The throne room slowly emptied.
Servants came hesitantly into the chamber, pausing at the sight of the bodies scattered across the marble. Guards moved to begin the grim work of lifting them, their movements stiff with unease.
No one looked directly at either of us.
Colsar watched them with mild impatience, as though the entire affair had been an inconvenience rather than a massacre.
Eventually he lifted a hand. “Leave them,” he said.
The servants froze.
“Out.”
They did not argue. Within moments the throne room was empty again. The doors closed. Silence settled over the chamber.
Colsar turned back toward me. “There,” he said calmly. “It’s finished.”
I stared at him. The ease in his voice made something inside me tighten.“You killed half the court,” I said.
“Yes.”
He sounded almost puzzled by my tone. “They were a problem.”
“And that solves everything?”
“It solves the part that matters.”
He stepped closer, studying my face as though expecting relief.
Instead I turned away from him. “I am still upset with you.” The words came out colder than I intended.
Colsar blinked. “With me?"
“Yes.”
He frowned slightly, as if trying to understand the shape of a problem he thought he had already eliminated. “I removed the threat.”
“That was not the threat.”
His expression darkened. "What are you talking about?"
"I am sorry," I said. "I am sorry I still need you to be present when the kingdom is not burning."
Colsar stiffened. "We both know that it is easier for you," I continued. "When there is something to fight. Something to fix. Something to destroy. That is when you know exactly how to love me. It is the quiet that loses you."
He crossed the distance between us in two strides. "That is just it," he said, his voice rising in a way it almost never did. "I was not there to fight when you needed me to be. And now I am trying."
The rawness of it stopped me for a moment. Not because it was wrong. Because it was true, and he knew it, and he was saying it anyway, which was its own kind of courage from a man who did not often admit to falling short of anything.
His hands closed around my arms. “I am trying.” His voice dropped. “I will be everything you need me to be.”
I met his eyes without flinching. “You say that now.”
“I have said it from the beginning.”
“Did you say it while another woman stood half naked in front of you?”
His jaw tightened. “That woman is dead.”
