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“Listen, you thick bitch. You’re on your own. Make your way home, and we’ll make sure you continue,” Gideo explained, giving Maryn a kick just to ensure she understood.

It dawned on Maryn then that she was entirely on her own. They had no intention of helping her, only hurting her.

We all watched her torturous journey home with the boys, making sure she kept going like they said they would. Several times, she blacked out, only to be awakened by the attackers, adding further cuts and bruises to her battered body. They kept up a steady stream of abuse directed towards her mother and herself.

They left her at the bottom of Coven land, never once helping her or going to get help, even when her injuries were clearly life-threatening. Instead, they piled on more punishment. We had never witnessed such sheer cruelty and nastiness in living memory.

Finally, the memories ran out, and we all sat there looking at the screen in varying shades of disgust and shock.

The whole of the chamber was silent, no one daring to break it. We couldn’t accept what we’d witnessed. My father and Diana had already watched this and still they remained there, not believing their eyes.

I wanted to erase what I had seen. It was no wonder that Maryn woke up screaming or that she refused to be alone, thinking that they might come back for her. Reassurances that they were locked up meant nothing to her.

I found it so hard to believe that such wanton evilness existed in my lifetime.

Obviously, watching humanity over the millennia that have passed, I have seen horror upon horror. But this is Kaltos we’re discussing. This is the first nightmare that I ever witnessed, and on Kaltos of all places, the shock hit home.

We would no longer live a life without fear. Claudias and Maurick had done their work properly. They had brought back the banished emotions in full force, surfacing in four boys who were once innocent. And they’d had that precious state destroyed by two madmen, again just like the rest of us.

Honestly, who should be blamed for it? The boys, their parents, Vam’pirs or Claudias and Maurick? The latter two had definitely laid the foundation for this hysteria to exist, for this incident to happen.

Nevertheless, the parents were to blame to some extent. They had listened to and spread rumours they had forced themselves to believe in. They’d not sought the truth.

Where were the facts? No one ever needed to have them to repeat a delicious piece of gossip. All kinds of individuals enjoy gossip, with no desire for proof of truth.

I turned my gaze towards the defendants, shrunken figures that still showed no remorse for what they had done. They had seen their parent’s expressions, and that was the only thing that seemed to move them. Their shame at having been caught and forcing their parents to go through this.

The parents themselves had not seen the evidence before, and now they stared at their children, their thoughts clearly written on their faces. Had they spawned monsters? They knew they were to blame. Their culpability shone through for everyone to read; there was embarrassment and pain there, too, but guilt was the strongest emotion.

My heart fluttered for them, although I harboured a great deal of anger. I had to imagine how I would feel if it had been mychild sitting there, my little Mihal. Devastated was the word that sprang to mind.

However, my son would never do this to someone. I would bloody make sure of that.

Between Inka and I, plus my parents, Mihal never stood a chance of doing something like this. We would ensure that Mihal was brought up properly. Not allowed to be racist. This entire farce originated from that one taboo subject.

Racism.

The parents slumped even further in their seats as someone from the back of the hall called out vicious abuse. The boys sat stone-faced, seemingly unmoved.

Then, a voice added vitriol and another. Within seconds, the chamber was full of voices shouting in hatred.

My eyes widened in shock; I had never seen such a loss of control by the public. Tieran banged vainly on the table to try and restore control but to no avail.

Emotions were torn open as everyone thought, ‘that could have been my child, sister or brother.’ Nobody wanted to listen. For once, their emotions ran riot over common sense, overruling any respect for the council. Four years of pent-up emotion had finally found a catalyst.

“Stop it!” a supernatural voice shouted, deafening the nearby people.

A shocked silence fell as faces turned towards Julius standing on his feet.

“Is this our idea of justice?” he asked in a lower tone.

“What about justice for the girl?” someone retorted.

Brave man, I thought to myself, bold indeed to challenge one of ‘them’.

“Isn’t that our purpose here? The council have seen the evidence; they are our peacekeepers and lawmakers, are they not? Let them make the decision of punishment, not us. Orare we going back in time to revisit our violent history?” Julius asked, waving his hand at the angry crowd.

That gave them pause to think.