A lone soldier stood behind Cyrus, his mailed hand resting atop Cyrus’s shoulder. The soldier was there to keep an eye on him should he attempt to cause a scene. His grip tightened as Thanet’s regent left the center of the platform to speak with him at the platform’s edge.

“Stand tall,” the regent, Gordian Goldleaf, told him as he gave a once-over to Cyrus’s elegant violet shirt and black velvet trousers. “It will do Thanet’s people good to see their prince give his approval to the ceremony.”

“Prince,” Gordian called him, though by all rights Cyrus should now be king. It was how the empire still referred to him in all official proclamations. It gave a vague hint that things might one day return to normal, that the empire’s regent was a temporary measure. A lie, of course, one few believed. Gordian may be regent, but Cyrus knew the name most people called him in the streets, a name Gordian had actually mocked one day at the dinner table, he was so amused by it: the Usurper King.

“I’ll give no such approval,” Cyrus said.

Gordian flashed him his brightest smile. He was a handsome man, muscular, bright-eyed, with his blond hair perfectly shaped beneath a golden crown.

“If you don’t, then we shall have two executions on this stage, not one.”

Gordian returned to the side of his wife, Katrin. The Usurper Queen. She wore a dress that matched Gordian’s royal garb: long, shining waves of silver broken up with deep streaks of red. Fiery-haired, with eyes greener than emeralds and a smattering of freckles upon her cheeks, she was a portrait of beauty just like her husband was handsome. From what Cyrus had learned over his two years, she loved him not a wit. She loved the power that came from the marriage, and that was apparently enough to earn her fierce loyalty. The two shared a false smile as they resumed speaking with the numerous church representatives. Between them stood their little son, Uriah, in a silken suit brought all the way from distant Gadir. He clutched his mother’s hand tightly. The boy was barely four. That he would witness the execution at such a young age seemed perverse to Cyrus, but what should he expect from such a twisted empire?

“Back them off,” Imperator Magus of Eldrid shouted to his soldiers from where he stood upon the stage. The thousands were growing restless, either seeking the blood they came to witness, or permission to leave the ceremony that had been declared mandatory to attend by the regent. The paragon lifted his shield. “Or I’ll do it for you, and it won’t be gentle.”