Chapter 184: What Is Home?
Lyria's POV
I would have liked to be the one to read it.
That was the truth of it, and I could admit it to myself even if I could not say it aloud.
I had watched the Duke pick up his parchment and begin walking, and something in me had wanted to be the one he came to.
But I looked away.
Because wanting it and being able to do it were two entirely different things, and I knew that better than anyone in this hall. Whatever the Duke had written, there was every possibility that the words on that parchment would be beyond what Patricia had managed to teach me in stolen hours and careful repetition. And if I stumbled — if I stood before the court and the kingdom and lost the thread of a single line — then everything I had managed to hold together since sitting down in this chair would come undone in a moment.
So I looked away.
I fixed my gaze on a point slightly past Jacinta and kept it there, and I told myself it did not matter.
