Chapter 33: Objection! (2)

Master Edric Reverie approached the witness line as though the royal council had been assembled exclusively to evaluate the moral consequences of poor tailoring.

He moved with elegant solemnity, silver hair falling in a smooth sheet over one shoulder, black-and-silver court robes arranged so precisely that not one pleat dared offend him. Even before he spoke, several councillors appeared to understand that the tailor would not provide a timid or easily manipulated account. He bowed first to King Cassian, then to the council, then—somewhat unnecessarily—to the chamber itself.

The Lord Chancellor looked over her notes.

"State your name, occupation, and your relation to the incident."

"Edric Reverie, master tailor and proprietor of Maison Reverie..."

He replied.

"The incident occurred inside my establishment during a private fitting commissioned by Lord Amor Moons for Lord Valdor Rhazien."

King Cassian inclined his head.

"Give your account from the moment Duke Alphonsins entered."

Master Edric’s expression sharpened. He described the fitting in exacting detail, beginning with Amor and Valdor’s arrival, the preliminary measurements, and the difficulties posed by ordinary garments when faced with a body constructed on Blackstone proportions. He explained that Lord Amor had behaved as a client, not as someone waiting for another party, and that the appointment had been arranged before any knowledge of Duke Alphonsins’s schedule could have been available. Several councillors took note when he stated that Amor had appeared—

"Far more interested in my fabric selection and Lord Valdor’s shoulders than in the possibility of Duke Solaris entering my shop."

Amor closed his eyes briefly. A faint sound moved through the council chamber.

King Cassian did not smile, but one corner of the Lord Chancellor’s mouth tightened as though resisting the impulse. Alphonsins’s face remained rigid. Valdor, standing beside Amor’s chair, looked toward Master Edric with the mild confusion of a man unsure whether praise of his shoulders was relevant evidence. The tailor continued mercilessly.

"Duke Alphonsins entered with Lady Celestine after Lord Valdor had been taken into the fitting area..."

Edric said.

"Upon seeing Lord Amor, the duke immediately accused him of following or staging the encounter. Lord Amor denied this and attempted to end the exchange."

"And Lady Celestine?"

The Lord Chancellor asked.

"She appeared uncomfortable..."

Edric said.

"She did not provoke Lord Amor. She did not encourage the duke’s approach."

Celestine’s shoulders lowered slightly at the acknowledgment. Amor noticed.

Edric then described Alphonsins moving closer despite Amor’s refusal to continue speaking. He described Valdor stepping out of the fitting area partially dressed, placing himself between them after hearing the tone of the confrontation, and Alphonsins’s continued insistence that Amor was performing jealousy. When he reached the moment of physical contact, the chamber seemed to grow colder.

"The duke took Lord Amor by the wrist..."

Edric said.

"It was not a brief accidental touch. His fingers closed around the same bandaged area Lord Valdor had already treated."

The king’s gaze moved toward Alphonsins. The duke’s expression did not change, but his right hand closed at his side.

"What did Lord Valdor do?"

Meridia asked.

"He caught the duke’s forearm, separated the hand from Lord Amor’s wrist, rotated the duke’s balance, and released him."

The chancellor paused.

"Released him."

"Yes."

"Did he strike him?"

"No."

"Did he continue after the duke fell?"

"No."

"Did he draw a weapon?"

"No."

"Did Lord Amor instruct him to act?"

"No..."

Master Edric’s voice remained crisp. He then added, with the faintest trace of offense.

"I will also state for the record that my carpet sustained no permanent damage."

This time, several people failed to conceal their reactions. Alphonsins’s jaw tightened. King Cassian glanced once toward the tailor, then toward the clerks, who recorded the statement with admirable discipline.

"The condition of the carpet is noted."

"Thank you, Your Majesty."

Amor pressed his lips together. Valdor looked down at him. The warmth in his eyes made resisting laughter even harder.

