My Vampire King Husband Died on Our Wedding Night? novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Burial Order

The next evening the whole court was waiting in the throne hall when I came down.

Two hundred vampires stood along the black marble walls in evening dress, and not one of them bowed.

I wore the black dress I had worn to the funeral, because I had decided I wouldn't give them a new reason to stare.

Hester walked half a step behind my shoulder with the keys at her belt.

The king's throne at the far end of the hall was empty, and a smaller chair stood beside it for the queen.

Duke Rooke stood in front of both of them with a document in his hand.

"Your Majesty," he said, as I reached the foot of the dais. "Thank you for joining us. This will be brief."

A minister stepped forward and unrolled a long sheet of cream paper with five signatures at the bottom.

"This is the order of interment," Rooke said. "It lays the king to rest in the royal vault at the third dusk. Four dukes have signed."

He lifted a pen toward me.

"The charter requires the queen's seal as well. A formality. Sign, Your Majesty, and the court can grieve in peace."

I looked at the pen.

[Don't sign. Say vigil.]

The words glowed small and white at the edge of my sight, and nobody else turned a head.

I didn't take the pen.

"I'd like to read it first," I said.

Rooke's smile didn't change.

"By all means."

I took the paper, and the court shifted around me with a soft whisper of silk.

It said exactly what he had said it said.

It also said, three lines from the bottom, that the queen's crown, the royal treasury and the keep would pass to the council of dukes on the day of interment, unless the queen took a husband within the year.

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