Chapter 9 - Reckoning in the Great Hall
The Great Hall of the Montgomery Citadel was built for solemn ceremonies, but today it looked like a slaughterhouse.
The long oak banquet tables had been overturned, spilling silver goblets, roasted meats, and shattered plates across the polished marble floor. Mercenaries in Harrington’s crimson-and-gold tabards lay scattered in heaps around the pillars, disarmed and subdued by the relentless efficiency of the royal guard.
At the far end of the hall, raised on the dais beneath the high throne, Lord Harrington backed away until his spine hit the carved stone armrests of the seat of power. His face was gray with terror, his hands shaking so violently he could barely hold his ceremonial dagger.
"Stay back!" Harrington shrieked, waving the small blade at the towering figure walking slowly up the marble steps toward him. "I am a lord of the northern marches! You can't touch me without a council trial!"
Alistair walked up the steps. He had shifted back to human form, though his eyes still burned with a faint, unholy golden light, and his knuckles were flecked with dried blood. He didn't carry a sword; he didn't need one.
"You talked about trials, Harrington," Alistair said, his voice dangerously soft as he closed the distance between them. "You talked about justice when you planted poison in an apothecary’s cot seven years ago. You talked about law when you tried to steal a kingdom from a boy who wasn't even born."
Harrington lunged forward with a desperate, pathetic scream, slashing the dagger toward Alistair’s throat.
Alistair didn't even blink. He caught Harrington’s wrist in mid-air with a grip of iron.
Crack.
The sound of snapping bone echoed off the vaulted ceiling. Harrington shrieked, dropping the dagger as his arm bent at an unnatural angle. Before the fat lord could hit the marble floor, Alistair’s other hand clamped around the front of his fur-lined tunic, lifting him off his feet with one hand until Harrington’s legs kicked uselessly in empty air.
"Please... Alistair... mercy..." Harrington choked out, his face turning purple as the king’s grip tightened around his windpipe.
"Mercy is for wolves who follow the pack law," Alistair whispered, his face inches from the traitor's eyes. "You are just carrion."
With a casual, contemptuous flick of his wrist, Alistair hurled Harrington’s bulk across the hall. The traitor crashed hard into the base of a marble pillar, went completely limp, and slid down into the debris without another sound.
Silence fell over the Great Hall.
The remaining guards dropped their weapons, falling to their knees one by one until every man in the room was bowing before the throne.
At the entrance of the Great Hall, standing in the archway beneath the shattered stone lintel, Isolda stood holding Finn’s hand.
The boy wasn't hiding his face anymore. His long dark hair was pulled back behind his ears, revealing both eyes clearly to everyone in the hall—the stormy gray right eye, and the brilliant, luminescent amber-and-emerald left eye that marked him as the undisputed heir to the Montgomery crown.
Alistair turned away from the fallen traitor, his gaze sweeping across the hall until it found them.
The harsh, terrifying king melted away in an instant. The exhaustion, the seven years of cold isolation, the bitter wars—all of it vanished as Alistair walked down the dais steps, his boots clicking softly against the marble floor, stopping just three paces away from Isolda and his son.
He dropped to one knee on the cold stone, ignoring the blood on his hands, and looked up into Isolda’s stormy gray eyes.
"I cannot undo the seven years I lost," Alistair said, his voice thick with a raw, trembling vulnerability that the pack had never heard from him before. "I cannot wash away the snow on the river or the tears in the dark. But I can give you my life, my crown, and my soul. Will you forgive a fool of a king, Isolda? Will you come home?"
Isolda looked down at him. She saw the man she had loved in the glasshouse—older, scarred, broken by manipulation, but entirely hers. She looked down at Finn, who was staring at his father with a look of fierce, unmasked pride, his amber-and-emerald eye catching the light of the torches overhead.
May you like
She reached out, her fingers gently brushing a lock of dark hair away from Alistair’s scarred forehead.
"Get up, Your Majesty," Isolda whispered, a slow, radiant smile breaking across her face for the first time in seven years. "You have a kingdom to run, and a son who needs to learn how to throw a proper punch."
