I waited in a small room during the opening arguments until a court officer came in to escort me into the packed hall.
All heads turned to me.
I walked past the table where the attorneys, Nikolai, and Kenneth Locke, sat: the accusing party. My legs carried me forward, but I looked at the next row behind a wooden barrier that separated the gallery from the proceedings, where my father, Hunter, and Jordan sat. My eyes locked with the latter, my smile faltering as an avalanche of emotions hit me. I averted my eyes and let them move to my friends in the following row: Kelian, Cardan, Tania… Even Keano and the rest of the team had come.
They had all shown up—every one of them here to support me—encouraging me forward with every step I took.
Even Vlad had wished me good luck that morning. He had video called because he had wanted to see me before Lieutenant General Locke kept me away from him forever. The conversation had calmed me—reassured me. He had made me laugh.
The court officer took my crutches and rested them against the wall. Someone cleared their throat as I climbed a small flight of stairs, the old wood groaning before I stood in the small witness box.
People shifted in their seats, whispering to each other, and the room’s buzz drowned out my nerves. The hall was enormous, but they had let in too many people, including press representatives in the back of the room, who were already writing down notes and recording audio. I tried to ignore the crowd as much as possible. The only thing that mattered was the court case, not the public.
Oh, how they would eat up the information that would be revealed today.
One judge raised a hand, silencing the room, and opened her mouth. “Taking the stand is Brigadier General Raven Renée.”
I looked at the three judges in total. They were going to decide on Domasc’s fate. And mine, for that matter. Nikolai and the team told me that none of the judges were outspoken in politics or affiliated with Domasc. This trial could go both ways; it was wholly dependent on the evidence.
* * *
The judge closest to me looked down. “Put your hand over your heart.”
She took off her glasses when I crossed my hand over my chest. “Do you swear to speak the truth and nothing but the truth, according to your own experiences and knowledge?”
“I swear.”
She put the glasses back on her nose and nodded, reading something in front of her. “Then let’s get started. Attorney of the accusing party, you may now question your witness.”
I sat down, adjusting the built-in microphone on the table in front of me.
Then I straightened my back, wrapping my hands together on the dark brown table in front of me, and faced Domasc. The silver in his hair framed his dark beard and sideburns. He would have been handsome once, if he hadn’t been such an asshole.
Micah walked over to me, his gaze reassuring. “We’re glad you could be with us today, Brigadier General.”
I leaned in slightly to the microphone. “Of course.”
“Tell us, Brigadier General, how did you first hear about the assignment?” Micah wrapped his hands behind his back as he waited for my answer.
“Chief General Domasc told me about it.”
He nodded. “He asked you to join the mission, didn’t he?”
I swallowed. “More like demanded it.”
“Objection. Argumentative,” Domasc’s Attorney said.
Micah gave me a reassuring look. He and Lisa had told me this often happened during court cases, and they had pressed to speak the truth no matter what. It could sway anyone’s mind, even if they had to remain impartial.
“Objection sustained,” the judge ruled. “Continue.”
“So,” Micah continued, “Chief General Domasc sent you on this mission.”
“Correct.”
“And what did he tell you about it?”
I sat back. “Not much. Only that it was classified, ‘off-the-books’.” I made quotation marks. “And that we would investigate some suspicious activity.”
“Did he explain why you, in particular, had to go?”
I answered all these questions as we had practiced, “He said it was because I had a lot of experience with the shadow plains.”
“But there are more soldiers with experienced in the shadow plains, aren’t there?”
“Yes.”
They had made bite-sized clips of my body cam footage spanning across every part of the journey on the plains. Micah went over every little detail, which took a very long time. From solidifying facts to walking a fine line between my own opinions and interpreted activity.
When we got to the part in the hospital, some people in the room gasped as they found out who my mother was. Others were still trying to catch up to what they saw.
“When you arrived at the designated location, you quickly realized Borzians occupied it, right?”
“Correct,” I replied again.
“How did you know?”
I heard the rustle of papers from Domasc’s side, but remained focused on Micah. “I walked into a room and found Borzian documents. That’s how I came to the natural conclusion that we were dealing with Borzians.”
“And did something solidify that deduction?”
“Yes. A Borzian woman walked into the room. She told me her name was Tatiana Zander, and that she had been waiting for me.”
He inclined his head. “I would like to exhibit evidence 23.”
The screen in front of me, and the rest throughout the room, showed another video. This time, I was showing the Ardenian part of the documents when a woman’s voice filled the room.
“Finally, we get to meet.”
I swallowed as I relived the entire experience for the third time. We continued talking and fought until the camera broke and the footage shut off.
“Was this the moment you just described?”
I cleared my throat. “It was.”
“And the other woman in the video was indeed Tatiana Zander?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know who she was?”
