Finding Her Magical King novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Proof

I did not sit.

"Who sent you?" I said. "Did the king?"

"No one sent me. The king doesn't know your name, and I would rather he didn't hear it from a stranger." Lord Thrale lowered himself into the armchair by the radiator. "I saw your wrist at the motel. I saw your mother's chin when you handed me my key."

"You knew my mother."

"Bryony Wickham laughed at everything, including her own trial. Your father Alder sang off-key in the corridors, and I hid in a cupboard once to avoid it." He smiled, and then he stopped smiling. "They were my friends, Sorrel. I would have given a good deal to save them."

The room was very quiet.

Soot had stopped hissing and was staring at him from the radiator.

"Then why didn't you?" I said.

"Because I was one voice on the council, and the order had a seal that nobody argued with."

He took a folded paper from his coat and laid it on the bed.

I picked it up.

It was thick cream parchment with the Beauclerk crest at the top and the words order of execution in black ink.

Under my parents' names were two seals in red wax.

The first one was King Osric's.

The second, pressed beside it, was labelled the assent of the heir, and the impression was a lion with thorns around its neck.

I knew that crest.

Anselm wore it on a signet ring on his right hand, and I had watched that hand across the car seat all morning.

"This is the assent of a seventeen-year-old," I said. My voice shook. "He told me he tried to stop it."

"I'm sure he has told himself so for years." Thrale's voice was very gentle. "A boy in that house was taught to want the crown, Sorrel. He knew what his father needed from him, and he gave it. It is not a crime to love someone who did something terrible, but I won't let you walk into his bed believing a story."

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