Ragnar raised his blade, eyeing the man's hands.
A piercing scream filled the room.
Joint by joint, each time Ragnar stabbed, an uncontrollable sound left the other man's lips.Ragnar's expression remained distant.
"What did her skin feel like?"
Altansarnai looked up, heaving, blood spilling from his lips.Ragnar waited politely to hear what he had to say.
The man grinned and spat in the Great Khan's face.
"Like milk—"
A boot found his jaw, breaking the bone.
Altansarnai doubled over, hand shaking just under his chin as tears left his eyes involuntarily and blood and saliva spilled from his unhinged jaw.
Ragnar asked no more questions, and Altansarnai, it turned out, had more breath in him than expected.
But that too ran out, alongside his life, and his dignity.
Ragnar rose over the corpse.The rise and fall of his chest was the only outward sign that anything had moved in him at all.He looked at his hands for a moment.Then he looked up at Somadina, still crumpled at the foot of his own throne, watching pathetically.
Warlord was a title of brutality, now everyone in that room, understood perfectly, what that saying meant.
"Him too," Ragnar said.
One of his men stepped forward."My Khan—"
"No—wait."Ragnar's voice had returned to its former quiet."My wife will decide how he dies.The rest," Ragnar continued, scanning the hall—the courtiers pressed against the walls, the soldiers who had surrendered, the ones who had not— "kill them all."
As his men got to work, Ragnar was already leaving.He moved through the palace like a wraith.The corridors were chaos, and the first man who stepped into his path did so by accident.A loyalist, young and still gripping his spear with both hands, his eyes going wide when he realised what he was looking at.
Ragnar killed him without breaking stride.
The second man tried to run.The third tried to surrender.It didn't matter.The hallway behind him was an accounting of every second he had yet to find her.
He had been calm in the throne room because he needed to be.
He couldn't remain calm any longer.
The corridor to Obiageli's courtyard was empty.The guards who should have stood at its entrance lay elsewhere, called to battles that would not save them.The door stood ajar, daylight spilling through its gap like blood from a wound.
Azul pushed it open.
Obiageli knelt in the centre of her chamber, exactly where Azul had known she would be.The ritual circle at her feet was intact; she was painting something on a piece of bark with a brush so fine it seemed to float in her fingers.She did not look up.
"Do you not die?What's the point of coming here when you will lose?"
Azul stepped into the room.The door closed behind her with a soft click.
"Why are you so certain I will lose?"
"The Valthorne may be in the palace, but they cannot outfight the sheer number of Naiman's army."Obiageli set down her brush and finally raised her eyes.They were peaceful."Sit.Please."
Azul crossed to the table and sat.
"I should have known," Azul said quietly."The kind of shit you'd try to pull."
