chapter 60

The throne room doors open and suddenly, all I see are images from the night my family and I had been forced, terrified, into vans and brought before the king.

I look over at Nathan. His expression is totally cold, just like it had been that night. For the first time since then, I’m afraid of him.

My lungs heave for breath, and I can’t stop swallowing. I’m trembling. I’m going to cry.

A hand touches my shoulder, squeezes reassuringly. The contact is so brief that by the time I look up at Xiao, it’s already over. She hasn’t stopped scanning the crowd.

How did she know I needed that reassurance? That I wouldn’t object to it? This isn’t the first time she’s been eerily tuned into me.

I’m unnerved and comforted all at once.

The room is arranged differently than it had been that awful night. There are more seats. Enough for at least a hundred people. They’re in a semicircle but parted by a single aisle; the thralls escort the sometimes-resistant werewolves down the outside and fill them in