Herald of Steel

853 Phillips' Family (Part-2)

Hearing the lady confess to all of this, Lord Theony's heart felt like it was doing cartwheels.

It was a story so scandalous that Lord Theony could not have written it himself even if he had wanted to.

And he even saw no reason to embellish it by the tiniest.

Just the raw facts were damning enough.

A father in law having an illicit affair with his daughter in law all while the son was fully aware of it.

The scandal practically wrote itself.

Such a thing would have destroyed the reputation of any man and his family.

Never mind this happened to the most prestigious in all of Tibias.

"Who else knows this?" Lord Theony then curiously posed so to the woman.

"Only the three of us! And my maids," Came the concise, monotone reply.

"How frequently did the king sleep with you?" Lord Theony then pressed for more details.

"Only until I gave birth to…. to …. Wuhhhuu… wuhhh"

But then suddenly that mechanical voice changed as the woman broke down in the middle of her answer.

For that suddenly reminded her of her son's name.

While Lord Theony was able to calculate that since the lady had given birth to her daughter first and then her son, the king must have slept with her for one year at the very least.

"...."

Lord Theony's interrogation came to an end with this and the room then once again returned to its silence, with only the low, mournful sobs echoing across the space.

So feeling he had obtained all he wanted at last pronounced,

"What you have done with the king and father in law is an affront to the ancestors and all living spirits in Tibias."

"It is the most heinous of acts."

"You and your daughter will be brought to trial before the court to be judged for this filth "

"Do not even think that you can run away!"

Lord Theony was filled with disgust and scorn, before he turned to look at the two maids who by now had huddled themselves to a corner of the room, trying to appear as inconspicuous as possible.

And as the lord's eyes fell on them, both shivered like a trembling kittens, as they then heard Lord Theony say to them,

"And both of you will be summoned too- to testify to the things Her Grace has confessed to."

Lord Theony felt the room with this, without waiting for the maids' answer, his heart dancing with joy and his head already getting to composing the speech he was going to give then all this was revealed.

He dreamed of standing in front of the court, addressing them as,

'My fellow lords and lady, you have heard what the lady had to say. Of what she has confessed to doing, And with who!'

'Can you truly believe it? That she had committed such a filthy act?'

'I know no words to describe this heinous…. thing!' As Lord Theony thought of the speech, he could not come up with an exact word right at the moment, and decided to skip it for now, intending to come back to it later.

As he then continued making the rest of the speech,

'It has violated every conscious morality of our society. She deserves to be punished in the most cruel way possible.'

'Also do not forget- it takes two to tango.'

'And who she has done this filthy act with? His Majesty the King no less. All while her husband the Crown Prince watched!'

'My lords! I truly have no words to describe this. In all my years, I have never even heard of such utter depravity much less seen it.'

'It is because of such acts that our country is where we are. It is because the king has lost the favor of the ancestors.'

'And it is put to us to bring His Majesty to justice!'

"The ancestors demand it!'

Lord Theony's spine already tingled with excitement as he thought about giving this speech.

He was sure not even Perseus's most staunch supporters would be able to speak up against Lord Theony when he showed them this proof.

Lord Theony was sure he could erode much of Perseus's influence with this speech.

But alas, Lord Theony would be very disappointed the next morning, as he would be woken up late morning not by the smell of sumptuous food brought by a maid right onto his bed, but by the loud thuds of fists smacking against the door followed by heavy footsteps of armored men.

"My lord! Terrible news!" And as soon as the men entered, Lord Theony heard this panicked shout, followed by the report that the lady in question, and both her maid had killed themselves, even taking the daughter with them.

"What!" As soon as the man heard it, he bolted up from his bed at the speed of lightning, and simply putting on a light robe, he almost ran through the corridor to the room in question.

And upon entering it, found a ghastly sight.

Hanging off the tall bedpost were the two maids, a linen sheet wound around their neck, acting as the rope.

Their eyes were bulged, their tongues rolled out, as they must have tried desperately to grasp for the tiniest bit of air at the very end points of their life.

While a bit side to these 'floating' bodies, on a large armchair laid the lifeless corpse of the mistress of the room, her arms sprawled over, wrists cut.

The rusty blood had gushed out of the deep wound and stained her nightgown before the rest pooled around the chair, where Lord Theony also spotted a large fruit knife, no doubt the 'murder' weapon.

And lastly, and perhaps mostly tragically, there was the infant girl, who, as if being played a cruel joke by fate, had been killed by having her throat slit open, just like her brother.

From this it could also be clearly seen how the lady's darning confession under stress was oh so different from a very similar condition faced by another lady, Lady Felicia.

And it could be heavily argued that if were to switch places with the woman would have certainly been able to come out much better.

Given how smart she was, it was unlikely Lady Felicia would have stumbled even in that first roadblock and might have possibly named a random noble- like Perseus's brothers, cousins, or even his other sons.

And even if she were to be caught in that, she would have never revealed the truth.

Like she had not revealed the fact that she had killed her step siblings even when she was in danger of losing her most desired dream.

And that was something actually relatively mild in the context of the time when compared to what the king and his daughter in law had done,

Because what Lady Felicia had done was simply kill some commoners.

But Philips's wife and the king's deeds violated the very social structure of the time.

And plunged the entirety of the royal family's reputation down into the abyss of absolute filth.

Lady Felicia would not have confessed to it, even if that knife had been pressed against Fabiyana.

And she would not have even needed to think too hard for a lie, because if you recall, Lord Theony had already given the noble lady the answer when he had said, 'You could have said the name of any loyalist noble and I would have probably believed you,' before pressing the lady for an answer.

This means the lady could have literally given the name of any loyalist noble.

But she was simply not smart enough, very much unlike the ambitious Lady Felicia, who had not even hesitated to harm her daughter during her pregnancy just to make her story about infidelity airtight.

And that had come to cost her dearly.

The noble lady was forced to commit suicide as she decided that death was the far better option than the ignominy that was surely to come.

Both her maids too decided to follow, one- because they were that loyal, and two- because they knew the information they had come to inadvertently know was the curse of a lifetime.

As long as they lived they would be hounded by it, from both sides as they pressured them to tell their version of the truth.

So rather than drag their mistress's name through the mud, they chose to end themselves too.

As for the baby, her mother trembled at the thought of what her dear precious would experience growing up with such a scandalous identity.

And that was if she could grow up at all, as the judgment hinted at by Lord Theony really made that doubtful.

So rather than leave the defenseless infant to fend for herself all alone in this cruel world, the mother had decided to take her daughter with her.

But one should not mistakenly think it was an easy decision for the woman, as when she was doing it, she had cried a river of tears, constantly kissing the fluffy cheeks of the baby, and mournfully confessing,

"I'm sorry, mother could not protect you… wuhhhuu… wuhhh…

I'm sorry."

"But do not worry. Soon we will go to where your brother is. No one will be able to hurt us there."

"My sweet precious daughter... this will only hurt for a second...wuhhhuu...wuhhhh."

It was truly tragic that four lives were wasted just because the woman was not smart enough.

Oh! How much regret that lady must have felt as her life came to such a lamentable end!

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