The day before Aberstein’s death, he had looked at me with an uncharacteristic seriousness in his gaze.

“This is how people die,” he said. “Three minutes past midnight.”

It hadn’t made sense to me at the time, but now his body was floating around somewhere in the Olstraavian Sea, probably getting nipped at by slaughter-fish and elk-rays, and now I had to answer for his death.

In some cultures, suicide is met with a funeral, but we do not exercise this privilege. Here, suicide is murder. And it is treated as such, so it is expected that someone answers for their crime in court, and then in execution. Death to answer death.

The matter of who would be executed would be settled in the royal courtroom tomorrow. As a child, I enviously watched court proceedings from a tilted, red-tiled roof through a circular, stained-glass window as fierce words cracked throughout the room. Only the royal family, officials, and necessary witnesses had the fortune of stepping inside. People of my status weren’t even allowed near the perimeter, and it was only with the help of Aberstein that I had ever gotten as close as I did. I spent many nights dreaming of how I would argue in that courtroom, slinging devastating ideas and saving innocent lives.

But now I was here. And now, the walls weren’t sun-bathed, and the stained glass didn’t glow. It was empty, dead, and ghostly.

I tried to think about how the white marble floors and the endless stone walls and the rows of pews and the judicial panel were beautiful, but I wasn’t stupid. I knew that this is where people died, and that if I lifted the right piece of furniture, I would find ancient and honorable puddles of red.

I left quickly, my idea of this place extinguished. I watched this courtroom hand out death to hundreds of strangers, never once pausing to thing that I could someday be one of them.

The flag outside the courtroom was half-mast, but no wind blew to show its colors. Instead, it was a bleak smudge against an even bleaker winter’s day. The protocol was thirty days for those in the royal family, but royal children were an exception. They’d likely keep the flag like this for longer.

---

“Your royal highness,” I said, standing up, hands clasped behind my back. The judge shook her head, and I immediately knew that something in my gaze, my walk, or my cheap clothing betrayed me, for she must’ve realized that people like me did not belong in place as expensive as this.

“Angela Marshall,” she sighed.

That was my name, and if I could trade all the money in the world for the privilege of it currently being otherwise, I would do so in an instant.

I sat back down, my chair squeaking in the unusual silence. My stomach was gurgling, and I willed it to stop, as I was positive that every powdered-wig old man within this courtroom could hear it.

In a row beside me, presented to the court as superficial equals, sat Aberstein’s brother, his mother, and his father. I had never formally met any of them, but I’d seen their faces plenty of times.

“Prince Etho.”

Aberstein’s brother stood. They looked similar and I had to look away from his familiar gaze before I grew sick.

“Queen Amanda.”

Aberstein’s mom stood, her dress comically puffing up when released from the compression of the chair. It felt as if this was some timely message from Aberstein, and I had to stop myself from weakly smiling.

“King Alder.”

Aberstein’s father finally stood. He had a deadly, uncomfortable air about him, and I understood why he had garnered so many of Aberstein’s complaints. I could not imagine him loving anyone, much less a child.

The judge continued to speak ceremoniously, and she did not attempt to hide the tone in her voice that revealed she had already landed on an answer as to who should be blamed for his death.

“We gather here today to discuss the murder of Prince Aberstein Drake. It is suspected that he walked out his top-floor bedroom window, plunging into the Olstraavian Sea. The time, recorded by a kitchen worker when there was a profound splash, was three past midnight. It is likely that he died upon impact. The four suspects will answer questions, as proposed by the panel.”

There wasn’t even a cough to break the thickening silence. It was cold here and I was suddenly going pale, sweating, and breathing hoarsely. I miserably shoved my cold fingers beneath my thighs.

“Angela Marshall, you were the last person to see the Prince, correct?”

I swallowed. “Correct.”

“Angela Marshall, the Prince had previously confided in you, correct?”

About a dozen nights flashed in my mind. Beneath stars, on beaches, on hillsides.

“About certain topics.”

“And the topic of life?” she said with a particular bite.

“Not specifically,” I lied. I suspected that they could smell the dishonesty on my breath, in the air, on my clothes.

“But you were friends?”

“Of course.”

“And how can you claim to be his friend, despite not seeing the warning signs?”

I pursued my lips and something bitter in me unraveled. “The same way his parents can claim to be his parents.”

A cascade of discontent murmurs ran through the court. I decided that I did not like any of the judges questioning me, and that they did not like me, either.

“Irrelevant. You were his confidante, Angela Marshall, no one else.”

“Do you really think that a Prince, of such high standing moral character, would trust such heavy secrets with a peasant girl?” I asked sharply.

“Evidently.”

“He did not tell me his secrets,” I lied again.

And suddenly, the judge is roaring. It is as if I have put match to tinder, for I can no longer feel the cold or the nausea or the uncertainty; I can only recognize the chilly fear that is sinking throughout my body. I am almost positive that the King has shrunk back, too. I am pressing back against the chair as the judge shrieks that I knew the exact time and date and that I had let him die.

If was any bone of self-preservation in my body, I was certain that I would already be running away with the screams at my back, but instead I sat, dreadfully frozen.

“Angela Marshall, to the stage!”

I find myself walking up to this place automatically. I’d always wondered what motivated prisoners to the stage. Had it been honor? A final message? The last way to show self-control? No, it had always been nothing more than numbing fear.

The cold from the marble floor seeps through my boots. I had always assumed that when I looked through the red stained-glass window from my rooftop perch, gaze flickering between the stage I currently stood on and the pew Aberstein had occupied, the marble was merely pink because of the glass.

But here, beneath my feet, it had kept its bloody red tint.

And all I can’t think is that… this is how people die.