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 rarelysee 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'sthatman you're accusing! That man who—"
"—who will kill you himself if you say another word."
Devyn's voice cuts through my rambling like a blade.
And all I can do is freeze because I think...
I think I also want to kill myself.
What in the world did I just say?
Devyn points at my chair. "Sit."
I bow my head in shame. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
Someone snorts as I take a seat, and the sound is followed by another snort, and then there’s a third one...and a fourth one...and I stop counting when I realize that there isn’t some powerfully contagious virus sweeping over the room.
It’s just everyone...laughing.
At me.
Hewhay’s, if you’re listening...
Are you really sure I’m destined to be here?
Maybe you wrote wrong, and what you really meant is that in this world I’ll be...deluded? Deranged?
"This session," the silver-haired woman says with a voice that also seems to suspiciously shake with ill-suppressed laughter, "will reconvene when we have more information. The investigation continues."
It's not an exoneration. But it's not a conviction either.
