The Council Chamber was every bit as beautiful as the other rooms in the palace.

  The large windows, which usually let in plenty of sunlight, now gave off a calm and somewhat gloomy atmosphere, so fitting for the Prince's current state. The long table in the middle, made of the same natural alloy of gold and silver, and the chairs, made of the same alabaster stone as the table and chairs in the dining room, did not shine now, but cast a dull glow, creating an even more gloomy atmosphere.

  Although the walls, ceilings, and floors were somewhat uneven and already quite old, they did not stand out from the overall appearance even now, when the sun had disappeared behind the clouds; the current gloom emphasised the ancient history that this palace held, and which no one wanted to know.

  When the door opened, everyone turned their heads sharply in its direction, and seeing that the visitor was none other than Prince Arenor, they rose and bowed, greeting His Highness.

  "Welcome, Your Highness, Crown Prince Arenor," they greeted him all at once.

  However, instead of satisfaction, irritation blossomed on Arenor's face.

  "Did I not ask you to add my surname when greeting and addressing me? Is it really that difficult?"

  "But Your Highness, your father..." one of the advisors began, but was interrupted by the Prince's stern voice.

  "Arland. Prince Arenor Arland." Pause. "Please do not forget that I am the Crown Prince, which means I am the future King and Pharaoh," he reminded them. "So you can be as obsequious as you like to my father, but remember me too, and remember that people with bad memories have far more problems than those who don't."

  "Forgive us, Your Highness Arenor Arland," said one woman; it was Rushania, the head of the council and the third most important person in the kingdom after the Pharaoh and the Prince. "We will try not to make such a mistake again," there was no mockery in her voice, for she was one of those who knew the history behind that surname.

  The Prince, who had not noticed his own tension before, finally relaxed.

  Usually, he kept himself completely calm; even in those moments when the situation was completely out of his control, he always managed to remain unshakeable. But when it came to his surname, he didn't even notice how he was losing his composure.

  Apart from his surname, the only other thing that worried him greatly was Airena.

  Remembering the true purpose of the entire meeting of the councillors, he walked over to the chair at the head of the table and sat down, acting as if everything was normal and he hadn't lost his temper just a few seconds ago.

  "So... what is the reason for such an urgent council meeting, Your Highness?" asked Rushania, propping her head up with her hand.

  "The reason is the incident that occurred at the last Night Bazaar. More specifically, the mass murder of merchants and shoppers, as well as ordinary passers-by." Pause. "What do you think about it?"

  "Is there anything to discuss here?" asked one of the advisors. "As far as I know, the killer has already been caught. All that remains is to wait for the trial and—"

  "What is your name?" interrupted the Prince.

  "What difference does it make? Is it—"

  "I just want to inform my father that one of his advisors is too stupid to be part of his council," Arenor snapped.

  "I beg your pardon," another advisor interjected, "but, Your Highness, isn't everything as he said—"

  "Proof."

  "What?"

  "Where is the proof that the man we considered to be the murderer is indeed the murderer?"

  "But one of the witnesses reported this to the Night Watch, did he not?"

  "And where is this witness?" This seemingly obvious question stumped all the advisers.

  "I don't—"

  "And more importantly, did we really just believe the words of some man who simply introduced himself as a witness?"

  "I—"

  "His Highness is right," Rushania interjected. "Why did we simply believe the words of a stranger without even checking their veracity?"

  "That's what I'm saying. Why—"

  "Excuse me, Your Highness, but how long must we continue to play your games?" the advisor interjected. "You're not a child anymore, so why do you continue to behave like one?"

  In an instant, the air became charged, causing everyone to flinch in their seats. Glances darted towards the advisor, hinting that he had gone too far, but he did not react; his gaze was fixed on the Prince so intently that it seemed as if he were glued to him.

  "You..." Rushania began, clearly intending to defend the Prince, but Arenor interrupted her.

  "What do you mean?" he asked calmly.

  "First, you befriend the bearer of divine power, endangering not only yourself but the entire Kingdom," the advisor began to list. "Then you demand to be addressed by a surname that does not belong to you. And now you are forcing us to deal with a matter that has already been decided... why? Are you really that bored, Your Highness?"

  "Stop it. You are insulting—"

  "Well..." Arenor smiled; his smile was not cold; it was hot, like the blade of a sword that had been lying in the sun for a long time. "You have every right to your own opinion. After all, we are a democratic kingdom, are we not?"

  The Prince's last words made everyone flinch, including the irritated advisor. After all, they all knew perfectly well that Afaria was not democratic; it was tyrannical.

  The silence that followed was so heavy that several councillors began to cough. However, it did not last long.

  "In any case... I still want you to see the actual evidence," he said, then glanced at Nasir standing by the door. "Bring in the first witness."

