The Alpha King's Bride novel · Chapter 24 of 24
Chapter 24: The Empty Bowl
A year to the day after I drew the tooth, I walked into the Crown Hall by the same doors.
The hall was full.
Every woman of twenty-two in the realm stood in rows on the stone with her family behind her.
I had seen their faces before, on the day I stood among them.
They looked sick with dread.
Today the carved bowl sat on its stand in the middle of the floor, exactly where it had always been.
It was empty.
I stopped beside it, and the whole hall went quiet.
I wore the black coat of the Queen, with a silver crescent showing at my collar.
Behind me, Aldric carried our daughter on his arm.
She was three months old, with her father's gold eyes and a fist wound into his collar, and she was asleep.
Perrin stood on my other side in the Crown guard's grey, with the deed to our parents' cottage folded in his breast pocket.
He gave me a small nod.
I turned to the women.
"A year ago I stood where you are standing," I said. "I was told the bowl would choose, and that the choosing was fate."
Nobody breathed.
"It was a lie. My foster family fixed it, and I paid for it. But they were not the only ones who lied." I looked at the old lords on the benches. "Every year this Crown told you a woman had no say. It told you to take what the bowl gave you, and call it a gift."
A woman near the front gripped her mother's arm.
"The Choosing is ended," I said. "By my word, and the King's, and the word of the old wolves of the Frostmark, who have set their seals to it this morning."
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