Darion had deliberately spared the lives of Valdenmoor's civilians.
That had not been an accident. It had not been mercy born from weakness either. It had been a decision.
He had stood on top of Aldric's stone building and watched the farmland burn while considering the residential district beyond it. The houses…the streets. The ordinary people who had gone to sleep the previous night without knowing that by morning their kingdom would be on fire.
He could have burned those houses.
Vera's accelerant would have spread through them faster than the people inside could wake properly. The fire would have moved from roof to roof, swallowing entire streets before anyone organized a response.
After what Valdenmoor had done to Percvale, after the burned homes and slaughtered livestock and dead knights, no one in Percvale would have blamed him for doing it.
But he hadn't.
Because those people had not marched into Percvale with swords and torches.
That… mattered.
