Chapter 10: What the Clerk Kept

Evander's POV

I had broken two of my own rules before supper, and my wolf was not sorry about either one.

I stood at the window of my study with both hands braced on the sill.

The courtyard lay below me in the late light.

She was down there with Kendrick Winslow.

They stood three feet apart under the arch.

The man was talking low and fast.

She listened with her arms folded and her head tilted a little to the left.

I knew that tilt. I had been learning it for two weeks.

My wolf had repeated a single word, over and over, since the moment she walked into my hall.

Mine.

I had not answered it once.

I was the King, and she was a married woman with a hearing in nineteen days.

I would be the judge who ruled on her freedom.

I had said my rule aloud on purpose, so that I'd have to keep it.

Then she had put her hand on my chest in the yard and said my name.

I closed my eyes.

A knock sounded at the study door.

"Come."

The Council clerk came in with a flat brown folder and her glasses pushed up into her hair.

"Your Majesty. You asked for the carrier's logs."

"Yes."

She laid the folder on my desk. Her hands weren't steady.

"I went to the Royal Post at six this morning, and I stood there until they let me see the book."

"I didn't want to send a boy."

I opened it.

The Royal Post kept a ledger for every outbound pickup in the realm.

Each house with a gate box had a line. The carrier signed it, and so did the household.

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