Chapter 28 · Trial Under the Fallen Crown

"You don't get to burn the witnesses just because they remember what you did." I planted myself between the old minister and the ash vault door.

Behind me, three surviving Morton servants huddled against the cracked pillars. Their wrists were bound. Their faces were gray with soot. Every one of them had watched my family carve marrow from my bones and call it a sacred inheritance.

Minister Orlan lifted one silver brow. "Move, Sula. This court has no place for a thief wearing a dead woman's name."

"Funny. I was about to say the same thing about you."

A murmur rolled through the ruined hall.

The fallen crown above us hung from half-broken chains, its black metal spikes buried in the stone. The old royal courtroom had already lost its roof. Ash drifted through the open rafters and settled on the minister's white coat.

He brushed it away. "You demanded a public trial. You have one. The evidence is gone, the witnesses are compromised, and your claim is nothing but a story told by a woman who crawled out of a grave.