My Vampire King Husband Died on Our Wedding Night? novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: Rooke's Offer

The Conclave adjourned until dusk, with Pippa taken away by the blue guards, still shouting that she had only meant to help.

I walked out of the throne hall on shaky legs.

Rooke was waiting in the long gallery beneath the portraits, with his hands folded behind his back.

He was alone.

"Your Majesty," he said. "A word, in private."

"Anything you say, you can say in front of Hester."

Hester had stepped out of the shadows with her keys already in her fist.

"As you like," said Rooke. "I'll be brief."

He did not look the least bit beaten, and that frightened me more than anything.

"A silly girl has said a silly thing," he said. "The houses will forget it by morning. What they will not forget is that the king wrote in your mind."

"He didn't write anything that wasn't true."

"Madam, that is not the question." He smiled. "You told me yourself, in front of nine houses, that you saw words. Your husband confessed it to you, I imagine, in your bedroom."

My stomach went cold.

"You were listening at my door."

"I have the oldest ears in this keep. I do not need to listen." He tilted his head. "The Charter does not ask whether the sorcery was kind. It asks whether it happened."

Hester said a word under her breath I had never heard her use.

"So here is my offer," said Rooke. "Withdraw your claim to the crown. Take a house in the country, and an income for life, a generous one. I will tell the Conclave the girl lied, and that the king woke naturally and that the charge was an old man's mistake. Edmund keeps his life."

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