Chapter 16: The Broken Seal

Every face in the arena turned to the royal box.

Then every face turned to the sand, to the black wolf standing over Corvin with his teeth still bared.

Lysander let go of the boy's collar.

He stepped back, and the change ran through him, fur into skin.

He stood in the torn rags of his shirt with the whole kingdom watching.

Guards in the Crown's gray hauled Corvin up by both arms.

He was sobbing too hard now to say anything else.

"Take him to the cells," Lysander said. "Take the Alpha of Thornwell, and take Lady Rosamund. Nobody touches them. Nobody speaks to them."

Rosamund walked down the stairs between two guards with her head high and her face wet, and she did not look at me.

My father went with his hand on a guard's arm.

He looked at me once, over his shoulder.

I looked back, and I did not look away first.

Then Lysander turned to me.

"Solveig," he said, so only I could hear. "He is right."

"I know."

"You've known for two years."

"I know that too."

He nodded, once.

Then he did something I would never have asked of him in front of one person, let alone forty thousand.

He walked to the Thornwell stone, still glowing white.

He pulled the heavy gold ring with the Crown seal off his hand.

He laid it in the hollow of the stone.

He picked up the guard's sword from the sand, and he brought the pommel down on the ring.

It took three blows.

The gold split, and the seal broke across the middle, and the arena heard every one of them.

He dropped the sword, and he went down on his knees on the sand in front of me.

"I was seventeen when my regents stamped the first license," he said.

His voice carried to the top bench, plain and hoarse.

"I was twenty when I read the first one and saw what it was. I regulated it. I made it neater. I did not end it."

"Her number is four hundred twelve, series seven. My letters are on it."

"I did not sell her. I let the kingdom go on selling people like her under my name."

"I am ashamed of it before every pack in this arena, and before her."

He looked up at me.

"License four hundred twelve is void. Every license in this kingdom with my seal on it is void, from this hour."

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