The Alpha King's Bride novel · Chapter 8 of 24
Chapter 8: The Hair in the Tea
Judith's hand stayed on her heart while she waited for the council to answer her.
Aldric did not look at her.
He looked at the eldest lord.
"The council will rule on the guardian motion in three days," he said. "Until then the Queen stays under the Crown's roof, and no one in this room touches her."
"Majesty, she is ill," Judith began.
"I said no one."
His voice was flat, and it carried to every bench.
Judith sat down, with her handkerchief at her mouth.
Imogen's sobbing stopped quickly.
That night I was sitting on the edge of my bed with a cloth against my neck when someone knocked.
I knew the knock, and I opened the door on the chain.
Aldric stood in the corridor with an old man in a long coat beside him.
In his hand was a black rose, and in the old man's hands was a glass tube.
"I need a quarter of an hour," Aldric said. "And I need you to let me say all of it before you answer."
I took the chain off.
They came in.
The old man was the Crown physician, and he would not look at me.
Aldric put the rose on my dresser.
"These grew under your window," he said. "On the third night you poured Judith Rooke's tea on them."
"I know. I saw them die."
"Tell her," he said to the physician.
The old man cleared his throat.
"Your Majesty. The tea you drank every morning contained wolfsbane root, ground fine. It blunts the mate sense and dulls the nose. It also contained this."
He held up the tube.
A single hair floated in the amber.
It was sandy brown.
"Whoever drinks it feels a pull toward the owner of that hair, strong as any fated bond," he said. "It grows blind to every other wolf. It is forbidden in three kingdoms."
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