“You think comfort had anything to do with it,” he says quietly, iron threading through his voice now. “You think I built this,” his gaze flicks briefly toward the city beyond the palace walls, “for indulgence.”
His jaw tightens.
“I built it because we were losing.”
The words land differently. Factual.
Elyssara’s expression does not change. “So you starved two thirds of your people to save the Star-blessed third by ripping them from their families after five summers?”
He lets out a short huff of frustration.
“I made a calculation,” he corrects, and there is no softness in it now. “One you have the luxury of condemning because you were not the one watching gods tear this realm apart.”
A grating flicker moves through her chest at that—but she does not yield.
“I have the luxury?” she repeats incredulously. “You’re right, Thalmyr. I was not the one watching the gods tear this realm apart. I was too busy in the slums—starving, magic-bound, orphaned, and hunted. Was I meant to be doing something else, Your Highness?” she snaps, sarcasm dripping from every word.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. He paces before the throne, forest-green robes dragging across the floor in a spill.
“You don’t understand,” he begins, but Elyssara doesn’t let him continue.
“Then explain it to me,” she says, stepping closer still. “Explain why children had to beg for scraps while your people dined on gold-plated fruit.”
Thalmyr stills, his gaze hardens.
“Because those children would have died anyway.”
Silence slams into the room.
Seren stiffens behind her. Ronyn goes utterly still, his hand gripping his bow a little firmer from the corner of her eye.
Elyssara’s magic flickers, just once.
“Careful,” she says softly. “Pissing me off won’t end well.”
But Thalmyr doesn’t back down. Lightborne magic flares at his palms, too.
“You forget where you are, Elyssara,” he says, voice tight and measured. He doesn’t say it as a threat. He says it as fact.And the army moves off the wall and takes a single step in, swallowing the open space in an instant.
“I know exactly where I am—myfucking kingdom,” she snarls, and her Fallen all reach for their weapons. Pure instinct. As though drawing steel against kings was something they’d all survived before.
Teddy says nothing, but the room shifts subtly around him anyway. Like even Starborn armies understand what kind of man survives becoming General of War of Zerynthia.
But Thalmyr ignores it all. His muscles are relaxed, his magic does not flare. He seems… exhausted.
“They have no magic,” he continues as if nothing has happened, voice steady, brutal in its honesty. “No protection. No way to withstand what was coming. I could have spread resources thin, watched all of you starve slowly, watched the Royal Guard get picked off by Ilyra’s Shades. Not a massacre on the battlefield. It would’ve been a slow, painful, unending slaughter.”
A beat.
But six words snag in her mind.
Get picked off by Ilyra’s Shades.
Her mind swims.
“Get picked off by who?” she asks.
Thalmyr huffs an exasperated sigh. “Ilyra’s Shades. They’re assassins, not just messengers, Elyssara. Lost the only Dravari Shadowweave to them only recently. She’s been planning this for years.”
