The Night Prince (The Wolf King, #2)(112)

I rip my sewn-up lips apart.

The wooden cross-brace hurtles from the ceiling, and the courtiers scream and scatter as it crashes onto the tiles before me. The floor shakes, then crumbles.

“Enough.”

I fall.

I land in a heap on the grass. The moon is full in the cloudless sky. It paints the lake by the nearby cabin silver. There are two figures sitting at the bank. A woman and a small child, around three years old, nestled into her side. Both have long red hair that brushes the ground behind them. My heart clenches. I push myself up and walk toward them. Unable to stop myself, I run. The grass tickles my bare feet and dandelions whisper between my toes.

“Mother?” I say.

“The moon is beautiful, isn’t she, little one?” she says, and something erupts in my chest. It aches, yet it’s warm. Tears spring into my eyes. I had forgotten what her voice sounded like, the musical cadence, the lilt of the Snowlands.

“Yes,” I say, at the same time as the small child beside her.

My heart cracks, because it’s not the adult version of me she speaks to. I don’t think she can hear me. I try to walk around her. I try to see her face, but the scenery turns, and I end up facing her back once more.

My mother sighs. “There is so much I need to tell you. So much you’ll need to know when you grow up. Yet I’m running out of time.” She leans back on her hands, and her hair tickles the grass. The small version of me snuggles into her side. “I hope you remember these times, and you remember me fondly.”

The small girl yawns. My mother hums the same haunting melody I hummed to Blake when he was in need of comfort, and the young version of me begins to gently snore.

“The Snowlands were at war when I was promised to your father. An alpha known as the Shadow Wolf had gained a loyal following. He devoted his life to the God of Night, and he was looking for the key to Night’s prison to free his master. My grandmother—the alpha of our pack—could not risk him finding me.”

“Why?” I breathe.

She looks down at the small sleeping babe at her side, almost as if she spoke. “It’s in our blood, little one. Passed from generation to generation down the female line, getting stronger as each branch of our family tree grows.

“My grandmother believed that the next generation would be powerful enough to either release the God of Night or to defeat him. She feared the alpha would force a child upon me, and then sacrifice her to free his master.” She shakes her head as darkness spreads its roots through my veins. “So my grandmother struck a deal with your father. Your father would support us in our fight against the Shadow Wolf, my grandmother would provide Wolves to help him fight his war in the kingdom of Rema, and I would be his wife to secure the alliance. Your father seemed kind, when she met him to discuss the terms. She thought I would be safe. I thought I would be safe.”

“You were not.”

Her breath is a whisper on the summer-scented breeze. “I was not. Your father. . . I loved him, at first. I was young, only eighteen years old. He showered me with affection. He bought me gifts. He made me his queen. He was handsome when we met, and I thought myself the luckiest wolf in the Snowlands to have escaped the war, and to have met such a man.” I hear the sad smile in her voice as the moonlit water ripples before her, and I wish that she would look at me.

“I took the wolfsbane willingly at first. Just a small dose every day. He told me it was for my own good, to keep my wolf at bay. No one would love a queen with my affliction, he told me. His council would murder me, our people would turn on me, and he could not be with me. . . I had to keep that side of myself hidden at all times. He said the wolf was an illness, and the wolfsbane was the medicine. It would make me better. I took it for him. I tried to be ‘better’ for him. It was, of course, unnecessary. I don’t have to shift on the nights of the full moon, because of the blood that runs in my veins.”

She tips her head back to the moon, which is full in the clear night sky.

“I needed him to think that it was the ‘medicine’ that kept it at bay, not the power in my bloodline, though it pained me to take it. Because I knew that if I had a daughter, and the secret came out, she would be killed by your father’s council because of what she represented to the Wolves.”

She exhales. “He changed after Philip was born, now he had his heir. Or perhaps he was a monster all along, and I had chosen not to see it. Perhaps forcing me to hide a part of myself, perhaps making me feel shame for who I was, perhaps showing disgust if I ever slipped. . . perhaps that was abuse all along.

“When you were born, he started making me take larger doses of my ‘medicine’. He told me he would take you and Philip from me if I did not. I can withstand it better than most, but I’m not impervious to its effects.

“I tried to escape with you and Philip, once. He caught me, and I was punished for it. This. . . this is the second and last time I will try to get you out of the kingdom.”

The temperature cools, and a shadow passes over the moon. The water of the lake becomes agitated, and my mother’s voice becomes harder.

“The next day at dawn, I tried to send you away with my lady-in-waiting. I instructed her to take you to the port at the White Cliff, and get passage on a ship to the Snowlands. There, I thought you would be safe. But your father’s men came in the night, and took us back.”