: The protagonist learns that blind obedience is fundamentally different from true loyalty. Practical Lessons
“What reason do we have to doubt?” Holt countered. “The woman rode out under a flag of truce and never returned. Her second-in-command, Captain Rennick, was found dead on the road with a dagger in his back— her dagger, according to the scouts. The evidence is plain.” Lesson in Loyalty -Chapter 3-
Her father had defined it simply. "Loyalty," he would say, lifting his pewter mug of ale after a long day in the fields, "is when your back is against the wall and you still don't step aside." He had been a simple man, her father, a farmer who tilled the same soil his grandfather had bled for. But Elara had learned long ago that simple things often carried the heaviest truths. : The protagonist learns that blind obedience is