**BOOK II OF THE FOUR REALMS SERIES**
When war came for Azura, Fara of Calate lost everything. Her husband, her new home, her freedom. When her captor - the formidable commander of the Leoth army - saves her life, she begins to see the enemy as som...
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The Prince's eyes were darker than they had been a moment before. He scented it then. Rage. Powerful and black as the core of the world.
'You desire your brother dead?' Theodan asked, studying him hard.
Panos pressed his lips into a flat line, his jaw clenched tight. 'Yes.'
Theodan sighed, turning the whetstone over in his fingers. 'I suppose it would be too much to hope for a king to be permitted to sit upon his throne unburdened by the threat of another who covets it.'
'I have little interest in my brother's throne, Leoth. But I would be a better king than he, of this I am of no doubt.'
'The eternal rivalry of brothers, then? Perhaps he stole your toys when you were children? Either way, I care not - I have no need for this kind of help.' He made a dismissive gesture with his head toward the door.
'You have no idea of what you speak, Leoth.' Panos snapped. Theodan turned, fixing him with a dark look. The prince continued, calmer. 'I have no desire to be king, Leoth, and still I do not. I am a soldier - like you. But he is formed of something else. Of darkness and chaos - more so even than Torrik. On this you must trust me.'
Theodan could taste the bitter poison of the prince's hate in the air between them. It was as deep and dark as the ocean's floor.
'Surely you have had ample opportunity to challenge your brother's rule? To take your sword to him and install yourself or any other whom you believe better equipped to serve as king?'
'It is not so simple as that. Our realm is wrought through with division and has been for as long as I was old enough to understand its workings.' The prince's expression was bleak. 'It is not how a realm governed by a bloodline works, Leoth; challenging my brother would have brought chaos. Civil war. Lords against lords. Families killing their own. The divisions in our realm run deep - we have been hovering on the brink of civil war for years. My father barely kept the lords from each other's throats. It almost killed him - he was on the brink of death, for many years, barely able to hold the realm together. When Valdr refused to aid Azura against Zybar, that division only grew. There are men who desert our armies now as we speak.'
'You declared war upon Leoth, and if your sister cannot talk him from this madness, they shall trample your realm to dust and it shall not matter who sits upon your throne, or which Lords kill each other.' Had he meant to say 'they,' and not 'we,'? Did he truly see himself so apart from his own realm now?
'A move we were forced to make. We thought you had slaughtered our sister, Leoth.' He scowled. 'For the first time, it seemed, mine and Valdr's concerns were aligned.'
'A move Torrik of Zybar forced you to make,' Theodan corrected him. 'Men led so easily by other men do not make great kings. Neither of you are fit to rule a realm.' Fara would make a greater queen than either of her brothers, of this he was certain.
