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Chapter 49: What the Tree Would Cost
Tanggal publikasi:
2026-09-11 05:05:44
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CAGED BY THE LYON Chapter 113: What Elara Was Told
Beckett didn't run. That was the first thing that bothered me.I stood up so fast my chair scraped the floor. Rowan caught my arm before I could reach the door."Wait. Think.""He's standing right there.""In public. On a busy street. Look at how he's standing, Mira. He wants you to cross that road."He was right, and I hated it. I forced myself back into the chair. Across the street, Beckett folded his newspaper, tucked it under his arm, and gave me a small, almost courteous nod, like we'd passed each other at a dinner party. Then he got into the parked car and drove away."He wanted us to see him," Rowan said. "Which means he wanted us to know Aldric knows.""About the bookshop.""About all of it." Rowan's jaw was tight. "We need to get Corinne back to the territory. Now."The drive back was quiet. Corinne sat in the back seat with her hands pressed between her knees, staring out the window. When we pulled up to the main hall, she didn't move."I have to tell her," she said."I know
CAGED BY THE LYON Chapter 112: Alder Street
Corinne came to me instead of her mother. I think that said a lot about how scared she was of Elara's answer."I'm going," she said. We were in the kitchen, the note flattened on the table between us. "I know it might be a trap. I know she's working for Aldric. But if there's even a chance she can give me back what they took, I have to hear it.""Then you're not going alone," I said."She said alone.""She also said she was sorry for a funeral she staged. People who say that aren't exactly honest." I pushed the note back toward her. "Rowan stays outside. I'll be across the street. You go in, you talk, you walk out. If anything feels wrong, you touch your left ear. We'll be in the door before you finish the movement."She looked at me for a long moment. "And my mother?""We tell her afterward. Or you tell her yourself, before. Your choice.""Afterward," Corinne said quickly. Then, quieter: "Please."I didn't like it. But I understood, and I nodded.Thursday afternoon, the bookshop on A
CAGED BY THE LYON Chapter 111: Sparring
We didn't go looking for Sorrel the obvious way. Rowan said that if she'd survived this long altering memories inside the council, she'd notice anyone asking loud questions. So we asked quiet ones. Elara reached out to three old contacts. Rowan checked property records for anything rented in the last year within a day's walk of the council building. Miriam, who'd taken to carrying a notebook everywhere, started writing down which councilors had recently seemed forgetful.It was slow work, and it left a lot of time for waiting.Kael handled it the way he handled most waiting. He trained."Again," he said, circling me on the packed dirt of the old sparring yard behind the main hall. He'd stripped down to a plain shirt and had a faint sheen of sweat along his hairline. I was breathing harder than I wanted to admit."I don't need to practice the thing I already do well.""You don't do it well. You do it fast." He stepped in, feinted left, and caught my wrist when I went for it. "There's a
CAGED BY THE LYON Chapter 110: The Signature
Miriam called the appeals board into session the next morning without telling anyone why. By nine o'clock, five of them were sitting around a long table in the council building's east wing, looking confused, and I was standing at the back of the room with Elara and Corinne, trying to look like I belonged."I'll be brief," Miriam said. "Five days ago, this board signed a release order for a prisoner named Beckett. I didn't know about it. Nobody notified me. I'd like to understand how that happened."There was a short, uncomfortable silence."It went through the normal process," said the man at the end of the table. Councilor Hale was in his sixties, heavyset, with the tired, careful face of someone who'd spent forty years being reasonable in meetings. "A petition was filed. We reviewed it. It met the criteria.""Which criteria?""Medical," Hale said. "There was a statement from a physician that Beckett's condition warranted transfer to private care. We have discretion in those cases."
CAGED BY THE LYON Chapter 109: The Arbiter
Nobody said anything for a while after Kael read it out. Miriam sat down slowly, like her knees had stopped trusting her."Can she refuse?" Rowan asked."If she was a stranger, yes," Miriam said. "But she holds co-authority in Emberclaw. That gives her standing, and standing means she can't decline once she's named. Refusal counts as a forfeit for whoever she belongs to.""For Kael," I said."For Kael."So Silas hadn't just picked an arbiter. He'd picked the one person in the room whose choice would cost Kael either way. If she refused, Kael lost. If she accepted, she'd be the one standing at the edge of the ring, deciding whether her father had won or lost.Kael put the page down very carefully, like it might hurt him if he moved too fast."Where is she?""Still in the records room," Rowan said."I'll go," I said."No." Kael's voice was quiet, but it stopped me. "I'll go. She promised you she'd tell me. I think it's time I let her."He found her where I'd left her, sitting alone at t
CAGED BY THE LYON Chapter 108: Terms
I didn't tell Kael about the message. Not that night, and not the next morning. I told myself it was because I didn't know what it said, and that accusing Vivienne without knowing was worse than waiting.That lasted until lunch.I found her in the pack's records room, going through old territorial ledgers with Miriam's list beside her. She looked up when I came in, and she didn't look surprised."You saw the name," she said."I did."She put the ledger down and leaned back in her chair. "I was going to tell you. I was just trying to figure out how.""Then start with what it said."She picked up her phone, found the message, and slid it across the desk. I read it twice.I'm not asking you to choose between me and your father. I'm asking you to think about what you actually want. You wanted real authority. He gave you half. I can offer you all of it. Emberclaw under one leader, you, with no one standing over your shoulder. All you have to do is stay out of the way."That's the whole mes
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