The Nechi's Wife

✣ chapter twenty ✣

I've been facing some serious writer's block. and I'm so sorry for taking practically a month to update. but here is chapter twenty:

...

There he was.

As he strode into the court, his arms interlocked by a trio of guards, I caught sight of where I'd bitten him. His earlobe was so jagged, so horrifically mangled—

By me.

He deserved it. He deserved what you did to him. Stop feeling guilty.

Flynd touched my fingers, but his warmth did nothing to ease the cold tremors dancing across my skin. No matter how much I wanted to forget—no matter how hard I tried—Declan would always haunt my thoughts. 

"Ayan, it's alright. He can't hurt you," My husband murmured in my ear. It was then that I realized how stiff I'd become.

Declan didn't notice me as he sat in the defendant's chair, but his unbothered demeanor was infuriating. How could he act so nonchalant when he was under trial for attempted assault? While I, the victim, was trembling in my seat?

Part of me wanted him to look in my direction, see the damage he had done and rue the day he'd ever been born. But a larger, less courageous part, wanted to run away and hide in my room.

The presiding judge, a man with a stern eye and a dramatic white wig, commenced the trial with the slamming of his gavel, "I will now entertain the preliminary arguments of the prosecution."

The prosecutor whom King Renyld had appointed was one of the nobles, Lord Carrig, a man who I'd never seen or met until several days before the trial. He was not an affable man, a person who had seen such horrible crimes that he'd been rendered cold and indifferent. In fact, upon hearing my story, he merely shrugged and said he thought we could make a good case.

He was a well-educated prosecutor, I had to admit, but the realization that I'd be on the stand, explaining what happened to me chilled my bones. It'd be like experiencing the suffocating heat, the slinking oil—all over again

For the majority of the trial, my mind drifted. Until I heard the judge's booming voice echo in the courtroom, "I now call the Princess to the stand."

After squeezing Flynd's hand, I made my way to the front of the court. As I took my seat, Lord Carrig approached me. His eyes weren't reassuring, but they weren't discouraging either.

"Your Highness, could you please tell us what happened?"

I nodded as I tried to gather enough courage to speak. "I...I was tricked. By Sir...I was tricked by him."

I couldn't even bring myself to utter his name.

"Go on, Your Highness," Lord Carrig encouraged with uncharacteristic patience.

"He said he wanted me to teach his son piano...I didn't know he didn't have a son," I tried not to think about how large the courtroom was, how it felt like I was being swallowed by a mass of quiet. "On the day of the lesson, I waited in the music room...till he came and told me there was a different music room across the castle."

"But it wasn't a music room, was it?"

I shook my head. "No, it was a bedroom. I..." Tears pricked behind my eyes as I voluntarily allowed the memory to resurface. "He...he pushed me on the bed. I managed to escape and...Sir Lorcan found me."

"How did you escape?"

"I...bit his ear," I whispered.

"Pardon?"