Chapter 13: Said Aloud

They took Odessa to the south wing with four guards and a locked door.

She went without a word, her chin up, her right hand still tucked in the folds of her gown.

My father was marched down to the guest hall behind her, shouting about his rights as an Alpha.

By noon the whole keep knew there would be a trial.

At the second bell Perrin came to the nursery and said the king wanted me in his study.

I went.

I left the door open, and this time the king did not tell me to shut it.

He stood by the cold hearth with his bandaged hand held against his chest.

"A year," he said.

I waited.

"For a year you watched me kneel to her. You watched her sit at my right hand and wear my mother's pin."

"I did."

"You carried her dishes. You sat at the foot of my table and let me thank her for your three nights."

His voice was perfectly level.

It was the voice from the yard, and my skin remembered it before I did.

"You had a year of mornings to say my name," he said. "You said nothing."

"I told you why."

"You told me your father had your arm. He is one man, Linnet. I have a thousand."

"You had a thousand," I said. "I had a kitchen."

"You could have written a line. You could have sent the boy with the honey bread."

"To a king who would read it as the jealousy of a kitchen girl?"

"I would have read it."

"Would you?"

He opened his mouth and shut it again.

"You didn't read the thing in front of your face," I said. "You looked at a cup in my hand and a girl on her knees and you made up the rest."

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