Chapter 21

"For treason, kidnapping, and murder most foul, the sentence is death."

A murmur passed through the crowd. Two guards stepped forward to bind Nikolai to the execution block. The prisoner made neither protest nor resistance. Defeated, he simply closed his eyes as the glinting axe was raised.

Alexei forced himself to watch impassively as it fell. The heavy blade cleaved flesh and bone in one clean stroke. The crowd roared approval, thirsty for vengeance slaked at last.

Alexei turned away, feeling only ahollow sense of grim necessity fulfilled. There could be no satisfaction or closure from this ritual of violence and pain.

The hole left by his loss would ever gnaw silently within him. But with Nikolai gone, no one else need be sacrificed to this bloody feud between their families. Alexei would rule with wisdom and temperance, honoring those his uncle's cruelty had cut down too soon.

As Alexei rode from the silent fortress, the first winter snowflakes swirled around him, pristine and fo