Shaking my head, I replied, “Not immediately.”
“What happened after the footage ended?”
I looked out into the crowd, meeting Jordan’s eyes before looking back at the Attorney, inhaling deeply. I bowed my head ever slightly and looked at the ground. “She tried to kill me.”
Murmurs arose in the crowd as people started murmuring, and journalists whispered into their recording devices.
“Please exhibit evidence 103.”
“Here we can see your wounds,” Micah said, as multiple photos of my wounds flashed into view, all made after they brought me back from the plains. “Tatiana Zander was the reason behind all of them?”
I tore my eyes away from the screen, my unconscious face. “Yes.”
“You were in a two-week coma after this happened, right?”
“I was.” My head started pounding; my throat was parched. I forced my hands to take the glass of water before me and drink from it.
“And you’ve only woken up… what, a few days ago?”
“Yes. Four days ago,” I confirmed.
Again, the buzzing made its way through the crowd, but I kept looking at Micah standing in front of me. His suit was a pristine dark blue, and his dark hair was styled meticulously. He was in control, his expression calm.
Breathe.
“And Chief General Domasc send you there, to Tatiana Zander, right?”
I forced my eyes to remain on him. “He did.”
“And you found evidence that he knew she wanted you?”
“I did,” I agreed again.
“What did you find out?”
“That the bird Domasc had written about was me.”
“Objection! Speculation.”
“Overruled,” the judge immediately said, but added, “Proceed to elaborate.”
Micah requested another piece of evidence of the messages Domasc had sent to Tatiana. The ones I had read in the field.
He cocked his head. “How did you know you were the bird?”
“I put the pieces together. My mother is Natasha Zander. Tatiana called herself my aunt. And, after a while, Tatiana confessed I was the reason she was there.”
“Did she say something else?”
My aching fingers were stiff. “She told me I would never get the throne. And I told her I didn’t want it.”
“Objection. The question assumes facts not in evidence.”
The judges sustained the objection.
“What did she want from you?” Micah asked.
I looked at the judge. “She wanted to kill me.” My wounds spoke for me, did they not?
“Because you’re the heir to the Borzian throne? A threat to her claim?”
I nodded. “That’s what she told me.”
“Let’s get into exhibit…” Micah’s voice ebbed away as I looked down, stashed my hands between my legs to warm them up, and focused on my breath.
This was going to be a long day.
* * *
During the short recess, I fled inside the toilets. I didn’t feel like speaking to anyone right now—not until this trial was over. Even though my leg still hurt from time to time, it was a relief to stand after sitting for hours on end.
I washed my hands under the lukewarm water, careful while my crutches dangled on my arms. My fingers were aching and had grown stiffer with every minute that passed inside the courtroom, like the rest of my body.
The door to one stall opened, and… Ashley walked out. Surprised, I looked at her through the mirror, my hands still under the faucet.
I didn’t know what to say.
“Hey,” she said, which was a good start.
“Hi,” I said back, turning off the tap and getting a paper towel to dry my hands.
Should I walk away? Stay? I didn’t know what I would say to her if I did. I grabbed my crutches and leaned some of my weight on them and off my leg.
Before I decided my next course of action, she said, “You did well in there.”
My doubt was instant. “You think so?”
“Yes,” she said.
She was much better at this than I was, but I guess that’s why she had become a lawyer instead of a soldier.
My smile was genuine. I slowly averted my gaze back to the door. “Well… I have to go back.” I hesitated. “Are you staying?”
Ashley started washing her hands, but she smiled at me through the mirror. “I’m staying.”
* * *
“You say you didn’t know what you were going to do inside the field, but that’s not completely true, is it?” Domasc’s attorney asked me. She walked from the accusing party’s table and stalked closer to where I sat in the witness box.
I looked at her. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You knew you were going to Damruin, didn’t you?”
“I knew the location of the mission, correct.”
They showed the fragment of me in the hospital again. I watched how I found my mother’s file again, how I read it again and took it with me again.
“Can you tell us what we’re looking at, Brigadier General?” The woman asked me. She barely suppressed a twitch of her lips, which was weird.
“Do I seriously have to answer that?” I looked at the judge.
Someone in the courtroom snorted.
“Silence in the courtroom,” one of the judges ordered, and the one closest to me said, “Yes.”
My eyes darted toward where the sound had come from, and I noticed Tania laughing silently—a fist in front of her mouth. Cardan also barely suppressed his laughter: he had a hand wrapped around the bottom of his face and tried to conjure a stern look in his eyes. Even Major Britton had folded his lips together. On the way back, my eyes trailed past Nikolai, who gestured to me to stay calm.
I looked back at Domasc’s attorney. “You’re looking at me in the hospital.” Again, I wanted to say, but suppressed the urge.
