Page 71 of The Fox Heir

Fear strikes my heart, and my body stiffens. “Tell me. I can handle it.”

Hunter studies me for a reaction. “Your brother,” he says the word like he knows it’s a lie. “Is fine, it seems. Or, as fine as any child can be when he’s raised by nursemaids and an evil father.”

“Fennec is still a baby. My father can’t do much damage yet.”

He shrugs. “Maybe not. But, Elena …” his voice breaks.

My heart sinks. I know where this is going. No woman lasts long with my father. Hunter’s cousin wouldn’t be the exception.

He nods, sensing I know. “She disappeared.”

“Dead?” The word sounds hollow in my mouth.

“I think that’s safe to presume, knowing the king’s track record.”

I suspected as much, but hearing it aloud makes it feel real. Elena, despite being my father’s mistress, had once been my friend. She didn’t deserve the life she got. Nor the end. I remember the cold, dark dungeon that my father locked me in when he left me to die. I refuse to think of Elena there, dead with hundreds of rats in that damp darkness.

I reach out toward Hunter hesitantly. When he doesn’t flinch away, I set my fingers gently over his where they rest on the blanket.

“Hunter, I am so, so sorry.”

He takes a deep breath and nods. “I wish I’d asked her more questions. I wish I’d been there for her. Instead, I was too concerned with becoming a King’s Guard. I suppose on some level I was embarrassed. My cousin was the King’s mistress.” He closes his eyes and shakes his head angrily. “Now I know there was more to it than that. But I was too blind to see it.”

“The moth ring?”

He nods. “The ring.”

I hesitate, not sure this is the right time to bring it up, but there’s no such thing as perfect timing. “Hunter, when we found you on the beach. In your pocket, you had a book.” I level my eyes with his. “My book, as it happens.” I take the little green book out of the pocket of my red cloak. The silver moth on the cover flashes in the dim light.

He takes a deep, relieved breath, then coughs. “I was afraid I’d lost it.”

“How did you find it?”

He gives me a sheepish grin. “Do you really think I’d forget the place you used to hide sweets in when we were kids?”

My mouth drops open. “You snuck into the palace? Into my room?” I stare at him wide-eyed. “Hunter, you could have been caught!”

He shrugs. “I figured if you had any useful information, you’d hide it beneath the floorboards.”

It’s so ridiculous, I laugh. “And here I thought it was the perfect hiding spot.”

He waggles his head back and forth. “It is, but you keep forgetting how well I know you.”

A relieved smile tugs at my lips. I am so glad to see him again. “Still, you shouldn’t have gone back there. It wasn’t worth it.”

“I had to. I couldn’t ignore what was happening. Not after everything we went through.” He takes a deep breath, like he’s bracing himself to tell me the worst. “There’s something you need to know. The increased soldiers at the borderlands, it’s a renewed effort to ‘protect Llwyn from the invading corpse armies.’”

I scowl. “Even though we are, in fact, the true invaders. It was never Annwyn.”

He pinches the space between his eyes. “Yeah, about that.”

I raise my eyebrows, suspicious.

Hunter takes a deep breath and gives it to me straight. “Your father is using your disappearance as an excuse to send renewed forces into Annwyn. To take revenge for your kidnapping.”

I blanch. “My … what?”

“You know your father. He will spin anything to his advantage.”