Chapter 11: The Girl in the River

Alaric's POV

I did not open it on the path.

I carried it down to the inn in my inside pocket.

It lay against my ribs the whole way.

Linnet had walked home alone.

She had not looked back, and I had not asked her to.

The room over the kitchen still smelled of fried fish.

I sat on the narrow bed with the lamp turned up.

I broke my mother's seal with a thumb that was still bandaged.

The paper was thick, and her hand ran across it in long, steady lines.

She had written it three months before she died.

She had written:

Alaric.

If you are reading this, you have come to ask for her.

Then I will be plain with you.

I have been a coward for eleven years, and I will not die one.

I stopped.

I made myself go on.

On the night before your wedding you were thrown into the Black River at the flood.

You were meant to drown.

Your brother's men did it.

You were twenty and a bad swimmer, and the current had you under the bridge before they had finished laughing.

You do not remember the river.

You remember a voice, and a smell, and a woman's hand.

I turned the page over.

My hands had gone cold.

The girl who pulled you out was Linnet.

She had crossed the border that evening on foot, because the road was washed out.

She would not be late to the wedding.

She heard you go under.

She took her wolf, which no one in this court knew she had, and went into the water after you.

She is a white wolf, Alaric.

She is the strongest I have ever seen.

She dragged you a mile downstream, half drowned herself.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Dethroned His Queen, Now He Wants Her Home from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.