Their Hidden Princess novel · Chapter 4 of 32

Chapter 4: The Moonstone

I shut the door behind me.

It was the only move I had.

"It was my mother's," I said.

That part was true, so it came out steady.

Roan turned the wolf head over in his fingers. The silver was worn smooth on the ears where she used to rub it.

"Only the palace casts a wolf like this," he said. "With a moonstone in its jaws."

"I know."

"You're a hedge-knight's daughter from a swamp."

"I know that too."

Voices came up the stairwell. Two women arguing over a missing hairbrush.

Roan stood up.

He was much bigger standing, in a room this small.

"Not here," he said.

He put the pendant in his shirt pocket and walked out.

I had no choice but to follow my mother's moonstone up the tower stairs.

He took me through a low door at the top and out onto the wall walk.

The wind off the lake hit. Below us the grey water went on forever.

Nobody came up here in autumn. The stones were green with moss.

Roan leaned on the parapet.

"Talk," he said.

So I lied.

"My mother was a maid in the palace at Moorhaven. She dressed the queen. When the queen got sick, she sat with her every night."

I made my voice shake on purpose.

"The queen gave her the stone at the end. For her trouble."

It wasn't hard to make the shaking real.

My mother had died with that stone in her fist, and I had been the one sitting up with her.

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