Chapter 5: The Letter

I ran.

The passage swallowed me in the dark, and behind me the captain's boots stopped.

I heard my mother's voice shout something at him, high and cracked and furious.

I heard a chair go over, and then I heard nothing.

The captain did not chase me, and I have wondered every day since why he let me go.

I came out behind the laundry baskets with the king's paper stuck to my ribs.

Conroy was waiting at the tower door in his shirt, with no sword and no expression.

"Where were you?" he said.

"Out."

"Verena."

"I have this," I said.

I pulled the paper out and shoved it into his hands.

He read it standing in the stair light, and he read it twice.

"It is your father's writing," he said.

"I know what it is."

"Will it be enough?"

"It will have to be."

At dawn, six guards came to take us to the council chamber.

It was a round room with a long oak table, and twelve lords of Merrow sat around it in their furred gowns.

My father sat at the head.

He was grey in the face, and he did not once look up at me.

Marigold sat at his right hand with the circlet on her hair and a cup of milky tea in front of her.

She saw me and gave me a small sad smile.

The Lord Chancellor stood at the foot of the table with his soft hands folded.

"Princess Verena has asked to be heard," he said. "We grant it, in the spirit of mercy."

"I don't want mercy," I said. "I want my crown."

I laid the draft on the table, flat, with my burned palm on top of it.

"This is my father's hand," I said. "Every one of you has seen it on a hundred orders."

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