Chapter 180: The First Reading
Lyria's POV
I turned toward the dais.
The Queen's expression was composed and pleasant, as though what she had just announced was nothing more than a small and sensible adjustment to the morning's proceedings. As though it were a kindness.
I looked at Jacinta, and she was smiling.
I looked away and pressed my hands together in my lap.
They knew.
Or they suspected enough to act on it, which amounted to the same thing. I could not read, at least not properly and not with any ease.
The royal family was aware of the fact that I could not read. And now, before the court, before every noble seated in this hall, before the entire kingdom watching on the scrying veil, they intended to make that plain by asking me to do the one thing I could not do, and allowing everyone to watch me fail at it.
It was neat. I could not fault the construction of it.
I turned my gaze forward, and it collided with Lucian's.
