The Elf Prince Is My Baby Daddy novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: Rushford

I didn't move.

Neither did Ilvar. He stood between the hearth and the door, his sword still in its sheath, his hands open at his sides.

"Captain," he said. "You're aiming a crossbow at the crown princess. In front of the crown prince."

"I'm aware, Your Highness."

"Do you know what that makes you?"

"A man following orders." The captain's eyes never left me. "The packet, princess. Toss it on the floor. Then we all go home."

"It's my mother's," I said. "It's my mother's handwriting. You've no right to it."

"The Chancellor thinks otherwise."

"The Chancellor," said a deep voice behind him, "isn't in Rushford."

The captain turned his head an inch.

The miller stood in the lane behind him, in his nightshirt and boots, with a pitchfork.

Behind the miller stood his wife, with the baby I'd delivered strapped to her chest and a fire iron in her hand.

Behind her stood the smith. The baker and her two sons. The old woman who kept bees. The widow from the end of the lane with her rolling pin.

More kept coming, out of the gray dawn, with lanterns and shovels and hay hooks.

The whole of Rushford, filling the lane outside Mam's door.

"That's our midwife," said the miller. "She caught my boy six weeks back. Caught me, near enough, though that was her mother. Put the bow down, son."

The captain looked at the crowd. He looked at the prince.

He was outnumbered fifty to one, by farmers in nightshirts, and he knew it.

Ilvar took one step forward.

"Here is what happens now," he said, quite gently. "If you fire that, every soul in this lane will swear to the Queen they saw you do it. And you'll hang. If you lower it, you ride back to Starhold and tell your master that the Prince of Starhold stood in this kitchen and said no."

The captain was quiet for a long moment.

Something moved behind his eyes. Not fear, exactly.

He lowered the crossbow.

"He won't like it," he said.

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