The Alpha Postponed Our Wedding, So I Married Another novel · Chapter 25 of 32

Chapter 25: Released

The warden didn't move.

"Your Highness, he's held on a Council warrant."

"I know what he's held on. I read the wire on the train."

"I'd need the Councilor who swore it."

"Then fetch him," said the princess. "I'll wait. I'm good at it."

The warden sent a guard running up the stairs.

It took twenty minutes.

The old shepherd sat on my stool and ate a heel of bread out of his coat pocket.

Alaric leaned against the wall of his cell.

The princess stood in the middle of the corridor with her hands behind her back and didn't speak once.

Gareth came down the stairs in evening dress, with his hair perfect and his face annoyed.

He stopped when he saw who was waiting.

"Your Highness. I didn't know you'd come south."

"No," said the princess. "You didn't."

"The Alpha broke into my mother's house. There were forty witnesses."

"There were forty witnesses to a man walking out of your coal cellar with rope marks on his wrists." She held out a folded paper. "Do you know what this is?"

He didn't take it.

"It's my safe-conduct," she said. "Sealed by the King in the autumn."

"It carries the Eastmarch Alpha from Highmoor to the Midwinter Council and back again, untouched."

"Your warrant can have him after. Not before."

"The Council..."

"The King is my father, Councilor Stowe. Ask him at dawn which of us he meant."

Gareth looked at the paper.

Then he looked at me, sitting on the cold floor in my cloak.

Something moved in his face, and went still again.

"Open it," he said to the warden, and went back up the stairs without another word.

The lock turned.

Alaric came out through the silver door, and I was on my feet, and he caught me before I'd taken a full step.

He smelled of stone and lamp oil.

I didn't care.

The old shepherd clapped his hard hands together twice.

"Now," he said in valley Eastmarch. "Now somebody's going to listen."

My grandmother had kept the fire going in the east wing.

When we came in, she was asleep upright in her chair, and the commander was awake in the other, with his coat across his knees.

He stood up when he saw the shepherd.

The two of them looked at each other across the rug.

"Tell him," the commander said to me, low. "Tell him I signed the report about the arm. I never asked his village."

I told him, in valley Eastmarch.

The shepherd listened.

Then he walked over and looked up into the commander's swollen face.

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