Chapter 23: The Council Votes

We rode through the night and reached the keep as the sky went grey.

The council hall was a round room of black stone with twelve high seats set in a ring.

Ten of them were full.

Ten old Lycans in dark cloaks turned their heads as the doors opened, and not one of them rose.

The King sat on a bench by the wall, and he was not allowed a seat.

He met my eyes across the floor and gave a tiny shake of his head.

"Council," Soren said, striding in. "You sat without your King."

"We sat without a brother who was found with poison in his sleeve," said the eldest of the ten, a bent wolf with white eyebrows.

"The seat is vacant, and the law lets the families name a regent."

"You've named one?"

"We were about to name a better one than the line you broke."

He looked at me, and his lip curled.

"The runaway's daughter," he said. "That is who you wish to put on the throne."

"I wish to put her at my side," said Soren.

"A pack divorcee who claims to carry the moon," said a woman on the left.

"We have only your word that she has any royal blood at all."

"You have my father's word," Soren said.

"Your father is an old man in a feud with his brother."

My hands were cold, and I kept them open at my sides.

"I'm not here to ask you for anything," I said. "I came to answer."

"Then answer this. What does the daughter of a deserter have to offer the Lycan court?"

"My mother wasn't a deserter," I said. "She was a woman who left a cage."

Nobody laughed.

"Show them," a voice said from the door.

It was the young dark-haired Lycan rider I had healed on the river road.

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