They Sold Me as a Brood Bride, So I Enrolled in the Boys' Alpha College novel · Chapter 17 of 24
Chapter 17: The Younger Son
Cadoc's POV
The younger Penhallow son sat on the bottom stair of the east wing with his hands between his knees.
I stood over him and did not like him any better.
He was twenty, a thin, long-jawed lad.
He had laughed on the gravel on term day while his brother put a boot on her wrist.
I remembered that laugh.
I meant to go on remembering it.
"Say it," I said.
"Not you," he said. "Her."
"You'll say it to me, or you'll say it to the Warden's wall."
"Cadoc," Gwen said.
She sat three steps above him with her arms round her knees.
Iolo was a shadow against the banister, with his scarred hands hanging.
I shut my mouth.
It cost me something, and she saw it cost me, and she gave me a small tired look that was nearly a thank-you.
"Tell me," she said to the boy.
"My father wrote the claim himself," he said. "The old-law claim. It's forged. He had a clerk in Truro copy the Crown's hand from a letter and put the words in."
"I know it's forged," she said.
"You don't know why," he said.
She waited.
I watched the lad's throat work.
"The Rite binds the heir to the person she names," he said. "Not to anyone else. My father knows that. He's not a fool. He knows the Rite won't hold for me, or my brother, unless you name us."
"Then why send you?"
"Because he doesn't mean the Rite to hold."
The stair went very quiet.
"He means it to fail," the younger Penhallow said. "That's the plan."
"Go on," Gwen said.
"When the Rite fails in front of the whole Hall, you're a Crown's daughter who has refused every man."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of They Sold Me as a Brood Bride, So I Enrolled in the Boys' Alpha College are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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