CHARLES’S POV:

Two soldiers flanked a gaunt, hard-faced man as he marched forward. His dead eyes sat low inside thin, lizard-like horizontal slits. As he approached Charles and Grace, an aura of anger and menace hovered about him like an invisible cloud. He was a dangerous man, Charles knew, for Charles knew the walk of dangerous men, their stare, their energy. Charles was one of them.

“Charles, what’s happening?” Grace asked with a tremble in her voice. She ...