The carriage rolled down the main highway away from the capital in dead silence. The woman in red sat near the window and watched the scenery pass by, holding her posture stiff and straight despite the long ride.
'Does he believe some nameless commoner can stand up to us,' she drummed a single finger against the armrest as she turned the King's threat over in her mind.
The King had dropped the weight of a twenty-shard core on all of them, reminding everyone who held the peak of power. He had done it not to force them into line, but to goad them into throwing their swords at his new pet project.
'Can the boy even tame that broken stretch of land,' she looked out the window, a slow smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.
The unowned region had sat empty for decades because the anomalies there bred faster than any single house could clear them out. Sending a lone commoner into that meat grinder was either a death sentence, or a calculated test of something terrifying to come.
