FAYE
The council chamber was suffocating. The walls seemed to close in as the elders bickered back and forth, each voice dripping with judgment and suspicion. They weren’t even hiding it anymore...every sentence was laced with the same accusation: that I didn’t belong here.
I sat there, listening, watching as faces I had once respected twisted into masks of contempt. Over and over they repeated it—“she is not supposed to be here,” “until a trial is held, she has no place among us,” “she cannot be treated as equal when her innocence has not been proven.”
The words dug into me like splinters. I wanted to clench my fists, to scream at them to stop tearing me apart like I was some carcass laid on their table for dissection.
Alexander shifted beside me, clearly ready to speak, but something
