The juice of the steer stakes bled into the silver platter, weeping under the pressure of the iron fork, as the guest took ravenous bites out of the meat that was growing smaller and smaller.
One might expect a man of his flamboyant eccentricities to dine with the fragile elegance of a peacock, but instead, he descended upon the feast with the primal ferocity of a wolf in a winter-starved glen. He tore at the fibers with his teeth, before washing the mass down with great, four-finger gulps of wine that stained his lips like fresh conquest.
Across the table, Alpheo was a study in stillness. He ate with the meticulous composure of a clockmaker, seemingly unbothered by the carnage across from him. His years in the mud of the trenches with legates and sellswords had steeled him against the brutishness of men;still he was a man of habit and kept on eating as he was taught long ago.
