It happened on a regular Thursday. All of the castle was to be summoned to the courtyard, where the king arrived from battle. Although his face was masked as usual, there was a strange, vicious glint in his eye.

“On your knees,” he commanded Reynauld De Chattion, before slapping him with his ungloved leper’s hand.

The way he had said it—that low, husky, irate intensity. It had awoken something within you. Something that no peasant, no maid servant, should ever feel for her king.