It was a struggle to envisage the face of his wife. When he imagined her sitting wrapped in furs with a newborn child against her breast, he saw a stranger. Two strangers. His hands would not cease trembling. They felt hot, as if they still held the fires they had unleashed in that moment of fury, so fierce with brutal vengeance. He did not regret the pain he had delivered upon Olar Ethil; but when he thought of it, he saw himself first, a figure silhouetted by towering flames, and the screams filling the smoke and ashes rising into the air became the voice of the trees, the agony of blackening leaves and snapping branches. He stood then, like a god, face lit in the reflection of his undeniable triumph. A witness to the destruction, even when that destruction was his own. Such a man knew no love, not for a wife, not for a child. Such a man knew nothing but violence and so made of himself a stranger to everyone.

Insects spun through the dusk. Behind him he heard Ville muttering something to Galak, and the smoke from the cookfire drifted past him, like serpents escaping another realm, fleeing off into the gathering darkness. He looked across to where he had left Raskan’s cloth-wrapped body. The hands were stretched out, bruised and swollen, and where the leather strings were tied round the wrists they now bit deep. Beyond them were the moccasins, lying on the grass. Draconus was free with his gifts indeed.

Urusander would find a way. He would crush the madness and force peace upon Kurald Galain. But blood would flow and the struggle would be arduous. If only the guilty died, then such deaths could be deemed just, and so make of each unfortunate murder an act of execution. Justice was at the heart of retribution, after all.

For too long had the highborn lounged, smug and complacent with the privileges that came with the wielding of power. But nothing of worth was given for free. Privilege was a bright weed growing on the spilled blood of the enslaved, and Rint saw nothing precious in such bitter flowers. When he looked ahead, he could think of nothing but smoke and flames, the only answers he had left.

It was Draconus’s noble blood that had yoked them all, dragging them through misery and unfeeling abuse. Without his title, he was no different from any of them. And yet they had bowed before him. They had knelt in deference, and by each and every such act they but served to confirm the Lord’s own sense of superiority. These were the rituals of inequity, and everyone knew their role.