Aila had been waiting to hear from Prince Zale again for weeks and didn't until a royal guard came looking for her as a witness. It was then that she realized that he had lied.
He knew the merking was going to be killed. This was his version of handling it.
It was plain from her perspective that he allowed his father to be killed so he could get rid of his true enemies. That was far too cold-blooded! She shuddered at the very thought. She could never do such a thing to her own father.
But she didn't know what Prince Zale's relationship with his father was like, what he had been through, or why he had done any of this. Did she truly have a right to judge him?
Aila and Yuval had thought they were using him but it appeared that he had been using them all along. It was safer to go along with it so she could get the reward she had been promised before.
