The Elf Prince Is My Baby Daddy novel · Chapter 16 of 32

Chapter 16: Rumor

The light from the tree didn't change.

But the court did.

I watched it happen, gallery by gallery.

The clapping stopped.

Fans went up.

Heads bent together.

"Star-glass shows star blood," Aurelia went on, gently, like a teacher. "We all saw three lights. But a half-blood has star blood of her own, doesn't she? Who's to say whose lights those are? A soldier passing through. A farmer at a bonfire. A ford is a very busy place, I'm told."

Ilvar started across the court.

I held up one hand without looking at him. He stopped.

This one was mine.

"You're asking if I lied," I said.

"I'm asking what everyone's thinking."

"No. You're asking what you're thinking. Everyone else was looking at the tree."

A few people laughed. Not enough.

By morning it was all over Starhold.

A maid in the corridor stopped talking when I passed.

A lord's son at the Academy asked Seren, loudly, if the princess's farmer was handsome.

Seren dropped an inkpot on his shoes. By accident, she said.

Someone left a turnip outside my door in the royal wing, with a blue ribbon tied round it.

Ilvar picked it up and looked at it for a long moment.

"I'll find out who," he said.

"Leave it. It's a good turnip." I took it off him. "Mam can put it in a stew."

But I didn't sleep.

At breakfast I put my spoon down.

"There's a blood reading," I said. "In the Star Chapel. I've heard the ladies talk about it."

Ilvar went still.

"The Reading Glass. It's for inheritance disputes. Two houses fighting over a will."

"How does it work?"

"A priestess fills a bowl with lit water. You put a drop of blood in. The light rises in the shape of what the blood is tied to. Kin. Love. Whatever holds the heart." He frowned. "It doesn't lie. That's why nobody likes it."

"Then I'll do it. In public."

"Linnet. You don't have to prove anything to them."

"I'm not proving it to them. I'm making them watch." I picked my spoon back up. "And I want one thing."

The Star Chapel was packed by noon.

Word went round the palace in an hour.

The ancient priestess from our wedding stood at the altar with a wide silver bowl.

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