Taming the Wolf King novel · Chapter 10 of 32

Chapter 10: The Hearing

They held the hearing in the great hall at four o'clock that afternoon.

The Dean said a matter touching the King had to be heard by the whole college.

He was sitting in the King's chair on the dais again.

The Dean sat beside him with a small velvet pouch on the table in front of him.

Three hundred students filled the pews.

I stood alone at a little table below the dais, where the Lot bowl had been.

Caspian had asked to stand with me.

The Dean had said the King couldn't be seen to take sides.

So he sat in the front pew with his hands locked together and his eyes on me the whole time.

Araminta sat on the other side of the aisle in a fresh white shirt, her pearl pin and a pair of white cotton gloves.

"Miss Coldwell," the Dean said. "This was found in your satchel, on its peg in the combat cloakroom. It is wolfsbane. Dried, from the flower."

"Head girl Wycliffe has made a complaint. She says you've been dosing the King to make him docile. That your so-called method is a drug."

A murmur went round the pews.

"Do you have anything to say?"

"Yes, sir," I said. "Three things. Can I start with the wolfsbane?"

"Go on."

"I grew up keeping lost wolves. Wolfsbane is the first thing you learn about, because it's the thing that makes them lost." I looked at the pews. "It doesn't make a wolf docile. It does the opposite. It locks him in his wolf. Feed it to someone long enough and he can't find his way back to his own skin."

The hall had gone very quiet.

"If I'd been feeding that to the King," I said, "he wouldn't have shifted back on the mat in front of twenty seniors. He'd still be a wolf now."

Up on the dais, Raife's warm face didn't change.

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