He took the two steps to the dais and sat beside me just as the doors to the great hall opened. Adrian’s noblesse entered first and took their places near the dais. I avoided meeting their gazes, especially Razan, whose expression was strangely smug. The guards entered next, stationing themselves around the room, fencing in the large crowd of people who followed. Not everyone fit within the hall, though they tried, cramming into the doorway and spilling into the foyer and beyond, into the cold and snowy courtyard.

They all looked tired and withered, their faces red and raw from the cold.

Adrian gave no signal to begin, and yet a villager came forward anyway. His hair hung at his shoulders and half was pulled back, exposing a wide forehead. He had prominent brows and a mustache that hid his thin lips. He carried a weapon, a bow and arrow slung across his back, and while he wore gloves, they were fingerless, exposing cracked and bloodied knuckles.

“Your name?” Adrian asked, expressing no irritation over his boldness.

“I am Oskar of Scarif, my king,” he said, and I could tell by how he spoke, his breaths were shallow. He was working up his courage, and as he began, his voice shook and his eyes watered. “You cannot deny your people have suffered. We have been witness to the corruption of the crimson mist, the horror of the monsters in our woods, and now an illness tormenting our children. My oldest son was stricken first. He died an agonizing death, eyes bleeding, unable to stop screaming, and we were forced to watch. My wife and daughter also fell ill, but it was my youngest son I lost, the same as the first.”

He spoke, emphasizing his words with his movements, jabbing his fingers and clenching his fists, and where before he had fueled his speech with grief, it now turned to anger.

A weight settled upon my chest as I listened to the man talk about the deaths of his children, and that dread slowly turned into fear as he continued.

“And I am not the only one. Many in my village have had similar deaths, all children, all sons. We have all met, and we can find no other common link between them.”

My first thought was of Ravena and the crimson mist, but I had no certainty in making that connection. This illness could be something much more natural, and to assign magic to it would cause unrest.

Adrian allowed a beat of silence to pass before he spoke. He sounded both serious and emotionless. “Anyone else beyond the bounds of Scarif experience the same?”

“My son, my king,” said a woman who raised her hand and stumbled forward.

“Mine, my king, mine!” said another woman.

A quiet murmur erupted in the hall, and it carried into the foyer and the courtyard.