Chapter 23: Price of Freedom

Overturned chairs lay scattered around the yard like fallen leaves, some smashed into splinters from the panicked crowd. The feast that was meant for after the ceremony had been strewn around, trampled, and left to rot. Only the archway remained standing, overlooking the carnage of discarded food and broken furniture. A tense silence hung over the area despite the humans cleaning up the mess of yesterday’s panic. Some she recognized from Master Aaron’s staff, others she had never seen before. Not that she cared.

Everyone ignored Aeris as she stood under the archway where she was supposed to be wed. The corpse of her now ex-future husband still lay on the ground, the grass surrounding his remains stiff with dried blood. The cloud of flies on his corpse buzzed around her as if to deter her, but she refused to move. The cloak she lay over his body fluttered in the weak breeze. Occasionally it lifted for a moment, providing a view of what lay beneath it.