The next witness was one of Edric’s assistants, a young man named Perren who had held Valdor’s discarded furs during the fitting. He approached the witness line with visible dread, hands clasped so tightly before him that his knuckles whitened. When the chancellor asked him to speak clearly, his voice cracked on the first word.

Yet his account matched Edric’s. Perren stated that Lord Amor and Lord Valdor had arrived first, that Amor had seemed excited about the commission, and that Duke Alphonsins entered later. He confessed that when Valdor approached him after the confrontation, he had expected the warrior to strike him merely because of his size and expression, but Valdor only retrieved a medical pouch and asked why Perren feared being hit. The admission produced an interesting silence.

King Cassian leaned forward.

"Why include that detail?"

Perren swallowed.

"Because, Your Majesty, Lord Valdor looked angry enough to frighten me, but he did not hurt anyone who had not touched Lord Amor."

Valdor’s expression remained still. Amor’s fingers shifted upon his lap. The testimony mattered more than it first appeared. Perren had been afraid of Valdor and still confirmed that fear alone did not become violence. He had expected brutality and received restraint.

The second assistant, Miral, testified next. She had been arranging pins near the fitting-room door when Alphonsins seized Amor’s wrist and saw the contact through a crack of the door. Her statement included the detail that Amor had pulled back before Valdor intervened and that Alphonsins’s grip tightened rather than loosened when Amor attempted to withdraw. She also confirmed that Valdor ceased movement the instant Amor told him not to escalate the situation further.

"He listened to Lord Amor..."

She said.

"Like, immediately!"

The words entered the record. Amor felt them settle like a shield.

After the Maison Reverie witnesses, the court received written statements from Madam Bellisa’s confectionery, The Open Hearth and Master Pellin’s jewelry shop verifying Amor and Valdor’s presence elsewhere before and after the tailor appointment. Neither establishment witnessed the confrontation itself, but their records weakened Alphonsins’s claim that Amor had spent the day following him. The Open Hearth’s waiter had even provided, with unfortunate enthusiasm, a statement that the pair had appeared to be on a lunch date and had been too occupied feeding one another to discuss ambushing a duke.

Amor considered asking whether witness statements could be burned after submission. Valdor read none of the embarrassment on his face as shame. He only remained steady beside him.

The proceeding unfolded with a precision Amor had not expected from a world he had once encountered as romantic fiction. The chancellor clarified statements, the king separated testimony from speculation, clerks recorded both words and evidence, and each witness was asked whether they had financial, political, or personal motive to lie. It was not perfect, of course; rank still moved through the chamber like invisible weather, altering how people breathed before speaking.

Even so, there was structure. There were rules. There was a visible attempt to build truth from testimony rather than merely accept the loudest person’s feelings. Amor found himself unsettled by it.

He knew very little about the legal system from his previous world beyond fragments learned from television, school lectures, and the messy battlefield of his parents’ divorce. Courts had always seemed distant until adults decided dragging a child into them might prove useful. When Lovell was young, the word hearing meant sitting in stiff clothes with dry lips while one parent whispered what he should say before the other accused him of lying afterward.

Sometimes he testified against his mother.

Sometimes against his father.

It depended upon who held custody that month, who needed money, who wanted revenge, and which adult decided a child’s voice could be shaped into a weapon. Lovell remembered benches too large for his body, lawyers speaking gently before twisting every answer, and the terrible knowledge that truth mattered less than usefulness. If he said the wrong thing, someone would punish him later.

Those memories were fuzzy around the edges. Not because they were harmless. Because his mind had buried them beneath worse years.

Still, sitting before the royal council while clerks wrote every sentence with scratching pens made his stomach tighten in a way that had nothing to do with Alphonsins. He could almost hear his mother saying, Remember what I told you, and his father saying, Don’t let her make you lie. Both had wanted the same thing from him, though neither admitted it. They wanted Lovell to bleed truth selectively.

