“Then let that be enough,” she said. “Being the throne’s heir is useful to my father’s plan, but you need not be a king to make things better for others. You need not be of the same blood to wish someone a better life. A noble purpose is enough.”

“Is that how you justify it?” he asked her. “All the killing and murder as the Lioness?”

The woman put a hand on the brass bell, her fingers curling across the carved outline of Lycaena. A wistful look crossed her face. Moonlight shone off her brown hair, and she was so regal, so beautiful in its glow.

“When I hunt, there is pleasure in the blood upon my tongue,” she said softly. “War makes monsters of us all, but that is why I become the Lioness. I hunt so no one else must be a monster. I hunt so others may know peace, and love, and live in the joy of their gods and the beauty of their rituals. For me, that is enough to grant my soul peace. What will it take for yours, Cyrus?”

She descended the stairs. Cyrus turned his attention to the castle illuminated in the distance. He could not see the courtyard hidden behind the surrounding castle walls, but he could envision it. The gently sloping grass hill. The cobblestone walkway. The giant crack pounded open by Imperator Magus of Eldrid’s shield, a deep chasm into which the blood of his parents had flowed. What he could see clearly were the gray banners hanging over the walls of the castle, red hands clasped in prayer in their center. Those banners proudly declared to every citizen of Vallessau that the Everlorn Empire ruled supreme.

Did his soul even want peace?

Cyrus pulled out the skull mask Thorda had gifted him on their trip back into Vallessau. He slipped it over his face and tightened the leather cord’s knot. A calmness passed over him as he felt himself becoming something different. Something new. This path meant inheriting the legacy of the killer who came before, the Skull-Amid-the-Trees, but wasn’t that the nature of his life? The inheritance of legacies, and the struggle to make them his own? With this new face he beheld the castle and its gray banners.

Will you be stronger, Cyrus Lythan? the Lion had asked. There was only one answer he could give.

“You took from me everything I loved,” he whispered. He spoke his promise to Magus, to Sinshei, to the Usurper King, and to the distant God-Incarnate who ruled the Everlorn Empire. “My parents. My kingdom. Even my gods. I can’t unmake the loss, but I can make you hurt. I can make you afraid.”