Finding Her Magical King novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Yard

Sorrel's POV

Deposed.

The word hung over the long table.

Nobody in the Rose Chamber looked at the man it had been said to.

I looked at Thrale.

The hatred came up in me clean and cold, and the table cracked down its middle.

The crack ran through the oak to his place at the head.

Frost curled across his papers in a white fern.

He glanced down at it.

Then he glanced at Anselm, who was still upright, and then at me.

"Mind her hands," he said mildly.

"Escort the late king to the east wing. He may keep his rooms until the funeral."

"I'm not dead, my lord," Anselm said.

"A formality."

"And the girl goes to the tower."

Ivor's wolves came forward into the doorway without being asked.

They did not growl.

They simply stood there, nine of them, with their jackets open.

Behind them, one by one, five lords and ladies got up from the table.

The old judge was first.

The woman in emerald was third, and she walked past Thrale's chair without turning her head.

Thrale looked at the empty chairs.

He eyed the wolves.

I saw him decide that a fight in the council room would cost him the council.

"The east wing," he said pleasantly. "By all means."

Anselm walked out on his own legs, and made it as far as the first landing.

Then he sat down on the stair, very suddenly, and Ivor picked him up.

We held the east wing that night with nine wolves, five lords, a cat and a locked door.

Thrale held the rest of Highcastle, and the iron guard, and the seal.

At dusk Ivor came in with his coat steaming and a look on his face I did not understand.

"His clerks tried to scrape the Wickham names out of the register," he said. "They tried knives, then lye."

"And?"

"It won't lift. The ink froze into the paper in the shape of the king's hand."

Anselm, propped on his pillows, shut his eyes.

"Good," he said.

I sat on the end of the bed and said nothing for a long time.

My mother's name was in a book where no one could erase it.

I had wanted that for eight years.

Now that I had it, I felt nothing but tired.

"I can't do it yet," I said.

"Do what?"

"What the letter says."

"I know."

"I stood there in the council room and wanted to burn the whole place down."

"At him."

"At him," I said. "And then I looked at you, and the anger was still there."

He was quiet.

"Come outside with me," he said. "There's somewhere I want to be, and you should come."

It was the yard.

He leaned on my arm across the flagstones, and the wolves stayed by the door.

The yard was smaller than I remembered.

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