Speaking: A Dark Royal Fantasy

Irene has wanted the crown her whole life. She takes it in the dark, with a length of waxed cord and her own two hands, from the husband who trusted her to the last breath.

The murder is the simple part.

In her realm the dead do not stay quiet. For three days a body can be made to answer, and it cannot lie, and no murdered king goes into the ground until he has named the hand that killed him, out loud, before the whole court. Irene has three days to make certain her husband never gets the chance.

She pays the man who examines the body to write it gentle. She buys the church that will hold the rite. A whole city grieves its good king, and she turns that grief quietly to her own use, because in thirty years she has never met a soul she could not read and could not price.

Then the court sends for the Speaker.

He is the one they call when the truth has to be certain. Everything Irene knows how to do works on a person who wants something. This one wants nothing. He cannot be bought or frightened or charmed, and at dawn he will kneel over her husband and ask the one question she cannot survive.

She has until the third day to find the way in. A rope is waiting if she fails, and a small boy asleep upstairs who has only her left.

The Speaking is a dark royal fantasy for readers of A Dowry of Blood, Crown Me Dead, and Web of Vows and Vengeance: a cold queen, a truth that cannot be bought, and a bill that comes due long after the crown is won.