Leroy took in the scene with a soldier's eye. The half-alive man still breathed, thrashing weakly as the public tried to tear him apart. Leroy raised a hand, stopping them. His wife had asked him to leave one alive. Then, he hadn't known why. Now he did.
The other lay broken, body little more than carrion. And Hadrian… Leroy's gaze lingered on the head severed clean from its body, mouth slack, eyes glassy. Once, the man had been feared, untouchable, weaving schemes in the shadows. Now, he was only another corpse rotting in the gutter.
Leroy laughed inwardly, a low, bitter thing. He had dreamed of ending Hadrian himself…of sinking steel into the man who had tormented his beloved wife for years, of watching the light go out of his eyes. He thought fate would grant him that satisfaction.
Instead, Hadrian was stripped of all dignity, slaughtered in the street by rabid men too consumed with vengeance to even care who he was.
So much for his power. So much for his name.
