Chapter 11: The Last Queen

Silver light poured down the walls of the Hall.

The torches burned white-blue, and every wolf's shadow on the floor turned to a pale shape.

Nobody spoke.

The guards holding my mother had let go of her without knowing it, and they were backing away.

"I am Ilse of the Moon Court," my mother said.

Her voice had changed.

It no longer sounded tired or low or small.

"I was Queen of the Moon when the High Crown's riders came in the night twenty-six years ago."

"I am Queen of it still," she said.

A woman screamed somewhere near the door.

The old King of Fenmark half rose from his chair and sat down again, and his hands were shaking.

"That's a lie," Osric said.

It came out as a croak.

"The Moon Queen burned," someone whispered.

"I did not," my mother said. "I was dragged north in chains."

"A lake pack bought me because they wanted a thrall who would never speak."

She turned and looked at my father.

"Edric Storrow bought me with his own hand, and he knew who I was the moment he saw my eyes."

My father had gone grey.

He sat in the Alpha's chair with his hands clenched on the arms, and he did not deny it.

"I let them call me nothing," my mother said.

"I let them throw knives at me, because a thrall can live and a queen cannot."

She looked at me, and her whole face changed.

"I let them do all of it for you."

I could not breathe.

"Twenty years," she said. "Every night I put my thumbs on that iron and sang the Moon's call."

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