Hearing what Raymond just said, the war gods were completely dumbstruck, their minds scrambling to catch up with what had just landed in the room. They looked at one another just for a second and something shifted between them all at once.So this was the real reason Master Raymond had called them here. Not to wave them off. Not to say goodbye and send them away with nothing but the memory of his face and an empty road ahead of them.They wanted to cry not from grief this time, but from the kind of relief that rushes in so hard and so fast it almost knocks a person sideways. But they held it back and pressed it down, kept it behind their eyes where Raymond wouldn't have to see it, because he had trusted them with something real and they weren't going to embarrass themselves in front of him again.Of course his gift had to be ten times better than anything anyone else could put together. Twenty times, even. Master Raymond deserved nothing less than the very best, and every one of them

Raymond's voice came out steady and direct, without a single trace of performance in it just the plain, undecorated weight of a promise being made.“I will go out of my way to protect every one of you, no matter what it costs me. The same way you showed up for me here today, I will show up for you when you need me. And if your troubles are large enough to start a war then I will go to war.”Still the three of them kept their heads pressed to the floor. The title of War God was one of the highest military honor the country had given out after five years of conflict. There were very few people alive who could put someone carrying that title in genuine danger. Going up against those people wouldn't just affect the individuals involved it could shake the entire country. And Raymond had just looked at all three of them and said it wouldn't matter. That he would come anyway.It was the greatest thing any of them had ever been told. Greater than the titles. Greater than the ceremonies.

Immediately Victoria cleared her throat.The disgust on her face was open and unhidden now, not even dressed up in the polite performance she had been maintaining for the guests around her. She looked at Raymond the way a person looks at something they have already moved past and don't understand why it keeps reappearing.“How could I do this?” she repeated, and let out a short breath that wasn't quite a laugh. “How could you even stand there and ask me that with a straight face?” She tilted her head slightly. “Well I never loved you in the first place. We got married and we had barely spent any real time together before you volunteered yourself to join the military on behalf of this entire family. You just left, that was all we needed from you.” She gestured at him with one hand, a single dismissive sweep from his head to his feet. “And look at you now. You come back after five years looking like this, with nothing to show for any of it. Not a single thing.”She straightened sli

The room around Raymond continued its quiet murmuring.But Raymond wasn't hearing any of it anymore.The rage that moved through him in that moment was the kind that doesn't announce itself loudly it doesn't shake a person's hands or raise their voice or make them dramatic. It goes deep and cold and absolutely still, and it is far more dangerous than anything loud. He wanted to reach out and close his hands around something. He could feel the restraint it was taking not to.Because before he left. Before he walked out of this house five years ago and gave everything he had to a war that asked everything of him in return they had made him a promise. Victoria had made him a promise. That his mother and his sister would be looked after. That they would not want for anything. That they would not suffer a single day while he was gone.That was the agreement. That was what he had left on.And now he was standing here being told his mother had been turned out of her own daughter-in-law's ho

Raymond stayed on his knees.His hands pressed flat against the dirt in front of the marker, his head bowed, and when he spoke again his voice came out raw and unsteady, the words breaking apart as they left him.“Those bastards did this.” His breath caught. “They let my mother die that they betrayed her, neglected her, threw her out like she was nothing and then had the audacity to stand in front of me and say she left because she was too proud to do chores.” His voice climbed slightly, shaking with something that was equal parts grief and fury. “They killed her. They killed my mother. And then they sent me here to this dump, this forgotten place like it was nothing. Like she was nothing.”He looked at the rubbish piled around the grave, at the crooked stick with the dirty name tag swinging slightly in the breeze, at the neglect that had been allowed to settle over this place like dust over something no one cared to remember.“They didn't even give her somewhere decent to rest.” Hi