Chapter 14: The Claiming

I didn't take it.

I didn't step back, either.

Piers turned the bottle so the moonlight went through it.

"Tomorrow my brother becomes King. The next morning the healer brings him the household orders to sign."

"The Writ is on the first page. It always is. Every King since the first has signed it."

"Auden won't."

"Then the Alphas will turn on him before the leaves fall. He's nineteen. He doesn't have a single friend on that Council."

He set one foot on the bottom step.

"I do. Take my Claim tomorrow instead, and I'll pour every one of these into the lake with my own hand."

"You'd do that for me."

"I'd do it for the crown. I'm being honest with you. I thought you'd like that better."

I looked at the bottle.

I looked at his hand holding it.

The guards had held my arms. But he had held the door.

"You stood in the doorway," I said. "The third time. You watched."

His face didn't move.

"Somebody had to make sure it was done."

Behind me, a stair creaked.

My father came down the hall in his dressing gown, barefoot, his glasses pushed up on his head.

He didn't look at me.

He walked straight past me onto the top step.

"Your Highness," he said. "It's after midnight."

"Elder Fairlie. I came to speak to your daughter."

"She's heard you."

My father came down one step.

But the air around him had gone thick, and the hair on my arms rose.

I'd never once seen my father's wolf come up.

"Get off my land," he said.

Piers looked at him.

Then at me.

He set the blue bottle down on the stone step, very neatly.

"Keep it," he said. "You'll want it eventually. Everybody does."

He walked away down the drive.

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