Page 42 of The Wolf Queen

“Of course, Majesty,” the Reaver said, dropping his head forward in a bow. “I’ll return with a suitable girl…”

“He’s going to attack Bayard,”Selene said, her eyes wide and solemn as the cave came back to us. “That’s close to the border.”

But there was more to her concern than that. Bayard was the equivalent to Middlebury in Strelae, a major trading town where people brought Granian goods to sell or transported iron ore from there into Grania. I remembered the town. I remembered Balin, the older man who worked leather, creating my jerkins. I remembered Kelly and her delicious pies. Pepin and I had walked its busy streets, and seen hundreds of people going about their business. And now Callum was going to extinguish each and every one of them.

I pulled my hand off the sword pommel and then made for the door.

“What happened?” Weyland asked, scouring my face for clues, then coming closer.

“Are you hurt?” Gael appeared by my side and ran his hands down my back and sides. “Did anything hurt you?”

“Not me,” I managed to get out, despite seeing the girl and the moment her neck was snapped, over and over again. “But a girl… And Bayard.”

“Bayard?” My grandfather’s frown grew deeper. “That’s close to the border. This Callum has attacked it?”

“He will, tomorrow,” I said, “and we need to stop him.”

“We can’t get to Bayard in less than a day,” Dane said. “Darcy, it took us longer than that to ride here from your father’s keep.”

“I think I know a way,” I said.

Chapter26

“You said the sword is a means to get rid of the Reavers,” I said, pacing back and forth along the floor of my grandfather’s war room. I glared at the map of both Grania and Strelae as I went. The room was beautifully appointed and scrupulously clean, but it was more a museum piece than anything. I eyed a suit of the heavy armour that Granians of old had developed to defeat their wargen enemies in the past. “We have to stop this attack. We have to.”

“I can provide the knights stationed on my estate,” my grandfather said. “They’d welcome an opportunity to get their swords blooded, especially when cutting down creatures such as these Reavers you’ve described.”

In the much lighter armour that the Granians used now. I looked at him steadily, wondering if he knew how ineffective that would be. His men would die for certain, if we got them there in time, just like they had in the early days of the Granian invasion. But first we had to work out a way to get them to the battlefield.

“Is there a crystal cave near the town?” I asked, stopping and scanning the now outdated map, as if it would tell me.

“The tor.” Weyland’s tone had me looking up, meeting his eyes, that smile of his warming me more surely than the fire that crackled in the grate. He’d taken me up onto that rocky outcrop and we’d… I’d been hurting and he’d been wanting, and together we’d seemed to rub each other the wrong way until we could work out a way to come together, not force each other away. He flushed then, as if reading my thoughts. “There’s a cave under the tor. Dane, you remember.”

His brother stepped forward to consider the map, then traced the line of the tor with his finger.

“We went rambling among the rocks when Father was locked in business negotiations.” Dane looked over at Weyland. “You got lost.”

“And you found me, having slipped down between two spurs of stone and into the fissure that led to the cave. I learned some new swear words that day,” Weyland replied with a smirk.

“So the only way out of this cave is through a fissure that a young boy could slide through?” Bryson said, frowning. “That will do our men no good.”

“No, that was just a crack in the roof.” Dane held the prince’s gaze effortlessly. “When I went in after him, we found it. The two of us caught hell from the local priestess, for blundering into a space kept sacred to women. Father sent us to the temple to scrub the steps for three days straight as punishment, while he finalised his business.”

Dane’s focus shifted back to me.

“There’s a way to get a large number of people to the town in little time. During the feast days of each aspect of the goddess, the townspeople would visit the chapels and pay their respects.”

“Is it the feast day of the Morrigan?” I asked, noting the way each one of my men winced. “Because we will worship her in the way she likes best, bringing war and destruction to the town if we are to protect it.”

“Not yet.” Gael’s tone was grim. “But soon. She grows in power as the summer wanes, the time of the mother gone again.”

“Then she’ll just have to accept our tribute early,” I vowed. “If I can do what Pepin did in the vision…”

“You can—if you believe it to be so,” Selene said, with that same kind of serene certainty that just seemed to amplify my own doubts.

“So we have the Maidens, and my grandfather’s knights,” I said, tapping a finger on my bottom lip.

“And those that worship the true god,” Higgins said, straightening up. “My visit with the local chapter was a fruitful one. There are many who have awaited your arrival for some time, milady.”

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