Page 48 of The Demon Prince's Accidental Mate
I didn’t look up. Couldn’t look up, so weighed down was I by the paralyzing fear that had taken control of me. When had I grown so weak, so unable even to look my fate in the eye as it judged me for something I had never known was wrong?
“Lilith Rowe.”
The voice was deep but flowing, almost musical in a way. It called me from the front of the room, but I didn’t respond. I’d given up. What was the point?
The speaker droned on about my supposed crimes. Crimes against a person who no longer wanted me punished for them, but that didn’t seem to matter. Not that anyone spoke up on that point, either. The crowd grew restless. They were eager to see me punished.
What waswrongwith those people? How could they all be so full of hate that their only pleasure was seeing others hurt? I stared at the floor. The stone so very clean, so very worn looking.
A lot of people had stood where I stood. How many of them still lived, I wondered? How many had survived their punishment? Would I be able to add my name to their list? I doubted it.
“Jury, are you ready to give a verdict?”
My attention returned to the present for a moment. I wished it hadn’t. I stared at the floor, still held up by the minotaurs, as one member after another stated that, in their minds, I was guilty of all the hideous crimes. I wanted to turn my head, to show them the face of the woman they were condemning to whatever terrible judgment awaited me, but I couldn’t even summon that much willpower.
This isn’t you. This isn’t who you are. You’re stronger than this.
Except I wasn’t.
Besides, what did it matter? The trial had lasted maybe twenty minutes at most. Nobody had spoken in my defense. I hadn’t been given a chance to speak. It was a sham. All for show. Nobody expected that I would be let off. They weren’t there for justice. They were there for blood, and as the final jury member stated his findings that I was guilty, I heard benches creak behind me as people leaned in. Waiting.
“Very well. The criminal has been found guilty of attempts to control others with her magic. To take over their minds. Very serious, very perturbing. But perhaps there’s a chance she can be rehabilitated. Are there any members of the jury who would volunteer for such … training?”
The judge’s voice made it clear he didn’t expect any such training to be successful. He was just offering me up to the highest bidder, giving someone a chance to inflict my punishment. I would have bet a lot more money than I owned that the whole thing had been decided ahead of time.
Off to my left, one of the jury members shuffled as he rose. I couldn’t even look over at him. My defeat was thorough and total. I had nothing left.
“I claim the right to punish this …thing,” he said, his voice cutting with such derision I would have sworn my skin parted under it like a scalpel. He came to stand next to me. I could see his black boots. They were shiny.
“Very well,” the judge said. “Then I shall—”
BOOM.
The doors behind me slammed open hard enough to shake the room. Gasps echoed through the crowd, and an angry growl formed in the throat of the jury member next to me.
A wave of fury washed over me, burning through the cold, dark fear leaving me frozen, releasing me. I whipped my head around at the sudden influx of emotions as they surged through me. There were too many to catalog, and they happened too fast. Because they weren’t mine.
Belial stood in the doorway, wings spread wide, flames engulfing his body. The fingers of his right hand were curled around the haft of a huge double-bladed battle axe.
“She. Is.MINE!” he howled and, without warning, launched himself at the jury member standing beside me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Belial
The blade's edges glowed orange as I swung it at the man who had risen to try to claim Lily. The air whistled, and the heated metal cut through it, but my intended target dodged out of the way at the last second, preventing me from bisecting his ancient body in half.
Damnable vampires.
The room's occupants scattered out of our way as Victor moved like the wind back to his chair, where he drew forth a plain steel blade half a foot longer again than my axe.
“Stay back,” I warned Lily as she looked ready to rush to my side. “This is between me and anyone who thinks they could claim you.”
“Iwilltake the girl,” Victor said imperiously, his perfect crystalline features barely moving as he spoke.
His eyes were the pale blue of a frozen lake under the sun, his skin the brilliant white of a fresh snowfall at midday. The air smelled of the deepest parts of winter in his wake, and he danced like a snowflake in a storm.
I, meanwhile, was the fury of a volcano as it erupted. My entrance was the shockwave. My blade the magma as it sliced its way down the sides of the mountain. My hair trailing like ash falling from the sky, a reminder and a warning all at once.
