The main chamber was filled with guards standing in postures that suggested they had forgotten their training. Their spears held at angles that would not defend against anything, their eyes tracking movement without comprehending it.
Servants pressed against walls, some weeping, some praying, all waiting for someone to tell them what had already happened.
The Emperor's body had been quarantined. Damon noted this without noting it.
Adjacent, through doors that had been forced open and now hung crooked on their hinges, came the sound of grief without dignity.
Vera, the Emperor's concubine, had collapsed against a divan, her hair unpinned and wild, and her hands clawing at her own face, wailing, rising and falling without pattern or pause.
"My son, my son, my son—"
And there was Jove. The youngest prince. Now lay on a table that had been cleared of its decorative objects, his neck a mess of red that the healers' compresses could not staunch.
