He Chose the Wrong Sister novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The Northmarch Charter

The Queen of Aurelmark rode into Harrowgate on a gray mare, in a fur cloak, with forty riders and her son behind her.

She was seventy, and she sat the horse better than I did.

Cade met her at the gate on one knee, and I stood beside him in the snow.

"Get up, Warden," said the Queen. "I'm too old to look down at a man's hair."

He rose.

"I've come to read this myself," she said. "I won't have it dropped in the mud by a clerk."

She took a roll of vellum from the prince, who handed it over without a word.

He did not meet my eyes.

He looked well, I thought, and tired, and ten years older than the man who had danced with me.

The whole keep had crowded into the yard.

The Queen unrolled the vellum, and her voice, small and clear, carried to the walls.

"Know all men that three summers past, at the ford of the Sele river, bandits struck down the heir of Aurelmark.

"Imogen Tarrant, now Lady Garrow, dragged him into a mill."

A rustle went through the men.

"She bound his wounds with a hem of her own gown.

"She sewed his shoulder shut with green thread, and kept him alive for two nights, and asked for nothing."

The Queen looked up over the page.

"The Crown has been told many things about that night.

"This is the truth, and it will be written in the chronicle of the realm."

I felt Cade's hand close on mine.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Chose the Wrong Sister from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.