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Monique Delacroix was next at the witness stand, and the most important thing she had to elucidate was why she hadn’t called the police when Sabine Miller and her allies attacked the school.
“I didn’t want Alma Venus to be associated with something of such proportions,” she answered. “We have a reputation to live up to, and having the members of two shifter factions, plus a dragon-shifter, battling at our gates didn’t feel like a good way to go about it. Something like this could affect our girls, could keep away prospective… clients. When Mr. Blackmane said he would take care of it and make sure his affairs wouldn’t affect the school, I thought the sensible thing to do was trust him. I was wrong.”
The headmistress stood her ground in front of all the councilors’ questions, but Avelyn eventually got the impression that what really convinced them to finally accept her testimony was the weight of her old, noble name. She confirmed that Viggo was in Myrtle Valley both the first time and the second time Sabine attacked because he was interviewing some of the Alma Venus brides. After he managed to drive the she-wolf away the first night, he had decided to stick around a while longer to make sure everyone was safe. This wasn’t entirely false, of course.
The next witnesses Councilor Willamar called were Viggo, Rosanna, Caleb, and Daniel. The Council would have loved to call some Alma Venus students to the stand, but Miss Delacroix had fought tooth and nail to prevent that from happening on the ground that such exposure would affect the girls for life. She was a powerful, influential woman, but that didn’t mean she could get anything she wanted. The reason why the Council had given up on this idea was easy to guess: Councilor Arthur Harington. His daughter would have been one of the witnesses, and he simply couldn’t have that. Lily Harington was too important to him to involve her in something like this, have her exposed at the witness stand in front of so many people, much less when it seemed that Viggo of the ancient Clan Drekinn had shown interest in her and was considering buying her for his Fyrstur, Eric Drekinn. No, Lily had to stay between the safe walls of Alma Venus and wait for her noble husband to claim her.
After the remaining witnesses had been heard, everyone expected Councilor Willamar to announce the end of the session. No one thought he had one more witness to call to the stand, and when he demanded silence in the courtroom and called his name, everyone held their breath.
“Jason Woodtail.”
Two words. Avelyn’s heart skipped a beat, and she felt Max’s hand tense under hers. Two simple words. Jason Woodtail. A name. She hadn’t seen him before, but she felt like she already knew him very well. Regarding his physique, the one thing she was sure of was that he’d have purple eyes, just like all pure-blood fox-shifters.
Jason Woodtail entered the courtroom through one of the side doors, escorted by two bear-shifters. It was easy to determine to which faction the two guards belonged to by the color of their eyes: deep, endless black. The Inari was tall and well-built, with short brown hair and sharp features. He was wearing a plain white shirt that stretched nicely over his lean muscles, washed up jeans, and battered boots. He was definitely handsome, in a rugged, boyish way. Avelyn thought that if he traded the old clothes he was wearing for a business suit, he would look like an authentic Prince Charming.
The guards stopped by the door, and Jason walked to the witness stand. He didn’t look at anyone in the courtroom. He simply stared at his shoes, and once he was up behind the stand, he fixed his
gaze on an indefinite spot on the floor. He looked like he’d rather be anywhere else in this whole wide world but there.
He wasn’t very willing to talk, either. He answered the councilors’ questions in as few words as possible, not giving details unless persuaded. Every time he heard Sabine’s name, he flinched. It was so subtle that only the shape-shifters in the room, including Avelyn, could see it. When he was forced to talk about her, he couldn’t say her name and only referred to her as “she”.
Yes, he had done some terrible things, and just two months ago he had been ready to kill Avelyn without much of a reason, but she couldn’t help feeling a bit sorry for him. It was obvious he still loved Sabine. Their story wasn’t complicated. At least, that was how he put it.
“We met in Denmark. We fell in love.”
“Why did you agree to help her attack Clan Blackmane and kill Avelyn Blackmane?”
“She wanted to do it.”
His straight, simple answer threw everyone off guard. For a second, Councilor Willamar stared at him dumbfounded, unsure what to ask next.
“Is it true that you killed your step-brother to take control of his earth?” Councilor Grimmr, the dragon-shifter, decided to take over.
“Yes.”
“Did you at least feel sorry afterwards?”
“Of course I did. Not only then, but before that.”
“And you still did it.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It had to be done.”
It seemed like there was no way anyone could reason with him. But even if he had the behavior of a madman, Avelyn had the impression that he wasn’t crazy at all. He looked rather… bored. He looked like he just wanted this to end. He knew what to expect, he was aware that he had no chance of getting out of it clean, and he simply didn’t care. Why didn’t he care, though? Because Sabine was dead, or was it something else?
It went on like that for another hour, the Council struggling to get the words out of him. The atmosphere had grown tense, the air was heavy with long, confusing silences, and everyone was tired and hungry. There was no point to it. Jason Woodtail had turned himself in and confessed to everything. This was another thing that surprised Avelyn, Max, and everyone else. The police and the Council’s private detectives hadn’t managed to find him. He had simply turned himself in three days before. Why? To protect the few werefoxes who had survived the battle at Alma Venus. If they had him, they had no reason to go on searching for the other earth members. They had no fault in what had happened, they had simply followed the strongest.
“No one tried to oppose you when you killed your step-brother and took over his earth…?” asked Jonathan Redfur. Even though he was a fox-shifter himself, he still couldn’t quite wrap his mind around it.
“Who would oppose a three-tailed Inari?” Jason answered with another question, but he did it in such a bored, disinterested manner that no one could take it as a challenge, a joke, or anything else. A four-tailed Inari could have been the right answer to that, but everyone knew they were incredibly rare.
They couldn’t ask more from him, really. His fate was sealed, although he could hope for a bit of mercy for having turned himself in. Avelyn was sure Jason Woodtail couldn’t care less.
“This trial ends here,” said Zachary Willamar after the witness left the stand. “We believe we and the jury have everything we need. Court dismissed.”
