Page 131 of The Wolf Queen’s Curse

I push the crown into his hands and cast the privacy spell again. “Tell him I’ll be back for it.”

Julius doesn’t react to that. He knows better and only snarls and turns on his heel, snatching the crown as if I’d truly rejected it, rejected Bishop and the Pack.

“Don’t run straight to your cousin,” Beryl calls after him. “If he comes after us, the deal is off.”

Julius throws a rude gesture over his shoulder and keeps stalking away, but he does change direction, heading back toward the throne room instead.

When I turn to Ann, Beryl releases her.

“Stay safe,” I say. “I’m sorry to leave—”

“I’m going with you.”

Beryl snorts and shakes her head. “My granddaughter doesn’t need a whore for a lady’s maid.”

Ann turns on her before I can say a word. “I am not a whore,” she says coldly. “I am Cordelia’s cousin.”

“Cousin? You’re no witch.”

“She has two parents. My grandmother is her other grandmother. On her father’s side.”

“There is no place in my cabal for a werewolf’s daughter who isn’t even a lycan.”

“My grandmother was a necromancer.”

“I suppose you’re going to tell me you are, too?”

“Of course I am. My grandmother was. My mother was. I am. All the women in our family are. That’s how it works. Do you not have necromancers in your cabal?”

That actually isn’t how necromancy works. Like vampirism, only some descendants inherit it regardless of their sex. A direct line of three necromancers is unheard of.

Beryl frowns, taking Ann in from head to toe. “What is your family name?”

Ann hesitates. Then she says, reluctantly, “Stockwell.”

“I mean your mother’s side, obviously.”

“I don’t know.”

“She can raise the dead,” I say. “She raised Silas without even an incantation.”

“That isn’t possible,” Beryl says.

Ann looks genuinely confused. “Why would I need an incantation? Raising the dead is a necromancy power.”

I continue to Beryl, “She summoned three ghosts to their graves without any formal ritual. She’s never even been taught rituals.”

Now Ann scowls as if we’re mocking her.

“I know how to summon,” she says, “and how to raise the dead. My mother and grandmother taught me.”

“And how do you do it?” Beryl asks.

“I concentrate. Very hard.”

Beryl stares at her and then bursts out laughing as Ann’s face reddens.

“What’s so funny?” Ann snaps.

“Why do you want to go with my granddaughter?” Beryl asks.

“Silas sent my mother and me belowstairs when my grandfather died. The Albion Pack turned us into servants and made us feel lucky that they didn’t turn us into whores.”

“She has nowhere to go,” I say. “She’s been a prisoner since she was ten.”

Beryl can’t disguise the gleam in her eye. A powerful supernatural who has no idea how powerful she is? A sheltered woman who has no experience on her own? That describes Ann, and it also describes me, and together, we’ll be bound by kinship. A package deal Beryl didn’t expect.

“Come then,” she says. “We shouldn’t tarry here, and we have a long trip ahead of us.”

She casts again, hiding us under her spell, and then herds us toward the back of the wall, where she must have found another way in.

As we go, I can’t glance toward the gates. Toward Bishop. I want to so badly, and I cannot.

He’ll understand why I had to do this.

Please let him understand.