This Time, I Accept Your Brother's Claim novel · Chapter 27 of 32

Chapter 27: What He Is

I set the silver cup down on the table.

Carefully, so not a drop went over the rim.

"You didn't die there," I said. "You never came down the stairs at all."

Piers looked at me.

"You stood in a doorway once," I said. "To make sure it was done. That's as close as you ever came."

He didn't answer.

There wasn't anything to answer.

"The Council will sit," the red-bearded Alpha said, rising. "Now. Here. Before anyone leaves this hall."

Nobody argued.

Four of the five great Alphas stood up from the high table. The oldest stayed in his chair, looking at his plate.

The King Father pushed himself up on his son's arm.

"I'm the one he poured for," he said. "I'll speak."

He looked down the table at his eldest son for a long time.

"You were the first pup I ever held," he said. "I've thought about that all through dinner."

Piers's face moved.

"Prince Piers Ravensdale gave his father to a poisoner to buy back a crown," the King Father said to the hall. "He put a vial in the house of the family that's stood by this throne three hundred years."

"He lied before the Council to put the Maiden in a cell."

He turned to the Alphas.

"I ask that he be a prince no longer."

"Assent," said the red-bearded Alpha.

"Assent," said the woman from the east valley.

The other two looked at the oldest one in his chair.

He didn't look up.

"Assent," they said, one after the other.

Auden had not spoken.

He was the King. It was his word that would finish it.

He looked at his brother across the white cloth, the apples, the full silver cup.

"There's a border post in the north," he said. "On the pass above the river. Forty wolves and a stone barracks and snow eight months of the year."

"You'll go there in the morning. You'll take no title and no ring. You'll stand the night watch like every wolf there."

"And you won't come south of the river again unless I send for you."

Piers stood very straight.

He took the heavy signet ring off his hand.

It took him a moment. His fingers weren't working well.

He set it on the table beside the cup.

Nobody had told him to.

Then he picked up his cane and walked down the length of the great hall alone.

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