Chapter 22: The White Crown

The great hall of the castle held two thousand people that day, and I walked through the middle of them in a plain gray coat.

I had refused the robe they offered.

I wore my royal investigator's badge on my chest.

Alaric walked a pace behind my left shoulder, in the dark coat with the plain silver pin, and I knew where he was without looking.

At the foot of the dais, the old lineage-hall elder with the bad hip waited with a bowl of river water.

The throne stood above him, high and black and cold.

I had never sat in it, and I had never wanted to.

"By the oldest law," the elder said, in a voice that shook and carried, "the seat belongs to the blood of the first kings."

"Show the hall your wrist, Thea Molyneux."

I pushed my sleeve to the elbow.

The number was on my skin, and the small crown beside it.

He dipped his fingers in the bowl and laid them on the crown.

"The old king burned his own seal into the heir he meant to destroy," he said. "Let the seal bear witness against him."

A sound ran through the hall.

I climbed the steps.

The Council stood in a half circle on the lower tier, and the councilor in charge of appointments was nearest.

He had a gray face and a dry mouth.

"Kneel," the elder said to him.

For a moment he did not.

Then he sank to one knee, and the others sank with him, rank on rank, down the length of the hall.

I turned and sat.

The chair was hard.

It did not feel like power.

It felt like a place somebody had meant to keep me out of, and I was in it.

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Girl He Sold Returned as the King's Mate from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.