"He doesn't want to rule. Doesn't want the politics, the responsibility. So he pretends. Stays in my shadow. Lets everyone think he's less than he is."
I'm laughing.
I don't know why. It bubbles up—exhausted, hysterical, completely wrong—and I can't stop it. I press my hands over my mouth and the sound keeps coming.
"The whole foundation of Discord." I choke on the words. "Is two men lying about what they are. In opposite directions."
Koshin's watching me. His expression has gone strange. Soft, almost.
"You're not running."
"Where would I go?" I swipe at my eyes. Wet. From laughing.
I shake my head. "This is—you know how insane this is, right? You have to know."
"Yes."
"A Titan. Pretending to be a god. Running a criminal empire. With a full god pretending to be a half-god as your second-in-command." I gesture at the city. "That's Discord. That's what I stumbled into."
"Yes."
I stop laughing. Wind and cold and the weight of everything he's just told me.
He's looking at me. Still waiting.
I should be terrified.
But I'm tired. So fucking tired.
And the thing is—the thing that makes no sense, the thing I can't explain even to myself—he saved a mother and child tonight. Threw himself over them. Let a building fall on his body so they could live.
That happened. That's true. Whatever else he is—Titan, monster—that's also true.
"Why are you telling me this?"
He doesn't answer right away. The wind picks up, pulls at his clothes, and he's just a shape against the darkening sky.
"Because you earned it." His voice is rough. "Because you stopped me tonight and you were right. Because you sat in a room full of Discord elite and told them how to win a war, and they listened." A pause. "Because you're one of two people who know what I am now."
"And?"
His good hand flexes against the stone. "And I wanted you to know. I don't—" He stops. Starts again. "I wanted you to see."
The blade catches the last light of the dying sky. White bone, jagged edges. Someone he loved, turned into a weapon he can never put down.
I think about the chains. Being bound by the body of the person closest to you. Trapped for decades—longer—with that weight around your wrists, that reminder pressing into your skin every time you move.
I think about carrying that. Every day. For centuries. Alone.
"What was she like?" My voice comes out quieter than I intend. "Elyr."
His whole body changes. Grief flickering through before he shuts it down.
"Gentle." The word scrapes out. "She remembered everything. Every word spoken, every thought conceived. And she was still gentle. She tempered me." He's looking at the blade now. "She reminded me that truth without compassion destroys as much as it reveals."
He pauses. Tilts his head again, that listening posture.
"Yes, I'm telling her." A breath. Almost a laugh, but broken. "I know you like her. You don't have to keep saying it."
