Harven shook his head, but his hand remained tight around the edge of his sword belt. He seemed to notice the tension in his fingers and forced them open, only to close them again a moment later. When he continued, the words came faster.
"He couldn't do anything against the Demon King. Then something even more monstrous appeared afterward, and he was just as useless against that. All those promises, all that power, and someone else had to stand between us and the things trying to kill us."
He stopped to draw breath. His eyes had moved past Pedri, settling somewhere among the burned houses without appearing to see them.
"We kept expecting him to do something. Even after he fell, some of us were still waiting for him to get back up."
