CHAPTER 15: THE SCRIPT

The marks on the left side of my neck are dark, bruised, and punctured sharply at the center, trailing a stark smear of red down over my collarbone. Nobody breathes. A young maid standing near the garden hedge gasps loudly behind her hand.

"Gods, it's true," the maid whispers, shrinking back against the foliage.

"So it is," Osric says very quiet, leaning forward over the dark wood of the table, his fingers tapping once against the grain.

Thessaly flares her nostrils, taking a deep, theatrical sniff of the morning air. "I can still smell it on her. A rogue's stink, all over her skin."

Garrick lets out a heavy, derisive snort, shifting his weight so the chair groans beneath him. "Look at the state of her. She's not fit to be a Luna of anything."

"Not Shadow Glint's," Thessaly snaps, her voice sharp as glass. "Not any pack's."

They wrinkle their noses at the lingering pine-and-smoke scent of Valen, entirely misreading the power clinging to my skin as the stain of some common vagabond. I keep my arms rigid at my sides, my fingernails biting hard into my thighs through the fabric of the dress, forcing my pulse to slow down.

Victoria steps forward, seizing the moment with practiced grace. Her voice trembles with a fragile, tearful cadence. "We tried to tell you, Elders. You wouldn't believe us when we warned you about her behavior."

Tristan straightens his shoulders, wearing the mask of a betrayed noble. "I begged them to give her the benefit of the doubt. Now I see I was a fool."

"Poor Tristan," Victoria sighs softly, stepping closer to touch his arm with feigned sympathy. "To be shamed like this in public before the whole council."

Thessaly snaps her gaze back to me, her eyes hard and judging. "Do you hear that? Your fiancé defended your honor despite everything, and this is how you repay him?"

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tristan’s mouth twitch at the corner—a triumphant smile he tries desperately to shove back down into a scowl. Victoria pats his sleeve, playing her part to perfection while her eyes gleam with malice.

You wanted this to happen, I think, staring straight ahead at the marble urn behind Osric's head. You wanted me broken. I'm just choosing how it looks.

The council waits. They expect me to shatter, to drop to my knees on the gravel, to weep and beg for mercy under the weight of their collective disgust. They want the waterworks. They want the submissive slouch that has defined my entire life in this manor.

"Have you no shame, girl?" Osric demands, his voice cracking like a whip across the open courtyard.

"I have shame, Elder," I reply, my voice flat, quiet, and unyielding. "But I don't regret what I did."

Garrick half-rises from his chair, his face darkening with rage. "You dare stand there and..."

"She didn't even blink," a maid mutters from the shadows of the stone wall, her voice trembling.

"She's lost her mind," Thessaly spits out, shaking her head in utter contempt as she leans back in her seat.

I lift my chin higher, letting the cold wind bite into my bare skin. My voice drops to a sharp, scrape-thin whisper that cuts through the murmurs of the courtyard.

"Then ask me why."

Osric’s eyes narrow into dangerous slits, and Tristan’s suppressed smile finally slips entirely from his face, leaving behind a cold, blank space of sudden panic.