Chapter 5: The Keep

I woke up in a bed the size of a small boat, in a room with a lock, and for a moment I could not remember why.

Then I saw the silver ring on my finger, and I remembered all of it.

I lay there and waited to feel like a fool.

It did not come.

My shoulder only ached, in a clean way.

Junie was already in the sitting room next door, eating toast off a tray with the tray balanced on her knees.

"Good morning, Your Majesty," she said.

"Don't."

"Your Highness? Madam Queen?"

"I will throw this pillow."

She grinned at me, and then her face went small and worried.

"Max, I forgot your tea."

I stopped with my hand on the doorframe.

"What?"

"It's on the counter at the clinic. I was so busy being furious I walked out without it." She winced.

"I can call the healer and have a tin sent."

I thought about the grey, bitter cup I had drunk every morning since I was twelve.

"Don't worry about it. I can skip one day."

"Your dad is going to have a stroke."

"My dad can have it on his own time."

I took a piece of her toast.

It was the first thing I had eaten in twenty hours, and it was the best toast of my life.

Elias found us in the dining room an hour later.

He was in shirtsleeves with a pot of coffee in one hand and a stack of folders under his arm.

The scar through his eyebrow looked white in the morning light.

"You're up," he said.

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