Page 50 of The Dead Queen

“Moths are solitary creatures,” Grandmother said, her voice full of reverence. “But when I was a child, I stumbled upon this gathering. As far as I know, it only happens once per year, on the first full moon of midsummer.”

“But why?” I asked.

Grandmother just shrugged. “Who can say? The moths don’t tell me their secrets. Many don’t even have mouths.”

I turned to her, my eyes wide. She laughed.

“It’s true. They survive off the food they ate as caterpillars. They don’t live long as majestic, winged creatures.” She tilted her head up toward the stars and closed her eyes. “But while they live, they are a wonder.”

We laid there on the wet grass, showered with moonlight and speckled with moths until the sun rose. As the birds sang their morning songs, the moths silently floated away in the wind, taking their many secrets with them.

I awake in my silk-covered bed, moonlight streaming through my window. My hand clutches Grandmother’s moth necklace so tightly, the silver bites into the flesh of my palm.

Slowly, as if through a fog, the Wolf’s escape returns to my mind. I bolt upright, gasping. My hands grasp at my neck, remembering the wound there, feeling the thin scar that’s replaced it. A palace healer must have attended to me.

“Shh!” a voice whispers. I turn to see Hunter scrambling up from a nearby chair, next to a small lantern lit low. He’s wearing a rumpled white shirt and brown trousers. It’s the sort of thing he’d wear to the training yard. A glint of metal behind him draws my eye. Copper-plated bronze. He’d tucked his King’s Guard armor behind an arrangement of red roses on the floor.

He kneels next to the bed and places a hand on my cheek. “Everything’s alright now, Sienna. You’re safe.”

“Have they captured him?” I ask, panic rising in me again. It makes me woozy and I fall back into the downy pillows.

He doesn’t respond.

The room still smells ludicrously of a thousand roses. The romantic gesture feels like a distant memory now. Yet here we are, surrounded by a veritable garden as proof that it did, in fact, happen.

When the nausea passes, I look sideways at Hunter. His face twists with concern, his lips pursed like he’s holding something back.

“Well?” I ask, impatient after my brush with death. “Did they?”

“Do you wish they had?” His face is unreadable in the low light. “Or are you asking because you hope he got away?”

I make an impatient sound that causes my neck to burn, like there’s still a tear beneath the surface. The noble-born healers did their best for me, I’m sure. The external wound healed, but there’s still significant damage under the skin. Only time will heal me completely. Well, that or my father. We share the same inherited power, after all. But considering he’s the one who sliced me, I doubt he’s eager to fix his own handiwork.

Discomfort must show on my face. Hunter grabs a small tin of salve from the nearby table and hands it to me. I take it without comment and smear some of the honey-smelling ointment onto my neck. The skin is tender, and the medicine does nothing for the burn.

“I told you before,” I say when I’ve finished. “I don’t want him to die because of me.”

“Did you know he was a Wolf?” Hunter asks, an accusation laces through his words like thorns through one of the bouquet of roses.

I nod.

“And you would still help him? After he nearly killed you?” Hunter says, incredulous.

“What?” I hold up my hands as if I could stop that thought. “No. He didn’t try to kill me. Father did.”

“That’s not what the other King’s Guards are saying.”

“And whose employ are they under?” I ask, challenging him to believe the lies over me. “If anything, he saved me.”

“Why would he do that?” Hunter shakes his head, still not willing to believe a Wolf on the loose would have spared the heir to the Fox Throne. And, honestly, I don’t blame him. It hardly makes sense to me and I was there.

“I don’t know.” And I don’t.

Tristan could have killed Father and been gone in an instant if it hadn’t been for me. If he hadn’t stopped to care for me, then he’d have fulfilled his mission and been well on his way to the northern border by now. But he didn’t.

“I’ll wait for you,” he’d said. Why?

I rub a hand over the scar on my neck. “I’m not sure I understand any of it. The Wolf said some … confusing things.”