Asher stood at the same window, eyes fixed on the snowfall drifting lazily from the sky. It felt as though not a second had passed—but eight months had come and gone.
Eight long, relentless months.
Months of rebuilding Everard. Of replacing fear with hope. Of dragging the enslaved from their shackles and leading them into celebration. He had imported festivals from the mainland—customs of joy and remembrance—to lift the people out of their old, broken mindsets.
He had repelled pirate fleets, not once but many times. Each attack made headlines across the continent, each retaliation adding fuel to the legend. They called him the most brutal lord to ever walk the land. A tyrant. A monster. A conqueror soaked in blood.
But Asher didn't care.
He had seen the cities—his cities—with his own eyes. He had walked the streets and seen the joy on faces once hollowed by despair. Two million, four hundred thousand people no longer bent to whips and hunger. That was what mattered.
