Letting out a slow breath, Stewart felt the weight of his father and Harrow's deaths lighten. His heart still desired the poisoner herself to find justice, but Eliza's capture would be an inevitability now she had no sponsor. He stood in silence as David's body swung, and only turned away from the execution when the body stopped twitching.

One face in the crowd still wore anger that matched his own. "Lady Penelope?" Many would not be able to discern the emotions on a dragon's face, but Stewart had been around her long enough now to notice both her agitation and anger. "You have an injustice you wish aired?"

It was so easy to do. Penelope quickly told of how she became the first person in Travis' dungeon, apart from the first unlucky kobold. She tried to keep her tone neutral when she described having had her talismans compromised and being shot and left for dead. She couldn't look Stewart in the face for most of the story, but in the end she saw her own anger mirrored on his face. Laboring on, even despite the curious murmurs and curses at mention of her talismans, she finally ran out of words to describe the event without digging into emotions she'd longed to put aside.

"Are they here?" Stewart asked.

"At least one is. I saw him among the enemy soldiers being escorted away from the keep. His name is William. He's a rifleman and a delver." She still felt conflicted about the matter. "I'm still angry at what they did, but so many good things have happened since."

Stewart thought about that concept, and how much the same had happened to him. If David hadn't performed the actions he had, Elanor wouldn't have come into Stewart's life. Those actions, though, had held no such intent for him. "Captain," Stewart called, waiting for the nearest officer to approach. "Take a description from Lady Penelope. I want these men found among our prisoners and brought here as soon as possible."

Penelope kept glancing to Stewart as she spoke, trying to divine some hint as to the rest of his plan.

Composing his thoughts as the captain rushed off to take care of finding William, he looked up at Penelope's conflicted face. "What you did with your time after dying was not because they planned for you to prosper. They took your talismans, shot you, and fully expected you to die. That was their intent.

"Since I'm dispatching my own personal trash today, you can do the same. If you don't make a choice, though, I will." He didn't care if it put her on the spot. Stewart felt he owed a great deal to Penelope, and resolving her past in a manner he felt was just would be a small part of repaying that.

Reflecting on his words, Penelope took a deep breath and despite her best effort, leaked a little acid from the corners of her mouth. "I don't want to feel like I'm placing my problems at your feet. Tie them up and I'll ensure they die as they intended me to—at the hands of a dungeon creature."

"It has a certain amount of poetic justice behind it." Looking at the corpse still hanging from the gallows, Stewart sighed. "There's still more to do: West Reaches still needs to reconnect with the kingdom, I need to visit the hub cities, with guards, to ensure they aren't planning their own little insurrections, I also find myself so deeply indebted to a dragon and her dungeon I will likely be paying them back for the rest of my life, and there's a woman I need to ask to marry me."

"I don't think there's a chance of her saying no. She literally marched into battle with you—Elanor has all the fire of a dragon already. You put her on a throne beside you and, were I your enemy, I'd be terrified."

Leaning his head back and looking up into the sky, Stewart smiled as he remembered the look of accomplishment she'd worn when dragging David from his keep. "She left with Astrid's wolf pack quickly. Do you know what's going on there?"

"I can guess, given rumors and what I've overheard. One of the wolves had set his sights on Elanor—" The dark look on Stewart's face made Penelope stop to reassure him. "If you think he could interfere with Elanor's own desires, you might be letting jealousy guide you. From what I know of Northern culture, he'll back off the moment she makes her preference clear. So, stop dawdling."

There was still the green demon of jealousy there, but Stewart could appreciate Penelope's advice. It had been easy to forget the wolves, though truly wolf-dragons, were Northerners. Their own culture was vastly different to those of the Trade Kingdom's people. Even the reclusive cat-kin were better known than those to the north.

"One more thing you'll want to think about," Penelope said, "what are your plans for Elanor's parents? I know she is happily divested of them legally, but…"

"I have no plans to kill them. They won't have access to their estates and titles, so their lives will become much simpler. Not easier, though. Your thoughts?"

Despite it not being her approval he needed, Penelope could see that as being a reasonable compromise. "One thing: don't tell her this is a present. It will make her feel like her life was bartered for her parents'."

"Lucky I wasn't brought up completely coddled in privilege. Between my tutors and the King's Guard, I don't have my head too far up my own ass."

"Well, when you find daylight again, you might want to take a little advice and wait until her uncle's body is out of sight before asking her. She's pretty down-to-earth as far as formerly noble ladies go, but that might be pushing it." Penelope held her tongue further as the woman in question approached them.

"I've made up my mind." Elanor marched up to Stewart, her armor feeling heavy enough that she wondered if it were somehow growing adamantine. When she was only a few feet from him, she reached into her ammo pocket and fished out what Liv had helped her make during the last few minutes while her uncle swung from the gallows.

Worked and molded by draconic breath and claws, the former bullet now resembled a rough loop and was made from pure dungeon gold. She looked Stewart in the eyes and dared him to stop her asking, "You have permission from those who stand as my parents, but I find your willingness to commit to a charge in love far less than in war. As your kingdom's inquisitor, it is up to me take up the torch. You'll marry me?"

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To Stewart, it sounded more like a demand than a question. He stared at the simple gold ring that had never seen the inside of a jeweler's workshop and couldn't stop a silly grin covering first his left side, then spreading across his whole face. Dropping to one knee and not caring one whit how it looked, he held out his hand. He expected Elanor to put the band in his palm for him to place on her finger, but instead she singled out the ring finger and slipped it on his left hand. He stared at it for a moment in surprise before she handed him a copy of the ring she'd adorned his hand with.

