Chapter 12
TWELVE
Val-Theris sat at the head of the long table, wings folded close behind him, every line of his posture carefully composed.
His expression was serene to the point of artifice—an angel carved from patience and restraint.
Those who knew him well could see the tension in the set of his shoulders, the way his fingers rested too firmly against the arm of his chair.
Jesenia sat in her assigned chair at his right. She promised herself that she would brave the council again for the sake of her people, but she kept her presence small. Still, she could feel the weight of the room pressing against her ribs.
Lunareth was being discussed, but only to the degree that painted her people as a plague, and not as war-ravaged victims of a fight they had no part in.
The doors of the council hall swung open, and the warmth of fire and the scent of ash swept into the room. It went quiet with confusion for a moment, and when Jesenia looked to the gilded doors, she saw a sight that made her sick.
It was the man who cruelly killed her brother as she watched helplessly. The man who stole her last living relative.
He wore deep obsidian armor, darkened with evil and death to the point that it would never shine again.
His gray cloak smoldered faintly at the edges, embers clinging to its hem like stubborn memories.
His wings—broader and heavier than Val-Theris’s—flared once, flaming viciously, before folding back against his shoulders.
“My dear brother,” he drawled, his voice rich with amusement. “I was beginning to think Seraveth no longer had the courtesy to answer summons from its kin. Why have you ignored my letters?”
A murmur rippled through the council.
Val-Theris rose slowly from his seat. “We answer diplomacy, not bloodshed,” he said evenly, “Why are you here, Val-Oros?”
Jesenia ceased breathing. All of the truths she had known came rushing to her in an instant, and sickly realized that the reason she did not recognize Val-Oros during the attack was because the fires of her home burning hid the flaming wings that protruded from his back.
The timbre of his voice—that cruel, almost playful lilt—was seared into her memory.
She heard it layered over the crackle of flames, over the screams of her village, over the wet sound of her brother’s body hitting the dirt.
She moved her hands into her lap to hide the shaking, begging herself not to cry.
“To offer you mercy,” Val-Oros replied lightly, as though discussing trade routes rather than war. His smile was sharp as a blade’s edge. “Before your stubbornness forces my hand once again.”
He paced a few steps into the chamber, boots echoing softly against marble.
Then, he took one heavy step onto the table that stretched the length of the room between the councilors.
“Korvath grows weary of Seraveth’s interference of my business in Lunareth.
Withdraw your legions, or I will return to the border.
” His eyes gleamed with wickedness. “And I will not stop at the border next time.”
“What business in Lunareth?” Val-Theris asked. “You reduced their homes to ash. If there is anything of Lunareth left, you will not find it in the land.”
Val-Oros’s gaze snapped to Jesenia’s dark hair, standing out amongst the white and gold of the chamber, despite her attempts to shrink into herself. Recognition flared in his eyes, cruel, sharp, and delighted.
“Well,” he said softly, turning fully toward her. “What do we have here?” He took a step closer, eyes gleaming. “One of your refugees, brother? This meek little dove sheltered beneath your wing?”
Val-Oros approached her from his risen position on the table in a predatory way, his presence radiating heat.
“I remember you,” he said, almost gently.
“The girl who trembled as I smashed that foolish boy’s face in.
” When Jesenia’s lip quivered slightly, his smile widened.
But Jesenia was careful not to cry out. She sat frozen, shaking, lips pressed together until they blanched.
She would not give Val-Oros the satisfaction. He kneeled to be closer.
“No tears?” he murmured. “Has the pacifist learned indifference? Or perhaps my brother has taught you that compassion is a luxury best burned away.”
A faint, broken sound escaped her throat—no more than a breath caught between grief and fury.
“I often wonder if the bleeding took him first, or the fire.” He hummed as if it was a question worth contemplating, and then a crack split the air between them, shifting Val-Oros’s and Jesenia’s gaze to the King of Seraveth.
Val-Theris’s hand had twitched against the table; the marble beneath it fractured, spider-webbing outward. His wings shuddered, feathers vibrating with barely restrained violence. Rohannes, standing at his side, gave the smallest shake of his head.
Not here. Not now.
“Enough,” Val-Theris said. His voice was quiet. Even. The restraint cost him blood that pooled at his broken fingertips. “This hall is for diplomacy, not torment.”
Val-Oros straightened, amused. “Ah, but torment is diplomacy.” He turned his attention to the council, spreading his hands. “It is how the world remembers who commands and who kneels.”
Then he paused. His gaze drifted back to Jesenia. Something in his expression changed, and he roughly grabbed her hand from her lap, lacing their fingers together. His eyes glazed over into a milky white as his prophetic sight took hold.
For a heartbeat, the world seemed to hold its breath.
Val-Oros saw her. He saw gold turned to ash. A city fractured by its own fear. He saw his brother kneeling in ruin, and at the center of it all, this woman in a devastatingly pivotal heap, crumbled lifeless to the ground.
The vision vanished as quickly as it came. Val-Oros smiled.
“You will be this kingdom’s undoing,” he said lightly, turning back to the council. “Mark my words.”
The chamber went still.
Val-Theris’s head snapped up in warning, severing the contact between the two and shoving his brother from his spot atop the table. “Val-Oros, enough.”
But he only shrugged. “Withdraw from Lunareth. If you do not, Korvath’s flames will make this gilded palace the next pyre.” He met his brother’s gaze, eyes alight with cruel certainty. A challenge.
Silence thickened, heavy as smoke. Val-Theris inclined his head once, the motion precise and cold. “Then let Korvath remember this mercy, brother, because when I answer your flames, there will be none.”
Val-Oros laughed—a merciless sound—and turned for the doors, his burning wings casting a red glow across the marble as he left.
The council was dismissed then quickly ushered out of the chamber for an intermission, leaving Jesenia alone with Val-Theris and Rohannes. When she was finally away from the judging eyes of the council, she tried standing from her seat, but sank back into the cushion and wept.
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 do nothing.”
“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 sees people. 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 the shape of 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.
Her brow furrowed. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that the future he saw may not exist because of you,” Val-Theris said. “But because of what others choose to do in response to you.”
Jesenia studied him for a long moment, as though weighing the truth of that against the fear coiling in her chest.
“And you?” she asked again. “What have you seen?”
The question was softer now, but Val-Theris felt the answer press against his ribs, insistent and sharp.
You.
He swallowed. “I have seen many things,” he said instead. “Enough to know that prophecy is a warning, but that it can also be prepared for.”
She did not look entirely convinced, but she nodded, accepting what he was willing to give her.
“For what it’s worth,” Jesenia said after a moment, her voice steady, “I never wanted to be anyone’s undoing.”
“Nor are you,” he said softly. “The failure of this kingdom will never be on the shoulders of you or your people. That burden is mine.”
He wanted to say more, to admit to the things he saw before she arrived at his gates, but knew it would do nothing but weigh her down with guilt that was not hers to bear.
He knew this much, even if he would never say it aloud: some endings did not arrive because they were chosen, but because courage and the strength of a people existed where power could not tolerate it.