Page 39 of The Wolf Queen

The crystal at the hilt of the sword was glowing and as she saw it, she stopped still. Her brows creased and her lips parted. Ayla went to her lover’s side, entwining her fingers with Selene’s, and all three Maidens came closer.

“Is that—” Orla said.

“The Sword of Destiny…” Selene drew her eyes back to mine, then searched my face. I wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but she must have found it, because something in her expression brightened. “It was destroyed after the queen went across the border. The Granians…” She looked past me to my grandfather and the prince, her eyes narrowing. “They presented us with a molten lump of metal and a smashed crystal, to make clear their victory.”

“All show, I believe,” my grandfather said, getting to his feet. “Richard Fetterling,” he said, holding out his hand. The Maiden inspected it for several heartbeats, as she summed him up, then Selene shook it firmly. “If this is the sword you speak of, it was displayed above the throne of the first Granian king, at least until it went missing. Joran the First explained away its absence with the molten metal and crushed crystal, telling the court of the time that it was a symbolic defeat we needed to press home, or so the history books say.”

“But what if it was just symbolic,” Dane said, moving closer. “For Granians and Strelans. Because the sword had been taken.”

“Retrieved.” I said that with total certainty, something in the pulse of the sword’s glow confirming that. “Locked away for safekeeping. Kept beneath this estate.” I looked over my shoulder at my grandfather and he smiled slowly.

“We are the descendants of Eleanor’s first daughter. Middlebury was to be the gateway to the north and Joran knew he’d be forced to hold that land securely, or risk losing what was taken from the Strelans.”

“Stolen,” Axe said darkly.

“The first duke built this estate, established these lands, began the process of turning Middlebury from a tiny outpost into a thriving town,” he continued.

“With the help of Nordred.” That was a guess on my part, but my grandfather nodded.

“He helped broker the peace between Strelae and Grania, which earned him the mistrust of both sides, but… he was always a powerful, capable figure. So, as long as what he was working on aligned with the king’s aims, he was left to his own devices.”

I wrapped my hand around the crystal pommel then. A ball of the quartz had been set into the top of the hilt, no doubt taken from the raw rock of the cave below. If I squeezed it tight enough, I saw it. A younger Nordred—much more grandly dressed than the stable master I’d known—pulling the sword from underneath his cloak. He unsheathed it from the very plain leather scabbard it was in, and the crystal in the hilt started glowing as soon as it was drawn out. The crystals on the walls glowed as he set the blade down on a rough-hewn stone dais, the light getting brighter and brighter as crystals grew up around the sword, before the glow finally faded. The sword was now encased, out of the reach of king and queen alike.

“So what does it do?” I asked, breaking the reverent mood in the room. “Apart from being a beautiful sword…”

Everyone gasped when I pulled it free. Blue fire played along the length of the blade, something it hadn’t done before. Selene reached out with a shaking hand, closing her fingers around mine before forcing it down.

“It signals who is the true ruler of all of Strelae, including the parts that were stolen from us by the Granians.” She glared at Bryson for a moment. “It is a means to connect with the power of this land. It is a means to rid it of the Reavers.”

“Really?” I held her gaze and didn’t let go. “Then show me.”

Chapter25

I felt a wrench when we left the children in the kitchen to have their breakfast. My grandfather’s staff, some of whom had known my mother as a little girl, volunteered to keep an eye on them while we went into the cave. My men, all of the men, wanted to come down to the cellar, and while the Wolf Maidens and I allowed that, we did not admit them into the cave.

“These are the places of the goddess,” Selene said, trailing her fingers along the crystals as we stepped into the cave. “The same as the one under Snowmere, and the one under the temple.”

“There’s a cave under the temple?” I asked.

“These places are all across Strelae,” Orla said. “There is one near to the village I grew up in. Went down there all the time, my sisters and I. We used to tease each other, pretend to be ghosts…” She stared around the cave, taking in the dais where the sword had rested, wide-eyed. “Then on the goddess’ feast days, the women would take us down to make offerings.”

“Offerings of what?” I asked, strangely desperate. Perhaps there was a specific food or some item sacred to the goddess that we could provide. Maybe I could haggle with this invasive divine force, give it what it wanted and then—

“The first harvest fruits at the beginning of summer,” Orla said. “I used to make corn dollies for that. A pelt from a new lamb in the spring. A skull of a raven in the winter. And… blood.”

“Blood?” I saw my hand slapping down on the cave wall, then the gush of blood from my nose last night. My nose prickled as if to remind me.

“Blood is life,” Selene said, raising an eyebrow. “Why else would the goddess have us bleed each moon time, if not to remind us of this? It is the first gift she gives us and the last. Blood is sacred. Blood magic is powerful. Blood…”

I jerked my knife free and then pressed the point to my finger, watching the red well up there. I hated the sight of it now, because of what it represented.

Loss.

Loss of people, loss of my child, loss of Nordred. I’d seen far too much blood, it felt, and if it was precious to the goddess, why did she waste it so on the battlefield? But once I had the spot of blood on my fingertip, I clenched my fist. As I opened my hand again, the spot had spread. I pulled the sword free of its scabbard and then closed my bloody fingers around the crystal on the hilt. Flames flared along the blade, again, but this time they were far stronger, far brighter, than before.

“It feeds from me,” I said. I could feel every beat of my heart, the crystal now pulsing in time with it.

“As we feed from her, the land,” Selene added. “The fruits of the trees, the vegetables in the earth.” Her lips thinned. “The flesh of the prey we hunt. That’s what it means to be queen, Darcy. Everyone, including those men up there.” She pointed to the stairs. “They don’t know what that means. If one of them has a child, they can walk away from it. If one of them ascends the heights as Granian king, they can indulge in any whim they like.”

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