Not one of them is stupid enough to answer.
“Look at me,” I order.
They do. Reluctantly.
“The night I took my Shula to wife, the wards around the Broken Plains flared stronger than they have in centuries,” I say, voice low but carrying to every corner of the room. “My power is not diminished. It is focused. Tempered. Directed.”
I step down from the dais slowly, closing the distance between us.
“And as for Delia…” My flames dim slightly as I speak her name.
The ministers notice. Of course they do.
“She is not a distraction. She is an asset. Her ideas will increase your survival rates in the mines. She is building something with Healer Withers even now that will save lives you have already written off as acceptable losses.”
I stop in front of Gorran Flint.
He reeks of fear and sweat, and old incense.
“Tell me, Flint,” I murmur. “How many sons from your district have died in the tunnels in the last ten years?”
His lips tremble. “T-too many, my Lord.”
“And yet you mock the woman—my viyella, my true mate with whom I share our most scared bond, the zareth—who might keep the next boy from bleeding out on the stone before he ever reaches the infirmary?”
I lean closer, letting my eyes flare bright.
“Do you know what that tells me?” I ask.
He shakes his head, throat working.
“That your tongue wags more than your brain works.”
A ripple of nervous laughter skitters across the gathered men, quickly silenced when I flick a glance their way.
“Listen well,” I say, straightening. “I will not explain to fools like you why I chose to return from the Vein. Nor will I apologize. The fact is, I chose her. The Fates chose her. And I have bound myself to her. In doing so, I have strengthened Ashfell, The Ember Vein, and Nightfall itself.”
I let the bone-mask slide just enough that white ridges press faint under my skin, a ghost of the skull beneath. The ministers gasp.
“You may call me Two-Face,” I go on, voice dropping.
“They have sung worse in their little taverns. But if you ever again refer to me as a lapdog or speak of my viyella with anything less than the respect she is due, I will personally see to it that you spend the rest of your days tending slag pits on the outer wastes.”
I smile then. It is not kind.
“You know as well as I that nothing grows there. Nothing lives. You will crawl back to the mines begging for the mercy of heat and work.”
Gorran swallows hard. His knees buckle fully this time, dropping him to the floor.
“My Lord Thorne,” he whispers, bowing his head. “Forgive my foolishness.”
I let the silence stretch.
The fire overhead crackles, shifting from angry red to steady gold.
“Consider this your only warning,” I say at last. “Rise. All of you.”
They do, with varying degrees of grace.