  ***

  The first to speak was an elderly night guard.

  Fortunately for the Prince, his testimony during the hearing was identical to what he had told Arenor personally. Word for word, letter for letter. This revealed him to be a man experienced in politics, one who was not accustomed to talking idly.

  "What is all this?" said the advisor after the guard left the room. "Do you really think that we..."

  "I find it very amusing," began the Prince, "that you accuse me of childish behaviour, yet you yourself are as impatient as a small child."

  The advisor blushed with embarrassment and anger at the same time, but still pulled himself together and fell silent, realising that otherwise he would only make his position worse than it already was.

  "Now, bring here..." Arenor began, but was interrupted by the door bursting open.

  "Wait!"

  A young guard literally flew into the room. His face was red, and he was breathing rapidly, as if out of breath — apparently, he had somehow found out about the Council meeting and then rushed here as fast as he could.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  "I also want to testify and give evidence!"

  The Prince tensed up inside; of course, there was nothing the guard could say that would undermine Arenor's authority or threaten his title. The danger was more likely to threaten the guard himself, who, by talking more than he should have, risked getting himself into trouble with the not-so-nice people who were plentiful in the Council.

  "Who is this?" the councillor exclaimed indignantly. "And how dare he burst in—"

  "He is a night guard and, incidentally, the second witness," Arenor explained.

  "That still does not excuse his disrespectful behaviour!" the councillor exclaimed.

  The young guard cowered in fear.

  "The councillor is right," said another councillor. "If you planned to allow him to act as the second witness and give testimony, why the disrespectful behaviour and rush?"

  The question was quite reasonable, and Arenor could not risk lying; therefore, he decided to simply be honest and tell everyone the truth.

  But not all of it.

  "His testimony was exactly the same as that of the first guard," replied the Prince. "So I simply saw no point in allowing him to testify as well."

  "Even so, you should have allowed him to testify!" cried the counsellor. "Or perhaps you are hiding something from us, Your—"

  "That was my intention," replied Arenor to the first question, ignoring the second. "I specifically invited the scribe to read out the young guard's testimony, which he had previously recorded during his interrogation.

  "Why all these excuses, Your Highness?" the advisor interjected again. "Why not just let us hear him?"

  "Because the real killer is still roaming the Kingdom!" the Prince raised his voice, making everyone flinch. "And while we waste time listening to someone and arguing with each other, who knows how many more people he will kill." Pause. "But if you are so eager to waste your time and risk the lives of defenceless people, then please," he waved his hand towards the young guard, "listen carefully."

  ***

  To the Prince's disappointment, his testimony was identical to what he had given to Arenor personally. This meant that his unnecessary stories about his life were also identical to those he had given to Arenor himself.

  However, compared to the guard, all the advisors were mature enough not to dwell on this and to ignore all the unnecessary information.

  All except the advisor.

  "Why are we even continuing to listen to him?" he asked, as if forgetting that it was his idea to allow the young guard to act as a second witness. "Can't you see that he can't even stop talking nonsense?"

  Arenor rolled his eyes; the boy annoyed him with his unnecessary chatter too, but the advisor did it much more.

  The guard blushed with embarrassment and opened his mouth to say something, but the Prince beat him to it:

  "The guard is still very young and he still has to learn how to speak properly. However, you, counsellor, are already too old to learn even patience, let alone respect."

  The counsellor blushed again and fell silent, as if he did not know how to respond to Arenor's statement.

  "That's all," said the guard. "I don't know if it matters, but before giving my testimony here, I also gave my testimony personally to Prince Arenor."

  Arenor stared at the guard with such a look that the guard was instantly frightened and lowered his head. Of course, what the guard said carried no weight, but his loquaciousness increasingly irritated Arenor; for if a man blabbed about something so insignificant that it was not even worth telling anyone, then if something more serious happened, rumours would be inevitable.

  "You see! What did I say?" the counsellor shouted indignantly. "The Prince simply falsified all the evidence! He asked the guards to say what..."

  "There is nothing unusual about that," Rushania interjected on Arenor's behalf. "Before presenting the guards' testimony to the council, the Prince had to hear it personally. Otherwise, what would his position be based on? Thin air?"

  The advisor blushed again and this time fell silent for good.

  "It's time to invite the last person here."

  "Is there really another witness?" one of the advisors asked in surprise.

  "You will see for yourselves who it is," the Prince replied mysteriously and waved his hand to Nasir, giving a silent signal to let in the man who had been standing behind the doors all this time.

  A few moments later, he entered the hall; a man whose appearance in the courtroom no one had expected.

  It was a scribe. But not an ordinary one. It was...

