They’d said her request was a bribe. Our mere presence a threat. And that there could be no risks taken.

“Giselle was her name,” I told the poor asshole who’d been tasked with keeping watch on me. He didn’t acknowledge me, but he seemed to stir awake from the nap he’d been taking while standing against the door. “My mother. You might remember her. Short black hair and a stricken yet beautiful face. The last time I saw her”—I lifted my fingers from my forehead to point straight ahead—“she was in that very cell.”

The wolf had stiffened, and he peeled open an eye to narrow it at me. “I care nothing for your stories. So kindly shut the fuck up.”

I grinned and continued, “Some coward took her from that cell, and do you know what she told me as she was dragged from it and taken to her doom?” I told him before he could say a word, “Everything will be all right.”

The wolf said nothing.

“It wasn’t all right, though, was it?” I feigned a tormented sigh, yet my chest burned when I recalled the moment I knew I would never see my mother again. “She was taken to the woods and butchered. Never to be seen again.” I shrugged. “Or so I hear.”

The wolf spoke then. “You will likely meet the same fate, should you find yourself lucky.”

“Maybe,” I mused, for I’d no plan outside of convincing this king I longed to kill to surrender his wife.

He should be dead. I’d had ample opportunity to fulfill that desire twice now. But although it would make me sleep better at night, I didn’t want his crown. I wanted no part of this miserable kingdom.

I just wanted their queen. Finding a way to keep her would be vengeance enough.

“Or maybe, I’ll get rid of your spineless king for you,” I supplied, more of a suggestion than a threat. “What say you?”

“I say you’re insane and irritating as fuck.”

“I have been known to be a little… unhinged.”

A snort. “Your father was, too.”

And there it was.

A crack. I widened it by asking, “You knew him, then.” Telling silence followed. I grinned. “Ever wonder what he’d make of all this?”

“The dead do not have opinions.”

The male I remembered was as kind and quiet as he was fierce and quick to anger. There had been many a night I’d lain awake, waiting for his inevitable return to the small farm he’d purchased for my mother upon discovering she was expecting me.

We might have been kept hidden, but we’d been loved, so their arguments had never lasted long. The way he’d spoken of this place…