We were gathered in the council chamber of the castle. Once the tyrant's residence, it was now our makeshift headquarters. The lamplight flickered against the stone walls, casting shadows across the tense faces of those around me.
Vix stood at the front, his face wrapped in that dark calm that always surrounded him, as if a part of him were elsewhere, already planning a dozen possible scenarios. But now he wasn’t speaking as a sorcerer, or a warrior, or a half-raven creature. He spoke as a son.
“My father doesn’t hide out of fear,” he began. “He hides out of strategy. He never takes a step without plotting twenty possible escape routes, twenty more for attack, and just as many for manipulation. But he has a weakness. Just one.”
He kept us in suspense for a few seconds. Kael, to my right
