FINNIAN

“Do you all hear what my brother just said?!” Rowan’s voice cracked through the palace hall like a whip. He thrust his arm toward me, clapping my shoulder as if I was some boy who’d just brought home a gold prize.

“An eye for an eye. A head for a head! Blood for blood!”

This time there was no mumbling from the elders. They wanted to speak, their hands went up here and there but Rowan already had the room in his teeth.

He gestured for me to sit while he strode to his ...