Crown of Hidden Scales novel · Chapter 4 of 24
Chapter 4: Lie Test
The Brook mill sat on a creek an hour south of the city, and it smelled of flour and wet stone.
Bronwyn's mother took one look at my sooty gown and the crown in my lap and put on a kettle.
She asked no questions at all.
"Loft's dry," she said. "Nobody climbs the ladder but the cat."
The loft ran the length of the mill roof, with a mattress of sacks, a window, and one lantern.
Bronwyn brought bread and cold mutton and set it between us.
"Eat," she told me. "And you." She pointed at Rhain. "Don't look at her like that."
"I wasn't looking," Rhain said.
"You were looking at the crown, which is worse."
She went down the ladder, and I heard her tell her mother in the yard that the hangman was very tall.
Rhain sat on the far side of the loft with his back to a beam.
He was exactly thirty paces away from me, near enough that I felt a warning prickle in my wrists.
"Come closer," I said.
"I'm fine here."
"The crown isn't. Come closer, or sit there and watch me blister."
He moved a yard, no more.
I ate, because my stomach had not stopped shaking since the throne hall, and I looked at him over the bread.
He had pulled off one glove to wash his hands in the basin by the window.
I had not been ready for what lay under it.
Scales ran from his knuckles to his elbow, dark gold, each plate edged in black, so neat and so dense that his skin looked like armor with a pulse in it.
He saw me look and went still.
"Those are real," I said.
"Yes."
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