Chapter 24: The Throne Is Hers Too

We went down to the gate together, Roan and I, with my father behind us and the whole hall streaming after.

The Mother stood in the road with her stick in one hand.

Behind her, in a long untidy line down the hillside, came the children.

There were more than a hundred.

Some were babies in slings, and some were half grown, and all of them were thin and quiet and staring at the walls.

Roan stopped at the gate.

Nobody on either side of it moved.

The girl from the next cell pushed through the crowd, took a small boy by the hand, and walked him across the line without a word.

The boy looked up at the towers.

"Is it a prison?" he asked her.

"Not anymore," she said.

The Mother caught my eye over the children's heads.

She looked at Roan, at the mark on my shoulder, and at the mark I had put on his, and she snorted.

"About time," she said.

"Mother, this is the king," I said.

"I know who he is. I saw him walk up my hill without a sword."

She jabbed her stick in his direction.

"You will feed them first. Then you will ask their names."

"Yes, ma'am," Roan said.

He went down on one knee in the road, in front of the smallest child in the line, a girl of about four with a thumb in her mouth.

"What do they call you?" he asked.

She took her thumb out and whispered it.

"Welcome home," Roan said.

Behind me, I heard my father blow his nose.

By evening every wolf in the castle had eaten, and the great hall was full of noise.

Pack leaders who had never spoken to a rogue sat beside them on the long benches.

The seer from Harrow Keep was telling a table of children what she saw in their soup.