The Werewolf King's Regret: Punishing the Wrong Daughter novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Cup
At the Harvest Moon feast Linnet saves the king's nephew from a poisoned cup and is flogged and banished for it; as she leaves, the king stares at his own palm, where a red line is opening.
Three hundred wolves watched me carry a cup of warm milk across the great hall at Hartmoor Keep.
It was the Harvest Moon feast, and the milk was for the king's nephew.
My sister Odessa had put the cup in my hands at the kitchen door.
She had braided my hair that afternoon and tied it with her own blue ribbon.
"Ewan likes you best," she said. "Take it to him, and I'll be right behind you."
At Marwood Hold I worked the kitchens, so carrying a cup was the one thing I knew how to do at a king's feast.
I hummed as I walked, three falling notes my mother used to hum over the stove, because my hands were shaking.
The cup was warm against my palms, which are covered in old pale scars from kettle burns.
The king rose from the high table to greet an envoy, and we crossed paths in the aisle.
He stopped for half a step, his head turning toward the sound.
Then the envoy said his name, and he walked on.
Prince Ewan sat at the end of the table with his wooden horse beside his plate.
He was six, thin as a rake, and he held out both hands when he saw me.
"Linnet! Is that for me?"
"Every drop," I said.
He drank half of it in big gulps and made a face.
"It's sweeter than usual."
Then he coughed, and slid off his chair.
His lips had already gone grey.
I smelled it as I dropped to my knees, a bitter green smell under the sugar.
Wolfsbane.
Our hunters at Marwood paint it on arrowheads.
I hooked two fingers down his throat and made him bring up the milk.
I tore the charcoal pouch off my belt, the one I kept for kitchen burns, and packed his mouth with it.
"Swallow it, Ewan. Swallow, good boy, swallow."
He swallowed, and his chest started to heave.
Someone screamed.
When I looked up, the whole hall was on its feet, and the empty cup was lying by my knee with my hand still wet from it.
The king stood over me with his face like stone.
"Seize her."
Two guards took my arms.
"That's her cup," Odessa said behind me.
Her voice shook beautifully.
"I gave it to her myself, Your Majesty. Oh, Linnet, what did you do?"
I turned my head.
My father stood beside her with his wide hand on her shoulder, the way he always stood beside her.
"Father."
He looked at the floor.
"My younger daughter has always envied what her sister has," he told the king. "I am ashamed to say it."
"The boy is breathing," I said. "Look at him. I stopped it."
"A girl who knows the cure knew the poison," said the king.
He did not raise his voice.
That was the worst part.
The law of Hartmoor is twenty lashes of silver chain for any hand raised against the heir, and the first lash is laid by the heir's own kin.
They tied my wrists to the whipping post in the yard, with the whole court lining the walls.
The king took the chain from the guard himself.
He did not ask me one question.
The first lash split my shirt and my back together.
I had thought silver would burn.
It does worse than that, it eats.
I counted, because counting was something to hold.
Seven.
Eleven.
There was one true thing I could have said.
I opened my mouth for it, and saw Odessa watching from the steps with her gloved hands folded.
I shut my mouth again.
Nobody would have believed it, least of all him.
Sixteen.
At twenty the chain dropped in the dirt and a guard cut my wrists loose.
I stayed on my feet, and I do not know how.
"You are struck from the Marwood roll," the king said. "You will be past the Silver Line by dawn, and if you are seen inside it again, you die."
I pulled my father's ring off my finger, the Marwood wolf in gold.
I walked up to the king, set it on the stone at his boots, and looked him in the eye.
"Your nephew is alive because of me," I said. "Remember I said so."
So I turned my back on all of them and walked out on my own feet.
The guards at the gate would not look at me.
At the end of the road I stopped and glanced back once.
The yard was dark except for the torches, and the king stood where I had left him.
He was staring at his own right palm.
A thin red line had opened across it, the same width as the chain, and blood was running down his wrist.
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