Page 30 of Shadows and Roses (The Dark Queens #1)

A few hours later, the palace was quiet, the Queen lay in her bed, the guards stood alert at her door, and the wolf fur cloak was draped on a chair in the moonlight. Eight small, spindly legs unfurled one at a time from deep within the forest of white fuzz, then a small body cautiously lowered itself to the floor. Sharp skittering across the stone didn’t break the silence. Tapping its way up the bed’s wooden frame went unnoticed. The maze of sheets befuddled the little creature for a while, but eventually, it found the warmth it had been searching for.