The Girl He Sold Returned as the King's Mate novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Dead King

The hunting lodge sat above the pass, gray stone with smoke going up from one chimney, and it took the chancellor's sealed order from his desk and Beryl's thirty guards to get us through the gate.

The porter looked at the King's face and fell to his knees.

"Majesty," he said. "They told us you were never to come."

"Who told you?" Alaric said.

"The master."

Alaric swung down from his horse and walked into the hall without waiting to be led.

I went after him, and Beryl came behind me with her hand on her sword.

The hall was big and warm.

Forty servants and guards stood along the walls, silent, with their eyes on their boots.

A fire burned in a hearth the width of a barn door.

In a high-backed chair beside it, with a rug over his knees, sat a thin old man with white hair to his collar.

He had Alaric's jaw.

He turned his head slowly, and I saw the eyes were the same amber, gone yellow with age.

"My son," he said. "You took your time."

Alaric did not move.

"You were buried," he said. "I carried you to the tomb myself."

"You carried a box of stones," the old king said. "A man needs a good death when he wants to be left alone."

His eyes slid to me.

"So that is her."

"Her name is Astrid Giffard," Alaric said. "Her birth name is Thea Molyneux."

"I know her birth name. I paid for her to lose it."

The servants shifted along the walls.

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