I Swore to Kill the Prince I Guard novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: Seventeen Candles
There were nine of them by sunset.
The old hound-keeper had gone down to the hill farms with the three dogs and a message.
The message ran ahead of him.
A washerwoman came up the road at noon, forty now, with a boy who had her chin.
A man who had been the cook's son came on a plough horse, shaking.
He stood a long time in the court before he would come near.
Two of the stable girls came together.
A carter who had been delivering in the next valley the night of the burning arrived with his hat in his hands.
"I thought you were all dead, my lord," he said.
"I thought it was my fault for not being here."
Evander put his hand on the man's shoulder and said it was not.
It was all he had to give.
By dusk the king's four riders had cleared the great hall of its fallen beams and swept the black out of one corner of it.
Someone found trestle tables.
Someone found a barrel of the small beer the hold had always brewed, still sound under its stone floor.
Seventeen candles stood in a row on the long table, plain tallow, not wax.
Florian had brought them in his saddlebags.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of I Swore to Kill the Prince I Guard are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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