The crowd pressed against the walls as the king’s procession rode through the village. Wolves flanked the horses, and grown men refused to look up. But Annie didn’t know any better. She was six years old.
Her toes had gone numb two hours ago, her boots were split, and she had one coin in her pocket. Her father had told her to wait at the milestone when the war ended. The war was over now, so she stayed. She had asked forty-three people for help in three days.
Nobody even stopped to look at her. When the king reined in his massive black warhorse, Annie walked straight toward him. The guards reached for their swords. She smiled up at the scarred man and held out her coin.
“Excuse me, Mr. King? Have you seen my papa? ”
Silence hit the road like a dropped stone.
Then the king dismounted. He knelt in the snow before her, and the entire village forgot to breathe. “Have you been alone long, child? ” he asked.
“Three days. Papa told me to wait here when the war ended. ” She pointed to her eyes—one brown, one green, just like her father’s. “Thank you for ending the war, Mr.
King. ”
She hugged him. The king went rigid. Then he asked her to come with him, to eat, to be warm.
She refused because Papa wouldn’t find her. So he promised. The king’s word was law. She took his hand.
At the fortress, Princess Neesa stood in the courtyard, jaw clenched. The Alpha King had destroyed her kingdom. She was being forced to marry him. And he had brought home a child—a thin, grimy little girl who clung to his neck and announced to the entire court that the king was kind, that he would help hungry children and hurt soldiers.
Neesa had heard the king refuse that exact thing three months ago. She watched him say, “Prepare the guest halls. ”
The queen mother’s face went stone cold. Annie woke on her third morning beneath a painted ceiling of gold stars.
She missed Papa, but the king had promised. She went looking for him and found Princess Neesa instead. She told the princess she was beautiful, that the king must be so in love with her. Neesa’s cheeks went pink and her mouth got tight.
Then Annie heard a crack in the courtyard. A boy tied to a post. A whip. She screamed, “Stop!
” and ran straight at him, putting herself between his bare back and the guard’s arm. The king came. He released the boy. The queen mother protested.
He said, “No one in this fortress will be whipped again. ”
Annie hugged him around the waist and told him he was a hero. Neesa requested a meeting with the king. She came to argue about the temple of the moon, the last sacred place of her people.
She expected a fight. He just agreed. She asked him about the child. Something flickered across his face—pain, quickly suppressed.
“She is my responsibility,” he said. Neesa leaned closer and breathed in. There was no trace of the child’s scent on him. He wasn’t her father.
He was hiding something. She asked him how to make Annie feel safe. He asked her for advice. A conquering king, asking her how to love a child.
She told him children trust presence, not proclamations. A month passed. Fenon knelt in the dirt with Annie teaching her to shift. The queen mother watched from the edge of the courtyard, and Neesa saw something cold pass through her eyes.
Then came the dinner. Annie insisted they all eat together. The king’s mother sat at his right, her gaze tracking Annie’s every word like a hawk. Fenon drank too quickly.
And then his hands clenched against the table, white-knuckled. Neesa asked if he was all right. His eyes went dark. He threw them out of the room before he lost control.
And then he lost control anyway. The wolf that exploded from his body was not the graceful animal of the courtyard—it was violent, jerky, wild. Plates shattered. The table flipped.
The wolf’s gaze fixed on Annie. Neesa stepped in front of the child. But Annie moved past her and walked straight toward the creature. “It’s all right,” she said, and put her hand on the wolf’s muzzle.
The great animal dropped to the ground and went still. The next day, Neesa sent samples of the food and wine to the alchemist. She found the king alone, ashamed, confessing that he’d always had “bursts” he couldn’t control. It was worse when he was young.
War gave it somewhere to go. And then he told her about the war. About Gerald. A soldier who told him the truth, no matter the cost.
Who had a wife who died young and a daughter he talked about like she was the reason for everything. Who warned him about an ambush in the southern pass above the Ardan Valley. Fenon told him he was reading shadows. Then the arrows came.
