Stark’s face is unreadable, cast in heavy yellow lamplight. He looks at the weathered tome in my hand. Then, slowly, his eyes drag up to the engagement band clamped around my wrist.
“What is this?” I demand. “Is this fiction? A children’s story? Where did it come from?”
His eyes darken, jaw drawing tight. “Congratulations on your engagement,” he says instead. “You’ll make an incredible queen.”
I nearly toss the tome at his head but stop myself in time. “Thebook, Stark,” I hiss.
Stark shrugs.Shrugs!
“I can’t tell you anything about that,” he says in a carefully neutral tone.
Rage floods my head. Two words burst from my lips like the crack of a whip. “Why not?”
He doesn’t answer me. Just stands there staring at me like he’s furious with me. His hand falls from the door knob, but he doesn’t step into the room. Almost as if he’s afraid to come any closer.
Afraid?I think, bewildered.Stark?
“What is going on here?”I demand of Anassa.“You know, don’t you? Is this real?”
Anassa’s caution filters through the bond. There’s a pause. I can almost feel her calculating what to say. The silence creeps up my back like a premonition, whispering something I can’t quite hear.
Her reply comes in the same tone of careful neutrality Stark used.“I also cannot tell you anything about that.”
I blink.
Also?
ALSO?
Whyis my direwolf colluding with Stark?!
They both know more than they’re saying. And for some reason, they’re in agreement that I don’t get to know whatever it is they’re hiding—aboutmymother.Myvisions. This history, whatever it is.
I thought I was losing my mind. And all this time… they knew. They knew about this book, these supposed Sturmfrost queens—the things I saw in hallucinations.
Betrayal burns in my chest.
Anassa ismydirewolf. She is supposed to be my ally, my protector. How long has she been keeping secrets from me? She, who has always treated me so abominably when she feels like I’ve shut her out. How much is she—arethey, both—hiding from me?
My mind balks under the weight of everything I’ve learned in the last half hour—and everything I still don’t understand.
It’s too much to process. The dots aren’t all connected yet.
But they will be.
I hold up the book, glaring directly into Stark’s eyes. My voice comes out rough as sandpaper and caustic.
“I’m taking this.”
I expect him to protest—to outright refuse. But I’m willing to fight him for it.
His gaze flicks to the book, then back to my face, reading the threat in my posture. In a tone weighted with layers of inexplicable warning, he says, “I would be careful with it.”
The fuck?
My eyes narrow. “If you’re so worried what I’m going to do with this book, thentell me what I need to know!”
Something flickers across his face, too swift to comprehend. He shakes his head.
