Arlo
Power in this court had never belonged to the man holding the sword. It belonged to the man standing behind him, holding the grease for the hinge.
I had made it as far as the lower stair before my mother's messenger caught me.
An incapacitated Crown Prince was a gift from the heavens, and I hadn't intended to waste a single hour of it. While the physicians were still shouting for holy water in his bedchamber, I'd already gathered a squad of High Council guards and started for the dungeons myself; reasoning that a dead spy couldn't be un-executed later, whatever proof Gunnar thought he might find. If he woke to discover the wolf girl gone, that was a grief he'd have to survive on his own time, not mine.
I hadn't accounted for my mother moving faster than I could.
The boy she'd sen