Gerald stepped in front of one meant for the king. “He asked me to find his daughter,” Fenon said. “He told me her name, where she’d be waiting. He said she had eyes like his.
One brown, one green. ”
Annie sat upright in the corner. “Papa is dead. ”
Fenon nodded once.
She burst into tears and ran. Annie hid behind a curtain on the third floor, trying to make the world make sense. Papa had promised. Papa never broke promises.
But Fenon had nodded. Then the queen mother found her. She crouched low, face soft and kind. “Your father is not dead,” she said.
“He lives. And I know exactly where he is. ”
Annie’s heart exploded with hope. She wanted to tell Fenon, to share the joy.
But the queen mother told her the king had lied to make her stay. “If you want to see your father, we must go now,” the queen mother said. “And quietly. If the king knows you’re leaving, he will stop you.
”
Annie took her hand. They walked through the garden, past the gate, through the fields, into the forest. The path grew narrower, then disappeared. The trees opened into an empty clearing.
“Where is my papa? ” Annie asked. The queen mother lifted a bow. The arrow was black, the tip coated and darker than the shaft.
“History remembers victory,” she said. “It never remembers mercy. ”
Annie pressed her back against a tree. The queen mother told her the arrow bore the mark of the southern kingdom—her death would restart the war and restore order.
And then she told her the truth. Annie would join her father in death. The string pulled taut. Annie screamed for her father.
Then she screamed Fenon’s name. The arrow flew. Something enormous hit her sideways, throwing her into the snow. The black wolf stood in the center of the clearing with the arrow buried deep in his shoulder.
He went down slowly, front legs first, then back. Annie threw herself against his neck. “Stand up. Please.
”
The forest erupted. Neesa came through the trees with soldiers. “Seize her,” she said, and the guards pulled the queen mother back. Neesa had the evidence, poisons in the wine, decades of drugging her own son to make him believe he was broken.
“You tried to murder a child under the king’s protection,” Neesa said. “You poisoned your own son. ”
“Mercy weakens kings! ” the queen mother screamed as they dragged her away.
“You will all thank me someday. ”
Fenon was unconscious for three days. Annie didn’t leave his side. Neesa filled every hour with tasks so she didn’t have to think about why she was afraid.
When Fenon woke, Annie threw her arms around him. He told her the truth then—about Gerald, about the battle, about the arrow meant for him. “I wish he’d saved himself instead,” Annie whispered. Then she looked at him through her tears.
“He chose you,” she said. “Papa always said helping people makes the world better. That must be why he saved you—so you could help everyone. ”
Fenon’s voice broke.
“He asked me to come looking for you. So I did. ”
He asked her, if she would accept it, to let him be her father. Not to replace Gerald.
Never to replace him. But to be the next best thing. She flung herself into his arms. Neesa watched from the doorway, and then slipped away before her heart could do anything else complicated.
He had destroyed her kingdom. That would always be true. But the man she hated no longer existed. The epilogue came in the courtyard, where Annie chased butterflies in a grass-stained dress with a crooked crown.
Princess Annie, no longer waiting alone in the snow. Neesa was leaving. The peace had been declared unconditional. She was free, her people were safe.
She felt nothing but relief. Then Fenon asked, “Will you miss it here? ”
“More than I expected,” she said. Annie arrived in a burst of energy.
“But you are home,” she said. “Families don’t walk away from each other. ”
She looked between them. “You watch her like you’re afraid she’ll disappear,” she said to Fenon.
“And you stare at him when he’s not looking,” she said to Neesa. She took Neesa’s hand and placed it in Fenon’s. “Are you asking me to stay? ” Neesa whispered.
“I’m begging you to, princess. ”
Annie shrieked with joy. “Perfect. Now I have both parents.
”
Fenon laughed—a full, real sound—and Neesa felt herself smiling against his shoulder. She was going to hear that laugh for a very long time. She didn’t mind at all.
