He Freed the Kings He Once Chained, They Chose to Bind Him novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The High King

Mariam was held in a stone room under the boathouse stair, with a bed, a table and one high window.

The captain unlocked the door, and Ren walked in with the old queens of the three courts behind him.

She sat very straight on the bed, with her hair still pinned.

On the table in front of her stood a cup of untouched water.

"There he is," she said, and smiled. "The High King."

"Dowager."

"Sit. I'll pour you some tea. They let me keep a pot."

"No."

Her smile held.

"You won't be any different, you know," she said. "In ten years, in twenty. Give any boy a crown and a whip and he becomes the boy. I only taught him faster."

"You taught him on purpose."

"I taught him what the crown is."

Ren looked at her for a long time.

The queens waited at his back, silent, and he could feel them listening.

"I read your schedule," he said. "Age twelve, dismiss the tutor. Age fourteen, sell his mare."

"A boy needs to be hard."

"He wanted that horse," Ren said. "You wrote his age down next to it. You knew exactly how much it would hurt him."

For the first time, something moved in her face.

"I'm not going to hurt you," Ren said. "That's what you were counting on."

He took a small bundle from his coat and unwrapped it on the table.

It was a seal, old and heavy, in gold.

Not the one in his pocket.

The captain had found it that morning in a locked chest at the Lake Palace, under her spare gloves.

"Your second seal," Ren said. "The one that signed three years of household papers."

He set it on the stone floor, took the smith's hammer the captain held out, and brought it down.

The gold flattened with one blow, and cracked.

He hit it a second time, and a third.

When he stopped, it was a lump of metal.

"This room has a window and a bed," Ren said. "You'll have it for the rest of your life. The door will be locked, and the key will be kept by the three kings. No cuff. No chain."

"How kind."

"Someone will bring you tea every morning." His voice stayed level. "And nobody will ask you what you want."

She went white.

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