Total pages in book: 90
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88960 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Now.
The car is already waiting.
Devyn appears beside me—I don't know from where, he just materializes the way he always does—and his hand finds the small of my back, guiding me forward. He hasn't spoken to me since we found her. Hasn't looked at me, really. His jaw is tight, his eyes fixed ahead, and I can feel the tension radiating off him like heat from a furnace.
Mrs. Lyme follows us to the car. She's still talking, quieter now, leaning close to my ear as we walk.
More stories. More evidence.
I don't know why she's telling me these things. Maybe she's afraid of what's coming. Maybe she wants me to understand what's at stake—not just a king, but the man underneath the crown.
Or maybe she just needs someone to know.
The car door closes. The engine starts. And we're moving toward a room full of people who've already decided my husband is a murderer.
The Court of Stakeholders meets underground.
I don't know what I expected—marble halls, maybe, or something that looked like a courtroom from a legal drama. Instead we descend through layers of stone and security until we reach a chamber that feels ancient. Vaulted ceilings. Torch-style lighting that flickers against the walls. A massive circular table surrounded by faces I don't recognize.
Faces that all turn toward us when we enter.
Toward Devyn.
The weight of their stares is physical. Accusation. Suspicion. Fear. I can read it in the way they hold themselves, the way some lean back as he passes, as if guilt might be contagious.
Devyn doesn't react. Doesn't acknowledge. He walks to his seat like a man walking into his own living room, and he sits, and he waits.
I take the chair beside him. My hands are trembling. I fold them in my lap and will them to stop.
The Baron of Greenwich arrives last.
Patrick Briones.
I know who he is before anyone speaks his name. The room shifts when he enters—a collective breath, a subtle leaning away. And his face—
His face is grief given form. Raw. Devastating. The kind of pain that hasn't had time to scar over, still bleeding fresh beneath the surface.
Abigail's father.
His eyes find Devyn immediately. The hatred in them makes my stomach turn.
Devyn gives him nothing. Stone meeting stone.
"We are here," a silver-haired woman announces from the head of the table, "to address the matter of Lady Abigail Briones."
The matter. Like she was a line item on an agenda.
"Her body was discovered yesterday in the dungeons beneath Chaleur Estate." The woman's voice is clinical. Detached. "Preliminary findings suggest she was killed—”
"Murdered." The older man’s voice cracks. "My daughter was murdered. And she was found in his house."
His. Not the king. Not Devyn. Just his, spat like venom.
"We don't yet have conclusive—" someone begins.
"She ran from him!" Patrick is on his feet now, shaking. "Everyone knows it. She ran because she saw what he was, and he caught her, and he—"
“Baron, control yourself—”
“I want justice!” Spittle flies from the baron’s lips. "I want him to pay for what you did to my little girl! And your own queen—” He points at me, and heads snap to my direction. “She said so herself, did she not? She saw my daughter run away—”
“That’s all I saw,” I protest.
“Then you know he killed her!”
A stunned gasp escapes me when I realize what he’s forcing me to admit. “That’s a lie—”
“You are the one who’s lying! You’ll do everything to protect your murderous husband—”
The moment I hear him call my king a murderer—
I lose it.
I don’t mean to, but it just happens—
I'm on my feet before I realize I'm moving.
"Stop calling him that!"
I know it’s impolite to cry out like that, and that I should sit down. And...and calm down, too, especially with Devyn’s gaze burning into the side of my face, commanding me to stay silent.
But—
“This is our king you’re accusing!”
It’s like what I said. I’ve lost it, and the words are just rushing out, one after another—
“Our king!”
My hands are...moving of its own accord, making wild gestures that even I can’t comprehend.
"The same man who paid for Mrs. Lyme's entire family to relocate after their house burned down—out of his own pocket, not the treasury! The same man who jumped into a frozen lake to save a drowning puppy! A puppy! The man you're calling a monster once carried a six-year-old girl three miles through a blizzard because her school bus broke down!"
I'm aware, distantly, that I sound unhinged.
But I can’t seem to stop.
"Our king—my husband—who was almost your own son-in-law—wasn’t he the one to pay off your loans before? What reason has he to murder Abigail? In all the years he’s served as your king, hasn’t he served with honor? So how dare you slander him? My husband is a good man! Not just that, but he’s...he’s also beautiful, with an even more beautiful smile! Granted, you rarely see it, but he does smile, I swear, and when it happens, it's like—like watching the sky turn pink while pigs fly past! It's that man you're accusing! That man who—"