Chapter 20: The Sealed Hall

The great doors boomed shut at both ends of the Moon Hall.

Twenty Crown guards stood in front of them with their backs to the wood.

The captain stood in front of the east door, the same stiff man in the same dark uniform.

I knew his face.

He had stood across my delivery room and not looked at the Healer once.

"Captain," Aldous called, held between two Alphas, his palm bleeding into his sleeve. "The order stands. Seal it."

The captain's hand moved to the latch.

I let go of Torin's hand and walked across the stone floor.

Six hundred wolves watched me go.

I stopped in front of the captain, close enough to see the sweat on his lip.

"You held my door," I said.

"My Queen, I..."

"I'm not your Queen. I was on my knees by a bed, and my Healer was begging you to let her turn my son. You listened and you didn't look at her."

"I took the order."

"From whom? Say who."

His eyes went to the Seer, and back to me.

"From the Chief Seer," he said. "Spoken. At four in the morning. He said hold it until first light."

"And the King?"

"The King gave the order at midnight. The Seer gave it again at four."

"Say it again, louder."

He swallowed.

"The Seer told me to hold the Queen's door until the moon decided," the captain said, in a voice that carried up into the open roof. "I held it."

Behind me Aldous began to shout.

I did not turn.

"I'm asking you to hold nothing now," I said to the captain. "Open this door."

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