The Dragon Queen's Gambit novel · Chapter 21 of 24
Chapter 21: The Eve of the Standing
Year Twenty. Ysmera was forty-six, Aldous was fifty, and Torvald was forty-nine.
On the eve of the Standing the whole city smelled of pine smoke and roasting lamb.
Pilgrims from every valley had packed the streets below the cliff, and bells rang in them until midnight.
Ysmera stood at her tower window with her forehead on the cool glass.
Torvald came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.
"The keeper swore on his dragon," he said. "The meat is clean. The sleeproot is in the river."
"Aldous believes it is in the trough."
"He believes a good many things."
She turned, and he saw her face.
"Tell me," he said.
"I am afraid."
It was a strange thing to say aloud.
She had not said it in twenty years, to anyone, in any room.
"Of him?"
"No. Of the beast."
She walked to the hearth and stood looking into it.
"I always told myself the true blood walks and the false one burns."
"But nobody alive has seen it happen."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of The Dragon Queen's Gambit are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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