Page 75 of The Wolf Queen

“I couldn’t kill him.” I took my hand off the Sword of Destiny and everyone noted the way the crystal pulsed with a blue light. “Not even with this. I tried but… We’re linked somehow. He went into some kind of stasis after the Strelans lost to the Granian forces, but he was awoken by me.” I saw it again, the vision that had been shared with me, of my birth and his rebirth. “When I was born, he came back to life.” I shook my head. “Or whatever it is that animates him.”

“Hatred, I imagine,” my grandfather said.

“And while I was cared for by my mother, he slipped across the border to the dark lands beyond the mountains. As I grew, he raised a Reaver army, but they just wreaked havoc in the lands beyond, until…” I swallowed hard, my throat suddenly completely dry. “Until I stepped foot in Strelae. I’m what brought him home, because I’m…”

I wasn’t one to beg, but right now I mutely pleaded with Bryson, staring into those cool golden eyes, wanting him to make the right decision. Because it would be oh so tempting not to.

“He thinks I’m his power source.”

“If you allow him access to your power,” Bryson said, cutting off the others before they could say anything. “That’s what all this has been about. He can’t take the sword, your power, anything from you, not until it’s freely given.”

“He’ll hold the keep and all of the people there hostage until I do,” I said, my voice getting faster and faster, my tongue tripping over the words. “He’ll kill some of them…” My mouth stopped, seeing it. Cook torn to pieces, some of the maids on the ground, screaming. “Enough to draw me out and—”

“So we keep you here, safe.” Bryson’s voice was authoritative, definite.

“No.” I dragged one breath in, then another. “I’m his power source but I’m also his weakness. You’ll need to…” I didn’t want to say this, but the realisation had come to me the moment I had found out the truth. I hadn’t wanted to accept it then and still feeling the warmth of my children’s body on my skin, I didn’t want to now. “You told me that you knew how the Granians ended the war with the Strelans.” I scanned the face of every man around the table. “I assume it wasn’t through superior armour and the might of the Farradorian empire?”

Bryson went very pale right then, his golden eyes standing out plainly on his face, but Higgins grinned.

“It’s time for the lady to meet the dread lord, isn’t it, Your Majesty?”

Chapter43

“The chapel is a grand place,” Higgins enthused, readying himself to get to his feet. “You’ll finally see His Majesty—”

“I will take Darcy to the chapel,” Bryson said, rising, “alone.”

“Are you sure, Majesty?” One of the lords eyed me suspiciously. “Seems like the easiest thing to do is dispose of the girl. No power source, no Reaver king.”

“You think you can execute the wolf’s mate without consequence?” Bryson’s voice sounded deadly, taut. I didn’t know what that meant, but my hand wrapped around the hilt of my sword as my eyes flicked around the room, trying to ascertain which threat was the biggest one. “His mate is the only thing that anchors him in this world.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.” My grandfather bowed his head in respect and so did each man around the table, some with gravity, some with fear.

“Wolf?” I asked, my voice thin. “What wolf?”

“If you want to know, you need to come with me,” Bryson said, holding out a hand for me to take, but I just stared at it. I didn’t want to relinquish my hold on my sword, not for anything. “It’s your choice. What you need, what the country needs, I can provide, but…”

But…That’s what I thought about as I prised my fingers away from the hilt, then slapped them down into his hand. It felt too warm, too big, too strong and he used it to tug me closer and didn’t that feel familiar? It was too easy to think of other men who’d done just that, my mates, so why the hell was I allowing this now?

Because I needed to know. The gods cursed women for their curiosity, that’s what the Granian priests said, but I held my tongue as Bryson led me out of the room. The carpets swallowed our footsteps so we moved like ghosts, without sound, right up until we reached the throne room.

It wasa strange place to be emptied of people. The place was too big, too cavernous and too ornate, as if the building itself and all of its majesty wasn’t confident enough to just exist. It had to proclaim its self-importance, even when there was no one to see it. But when I went to pull away, Bryson’s grip tightened on my hand. He paused, looked over his shoulder and then stared at me for just a second, before drawing me closer.

“You know the Granian version of how we won the war with the Strelans,” he told me. “Your school mistress or governess would’ve taught you.”

“Superior might,” I said, counting off each reason I’d been given. “Better coordinated troops. Supply lines from the Farradorian Empire that brought more food, more weapons, more soldiers to fight, when the Strelans had no such ability to resupply.”

“But what happened when those supply lines were cut?” Bryson asked, willing me to see it. “When our knights and soldiers dwindled and so did our food supplies. This is a rich land, but then it was torn apart by war, crops weren’t planted and those that grew were either harvested and redeployed or burnt in the fields. Both sides were struggling, until…”

The answer would come from where he was taking him, that much was clear, so I held onto his hand and then followed as he led me up to the lion throne itself.

“Few know this exists,” he told me. “Only the devout and…” He shook his head. “My father. My grandfather showed it to him, hoping he’d understand, but my father…”

Bryson shook his head and then moved behind the throne. He let go of my hand and I felt that warmth still there when he pulled away, then watched him do something very familiar. He pricked his finger with his belt knife and then pressed the welling spot of blood to a small carving in the back of the grandly carved seat.

One that was familiar.

The black sun and the white jaws of the wolf represented as a crescent moon. I frowned at the sight of them, remembering my father’s rants about cultists… I stared at Bryson and he met my gaze with equanimity before pressing the blood to the black moon. I’m not sure what I expected to see, but it wasn’t this. A mechanism engaged, a small whirr alerting me to that, and then the back of the throne sprang apart, revealing a darkened doorway.

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