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The city’s lower streets seemed so calm against Lukas’s pounding heart, so ignorant to the devastating reality of what Jesse now faced. This simple observation filled him with a rage he could not pin down. Why did no one fight for this man? Had all the world been reduced to cowards and traitors?
A woman carrying a huge bundle of reeking cloth bumped into him as he rounded a corner, and he nearly growled at her in frustration and disgust. She stared at him with wide eyes and offered pleading apologies, but he ignored her. His mind had room for one image only—what he’d seen in Jesse’s eyes. Cyrus had been so unfathomably selfish. What had he gained from such a perverse deception? Like Lukas, Cyrus had been given a second chance, an opportunity for forgiveness as a discharged soldier fro
