that one of the truest measures of the Duke’s stature as a ruler of men had emerged on that winter night so long ago. The night he broke a decade’s stony silence and spoke to his middle son and made him his confidant. His sole confidant in the painfully cautious eighteen-year quest to drive Alberico and his sorcery and his mercenaries from Astibar and the Eastern Palm. A quest that had become an obsession for both of them, even as
