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“So she got away from you. Fine.” She waved a hand, the emerald winking. “Did you send scouts after her?”

He put a hand to his hip, leaning to compensate for the magnificent sword he no longer carried.

“My army isn’t the kind to... scout,” he said thickly.

Erida could only sneer. She remembered the Ashlander horde, half rotten and lurching. Deadly, but brainless. Sometimes literally.

“I’ll have Thornwall dispatch riders to every corner of the Ward. And I’ll triple her bounty,” she said, leaping up from her chair. “She will be found, and her Spindleblade too.”

Taristan’s low sigh stopped her.

“MySpindleblade. I shattered hers.”

Gnashing her teeth, Erida whirled on him.

“How did that girl manage to steal a sword out of your own two hands?!”

She tried to imagine it, tried to balance the mercenary lord before her with the ugly mouse his niece was.

“Taristan, what happened in Gidastern?” Her voice quivered.

“The Burning Realm lives up to its reputation.”

Outside the windows, the red sun slipped beneath the horizon, its blaze disappearing. The salon went dark and cold too quickly, the candles unlit, the hearth weak and low.

“How many died?” Erida murmured. She ran a hand over her arm, shivering through the thin silk.

Taristan shrugged. “How many live in Gidastern?”

He would not meet her gaze. Erida realized she did not know what regret looked like on his face, or whether he could feel it at all.

Her own remorse was smaller than she expected. There was only severe, necessary logic to think of.

“Did any escape?” she demanded. “Does anyone know you did this to my city?”

Taristan’s red silk went black as the shadows grew, spilling over him.

“The horde followed me in soon after. I doubt any survived to tell of what happened.”

“Good.”

The word came out almost too quickly, an arrow loosed before the archer could take aim. It was easier than sitting with the knowledge of a city in ashes, its people slaughtered. Her own banner trampled and bloody. Erida let the thought well within her, only for a second. She remembered the corpse army, ragged and clawing, a nightmare in daylight.

And a weapon too.

She felt Taristan’s reluctant gaze, watching as the scales balanced in her head.

The equation was easy, in the end.

With her chin high, Erida drew up her spine and folded her hands together, standing as she had every day of her royal life. She was marble and gold, unfeeling, a queen.

An empress. And empires are born in blood.

“Gidastern burned in a terrible fire. These things happen,” she said, waving a hand. Then her fingers curled, clenching into a fist. “What is one city for an empire?”

Deep in her mind, something smiled. She could feel it, unfamiliar lips pulling over too-sharp teeth.

Taristan watched her with something like fascination. She recognized that look too. She saw it on her own courtiers all the time.