Amarna, Egypt, 990 AD
It made perfect sense for the Star Chamber to be based in the same place as the Council of Originals, seeing as the latter were the only ones with the authority to summon the former. The Star Chamber had been established to deal with disputes of the highest international concern - primarily, disputes between the original fairies, who were generally too arrogant to listen to mortal judges. The Star Chamber had a secondary role whereby it could step in whenever and wherever the council failed. As the Judge of the Star Chamber, Gwythr automatically became the new Acting King following the realisation that Aura was the child's mother.
Within an hour of the discovery being made, every single living original fairy had gathered in the courtoom of the Star Chamber, discussing it in tones of varying degrees of hysteria. Almost every original refused to believe Tsi's testimony and demanded to search the girl's bloodline themselves. Gwythr ordered the child to be brought forward and accepted Panagiotis' quivering witness statement of her birth before allowing each and every original to place their fingers on her temple and scan her heritage. This was the only time there was any order; once each original had learned for themselves the truth, Gwythr lost control of the room and chaos ensued.
Beneath all the shouting, Aura sat quietly in the corner of the room, head in hands. What she was thinking was anybody's guess, but luckily for her she escaped the notice of the rest of the council, who directed most of their emotion at one another instead of at her. Only when the baby began to cry did Gwythr finally manage to silence the room and regain control. Panagiotis was ordered to remove her, which he did, and Gwythr called a vote. It was protocol only; nobody in the room doubted Aura's guilt, since it was written in the DNA of the little girl, and DNA never lied. It was the first unanimous conviction in the Star Chamber's history. The sentence would require a little more deliberation, however.
When the story spread to the rest of fairykind, the general response was anger. How could they trust the originals to make laws, when the originals could not even abide by the laws they set down for themselves? Following the public outrage and the fury of most of the council, Aura's sentence was upped. She was removed as Chair of the council and replaced by Gwythr (whose handling of the situation had impressed everyone) and ancient magic was employed to render her permanently sterile. Throughout the entire process she proclaimed innocence, but the evidence was stacked against her and by this time most people had already turned against her; few would listen and even fewer believed. Mallos was one of the minority who half-heartedly stood by her. Once her sentence had been carried out, Aura returned to England without waiting to see what would become of her daughter.
The little girl was deemed to be too dangerous to be allowed to become a part of normal society. Mallos' offer to adopt her was unanimously turned down by the council, who finally agreed through majority vote that the safest thing would be to hide her away on the isle of Sicily off the coast of Italy. The child was sent to live beneath Mount Etna and was assigned a nursery maid to take care of her.
Panagiotis did not stay for the court rulings. After his initial witness statement, he returned to Greece to cremate Eleutherius. Like Aura, he refused to see the child, blaming her for his friend's death.
Eventually, things settled. As Panagiotis had predicted, all that was known and believed in had been overturned. Fairykind had been touched, and perhaps tainted, forever. |