They stood in some kind of antechamber, with a hemispherical wall that found its apex in a bricked-in passageway. Narsheidel and two others—an aging Longshield and Baron Denthuel, the one-legged Horselord assigned to command the Citadel—stood back, their hands out, their faces wary or placating or worried or pleading or …

“Where’s my father?” he cried.

Only Narsheidel, his soaked armour shining silver and black in the uncertain light, dared speak.

“King Harweel is dead, boy.”

The words winded him. Even still, Sorweel heard his own voice say, “That means I am King. That I’m your master!”

The High Boonsman looked down to his palms, then out and upward, as though trying to divine the direction of the outer roar—for it had not stopped.

“Not so long as your father’s words still ring in my ears.”

Sorweel looked into the older man’s face, with its strong-jawed proportions and water-tangled frame of hair. Only then, it seemed, did he realize that Narshiedel too had loved ones, wives and children, sequestered somewhere in the city. That he was a true Boonsman, loyal unto death.

“King Harweel is—”

Explosion. Only afterwards, sputtering, scrambling across the floor, would the young Prince understand what happened. Bricks exploding outward, as though a tree-sized hammer had struck the round wall’s far side, taking Lord Denthuel in the head and neck, swatting him broken to the ground.

Dust carried on the back of shiver-cold air. Pale out-of-doors light. Ears ringing, Sorweel turned to the gaping hole …

He might have called out, but he wouldn’t remember.

He looked through the breach into the husk of the Citadel’s ruined galleries. Something golden hung in the floorless hollows, something that boiled with impossible light. Against a backdrop of empty windows and long-gutted walls, it walked across open air. Walked. Rain plummeted in lines about it, as though down a well.

But no dampness touched him.

The Aspect-Emperor.

The shining demon crossed the threshold, framed by gloom and deluge.

The nameless Longshield simply turned and ran, disappearing into the halls. Raising his greatsword high, Narsheidel cried out, charged the luminescent figure …

Who simply stepped to the side, impossibly, like a dancer avoiding a drunk. Whipping his arms like rope, the figure brought his curved blade up over his scalp, then snapped it back in a perfect arc. Narsheidel’s body and head continued careering forward, joined only by a flying thread of blood.

The demon’s eyes had remained fixed on Sorweel the entire time. Only … they did not seem a demon’s eyes.

Too human.

On his knees, Sorweel could do naught but stare.