People started moving.The place was an excited hum.
ButNoctornofinished speaking,looked right to Loren and nodded.
So I didn’t twitch even a muscle.
As constables and the king’s guard started shifting peopleout, Mom asked, “Should we…leave?I mean, is that it?”
“We’re to stay, Corliss,” Ansley said.
At that comment, I looked to Loren.
He was not holding my hand.He was not asking me if I wasokay.He wasn’t appearing like he had any reaction to all that had just gonedown.He wasn’t even looking at me.
His gaze was aimed at the redhead that was sitting with theother king and queens.
My skin felt cold.
So cold, my mind blanked at the extremes of it.
“Satrine.”
I stared at my lap and my hand covered in a cream, kidleather glove sitting in it.
That hand not held in Loren’s.
“Satrine.”
Did he know?
Did he just suspect?
Or did the king tell him I was mad and a harridan besides,and he wasn’t having his decorated soldier marry such a strange, foul woman?
Mom and Mary both squeezed my hand.
“Satrine!” Momsnapped.
I turned to her.
But I said nothing because the king spoke, his deep voiceechoing in a now mostly empty room.
“Are you quite all right, madam?”he called.
Stiltedly, I turned my head to where he was looking.
And saw, sitting alone at the far back, the witch who hadbrought us to this world.
And it was then my heart didn’t explode.
It rent in two.
Because it was then I knew.
That Loren knew.
Everything.
ChapterTwenty-Eight
