The Alpha King's Bride novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Nothing From That House

The King throws Judith's tea out of the car window and tells Finola the wedding is at dusk.

The King did not offer me his arm.

He walked down the steps in front of me, and four guards in black fell in behind us.

The whole hall parted to let us through, and nobody said a word.

I kept my chin up until we reached the doors.

Judith caught up with me there, out of breath, her cardigan buttoned wrong.

"Finola, wait. Take this for the road."

She pressed a small silver flask into my hand.

"It's your tea, sweetheart. You're white as paper, and you'll want it later."

Her eyes were wet again.

"I'll come to see you as soon as they let me," she said.

I said thank you.

I meant it, and that is the part I still can't forgive myself.

The King's car waited at the foot of the stairs, long and black, with a driver who looked straight ahead.

Aldric Ashdown got in after me and shut the door.

The car pulled away from the Crown Hall, and the crowd on the steps went small in the mirror.

Imogen stood at the very top of the stairs and waved at the car with both hands.

Jasper stood beside her, and she did not let go of his sleeve.

He did not shake her off.

He sat across from me with his hands on his knees.

Up close, the scar through his eyebrow was pale and old.

He had not stopped looking at me since the dais.

"You said finally," I said. "Finally what?"

"Ask me in a month."

"I'm asking now."

"I know you are."

That was all he gave me.

I turned the flask over in my hands, because I did not know what else to do with them.

I unscrewed the cap.

The honey smell rose up, warm and sweet, the smell of every morning since I was eighteen.

I lifted it to my mouth.

His hand shot across the seat and closed around the flask.

"No."

"That's mine," I said. "It's my foster mother's tea."

"I know whose it is."

He rolled the window down with one finger, and the cold air came in.

Then he threw the flask out into the road.

I heard it bounce and skid on the stones, and I stared at him.

"You can't do that," I said. "You don't get to throw my things out of a car."

"Nothing from that house touches you again."

"You've known me for twenty minutes."

"Yes."

His voice did not change at all.

It made me angrier than if he had shouted.

"You sat on that stone seat and let them laugh," I said. "Do you believe me or not?"

"I believe you."

"Then why didn't you stop it?"

"Because belief isn't a witness," he said. "The steward asked, and four hundred wolves said nothing. A king who overturns a draw without a witness is a tyrant. I am already called one."

I looked down at my hands.

They were shaking, and I made them stop.

"Does the draw stand, then?" I asked.

"For now. The Rooke house has thirty days to petition that the lot was tainted."

"Tainted. By the thing they did."

"If they petition, a council hears it," he said. "If the council rules the lot void, you go back to them."

Back to the kitchen.

Back to the cup in my hand every morning.

Back to Jasper, who would not look at me.

My stomach turned over.

"They'll petition," I said.

"Yes."

"Then why do you look like that's good news?"

For the first time his face changed, only a little.

"Because it gives me thirty days," he said. "Jasper Lowe has never bitten your mark. Is that true?"

I had not told him that.

I had said it to the hall, loud, but he had been all the way up on the dais.

"Four years," I said. "He said after the Choosing."

He nodded once, slowly.

"What does that mean?" I asked.

"It means you will eat only what comes from my kitchen."

The car turned in through two tall gates.

The Crown Hall rose in front of us, grey stone with a hundred lit windows, and every one of them seemed to have someone standing in it.

Servants lined the steps in two rows, and a woman with a measuring tape around her neck stood at the head of them.

"Your Majesty," she said, bowing. "The council is assembled. The seamstresses are ready."

"Ready for what?" I said.

Aldric opened the car door and stepped out.

He turned and held his hand down to me.

"The lot says a bride by dusk," he said. "Dusk is in three hours."

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