“It took them years,” Thorda continued, “but they steadily advanced, their resources limitless compared to ours. When they tired of our ambushes, they burned the forests. I think, by the end, they thought it easier to replace our people entirely with their own citizens than convert our own. It was in that final year, when the people’s hope was dwindling, that my husband built his legacy. He used every advantage he could conceive. He fought alone, and hunted leaders instead of grunts. He ambushed from the trees. He poisoned food. With his face unknown, he could still walk among their camps, and walk among them he did… with me, as I argued for peace.”

Thorda could not hide his disgust at his past self.

“I begged him to not risk his own life. Trust in diplomacy, I told him. I still had my agreements, and the excuses the God-Incarnate used to justify our invasion were wearing thin. A new peace treaty would be finalized, and all my efforts rewarded. Miquo would become part of the Everlorn Empire, but we would maintain special privileges, and select gods were allowed to survive. And then, on the day the new peace treaty was to be signed, Rhodes promised to set aside his mask. It… it was a lie. As we met at the diplomatic table, he attempted to kill the God-Incarnate. Attempted, and failed.”

The older man shook his head.

“They captured him alive. I bribed a guard so I might speak with him one last time before his execution. ‘Train them,’ Rhodes begged me. ‘Train Mari, train Stasia, train them both like I trained you. Teach them to kill. Let the blood of my blood slay a thousandfold more than I did in my time.’ And I promised him I would. How could I refuse, given what I must do the following day at the city gates?”

Thorda trembled, sorrow and fury intermixing into a dangerous glare that frightened Cyrus.

“You must understand, I had no choice, not if I wished to protect the lives of my daughters. In full view of my city, my husband, and my children, I rebuked Rhodes for his war upon the empire. I condemned the blood on his hands, and I vowed absolute obedience to the Everlorn Empire. In the quiet prison, I told him one final time that I loved him, for my last words to him below those gates were savage lies.”

Cyrus knew but a shadow of that pain. He had been forced to condemn the resistance fighters while under the Usurper King’s watch, and he had been forbidden from saying a kind word about his slain parents. But to speak such horrible things to their faces? He tried to imagine cursing his parents just before the sword fell upon them. He couldn’t. It was too awful, too cruel, and yet Thorda had endured. His respect for his master increased tenfold.