Born From A Divine Gamble 124 Trial Part 2

She understood this wasn't at all an answer that would help her but she was currently compelled to say the truth, she couldn't do otherwise. She really wanted to slap herself in the face right now but she couldn't help it. This was the one thing she had struggled to understand this whole time, Emp's motives.

Did he really have to ask that? What was even the connection with the theft of Emp's books? Could he not have just kept his mouth shut for crying out loud.

"You're unsure?" The son of the count repeated with a raised brow.

Galana had never seen him do anything for the city before. The only thing she had ever heard about him was when he got married about two years ago. She held no respect for him or his wife but he was still a n.o.ble so she had to answer his question.

She wasn't quite sure how to clear up the confusion but the seal forced the words out of her anyway.

"I hate n.o.bles," She continued, cursing herself again.

She heard a good amount of people behind her in the crowd scoffing because of her answer. Saying she hated n.o.bles right in front of them was nothing less than disastrous for her so the others could only gasp or laugh in reaction. She did her best to ignore them as the words continued to spill out.

"They caused all my problems, they never did anything good for me, I even ended up here as a slave because of them. I just wish they had all left me alone. Emp is different, I do not hate him. I would be really happy to be his friend but I'm... Not sure I can ever be. He's a high n.o.ble at the very top of the chain and I'm just... no one."

The crowd grew quiet again behind her.

"I met him almost three years ago and this whole time, I've had no money, I accomplished nothing, I insulted him, I was insufferable and selfish, and I was in debts over my head. He remained friendly the whole time and he's here again today but I can't help but wonder if he's really here for me or if he's here for something else. He's acting friendly and he's trying to help me but his he truly doing it for me or is he here for the books or maybe even to make sure I won't reveal any secrets to the viscount and his son?"

On her right, she could see the group of accused men smiling in pleasure, the viscount was straight up laughing. On her left, she could see Emp grounding his teeth in frustration. He seemed like a really carefree person the first time she met him and sounded like that too in his letters but every time she saw him in person, she managed to anger him.

Emp got back on his feet and took a deep breath to calm himself before he spoke to the count.

"I have three things to say about what she just said, can I talk?"

The count was left speechless by the way Galana had answered his simple question so he was glad that Emp got up to take the relay.

"Go ahead."

"Thank you. First of all, I would like to point out that no one would have dared say this sort of thing if not for the order to say only the truth so I'm sure we can all agree, the order is working."

Some folk in the crowd laughed at that, indeed everyone agreed on that point. No one here would have dared say they hated n.o.bles in front of so many people. The count nodded as well and Emp went on to the next point.

"Secondly, my motives for being here have nothing to do with the guilt or innocence of the ten accused men here. Whether I'm helping her or not doesn't change what they did."

So he wasn't here for her after all... She felt her heart clench as she heard his words. He had not said it explicitly but what he did say was the same as admitting it. It was very painful to hear even if she had suspected it was the case all along.

Emp turned on himself and looked directly at her for his next words. She was surprised to hear him shout.

"Finally, you are a huge idiot! You are always calling me that but you are way worse! Do you really think I would do all that for just a few books? Do you really think I care about those?"

She glared at him. Even in her current situation, she wouldn't let herself be shouted at without yelling back.

"They're worth over 230 dragons! How could you not care!"

"Because I am not greedy like you! If I was I would not have sent all of those to you! Any three of them could have paid back your debt but I sent over fifty because it is you I care about!"

He dared call her greedy! He could well speak with a fortune in his pocket!

"I'm not greedy, you're just wasting huge amounts of money all the time for no reason! I told you people don't just give precious things like that for no reason! How do I know the goal wasn't to bring down this guy? Who's dumb enough to keep sending so many precious books even if he's told to stop!"

Emp stepped closer and threw is arm in the direction of the n.o.ble. Throwing his words in the air with the back of his hand as he spoke.

