Chapter 14: The Night He Did Not Sign

Alaric's POV

The Council gave me three days.

That was what it came to after four hours of shouting, and I had to take it.

Astrid would stay in the castle under my guard until the Council ruled on the decree, and nobody was to touch her before then.

The chancellor had moved the motion himself, politely, with the decree under his hand.

I watched her walk out of the chamber with Beryl Quinlan at her shoulder, and she did not look back at me once.

I went to my study and lit one lamp.

I took a clean sheet of vellum and wrote across the top: I, Alaric Rooke, give up the crown of my fathers.

The pen was steady for six lines.

I set down that the throne belonged by the oldest law to Thea Molyneux, called Astrid Giffard, and that I yielded every power I held to her.

Then I read it back and saw what it was.

It was a gift to a woman who had walked out of my bed that morning over the secret I kept.

Worse, it was a death warrant.

If I abdicated, the Council would name a regent by sundown.

The regent would be the chancellor, and the decree would still be the law.

She would be the claimant on an empty throne, with no King left to shelter her.

I put the pen down.

My coat was over the chair.

It still smelled of her, rain and iron and the soap from the clinic, and I picked it up before I could stop myself.

I stood in my own study with my face in my own coat and my eyes shut.

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