While Iara played with fire, Qaen was in the process of catching up with his past. After bathing the unconscious Anet and putting her to bed, he had stepped out of the manor in search of the people he knew in the Fourth Ring.
He hadn’t seen these acquaintances for centuries. As the Commander of the Emperor’s Elite Eleventh Legion, Erunal had had his own residence in the First Ring. He had never come out of it, let alone down to the Fourth Ring. During his brief, two centuries of freedom, he hadn’t dared come to the wealthy Fourth Ring often, and after being captured by Rona Aluva, who visited the Fourth Ring almost as rarely as Erunal, Qaen naturally had not been able to visit, either. Quite a few things had changed the Fourth Ring streets during Qaen’s long absence, but tucked away behin