"Why would I even do that? Maurice is just a n.o.body I do not even know! He could be a blat, a rat or an inside out beheaded fish I would still not bother with him! Why can you not just accept a gift like a normal person and just say thank you?"

She pressed the tip of her finger on his breastplate and pushed on it hard as she answered just as loudly. She would have liked to make him back off but he didn't move an inch.

"Because you're an idiot who can't tell when someone is taking advantage of him like me! You'd give anything to anyone as long as they asked for it! It doesn't mean you think I'm your friend! Anyone in the crowd here could just say right now that they don't have food for dinner and you'd give them a gold crown to pay for a meal! After all I did, I don't want to take advantage of your stupidity on top!"
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"It is not stupidity it is goodwill! I am offering you my help! That is clearly a concept you do not understand! Of course if someone is in trouble I will help! If you had just let me pay it two years ago none of this would have happened and you would not have an ugly fish tattooed on your forehead! You only have the skin on your bones left! You are clearly the bull-headed idiot here!"

He pushed her hand aside and glared at her just as strongly as she was doing it. The crowd behind her was deathly silent and so were the n.o.bles on the stage with them. They all had dumb struck faces. Clearly they had never seen such an unsightly public dispute between a n.o.ble and a slave. The only one that seemed to react without too much surprise was the guard who had already seen the same sort of scene once before, years ago.

The two of them where way too caught in their quarrel to spare a look at any of them however. Galana yelled at him again, there was a difference between goodwill and selfishly intervening just to make himself look good.

"If you care so little about the books then why did you even come back here to get them? You just gave me a bunch of trash you didn't care about to satisfy your desire to help a poor girl in need? You never came to visit even once in two years, you would just have stayed in a rich people place and never seen me again if I wasn't enslaved! You only came back to make sure I wouldn't tell everyone what's happening with the Muraciers!"

"I did not come back here because I was busy! Was it not obvious in my letters? Have you not noticed what I am doing right now? I was ordered to hide my ident.i.ty until I was ready and instead I am standing here on a stage in front of hundreds of people with a count a two viscounts because I am trying to help you! Do you think I care at this point what the emperor ordered all those years ago? Do I have to scream every secrets I have here to make you understand how much I care about you?"

Emp seemed more than ready to do it, he stretched his back as if he was about to yell all of them but she stopped him with a kick in the s.h.i.+n. She had forgotten she wasn't wearing shoes so she hurt her toe on his armor and cursed before protesting.

"I'd rather not be hanged over your stupidity thank you! Your story isn't even right! How could you have been all the way in Bêtéclair but still get here so fast after I sent my last letter? Muraciers aren't supposed to ever lie but I never know with you! You keep saying things with an honest face but none of it ever makes sense!"

Emp leaned forward to get to her eye level and grabbed her shoulders as if to shake her in exasperation.

"It is not making sense only because you are not willing to hear the actual truth! I tell you the truth and you take it as a lie almost every time! The day I received your letter, I ran all the way here alone from Bêtéclair and it took me most of the day. I jumped over the pit in the howling hill to gain time and then I got caught by a sloth because I made the mistake of running here alone. I could have died twice on my way here but I had to come as fast as possible, no matter what, because I was scared for you! I could have taken it slow but instead I rushed here in a day and almost killed myself twice because I like you!"

Gasps sounded everywhere around them, neither of them noticed and Galana froze like the n.o.bles had before her.

"I made all this and then, the first complete sentence I hear you say since I arrived is that you are not sure I am your friend! I cannot believe it! Since you said you wished to be my friend then just accept my friends.h.i.+p and stop arguing with yourself over all this nonsense! By the ancestors and the G.o.ds too, how can you be so frustrating?! I had to run around the city looking for you and asking people what had happened to you because you where too stubborn to tell me who was the guy that was bullying you! You didn't even tell me your grandma died! If you had told me I would have come back here right away! I've considered you my friend all this time and instead of just going with it, you kept wondering if I was serious the whole time?! Are you even listening at all? In what language must I speak for you to understand?"

