He picked up the knife. It was heartlessly plain: just a steel blade and a wooden handle. He wasn’t allowed the honor of dying with a beautiful knife in his hand. He hadn’t earned that honor, and he closed his eyes, so deeply shamed he could barely breathe.
He took solace in the knowledge that His Exalted Line Lord would never rest until the man who’d just been acquitted had paid for his part in his Line’s disgrace. He took solace, as well, in knowing that the great plan he’d been a part of, that he’d failed so dismally, was still in place.
The Mythlan officers in the field now were only a small portion of that great plan, which would reshape the Union of Arcana in ways no one living outside Mythal could even imagine, on this ordinary day. But Bok vos Hoven could. And because he could, he wept, for he’d denied himself the chance to birth that world he could see so clearly in his mind’s eye.
I offer apology for all the failures I have committed against thee, Bok vos Hoven told the ancestors who would stand in judgment over him in just a few moments, and kissed the knife in his hands.
Then slashed his throat.
The pain and the death that rose to meet him were a relief. This death would free His Lordship for the great task at hand, and so Bok vos Hoven lay bleeding out on the stone floor…and smiled.