Vampires Can't Have Children, So I Left Carrying the King's Triplets novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: What Honoria Said

They brought Honoria into the great hall on foot, with Merrick at her elbow and her burned gloves in her lap.

The Court rose when she came in, out of habit, and then sat again.

She walked up the center aisle to the foot of the dais.

Bastian sat on the throne with the signet on his finger and me at his right hand.

Eileen sat on the steps below us with a blanket round her shoulders, and the Archivist's hand rested on her braid.

"Aunt," Bastian said.

"Majesty."

"You asked to speak. Speak."

She raised her chin.

Her pearls were gone, her silver hair had come loose, and for the first time since I had known her, she looked her age.

"Today my son called an innocent woman a murderess," she said. "I will tell the Court what I am."

"Say it."

"I am the king's aunt by marriage, and before that I was a bride."

The hall stirred.

"I was a human girl of nineteen when I was bonded to the king's father's younger brother, the second son of this House. We were very happy. I took his strength for fourteen years, and he took my life, a few drops at a time."

Her voice did not shake.

"I bore him a son, in the fifteenth year. The Houses called it a scandal. The old men of the Court came to the nursery, and they took the child from my arms, and then they sent me a paper to sign."

"Gerard," I said.

"Gerard. They gave him back to me when I signed. When the bond broke, my husband lay down on the floor of our bedroom, and I held his hand for twenty-six days while he died. Then the House turned me, so that the widow and her son would stay under its roof and keep quiet."

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