I Married the Emperor to Kill Him novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Seal

Corvain pulled his blade out, and his steward folded onto the council room floor.

Nobody screamed this time.

The dukes had gone past screaming.

Corvain stood over the body, breathing hard, with blood to his wrist and on his rings.

"He went for me," he said. "You all saw it. A poisoner, cornered, with his hand at his belt."

"His hands were held," Cassien said. "By two guards."

"He pulled free."

"He didn't."

"You were walking a dying man up and down the room, Highness. You were not watching."

Isandor's weight shifted on Cassien's shoulder.

"I was," he said.

His voice was a rasp, but every head turned.

"Keep walking," Cassien told him.

"I'm walking."

"You're leaning."

"I'm leaning on purpose."

Ilvessa let go of Isandor's other side.

She went and stood over the steward's body and looked down at it.

Then she held out her ringed hand to the nearest guard.

"Turn out his coat."

The guard knelt and emptied the dead man's pockets onto the floor.

There was a purse of Asterhold silver, a ring of iron keys, and a small thing on a cord, wrapped in a scrap of blue silk.

Ilvessa unwrapped it with two fingers.

She held it up to the light from the window, so the whole room could see.

It was a moonstone the size of a thumbnail, cut with a bell.

Cassien stopped walking.

Isandor nearly went down, and Cassien caught him.

The stone was not Severen's own seal, and not the old chancellor's.

It was a copy, cut cheap and fast.

Someone had carried a copy of the seal of Lisvaine's royal house in his coat, all the way from the Asterhold wing to Cassien's pillow.

"Well," Ilvessa said. "That's tidy."

Corvain said nothing.

The door opened again.

Maelis came in with a freckled boy by the wrist, a kitchen boy in an apron, about nineteen, his face blotched from crying.

She had clearly dragged him up the stairs herself.

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