"Were you wrong?"
Seated on her throne, the king scrutinized the "sinner" below and demanded an answer.
"I was."
The "sinner" chose to follow his heart without hesitation.
His intuition told him that he had to do so at this very moment, or something rather terrifying would most likely happen next.
"Louder! Were you wrong?"
"I was!"
The "sinner" loudly admitted his mistake, but the king on her throne showed no mercy. Her voice remained icy as she pressed him further:
"Come on, then. Tell me exactly what you did wrong."
At the king's words, the "sinner" kneeling on the floor broke into a cold sweat.
Perhaps he was imagining it, but out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw the tuft of hair atop the king's head gradually drooping.
Even when she had traveled with this "sinner" in the past and worn a hood, that tuft had always managed to poke through the gaps in the weave.
But there was no time to ponder such irrelevant matters. The gaze of the woman on the throne seemed to pierce his soul, forcing him to answer loudly:
"I shouldn't have gambled with such high stakes!
I shouldn't have entrusted the outcome of the wager to my opponent's conscience!"
Yet, contrary to the "sinner's" expectations, his crisp, decisive answer did nothing to quell her anger. The storm clouds over the king's lovely face only grew several times darker! She shouted at him:
"Well, well, well, Sovell! So you knew exactly what you were doing wrong, did you? Huh?!
Pellinore knows to mend his ways when he makes a mistake. Nothing could be better than that.
And you?
You knew it was wrong and did it anyway!"
With that, the king actually left her throne, descended the steps, and walked