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Hector had been trying to make time to talk to Ericoros whenever he was at Warrenhold. If he and Garovel were ever going to change the reaper's mind about Leo, about joining their side in earnest, then it was crucial to keep talking to him on a regular basis.

It might never happen, of course. Even Leo didn't think it was possible to change Ericoros' mind about releasing him and abandoning Sai-hee. But Leo was a valuable enough player on the board to warrant the potentially wasted effort.

That was how Garovel put it, at least. Hector wasn't terribly comfortable thinking of it in terms like that, like this was all a big game. He understood what Garovel was saying, but still... these were people with lives of their own. They were definitely valuable in the grand scheme of things, but they deserved to be treated like free individuals, didn't they?

Despite the fact that Ericoros was currently their prisoner.

There was no getting around that, Hector knew.

He'd been trying to come up with a way to make Ericoros more comfortable, to feel included in what they were doing, without giving him too much freedom. This was a two-way street, after all. He wanted Ericoros to trust them, but they also needed to be able to trust Ericoros. If the reaper somehow escaped and brought Sai-hee here to Warrenhold...

Ugh.

As Melchor's reaper, Orric, had mentioned, this was going to take a long time. Many years, most likely.

Which was kind of a strange thought. As a servant, Hector was a little over a year old now, and yet he was making plans for quite far into the future. It really wasn't that long ago when he felt the future wasn't even worth thinking about.

If this next year was as crazy as the last, then he wondered if Warrenhold would even be standing by the end of it.