Snow dusted the alpine roofs of Innsbruck like powdered sugar on a solemn cake, pristine, orderly, and indifferent.
High in the ballroom of Schloss Eberstein, the Grand Prince of Tyrol stood before a crowd of carefully selected elites, officers in parade dress, engineers with creased collars, professors in archaic robes, and businessmen whose medals gleamed with freshly purchased honor.
And Bruno hated every second of it.
It was not the ceremony itself that stirred his contempt; he had built this Order from scratch, after all.
The Order of Saint Michael the Archangel had formed from the convergence of several other orders of merit and chivalry that Bruno had created in the early years as a monarch.
He had consolidated his orders into two. One for men, and one for women.
The Order of Saint Michael wasn't just a social club for the elites of Tyrolean society.
It had a genuine purpose: a knightly brotherhood for a modern age.
