King Aldric found General Alric waiting in the dim wash of the corridor, shoulders hunched as if the chill had taken root in his bones. The torchlight caught the silver in his hair and the map of old scars on his hand. He stood when Aldric entered, slow and unsure, as if each step belonged to someone else.
"I was about to send for you," Aldric said without preface, closing the door behind them. "About your daughter."
Alric's hands went to his knees. He shivered once, a sound like a man trying to hold himself together. "Is she…?" His question broke on the single name.
Aldric's eyes were level and terrible in their calm. "She will be punished according to the law." He watched the general for a reaction, then added, blunt as a blade, "What do you have to say about that?"
Alric swallowed. The marrow of the moment showed through, the man who had once stood unbowed before battle now found nothing to say for his child. He looked once at Aldric, then away. "She sinned," he said hoarsely, as if the words burned him to speak. "She must pay the price."
They left the chamber with that between them — a small, cold pact.
-
Judgment day. Word had wound itself through the lanes and alleys like a river of reeds. The square before the hall was full; faces hollowed peered from wooden benches and low walls. Children sat on fathers' knees; old women fanned themselves with fans. Above all, the banners hung limp.
The Hall of Judgement was a rough thing of timber and stone, its rafters blackened by seasons of smoke. The judge sat upon a raised platform, a plain man with a lined face and a voice that always seemed to come from the dry places in his throat.
The soldiers leaned against the plank in the center, their chains clinking like low thunder. Between them, the accused stood: Queen Selene, face set and pale; Princess Evelyn, hair tangled at the shoulders; Virelda, in blood stained garments, hands folded so tightly the knuckles whitened.
The crowd drew its breath as one animal.
The judge rapped the bench with a wooden staff until the sound cut across the murmur.
"Who first brought forth the plan to harm Queen Aurora?" he asked.
Selene's hand shot up before the judge finished the sentence. She pointed with a finger that trembled, not at herself but at Evelyn. Her voice was quick, a hiss of accusation. "Evelyn."
Heads turned. Evelyn's mouth, small and cracked, flattened into a line.
The judge looked from one woman to another.
"Who stabbed her?" the judge asked next, and the hall went very quiet.
Evelyn answered before the judge could press. "I did." The confession fell like a stone.
A dozen people sucked at the air. Someone near the back gagged.
The judge's face did not change, but his eyes sharpened. "And did Queen Virelda partake in the torturing?"
Virelda said nothing. She only bowed her head, tears streaming down her face.
The judge turned to the chained soldiers. "You were with them. Speak plainly."
Their boots left wet prints in the straw from the rain that had washed the square before dawn. They looked at one another, then at the judge, then to the assembly.
One of the soldiers spoke, his voice trembling. "Queen Selene summoned us days before the hunt. She threatened our families, said we dare not tell His Majesty, or our kin would pay the price. We had no choice but to obey."
He swallowed, eyes dropping to the floorboards before lifting again with effort. "In the forest… Queen Selene and Princess Evelyn struck the blows. We only held Queen Aurora down because Queen Selene commanded it. Without her word, we would not have laid a hand upon her."
The second soldier shifted, the chain at his ankle clinking as he nodded. "It was Queen Selene who gave the orders. Princess Evelyn was quick to follow. We did as we were told, no more. The hurt came from them, not from us."
A murmur rose like wind through dry grass. A child cried once, sharp and short. Faces in the crowd shifted; old loyalties bent in the heat of the revelation.
Aldric watched from the front dais, his jaw clenched.
General Alric stood with his head bowed, the general's frame stricken and small beside the throne of law.
The judge let the pause sit until the clamor stilled. Then he spoke, slow and ceremonial. "By the old law of this kingdom, by right and by crown, the court will pronounce judgement."
He addressed Selene first.
"For the crime of conspiring to harm Queen Aurora, and for the direct infliction of cruel wounds upon her person," he began, "you, Queen Selene, will be stripped of your title and garb. Your hair will be shorn in the square — a mark of shame before the people you once ruled with influence. You will be fed, in public, from the common bowl of the road: first, a bowl of the river's mud-water, that all may know your name is not above the grime of the earth. You will be scourged—twenty strokes in the pillory—before being bound to the fields for six years and a day to labor without pay for the relief of the wounded you afflicted."
Selene's mouth opened and closed. Pride and panic wrestled there; when she spoke it was a sound like a snapped string. "You cannot—"
"You gave the order," the judge said, quieter now, as if reminding her of the truth she held like a coin. "You bear the greater burden. Let this be a lesson to those who hide malice beneath courtly smiles."
The crowd's reaction was not immediate. The village folk had not seen a queen humbled so plainly. A few clapped; many only watched.
Aldric's hands were folded so tight his nails bit the skin at his palms.
The judge turned to Virelda. "You, Queen Virelda, will answer for your silence and for permitting the conditions that allowed harm to befall Queen Aurora. Your sentence is less severe: three days and nights in the stocks at the market cross, and four years of service at the infirmary tending the wounded. You will bear a fine to the crown and you will be stripped of your title as a queen."
Virelda's breath left her in a small, startled sound. Shorter.
The crowd breathed again as if someone had loosened a knot.
The judge looked at the soldiers. "For your crimes, this court decrees thus: each of you shall receive thirty strokes, be cast into prison for five years, and be stripped of your rank and station. So let it be carried out."
Finally the judge faced Evelyn.
"For you, who took a blade and struck at the Queen, the law is stern." His voice rang with weight, each word like stone. "By the ancient provisions, you shall be scourged in the square, and thereafter bound to public labour. Furthermore, the court has learned that you came to Velmora feigning peace, while harbouring wickedness in your hearts. This crime is added to your sentence."
They brought forward a basin then, as had been kept for such days: sour water and ash, the instruments of the public scourging.
Evelyn stood rigid, lips white. The first stroke fell. Her shriek cut like a wind through the rafters; the second and third followed. The crowd watched as the flesh took the rod and the color left her face.
When the flogging ended, Evelyn sagged into the arms of those who held her. She was led to a small cell near the hall to be tended by the surgeon's apprentice — a boy with trembling hands who dared to look only once.
Night came and with it the thin dispensary light. The labor that followed — the binding, the cleaning, the whispered curses — was more than her body could bear.
Later that night, in a curtained chamber lit by one guttering candle, Evelyn's breath shallowed and then stopped.
The surgeon's apprentice felt for a pulse and found none. He covered her face with a rough cloth and left the door open so the guard could mark the time. The news slipped from the cell like oil from a broken jar: Princess Evelyn was dead.
At dawn, when the sun broke over the ridge, the palace learned it all. Aldric stood apart, the crown heavy on his brow, while General Alric's shoulders sank as if a great weight had been placed upon him. The judge recorded the death with the same steady hand he used to record births and sales of grain.
Selene's humiliation was complete in the square: her hair was shorn in one clean motion, the mud-water forced into her mouth in a public gesture meant to unmake dignity. She tasted the river's rot and the people watched as a queen became the scouring of the road.
Virelda, stock-marked and humbled, bore her days of penance in silence, her brow sweating under public scrutiny but her sentences measured and shorter.
After that day, the hush that fell over the kingdom was not peace. It was the exhausted quiet after a storm—an ache left where something living had been broken.
Aldric walked among his people afterward, greeting none, his face a map of lines that had deepened in the space of a few hours.
General Alric went to the place where his daughter might have been, and paused there, hands on the lintel as if the air itself might say the thing he could not.
Judgement had been given. The law had run its course.