Chapter 20: The Betrothal Cup

The kitchen held forty cooks, and not one of them was Odette.

Soren stood in the middle of the stone floor with his hands on his hips and his eyes gold.

"Every woman here has been counted," he said. "She isn't one of them."

"Then she's already in the hall," I said.

"Then we call off the feast."

"No."

He turned.

"Rhiannon, she has a pouch of monkshood and a knife she can't afford to waste."

"And if we cancel, she walks out of this keep and tries again at some other table."

I kept my voice level.

"I want her in front of both courts, with the cup in her hand."

"You're offering to drink poison."

"I'm offering to be seen not drinking it."

Gwen put down the ladle she had been sniffing at.

"Monkshood numbs the tongue," she said. "It smells faintly of parsnip. I can tell you by the cup in a breath."

"Then you'll stand behind my chair," I said, "and you'll tell me."

Soren looked at me for a long moment.

"You ask, and I do it," he said. "Is that still the rule?"

"It's the rule."

"Then ask me for something."

"Hold my hand while I do it."

He took it.

The great hall was lit with a thousand candles.

Both courts sat at long tables below the dais, Lycan grey on the right and Crescent Moon green on the left.

Joss sat at the head of the green with his ring on his hand.

The King took his iron chair.

Beside him sat his brother, in a council cloak, smiling at me.

I took the pale chair on the King's other side, and Soren stood at my shoulder.

Servants moved down the tables with trays.

The last to come up the steps was a thin kitchen woman with black hair and lowered eyes.

She carried a silver cup on a salver.

She did not look at my face.

She set the cup in front of Soren and me, as the betrothal custom said, and backed away.

Gwen leaned over my shoulder as if to straighten my sleeve.

"Parsnip," she breathed in my ear. "It's in the wine."

I stood.

The hall went quiet, table by table.

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