Dante leaned forward. Every soul in the hall pressed backward.
"You want revenge."
"I want him to know what I felt. I want him to die the way I died?—"
"No."
The word echoed across the hall. Isabel's face crumpled.
Dante waited until she looked up at him again. Until those desperate eyes met his.
"Your wants are irrelevant." His voice was flat, empty of anything that might be mistaken for compassion. "You died screaming and forsaken. That terror is the only thing about you with value, and I will use it. The moneylender will live out his natural life and die peacefully in his bed, wealthy and content. Your suffering will power the ward-barriers that protect the realms. That is your purpose. That is all you are worth."
His hand tightened on the armrest. Bone creaking under his grip. Mercy only prolonged suffering. He'd watched it happen too many times to count. Better to break them quickly than let hope fester.
He let that sink in. Watched hope die in her eyes all over again.
His fingers relaxed on the armrest. The mask he'd perfected centuries ago remained firmly in place.
"You will serve in the Tower of Screaming Winds for one thousand years, where every soul who enters will experience your final moments on an eternal loop. Be grateful your death serves a function. Most don't."
The Tower was the cruelest assignment in his domain. A place where the dying moments of the terrorized played endlessly, maintaining the ward-barriers through concentrated fear. Those sent there didn't fade, didn't find peace, didn't even have the mercy of forgetting.They relived their worst moments forever, their agony powering the realm.
It was necessary. The barriers required a specific frequency of terror to maintain stability. Without souls like Isabel feeding power to the system, the boundaries between life and death would collapse. Thousands would die.
One soul's eternal torment weighed against the extinction of the realms.
The balance was simple. His feelings about it were irrelevant.
Isabel's mouth opened in silent horror. No sound came out. The weight of eternity had crushed whatever protests she might have offered.
"Remove her," he said. "Before her despair becomes tedious."
Two shadow-guards materialized and lifted Isabel from the floor. She didn't resist. Couldn't. The certainty of her fate had broken her all over again.
The court watched in silence as she was led away. No one offered comfort. In the Court of the Forsaken, hope was a lie, and everyone learned that eventually.
Dante settled back into his throne, shadows coiling tighter around the base. Another soul broken. Another thousand years of screaming. Another piece of his realm's terrible function fulfilled.
He'd stopped counting how many he'd sent to the Tower long ago.
"Next."
The chamberlain consulted his scrolls. "A territorial dispute between the houses of Grimwald and Thorne. Both claim salvage rights to the battlefield at Raven's Cross."
Ridiculous. They were always fighting over salvage rights, boundary lines, and perceived slights that had festered for ages, as if any of it mattered. As if death made their petty squabbles anything but pathetic.
"Grimwald claims the field by right of higher death count among their house soldiers," one representative began. "We lost?—"
"Both houses will share the field," Dante interrupted. "Alternating salvage rights by lunar month. Disputes will be settled by single combat to the death." He paused, letting his shadows pulse outward. "If you waste my time with this again, I'll assign the territory to neither house and let it rot."
The representatives bowed quickly and withdrew, their relief at escaping his presence written across their faces.
Good. Fear was efficient. It saved time.
"Next."
A minor noble approached, stopped at the invisible line, and bowed low. "My lord, I seek permission to?—"
