บท 86: Unpleasant consequences

The bitterness of failure had become an all too familiar companion for Rose in the wake of her staggering setback. The truths she had risked everything to unearth, the evidence that should have proven Blake's innocence beyond any doubt, lay in smoldering ruins - dismissed as mere circumstantial trivialities by those too mired in dogma to see the truth staring them in the face.

Her counsel's words echoed through Rose's mind like the peal of a rusted knell, each syllable a hammer strike against the sputtering flame of hope she fought so desperately to keep alive. Not enough...circumstantial...the system too entrenched to truly deliver justice.

An inarticulate growl of fury rumbled up from the depths of Rose's being, her hands clenching into white-knuckled fists that trembled with the force of her barely constrained rage.

Her beautiful face scrunched up to a subpar comparison of the beauty it held.