Chapter 2: The Luna On Trial
1008 Words
Ariana's POV
Six days in the holding cell and nobody had told me anything.
No updates, no counsel visits that lasted longer than ten minutes, no word from Kayden. I had spent six days in a stone room with a narrow window and my own thoughts.
I arrived at the courtroom, already worn out, I was not prepared for what the prosecutor opened with.
"Elders." He addressed the panel. "Before we present the physical evidence, this court should understand the emotional state of the accused in the weeks before the death of her daughter." He paused. "Luna Ariana had recently discovered that her husband, Alpha Kayden had been involved in a long-standing relationship with another woman."
The audience stirred and I stopped breathing. He had another woman. That explained everything, the cold dinner, the cold looks.
I had spent three years of our marriage believing I was the problem, unable to give him whatever it was he needed from a Luna and it turned out the answer had nothing to do with me, he just had someone else.
I looked at Kayden across the room. He was already looking at me, his jaw tight.
"Luna Ariana."
I pulled my eyes back to the front.
The prosecutor set a folded dress on the evidence table and smoothed it flat with both hands.
"This was recovered from your personal wardrobe." He said. "The blood on it is confirmed to belong to the child."
"That is not my dress." The words came out fast. "I have never seen it before."
"It was found in your wardrobe." He argued.
"Then someone put it there." I insisted. "That is not my dress."
"The wardrobe was locked." His voice was cold.
"I just told you it isn't mine..."
"You had the only key to the wardrobe." He said, cutting me off.
"Then someone made a copy." I tried to keep my voice calm. "Someone who had access to my chambers. Someone who had been planning this long before I walked into that room."
He looked at me for a moment then moved to unwrap a knife.
"This was recovered from under a floorboard in the Luna's private bathroom." He said. "It was cleaned but not well enough."
The audience stirred, gasps and whispers came from different direction.
"I have never seen that knife," I said. "I don't know how it got there."
"It was in your bathroom, Luna Ariana." He said, not convinced. "Your private bathroom that no servant enters without your permission."
"Someone entered without my permission. Someone went into my rooms and hid the dress, the knife and sent me a note with my daughters name on it to make sure I was standing in that room when she was found..." I paused and took a deep breath. "I know how this sounds but I am telling you the truth."
The prosecutor smiled slightly. "Of course you are."
The witness took the stand next.
I didn't recognize her immediately. They said she was a merchant's wife. She had been at a pack gathering two months before Lena died. She settled into the seat with her hands folded in her lap and her eyes anywhere but mine and began talking.
"I heard her in the corridor outside the east hall, she didn't know I was there." Her voice was steady. "She was speaking to one of the servants, I didn't hear what the servant said, but I heard the Luna clearly."
"What did she say?" The prosecutor asked.
"She said her daughter was the only thing keeping her trapped in a marriage she wanted out of." She said. "And that if she was out of the picture, she would have freedom."
The courtroom went completely silent.
Something cold moved through me. I had been unhappy in my marriage, everyone in the room knew that and someone had twisted that into something false.
I was on my feet before I knew I was standing. "That is a lie."
Every head in the room turned to me.
"She is lying." I pointed at the woman, she shook but still wouldn't look at me. "I have never said that. I have never in my life spoken about my daughter that way. Someone paid her to stand there and say..."
"Sit down," an Elder said.
"She won't even look at me." My voice cracked. "Ask her to look at me and say it to my face..."
"Luna Ariana." His voice was sharp. "Sit down or I will have you removed."
My counsel pulled at my arm, harder this time. "Ariana, sit."
I sat, my whole body was shaking.
"You have to stop," he said under his breath.
"She's lying." My voice was sharp.
"They don't care." He kept his voice low and flat. "Everytime you react like that you look unstable. You look like someone capable of killing your own child. So calm down."
I looked across the room at Kayden. He was watching the witness step down from the stand with his arms crossed and his expression sealed shut.
"Kayden." I said his name. "Kayden, look at me."
He didn't turn. The elder called for deliberation. I sat in the empty loud room and waited and did not let myself think about Lena because thinking about Lena would destroy what was left of my composure and I needed what was left of my composure to survive whatever came next.
They came back in forty minutes.
"On the charge of murder in the first degree," The elder said. "This court finds the accused..."
I looked at Kayden one last time.
"... guilty."
The room exploded in noises. My counsel closed his eyes, the guards moved toward me immediately, hands closing around my arms, and I didn't fight it because there was nothing left to fight with.
Kayden finally looked at me across the noise and chaos and I waited, even now, even after everything, some part of me still waited.
He held my gaze for a long moment then he said, loud and clear. "Take her out."
- Writer
