Chapter 24: The Quiet Queen

By the next full moon, the field below Ravenmoor had a name on every banner and a market in every ditch.

Sixty thousand players had stayed.

They had made the marsh villages their allies and hired Tamsin's cousins to guide them through the reeds.

They had made it a point of honor never to touch the bread seller's daughter.

Now they stood in the yard and along the wall, in mismatched armor, quiet for once.

Brigid climbed the keep steps with a cushion in her hands.

On the cushion lay a plain iron circlet.

"The keep needs a ruler," she said, and her voice rang across the yard.

"Forty soldiers voted the seal to a man with a bad back and a good heart. Today the keep votes again."

"I vote Wren!" shouted the man in the banana suit.

A roar went up from the walls.

Wes stood at the foot of the steps in his plain coat, with Sera beside him in Wren's tall body.

Tamsin lounged on the bottom stair with Gravel's enormous head in her lap.

"I'm not a queen," Wes said. "I log in on weekends."

"Then Wren rules," Brigid said, "and the captain commands, and the thief robs whomever she likes."

"I'm very particular about my victims," Tamsin said.

"And I design the throne room," Sera said. "I've been wanting to sit in it for fourteen months."

Wes laughed.

He looked up at Brigid, who held out the circlet and did not look away.

"Stay," she said. "Not past launch day. Past everything."

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