The Dragon Duke's Heir Contract novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: The Sentence
The King heard the case himself, in the great hall of Lorien, with the whole court on the benches.
By then Ysolene was seven months gone.
She sat on a cushioned chair at the front with her feet up and her belly under a rug.
Her father held one of her hands while her husband held the other.
Valerian's own hands were healed.
They were pink and new-skinned, and he kept flexing them under the table.
The inquest had taken the autumn.
They had found forty-two pages of the baron's signature in the east wing of Vaskary.
They had found a green-liveried valet who sold his master for a pardon.
They had found an apothecary in the village who remembered the buyer of the moonroot because of a gilt-edged purse.
Ignatius stood at the bar in a plain grey coat, without a single ring.
"Lord Ignatius Vaskarys," said the King.
He was a heavy, tired man of sixty with a short grey beard, and he looked at the accused over folded hands.
"You are charged with forging the royal ledgers, with perjury, and with the false imprisonment of a peeress."
"With the attempted poisoning of an unborn heir. With the planned murder of the Duke of Vaskary by the Crown's own archers."
"How do you plead?"
"Not guilty, Majesty."
"Does the Duchess wish to speak?"
Ysolene rose.
It took two tries, with her father's hand under her elbow.
"I'll be brief," she said.
She named the charges in the order the clerk would need them, and she did not look at Ignatius once.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of The Dragon Duke's Heir Contract are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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