Chapter b184 /b

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b“/bYou heard the king, MOVE!!” Marlow’s bark was a bell.

Soldiers snapped into ce, moving like practiced shadows into corners.

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The crowd’s murmur became a buzz the size of a hive. People leaned in to hear. Children pressed their bfaces /bto the railing and watched as if the night were a y made for them.

It was then that the first of the consequencesnded, soft and heavy: faces I had known for years began to look at me as if I might be a story they had misread. A baker’s wife, the woman who had once shared her bench with me in the marketb, /bstepped back as if the space beside me was suddenly too hot.

It hurts in a particr way to see trust take a step back.

I would not pretend the coldness did not cut; it did.

But I had a King, my mate with his hand on my back and a guard at my side who would not let a whisper grow teeth without proof. I breathed.

Monica finished binding and stooping to clean Isolde’s wound. Her hands were careful but swift. The first thing she did was an undoing of the theater. She wiped at the blood with cool cloth and the wound rose like a red moon in the fabric. She then dipped a bit of linen into a clear solution, smelled it and frowned.

“You have traces of something herbal mixed with iron,” she said. “Not wolfsbane in its crude form. A binder. Someone meant the scent at the wrong time. But there’s-” She held her breath like she’d found a note on a page. “Small residue of apound that looks like it was used to…draw attention. It darkens the blood when exposed and makes a wound glisten more. A show wound.”

The yard turned.

Not everyone understood the words, but those who had been wound up with theater recognized the pattern.

Isolde’s scream had been a prop, and the wound had been shaped to deliver a spectacle.

Isolde clutched at Monica’s hands as if the healer might usher something like mercy near. “They tried to hurt mebi,/i/bbi” /i/bshe cried. “She tried to-”

Monica kept working. “You stabbed yourself on purpose?” she asked quietly, not using, only collecting facts like a basket. “Or was someone helping you?”

Isolde’s eyes were a web of panic. “I didn’t-” she started. “They… They made me-” Her voice faltered, then began again in a frantic whisper: “They said he didn’t love her. They said she bewitched him. They said- they told me I was worthless if I let him leave with a stranger-b” /b

bThe /bstory was fitful.

It bhad /bthe btexture /bof a person who had been fed snippets of venom until the venom became their bvoice/b. Monica listened, pressed the clean cloth against the cut, and then looked up, slow and bsteady/b, like ba /bwoman who does not let pity make decisions.

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“We will put you under guard,” she said. “You will speak once you are conscious and sober. The soldiers will record what they saw. We will have witnesses. If you were coerced, tell them. If you conspired-” The threat in her tone might as well have been a knife turned the other way.

Marlow stepped forward and fixed Isolde’s wrists more firmly, not cruelly but with the unambiguous weight ofw. “You will answer,” he said. “The King will hear. But not tonight. Tonight we secure the truth.”

Francesco’s voice was quieter when he finally spoke.

He threaded his fingers through mine and squeezed like a promise. “Eine. I need you to stay with Monica while we take statements. Will you, amore mio?”

Tears that had been high and hot behind my eyes slid back, cooling like rain.

I give him a small smile before nodded. “Of course.”

We moved to the infirmary together.

The corridor smelled of herbs and the faint guilt of men who’d once trusted whispers too easily.

Audrey did not let go of me until Monica led me to a pallet and told me to rest. She stayed, de leaning close like a shadow unwilling to leave its post.

They made everyone give statements. It was a slow, clinical unpeeling. Faces were recorded: who had stood where, who had said what, which direction people saw me move. Hands that had been clutching at thece of a gossip altered under the weight of the soldier’s pen. People who had raced to be first with knowledge now had to be precise with memory.

The thing that struck me as we went on was something I’de ito /iexpect but still did not relish: how quickly loyalty had to be asked for. The people I’d fed bread to, the ones who had watched me in the kitchens andughed with me, gave their ounts with a hesitancy I had not known before. It was not malice; it was fear — fear of being wrong, and those who love a clear story over aplicated one will choosefort.

At one point a child brought me a small ribbon she had found in the yard. “For luck,” she said solemnly.

I tied it to my wrist like an anchor, the way sailors knot their thoughts and expect seas to behave.

When thest witness left, Francesco was tired in a way that made him hard to read. He had the look of a man who had run and not found his breath. He sat at the end of the infirmary pallet and took my hand between both of his. “They will bring Isolde to talk in daylight,” he said. “They’ll have to tell the truth. We will set watchers. We will unpick the weave of this story until we find the first loose thread.”

I leaned into him, fingers pressing into the meat of his palm. “Who told her those words?” I asked.

He didn’t answer immediately. That was the silence of thinking through a horizon.

“Someone who wants to sow division,” he said atst. “Either from across the border or someone with a hunger for a position inside. We will pull both threads. I’m just d you’re okay, my Luna”

I give him a small smile, he cares, my priority and safety is always his number 1.

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Beyond the infirmary door the yard held its breath and then moved. Soldiers went to the gate to tighten the ring; a messenger was sent to the outer posts. Alfonso wrote, and his pen scratched like a man delivering an indictment.

Monica lifted her hands and dered she would not be part of a witch hunt; she would be part of a careful truth–extraction.

The entire night, Iy awake against Francesco’s chest.

The world outside our room hummed with a worry that did not fit in the smallness of the mattress and

nkets.

Looks like it was the beginning of something unknown.