Let it lie.
“Let them come,” Conan said, and his smile was the edge of an axe. “I was not made for thrones. I was made for this.”
And the Picts were about to learn why old men in taverns still whispered the name of the Barbarian King.
The crown remained on the cushion.
He set down the goblet.
He remembered the cold of his homeland. The sting of snow in his lungs. The honest bite of steel. Not this velvet cage of crowns and couriers.
His bare feet—calloused from a thousand battlefields—rested on the mosaic of a serpent he’d crushed with his own hands. Outside, the city of Aquilonia whispered his name like a prayer and a curse. King. Barbarian. Savior. Tyrant. Let it lie
He strode past the throne without a backward glance.
The wine was sour. The women’s laughter, tin. The torches in the hall guttered like frightened things.
He reached for the hilt of his father’s sword—the one that had tasted the blood of wolves, serpents, and sorcerers. The weight of it felt truer than any scepter. I was made for this
A scout burst through the doors, armor dented, breath ragged.
Conan stood.
But for now… for now, he was simply Conan. A thief who stole a kingdom. A warrior who had never learned to kneel. He remembered the cold of his homeland