She hardly heard anything he said in that last part, her brain couldn't get past what he said before. She noticed he had stopped talking and was waiting for some sort of answer from her. She didn't know what to say. Maybe if she asked again it would make more sense the second time.

"Did you just say you like me?"

Everyone held their breath while Emp let go of her shoulders right away. He stepped back with a face mixing shock and annoyance. Galana watched him struggle to find a proper answer for a painfully long moment and finally, he spoke to her again.

"I meant it as in "I appreciate you" not as the love sort of like... I think. I'm... I don't want to upset you again. That's not even close to the important point... Err, we should get back on track with the trial."

Emp looked around with a shameful air and walked back to his seat under the stupefied gaze of the crowds. Most of them were currently thinking; did we just a.s.sist to a lover's quarrel?

Galana didn't share their thoughts.

What sort of answer was that! That didn't even mean anything! "Didn't want to upset her" he said, well he was doing it right now with that s.h.i.+tty answer! Emp was definitely the worst! He wasn't even sure of is own answer! He certainly deserved to be slapped around some! She felt like the thing that caused her whole ordeal with the Balpoisson was happening all over again!

Maurice had complimented her and said he loved her, she had pushed him back while saying he had the face of a mutated squirrel and the weight of an overfed shark.

Now Emp was doing the same, what in the b.l.o.o.d.y lake was she supposed to answer! He wasn't even his type, she wanted someone smart and knowledgeable, Emp was as far away from that as it could get.

"Do you like him too by chance?" The son of the count asked along with his wife, wildly amused by the scene that just took place in front of him.

She wanted to scream, "Of course not!" but instead "Yes." came out with a tone saying: that's obvious.

Her hand shot up to her mouth to placate it instantly. How embarra.s.sing!

Now it was Emp's turn to stare at her frozen in place. She heard a bunch of "Oooh!" in the crowd behind her and even Palonia shouted "Go girl!".

Why did she even say that! The order was supposed to force her to say the truth! She did not want to believe it could possibly be what she truly felt.

He might be taller and a lot more manly than last time she saw him, he was still rich and apparently honest, he cared for her enough to do all that despite her errors and her general evil and...

But he was too... Dumb.

But 'she' was too... Dumb, possibly scared as well.

She got so panicked she felt as if her blood was running backwards. Friends, she had to aim for friends. That was the only way out of the stupid thing she just said. Wait, hadn't he done just that a moment ago?

She let out a long string of curses in her head.

She absolutely had to add something to her answer now while she still had the chance! She was terrified at the idea of saying anything else that might sound even more embarra.s.sing but she had to do something, anything.

"That's not what I meant to say!"

That wasn't what she meant to say either! It wasn't even because of the order this time, she was just too fl.u.s.tered to think properly!

"Obviously not, that's why we ordered you to say the truth!" The count's son laughed.

While from Galana's point of view, this whole thing was a disaster, the n.o.bles a.s.sembled to judge Maurice and the mercenaries felt a lot better now. Up to now, they hardly understood the motives of anyone involved in this affair. They couldn't grasp why a high n.o.ble like Emp would waste his time trying to condemn a simple viscount's son.

The truth was the count didn't care whether Maurice was found guilty or not and the viscount Rougefond would love to see him take the fall but neither had understood what was happening. Were the Muraciers attacking them? Were they trying to crack down on crimes and corruption? Would they go after them once they were done with the Balpoisson?

Now, even if this wasn't exactly right, they firmly believed that all of this was happening simply because Maurice was a victim of extreme stupidity and enslaved the secret lover of someone way way above him. Everyone of them including the viscount Balpoisson reached the same conclusion, whatever they did today to punish Maurice or even if they found him innocent, he'd end up feeding the roots of the ancestors before long.

Emp himself didn't know exactly how he would react if Maurice and the mercenaries were declared innocent as he never doubted that they would all be found guilty. Right now, he was more preoccupied by what he had just heard Galana say.

