All Chapters of I Married My Mate's Enemy : Chapter 81 - Chapter 84

Lana’s POVSpring came stubbornly, the country reluctant to change all at once. It arrived the way it always did—slow green, mud, and the first splatter of lambing in the barns. The hermitage smelled like peat fires and paper. The map we'd been stitching together grew layered with not just places but names, the faces of people who gave testimony and those who risked small betrayals of their own comfort to do what was right.Our campaign had become less about a single, dramatic takedown and more about making the truth cumbersome for those who relied on whisper networks. We put Elders on record, coaxed a courier to keep a receipt, and trained witnesses to recount events with calm precision. Each small success loosened the manipulators’ grasp; each public inquiry tightened the light.One morning, as panes of glass trembled under a dull wind, an envelope arrived for us at the hermitage. Inside was a thin, nervy note: *We’re watching the Assembly. Aldis has moved to the coast. He’s meeting

Lana’s POVThe Assembly met in a building that smelled of old wood and the careful confidence of men who had decided the fate of towns for generations. We had built our case with witnesses, with ledgers, with quiet demonstrations that taught councils to be suspicious of gifts. Now the work felt grimly formal: we would bring evidence before a body packed with men who guarded reputation like an old Sunday shirt.Warren had spent weeks preparing the legal framing. He’d taught witnesses to hold their memory steady and to avoid the rhetorical jaws that Assemblymen used to twist facts. Mara had trained them like performers, coaching voice and cadence so that the testimony would land in the stony ears of magistrates. Bastion and Maris had worked with scholars to authenticate artifacts and provide neutral explanations of their effects. The hermitage had become a laboratory for truth.We arrived early, sun slanting through the Assembly’s high windows. The building’s wood seemed softer up close