She stepped closer and continued, “Why were you in that hospital, Brigadier General?”
“To find my mother’s file.”
“So you could erase the evidence?”
Evidence? I frowned. “So I could find out what happened to her after she got sick with the mutation.”
“Why did you take the files with you, then?”
“To show my father.” I looked at my father, who smiled at me.
“Or,” she countered, “was it because you didn’t want anyone finding out Natasha Zander was your mother? So you could remain a spy for the Borzian government?”
Was this woman for real?
“I’m no spy.” I grimaced. “I didn’t even know my mother was Borzian before entering that hospital.”
“But how could we know you didn’t, Brigadier General?”
“Objection—argumentative.”
“Sustained.”
I clenched my fists underneath the table. Relax, Raven. She’s trying to get a rise out of you.
“When you entered the room where you supposedly found the documents, you recognized the Borzian language on those documents, didn’t you?”
“I did.”
“And yet you say you don’t speak or understand Borzian.”
“It’s not hard to recognize the language. It’s very different from Ardenian.”
“Did you plant the documents there to save yourself?”
I frowned. “How would I have done that?” They had seen the tapes, right?
“You tell us, Brigadier General.”
My Attorney stood. “Objection—argumentative.”
“Sustained.”
Domasc’s attorney continued like everything was going according to plan. She had woven her own narrative through mine. Disrupting it, corrupting it. Spinning it, so I looked like the bad guy.
“Have you met Tatiana Zander before this mission?”
I sighed. “No.”
“Then how did you know the woman was Tatiana Zander?”
“I recognized her from a photo in a newspaper, and she told me who she was.”
“Isn’t it convenient that your camera died, and those recordings of her confessions aren’t here?”
“On the contrary. It is highly inconvenient for me,” I deadpanned.
“It’s because she didn’t confess a thing, isn’t it, Brigadier General?”
My hands curled into fists. “No.”
“It’s because you were working with your aunt, isn’t it?”
“Objection!” one of my attorneys stepped in. “Argumentative, again.”
“No.” My anger rose rapidly, and I had to bite my tongue to push it back down.
Domasc’s attorney looked at the judge, that said, “Sustained.”
The woman walked back, grabbing something else from the table. “Tatiana Zander is a respected, distinguished general.”
“You’re a fan?” I asked her.
“Are you?” she countered.
A humorless laugh left me. My head pounded.
“Objection—relevance.”
Nikolai arched a brow at me.
Yes. I know.
“Sustained. Councilwoman, get to the point.”
“You told the court Tatiana Zander wounded you. She scratched your face, broke your leg in multiple places, and stabbed you twice; once in the side and once in the back.”
“Correct.”
“And yet you still walked away from that.”
“I was carried away, unconsciously.”
“But she didn’t kill you.”
I looked at the judge again, wondering if they really expected me to answer that question.
“Objection. Asked and answered,” Lisa said from our table.
“Sustained.”
The attorney wasn’t deterred. “Don’t you think that if Tatiana Zander had wanted to kill you, she would have? She had way more experience than you and—”
“Objection—argumentative.”
The judge sustained it again.
Was she suggesting I had hurt myself or that Tatiana had let me live on purpose? I knew she was trying to bait me, so I had to remind myself that they didn’t have a case. They didn’t have a case. They were going to lose.
“That’s all,” Domasc’s attorney said, stepping back, proving my point.
* * *
“We have to get you out of here before the madness erupts if it hasn’t already,” Nikolai said, and I took his arm as I tried to walk faster. “I booked you a suite in the Westeria, where you can stay for at least the trial duration.”
“Raven!” someone shouted from behind, and I just knew it was Jordan. But as I looked around, the crowd had closed in on us with their cameras and recording devices. Other people were just plain yelling.
He couldn’t get to me.
I had to get out of here. I didn’t even have time to talk to my father or friends.
“Gods,” I muttered as Nikolai led me through the crowd, out of the building, where more people had lined up.
Flashes blinded me, and I held up the hand that wasn’t gripping Nikolai to shield me from the onslaught.
“Raven! Is it true you’re a Borzian princess?”
“Is it true you’ve conspired with Tatiana Zander to take the Borzian throne?”
That didn’t even make sense. What the hell was up with these people making things up out of thin air?
“Is it true you and General Zaregova are in a relationship?”
At that, Nikolai growled deeply, the crowd around us immediately backing away a step or two. “Don’t tell them anything,” he said in a low voice. “They will just twist it into whatever they want to hear.”
A car was already waiting for us, and Nikolai opened the door, letting me step inside. “You did good today, Raven. Take some rest.”
I nodded once before he closed the car and barged straight back inside, the crowd parting around him like he was a god. I tried to catch another glimpse of Jordan as the car slowly pulled away from the courthouse, but the press followed the car, obscuring my view entirely.