Chapter 18: In Front of Everyone

"Did you tell him?" I said.

"I told him to get out of my bay." Arne sat down heavily.

"Then he asked if my girl ever held anything back from the King. Those words, kid. Held back."

The kitchen went cold.

"How would he know that?"

"I don't know, kid. But he looked like a man doing sums."

I put the shears on the table and sat across from him.

Then I told him what I'd heard through his mother's door.

Arne took off his glasses and pressed his thumb and finger into his eyes for a long time.

"Good," he said finally. "Good. You walked out."

"I don't feel good."

"No." He reached over and squeezed the back of my neck. "You won't for a while."

Tove texted me Monday at four.

He's called the Alphas back. All eleven. Seven tonight. He asked if you'd come. Bring the book, he said. If you want.

I went.

I wore my uniform again, and I carried the journal in a dish towel because it was still swollen and soft.

The great hall was packed tighter than the night of the Presentation.

The eleven Alphas sat along the wall this time.

The council sat on the bench.

Vidar was standing in the middle of the floor, alone.

He was in a plain gray shirt, and he looked like he hadn't slept at all.

Torvald stood by the hearth with the sharp-faced old lawyer.

Vidar saw me come in.

Then he spoke to the room.

"I asked the woman who pulled my grandfather's journal out of a fire to bring it," he said. "It's hers now."

"I'm asking her for it."

Two hundred heads turned.

I stood there with the book in its dish towel.

I made him wait.

Then I walked down the hall and put it in his hands.

He opened it to a page near the middle that had dried flat.

He read it out loud.

All of it.

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