A frail hand, more bone than flesh, brushed against the cheek of the twenty-eighth Emperor of Romelia. The boy's skin was smooth, the crown he wore during ceremonies still too large for his brow. While he was a symbol of youth and future, the the hand that touched him was opposite of both, cracked and trembling, its veins like raised cords, the nails dark and broken, the flesh on the hands mottled with bruises.
Mesha clenched his jaw at the gesture, willing himself not to flinch. At fifteen, he was still more child than man, yet he bore himself with all the stiffness of someone trying to counterfeit strength. He had no choice. To falter before this man,this giant who had carried the Empire upon his shoulders for nearly a decade, would be to betray the current peace the old lion tried to maintain.
The Regent was almost unrecognizable now. Once called the Great Lion of Romelia, his very presence had filled courts and battlefields alike, his voice the roar that bound armies together.
