"...he might even have earned the right and accumulated the strength to contend for my throne…"
Reynold swallowed heavily when he heard Dirar describing everything that went with becoming Captain of the Stone Guard. Looking back, he should have expected as much. During the welcoming feast, it had been Rastlan who sat next to Dirar. At the time, he'd treated it as little different from his own father bringing a favored knight to sit at the High Table, but now, he realized how mistaken they'd been.
The mistake, he realized, came from the fact that Rastlan came from a different clan than Dirar. Reynold had been steeped in the ways of the Kingdom of Gaal for so long that he'd forgotten how inheritance worked among the Eldritch. Why should he expect Dirar to pass his throne down to his son when he could choose from among the most capable people in his empire?
