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"Wasn’t it?" Owain asked sharply as he frowned at the engineer. After months of trading barbed words with her, he was enjoying watching her use her viperish tongue against someone else for a change, but he couldn’t help but feel that this latest barb was aimed more toward him than it was toward Baron Hanrahan.

But for that to be true, she would have to know about Loman’s intention to contend for the throne. ..

The thought that she might be aware of Owain’s struggle to inherit the throne that should be his by birthright shook him to the core.

His eyes narrowed and his brows lowered as he scowled at Isabell, who seemed completely immune to any form of intimidation.

Was this really an idle comment in response to Jocelynn’s childish infatuation with stories of true love?

Or had the entire story she told about the civil war in the Emerald Kingdom been intended to allow her to make this point?

Owain had no way to know for sure, but knowing what he did about the sharpness of Isabell’s mind and the keenness of her wit, he wouldn’t put it past her.

"As the eldest son and heir," Owain said carefully. "The throne was his by birthright. Or do you mean to tell me that the Emerald Kingdom practices some heretical version of the faith that denies men the position they were born into after meeting their struggle in their past life?"

Owain’s question instantly drew the attention of most people at the high table, though a few of them seemed to bristle at the implications of his statement.

It seemed odd for Owain to couch his question in the doctrine of the Church, though those closest to him understood that it was likely a reaction to the threat he felt from his own brother.

Owain was looking for reasons to shore up the legitimacy of his claim to the throne wherever he could find them and the Church’s teaching that people born into positions of privilege had earned them through struggles in their previous lives was just one of the many straws he was grasping at as he searched for an escape from the possibility that his father would pass the title of Marquis to his brother Loman.

Bastian, on the other hand, gave his half-brother Hugo an intense, dark look, as if to remind his younger brother that there was no doubt between them about who would become the next Baron Hanrahan.

Small though the barony might be, and struggling as it was, in Bastian’s mind, it still belonged to him, and any problems the barony faced would quickly be swept away when he rode Owain’s coattails to greater heights in the coming Holy War against the demons.

"Maybe the throne belonged to him," Isabell said, disrupting the pair of heirs from their inwardly spiralling thoughts.

Her voice was light and airy, as if owning a throne was no different than owning a fine horse.

Perhaps to her, there really was no difference, given how easily she talked about walking away from the title and lands the Emerald King offered.

"But I struggle to say that it was best for him to have it," Isabell continued.

"In three years of wars, tens of thousands of people died, my lords, and for what?

Whole cities were burned to the ground. Baronies and even Counties that had stood for a dozen generations fell and had to be rebuilt from next to nothing.

And for what benefit? For a different man to sit on a gilded chair and call himself king? "

"Fine of you to condemn him after you helped him pile up so many victims," Baron Hanrahan said with a snort. As he spoke, his eyes darted nervously to the people sitting at the lower tables, as if he were afraid they would come to the conclusion that it didn’t matter which lord ruled over them.

It was a notion that he desperately wanted to avoid, lest any of them think of toppling his beloved son Bastian in favor of the bastard Hugo, or worse, one of the knights who was more popular with his villagers than Baron Hanrahan was among his subjects in the barony.

"Aren’t you just as guilty as he is for all the people you killed?

" the portly baron asked, hoping to shift the conversation away from questions about the legitimacy of a person’s rule and whether or not the Emerald King’s uncle could have some justified reason to seize the throne from the rightful heir.

"Perhaps I am, my Lord Baron," Isabell said directly, refusing to shy away from his accusation. She’d made what peace she could with her actions long ago, and she wasn’t about to be disturbed by his childish prodding at her old wounds now.

"That’s part of why I’ve come to the frontier, after all.

It’s time to build up something new, don’t you think? "

"Build?" Baron Hanrahan said with a snort.

"I doubt you could build anything that lasts.

By your own admission, you are an engineer who rains down death and destruction.

But out here, squaring off against the demons of Airgead Mountain, you could put those skills of yours to use.

And you know what the Church has said about those who slay demons while fighting under the banner of a Holy War. "

"It would be a way to wash away any of your failings for what you did before and maybe even earn the right to enter the nobility properly in your next life," the baron said, giving Isabell a piercing look as he attempted to do as Owain had asked and goad her into a position that she couldn’t back down from.

"Assuming you have the courage to fight again, that is. "

"It’s not a lack of courage that took me away from the battlefield, my Lord Baron," Isabell said pointedly. "It’s a lack of stomach for meaningless deaths in the service of a king who knew little more of providing for his people than what he’d read in a book at the Emerald Academy."

"But there are things worth fighting for in this world," she said as a dangerous, ambitious gleam appeared in her eyes.

"And there are things that I would rain down destruction from the sky in order to protect. But Hanrahan Barony and the small town here... I’m afraid that neither of them rises to that level for me. "