Zzzzzzzzzz
You've certainly succeeded in making me curious about the characters. It's tightly written and I particularly like that while it may be a part of a larger whole, it's also a stand-alone character sketch.
...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.
I...have? Yes! Thank you very much! 
It was originally meant as a short flash piece to explore the "bite" concept, and it turned into a character study revealing a man's weak points and self-doubt. This is a character, though he's a Canon one, that others (who've seen snippets of writing in which he is a major player) seemed to think was a Complete Monster, and he's not. He's certainly not perfect, nor admirable, but he isn't (really) a villain, either.
Really, he's a villain (to his wife), and the primary antagonist of the actual villain, but he's still trying to do what he thinks is best for his people, even if that means doing things he really despises to try and achieve that. Perhaps much of what he does, and the actions fueled by raw emotion, can be summed up in the phrase, "The ends do not always justify the means; such means as those may well tear down what was built up."
I'm curious about your thoughts on this drabble of mine, done during a period of actually having decent (as in, others expressed interest) ideas, back in December/early January.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7112351/1/Ritual
What do you think? I can post a link to the forum thread I reference, if you'd like.
If there's anything I should change about the presentation (although I would like to keep the characters with minimal explanation, as I want readers to get interested and ask "Who is this person?"-type questions), I'd love to know.
Thank you.