My Fated Mate Was a Lie, Now the Alpha King Wants the Truth novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Trial

"Tarn End," said Cassian.

He had gone grey under the silver.

"I felt it go. Through the claim, like a tooth coming out."

"How many?" I said to the guard.

"Nobody dead, Majesty. The Greyfall riders reached the village before the storm broke and walked every family into the cairn-house. But the roofs are gone."

I was already pulling my dress over my head.

By dawn forty wagons stood in the palace courtyard, and four hundred people from Tarn End were drinking soup out of the kitchen cauldrons with blankets over their heads.

They did not shout at the King.

They looked at him, and that was worse.

The cropped-haired woman from Hollin stood on the palace steps and put her hand up for quiet.

"He signed," she said. "Five years of writs, six hundred strands. We have talked it over in the night."

She looked at Cassian.

"We will judge him. Tomorrow, in the Moon Hall, with Tarn End in the gallery. Not you, Miss Wrexham. Not the Council. Us."

"I'll be there," said Cassian.

"We know. We thought you might like to sleep on it."

That night he lay on his back in the big bed with the lamp lit and his hands open on the coverlet, and he did not speak for a long time.

I turned on my side and looked at him.

"You can ask me to speak for you," I said. "I won't."

"I wouldn't."

"I know."

"They could send me north with a spade," he said. "They could ask for my head. I'd like to think I'd say yes."

"Would you?"

"I don't know." His throat moved. "That's the thing I'd like to be sure of, before I stand up."

I put my palm over the silver mark, and the hum under it was steady, a plain sound, a man breathing.

"Look at me," I said.

He did.

I climbed over him slowly.

I climbed over him slowly.

The lamp-flame leaned away from the movement.

I sat astride his hips and looked down at him.

Grey under the silver, his jaw tight, watching me.

I unbuttoned his collar first, my fingers slow.

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