Page 33 of The Fox Heir

She shakes her head impatiently. “And your father told you that, did he?”

I nod, a long-tended knot of guilt tightening in my gut.

She leans forward. “It is a lie.” The Dead Queen does not breathe, but I still smell the scent of rot and decay on her words.

I blink several times as the world swims around me. “That’s not possible. What’s the benefit in making me believe such a thing? I must have killed her.”

“No, Granddaughter.” The Dead Queen shakes her head slowly. “Your mother’s death was not your fault.”

I should have suspected this. Women in my father’s circle never last long. But to make me think my mother’s death was my fault is cruel beyond comprehension. All those years as a motherless child, believing I killed her. Believing I didn’t deserve a mother because of what I did to her. A dense ball of emotion catches in my throat, burning there like a hot coal.

I hate him. And if it’s the last thing I do, I will kill him.

The queen begins to walk away from Nell, toward the stable door. Pain clutches at my heart as I watch her leave. It unleashes a fresh wave of grief. I had no mother, and then I lost my grandmother. How much loss is one person expected to bear?

“I mourned you,” I whisper. “For so long, I was in agony over your death.”

In this fragile moment of honesty, I wish I could see her face behind the veil. But that isn’t the truth. I’ve already seen the corpse she’s become, all rot and bone and putrid decay. She’s nothing like the woman I loved. What I truly long to see is my grandmother’s face as it once was. I miss her more than anything in the world.

“You were right to mourn me, to believe me dead,” the queen says, her voice thinning to a rasp. “Because I am. The feelings of the living are lost to me now … except fury.” She takes a shuddering breath. “That is the one emotion that refused to die with my body.”

As we pass the stalls, the horses’ restlessness grows into terror. They stomp the ground and kick their walls, trying to escape their enclosures. They huff wildly, their breath hovering, frozen in the air. They sense a change in the atmosphere. I feel it too. It’s dark. Dangerous.

“Death strips you to your basest self,” the queen says as she glides past them. “I cannot hide that I seethe. That I rage. That I crave the blood of my enemy for what he did to Llwyn.” Her spine crackles as she straightens to her unnatural height. “For what he did to my daughter.”

Her words take on a deep, hollow quality, like a curse.

“When I was alive, I wore masks. A different face for every occasion. The doting grandmother to you, the obedient mother-in-law to your father, the defiant leader to the Sympathizers. But now there is only this.” She gestures to her veiled face. “Grotesque. Vengeful. And so, so angry.”

I stand frozen in the face of her thunderous wrath. She may have lost all other human emotions, but her rage has multiplied a hundredfold. It’s the closest thing I’ve ever seen to the spite that’s buried in my soul, to the fury that’s ruined me.

“And I remember.” Her words echo unnaturally against the surrounding stables.

A shiver needles down my spine. “Remember what?” I ask, despite my better instincts.

Behind me, Tristan shifts. He’s tense. Watchful … protective.

The Dead Queen halts and turns toward me with unnatural speed. “You.” Her voice is almost a hiss. “How you used to cry after your father’s cruelty. How you hid with that boy of yours in the library, reading histories and fairy tales for hours. Wondering why you were never good enough.”

My heart seizes with guilt at the mention of Hunter. Tears sting at the corners of my eyes, and I hate myself for them. “I wasn’t good enough, it turns out.”

The Dead Queen leans in, far too close. Her words curl around me like smoke. “Of course you were. It was never that you weren’t good enough. It was that you were too good. Too clever, too brave, too strong, and too powerful for him.”

I say nothing.

“And it made him afraid.”

“I was a child,” I whisper, disbelieving. “What could he possibly have feared from me?”

“That you would overshadow him.” Her words are sharp as shattered glass. “That you would burn brighter than he could, or any other Fox King or Queen before him. And he couldn’t stand that possibility. Small men can’t bear to be eclipsed by a woman.”

Her face hovers so close to mine, I have to steel my spine against the urge to back away. Behind her veil, I can see the hint of her opalescent eyes fixed on mine. They’re wide and insistent. They’re eyes that hold more power in a single gaze than most mortals could command in a lifetime.

“Tell me,” I say. “Tell me what happened. Why you left me. How you became the Dead Queen.”

“No.” Her voice is barely more than a whisper, yet the word is final.

“Please.”