  "But that's His Majesty's personal scribe!" exclaimed one of the advisors in astonishment.

  The appearance of the Pharaoh's personal scribe could only mean one thing: the Prince's words were not just words, but had direct confirmation in the form of the most authoritative scribe in the Kingdom.

  Arenor glanced at the irritated advisor; his face, which had previously expressed ordinary annoyance, now expressed sincere anger towards Arenor. His eyes were filled with burning hatred as he looked into the eyes of the Prince, who, in turn, did not stop himself from smiling broadly at the advisor.

  "So... let's get straight to the point," said the Prince, rising from his seat. "The very person we took for the murderer is, in fact, an accidental witness. She is a young girl who witnessed everything that happened that night at the Night Bazaar."

  "Your Highness, why do you think she is a witness and not a murderer?" asked Rushania.

  "Because she is a petite, weak girl who is unable to resist even me alone," he suppressed a smile, remembering how she had nearly killed him when they first met in the throne room, "let alone a huge crowd of men, women and children combined."

  "She could have done it with divine power," Rushania argued reasonably.

  "She could have," Arenor agreed. "However, immediately after she was brought to the palace, I subjected her to several tests, which revealed that she possesses nothing of the sort."

  No one objected, as everyone knew the true meaning of the word "tests." Torture.

  "As a result, I also discovered a lot of interesting information, which His Majesty's personal scribe will now tell you."

  "So..." began the Scribe, opening his notebook. "Crown Prince Arenor... Arland," he added, after a disapproving glance from Arenor, "invited me into the witness holding room under the guise of secretly recording the testimony of the sole witness."

  "Why secretly?" one of the advisors immediately asked.

  "Because," Arenor began, "she refuses to meet or interact with anyone but me." Pause. "All this time, I did nothing simply because I needed time to gain her trust and find out all the details of that night."

  Rushania nodded:

  "Then it's understandable why you invited the scribe instead of her."

  "But he could have brought her here by force!" the adviser couldn't help himself again.

  "That would only make things worse; first, she might simply refuse to speak, and second, she might harm herself or us in the heat of the moment," explained Rushania.

  "Then we should have..."

  "Tell me, counsellor, do you also object a lot during council meetings chaired by my father?"

  "No," said the counsellor. "Then I don't object at all, because His Majesty is much smarter and more educated than His Highness."

  "You do understand that if my father finds out what you just said, you will first be subjected to cruel torture and only then finally allowed to die?" asked Arenor with a smile on his face.

  "Would you dare tell your father about this?" asked the advisor. "Have you decided to hide behind your father's back, just like when you were a child?"

  "The question is not whether I will hide behind my father's back. The question is... will you, advisor, hide behind my father's back after what happens next?"

  "What are you—"

  "Scribe, please continue. And don't stop again," he gave everyone in the courtroom a look that clearly told them not to interrupt the scribe.

  "So..." he cleared his throat. "According to the testimony of the only witness, she was walking through the Night Bazaar with her brother when it all started. People, one after another, just started dying. There was no apparent reason for it. One of those people was her brother, so she didn't pay much attention to everyone else around her; her focus was on her brother. And then, in an instant, she felt a blow to the head and lost consciousness," the scribe concluded. "She said she remembers nothing after that. Her next memory is of waking up in the royal prison."

  Arenor felt guilty for using Airena's tragedy — the death of her brother — to protect her. He knew she would not approve and would surely try to kill him for it. However, he also realised that he was doing it for her sake; to save her from this cruel world, at least this once.

  "I have a question," one of the advisors finally spoke up, "why is she the only one he left alive?"

  "My theory is that he did it to frame her for all the murders he committed," Arenor suggested. "Well, he did a pretty good job of it, if I do say so myself."

  "But why are there no other witnesses besides her?" asked another advisor. "The Night Bazaar is always located near the city, where there are always a lot of people. So why is she the only one who didn't..."

  "It can be explained by his gift of suggestion," Rushania interrupted him. "Especially since, as we have all discovered, he really does possess it." Pause. "The only curious thing is that, unlike the usual gift of suggestion, its effects extend not only to the person who had direct contact with its possessor, but also to everyone to whom his words were passed on."

  Unlike everyone else, who was happy to find answers to their burning questions, the irritated advisor was completely deflated after the scribe's words: whether they were true or not was irrelevant; after all, they had been spoken by the Pharaoh's personal scribe himself, which meant that all those who doubted his words would suffer a harsh sentence. So now he just sat and waited for the moment when the Prince would pass sentence on him.

  However, contrary to his hopes, the Prince was not going to pass sentence on him so easily.

  "Don't worry, advisor. As you rightly said, I am only a Prince, not a King, so I would not dare to dismiss you. You will remain in your position until my father makes his own decision and dismisses you." Pause. "Well, or until you decide to resign yourself."

