Chapter 18
EIGHTEEN
Val-Theris left them behind with their pale faces and stiff bows, with their half-swallowed threats and careful hatred, and the silence that followed him down the corridors felt louder than any shout.
He walked without destination at first.
His boots made no sound on the marble, but he could feel the echo of each step through his bones. The murals of angels watched him pass—painted eyes forever benevolent, forever serene.
His wings were still half-fanned with the aftershock of rage, feathers unsettled. It was not the kind of anger he indulged often. It left him hollow afterward, as if each outburst tore away something he needed to keep himself intact.
By the time he reached the upper residence wing, the sun had lowered into late afternoon. The light slanted through high arched windows in sharp bars, gilding the dust in the air and turning it into something almost holy. The palace smelled faintly of incense and old parchment and polished stone.
None of it soothed him.
He stopped outside Jesenia’s chambers.
For a long moment, he stood there with his hand hovering over the door as if he could feel her on the other side.
He had not seen her since the day she left him standing in her room with the sunlight cutting him into pieces.
Since the day his noble intention had turned into a weapon in her hands because it had not been offered as a choice, but as a solution.
He had tried to tell himself that time would soften it. He had tried to believe Rohannes when he said she always forgave.
But the memory of her face when she asked—Do you care about me, or do you just value the ease I bring to your conscience?—had not left him. It haunted him more deeply than visions ever had, because it was real and present and he could not outrun it.
He knocked. Once. Twice.
No answer.
He could have left. He should have left. He had no right to enter uninvited after everything he’d done.
But his patience—his careful restraint—had already been spent in the council chamber. And the thought of her sitting alone with that same bitterness twisting in her chest while the city sharpened its knives…it was unbearable.
He opened the door.
The room was dimmer than he expected, the curtains half-drawn to keep out the glare. The late sun still found its way through, pooling in puddles of gold along the floorboards and catching on the edge of the small table near the window.
She was not there. He hadn’t expected her to be, but a part of him clung to the hope of possibility. The only other place she would be in a city that hated her was down in the refugee quarter with her people, trying to soothe the suffering brought upon by his own.
He walked there alone, slowly, like he was afraid at any moment for the Lunarethians to push back on his presence. But in 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 have turned 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. “I didn’t think,” 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?”
Val-Theris closed his eyes briefly, as if bracing himself.
“I did,” he admitted. “Some part of me did.” He opened his eyes again.
“And I did it anyway because I thought the ends would justify it. Because I thought my intentions would make it clean. That you might see what your people needed and understand. That…you’d give them one more part of yourself when I had no right to ask that of you. ”
His gaze held hers. Jesenia did not speak, but the air changed.
She listened. Val-Theris’s wings shifted faintly, feathers brushing against one another with a soft, restless sound.
“I cannot change what I said,” he said softly.
“I cannot undo the way it made you feel. But I can tell you what I should have told you then.”
Jesenia’s hands loosened slightly on her shawl. Her gaze remained guarded. Val-Theris bowed his head a fraction—an acknowledgment that felt almost ceremonial.
“I want you by my side,” he said quietly.
“Not as an answer. Not as a symbol. Not as a chess piece to corner my council. I want you because you are Jesenia. Because you walk through starvation and still find room to carry others. Because you have every reason to hate my city and yet you keep saving the people within it. Because your courage shames both men and gods, and I am jealous of how you do it so easily.”
Jesenia’s lips parted. Her breath trembled.
“I came here to say that I was wrong,” he continued. “And that I am sorry for using your gentle heart to try and solve problems you never created.”
Jesenia stared at him for a long time. Finally, she spoke. “You wanted to marry me,” she said slowly, “so that my people could stop starving.”
Val-Theris nodded once. “Yes.”
“And you believed it was noble.”
“Yes.”
“And you didn’t stop to consider that making me your queen would paint a target on my back larger than anything I’ve ever known.”