Amor did not want to think about it. His hand reached for Valdor almost without intention.

At first, he only touched the warrior’s fingers where they rested near the back of the chair. Valdor responded instantly, lowering his hand until it settled upon Amor’s lap within easy reach. He bent slightly, not enough to draw attention as an obvious gesture, but enough that Amor could hold, turn, and trace his palm without straining. Amor’s thumb moved over the rough calluses.

The texture grounded him. Valdor’s hand was large enough that Amor could barely spread his own fingers across the width of it, the skin warm, scarred, and marked by years of weapons, work, and weather. Amor traced a line near the base of the thumb, then followed the hardened ridge across the palm where spear or axe haft had worn the flesh. Valdor allowed everything.

He did not ask whether Amor was nervous. He did not pull away. He simply offered the hand as though it belonged there.

The intimacy of it should have embarrassed Amor in a royal chamber, yet the movement had begun before self-consciousness could intervene. Every time the testimony drew too close to old memories, his fingers found another scar. Every time Alphonsins shifted across the room, Amor pressed lightly into Valdor’s palm and felt the warrior remain.

Valdor watched the witnesses. Amor watched his hand. King Cassian noticed, though his expression remained neutral. So did Alphonsins.

The duke had been permitted to begin cross-examining the evidence after the initial witness statements concluded. As complainant, he was not acting as a trained advocate, but noble procedure allowed him to challenge testimony directly before the council if the chancellor permitted each question. His military discipline returned as he approached Master Edric first, voice calm, phrasing precise.

"Uh, right. Master Reverie..."

Alphonsins said.

"You are a long-standing merchant of House Moons, are you not?"

"I am a tailor fortunate enough to have clients with taste."

Edric replied.

"That includes House Moons?"

"Frequently."

"So their patronage benefits your business."

"Good taste generally does."

A few councillors shifted. Alphonsins ignored the jab.

"Would losing House Moons’s favor harm you?"

"No."

The duke’s eyes narrowed.

"No?"

"I am the best tailor in the capital. I prefer House Moons patronage because Lord Amor allows interesting commissions, not because I require rescue from poverty."

Amor nearly smiled. Alphonsins adjusted.

"You admit personal fondness toward Lord Amor."

"I admit professional respect."

"Does that not bias your account?"

"Not enough to alter what I saw."

The answer held. Alphonsins moved next to the question of angle and visibility, attempting to establish that Edric could not have seen the exact pressure of Alphonsins’s hand upon Amor’s wrist. Edric conceded he did not measure grip strength, but he had seen fingers close, Amor pull back, and Valdor intervene immediately afterward. The concession sounded reasonable rather than damaging.

Then Alphonsins turned toward Perren. The assistant nearly trembled beneath the duke’s attention, which made him easier to pressure and also more sympathetic before the council. Alphonsins asked whether Perren had feared Valdor before any violence occurred. Perren admitted he had.

"So Lord Valdor appeared threatening prior to intervention?"

Alphonsins said.

"He appeared large."

Perren replied. The answer seemed accidental. It worked beautifully. King Cassian glanced down to hide whatever reaction crossed his face. Alphonsins tried again.

"You expected him to strike you?"

"After the incident, yes."

"Because he appeared violent?"

"Because I was frightened."

"Of violence?"

"Of his size..."

The duke’s mouth tightened. Perren added, with unfortunate honesty.

"Ah-and because I am foolish when frightened."

Vervath made a low approving sound. Alphonsins moved to Miral.

He attempted to suggest that Amor’s withdrawal from his grip could have been dramatic rather than evidence of pain. Miral responded that she had watched Valdor rewrapping the wrist afterward and saw redness around the old bruising. When Alphonsins asked whether she was medically trained, she admitted she was not, but stated that—

"One does not require a physician’s license to see finger marks."

Amor looked down at Valdor’s hand to hide his expression. Valdor’s fingers flexed once beneath his touch.

The cross-examination became more strained as Alphonsins proceeded through each piece of evidence. The records proved Amor and Valdor’s route through the city. The witnesses all placed Alphonsins as the one who approached after Amor attempted to end the exchange. The medical report established both the old bruising and fresh irritation. Still, Alphonsins remained intelligent.

He shifted away from denying every fact and toward framing intention. Amor might not have known Alphonsins would appear, but once he did, Amor allegedly escalated through mockery. Valdor might not have struck him, but causing a duke to fall in public was excessive. House Moons might not have arranged the meeting, but its heir’s conduct drew foreign force into a domestic romantic quarrel. The argument had shape.

Then Alphonsins saw Amor’s hands.

Amor had turned Valdor’s palm upward and was tracing one deep scar crossing diagonally below the smallest finger. The movement was absent-minded, almost soothing, and Valdor stood with his hand resting in Amor’s lap as though nothing about the royal setting made that intimacy inappropriate. When Amor’s fingers pressed experimentally near a callus, Valdor bent his fingers slightly to make the scar easier to follow. Alphonsins stopped speaking.

The witness before him—Madam Bellisa’s shop assistant, summoned to verify the pastry purchase—waited in visible confusion. The chamber noticed the pause. King Cassian followed Alphonsins’s gaze. His steel-blue eyes briefly settled upon Amor’s hand playing with Valdor’s, then returned to his nephew.

"Duke Alphonsins."

The duke startled almost imperceptibly.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"You were questioning the witness."

"Of course."

A faint flush touched Alphonsins’s cheekbones before he composed himself. Amor looked up only because Valdor’s hand had stilled.

He found Alphonsins staring and understood immediately. The duke’s distraction was not caused by testimony, evidence, or legal argument. It was caused by the quiet fact that Amor had sought comfort from another man in full view of the court.

Amor’s expression cooled. He resumed tracing Valdor’s palm. Valdor allowed it. Alphonsins’s next question came too sharply. The chancellor corrected him.

"Ask what the witness observed, not what motive you would like assigned to Lord Amor."

The rebuke landed publicly enough to deepen the duke’s flush. He bowed his head.

"Yes, Chancellor."

Celestine watched from her assigned place behind him. The morning had turned into something increasingly unbearable.

She had known the hearing would be uncomfortable, but she had not expected to feel such heavy guilt while standing within a palace chamber more beautiful than anything her childhood self could have imagined entering. Pale green skirts brushed against her knees whenever she shifted, and the hairpin Alphonsins had once helped her recover held her brown hair neatly back from her face. That small kindness had begun their friendship. She wished it did not feel different now.

Celestine was the illegitimate daughter of Baron Wyclere Meadows, a fact the court remembered when convenient and forgot when assigning obligation. Her father acknowledged her only enough to ensure she could not claim neglect openly, but not enough to provide the money, protection, or security enjoyed by his legitimate children. She learned early that gratitude from nobles did not pay rent, repair shoes, or replace winter cloaks. So she worked.

She cooked in kitchens that needed extra hands during festival seasons, maintained gardens when older workers trusted her with pruning shears, mended linens for merchants, and eventually took seamstress work because her fingers were steady and her eye for detail better than most expected. One recommendation became two, then five, then enough that minor nobles began asking for her by name. She did not become rich, but she became useful. Usefulness was a safer foundation than pity.

Alphonsins entered her life through a lost hairpin. It had belonged to her mother, a modest silver piece set in the shape of a magnolia with a green glass bead, and Celestine had panicked when it disappeared during a royal ball. The duke found it after noticing where she had dropped it by the fountain. He returned it without mockery.

For a man of his rank, the kindness felt extraordinary. Celestine wanted to repay him. When she learned of the upcoming summer festival, she thought an outfit might serve as both thanks and friendly encouragement. She had enough skill to design something elegant but not excessive, and she hoped presenting it would express gratitude without overstepping. Alphonsins allowed the idea, perhaps amused by her determination.

