“They’re not rioting,” Jesenia said. “They’re begging.”
“Begging is simply a kinder word for demanding,” Varin replied. “And demand becomes revolt.”
“And starving becomes death,” she shot back, her composure finally cracking. “Is that an acceptable cost to you? Are you really so afraid of pacifists who let Korvath destroy their homes because they would not fight back?”
The chamber erupted. Voices rose, overlapping, sharp with accusation and fear.
“Your voice is the reason the Lunarethians are so comfortable inciting unrest. You have no understanding of governance! This is exactly why it was a mistake allowing you to enter this chamber.”
Val-Theris stood motionless amid it all. Jesenia waited. She waited for him to raise his voice. To strike the table. To remind them who he was. But he didn’t.
Instead, he lifted a single hand. The room fell silent again.
“We will revisit ration distribution at the next session,” he said. “For now, this discussion is concluded.”
Jesenia stared at him. That was it. No concessions. No immediate relief. Just postponement that might as well have been a slap in the face.
She looked toward him, unable to keep the tremor from her voice. “Val-Theris?—”
“Not now,” he said quietly.
Something inside her snapped. She turned away from the council, away from their polished indifference, and walked straight toward the doors.
Behind her, Varin exhaled in thin satisfaction, and rose from his seat with a triumphant smile that faded the moment his king stood to follow the refugee through the door.
The doorto Val-Theris’s private office slammed shut behind Jesenia, and the sound echoed through the marble chamber like a crack of thunder.
Val-Theris had followed her inside, then stood at the window, his wings drawn tight against his back, their golden edges dim in the afternoon light.
“You can’t keep turning them away,” Jesenia said, her voice trembling with fury and grief. “There are children starving in the refugee quarter, Val-Theris. The ration lines barely last an hour before the guards shut them down. The council keeps promising more supplies but nothing ever comes!”
“I know,” he said quietly.
“Then do something!”
He turned, eyes hardening. “It’s not that simple.”
“Itisthat simple!” she snapped, stepping closer. “You are the King of Seraveth! You are a god among men! You could open the granaries today if you wanted to!”
He looked away. “And if I do, I give the council cause to call me a tyrant.”
“Better a tyrant who feeds the hungry than a king who watches them die!”
Her words hit him like a slap. For a moment, he said nothing, only let the silence stretch until it was unbearable.
“You think I don’t want to help them?” His voice was low now, controlled, but shaking beneath the surface. “You think I don’t hear their cries in my sleep? Every petition I grant, every law I sign—it’s a war with my own council. They control the traderoutes. They own the fields. I may be a god, but the crown is not, Jesenia. It is a cage.”
“Then break it!” she cried. “You of all people can!”
Her words trembled in the air between them. He stared at her for a long time, his expression unreadable. Then, very softly, he said, “If I do what you ask…I will be no better than my brother.”
Jesenia shook her head. “You arenothinglike him.”
“Am I not?” he demanded, stepping forward, the air shifting with the faint stir of his wings. “You think Val-Oros began his rule by burning cities? No. He began by believing his godhood gave him the right to ignore law. By believing that his heart was wiser than the balance of his people. I willnotbecome that.”
Her voice cracked. “Then what good is your mercy if it starves us?”
Val-Theris went still. For the first time, she saw something almost fragile in his face—that flicker of doubt he could never admit. But it hardened again, quickly, as though he feared what it might mean to let her see it.
