The old man's fingers trembled as he pulled the ring from beneath his cot, but his voice carried the kind of authority that made three hundred men hold their breath at the same time.

"Kneel."

Eddard dropped to one knee on the cold concrete floor of Hell Prison's east block, feeling the chill bite through the thin fabric of his pants while three hundred men stood in rows behind him, silent as gravestones, their eyes fixed on the ceremony they had waited years to witness.

 The old man held the ring between his thumb and forefinger, a silver band with a black stone and a symbol carved into its face that most governments would start wars to understand.

"From this moment forward, you are Zeus," the old man said, placing the ring into Eddard's open palm and closing his fingers around it with surprising strength. "The Apex of the Stars answers to you now, every cell, every operative, every resource spread across six continents. All of it is yours, and yours alone."

Eddard slid the ring onto his finger, where it fit like it had been cast from the shape of his bones, like it had been waiting for him through every miserable night he spent staring at the ceiling of his cell.

"I trained you for three years in this pit," the old man continued, settling back onto his cot with the exhaustion of someone who had finally set down a weight he'd carried for decades. "Martial arts, medicine, strategy, languages, the kind of knowledge that turns ordinary men into something the world isn't ready for. Don't make me regret choosing a prisoner over the hundreds of men who would have killed for this ring."

"I won't."

The ceremony ended without applause, just three hundred heads bowing in unison, and the sound of that collective silence was louder than anything Eddard had heard in three years of confinement.

Afterward, Kurt Davis appeared at his side with the eager smile of a man who had spent his entire fortune building a reputation only to discover that real power looked nothing like what he'd accumulated. 

He was the richest man in the city, and right now, he looked like a servant hoping his master would notice him.

"Sir, I have my personal car waiting outside with a private escort, tinted windows, the full arrangement," Kurt said, leaning close enough that nobody else could hear. "Shall I drive you wherever you need to go?"

"My wife is coming to pick me up," Eddard said without looking at him, buttoning the collar of the plain shirt they'd given him on intake three years ago.

"Of course, of course." Kurt nodded several times too many. "And regarding your wife, Arya Lewis, I followed your instructions to the letter. Her company secured three major contracts this quarter, all routed through shell buyers so she would never trace the deals back to us. She believes she earned every one of them on her own."

Eddard turned to him for the first time, and something in his gaze made Kurt stand straighter without realizing he was doing it. "Good. Thank you, Kurt."

The words landed on Kurt like a medal pinned to his chest, and his face flushed with the kind of pride that only comes from being acknowledged by someone you genuinely fear.

Eddard gathered his things, which amounted to a single bag because three years of prison had a way of stripping a man down to what actually mattered, and walked through the iron gates into sunlight that hit his face with a warmth that felt almost aggressive after so long under fluorescent lights. 

He stood still for a moment, just breathing air that didn't taste like rust and concrete and regret.

A black luxury sedan sat at the curb with its engine idling, but no one stepped out to greet him. Instead, the passenger door swung open and a woman climbed out on sharp heels, her eyes even sCollins, a clipboard pressed against her ribs like a weapon she'd been looking forward to using all morning. 

Martha, Arya's cousin and assistant, the kind of woman who only smiled when she was about to ruin someone's day.

"Eddard." She said his name like it was something rotten she'd found at the bottom of her purse.

"Where's Arya?"

"She's in the car, but before you get any ideas about some tearful reunion, you need to deal with this first." Martha held out the clipboard, and Eddard could see the words DIVORCE AGREEMENT printed across the top of the document in bold black letters. "Sign it."

Eddard looked at the paper, then back at Martha, searching her face for any trace of humor and finding nothing but satisfaction. "You're joking."

"I have never been less interested in joking in my entire life."

Something hot crawled up from the base of his skull and spread across the back of his neck, the kind of heat that comes right before a man says something he can't take back.