She immediately wanted to suck the words back in. She was expecting them to be a lie, but the cringe inside her when she told even the tiniest of lies was absent. Shehadrun away. She’d run out on Derek.
“Where were you running from?” the duke asked. “From what my soldiers describe, there wasn’t a city or village for miles.”
Every thought evaporated. Theodoric had asked her who she was running from in those woods, and she’d almost said the truth, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it now. It was an accident. Derek didn’t mean to hit her, and she shouldn’t have run out on him.
“Where were you running from?” The duke’s voice carried through the room, silencing the even breaths of everyone around her.
Gainesville was on the tip of her tongue. Would they believe her? Theodoric had spouted all sorts of places Amaris had never heard of, and he didn’t seem to recognize it when she told him the other night. What if it didn’t exist to them?
Panicking, she looked to Theodoric, but he didn’t acknowledge her as his eyes pinned to the floor, and he gave his head a slight shake.
The duke raised a suspicious brow. “Are you a slave?”
“What?”
“If you’re not a slave and you claim you weren’t the one behind this attack, we will need proof of your innocence.”
Amaris tried to keep her focus on the duke, but Theodoric continued to pull her gaze as he rubbed the back of his neck, and his chest moved at a swift pace.
Proof?Amaris didn’t have any evidence. She was still proving to herself what the hell happened. The room began to shrink in on her. “I don’t have anything.”
A murmur went through the crowd, but the duke didn’t silence them. Amaris studied his stony face, not a single bit of emotion crossing his features.
“As you are unable to provide evidence to the accusations against you—”
“Wait—”
“Do not interrupt me!” the duke roared.
Bennet’s eyes flared with excitement, but there wasn’t rage in Theodoric’s gaze. He didn’t even appear to be listening anymore.
“I will have no choice—”
“What about what happened in the river?”
The crowd silenced. The tapping of the duke’s ringed finger was the only sound emanating through the throne room. Her one stupid act of pure instinct could possibly be her only mercy.
“I saved him.”
Theodoric’s face snapped up to meet hers, finally pulled back into the conversation, but his face was draining of color. Amaris kept a hesitant eye on him.
“What do you mean you saved him?” the duke asked, but the slight flicker of anger within his features wasn’t aimed at her but at Theodoric.
“His horse bucked him off into the river. I’m the one who jumped in and got his head out of the water.” Amaris bit back against the words she wanted to fling at the duke and forced herself to be reasonable. If she continued to fight back, she would end up spending the rest of her life locked in that cell. “Would a murderer have rescued your son, jumped into a dangerous river, risked their own life?”
Theodoric stiffened as she hooked him. He gripped the hilt of his dagger and opened his lips as if to say something, but he closed them.
The duke stroked his beard, pulling at the edges. “How did you come to possess such talents?”
“I’m trained,” Amaris uttered. Likely no one here would know what a paramedic was either.
“You’re a mystique then?”
Gris had asked her that. Was that their version of a medical professional?
The duke leaned forward, interlacing his hands as he rested them upon his knees. His white eye glared at her like it was reading her thoughts.
“I’m trained in the medical field well enough to know your son has a severe concussion and has been struggling with a headache ever since the incident.”
