“And yet your Queen is the one who asked me to train you,” he muses. “Do you think she would ask that if she has complete faith in her wards to do the job of an army?”
The question hangs in the air like a noose. An undeniable truth.
The General uses the silence.
“Leaders must give assurances, but Generals of War? We give unignorable facts,” he declares.
“If Caeloria use their machines—their advanced weaponry—to take your kingdom, will you hide behind your wives? Or your children?”
Seren sucks in a sharp breath at the self-loathing laced through Teddy’s words.
At the sharp wound he carves into his own soul for his failings.
Murmurs rent the air.
He stops, eyes panning across the ranks. “So will you learn to fight? To protect? Or will you wait to see how quickly metal pierces flesh?”
The clearing erupts in a collective battle cry.
And the General leverages it, carving through their cheers with intent. “Today we learn to attack! War is not won by defending. Victory belongs to the force who can exploit weakness and twist it to their advantage.”
The army roars.
The sound tears through the clearing like a blade splitting hide—raw, hungry, uncertain, but alive. Not the polished thunder of seasoned soldiers. Rougher. Civilian throats straining to sound like warriors. Fear disguised as fury.
Teddy lets it crest, masterfully shaping the men and women into warriors.
Then he lifts one hand.
Silence falls so fast it feels like the space between breaths.
His gaze sweeps the ranks—measuring, weighing, dissecting. Not looking at people. Assessing moving parts. Evaluating structure. Calculating failure points before they reveal themselves.
Gods, he is magnificent like this.
She understands with horrifying clarity why armies would follow him into death.
Seren hates that her chest tightens every time she sees him fully inhabit command. Hates that something inside her thrills at the precision of him. The certainty. The brutal clarity of purpose.
He knows exactly how to move forward in war.
He just refuses to move forward with her.
“Fear lives at the boundary,” Teddy says, voice carrying effortlessly across the clearing. Not shouted. Projected. Directed. Like a weapon placed exactly where it will do the most damage.
“Where impact is anticipated but has not yet arrived. Where imagination outruns reality. Where the mind invents suffering before the body experiences it.”
He begins to walk. Slowly. Measured strides between the lines of soldiers. Boots crunching over gravel. Over packed dirt. Over the fragile remains of whatever these people once were before he began reshaping them.
“If you stand at the edge of force… you will fear it.”
He stops beside a young man whose knuckles have gone white from his fisted palm.
“But if you enter force?—”
Teddy steps forward suddenly. Closing distance. Invading space. The young man flinches backward instinctively.
The General does not strike him. He simply looks at him. And the shame that floods the boy’s face is worse than any blow.
