"[Subjugation]."
The word settled over the gutted record-house.
They had spent the last months hearing what the Primordial Villain did to the people who crossed him.
Every soldier along the walls looked at the unconscious count in his chains and arrived at the same understanding in the same breath: they had just watched a peer of Vraven stop belonging to himself.
Nobody moved.
Until Stormlord's warhammer rang free of its harness.
The commander of the Aegis Vanguard took one step with the hammer already in his fist, and there was nothing hot in his face at all.
He had watched a detained vassal of his king enslaved in front of a royal commission, and his whole body had turned into the next line of protocol.
But before he could take the next step, the temperature at his throat changed.
Black Fang had not moved from the far end of the reading table, the scorched volume still open against her arm.
