Inside the throne room, silence reigned like a sovereign of its own. The chamber stretched wide and cavernous, its high-arched windows bleeding daylight onto marble floors polished to a mirror's sheen. At the far end, upon a throne wrought of polished white marble and gilded steel, King Heimdal sat, his posture straight but heavy, the crown weighing as much as the years etched into his stern face.
Before him stood two figures—his son, Alaric, and the man Heimdal had always believed to be nothing more than one of Alaric's loyal guards: Angus.
Heimdal's eyes lingered on Angus longer than was necessary. The memory came unbidden—of a much younger Alaric, brash and restless, arriving at the palace gates with two scrawny siblings he had purchased from the slave market at the borderlands of Estalis.
