Chapter 22: The Moot Judges

In the dark, one pair of eyes lit.

It was an old woman on the lowest shelf, with white hair floating around her shoulders.

She looked at Soren, and at me, and her eyes burned silver and stayed that way.

Then a man beside her lit his.

Then a girl near the wall, and a whole row of them, and a house with sea-green eyes, and another with gold.

They came on like lamps in a harbor, shelf after shelf.

Soon the hall was bright from floor to roof.

"The Moot has seen," said the old woman, in a voice like a rusty hinge.

She was the Speaker of the Moot, and she had sat in that chair for sixty years.

"A claim was made by a free will, before the houses. We do not deny it."

My breath went out of me.

Soren's hand found mine, and the pearl was warm between our palms.

"That is a dispute of form," Orlan said.

He had come down off the dais.

He was still smooth and gray, but his voice had gone very thin.

"The regency is lawful. The prince was dead, by the report of my own guard, and I acted for the realm."

"You chained me in iron," Soren said.

"A treatment."

"You threw me into the sea to drown."

"A rumor."

"I will tell the Moot what it was," said Neris.

She came forward with the bolt cutters still in her hand.

She knelt at my side, set the jaws against my cuffs, and cut them with one hard squeeze.

I rubbed my wrists as the black iron fell on the stone.

"Thanks," I said.

"Do not mention it," she said, and she stood up, and she turned to the court.

I have never seen anyone so frightened and so upright.

"I am Neris of House Corrin," she said. "I was betrothed to the prince at nineteen, by the regent's hand, with this."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Claimed by the Mer-Shifter Prince I Made Cry from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.