"… the days when you could choose their paths have ended, Lady Maela, and the surest way to lose them is to fail to recognize that truth…"
Ignatious's voice was soft and gentle, and his words came from a place of kindness, but they cut Maela's heart like a knife.
In the darkness, there was only a single, tiny flame between them, but it was enough to see how serious the other man was. Worse, he was an Inquisitor, a High Inquisitor at that. A man capable of carrying a Holy Flame Blade would have burned falsehood out of his being long ago. So when he said that both her daughters were on a path that could only end with Jocelynn's death and that they were risking everything to turn away from it…
"Is this really the only way to save my Jocelynn?" Maela asked. She felt very small in the darkness and she clung to the light of the single flame Ignatious held like a drowning woman clinging to a branch.
