"You mean…" Apollyon's voice dropped low, venom dripping from each word as his jaw clenched so tightly that the veins in his temple pulsed.
His aura swelled, pressing down on the room until the air itself groaned under its strain, cracks webbing faintly across the stone beneath his throne. "…this man, this boy, who is but a babe before us, was crowned Lord of Tenaria by God Himself?"
The power leaking from him thickened, oppressive as a storm-tide crashing against the walls. The space around his throne seemed to warp, as if the raw might coursing through him might at any moment shatter reality itself.
It was one thing, an unendurable thing, for Asher to have claimed the most radiant woman history had ever known as his wife.
But now, to hear that he had inherited the continent itself? That the very land they ruled bent to him?
That truth struck the gathered rulers like a blade to the gut. The faces of a few of the lords bore rage.
