Chapter 24: The Queen's First Order

We buried my father the next morning, in the family crypt under the Moonhall.

Nobody had buried him yet.

My mother had kept his body in the cold room for three days, and the guard had stood watch over it in shifts, weeping.

Four thousand wolves came down to the crypt gate, and every one of them stood bareheaded in the rain.

The Keeper said the old words.

The four Alphas carried his coffin.

I walked behind it in black, with Garrick a step behind me.

At the bottom of the stairs, the crypt was lit with candles, and the stone tomb stood open.

Next to it was another tomb, with a bronze plate on the lid.

The plate had my mother's name on it.

I looked at it for a long time.

Then I told the guard to take it away.

"The coffin is empty," I said. "Don't leave a lie in my father's house."

They lifted the lid, and they carried it out, and nobody spoke.

I knelt by my father's tomb.

I had taken off the ring that morning, because I wanted to put it on his hand.

I held it over his folded fingers.

My thumb brushed the rim, and I turned it a quarter turn, without meaning to.

The stone glowed red.

My father's voice came out of it.

It was not the voice I had heard at the toast.

It was lower, and rougher, and very near.

"Girl," my father said. "If you are hearing this, it worked, and I'm gone."

I stopped breathing.

"I recorded this in the study before the party. Garrick doesn't know.

"I told him not to say goodbye, and I'm sorry for that, too. He's a good man. Let him be one."

Behind me, Garrick made a small sound.

"The ring will tell wolves the truth, and the law will never believe it.

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