Chapter 13: What She Is

Sorrel stood in the gold light with her heart going hard, and the whole court watched her turn to the Queen Mother.

"What am I?" she said.

Helene's smile held for a moment longer, and then it came apart at the edges.

"Your Grace," the chancellor said from the floor, "what does the Queen Mother mean?"

Helene looked at the gallery, at forty lords who were looking at her and not at the Stone.

She seemed to see that nobody would help her.

"The Dragon Stone lights for the king and his mate," she said. "It has lit for no one else in three hundred years."

A hush ran around the hall.

"Her mother was the last mate-finder in Caerlund," Helene went on, in the same clear, tired voice.

"She named this girl for the king on the day she was born."

"Your father kept the secret for eighteen years."

"You knew," Sorrel said.

"I lent Perrin money he could not repay, and he paid me with your name. I took you for my son and called it a kindness to your house."

"A kindness to whom?"

"A king whose mate belongs to another man does not die all at once, my dear." Helene's voice had gone thin.

"He goes cold from the middle. They called it the war. It was never the war."

Ronan had not moved.

"I woke on burned ground six years ago with a name in my mouth," he said, very low.

"It was hers."

"Yes," said Helene. "You were already starving for her."

The chancellor rose from his knee.

"Your Grace," he said to Ronan, and his voice shook. "The council kneels."

One by one, in rows, the lords went down onto the white floor.

Helene did not.

She stood alone on the dais with her hands folded, and nobody looked at her, and then Ronan did.

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