Chapter 2

He must have been afraid she would ask again. He snatches the parchment out of her hand and throws it into the brazier.

The fire eats it in a heartbeat.

Then he sighs. Soft. The way he used to. He reaches out to smooth back the white hair at her temple.

Mama turns her head away.

His hand stops in the air. His jaw locks. The stripes under the skin of his throat ripple once, dark.

"Tonight I'm taking Vesp to the King's moon-feast at Highmount. Give her the Vale Nine-Tail Crown."

"No!"

I'm on my feet before Mama can answer.

"That was my grandmother's. That's Mama's only piece of the Hollow left. No one's putting that crown on her head!"

Vespera's eyes fill on cue. The tears slide down without so much as a tremble.

"It's my fault. I should never have wanted the crown. I'm low-born. I have no father, no mother to stand behind me. Just let them laugh me back. It's only what I deserve…"

Kael's face goes hard.

"Iselle. This is how you raise my daughter? No manners, no shame? Maybe Vespera should raise her from now on. She will teach Lyra what obedience looks like."

Mama goes white. She drags herself upright on the bed, every bruise screaming, and shoves me behind her body.

"Take the crown. Take it. Don't touch Lyra."

A flash of triumph in Vespera's eyes — gone before anyone but me sees it. She presses her hand to her chest, soft, sweet.

"Kael. I've never been to the King's court before. I'm sure to shame you in front of the Lion. Let Iselle come with me — as my maid. She can guide me. So I don't fail you."

My mother — his true mate — serving the serpent like a slave.

That's not guidance. That's to shame her in front of everyone.

Kael doesn't pause for so much as one breath.

"Done."

By dusk, a rough grey robe lands in the chamber.

I watch Mama drag her broken body off the bed. I watch her pull that coarse cloth over her bruises body, over the place where the tiger-fang pendant used to lie at her throat.

The tears come up out of me without sound.

Mama reaches over. Wipes my cheek with her thumb. Presses something cool into my palm.

A hairpin.

A single strip of polished silver willow-wood. The sacred wood of the Vale Hollow. And wound twice around it, fine and snow-white — a single strand of my mother's fox-fur.

"Lyra. My little kit. I don't think I have much longer with you."

"After I'm gone, you take this pin. You leave the Drayven Reach. You go north — past the Bone Wastes, into the Frostfangs. You find Roen Wolfram, the Alpha of the Frostfang Pack. He was your grandfather's sworn second. Show him this pin. He'll keep you alive."

I close my fingers over the pin. My chest is splitting open.

I know already.

I know she's been worn through. Bled out. Ground down, year after year.

She fought. She fought every time. And every time she fought, they pushed her deeper into the mud.

When Vespera was first brought into the Hold, Mama had a small den built outside and quietly settled her there — afraid she would ruin me.

The next morning Kael named it jealousy. He made Mama crawl on her knees from the Hold gate to that little den, to beg Vespera personally to come back.

Half a year ago, when Mama woke from the wolfsbane brew, she took a knife and went straight to Vespera's chamber to kill her.

Kael caught her at the door and told her, "Take one more step toward Vespera, and I'd throw your mother's bones to the kennel-hounds. Nothing of the Vale family left to bury.

Three days ago, Vespera's drawings turned up all over Highmount. Naked. With half a dozen shifters crawling all over her.

Kael decided Mama had drawn them.

That night he poured a sleep-draught down her throat and locked her in a stone kennel with six lower shifters.

After that night, Mama stopped fighting.

I press my face into the bones of her shoulder. She is nothing but bones now.

"Mama —"