Runaway Princess Bride novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Toast

I did not stop to think.

I had grown up at tables where the wrong glass meant the wrong ending.

I stood up, and my chair scraped the marble in a hall full of silence.

"Wait," I said.

The cellarer had already lifted the decanter.

He froze with it tilted over the gold cup.

Two hundred faces turned toward me.

"Princess?" he said.

"Put it down."

Beside me, the king's hand tightened on the arm of his chair.

The regent, seated at the high table, set down his knife with a faint, patient click.

"Adelaide," he said, with a small laugh. "Surely you are not going to lecture my cellarer about wine."

"I'm going to ask him to taste it."

The hall rustled.

"I beg your pardon?" said the regent.

"It's a toast for the king," I said. "In front of the whole court. Someone should drink first. That's an old custom, isn't it?"

"It has been a century since anyone did that."

"Then it's overdue."

I walked around the table to the cellarer.

He was a round man in a dark livery, with sweat beading across his lip.

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