Page 95 of Commanding Scythe and Sky

Almost as though he could sense Ryker’s horrified stare, Ford lifted his sapphire eyes to his son in the crowd. Their gazes locked for one eternal heartbeat before the unbroken father gave his son one last nod—an order: look after them. Keep fighting. Keep resisting.

The moment shattered with a brutal yank as three uniformed bastards hauled him across the plaza.

So Ryker watched.

Watched in horror, rage sending tremors down his limbs as his father’s wrists were shackled and hung from great steel chains forged to contain beasts much larger than men.

Watched with tears rolling down his cheeks as those devils beat Ford until he at last hit his knees, supported only by the chains biting into his wrists. As those same monsters—monsters that looked like men—stepped several paces away and unfurled a silver-tipped whip.

One of the remaining twenty fought his way free with a battle cry—a cry that abruptly ended when the earth trembled and a shard of stone speared straight through him.

The people screamed as blood poured from his mouth, his eyes wide with agony.

Jace.

Ryker remembered him from one of the meetings.

Remembered his laugh even as the light dimmed in his eyes. Even as he went limp.

“Demon bastards!” someone bellowed. The crowd charged forward, but fire erupted, barring their path. They tried to retreat—to run—but the soldiers pinned them inside the square like livestock.

His father’s execution was to be a spectacle.

This wasn’t just his death sentence; it was humiliation—the breaking of a great man—and a reminder to the rebels of what resistance earned.

One of the men who’d hauled Ford to the pole barked a demand for silence, and slowly, the crowd complied.

The same bastard strode forward and yanked the whip from the first man’s hand. The first lash cracked forward.

Bile burned in Ryker’s throat as his father refused to yell—to grant them the satisfaction of making him scream. Ryker’s eyes stung as he scoured the crowd for anyone not cowering in fear and came up empty. Scoured the survivors lined up like cattle for slaughter behind the man who’d sacrificed everything for his people.

Beaten.

Bruised.

Broken.

The men Ryker had grown up worshipping as heroes could do nothing for their brother-in-arms as the whip cracked and Ford’s brutalized body bowed against his restraints.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Until at last, that whip cleaved through muscle to the bone⁠—

—and Ford screamed.

The King smiled.

Smiled as he prowled forward and crouched beside the man whose blood pooled across the cobblestones, pouring into the drains of what had once been a children’s fountain.

Ryker thought he would be sick as the cruel King wrapped a massive hand in his father’s hair and yanked his head back from where he’d collapsed against the post.

He couldn’t watch any more than he could look away. There was nowhere to run.

Silence settled over the square. The kind that stretches before an eruption.