The silence that followed was no ordinary silence. It pressed down like a great weight, thick enough to choke on. No one in the chamber dared shift or breathe too loudly.
The king's eyes lowered to the dark pool of blood seeping slowly across the floor at the duke's feet. It trailed from the still forms of the Phantom League's dead.
Everyone understood the unspoken truth.
Kaede had done everything Alastair had failed to do: crushing an enemy syndicate's leadership in barely a year of ruling while he, given entire centuries, could not claim a single true victory.
The king did not need to voice the comparison. It was written clearly enough in his expression.
"What have you been doing all this time, Duke Alastair Thalion Greenvale?"
Alastair was many things, but a dumb brute wasn't one of them. He knew what he had to do. Paint his rule in a bright light. So he swallowed hard as he grasped for something—anything—that could cast his rule in a favorable light.
