Ignatious lowered the Holy Flame Blade. The golden flames along its edge dimmed but didn't extinguish, clinging to the steel like embers refusing to die, and the warm light they cast turned his youthful face into something that looked gentle and serene.
"Take them alive," Ignatious said. His rich, velvet voice carried across the stunned silence of the hall with an authority that brooked no argument, and the men of Blackwell moved before the echo of his words had faded.
For days, ever since the men from Blackwell had learned what Lady Jocelynn endured at the hands of the Inquisition and how Lady Eleanor had died, a slow, simmering fury had built in the hearts of the knights and sailors who had come so far from the sea to serve their lord's daughters in a distant land.
