Dark Halls, Stone Walls

Chapter Twenty-Five

She opened the tool's mouth as wide as possible then placed it against his throat.

His shaky breaths halted.

"Explain yourself until I get tired," She said softly. "Or I'll cut out that useless throat of yours."

He stammered. "Wh-what do you mean?"

She stared at me with frighteningly empty eyes. "Go on, ask him that question that you had on your mind." As if to make a point, she pressed against him harder.

He grunted. He still wasn't breathing.

I struggled to get the next words out. "What about any possible evidence? Surely something gave me an alibi or something else. Even so, explaining my current condition should have been enough to cast doubt on my guilt! Why would I betray you if I was going to get hurt?"

She loosened her grip. He drew in a trembling breath. "... It was already a struggle to get people to understand that you had amnesia, so the fact that the defense lost by a slight majority is already incredible."

I sighed. He continued.

"So we're on a fast track to her trial and it's not looking good. I've been trying my best to gather evidence so that it didn't get destroyed, but my room was ransacked, with most of the evidence—"

She interrupted him, speaking sterner than before. "And why didn't you put it in a locked safe or even with the local guards?"

"... Because of the cooking incident, I stopped trusting people as much." He sounded slightly annoyed. "I refused to have my room be cleaned under the guise of a broken heart, I investigated everything, and kept a lot of evidence on my person so that just in case there would be a backup."

His shoulders sagged. "That was the one saving grace out of all of this, but it's not going to be enough to hoist her out of a guilty verdict. It might get down to a prison sentence rather than a death sentence, which could be a blessing in disguise until I find or recover enough evidence to get her sentence lifted."

She glared daggers at him and then articulated herself in such a way that reminded me of a ruthless mother, not an optimistic woman in love, "So let me get this straight, you thought her family is trying to take you out with her help, but things went down the wrong way, so now everyone is locked away and she's going to take the fall anyway despite her innocence?"

He nodded helplessly. She scoffed and then glanced at me.

"What, got something else to say?"

I nodded, "Am I truly innocent?"

An uneasy quiet. I quickly explained myself.

"I-I mean, yeah, if letters were forged and the like, then yeah, there's that. A-and I don't think I'd betray the crown... but isn't it—isn't it weird that if my family was accused of sedition and treason, that I would be completely in the dark about it? There's no way that, if my family was involved, that I would not know anything as big as blocking in the entire castle. Also!" My heart squeezed from the pressure in the atmosphere and the words fell out even faster. "H-how did no one noticed that there was such a large moment about to happen? I don't know if it's logs or stones that are blocking the doors, but wouldn't someone have noticed it and investigated it since there was a royal wedding coming up?"

He nodded. "It wasn't logs or stones, but we noticed abnormal movement. The problem was that it was a little too late... but you bring up a good point." He admitted begrudgingly. "We should have noticed something way faster than we did and now no one really knows whose side anyone is on. I initially thought that the faster we get this trial going, the better, though only so that rumors can spread that the rebellion has died out... but since so much evidence is gone..."