Her father gently leaned his head upon hers. Together they watched the three logs within the hearth char and fade to gray.

“Do not hate me, Mari,” he whispered.

“Why would I ever hate you?”

He did not answer. The fire crackled, silence followed, and she lay there until the fire faded and sleep came.

Cyrus was glad to be outside, for his feet craved a walking path. Hood pulled high up over his head, he traversed the dark streets, his gaze locked mere steps before him. His mind, however, was a thousand miles away.

Forty men and women, prominent members of Vallessau’s high society, set to hang. And why? Because they sought to meet him again. They wished to be in his presence, to watch him move, to fight, perhaps even execute another member of the imperial army. They desired the hope he offered, and in return, the Imperator stormed the mansion and dragged them into prison cells.

“Everywhere I go, people are dying for me,” he whispered. He dared not voice the thought that followed: Am I worth it?

His path led him southwest, to the outer wall where the city could grow no farther due to the rising Emberfall Mountains. The particularly clever or desperate citizens had carved their homes into the rock, with both wood and rope ladders granting access. Cyrus focused on a distant section worn into the cliff by wind, rain, and time. There. That would suffice.

Cyrus clutched his hand into a fist, and he enacted the magic of the Anyx ring so that when he stepped forward, his entire body transported to the deep shadows atop that cliffside. He calmly crossed the tiny space to the edge, and from high up he gazed upon the sleeping city. He soaked in the faint streetlamps, the torches surrounding the castle, and the five blockading ships lurking on distant starlit waters.

“Does it end?” he whispered to the night. “Does it ever end?”

People had fought and died for him from the first moment the army of the Everlorn Empire invaded Thanet’s shores. Those better than him had sacrificed their focus and time to train him. Years of others’ lives, spent and gone, to make him useful. Thorda whispered stories, and his daughters sowed chaos so he might claim the credit. Mari had insisted he didn’t need to own the city to wish the best for its people, and Cyrus believed that, he did, but he also understood the unspoken promise connected to that belief.

The people believed in him, in the Vagrant. They believed, and with that hope came bloodshed. His hope. His bloodshed. There would be no washing his hands of that.

“I won’t let you win,” Cyrus told the phantom image of the Imperator who had murdered his mother and father. “I’m tired of people fighting for me. I’m tired of people dying for me. Others carry the burdens meant for my shoulders. No longer.”