He walked there alone, slowly, like he was afraid at any moment for the Lunarethians to push back on his presence. Butin fact, they hardly noticed him at all, like he was simply an apparition patrolling their makeshift tents and small fires.
His eyes landed on a washbasin with Jesenia among the three women sitting around it, scrubbing dirt from linens and children’s clothes. He watched her for a while, the way her brow furrowed in concentration as she used a stone to wear away at a stain. Her eyes seemed dark with sorrow and heartbreak.
Val-Theris had come to learn that she kept her hands busy when her mind was full, to try and calm her racing thoughts—but he could tell that whatever sat at the forefront of her mind would not let her forget so easily.
Her hair was loose down her back. Her shawl was wrapped tightly around her shoulders. The faint bruise along her cheekbone was yellowing at the edges now, as if time was trying to heal what the city insisted on reopening.
She didn’t turn when he stepped closer. “You shouldn’t be here,” she said quietly without lifting her head.
Her voice was steady. Hollow. That was worse than fury. Val-Theris kneeled next to her as softly as he could, as though the slowness might reduce the damage of his presence. He did not approach like a king or a god. He approached like a man who had already broken something precious and was trying not to shatter what remained.
“I know,” he said. “But please, I need to speak with you.”
“I’ve been trying to be gone,” Jesenia replied without looking at him. “That is the point. But you make it difficult when you come looking for me.”
Val-Theris swallowed. “I don’t want to fight with you,” he said.
Jesenia finally turned her head slightly. Not fully. Just enough for him to see the edge of her expression.
“You don’t want to fight,” she echoed, almost amused, but the sound held no humor. “You made a proposal that would haveturned my body into a treaty and my heart into collateral, and you don’t want to fight.”
Val-Theris did not flinch. He deserved the words. Every one of them.
“I was wrong,” he said quietly. The sentence hung between them, stark and simple, without justification or excuse. Jesenia’s eyes narrowed faintly, as though she didn’t trust the shape of it. His wings folded tighter behind him, a habit he could not break—making himself smaller when he felt too large for the moment.
“I’ve spent days trying to find a way to explain myself,” he said. “I’ve filled entire pages in my head with words that sound noble and necessary. Citizenship. Protections. Food. Safety. The end of slurs and camps and ration lines.” His voice roughened. “And none of it changes what you said to me. That you wanted to marry for love, not as a political solution. And I tried to take that from you for…convenience.”
He cringed at the harshness of the word, but somehow, it felt like the only one that fit.
Jesenia dried her hands on the fabric of her dress at her thighs before her hands tightened around the edge of her shawl. Then she stood and stepped away from the others to make the conversation more private. Val-Theris followed to the edge of an alley, where she stared at him as if he were something new—something she didn’t want to let herself believe in.
Val-Theris looked down at the ground for a moment, as though he could find humility there.
“In that moment,” he admitted, “I wasn’t thinking of you as Jesenia.”
Her breath caught faintly. He lifted his gaze again.
“I was thinking of you as a way out.” The truth hurt to say. It scraped his throat raw. “A way out of the council,” he continued. “A way out of their control. A way to prove to the city that the refugees were not vermin, not burdens, not?—”
He stopped, jaw tightening.
“I tried to turn you into a banner,” he said quietly. “I tried to hang your name over the gates and hope it would make them ashamed of their cruelty.”
Jesenia’s eyes glistened, but she did not blink. She held his gaze like a blade.
“And did you think it would work?” she asked.
Val-Theris exhaled slowly. “Ididn’tthink,” he said. “Not as I should have.”
The confession was too human. Too bare. It felt like stripping armor in a room full of knives. He stepped closer again, slowly, stopping when his boots met her toes. Close enough to be heard clearly. Far enough not to trap her.
“You asked me if I cared about you,” he said, voice low. “And I answered you with policy. I tried to offer you a crown you didn’t want and called it freedom, when really it was just a cage that gave you a nicer title.”
Jesenia’s throat bobbed. Her jaw trembled once before she mastered it. That finally made her look fully at him. Her eyes were dark, rimmed with exhaustion and something sharper—something that had learned to survive by not trusting mercy, even when it came in divine hands. Val-Theris glanced toward the quarter and beyond, toward the distant glow of the city.
“I wanted to fix it,” he said, and the words were almost a whisper. “I wanted one decisive action. One thing I could do that would make them stop hurting you.”
Jesenia’s voice thinned. “And you didn’t think that you’d be hurting me?”
