Bound to the Alpha King novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Fen Moss

"Irons," said Embla.

She said it the moment she saw the badge, before I could open my mouth.

We stood in the war room under the keep.

A map of the kingdom was painted on the long table, with a fire at each end.

Embla had her arms folded.

Brack leaned in the corner on his bad leg.

Rorik stood across the table from me with the moss badge in his palm and his eyes on my face.

"Chains in the Wolf Tower," Embla went on.

"A guard on her at all hours."

"If she dies, my brother dies, so she must not be hurt, but she does not walk alone."

"She walked into a ring of the Chancellor's men for her brother," Brack said mildly.

"That was a play."

"It might have been."

"It was a very good one," said Embla. "That is what troubles me."

I looked at all three of them.

I had been awake for twenty hours.

My palm still itched where I had cut it open on the king's knife.

"You can chain me," I said.

"I'd rather you didn't, because I have forty patients in the undercroft and a brother who will do something stupid the minute I'm not there."

"That is not a defence," said Embla.

"It's the truth."

"Is it?"

Rorik put the badge on the table.

"Hedda," he said.

It was the first time he had said my name.

It sounded different in his mouth, lower and slower.

"Did your people send you to kill me?"

The room went silent.

I had expected the question for two days.

I had practised answers.

All of them left me when I saw how he asked it.

He wasn't angry.

He was tired, and under the tiredness there was a thin hope that I'd say no.

"No," I said.

"Say more."

"The elders told me to run if they came for Tobren."

"They told me to bring nothing sharp."

"They did not tell me to kill anyone."

"If they had, they'd have told me to bring more than one vial."

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