“He was a nasty piece of work,” said Samuel, his eyes on the woman’s wrinkled face that sometimes wore scars on her cheek or at the corner of her eye. “Mercy would call him a real rat-bastard. He was a forest lord whose greatest magic was to command beasts. When the last of the giants—who were beasts controlled by his magic—died, it left him a forest lord with no great power, and he resented it as Ariana’s power grew. When the fae lost their ability to imprint their magic on things—like your walking staff, Mercy—she could still manage it. People found out.” “A great lord of the fae came,”
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