"Invested in the Third Era. If you need to, feel free to go and ask."
With that, Elliot suddenly bared his teeth and laughed without restraint. "Oh, my apologies, sir. I nearly forgot-you won't live to see the Third Era."
The noble staggered a step, his face alternating between red and white.
The Sacred Blood Nobles had fallen precisely because they feared the end of the Second Era, and Elliot's words had struck him where it hurt.
They pretended not to care precisely because of the fear in their hearts, and now Elliot had laid that fear bare.
The man still instinctively pointed a finger at Elliot. Elliot's face abruptly darkened. "Insolence! Is this how your Trenchard Family treats a duke!?"
The man snatched his hand back as though he had touched a burning coal, and actually began stammering an apology on instinct:
"S-sorry, Duke..."
Everything the Sacred Blood Nobles possessed came from their bloodlines; noble rank meant strength and status.
The Empire's lower classes were rigidly stratified, but were its upper classes any different?
Bloodlines were power, and sacrifice was the foundation. A second son of the Trenchard Family might lose his head and dare to snap at Elliot as an heir, but even with twice the courage, he would never dare act insolently before a duke with real power.
A duke's name carried more authority than the Empire's laws.
Though these nobles dared to joke about the destruction of the Second Era, they did not dare meet a duke's eyes now.
They did not even have the courage to face the apocalypse, much less defy the authority etched into their bloodlines!
Elliot suddenly found it all rather dull. These nobles were so shallow that they fell short even of the Fourth Prince, Trafford.
At least he had known