Val-Theris reached for her instantly, wings open as if to shield her from eyes that were not there. His golden-kissed feathers trembled with the effort it took not to chase Val-Oros back to Korvath and leave his ruins in the dirt.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” His voice was low, rough. “That it was him?”
“I didn’t realize until…” Jesenia said through her tears. “It doesn’t matter. It wouldn’t have changed anything. Everything I cared about was lost long before you could have helped.”
“I still could have tried.” The words shattered his fury into helplessness. “I cannot listen to him taunt you that way,” he whispered. “And donothing.”
“You did the right thing,” she said softly.
He pressed his forehead to the edge of the marble table, breath uneven. “I want to kill him.”
“I know,” she whispered. “And I cannot say I understand, but please, whatever you do, don’t do it in Lunareth’s name.”
He looked at her then, his heart pounding in his ears. He understood what she meant:don’t make her or her people a martyr against the cruelty of this war.
The silence that followed was not of Val-Theris’s acceptance, but now was not the time to discuss it further. The three of them stayed in the chamber for a moment longer until Jesenia’s tears dried against the lingering echo of Val-Oros’s presence.The chamber had dimmed from the afternoon sun when Jesenia stood.
There was still a tremor in the Angel-King’s feathers, but he stood with her. She made a step as if to leave the room, but stopped suddenly and turned her attention back to Val-Theris.
“What did he mean?” she asked quietly. It was careful in the way of someone who already suspected the answer might hurt. “When he said I would undo this kingdom,” she clarified. “That wasn’t his cruelty alone. He meant it.”
Val-Theris’s jaw tightened. His gaze shifted, just briefly, to the marble floor between them.
“Val-Oros does not speak without intention,” he said at last.
Jesenia felt the weight in his words immediately. “So he saw something.”
“Yes.”
Her breath caught. “And you won’t tell me what.”
“I can’t,” Val-Theris said.
Jesenia searched his face, her expression torn between fear and disbelief. “You see the future too,” she said. “If he saw this country’s ruin, wouldn’t you know it too?”
Val-Theris exhaled slowly, as though steadying himself against a painful admission.
“Our gifts are not the same,” he said quietly. “My brother’s sight is…narrower. More precise. He seespeople. When he touches someone whose existence bends the path of what is to come, the vision comes unbidden.”
“And you?” she asked.
Val-Theris hesitated. “I see fragments,” he said. “Symbols. Echoes. I am given theshapeof endings, not their names. I see faceless people, but the setting is clear. I can see suffering, but not far enough to understand the source.”
Jesenia absorbed that in silence, her fingers curling faintly into the fabric at his chest.
“So if he knows what he saw,” she said slowly, “then he is the only one who can tell us what it means.”
“Precisely. And he would never. He would rather let fear do the work for him. He said just enough to give credibility to the council’s fears of you and your people. He is attempting to undermine me with a civil fracture.”
Jesenia looked away then, her gaze drifting down the long corridor, as though she half-expected Val-Oros to step back through the shadows and finish what he had started.
“Do you believe him?” she asked softly.
Val-Theris closed his eyes, because the answer was simply: yes. He knew better than to distrust prophecy, and behind his eyes, he remembered his own visions of ruin. He saw Jesenia as Val-Oros had long before he knew her name.
But he did not say any of it. Instead, he opened his eyes and met her gaze.
“I believe that Val-Oros mistakes cause for blame,” he said carefully.
