Chapter 32: “Cat got your tongue?”

Celeste sits on the corner of the harem, her eyes fixed on the window overlooking a beautiful pond. Though her thoughts tend to soar a mile a minute, there's a calming sense in watching the lush green grass encircle the tranquil blue water.

Her mind is thrust back into the tumultuous whirlwind of events that transpired mere hours ago within the hallowed halls of the courtroom. The echoes of impassioned arguments and fervent debates reverberate through her consciousness, each moment magnified into a mess of dramatic intensity.

Every gesture, every word spoken, assumes larger-than-life proportions in the theater of her memory, etched with the vivid hues of heightened emotion and palpable tension.

Clad in the somber black robe she had slipped on earlier at home— home, oh what a foolish thought it is— Celeste finds herself trapped in a surreal reality she never saw coming—a concubine in a foreign land, stripped of her freedom and dignity.