CHAPTER 405: ROTTEN MARRIAGE RELATIONSHIP

Primrose didn’t say a single word during the entire trial. All she did was sit gracefully beside her husband, watching as Arabella finally revealed her true, rotten self beneath that fake, friendly smile.

To be honest, Primrose had always been irritated by the Duchess of Cindralis. Even when Arabella was smiling politely, her thoughts were filled with insults toward both Primrose and Edmund.

Still, since Arabella had never actually voiced her nasty thoughts or done anything openly wrong, Primrose couldn’t act on it, and she couldn’t just slap her in the middle of the tea party for no reason.

Luckily, people with such rotten hearts usually end up doing rotten things. Primrose had also done questionable things in her life, but at least she never hurt innocent people. Arabella, on the other hand, didn’t have even a shred of morality left.

Throughout the trial, Arabella showed no guilt. Instead, she tried to play the victim, claiming to the judge that she knew nothing about her husband’s crimes.

"How dare you accuse me like that?!" shouted the Duke of Cindralis—Frederic—as he pointed a shaking finger at his wife. "You’re the one who forced me to sell our food supplies! You’re the one who told me to rely on the palace because you were so sure Her Majesty would help her dear friend!"

It was no wonder Arabella thought that way. After all, she had been one of the ladies who attended Primrose’s very first tea party, so anyone would assume she had a close relationship with the queen.

Primrose might have considered her a close friend too if only she hadn’t been able to read people’s minds.

She might not have asked Sevrin to investigate Arabella and her husband either if she hadn’t known how rotten the Duchess truly was inside.

In the end, Arabella was simply unlucky. The woman she thought would never become a threat to her future turned out to be the very reason she was now standing trial.

"Your Honor! This whore is the one who ordered me to do all those terrible things!" Frederic shouted. "If you want to punish someone, punish her! She must have bewitched me with dark magic!"

"You fucking bastard!" Arabella shouted back. "Do you think I chained that collar around your neck?! You just wanted to sell the food to earn more profit for yourself! Buying me a wedding ring was nothing but your pathetic excuse!"

To be honest, Arabella was right. Based on his thoughts, Frederic had indeed hidden most of the profits for himself. The ring he gave Arabella wasn’t even expensive... in fact, it was practically fake.

He never asked anyone to mine a real gemstone for his wife’s wedding ring. Instead, he ordered a cheap imitation from a jeweler outside the kingdom and lied to her about it.

Primrose couldn’t bring herself to judge him too harshly. After all, what kind of man would waste money on a wife who’d cheated on him countless times?

However, Frederic was just as rotten as Arabella. He, too, had been unfaithful many times, and his impotence came from a curse placed by a witch he had accidentally impregnated and then abandoned.

No wonder they were both desperate to destroy each other just to save themselves.

"Silence!" the judge finally roared, slamming his gavel several times until the sound echoed throughout the courtroom. "How dare you two defile this sacred court!"

As the judge continued scolding them, Primrose let out a tired sigh and leaned back against her chair.

"Are you bored?" Edmund murmured, noticing that Primrose had sighed several times already.

"Not really," Primrose whispered back. "The trial is actually quite entertaining. I’m just tired of sitting for too long."

Ever since she got pregnant, Edmund had asked the maids to replace all her chairs with ones that had thicker cushions, even her office chair was incredibly comfortable, allowing her to sit for hours without feeling sore.

That was why sitting on a hard wooden bench for more than an hour made her uncomfortable. Her back was starting to ache badly.

"It’ll be over soon," Edmund said softly as he gently rubbed her back, channeling a bit of magic energy to ease her pain. "But if you start feeling nauseous, just tell me right away."

Primrose hummed in response. She did feel nauseous, but not because of her pregnancy, rather, it was from witnessing how disgusting the marriage between the Duke and Duchess truly was.

They had chosen each other as mates, yet even the mate mark wasn’t enough to keep their loyalty intact.

Besides, how could anyone want to cheat on their spouse? Wasn’t it exhausting to juggle romantic relationships with multiple people at once?

Primrose herself had never been involved with another man in her past life, even when her marriage back then was terrible.

But loyalty was something rare these days, even a mate mark wasn’t always enough to guarantee it.

Back to the trial, just as Edmund had said earlier, it ended rather quickly. Mostly because both Arabella and Frederic had exposed all their crimes in hopes of dragging each other down.

It turned out they had hated each other for a very long time but kept pretending to be a loving couple in public just to maintain their image.

However, once a facade cracks, it keeps crumbling until there’s nothing left to fix.

"Because of the criminal acts committed by Frederic Cindralis and Arabella Cindralis, both of them will serve a sentence of one hundred years of free labor in the fields of Cindralis City, and their noble titles will be revoked." The judge struck his gavel three times, signaling that his verdict was final.

"One hundred years?!" Arabella gasped, then screamed like a madwoman. "What kind of ridiculous punishment is this?! Why should I serve this damned kingdom for free for a hundred years?! Just give me a death sentence! Kill me instead!"

"Guards!" the judge shouted as Arabella tried to rush toward the bench. "Take them to the dungeon! They will begin their sentence once winter ends!"

"Let me go!" Arabella struggled violently as the guards grabbed her arms. "How dare you touch a Duchess!"

"Duchess, my ass!" one of the beasts in the audience shouted. "You’re lower than a commoner now!"

"How dare you almost starve your people just so you could buy a wedding ring!"

"Shameless! Boo!"

Arabella gritted her teeth and turned her furious gaze toward Primrose, who sat calmly beside her husband. "What about her?! That damn queen is covered in luxury from head to toe! Look at her wedding ring, it’s outrageously expensive!"

Primrose clicked her tongue in annoyance, irritated that this crazy woman had decided to drag her into her mess.

Since Edmund had never revealed the truth about his businesses, it was understandable that people might start questioning it.

However, Primrose remained calm and responded with a faint smile. "Oh, Arabella." She deliberately called her by name, just to remind her of her current place. "In case you’ve forgotten, I was already a duke’s daughter before becoming the Queen of Noctvaris."

Her smile grew wider as she continued, "My father, the Duke of Illvaris, is so wealthy that I never needed to steal from the people just to afford my beautiful gowns or jewelry."

She lifted her hand, showing off her wedding ring that shimmered under the courtroom lights. "And besides," she said with a calm, confident tone, "my husband personally retrieved the Celestial Heart Stone from the abyss himself. So you can’t call it expensive, this ring is priceless."

Lazarus indeed possessed great wealth, and the beasts should have known that, since the Duke of Illvaris was often talked about by people along the borders because of his successful distillery business.

Even if that still wasn’t enough to prove how rich he was, Primrose could easily say that Moonfire, the alcoholic drink produced for beasts, was also her father’s business.

That would definitely cause an uproar among the beasts—some of them would probably be furious to learn they’d been consuming a product made by humans for years—but it was still a better option than revealing that Edmund owned several businesses.

First, it could make people think that he had neglected his duties as king to run private enterprises. And second, she simply wanted to show off her father’s achievements to the beasts.

It seemed that her words managed to stop all the accusations running through the minds of everyone in the courtroom.

[Yes, yes, I heard Her Majesty’s father really is THAT rich.]

[No matter how you look at her, she truly has the aura of someone born with a silver spoon in her mouth.]

[Poor His Majesty. He probably looks like a beggar in his wife’s eyes.]

[He probably needs to run some businesses just to impress his father-in-law.]

Primrose pressed her lips into a thin line, realizing that people were now starting to pity Edmund.

If only they knew how much wealth Edmund actually possessed, they’d probably want to rob him instead of pitying him.