  The words spoken by the Prince were much more terrible for the advisor than dismissal.

  In fact, dismissal would have been the best option, because it would have shown the Prince in a bad light; how dare he dismiss his father's advisor without his permission? This would clearly sow the seeds of discord between them and cause the Prince to lose a significant part of his reputation.

  But now that he had declared that he would not dismiss him, the advisor's entire world was destroyed. After all, this meant that the advisor would now have to walk around the palace surrounded by rumours about his unprofessionalism, about how he had dared to be rude to the Prince, about how he had been wrong in his assumptions, about how he had lost in disgrace. It meant that even if the advisor was not dismissed, he would be destroyed; his reputation; everything he had achieved in his life would now be destroyed because of one mistake.

  That was life in the palace.

  In any situation, the one with more power always won.

  It simply could not be otherwise.

  ***

  When everyone had left, the Prince was also about to leave, but he was detained by the Head of the Council, Rushania.

  "Your Highness, allow me to ask you one question."

  "The meeting is over. All questions should have been asked during it," he replied.

  "I wanted to discuss this matter with you in private."

  "Are you hiding something from your colleagues? Why such..."

  "You said that the real killer presumably has divine power, or more precisely, the gift of persuasion, capable of convincing anyone of anything. And we saw this for ourselves in the example of all of us. However, you missed one very important point."

  "What is it?"

  "If the real killer left your only witness alive solely to pin the blame for his murders on her, why didn't he just convince her that she was the killer?"

  "I—"

  "Why would he come to the palace himself and bring her there if he could just convince her of everything and make her come and turn herself in?"

  Arenor froze in shock for a moment, not knowing what to say; he had overlooked this detail when he was coming up with the story for the hearing.

  "Besides, he didn't have to shift the blame onto anyone at all, because he could have just killed everyone and disappeared," Rushania continued to press.

  "I don't... I don't know," he said, his eyes widening in horror and his body shaking. "I don't know why he did it."

  In a normal conversation between two ordinary people, there was nothing wrong with that phrase. But in a political conversation between the Crown Prince and the Head of the Council, that phrase had a devastating effect.

  That phrase meant that the advisor was right; he really was inexperienced, young, and unprofessional. He really was just a fraud. Moreover, an inexperienced fraud. He was just a pretender. He would never become a real King, and he was not worthy of the title of Prince. It was just a title. In fact, he had never been a Prince. He was just a silly little boy who thought he was a Prince.

  His breath caught, his skin paled, and his body shook. He opened his mouth, trying to breathe, but then, after another unsuccessful attempt, closed it again.

  'I screwed up again,' echoed in his head. 'I failed again, I couldn't save her again. This is the end. My attempts were just that, attempts. She will die again. He will kill her again. And I will be powerless again—'

  'Your Highness, are you all right?' asked Rushania, her expression turning concerned.

  "I'm—I'm fine, I just—I—" He held back from grabbing his throat; he was suffocating.

  "I understand," said Rushania. "No matter how much you pondered the behaviour of the alleged murderer, you unfortunately never found a way to explain his illogical behaviour."

  Arenor was in no state to notice the sharp change in Rushania's behaviour; how she had shifted from a stern tone to an understanding one, and how her gaze had softened. He completely failed to notice how, immediately after pulling the ground out from under his feet, she grabbed his arm and pulled him to the surface, stopping his fall.

  Arenor did not notice at all how Rushania saved him from falling into the abyss.

  "Yes, that's right, I just couldn't find an explanation," he said, trying to catch his breath after the panic.

  "Actually, it's no big deal," she said. "No matter how hard you try to be the perfect Prince, you're still young enough that it's normal for you to make mistakes. However..." She waited for him to regain consciousness. "From now on, try not to make mistakes like this—or any other mistakes, for that matter. You, Your Highness, should know better than anyone that in the palace, even the smallest mistake can be your last."

  Then she handed him the document for which Arenor had convened this entire meeting; the document granting him permission to investigate the incident at the Night Bazaar; a document that would allow him to find the only witness to Airena's crime and get rid of him; a document that would give him a chance at a happy life with the person he loved most.

  "As for the other advisors, you needn't worry," said Rushania, approaching the door. "I will make sure that none of them have any questions; and if they do, that they disappear as quickly as they appeared," she said finally, then left the council chamber.

  The panic left him as suddenly as it had seized him. He literally clung to the document like a wild beast to its prey; for, in essence, that was what it was. Now the hunt had begun, and this time, Arenor was not the prey, but the hunter, who would leave no one alive who dared to even try to destroy his chance at happiness and touch his Airena.