“You always do.”
His gaze lifts slowly, and when it settles on me it isn’t curiosity or even irritation—it’s assessment. He’s already measuring the value of this conversation before I’ve begun, deciding how much of his time I’m worth.
“Make it brief.”
I don’t sit. I don’t move further into the room than necessary. “There are coordinated attacks along the outer supply routes,” I say, letting the words land clean without dressing them. “They’re not random. They’re pushing inward.”
“I’ve seen the reports.”
His tone doesn’t shift, and something in my chest tightens at the lack of reaction. “Then you know what it means.”
“I know what it looks like.”
I step closer, just enough to shift the angle between us. “Krago is positioning. He’s cutting outer villages, forcing supply routes to bend, thinning support before he escalates.”
My father leans back slightly, the movement unhurried, like he’s adjusting to something mildly inconvenient rather than significant. His fingers still against the stone, and the room feels tighter for it.
“And?”
The word lands flat, stripped of urgency.
“And we should respond before he reaches the central plains,” I say. “Deploy a targeted force, disrupt the advance before it consolidates.”
He doesn’t answer immediately. His gaze drifts past me for a moment, as if considering something more interesting, then returns with the same indifference.
“No.”
The refusal is clean. Final.
I hold his gaze, waiting for more, but none comes. “That’s not a sufficient response.”
“It is,” he replies. “Because it’s final.”
The irritation hits faster this time, sharper, but I keep it contained. “You’re underestimating the scale of this.”
“No,” my father says calmly, folding his hands now, stilling them completely. “You’re overestimating the value of what’s being lost.”
There’s no pause, no hesitation in it. Just fact, delivered the way he delivers everything—without weight, because to him there isn’t any.
“Outer villages are expendable,” he continues. “They exist to be consumed. That is their function.”
“They’re part of the supply chain,” I counter, keeping my voice even.
“They’re a replaceable part of it.”
“They’re still part of it.”
“And they will be replaced,” he says. “As they always are.”
I close the remaining distance between us, stopping at the edge of the table. The stone is cold under my fingertips when I rest my hand against it, grounding the tension before it has a chance to show.
“This isn’t isolated,” I say. “If he keeps pushing inward?—”
“If,” my father cuts in, the single word slicing cleanly through the rest.
I go still.
He watches me now, fully engaged, though not in the way I want. This isn’t attention—it’s correction.
