Page 90 of Downfall of a Princess

“But I thought I did.” She hid her eyes behind her hand, looking racked by regret. “It was my job to know everything about that man, and I thought I did. I talked to his owner. I verified where his previous contract came from. I checked his history for the past five years. But I didn’t discover this littlepiece of information until today.” She groaned. “I should’ve dug deeper from the beginning. And you should’ve told me who he was the moment you knew.” I inhaled to argue, but she stopped me by raising a hand. “I know, I know. It’s not your fault, Ari. It’s mine.”

“It’s no one’s fault. There is no need to blame anyone.”

But she wasn’t listening.

“I made a mistake. I allowed that viper into the palace. But I will fix it.”

“What do you mean, Gem? What are you going to do?”

She drew in a breath, standing taller.

“All right.Here is whatweare going to do. You,” she pointed a finger at me, stabbing it through the air energetically, “you will keep your mouth shut. You know nothing. No one will be able to identify him for certain as the man who came to your bedroom a few times. I made sure of that.”

“But what areyougoing to do meanwhile?”

“Me...” She gripped her upper arms, pacing the room. “I have a report from the night guards. They saw him returning to the palace that night, just before the body was found. The report is evidence.”

“But he didn’t do it. He didn’t kill anyone.”

“He could have,” she spoke as if thinking out loud. “I’ll just have to present it to Madam Trela in a way that she’d agree with me. The two murders don’t have to be related. Let her hunt down the killer responsible for the last one. Meanwhile, we’ll execute Salas for the first.”

Her words sliced through my heart like a knife. Gem had the power and the ability to do anything she put her mind to, and her mind was clearly set on annihilating Salas.

“Gem, listen to me!” I yelled, finally getting her attention. “Salas didn’t do it.”

“He’s a fallen man, Ari. His physical urges got the best of him. Clearly, he has no control over them since he used to sell sex for money. He’s aggressive. He’s injured a man already, remember?”

“There were six men, Gem. Six men provoked him by insulting someone he—” I cut myself short, afraid to reveal more than was necessary and make the matters worse.

Thankfully, Gem was too preoccupied with developing her plan to notice my misstep or to push for explanation.

“The point is, he’s violent, as it has been proven,” she continued, “and sexually insatiable, as all whores are. It won’t take much to convince everyone that he’s capable of both rape and murder. Especially since we have witnesses. The guards will recognize him. He wasn’t in his barrack at the time of the murder. I need to talk to the slave owner’s helper. He will be another witness for the crown.”

She spun on her heel, heading for the door in a spur of energy.

“Salas didn’t do it, Gem,” I repeated resolutely.

“You don’t know that for sure,” she dismissed.

“But I do.” I stepped between her and the door, blocking her exit. “I am a witness too. I was the woman who led Salas away from the guards. That night, I went to the city with him. We came back to the palace together, though we walked through the gate separately. I’m in the gate guards’ report, too, if you look closely.”

“Ari.” She shook her head, backing away from me. “You’re not helping here.”

“I’m not going to help you execute an innocent man. Salas is not a murderer, and you knew it before you even started cooking this whole thing up in your head.”

She sighed. “Oh, sweetie. For you and me, it’s not about the murder. Or about the truth. Don’t you understand? He’s a brothel boy, a whore—”

“Was,” I corrected, my cheeks burning hot as if she’d slapped me by insulting him.

She waved my correction away. “Regardless, he’s a fallen man, a ruined man. Legally, his only place is in the brothel. But that’s not where he has spent the past seven years, is it? However he obtained that first slave contract, he did so by fraud. Whores can’t leave the fun district without a permit, not even for a night. And he’s been away for seven years now. Do you understand? Either way, he’s a criminal. Every day he’s lived for the past seven years has been a crime. That’s the law.”

“But why?”

I knew that men working in fun houses had to be registered. I was not aware that it was the only occupation they could ever have for the rest of their lives. None of my professors ever mentioned the laws on prostitution. It simply was not a priority of the crown to focus on them or work on improving the lives of those men. Even speaking about them was considered improper. This was another thing about my new world that made sense on the surface but stank with injustice when one poked deeper.

“For public safety,” Gem snapped. “Whores belong to brothels, under the penalty of death if they leave. They’re certainly not allowed anywhere near the palace, not to mention into the bedroom of the crown princess. By not disclosing who he was, he deceived everyone, including you and me. He deserves to be executed, Ari.” She grabbed my shoulders. “Either way, he’s a dead man, rightfully so. The only way we can protect ourselves now is to keep both our names out of it. Which means, he needs to be executed for murder, rather than for vice and treason.”

She said it as if Salas’s death was a decided thing already. All that remained was figuring out the details.

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