The Alpha's Slave-Born Daughter Made Kings Kneel novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Cellar

I did not run to my father or to any guard.

I ran up the east tower to the King's door and hit it with both fists until it opened.

He was already pulling on his coat.

"The soldiers are drugged," I said. "Mama's gone. They left my cousin's knife on her pillow."

"Which way?"

"Sunniva gave me a key. She said they'd take her to a cell under the kitchens."

He took the key from my hand and looked at it for one second.

"Show me."

We went down the back stairs together, past the kitchens, and I led him through the scullery where I had scrubbed pots all my life.

Behind the flour store was a low door.

The key turned in the lock, and the door opened onto a flight of cold steps going down into the dark.

I smelled my mother's blood before I saw her.

The cellar was a long vaulted room with barrels along one wall.

Osric stood at the far end with four of his guards.

My mother sat on the floor against a barrel with her wrists tied and her chin on her chest.

Beside her stood a stack of gold bars on a crate, each one stamped with the Fenmark crest.

Osric turned with a bar in his hand, weighing it.

His face went slack.

"Your Majesty," he said.

"Twenty bars," I said. I could hardly get the words out. "You sold her."

"She's a thrall," Osric said. "My thrall, by blood and by law. Fenmark pays well for a thrall with her talent for silence. He'd have taken her out the back gate at dawn, and nobody would have missed a kitchen woman."

"You took her out of my household," the King said.

"I took my brother's property."

"You took her, and you drugged my guard," King Evander said, "and you'll answer for both."

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