Chapter 23: The Crown

Elowen's POV

I changed back on the grass in front of the dais, and someone laid a coat over my shoulders.

It was Dashiell's, and it smelled of him.

I stood barefoot in the torch smoke with the broken cuffs at my feet.

Every pack on the field was still on its knees.

"Rise," I said to all of them.

They rose in a long rustle, slowly, and nobody looked away from me.

Honora stayed where she was.

I climbed the dais steps, and she watched me come.

"You said nobody would touch her until she had been heard," Lavinia said, from the stone behind me, in a small cracked voice.

I turned.

She was on her feet in her white shift with her hair in her face, and she was crying again.

"I did say that," I said. "I'll keep it."

I looked out over the field.

"This woman held the Council for twenty years," I said. "She has a right to speak before she is judged.

"So speak, Honora. Tell the packs what you did to my father."

Honora lifted her chin.

"I have nothing to say to a servant."

"I am not asking."

I let the old part of me come up under the words.

It was only a little, not a No, only the weight that lay under one.

Honora's mouth opened against her will.

"Aurel Brae was a gentle king," she said, and her voice came out flat and clear.

"He thought the seat was a gift to be handed down in his line.

"I thought it should go to the one who could hold it."

"Go on."

"I sent my captain with silver to the king's tower on the night of the autumn Moot.

"The king would not kneel, and the captain was told to make him."

Her face twisted, and I could see her fighting the words.

"It took four minutes. The queen escaped with the child.

"I hunted that child for fourteen years."

A groan went around the field.

Somewhere in the Alpha rings, a woman began to weep out loud.

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