Page 118 of The Queen's Box

“Okay, the queen. What can you tell me about her?”

Willow knew this was tricky territory. “Well, she’s Serrin’s mother, first and foremost.”

“Right. Because he’s the prince.” His arm, the one he’d draped over her shoulders, slackened. She felt him withdrawing, and she couldn’t bear it.

“No, please,” she said. What she was feeling was too scary and too new to say aloud, but she hoped he somehow knew, just the same. That she loved him, not Serrin. That he’d been here all along, and yet she had to go to Eryth and back to find him. That she wasn’t letting him go now.

She readjusted his arm, nestling close and wrapping his warmth around her. He resisted only for a moment, then tightened his grip and pulled her close.

“Her name is Severine. Her court reveres her. She’s beautiful and clever—and terrifying. I didn’t learn much of this until recently, but I guess there was a rebellion long ago? It failed, but rebels still exist.” She took a deep breath. “And, Cole, that’s the thing. The babies that are blighted are always babies of rebel parents.”

“There it is, then,” Cole said. “There’s the answer. The queen is orchestrating it all. She deploys the Secret Sisters in the dark of the night—”

“—and tells them which babies the duskwyrms should bite,” Willow finished, her pulse thudding sickly. “The Blighted aren’twicked. They’re just tools. A way for Severine to maintain control.”

“She keeps her hands clean and her reputation untarnished,” Cole said. “Damn.” He hopped off the picnic table and held out his hand. She took it and climbed off, too. “Well, Willow, I feel sorry for Serrin. I do. But thank God you got the hell out of there.”

Willow nodded, but thoughts of Serrin prodded cruelly. The dreams he had for when he became king—they were all built on a lie. He’d said—how had Poppy put it?—thathelping the Blighted was the central tenet of his future stewardshipor something like that. What he didn’t realize was that his mother was the one who’d marked them in the first place. Severine was pure evil, and she got away with it by making the Secret Sisters do her dirty work.

~

It was dark by the time they got back to Ruby and Brooxie’s, but the darkness here was nothing like the darkness Willow knew she had to return to. Lost in her thoughts, her hand slipped from Cole’s without her noticing. He recaptured it, his fingers squeezing hers. She looked at him and forced a smile, squeezinghis hand in return. Then she turned away before he could see too much.

The sisters fussed over them when they entered the house.

“You look like you’ve seen the dead,” Brooxie exclaimed. “Both of you!”

Cole offered a tired smile. “Not far off.”

“Pour them some iced tea, sister,” fussed Brooxie. “Cole? Tell us what happened.”

Cole moved with them toward the kitchen, and Willow heard the low murmur of their voices. How much would he tell them? Willow stayed back, eyes sweeping over the familiar clutter of the living area. The spindly mint and basil plants crowding the windowsill, reaching for the sun. The small stack of clean linens left neatly folded on the arm of the sofa. And there, on the low tea table in the center of the room: a hand-embroidered cloth, stitched in painstaking loops and puckered at the corners where the tension had slipped. It reminded Willow of the doilies her great-aunt used to keep under bowls of hard candy. Pointless, fussy things—but made with care.

She needed to lie down.

She didn’t go to the little guest room at the end of the hall, the one the twins had assigned to her. She went instead to Cole’s room.

The blankets were still rumpled from that morning, and seeing them made her stomach lurch. Had it been only this morning that they’d slept together? She could almost feel Cole’s hands on her skin and the scrape of stubble at her collarbone. The ache of being chosen and choosing back and coming together as one.

But the Box pulled her attention, silent and squat in the center of the room. Willow moved to it and sank to the rug. She grazed her fingertips over the lid, following the outline of the carved serpent curled around a pomegranate tree in full fruit.

Was it pulsing, or was that her own blood thudding behind her eyes?

When Cole spoke, she jumped.

“I should have known,” he said from the doorway, a glass of iced tea in each hand. He stepped into the room, hurt radiating from the tight set of his shoulders. “Ididknow. I just talked myself out of it. Told myself that finally—finally—you might choose me.”

“I do choose you, Cole. I do!” Willow said.

He crossed the room and set both glasses on the bedside table. “Then what are you doing? Why are you stroking that goddamn Box like it’s your lover?”

She retracted her hands and curled them in her lap. “I have to tell Serrin. You know I do.”

“Serrin,” he said. “Always Serrin.”

“It’s not like that. It really, really isn’t.”

“No?” He crouched beside her. “And yet you’re leaving me and going back to him.”

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