Page 33 of The Wolf Queen

Rake’s tone caught my attention. It had my eyes swinging up and locking with his and when they did, the song inside me rose up a note, and somehow I knew it would be doing the same to him.

“You’re not even a spy,” I said.

“And you’re not yet a queen.” Those golden eyes took my measure and found me wanting. “Those mates of yours are falling all over themselves trying to prove their love but you…”

I hadn’t thought of Rake in terms of him being a man, not in the full sense of the word. He was simply an agent of the king, an emissary of the crown prince, a symbol of their authority. To me, he was merely a means to an end; an annoying one at that. But as he stepped closer, fingers lightly caressing the sharp points of the crystal, I felt the impact of his male energy. His height—towering over me; the breadth of his shoulders—the powerful set of them. The bulk of his muscle, the way he held himself, perfectly poised to leap into action—none of that were attributes of a messenger, no matter how gently born. They were elements of a warrior.

…Or a prince.

My mother’s voice was rising along with the song, the sound of all of it becoming transcendent, making this moment of confrontation all the more jarring. My eyes narrowed as I raked through my memories. An insistent thought—that I already knew who he was, before I’d even seen him in the flesh—made me drag up the vision of the Granian throne room which I’d seen the moment I’d slapped my bloodied hand on the chapel wall.

“What is this place?” I asked him.

“You know.” His eyes bore into mine, a fine line forming between his eyebrows.

“And this sword—?”

“You’ll find that out… if you’re fit to wield it,” he said.

“And you?” The song paused then, leaving silence, one we filled with our heaving breaths. “Who are you?”

“Ra—”

“No, that’s not it.” I shifted closer, facing down this man who was so much taller, so much stronger than me But I didn’t flinch for a second. I stared into those golden eyes, seeing them beneath a golden circlet, watching me from behind the king’s throne, right before the whole court was brought to their knees. “You’re Bryson.”

I’d heard the crown prince’s name often enough. Linnea had been wont to summon him, like some kind of patron saint, telling me what I could aim for in the marriage market, if I just behaved. But I never did and so I’d never been dragged off to court. And that had meant that it was totally unlikely I’d ever enter his social circles.

But… what if, somehow, he burst into mine?

My eyes flickered over him. I took in the uniform, well made and pressed, which made clear he hadn’t slept in it. But that was to be expected of a royal messenger—a representative of the crown while wearing the uniform. It wasn’t the clothes that drew my attention, but the man wearing them.

“Crown Prince Bryson,” I said, finally, willing my theory to be wrong.

“Heir to the Lion Throne,” he said, with a sardonic twist of his lips. “First of his name. My forebears were the ones who cut down your people on the battlefield like grass during the invasion and…” As his hand slapped down on mine, the song in my head changed pitch and volume. “I am a direct descendant of Queen Eleanor of Strelae.”

The song reached its crescendo immediately, the voices singing with all they had. Quartz crystal is terribly hard, perhaps brittle if struck hard enough, so it shouldn’t melt away like ice. But as soon as our hands connected on top of the crystal structure around the sword, that was what happened. The song grew louder, and the stone at the pommel of the sword began glowing so brightly I couldn’t look at it.

“Take the sword, Darcy,” my mother said, appearing on the other side of the dais that held the weapon. “Take it and claim your birthright. Bryson is right. He is descended from Eleanor, just as you are, but he misunderstands what that means. He thinks himself the saviour that we need, but in his hands this sword is nothing but cold steel. Take it and—”

Her voice cut out the moment I clasped the sword, and suddenly nothing in the world felt more right.

The song was gone or, rather, it now sang in my blood, a throbbing tide of power. Not just because I held a blade in my hand, but because it was this one. I’d been taught to wield a sword since I was old enough to hold a practice one. Each time I had, a growing sense of power came with it. That had grown and grown as I’d become more proficient, something I’d had to hide from my father. But now, holding this sword, I wasn’t going to hide a thing. I whipped the blade up and set the tip of it against the prince’s throat, because I had a moment of clarity.

His father was dying. Bryson was heir to the throne of Grania and would expect to lead their army where he willed. But why would I allow that? I frowned slightly as I tilted my head, considering him anew. He should have been on his knees before me, something I quickly corrected.

“Kneel.”

My voice echoed through the cave, bouncing off the walls, the sound growing louder and louder, the flap of a raven’s wing seeming to spur it on, right as this ‘Rake’ dropped down.

“Darcy—”

“Queen,” I corrected and suddenly, despite my earlier reluctance to take on everything that that mantle brought with it, I knew that it was true. The historians talked of the origins of the Farradorian Empire, of the priest kings that had led them in the beginning, tied to the power of the land, and I knew now what that felt like. I was the whip of the wind, the slice of a blade, the crackle of fire, the heavy weight of the earth. I was—

“My queen,” Bryson agreed. When he pulled out his sword, I stiffened, but he did so simply to proffer it to me, as if offering it in fealty, and lay it down on the ground before me. “That sword you wield was brought over the border by Nordred himself, left here for safe keeping so we would know when she came.” He dared to look up at me. “The queen to come.”

“Hmmm. That doesn’t answer a question I have,” I said, as I stared steadily down at him. All doubt, all concern, felt like it’d been driven out of me, leaving only a dreadful purpose in its wake.

Callum was a plague on the land, infecting and destroying everything in his path, powered by a bastardised version of what pulsed in my veins, but I knew now I had what I needed to best him. We would yet meet on the battlefield, that I knew, though not before I gathered an army.

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