Chapter 20: The Dead Return

The throne room of Carrow held four hundred people by noon.

Haruka stood at the back behind a pillar with her hand on her sword, and her heart was going.

Queen Imelda sat on the throne in her black dress with the crown pinned over her grey braids, thin and upright.

On the floor below her stood Prince Aldric, in the same grey cloak he had worn to the chapel.

A rider stood on each side of him.

Lord Harrow stood in chains a little apart, with his silver beard combed, looking at the ceiling.

The Queen had made the valet repeat his story.

She had made the clerks read out the two matching letters.

She had made twenty riders swear to what they had heard in the chapel, one after another.

The court's murmur had changed from doubt into something low and ugly.

Aldric's face was a bad colour.

"This is a conspiracy against the Crown," he said. "My mother's riders, lying for her. I am the heir..."

"You are," said the Queen. "For a few more minutes."

A whisper went through the hall.

She lifted a hand to the herald at the great doors.

"I have one more witness."

The doors opened.

Haruka stepped out from behind the pillar and fell in a pace behind the woman who walked in.

Seraphine wore a plain green gown that the Queen's women had brought to the lodge at dawn.

The walnut stain had been washed out of her hair, and the copper fell in long waves to her waist.

She walked down the middle of the hall, up the long blue carpet, with her head high and her hands empty.

The silence broke from the back to the front in a ripple of gasps, a man's oath, a woman's scream.

Someone dropped a goblet.

Four hundred nobles turned and stared, and not one looked away.

Haruka watched Seraphine's straight shoulders, thinking that this was the walk she had wanted all her life.

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