22. Chapter 22 #4
The truth spell did not care for grief, but it allowed a moment for breath. Barely.
Sloan swallowed. Her lips pressed together. Tears slid down both cheeks now, unchecked.
“She screamed for Nikolay.”
The name crossed the chamber like a living thing.
Nikolay did not move, but the stillness of him became almost unbearable. Maddie’s head bowed farther.
Grace gave them one beat. Only one.
Mercy measured tightly enough to remain useful.
“Did she scream his name more than once?” Grace asked.
“I don’t know. I just knew something was wrong.”
“What did you do?”
“I ran.”
“Toward the clearing?”
“Yes.”
“What did you see when you reached the clearing?”
Sloan’s eyes fixed somewhere beyond Grace. Not on the room. Not on Maddie. On memory.
“The torches,” she said.
Grace waited.
“They were around the altar. The elders were there. Sage was there. Maddie was on the altar.”
“Describe her position.”
Sloan’s breath hitched. “Bound.”
A stir moved across the dais.
Grace did not look away from Sloan. “How?”
“Wrists. Ankles. She was trying to get loose, but she couldn’t.”
Maddie made no sound. Neither did Nikolay.
I knew that kind of silence from battlefields after the screaming stopped.
“What was Sage Lynch doing when you arrived?”
Sloan’s face crumpled.
“He was standing over her.”
“Was anything in his hand?”
“I saw a knife near him. In his hand or on the altar, I don’t—” The spell hummed sharply. Sloan winced. “In his hand. I think it was in his hand.”
“What happened next?”
Sloan stared at Maddie.
The entire chamber seemed to lean away from the answer before it came.
“Maddie screamed Nikolay’s name again.”
Grace’s expression did not change.
“And Sage?”
Sloan’s lips shook so badly the first words failed.
Grace did not rescue her.
Sloan forced them out.
“He hit her.”
Maddie closed her eyes.
Nikolay’s folded hands tightened over Maddie’s until one knuckle split. A bead of blood appeared, bright against pale skin, and healed almost as quickly.
“Describe the strike,” Grace said.
Ironwood’s counsel stood. “Objection. Asked and answered.”
“No,” Grace said, turning toward the Magistrate with perfect calm. “It has not been answered. The witness has stated that he hit her. The nature of the strike is relevant to whether Sage Lynch was engaged in consensual ritual or violent coercion in the moments before Prince Nikolay arrived.”
The Magistrate’s gaze moved from Grace to Sloan.
“Overruled. The witness will answer.”
Sloan’s voice broke apart.
“Open hand. Hard. Across the face. Her head snapped to the side.”
A sound moved through the chamber.
Not quite a gasp. Not quite a growl. Many species had ways of responding to an indefensible thing before their politics remembered itself.
Grace’s hand rested lightly on the lectern.
“Did Madelyn cry out after being struck?”
“Yes.”
“Was Madelyn crying to be released?”
“Yes.”
“Did she renounce Nikolay?”
“No.”
“Did she call for Sage?”
“No.”
“Once again, whose name did she call?”
“Nikolay.”
“Why didn’t you run to her?”
“Guards grabbed me, then took me to my room and locked me there. I wasn’t freed until after Sage was dead.”
Sloan turned fully toward Maddie then, breaking the clean line of examination, breaking the invisible rule that witnesses speak to counsel and Council, not to the person they harmed.
“I would have stopped him,” she said.
Her voice fractured on every word.
Maddie lifted her head.
Sloan’s face was wet now, ruined by tears she seemed too tired to wipe away.
“I swear to you, Maddie. I didn’t know. I didn’t know he was going to do that. I would have stopped him.”
The prosecution erupted.
“Objection. Move to strike. Nonresponsive, improper address to—”
The Magistrate’s staff struck stone once.
“Enough.”
The word silenced him more effectively than any shout would have.
Grace did not look triumphant. She did not look moved, though I knew she was. I could feel the bond between us, taut and bright, carrying fury, control, sorrow, and the terrible satisfaction of a truth finally spoken where it could not be buried quietly.
She turned to face the Magistrate.
Her voice was level.
“No further questions.”
The Magistrate looked to the prosecution.
“Cross-examination?”
The counsel stood.
Then stopped.
His eyes went to Sloan, who sat gripping the witness stand with tears still falling down her face.
He looked toward the Ironwood gallery, where rage and grief warred with visible fear.
He looked toward the Council, where no face offered him rescue.
He looked, finally, toward Grace, who had stepped back from the lectern and waited with the patience of a woman willing to let him put his hand into a fire if he insisted.
He lowered his papers.
“No questions.”
A faint sound moved through the chamber, cut short by the Magistrate’s stare.
“Witness may step down.”
Sloan rose unsteadily.
One guard approached, but she descended the steps without taking his offered arm. Pride again, or penance. Perhaps both.
Then the guard directed her toward the side exit.
She went.
The doors closed behind her.