Read Online Foxheart by Claire Legrand - Free Book Online

have you done to him?” The shock of this new Fox left her with a dangerously upset feeling lodged in her throat. “This isn’t my Fox. My Fox would never speak to me like that.”
    â€œYou’re right,” Anastazia agreed. “This isn’t your Fox. And yet you’re wrong, because it is your Fox. He’s the same, and he’s different, and he’s new, and he’s who he was always meant to be. And so are you, my dear. See for yourself.”
    Anastazia pulled Quicksilver to stand in front of the mirror in the corner. Quicksilver saw her own reflection—and yet it wasn’t her own reflection. Much was the same—her squashed, piggish nose, the shape of her mouth—but her hair was a bright, blazing red instead of gray, and her eyes were an even more brilliant violet than Anastazia’s.
    Sly Boots sat up, looking dazed. “I feel a little better now. What did you do to your hair?”
    â€œIt couldn’t ever have happened in your time,” Anastazia told Quicksilver, her eyes fixed hard on Quicksilver’s face. Quicksilver, for her part, kept her expression blank, determined to give nothing away to this woman—nor to this Fox, sitting by the window as if nothing were amiss.
    â€œEver since the Wolf King began his hunt,” Anastazia continued, “eliminating witches from the world one by one, magic likewise faded, for without witches, there can be no magic. Magic feeds on itself, you see. The more witches, the stronger the world’s magic, the more you can see it in the forests and flowers, in the sky itself.
    â€œIn your time, so little magic is left that even someone whose blood is rich with magic will never be able to access it. Even blood as rich with magic as your own, Quicksilver.” Anastazia paused and smiled wistfully. “As our own, I should say. But here, in this past . . . here, your blood sings. Magic is everywhere. Magic is at your fingertips. In them.”
    Sly Boots approached them slowly, his eyes wide. “Does she mean what I think she means?”
    â€œYou’re saying I’m a . . . a—” Quicksilver swallowed hard.
    â€œYou’re a witch, Quicksilver of Lalunet.” Anastazia grinned. “Just like me.”

.11.
A NASTAZIA AND THE W OLF K ING

    A nastazia had lunch sent up to their room—vegetable stew and hot, crusty bread and mint tea, plus a leg of mutton for Fox. They ate in silence, listening to the birds that perched outside the window. The birds’ feathers glowed a rich, deep indigo tipped with glimmering gold, and they sang with eerily human voices. Past them, the stars shone like beacons in the midafternoon sky.
    At last Anastazia turned to Quicksilver with a serious expression.
    â€œNow that we’ve eaten,” she said, “I suppose you’d like to know what’s going on. I know I did, at this point.”
    Quicksilver folded her arms over her chest. “You might say that.”
    Anastazia took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. “All right. This is always the hardest part. I know it will be difficult for you. I know because it was for me too. And for the Anastazia who taught me. And for the Anastazia before that, and before that, and before that.”
    â€œWhat is she talking about?” hissed Sly Boots, sitting with a pillow clutched protectively to his chest.
    â€œI’ve brought you back to an earlier time in history,” Anastazia said, ignoring him, “so that you might come into your witch bloodlines and learn how to work magic, so that you might help me find the bones of the First Ones’ monsters and defeat the Wolf King, so that we might save our race from extinction.”
    â€œNothing to worry yourself about too much,” said Fox breezily, lounging on his cot. “A simple task, really.”
    Quicksilver wondered if she would ever stop feeling disturbed at this snotty, insufferable voice coming from her