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they’d held their own well enough today.
Their soldiers had, too.
The Lords of Suria had lost their father to
Adarlan’s butchering blocks a decade ago,
their mother surviving the wars and Adarlan’s
occupation through her cunning and the fact
that her prosperous port-city was too valuable
to the empire’s trade route to decimate.
Sol, it seemed, took after their even-keeled,
clever mother.
Ravi, coltish and brash, took after their late
father.
Both, however, hated Adarlan with a deep-
burning intensity belied by their pale blue
eyes.
Sol, his narrow face flecked with mud,
loosed a breath through his nose. An
aristocrat’s nose, Aedion had thought when
they were children. The lord had always been
more of a scholar than a warrior, but it