Page 210 of Maksym

I stepped away from the lectern.

No paper. No notes now.

“She found herself bound to an altar while a witch worked a ritual designed to strip her of agency at the deepest level. Not merely to change her mind. Not merely to persuade her. To reach into the sacred place where a mate bond lives and tear out the Goddess’s choice because Ironwood preferred another outcome.”

A witch sovereign on the dais did not move, but the flowers in her hair seemed stiller than before. Adramal watched without expression, his large hands resting on the arms of his throne. Kazimir was unreadable. Maksym was not, to me, because the bond did not require his face. I felt him like a drawn blade in a dark room.

“Madelyn Baucaum did not want Sage Lynch. She did not choose Sage Lynch. She did not consent to a ritual binding her to Sage Lynch. She wanted to keep the bond with her true fated mate, Prince Nikolay Kozlov.”

I looked at Nikolay then. Only briefly.

“Prince Nikolay is flawed. Painfully so, by the testimony before you. He was cold. He was arrogant. He mishandled the most sacred gift the Goddess placed in his hands. But being a bad mate before danger arrives does not require a man to remain a bad mate once his mate screams for him.”

Maddie’s hand tightened around Nikolay’s. I faced the Council again.

“When Nikolay felt through that bond that Maddie was in danger, he did what any mate in this chamber would have done. He gathered help. He went to her. And when he arrived, even then, he did not strike first. He did not rush the altar blindly. He let Maddie guide him. He drew Sage away from her. He used words first.”

I paused.

The room gave me silence.

“Sage Lynch made the final choice of his life when he shifted and lunged at Prince Nikolay Kozlov. Had Sage not taken that action, had he released Maddie, had he ended the ritual, had he allowed law or mercy even one foothold in that clearing, he would be alive today.”

My voice lowered.

“That is not the fault of Nikolay Kozlov. He may be guilty of many things, but murder is certainly not one of them.”

I inclined my head.

“Thank you.”

I returned to my seat with every nerve awake and no sensation in my fingertips.

The Magistrate turned toward Ironwood’s counsel. “Prosecution.”

To his credit, he did not rush. Desperation delivered quickly sounded like desperation. He approached the lectern with his pages in hand and his spine straight, a man attempting to rebuild a house after the foundation had publicly crumbled to sand.

“Honored Magistrate. Members of the Council.” His voice had regained some of its early smoothness. “Defense counsel is eloquent. No one disputes that. But eloquence cannot erase what is not in dispute.”

Ah, I thought. There it was. The refuge of wounded counsel everywhere: undisputed facts, stripped naked and asked to pretend they had never met context.

“Madelyn Baucaum befriended the Ironwood pack,” he said. “She drove herself to Ironwood territory. She ate with them, drank with them, and ran with them. She enjoyed herself enough to remain a second night. She went horseback riding alone with Alpha Sage Lynch. She chose to stay for the Black Harvest Moon Festival.”

Maddie sat very still. Nikolay’s hand remained around hers.

“No one forced her to stay. No one dragged her across their boundary. Her mate, by every account, had treated her with disdain. Being among wolves was comfortable to her. It was natural to her. The defense asks you to believe that every moment of her time among Ironwood was coercion. But the evidence does not support such simplicity.”

His gaze swept the Council. “Yes, there are troubling claims regarding the ritual. Yes, Miss Baucaum appears to have been bound. But ritual restraints are not, in themselves, proof of murderous intent or abduction. Magic can be volatile. Participants can harm themselves when fear overtakes them.”

I felt rather than heard Iron Valor’s reaction behind us. Bronc did not move, but the air near him seemed to tighten.

The counsel continued, more quickly now despite himself. “The only thing this Council can know with absolute certainty is that Prince Nikolay Kozlov entered sovereign pack territory without Alpha permission, confronted Alpha Sage Lynch during sacred observance, and left that Alpha dead. A prince powerful enough to kill should also be disciplined enough not to do so. Instead, he murdered Sage Lynch in cold blood.”

Cold blood.

After Maddie’s testimony. After Sloan’s. After the knife, the altar, the strike, the scream.

Some men did not need facts to be absent. They only needed enough status to insult them publicly.