Page 70 of The Wolf Queen

For a few moments, the vision flickered back and forth. When I reached my newborn hands into the air, he did the same, black smoke playing across his skin. Those eyes stared at his claws as if seeing them for the first time. And when I fed at my mother’s breast, temporarily soothed from the trauma of birth, Callum set forth, seeking sustenance too. First a deer that happened to cross his path, then a bear just risen from hibernation. But their meat, their blood, didn’t slake the hunger and thirst that burned inside him.

He stumbled into a small village, lurching like a shambler, bird shit, dirt and mud caking his body. People looked up as he passed and made the customary sign to ward off evil, looking scared when it didn’t work. They frowned and shied away, then laughed nervously as he approached. The age-old approach of the uneducated to the unfamiliar was evident in the way they poked him with the long forks they’d been using to toss hay, then circled him, before pushing him around as he stumbled. Then he shifted, taking the form of a Reaver. And the laughter turned into screams.

As I stood with my hand at my mouth and my guts roiling, he continued his trail of destruction. Blood, flesh, sobs that were hacking and broken as he rutted on top of something soft, then the only sound was the crackling of fire, the stink of smoke in his nose, before he moved on. Over the Eaglefell Mountains and beyond, to the dark lands. When he recruited more and more Reavers, his powers grew and so did his memories of what had happened. He turned a band of murderous monsters into an army, turning them back towards the border of his homeland when he felt her presence.

Me. My arrival in Strelae brought him home. Everyone he killed, everything he destroyed, was because of me. If my mates hadn’t whisked me across the border, if I’d mouldered away in my father’s keep… Nordred could’ve taken me to Strelae at any point before I met them, whisking me away under my father’s nose and the two of us, we could’ve lived the life we always wanted, father and daughter selling our swords to the highest buyer.

But he hadn’t.

He’d left me in Grania, in a country that would never welcome my strengths and skills, because somehow he’d decided that was a better option.

Because of this.

The world was going to burn because of Callum and his Reavers. If I burned some today, yet more would be made from what was left of the population of Strelae. And it was all my fault. He’d never have returned to the place of his birth, never decimated Wildeford and countless other towns, Snowmere being the largest, if I hadn’t crossed the border. I staggered back, his words hitting me far harder than anything physical he could’ve done to me then.

It was all my fault.

“I was joined to Eleanor in birth,” he told me, “and now I’m tied to you just the same as her successor. Your strength feeds mine.” His hand closed around the sword and the black flames ate the blue, extinguishing all the light I brought to the blade. “My destiny is yours, Darcy, Wolf Queen.”

Chapter39

“Darcy!” Bryson’s voice broke the spell I was under. “You can do this.”

The word of a king I wouldn’t kneel to, a man whose father proposed to subjugation of mine, but somehow it was what I needed. Callum’s words were just that, words and they were only distracting me.

I had to try. If I managed to strike Callum, the bastard, through the heart, then none of this mattered. He’d die and the Reavers would die with him. Everyone I loved would be safe, all of them, so I flexed my fingers around the hilt of the sword and felt myself drop down into the state that Nordred had worked so hard to instil in me.

Where ego, thought, self was dissolved and blown away, leaving only this. An arrangement of limbs best suited to make the strike, sword raised, arms bent, so that when I straightened them the momentum of that would carry the sword forward to its target. I saw it then, the point piercing his chest, burying itself hilt deep and me sobbing, blood running down my face, down his chest, as his heart was sliced in two.That, it was the only thought I allowed myself.I want that.

I moved like clockwork, my body, my sword moving on automatic, the sounds of the room falling away, leaving only Callum and I locked in a terrible kind of intimacy. He moved forward, raising those smoking black hands, as if we were caught in a terrible dance.

One I led.

I needed to aim for the soft parts, the neck, the gut, where few bones would impede my blade, so I aimed for one, then whipped my sword sideways, going for the next. The tip of my blade scored his neck and blood burst free, right as he laughed. He straightened up, giving me a front row seat to watching his skin knit back together. No matter, I would try again.

Find your form, maintain your balance, see the target and strike. I heard Nordred’s voice in my head, directing my arm as I attacked again. This time Callum met my strike with his own, the heel of his palm smacking into my forearm and that’s when I saw something completely unexpected. Leather shrivelled and curled then fell away where he had touched me and my skin? It went cold, bitterly cold, a bruise forming, or so it seemed, but the spot was too dark, too deep. The cold went right the way down to the bone it felt, filling me with something I instinctively shied away from until the flames of my sword flared brighter. Just as before, they roared to life all over my skin, driving out the cold, healing the bruise, right before I rallied.

“Get your arses over here!” Dane growled. The northern lords and Bryson were already there, trying to hold the door shut as it groaned on its hinges, but Tristan and his contingent were clustered in the corner of the room, watching everything like traumatised children.

“Now!” Bryson roared and no one could have refused his order.

But I couldn't focus on that, because right now was the moment that all of my training failed me.

A skilled swordsman against an unarmed man was not an equal fight, and yet here Callum was, blocking my every blow with his own, because the rules had changed. Nothing I could do would hurt him. Every cut was erased as if I never made it, every injury healed. I was forced to do the same, feeling that bitter, bitter cold all the way down to the marrow of my bones, right before I shook it off. But he laughed every time, at my pain, at my confusion.

“You see how we’re perfect for each other,” he told me. “So well matched.”

“I long to see your eyes open and staring at the sky,” I said back, feeling a growing sense of trepidation, tears beginning to burn in my sockets. “For the Morrigan and her birds to peck them out, for maggots to form in the wounds I leave in your body.”

“And I have much more prosaic intentions for your body.” He ran his eyes down my form and my teeth locked together. “You lost one child, but I’ll give you another. Many in fact. A daughter to rule after and a brace of sons to defend her. Don’t cry for the loss of your babe, because you’ll be barely out of the birthing bed before you’ll be back under me again.”

Not that. Not fucking that. A strangled growl formed in my throat, pain fighting its way up, up, up from where I’d stuffed it down and it came with fangs and claws. I shifted then into the half-wolf form, the other half of my soul dragged up with my pain.

“My child…” It wasn’t just the loss of my baby, I knew that academically. So many had lost theirs in this war not of our making, each woman feeling so damn helpless to protect the other half of their heart. It was the loss of each one of those children that had me snarling, the expression so much more natural in this form. “My child. Their children. All of their children.”

“I’d kill every single one of them ten times over,” Callum replied with a look of pure elation, “if that’s what it took to get me what I need. You.”

If what Nordred taught me was no use here, it didn’t matter. I had other weapons at my beck and call. I stabbed the sword into the rich carpet of the room, watching the bastard’s face fall. If I fought him, he could strike back, but this?

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