Page 1 of Kill the Queens

ONE

Ace

Death was sneaky. Not that anyone would think back on that when faced with that white light they're supposed to walk into. That’s just how truly devious and tricky it was. Everyone always forgot that. But not Ace.

Ace saw spots the day she died, before the white light had even fully appeared. Call it foreshadowing. Call it a warning. Call it Ace’s mistake for not paying enough attention to it or to the feeling in her stomach that screamed for her to run the other way. They'd dotted her vision in warning. She'd thought it was a symptom of the fear that gripped her as she followed her family through the woods and nothing else. So she ignored her gut instinct.

Always trust your gut.

Lightning cut across the sky, the flash sparkled in her gaze for several seconds after, followed by aboomthat shook the ground. Rain was coming down in fat, heavy drops that reminded her of tears as they fell down her cheeks.Was she crying?She honestly didn't know. She hoped not. She’d never hear the end of it from her siblings.

From her parents’ deaths to the growing feud between humans and Fae there'd been a lot going on. A lot of people to mourn. It made her heart heavy like an extra piece of luggage she needed to drag around with her. One she could never put down.

A few of her siblings were up ahead. Their forms weremerely shadowed outlines against the trees. When lightning struck she would get a glimpse at their tattered dresses and messy dark hair. One of her sisters, her oldest, walked behind her, hand pressed between her shoulder blades forcing her forward.

Goosebumps chased over Ace's skin. A dark, cold feeling settled against her neck, creating a shiver that ran down her spine again and again. Those little white dots appeared once more at the edges of her vision.

Probably just from the flashes of lighting, she told herself.That’s all.

Her skirt snagged on a fallen limb. Before she could pull the murky brown material—that had once been some shade of light blue—her sister grabbed her dress and yanked. The dress tore and Ace's eyes lifted to her sister’s calculated face. It was the only dress she had. And now it had a gaping hole in it.

"My skirt!" Ace hissed up at her sister.

"It's not important." Ace could remember the exact way her sister's face twisted into something ugly when she talked to her that night. She’d never seen her look so terrifying. "Keep moving before we run out of time. The moon needs to be at the center of the sky."

"For what?"

Her sister shoved her forward without another word. Ace stumbled along, her heartbeat trilling in her chest. She was starting to lose feeling in her fingers, the numbness creeping up slowly into her hands and then eventually into her arms. None of them had told her what was happening tonight. It was a secret Ace wasn't allowed to know.

You have a blabber mouth and you'll tell everyone.They’d tried to reason with her.

No matter how she begged and pleaded with them they'd all kept it a secret from her. Ace knew she could keep a secretwhen she wanted to. She wished she knew the secret even more now as her flimsy cloth shoes sunk into the mud of the forest floor. Water seeped in between her toes.

Her skirt was ripped and her shoes were ruined. What a night this was turning out to be.

The forest opened up to a small valley where the moonlight poked out from parting clouds and cast its light. It was in the middle of the sky just like it was supposed to be. Just like her sister wanted. The storm clouds continued to shift and quickly the moon was out of view again. Did her sisters need to see the moon to do whatever they'd come out here for?

The small group slowed to a walk and then came to a stop. Her sister’s hand had slid up her back to the nape of her neck. Her fingers curled into Ace until the pressure made her squirm.

That's where everything got fuzzy in Ace's memory. It went from a dreamlike sequence to small flashing images. Some human coping mechanism to protect her from trauma. Ace wished she could remember it all clearly as she did the hours that led up to the exact moment of her death. She wanted to use it all as fuel. She wanted to know with certainty that she had died with a purpose and that it had been forsomething. Anythingof value.

There was screaming, she remembered. Some her own as she was forced to her knees and no one had answered her questions. Some were strings of prayers that were shouted to the heavens.

She remembered the shine of the knife as lighting had blasted through the sky followed shortly by thunder that could have very well been Ace’s own heart. She remembered the terror that filled her as she tried to rip from the hands that held her there, as the blade was brought to her neck.

What were they doing? Why would they do this to her? Didn't they love her?

Steel bit into her skin. Pain didn't register till after the knife had been dragged across her flesh from one side of her neck to the other. Red seeped into the bodice of her gown even as Ace pressed her fingers to her neck and tried to hold the blood in.

Her next breath had felt like she was underwater. It burned in her lungs. She coughed only to produce hot droplets of crimson on her bottom lip. Her head spun. Her limbs...gods she couldn't feel her entire body even as the world tilted and she fell against the damp grass.

Though she didn’t want to accept it, she knew what all of this meant. Ace knew as she blinked, watching the wind and rain play at the grass around her sister’s shoes, that she was dying. Every second that passed, her body grew weaker. Her thoughts became slower, more sluggish, which was a striking difference to how frenzied they were not long ago.

Someone turned her body to face the sky.

More white dots appeared, bigger this time, making it hard to see the faces looking down at her. The people she called family.Were they crying?She blinked and her eyes almost didn't make it back open. She wanted to know if they were mourning her or felt remorse. Perhaps if she could look them in the eyes there would be something there that would tell her why.

One feeling vibrated through her as she struggled to stay conscious, as her throat burned, and her lungs filled with liquid. She wasn't angry. She wasn't scared or sad. Not anymore. Not when she looked past their smiling faces up to the moon that had reappeared in a suddenly cloudless sky.

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