He took a small moment to clear his thoughts a bit and then asked for a clarification like she had done just before.

"You meant you like me as a friend, right?"

She wanted to jump on the occasion to say yes and get out of this embarra.s.sing situation.

"I'm not sure..." Is what she said instead.

Trice d.a.m.ned cursed seal only good to scrub the floors!

She slapped herself on the forehead in protestation and saw the corner of Emp's mouth rise.

"Idiot! Don't you dare laugh! That's not funny at all!"

It only accentuated his smile further however.

"So do you really regret being mean with me or did you just write that in the letter to give a better last impression?"

"I do regret, I regretted from the very day I met you."

"You'd never try to stab me again would you?"

She wanted to say "I will if you keep making fun of me!" but she said "Off course not!" instead.

"And did you miss me?"

Not really.

"I did..."

Curses.

"I missed you a lot too. You should be honest more often, I like you better that way."

His smile was just infuriating!

"Stop laughing I said! Stop that or I'll..."

Bash your head into a stone wall!

"Or I'll..."

Chop you into bits and feed you to the fishes!

"Or I'll..."

Drill your head inside a bucket of p.o.o.p!

She came up with a good dozen threats but none of them managed to get past her lips to the apparent pleasure of Emp. She growled in frustration.

"How come I can't threaten you! What's this s.h.i.+t about!"

"You can't because you wouldn't do anything for real and you're compelled to only say the truth right now."

"That's unfair! Why am I even here in the first place? Do you plan on making fun of me the whole time?"

Emp tried to appease her with a gesture of his hand.

"Sorry, I'm just having a bit of fun. Look, you said in your letter you were looking forward to my answers and I was really looking forward to your letters too. I had great fun picturing you shouting at me angrily with every letters and I admit it was the main reason I kept writing to you. The books where just an excuse to have you shout idiot at me. I found all of that really entertaining but I wasn't doing it for the giggles. I really did care about what were your thoughts on my problems and I really wanted to keep our friends.h.i.+p alive through the letters.

You wouldn't believe how angry and relieved I was when I saw you. I was so relieved you had not met a tragic end but I was so angry about what happened at the same time. You said you might never understand me but I'll say the same. All of this could have been easily avoided if you had thought differently. I do not understand what goes on in your mind and what brought you up to this point and I might never do but you are still important to me whether you believe it or not. Could we all just agree for now that we are at least friends, as strange and unexpected as it sounds? We'll all be able to think about that more properly once this is over."

Galana took a deep breath and answered "yes" with conviction. This time, her thoughts and her words matched perfectly. He was right, as impossible as it sounded, he truly was her friend, even if she was impossible to stand and even if he was incredibly nonsensical at times, they trusted each other.

"Alright then. I'm sorry we made everyone wait, are you ready for actual questions about the trial?"

Those present on stage all nodded whether they were happy with how things were going or not.

"We don't care, let the girl give him and offering already!" A guy screamed form the back of the crowd along with various other comments.

Emp ignored them all while Galana did her best to not feel embarra.s.sed by thinking about what she was here for instead.

"When was the first time you met Maurice Balpoisson." Emp started.

From then on, everything took back its serious atmosphere. The accused party had felt pretty lost throughout the bout between her and Emp and were still rather confused by the chain of event. At this point, most of the mercenaries felt like they were being toyed with by the high n.o.ble and felt rather regretful for following the son of the viscount. Maurice himself was livid and it only got worse as Galana kept talking.

"Six years ago."

"What were the circ.u.mstances?"

"My parents were looking to borrow money for an expedition in the woods south east of the kingdom. Balpoisson agreed to lend us some money."

"But he had a reason to lend you money, did he not?"

"He wanted to seduce me with his money and t.i.tle but I insulted him instead."

Some in the crowd scoffed again and Maurice turned his head around to glare at everyone on the other side of the guards.

"What happened next?"

