Chapter 8: The Ring

Kyros's POV

I did not sleep after the ledger.

I sat in the records chamber until the lamp died, with a scraped line under my thumb and a word I could not stop turning over.

Wife.

Melina had gone back to the loft without a word, and I had let her, because I had no answer to give.

If there had been a queen, someone had cut her out of the book while I slept, and only one body in the court could have signed for that.

I could not ask Ligeia.

So I took the other road, and I went to the court.

The Tide Court meets in a cavern under the harbor, in a ring of seven stone chairs.

I have sat in the tallest one for longer than the town has had a name.

That morning I walked to the floor of it on foot, with no steward and no herald.

I stood below the Elder Table as a petitioner.

Ligeia sat in the regent's chair at my left hand.

She was in white again, and she did not look at me.

Three elders watched me from the high bench.

The eldest was a grey woman with a deeply lined face.

She let me wait a full minute before she spoke.

"The lord of the tides asks to be heard."

"I do."

"Then speak, and be brief."

"The trial of Zoe Karras is set in three days," I said. "I want it set aside."

"On what grounds?"

"She is nine years old and she was nearly drowned by the court's own regent."

Ligeia's head came up.

"My lord, that was a misunderstanding."

"It was a child held under water in front of forty witnesses."

"She was held gently."

"She was let go."

The hall murmured.

The eldest lifted one hand, and the murmur stopped.

"The law is old, Lord Kyros. Every child raised under a lord's roof is tried by the water."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Left My Daughter With His Ex, So I Left the Sea King from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.