They visited Maison Reverie because she needed fine materials and advice beyond what she could purchase alone. Then they met Amor.

Duke Alphonsins’s former lover.

Everyone at court knew that history, even those who pretended refined ignorance. Amor Moons had been infamous for his devotion, dramatic gifts, and tireless pursuit of a man who remained publicly cold toward him. People laughed behind fans, sighed over his beauty, and whispered that no amount of rejection could cure the Moons heir’s obsession. When Celestine heard they had broken up, she assumed what everyone assumed.

Alphonsins must have ended it.

How could Amor, who had chased him so openly, possibly have walked away first?

Then she saw them inside the tailor shop. Amor had not looked jealous. He had not looked desperate. He had not even looked particularly wounded until Alphonsins kept speaking.

What Celestine saw instead was discomfort hardening into irritation, then anger when the duke refused to accept distance. She saw Amor attempt to leave the conversation. She saw Alphonsins reach for him.

Her stomach turned at the memory. At the time, shock had frozen her. She had wanted to intervene, but the situation escalated before she understood how to place herself between a duke and his former lover without causing greater scandal. Valdor moved faster than anyone else. By the time she found her voice, Alphonsins had already fallen.

Celestine had apologized. It did not feel like enough.

Now, watching Amor in the council chamber, she realized how much the court had misunderstood or preferred to misunderstand. The beautiful nobleman everyone called obsessive sat injured, composed, and visibly uninterested in Alphonsins except as a threat to be answered. He did not seek attention from the duke. He looked toward Valdor when unsettled. That simple truth changed the shape of every rumor.

Celestine glanced at Alphonsins.

He had been kind to her. He had helped recover her mother’s hairpin, listened to her plans for the festival outfit, and treated her work as worthy of attention. She had begun seeing him as a trusted friend, perhaps even someone whose loneliness hid behind military severity. Yet his behavior toward Amor revealed a different man.

Not entirely different.

Worse, perhaps, because the kindness and cruelty belonged to the same person. She wondered whether she should keep her distance after this. A person could be gentle while looking down at one woman and cruel while looking backward at another. The first gentleness did not erase the second cruelty. Celestine’s life had taught her that powerful men often chose when to show which face.

"Lady Celestine Meadows."

Her heart lurched. The Lord Chancellor had called her. Every eye turned. Celestine stepped forward.

Alphonsins looked back at her, expression unreadable beneath expectation. Amor’s hand stopped moving over Valdor’s palm.

The chamber seemed too large as Celestine crossed the marble floor. Her shoes made soft sounds that still felt too loud. She bowed deeply before the king. King Cassian regarded her with measured attention.

"You were present at Maison Reverie with Duke Alphonsins."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

"You are neither the complainant nor accused, but your position offers relevant observation. You will give testimony truthfully, regardless of attachment, gratitude, fear, or expectation."

Celestine swallowed.

"Yes, Your Majesty."

The Lord Chancellor’s voice remained firm but not unkind.

"State your name, status, and relation to the events."

"My name is Celestine Meadows..."

She said.

"I am the acknowledged illegitimate daughter of Baron Wyclere Meadows, and I was accompanying Duke Alphonsins to Maison Reverie regarding fabric for a festival outfit."

The clerk wrote. Alphonsins’s gaze remained upon her. Celestine felt it like pressure between her shoulder blades even without looking back. The old instinct rose at once:

Please the powerful person who had been kind, do not make an enemy, do not risk the fragile place she had built through work and reputation. Gratitude urged caution.

But Amor’s wrist remained bruised. Valdor’s hand rested open within Amor’s lap. And the truth did not belong to Alphonsins because he had once returned a hairpin. Celestine lifted her chin.

"When we entered the shop..."

She began, voice trembling only slightly.

"Lord Amor was already there."