"He promised I would regret it but lent us the money anyway on the condition that he would choose the escort my parents would hire by himself. Since my parents really believed they would find something big there, they agreed to his terms."

"And just to be clear for the next part of the story, could you identify the mercenaries?"

"The nine men aside from Balpoisson and a tenth one that I killed."

The crowd whispered in confusion but everything soon became clearer.

"Did the expedition happen?"

"Yes, and my parents never came back. Balpoisson came later to reclaim his money, he asked for fifteen red dragons. He came with the mercenaries."

The crowd was instantly hooked, the story couldn't be more fishy than this.

Emp called for experts to climb onto the stage, mercenaries and supplies providers to ask about the prices. The conclusion was clear, it was impossible to reach fifteen red dragons of debt by hiring ten men and enough supplies for a trip to the edge of the kingdom. Worse for Balpoisson, the mercenary that testified made it clear that coming back without the people they were supposed to protect should have been a breach of any good contract and the mercenaries should have been the ones to pay Galana back the money her parents gave them.

"I believed they had murdered my parents on the orders of Maurice Balpoisson but I could not prove it and with the debt iron around my wrist, I couldn't leave the town to find out for myself."

The crowd was stirred again, it was obviously a trap but if they had been stuck in the same problem as her, they felt they would have been unable to do anything either. Who would believe some random person instead of the son of a viscount? She was doomed the moment they knocked on her door.

The viscount had not expected that Emp would bring so many experts just to testify that Galana's parents couldn't have such a high debt and had no defense against it.

As for stating that the mercenaries all came back alive, it proved nothing and he had no way to refute it as it was a fact obvious for all to see.

The next men and women Emp invited on stage were a thousand times more harmful for Maurice and the mercenaries. They almost all started panicking when those people stated who they were.

Emp had brought with him resellers of antiquities and merchants of oddities. One man and five women, all coming from different shops but all remembering very well when the mercenaries came to sell them a bunch of unusual things five years ago.

Thanks to their records and testimony, Emp was able to prove without a doubt that not only did the mercenary come back alive but they brought back a haul of twenty red-dragons worth of old things with them including an enormous stone statue.

This meant a lot for Emp. First, the expedition had obviously been successful. Second, with the profit of twenty RD, the debt of fifteen RD should have been null for Galana. Lastly and more importantly, her parents died there but those ten men came back uninjured with a giant statue. If it was so dangerous that they had to leave the Whisryba couple to die, how did they find the time to loot the place and bring back such a huge and unwieldy thing? It should have been left there.

Emp had no real proof that they had killed her parents but what he presented on this stage heavily implied it.

Now that this was done, it was time for them to defend themselves. Emp wondered if one of them would dare refute selling those items at the specified time or if they would find some excuse as to why they had those things. He believed that they would most likely say that they had gathered them somewhere else or had them in their homes and sold them to make up for the loss in the expedition but he was far from right.

Instead, one of the mercenaries broke down and spilled out everything he knew. Maybe he hoped he would get out of this if he was the first to confess? He did not hesitate to throw the guilt onto Maurice.

"We were just following the orders he gave us! We weren't told why, we were just told that we needed to get rid of the two."

The others all scowled and shouted at him to shut up but he didn't listen.

"Don't you dare say anything more!" Maurice snapped but it was too late.

At this point, the nervous man was convinced that he would only live if he turned on the others and showed himself to be helpful. The crowd wasn't all that surprised by his turnaround nor by his sudden admission of guilt.

"Just so that we do not misunderstand each-other, by "he" you mean Maurice Balpoisson, correct?"

"Yes, he paid us a lot to kill those two and he is a n.o.ble, there was no way we could say no!"

"So, did you kill them?"

The man nodded while all the others roared at him to shut up.

"We followed the two ruin seekers into that old decrepit city and we waited for them to find some good things to sell. I have a wife you know, the pay from Balpoisson was good but we couldn't resist those old treasure. We murdered them in their sleep after they filled our wagon with valuables."

