Chapter 24: The Chair Beside the King

Someone had carried a second chair onto the dais.

It stood on the King's right, carved from the same dark wood as his own.

It was a little smaller, with a cushion the housekeeper had sewn that morning.

I stopped in the doorway of the great hall and looked at it.

"You knew," I said.

"I was asked to vote on it," Torin said, at my shoulder.

"And?"

"I said yes before they finished the question."

Behind us, Eli snorted.

He was wearing the gray coat and carrying a book, and he had stopped pretending to read it.

My mother touched my arm.

She had come up from Pinebrook that morning with Garrick, and for the first time in my life she looked rested.

"Go on," she said. "It won't bite."

"It's wood," Eli said. "It can't bite."

"It's the King's wood," said the housekeeper from the kitchen doorway, in her gray cardigan. "Anything might."

I laughed.

Then I walked up the long aisle between the Alphas, and they stood as I went by.

All of them stood.

I climbed the three steps to the dais.

The envoy waited at the top with the ledger open in both hands.

"Wynn MacBain," she said, for the room.

"Omega of Pinebrook. Sent to the Crown on the Tribute Moon, and kept by no law and no Alpha."

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