Finding Her Magical King novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Decree

Anselm did not answer the lord in the green sash at once.

He looked at the crown in Ivor's wrapped hands.

He looked at the chained man on the steps, and at the old judge on his feet.

Then he looked at me.

"Your Honour," he said. "Is the council's vote valid?"

"It was carried by a man who has just confessed to forgery and treason," said the judge.

"It is void, Your Majesty. You never ceased to be king."

A rustle went through the hall.

Anselm nodded.

He walked to the long table beneath the dais, where the register lay.

He opened it to a clean page.

"The Witch Decree was signed by my father," he said.

"It was drafted by the man in irons. It exists because a coward was afraid to be told he was wrong."

He picked up the pen.

"My lord of the green sash asks me to choose. I choose."

He wrote.

His hand was steady, and he wanted every line to be seen.

The Witch Decree is repealed.

Every witch in Hallowmere may live in the open, under the crown's protection.

The names of Alder and Bryony Wickham are cleared, and their house is restored.

He signed it.

There was no frost on the page this time.

"There," he said.

No one spoke.

Then the lady in green, who had called me the motel girl in the palace, stepped out of the crowd.

She went down on one knee on the marble.

"Your Majesty," she said. "Miss Wickham."

She meant me.

One by one, the court knelt.

The lord in the green sash was the last, and he did it stiffly.

I stood in a borrowed coat with a bandage at my throat.

My knees shook so much that Anselm had to put an arm around me.

"You don't have to do anything," he murmured. "Let them look."

"I'd like to run."

"Later."

They buried my parents on the fourth morning.

Their bones had lain eight years in a pit under the old yard, with a thorn bush planted over them.

The wolves dug them up with their own hands.

Anselm walked behind the cart, bareheaded in the drizzle, and carried the smaller box himself.

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