"Which was the person who finished them?"

"It was Sam and Noser! Sam took the girl and Noser drove his sword through the heart of the man."

"You really are a huge piece of s.h.i.+t!" Noser screamed in wild rage while the man named Sam almost fell backward down the stage.

Emp turned back towards the Count with a face saying "There you have it.". There was nothing left for him to say, the work had been done and the truth had been heard by hundreds of people.

Galana could almost not believe what she just heard, after all this time, she was finally given the answer she was looking for. She now knew once and for all what had happened to her parents. She felt empty. She had known all this time that they were dead but hearing it said this clearly was like s.h.i.+ning a torch over a message she would rather have not seen.

"Did you at least plant them?" She asked sorrowfully.

"Of course not." One of them answered nonchalantly. "We didn't have the time to bury them and we didn't have a three to plant on them so we just left them there after we took their valuables."

The crowd grumbled in anger while Galana fell onto her knees. This meant that their souls were lost. They wouldn't grow back to join the ancestors and this felt much more devastating to her than them admitting to their murder.

She did her best to hold back her tears but some still rolled down her face in spite of her efforts.

Meanwhile, the count rose from his seat and looked over the accused group and the crowd.

"I think we've all heard enough for now. Balpoisson, at this point, I don't see how he could get himself out of this but do you have anything to say for your son still?"

The viscount had been woefully silent since Emp's dispute with Galana earlier and with this new turn of events, he didn't have any idea how to save his son either. He was making a truly ugly face but now, he had no other choice than to admit his defeat. Even if they pledged that the mercenary was telling lies, the whole crowd would still be against them and with the victim being in close relations.h.i.+p to a Muracier, this whole trial felt like a joke. He had no other choices than to cut his losses now. He was truly glad he had taken owners.h.i.+p of the girl from his son first. His foresight might just save his house.

"I will bend myself to your good judgment." He said spiritlessly, turning his eyes away from his son.

"Then I will take a short break to think this over and come back to pa.s.s on my judgment."

Feeling distraught about how his own father gave up on his defended, Maurice turned aggressive and demanded haughtily a trial by combat to prove his own innocence. The whole crowd booed and he was instantly and mercilessly denied by the count Staedler.

"No, it would only be a waste of all of our times. We all know you are guilty, even your father does. You believed you could do anything to her because she was lowborn and crossed the line so far I can only wonder if you ever even saw it. Because of you, this whole city will seem tainted in the eyes of the most powerful house of the empire. You went so far as to place the seal on her forehead to parade her in front of everyone to make an example of her. To me, it seems more like an example of your malevolence than an example of the punishment awaiting those who insult a n.o.ble. I will now retire with the young lord Muracier, the viscount Rougefond and your father viscount Balpoisson to decide on your and your accomplices fate. I would not expect clemency if I were you."

The count turned towards the crowd and spoke loudly to their attention.

"The deliberations should not take long, feel free to stay here to hear the results."

They all left the stage and convened in a silent room to discuss. Galana remained on the stage and took this long time to calm herself. She had already cried their deaths for five years, she had cried enough now. The facts were devastating to hear but her peace was made long ago already.

Meanwhile, the guards had to step up to maintain the prisoners in place in case they tried to escape their sentence. Balpoisson was especially violent but after he got hit in the stomach once, he greatly calmed down. In the back, the crowd was chanting the different sentences they wanted to hear. There was quite a variety but Galana highly doubted that those men would end up as fish bait for the huge ones in the lake.

She dried her tears and stood back up long before the n.o.bles came back.

Everyone took back their seats except for the count who stood in front of it to spell out the verdict. He raised his hands and the crowd quickly quieted. Galana hoped it would be a good punishment after all that he did to her.

"Maurice Balpoisson and accomplices." The count started. "You have been found guilty of theft on a high n.o.ble, fraud and murder. You have been found innocent on the charges of unlawful enslavement."

