anything left to sacrifice, but I couldn’t help but stare at that brilliance as Rake slipped inside.

The door had been left ajar so he could come back out again and that glow drew me forward, even as my feet dragged on the rammed earth floor.

“This is your birthright,” my mother insisted, but I could only shake my head over and over. “Her power is your power.”

I didn’t need to know whichhershe meant, because I heard the persistent rustle of a raven’s wing in my ears, then the far-off caw of one in the distance.

“No…” That denial was audible, and I clung to it. Gods and goddesses seemed of the one mind, to exact their due from their petitioners. The Morrigan had claimed what was most precious to me last time I’d walked into one of her sacred spaces, so I had to ask what would she take this time? I heard her low chuckle, that of a school yard bully about to strike you down yet again, and still I moved forward. “Mother,” I pleaded with my mother, with the Mother aspect of the goddess, “please.”

“I knew this would be hard,” she told me, her eyes filled with empathy. “Even I underestimated how much. But we’ll come out the other side, Darcy, I promise. We always come out the other side.”

And so, once again, I needed to let go and trust. It seemed I was about to put that promise to the test. I gripped the door, feeling its solidity, its age, and as I did so, I knew somehow that the door was far older than this estate. Than my family’s claim to this land, I was willing to bet. I could see it, streams of women coming to this place, opening the door and walking into the light, over and over, until the Granians came and cordoned the space off, claiming it as theirs.

Or protecting it.

So many Strelan sacred spaces in these lands had been destroyed by the church, by the Granian army, that it was hard to know what would’ve happened to this place if my family hadn’t built their estate over it. As I hovered, my hand on the door, my eyes adjusted to the light and I could see what lay behind the door. It wasn’t a massive complex of caves, like under the citadel. Here it was just one, the walls covered with clear crystals that were glowing softly as I stepped in.

I’d been careful to hide from Rake, wondering at what he was doing, but I was exposed the moment I walked inside. His head jerked up, those golden eyes glowing just like the crystals behind him.

“What are you doing here?” he snapped, not a hint of servility in him, right as his hand reached out to touch a sword encased in a tomb of spiky crystal.

Chapter21

“What is one of His Majesty’s servants doing in one of my grandfather’s guest rooms?” I countered, though there was little heat in my voice. Rake didn’t really have my focus; the sword did.

It sang to me like a siren, drawing me closer. It was a long, slender blade, by today’s standards, not made for cleaving the heads off wargen or Reavers, but somehow it didn’t look any less deadly for it. My mother was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear her words. The sound of a thousand voices, joined in song, filled my ears, with the sound of a raven’s wing beating as its percussion. It lured me closer and closer until the two of us stared down at the sword.

It was as if living rock had swarmed from the bowels of the earth itself, growing up and over the dais that supported the sword, then surrounding it in a caul of spiky quartz. The sword itself glowed within the stone’s grip. A chunk of crystal had been set into the pommel and it brightened as I stepped closer.

“You’re not a messenger,” I said, without thought, knowing now that it was true.

“And you’re not a duke’s daughter.”

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