Chapter 110

Sloane

They came for me at two.

Cassandra had helped me dress. It had taken both of us, and most of my patience, and when it was done I was wearing a pair of her trousers with the left leg slit to the knee over the splint, and a gray sweater that smelled of her cupboard. I had brushed my hair myself. I had left it down.

“You don’t have to look like anything,” Cassandra said, watching me in the mirror. “You only have to tell them the truth.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I didn’t answer. She put my crutch in my hand and walked beside me down the hall, past the guard, and down two flights of stairs to the council chamber, and she didn’t let go of my elbow once.

I had sat at that table, in the chair at Kade’s left hand, for two years