The Bound (Ascension #2)(126)

“Queen Brigette,” he said. Cyrene could tell the words hurt him. “Is it true?”

“Queen Cassia and King Tomas were murdered last night in their sleep by an assassin who was apprehended after the incident.”

Brigette gestured off to her right, and Cyrene looked around Dean to see whom she was pointing at. When she saw who was on her knees in chains before the throne, Cyrene gasped aloud.

“Maelia!” she cried.

Cyrene jerked forward, as if to run to her friend, but Faylon grabbed her shoulders and held her in place. Her knees gave out beneath her at the sight of her friend shackled to the ground. Bile rose up in her throat, and her breathing was ragged. Her entire body trembled with the view before her.

It made no sense.

“Cyrene! Cyrene, please!” Maelia cried. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she coughed in between sobs. “I didn’t. I didn’t. Please help me.”

Cyrene just stared at her friend as she tried to stay upright. “She couldn’t have done it. She didn’t,” she whispered.

Dean questioningly looked from Maelia to Cyrene.

Her eyes found his. “She couldn’t have.”

“If that is how you plead,” Brigette said coldly, “then bring forth the witness.”

The reason that Darmian hadn’t gone out to look for Dean materialized before her. He walked out before his Queen and bowed formally in his royal-blue military uniform. He also seemed to have aged overnight.

“I apprehended the murderer, Your Majesty,” Darmian said. His voice lacked all emotion. He was strong and stoic and refused to even look at Maelia.

Cyrene could see how much that broke Maelia. Her head dropped, and all Cyrene could hear was the sound of Maelia crying.

“Please recount what you saw,” Brigette said.

“I was intimately involved with the suspect and had planned to surprise her in her rooms that night.” He delivered that news without a trace of embarrassment or remorse. “When she wasn’t in her quarters after the ball, I went in search of her. I found her leaving the royal wing of the palace. She was crying and shaking and rubbing her hands together, as if she were trying to get the blood off of them.”

Cyrene cringed.

“And then the alarm went up. The Queen and King had been found dead in their bedchambers. There was an assassin loose. Even though I did not want to do it, I searched Maelia because of her suspicious behavior. What I found was this.” Darmian retrieved two sharp blades and laid them before the Queen as evidence. “She sliced their throats open. She is guilty.”

“I didn’t,” Maelia repeated over and over again. “Your Highness, please. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I never wanted to. I was forced to. I resisted for as long as I could. I tried to stay away, but it called for me. It made me.”

Cyrene’s mouth fell open. Maelia was admitting to it. She had actually committed this heinous crime. How is that possible? Poor, sweet Maelia. She was good with a sword, but two Captains of the Guard had raised her. She wasn’t an assassin. She couldn’t be. Could she?

Then, Cyrene really thought about it…all those times she had known just when to go in and out of the palace, unnoticed, how everyone seemed to pass right over her in a crowd, the utter stillness of her feet…

“Creator,” Cyrene whispered. “You did…”

Dean sharply looked at her, but her eyes were focused on Maelia. She couldn’t get in enough air.

Maelia was her friend. She had been her friend from the first day when she was made an Affiliate. Not once had she suspected that her friend could do something like this.

Is this why she had been so sick? She was trying to resist assassinating the crown?

Cyrene felt like an idiot, and she was also utterly terrified. What was to become of Maelia for her actions? Despite everything, Maelia was one of her closest friends.

Brigette looked indifferent. “You admit to your crimes and say someone forced you to do it. Who forced you?”

Maelia was trembling from head to toe. “I wish I could tell you. I wish they would let me.”

Brigette shook her head. “She’s mad. The punishment for the murder of the Queen and King of Eleysia is death. Does anyone here speak otherwise for this girl?”

Maelia looked up into the crowd for someone, anyone, to say something. Cyrene wanted to. She desperately wanted to defend her friend. She stepped forward to do just that, but Dean put his hand on her arm and shook his head. She pushed past him anyway.

“I will! I speak for her,” Cyrene called.

A ripple ran through the watching crowd.

Brigette fixed Cyrene with an icy glare. “You have no voice here, Affiliate. You have been summoned for conspiracy to murder. We already believe that you conspired with your Affiliate friend here to end the lives of our Queen and King. You used Prince Dean to enter the country, seduced him to lull us into a false sense of security, and then sent your assassin to do your dirty work,” she said with venom in her voice. “Your trial awaits you after we deal with this murderer. So, unless you want to follow her onto the block immediately, then I suggest you step back.”

Brigette flicked her hand toward Maelia, and a handful of guards began unchaining her.

Cyrene stepped back in horror. They believed that she had seduced Dean to get close to the royal family. They believed she was responsible for this. But since they hadn’t caught her red-handed, she wasn’t on trial yet, like Maelia was.