"I was just listening to advice from one of your guardians that it would be best waiting until this mess is cleaned up." Stewart struggled to hold back a laugh when he realized Elanor still wore her gauntlets. Taking his time unbuckling the wrist strap, he grinned like a fool at the fact she had worn all her armor to ask him (or tell him) to marry her. With the gauntlet finally free, Stewart slid the gold ring onto Elanor's finger. "I'll replace this with one I've made myself, later."

Grabbing Stewart by his upper arm and jerking him to his feet, Elanor pressed her advantage and kissed him. She knew for a fact the wolves had affected her, or perhaps infected her, with their fervor.

Penelope shuffled her feet a little and turned to give the pair a little privacy. She looked at Liv's grinning face and felt dawning realization strike. "You talked her up for this?" she asked, walking over to the three wolves that remained of the pack.

"She didn't need much talking." Shrugging her shoulders as best she could with the better part of half a ton of adamantine shield on her arm, Liv elbowed Njal. "We will spar later to figure out who tells Hreti."

Trygve snorted. "I want in on that. Winner gets to tell him?"

Nodding, Liv gestured to the far side of Penelope. "Losers have to stop him mauling the winner."

"Wait," Penelope said. "Hreti was pursuing Elanor? Did she know that?"

The question got all three wolves chuckling, then laughing hysterically. Penelope thought about it a little more and joined them, grumbling laughter that was the first heard uttered by a dragon in the West ever.

She was starting to recover from the laughter when, in her peripheral vision, Penelope spotted William. He didn't look happy, but even worse was the unconscious man slung over one of the soldiers' shoulders—Peter.

Every scrap of her remaining humanity fought to keep her draconic nature from lashing out. Soon she told herself, Very soon. She glared at them and did her best not to spray a gout of acid at them as the soldiers waited to report to a still distracted Stewart.

Aware that someone was trying to get his attention, Stewart had to carefully disengage himself from Elanor, lest she become upset with him. When he looked at her breathless face after the kiss, all he saw was a woman who looked hungry. "This is for Penelope. These are the men who ensured she would become bound to Travis." Never before had he seen delight turn to ugly hatred quite so fast. "She wants to deal with them."

"Sire, these are the two you wanted. The one on Sergeant Milner's shoulder tried to run when we singled them both out, and we may have had to get a little rough with him. He'll wake up soon enough with some water." With a nod to his men, the soldier directed them to dump Peter on the ground while another upended his canteen of water over the man's face.

Jerking awake, Peter stood quickly and looked around to get his bearings. The same soldiers who'd come looking for him and William stood around them even now. When he turned, though, Peter's eyes widened more. A man wearing the royal crest of the kingdom on the surcoat over his armor, a woman wearing a breastplate and carrying a pair of guns who looked furious, and then he saw the dragon stalking closer.

The dragon gave away the man's identity—he was the king of the Trade Kingdom. Peter had been stripped of his weapons, as had William, when their squad had been captured by the King's army. He did the only thing he could under the circumstances, he lowered his head.

"You wonder why you've been brought before me, or why I sent my soldiers to find you in particular?" Stewart hoped they would give him a reason to kill them on the spot. "You are both despicable men. There are few crimes as low as bushwhacking your friends and allies."

William, having mimicked Peter, lifted his head up in surprise. That only described one incident they'd had in the last several years, and as far as he knew there should be no evidence of it. He managed to stop himself a moment before denying it out loud, for he too recognized the man making the accusation.

"From the confusion I assume you wonder how I know of this and why it is something I would take a personal interest in? The woman you betrayed, stealing her talismans and shooting her, is still alive. She is now a high ranked member of my court, a personal friend of mine, and her word is beyond reproach. If she asked me to kill you both, I would have done so and only bothered to ask her after the fact why it was warranted." Given how long the men had evaded any repercussions, Stewart let them stew for a time. Their eyes all strayed to Elanor who had taken up position at his side—not once did they look at Penelope. "Lady Knight and Friend of the King Penelope Bogblood," Stewart said, stepping to the side and guiding Elanor to move with him so Penelope could work herself a little closer.

"William. Peter." Penelope wanted to bite, tear, and reduce each of them to a puddle of sizzling slime—but she contented herself with reminding them of what they did and who she was. "You don't recognize me now, I'm sure, but you two idiots managed to leave me for dead in the only dungeon in the world that would save my life. You killed the woman known as Penelope, but since then I have only grown stronger—very physically stronger."

"P-Pen?!" Peter could scarcely believe what he was hearing. "We didn't—"

"Stop talking. The only reason I didn't chase you down when I saw you being escorted to the prison encampment earlier was because I had friends and allies who needed me. Even now my new instincts are telling me how delicious you would be, but I won't eat you." She looked at the soldiers still standing guard around the two. "Tie them together and bind their legs. They don't have talismans?"

The soldiers moved to obey. They knew their King trusted Penelope—he'd said as much—and without any word from him they took her order as his own. The captain shook his head to her question. "We can strip them, but they have already been searched."

"Strip them," Stewart said. "There will be no escaping this justice."

As the soldiers followed Stewart's orders, Penelope ignored her former party members' now-vocal pleas for clemency.

"We were only doing what we thought was right!"

"You knew what we were about! That's why you were with us!"

The last, though, helped to ease Penelope's heart.

"You deserved it!"

With the soldiers stepping back from the two bound and naked men, Penelope let her draconic anger boil and sent her breath out with full intent behind it. Magic imbued her acid to a potency she hadn't used since dealing with the goblins. It made the men's deaths fast—probably faster than if they'd swung from the gallows.

The crowd, mostly soldiers from Stewart's army but including some noble military from West Reaches, stood silent as what was left of two men burned away from the magically imbued acid. Searing and boiling, melting the grout between the cobblestones and even etching the stones themselves, Penelope's breath left nothing of flesh, bone, or the two men behind.

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