“Mrs. Henderson, please describe your relationship with the Willowbrook Shadow Council.”
“My husband Robert was a Council associate for twenty years.” Her voice cracked on the first sentence and didn’t recover. “After he died, Margaret Thornfield approached me. She said the Council valued my… continued cooperation.”
“What did that cooperation involve?”
“At first, small things. Passing along information about shipping schedules. Hazel’s client list.” She couldn’t look at Hazel. Her eyes fixed on a point above the gallery, somewhere in the granite walls. “Then, after Hazel entered witness protection, Margaret came to my house. She told me that if I didn’t provide the safe house locations and daily schedules, Lily’s tonic supply would be cut off.”
“Lily is your granddaughter?”
“She’s fifteen. She has moon-sickness. Without the stabilizer tonic, she…” Mrs. Henderson’s composure shattered. She pressed her fist against her mouth and breathed through the sobs. “She would have died. Or hurt herself. Or hurt someone else. Margaret knew that. She sat in my kitchen and drank my tea and told me my granddaughter would suffer, and she said it like she was discussing the weather.”
The Truth Stone blazed white. Every word verified.
“Did you provide the information?”
“Yes. All of it. The safe house locations, the supplier routes, the daily schedules. Everything Margaret asked for.” She was openly weeping now. “I told myself it was for Lily. That Hazel would understand. That anyone would do the same thing.”
“And did Ms. Wickwood understand?”
For the first time, Mrs. Henderson looked at Hazel. The hedge witch sat in the gallery with her hands clasped, her face unreadable.
“No,” Mrs. Henderson said. “She didn’t. And she shouldn’t have to.”
The defence declined to cross-examine. There was nothing to gain from attacking a weeping grandmother whose every word rang true under the Truth Stone.
Margaret Thornfield sat in the gallery and watched Mrs. Henderson leave the stand. Her expression hadn’t changed. It wouldn’t change. She was a woman who’d made pragmatic calculations for thirty years, and she would make them until the day she died. But the calculation had shifted. The numbers no longer worked in her favour, and Margaret Thornfield was, above all, someone who understood numbers.
The jury retiredat 2:17 PM. Hazel and Marcus waited in a corridor that smelled of old stone and floor wax. She held his hand. Their combined magic glowed steady between their palms, warm gold laced with lavender, weak but constant, like a heartbeat.
“How long?” she asked.
“Could be hours. Could be days.” He leaned his head back against the wall. The trial had cost him more than he’d let on, every word of the closing argument drawn from reserves he couldn’t spare. The obsidian wound ached in time with his pulse. “Jury deliberation is the one thing a lawyer can’t control.”
“You were incredible in there.”
“I was adequate.” But his fingers tightened on hers.
Azrael lay across both their laps, a bridge of warm fur. He was asleep, or pretending to be. The bow tie had slipped slightly sideways.
Beth Morrison found them an hour in. She didn’t sit down. She leaned against the opposite wall and said nothing for five minutes.
“The closing argument,” she said finally. “About the witnesses who come after.”
“What about it?”
“It was good.” She pushed off the wall and walked away. It was the closest thing to a compliment Beth Morrison had ever given anyone.
Two hours. Three. Ava Feng brought coffee that went cold. Mrs. Henderson sat at the far end of the corridor with Lily, the girl asleep against her grandmother’s shoulder. Margaret Thornfield was nowhere to be seen, she’d left the courtroom after Mrs. Henderson’s testimony and hadn’t returned.
At 6:22 PM, the bailiff appeared.
“Jury’s back.”
The courtroom felt different now. The floating orbs had dimmed, casting the granite walls in amber. The gallery was fuller than before, word had spread. Hazel saw faces she didn’t recognise: supernaturals from Portland, from Augusta, from towns she’d never heard of. People who’d come to watch an empire fall.
Viktor Blackwood sat at the defence table with his hands folded. His composure had returned, or been reconstructed, carefully, like a wall rebuilt from its own rubble. Cassandra sat beside him, utterly still.
Judge Ironfang settled in her seat. “Has the jury reached a verdict?”
