Chapter Eight
Gaule stretched out before them like a flower, ready to be picked. It was no secret that the kingdom had thrived over the years due to the wards Etta’s father had protected them with—even after they’d betrayed him.
He could have brought the wards down and left Gaule open to La Dame’s desires, but he’d never blamed the people for their king’s misdeeds, and there had still been a need to keep the king alive, if only so Viktor himself lived.
Etta was not her father.
She stood next to Edmund atop a hill that looked down into one of the prosperous villages on the Leroy lands, cursing every person below who allowed her people to suffer. They were complicit. They were hateful. She had experienced enough scorn from the Gaulean people to rid herself of her father’s noble ideas of
