My Alpha Parents Gave My Tuition Away, So the Royal Command Took Me novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Reception

Linnea's POV

"An old scar," Hollis said, and pulled his sleeve down over the glowing mark.

"It's glowing."

"Go back to bed, Brask."

"You were hiding something on that table."

"Training records," he said. "Go to bed."

I looked at his closed face for a long time, and he looked back.

I went to bed, and I didn't sleep.

Three nights later the Crown held its spring reception at the Royal Palace.

The Royal Command's recruits were invited every year, to stand in rows in their dress blacks and be looked at.

The Brask family was invited too, because the Crown's invitations went out months ahead.

I stood at the side of the ballroom in a black uniform jacket, with Teague at my left elbow.

"Don't eat the little crab things," he said. "They come back up."

"I'll bear it in mind."

Hollis stood across the room with the Marshal.

He hadn't looked at me once all night.

I'd checked a dozen times.

Then the room hushed, and my father walked onto the dais with my mother on his arm and Sabine behind them.

Sabine was thin and pale, in a pearl-colored dress.

My mother held her upright with a hand at her back.

"Friends," my father said, and tapped a glass. "A toast. To my daughter Sabine, whose gift the capital has misunderstood this week."

There was polite applause.

"A bad night on a stage doesn't make a fraud. It makes a girl who works too hard." He smiled around at the court. "And to my other daughter, who has run away to play at being a soldier. We forgive you, Linnea, and we pray you come home."

People turned and looked at me.

A hundred of them.

Every face held the same small, pitying smile.

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