Page 108 of The Fox Heir

I point toward Tristan. “Why send him? Of all the people left in Annwyn, why send him to fetch me?”

“Because I trust my Wolves above all others.” The queen folds her skeletal hands in front of her. “My Wolves would do anything for me. They helped create me.”

The hair on my neck bristles. “No riddles. Tell it plainly.”

“It’s not a riddle. They were there in the borderland when I died.”

I blink rapidly. “Explain.”

No one moves. We barely breathe as we wait to see how much the queen will tell me. A moth floats down from the rafters, fluttering on gray wings. It settles on the queen’s dead chest, unafraid.

“These two.” She tilts her head toward Tristan and Nalina. “They were barely more than children, but they were soldiers nonetheless. It’s something far too many Annwyn teenagers must become when we have so few soldiers to protect our land from Foxes.”

I eye Nalina. When Grandmother died, I was twelve. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. Just a few years older than Tristan and me.

More moths flutter down, as if drawn to the Dead Queen in her vulnerability. As if they’re comforting her. Their wings open and close where they perch on her veil, her dress and along her skeletal arms.

“Your father didn’t just murder me in the borderlands.” The Dead Queen’s voice is cold. “He tortured me, tied me down, and watched as his feral foxhounds tore me apart, bit by bit.”

Her torn flesh, the exposed bone. I’d assume it was natural rot and decay, but she died that way. My father’s beasts ate her flesh straight down to the bone.

“He left me there in the mud. He thought I was dead, but my heart still beat. Barely.” She pauses, studying me. “As a reward for all of my service, the previous Dead Queen nominated me to take her place. Only one Dead Queen can reign, so she passed from this earth. She left me with this ruined kingdom and the endless torture that this war brings.”

She sounds resigned, not what you’d expect from a woman given a throne. But I wouldn’t want to be in her place either. It would have been kinder to let her die in peace.

“When you say Tristan and Nalina helped create you,” I ask. “What do you mean?”

The two Wolves stiffen, glancing at each other.

Beneath her black veil, she shakes her head. “The secrets of reanimation are sacred in Annwyn.”

I don’t budge. “If you expect me to be a weapon for Annwyn, then you’d better start by telling the truth.”

The Dead Queen takes a moment before she nods once.

Nalina begins to protest. “My queen, these rituals are secret for a reason. I don’t trust the Fox.”

“I know.” The Dead Queen stares at me for a long time as the undead moths on her dress open and close their tattered wings in a silent dance. “But I do.”

Slowly, she lifts her veil with her skeletal fingers. The moths on the thin fabric take flight, waiting until the veil settles again. They return to perch on my grandmother’s corpse.

Every time I see her face, I struggle not to shrink back. But this time, I take her in. All of her. Every mark, every bared bone and torn shred of flesh. Now that I know how it happened, who did it to her, I feel a spark of pity. I know what it’s like to feel my father’s wrath, but not to this extent. She endured a brutal death.

My eyes drift out the window to the bonfire smoke drifting up from the Spires. I will make him pay for what he did to her.

The Dead Queen steps forward slowly. She raises her arm and traces my cheek with a cold, hard finger bone. “I want him to tell you.” She turns to Tristan.

I turn and focus all my attention on the gray-eyed Wolf.

“What’s the secret to eternal life?” I ask, my voice low, daring him not to tell me.

His eyes are sad, but they never leave mine. “To live eternally, there must be sacrifice. When the future queen gives up her life, she must be bathed in the light of the full moon, so the Moon Goddess can witness the act of devotion.” He pauses.

“That can’t be all there is to it.”

“No.” He swallows hard. “That’s not all. Her heart must be stolen from her chest before it stops beating … stuck in the moment between life and death. It must be stolen by someone devoted to her cause for the rest of their life.”

Something hardens in my chest. “Who?” I ask, my voice low and threatening. “Who tore out my grandmother’s still-beating heart?”