"Lady von Eisenburgen, you have shown yourself to be the most rotten in mind and soul, with your recent behavior towards my betrothed, but that is not all. You had to go too far and have aimed for her to partake of this drink to which you added the most deadly of poisons."
Prince Lichterstahl spoke and looked at me with eyes colder than I had ever seen them before. Cold enough, to send shivers down my spine. Cold enough to make it feel as if the very air within my lungs was freezing up. I collapsed to my knees, uselessly gripping at the pebbles of the courtyard's ground. Surely the other students of the Royal Academy around us were staring at me with disgust as well, but I could not even perceive them, my gaze captured by those cold eyes—not even enraged or hateful, just cold, so heartrendingly cold. He continued.
"By royal decree, I hereby strip you of all your titles, your lands, your possessions and your privileges. And of all your rights. The punishment for your treasonous transgression is clear. By noon tomorrow, you shall be—"
Hanged? Most certainly that would be a fitting punishment for aiming for the future queen's life. But before he could condemn me to death like a common criminal, that woman interrupted him. A quick whisper into his ear, a soft sadness around her eyes. Amelia Sternenbund. Did she believe I wished for her pity, that whore? And she is so close to him. Just watching that made me wish to rush at her and claw at her eyes—it wrenched my heart. Surely the guards would cut me down on the spot before I could even scramble to my feet, so all I could do is wait for my beloved to pronounce my sentence. His eyes widened and he continued to speak.
"By the mercy of your future queen, you shall be incarcerated for life without parole and never again see the light of the sun. Guards, take her away!"
Burly hands roughly grasped my arms and shoulders, pulling me away from the Prince's icy gaze, my knees scraping over the pebbles, the trivial pain barely registering over the anguish filling my mind at losing him to that filthy peasant whore.
***
The guards dragged me down the dimly lit spiral staircase leading into the dungeons deep below the royal castle. Still in a shocked daze, the reality of my situation had not yet set it, but the loud clanging noise of an iron door swinging brought me back to this world. A violent shove at my lower back made me stumble through the doorway into an even more dimly lit room. Straw covered the cold stone floor and the air was filled with a stench that was as unfamiliar to me as it was easy to identify—unwashed human and filth. Were those bodies I could make out lying in the straw? Other prisoners?
Just then, a guard's calloused hand once again gripped my arm and forcibly spun me around. Anger flared up inside me, but before I could open my mouth, the tip of a sword lightly touched my throat.
"His Majesty, the Prince, said for you to be stripped of all your possessions."
In one precise stroke, the sword moved downwards, cleanly cutting upon my dress of black velvet, from the cleavage to the hem. With another powerful and practiced movement, he pulled the tattered garment from my body and gave me another shove. Losing my bearings, I helplessly flailed around as the ground quickly approached my face while the door clanged shut behind me. The guards had left and everything went black as my head painfully impacted the stone beneath the straw.
When I came to the first thing I recognized was the stench of the other prisoners in the cell. It was even stronger now. My eyes fluttered open in the dim light and my heart skipped a beat with dread. They were standing around my naked, defenseless body. Rough, unwashed peasent men. Criminals.