He made a short pause in his speech to take his breath and let the crowd rejoice at his declaration of guilt and complain about his innocence before he moved on to the main point.

"After deliberation, it has been agreed that two choices would be offered to you. You must choose either a sentence of death by decapitation or a lifetime sentence of enslavement. You would be made into a sealed slave, the seal would be placed on your forehead to remind you of your own misdeeds and your owner would be miss Galana, the main victim of your crimes."

The crowd cheered and laughed at the sentence while the count asked Maurice to make a choice.

"I refuse to make that choice! It's not right! You're just as bad as me! I don't deserve this!"

The count ignored his pointless complaints and turned his eyes towards Galana.

"I don't want him, he's disgusting and I hate him, I'd rather chop off his head myself." Galana said coldly.

She was still bound by the order of truth so everyone knew she wasn't lying and the crowd erupted in laughter again.

"Then death it shall be." The count sighed in disappointment. "Now, for the other nine. All of you will be fined four red-dragons each, the two that made the killing blow will also serve a lifetime sentence of enslavement and the other seven will face thirty years of work in the border fields as slaves."

Those men were mostly glad that they wouldn't loose their lives but they still feared the amount of money they were asked to deliver.

"Where will we find four red dragons! That's too much!"

"We can't even earn this money if we're stuck into slave labor!"

"You should find yourself lucky that the price isn't higher, this is only a tiny fraction of the value of the things you took from her family and the books you stole from the young master Muracier here. If you are unable to pay, you will be made to work until complete repayment, those years of work will be added at the end of your slave service. For the two that will serve a lifetime of slavery, the money will be taken from your families in the form of an increase in tax so that they do not feel as cornered as the lady you hara.s.sed."

The crowd seemed to be pleased once again. Their families would have been very upset by how this trial was ending but they had not come. This was usual practice in case the crowd decided to take their anger on them.

The count turned over towards Galana next.

"Finally, the owners.h.i.+p of Galana here will be transferred to the young master Muracier along with her regained a.s.sets and the money fined to the other ten."

Galana felt like a bee flew across her brain, the whole thing buzzed before she screamed; "What!" in anger.

The whole crowd gasped at the unexpected words of the count.

"Shouldn't I go free!"

Emp started explaining what had happened for her.

"Normally yes but even though I did my best, you've already be found guilty of murder the other week and the seal has already been engraved on your forehead. Even though I feel like you were right for stabbing him, he was unarmed when he came in and wasn't threatening you. Because of this, the city won't pay for the removal of the seal as it is your lawful sentence. Even If we wanted to remove it ourselves, we would have to make the trip all the way to Thronewoods and the cost would go past everything you just regained. On top of that, it will leave an ugly scar. Since I didn't trust anyone else with your owners.h.i.+p, I requested you to be transferred to me."

Galana shook of rage on the spot as the crowd stared wide eyed at this new unexpected situation. Who would have known that the young master Muracier would be willing to leave his lover enslaved!

He didn't come to save her at all! He was just as worse as Balpoisson!

"You killed people too and you weren't enslaved! How is this different!"

"I said the same but the count said mine was self defense where yours was resisting arrest, even though they were bad guys. I sort of disagree but I can't do much more."

"You're so frustrating!" She finally screamed as loud as her lungs would allow it.

"But I'm still the guy you like the most anyway right?" He said with a brilliant smile.

"Yes." She answered despite herself before punching herself on the forehead yet again.

Emp laughed in front of the deathly silent crowd and the fuming Galana.

"And what do you think of Ballpoisson?" He asked.

"He's a slithering disgust of a thieving scammer, has the face of a mutated squirrel and the weight of an overfed shark, I wish I could skin him alive."

Maurice turned red in anger as it was not the first time he heard those exact words from her. He opened his mouth to retaliate but got slapped silent by the close-by guard.

Emp laughed some more.

"I'm really doing my best to help and I'll find some solution for you but I must say, I really like that honest you."