I Audited the Demon King's Castle, and He Won't Let Me Leave novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Seleth Falls

Seleth stood with his back against the shut door and his hand still on the latch.

He drew himself up, smoothed his plum coat, and turned to face the hall.

"Fourteen bookkeepers," he said. "That is what you are weeping over, in my presence."

"They were nobody, madam. They were a clerk and a glove maker, and one was a nurse."

"A line of chalk on a floor, and they all thought they were so important."

He looked around the hall, and no one looked back at him.

"Do you know what the Council pays for a circle that sends people home?" he said. "Nothing."

"There has never been one. Someone had to be sensible and charge for the hope."

"Seleth Marn," said the old woman with the cane.

She had stood up.

She was very small, and the whole hall went quiet for her.

"I was seated the year this one signed," she said, with a nod to Tae.

"I voted to let the old king keep her, and I have asked after her every spring."

"You told me she was well. You told me she had no wish to go back."

"She said so herself," said Seleth.

"She said it after thirty years of you."

She came down the three steps and across the flagstones without the cane, though it shook in her hand.

She stopped in front of the Collector and took the heavy gold chain in both her fists.

It had belonged to nineteen Collectors before him.

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