Chapter 21: The Reckoning

The king's court sat at nine, in the great hall of Highcastle, under a ceiling painted with the kingdom's rivers.

Linnea was brought in by two guards.

She had slept an hour in a bolted room.

She had woken to the sound of six hundred pairs of boots in the square.

Theron stood already at the foot of the throne, without his sword, with a grey cloth bundle under his arm.

Their eyes met.

He did not count.

She heard him, plain across forty feet of floor: You're whole. You're whole. You're whole.

She almost wept.

The hall was full.

The great lords of the river sat along the walls in their furs.

They were the heads of the six old houses, and their ladies.

Her family sat behind the throne, still under guard, and her mother put a hand to her mouth.

The king came in last, in a plain dark coat with a gold pin.

He took his seat as if it were any other morning.

The clerk stood at his shoulder.

"Lord Commander," the king said. "I understand you have a petition."

"I have two books," Theron said.

He unwrapped them on the step and held them up.

The clerk's face went the colour of old paper.

"Those are my office papers," he said. "They have been stolen."

"They were taken from the third drawer of your study," said the senior listener from the side of the hall.

"I was there."

"Your majesty," the clerk began.

"Hush," the king said, quite gently. "Let him read."

Theron read.

He read the stipends, and the dates, and the forty crowns a quarter.

He read the word Compliant beside the names of women who had said yes and been told to keep quiet.

He read the word Failed beside the names of the twelve who had said no.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Erased by My Family at Seventeen, I Heard Every Lie at Eighteen from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.