"I..." A faint, dry syllable finally squeezed through Bellardi's stiff lips. The fact he could move at all startled even him.
"Tell me," the Ironspine Duke said, gazing at him, his gray-blue eyes bottomless. "Tell me what you truly think. There is no judgment here, only the truth. What is your opinion of them?"
A long, suffocating silence spread through the frozen time.
Finally, the last trace of struggle in Bellardi's eyes was swallowed whole by a surge of venomous resentment. He summoned every ounce of his soul's strength to hiss out the hatred he had suppressed for more than a decade:
