“I’m not trying to recapture my throne for entertainment,” he hissed as he followed Arn into the room. The paragon lifted the dresser, found nothing, then set it down so he might tear open a few drawers to be sure. Next he tossed the bloodstained mattress aside. The magistrate had died in his bed during their earlier attack on the Sanctuary, but there was no sign of the body.

“Then why do you want your throne back?” Arn asked. “Surely you know that even if we succeed, God-Incarnate Lucavi will send fleet after fleet across the Crystal Sea until he buries this island in soldiers and paragons. I assumed you were motivated by hate and spite. Never took you for one of Thorda’s idealistic dreamers.”

These issues were problems lurking in the distance, ones on which Cyrus had refused to spare even a moment’s thought. What point was there focusing on the difficulties he might face as king when the sheer act of reclaiming his throne was already so daunting?

“If it’s so hopeless, then why are you here?” he asked.

Arn dropped to one knee and checked underneath the bed.

“There you are,” he said, ignoring Cyrus’s question. “It must have fallen out of my pocket while I was handling the magistrate.”

By handling him, Arn meant squeezing the magistrate’s head between his gauntlets until it popped like a grape. There hadn’t been enough left for Cyrus to carve the Vagrant’s crown across the forehead, an issue that, when presented to Arn, had only made the paragon laugh. It was during this head-squashing that Arn must have lost his most precious… whatever the object of his fanatical search was. He shoved the bed frame up with his shoulder and then grabbed it, surprisingly quick for a man so giant. Cyrus caught only a glimpse of something orange and white before it vanished into Arn’s pocket.

“Is that it?” Cyrus asked. He felt like he was the butt of some strange joke. “We risked our lives for whatever that little thing was?”

“I don’t remember asking you to come along.”

Alarm bells were ringing nonstop. No time to argue the matter, not here, as much as Cyrus wished for an explanation.

“Later then,” he said. “It’s time to get out of here before the entire imperial occupation comes down on our heads.”

CHAPTER 34

ARN

I appreciate you coming with me,” Arn said as they approached their home, and he did mean it. Their sprint had slowed to a walk as they reached the neighboring housing district and left the ringing of alarm bells far behind. They’d encountered only a single soldier during their way out, outmatched and easily dispatched. “Even if you did so uninvited.”