Chapter Forty-Five #2
But his eyes. His eyes are the same. Sharp. Assessing. Unwavering. A king to the very core. Or at least, a man raised to become one. The room bends around him in subtle ways. Guards straighten. Servants still. Even silence seems to wait for his permission before settling fully.
The silence stretches between them. Not awkward or uncertain. It’s measured, calculating. As if both of them understand exactly what this moment is.
Elyssara does not bow.
She does not slow.
She walks the length of the hall with the same steady certainty she carried through The Barrier, her Fallen fanning out behind her, her presence cutting through the space like a blade drawn clean.
The guards track them nervously. Not because they are loud, but because every person behind Elyssara moves like violence held barely in check.
She brushes past Calira, and stops a few paces from Thalmyr. Close enough to be heard. Far enough to refuse intimacy.
Thalmyr’s gaze drags over her, taking in the leathers, the weapons, the magic that hums just beneath her skin. He nods in approval, as though he’s witnessing the prophecy enacted before his eyes.
“So,” he says at last, voice calm, measured, entirely unhurried. “The Lightborne finally returns.”
Elyssara tilts her head slightly, studying him in turn, her expression unreadable. “Not returns,” she corrects, her voice steady, cutting. “I was never allowed here to begin with.”
A heartbeat passes.
“I have finally arrived,” she says, her voice like steel.
Something shifts in his gaze. Not guilt. Not quite. Understanding.
“I wondered when our efforts would finally bring you to me,” Thalmyr says.
Elyssara’s lip curls faintly. “You didn’t bring me in. Though I’m aware of all your attempts to do so. But I’ve wondered something too….” she trails off.
Then her eyes pin him in place. “I wondered how long you thought you’d get away with all this.”
The air tightens.
Thalmyr exhales slowly, clasping his hands behind his back, posture straightening—not defensive, but bracing.
“You think I did this lightly.”
It is not a question.
Elyssara steps forward. Just one step. Enough to close the distance. Enough to make it clear she is not here to circle the truth.
“I think,” she says, voice low, controlled, lethal in its precision, “that you chose who to save and who to sacrifice so you could remain comfortable.”
Thalmyr responds instantly. “Kings are not granted the luxury of clean choices, Elyssara. Only survivable ones.”
Silence falls. Heavy. Unavoidable. But Elyssara was never good at holding her tongue. And here? She fucking refuses.
“And I think,” she continues, her gaze locking onto his, “you decided we weren’t worth saving.”
He drags a hand through his golden hair, his sharp jaw set and rigid.
“No,” Thalmyr says quietly. “I decided I could not save everyone.”
A bitter laugh escapes him. “You speak like someone who still believes there was a path where no one suffered.”
Calira steps forward, arm reaching out to put distance between Elyssara and Thalmyr, her brows pinched in fury.
“You speak of things you do not understand, Lightborne,” she snaps, as if defending the man who cast out an entire population of people.
“He was the only person who ever chose to save me. Without him, I would have died in those slums with everyone else you’re mourning.
” The words leave her mouth with the sharp certainty of devotion.
Thalmyr closes his eyes briefly—not proud, not ashamed. Only aware of the cost of being loved by people his choices damaged most.
“Stand down, Callie darling,” Thalmyr soothes with the affection of a father.
Calira obeys instantly with devotion so deeply ingrained it has become instinct.
Elyssara’s mind drifts to Revryn grieving the daughter who’s still alive. Mourning the loss of the sweet child he sang lullabies to. And then she thinks of the asshole who ripped her from his arms and turned her monstrous. Turned her into this.
“Yeah, Callie darling. Stand down and let the adults talk,” Jax hisses.
And for once, Elyssara enjoys the jab. Because it’s Revryn her heart bleeds for. Not Calira.
Calira bares her teeth, but Thalmyr does not flinch.
Ronyn leans in. “I told you there’s a weird dynamic going on, El,” he whispers loudly enough for everyone to hear. “You know that fairytale where the prisoner falls for the captor? Kind of like that.”
But Jax slams her boot into the marble floors, the sound echoing through the halls. Everyone’s eyes snap to her, and she gets exactly what she wants: everyone’s attention.
“You will answer for your atrocities,” she snarls at Thalmyr, stepping around Calira like she is inconsequential.
Thalmyr does not speak, just huffs a long, pained sigh.
So Elyssara takes the opening. “Quite the privilege to ignore the Earthbound, watch them starve, and still sleep soundly at night.”
Thalmyr flinches. Small, but real.
That, more than anything, tells Elyssara she is closer to the truth than he would like.
“You think comfort had anything to do with it,” he says quietly, iron threading through his voice now. “You think I built this,” his gaze flicks briefly toward the city beyond the palace walls, “for indulgence.”
His jaw tightens.
“I built it because we were losing.”
The words land differently. Factual.
Elyssara’s expression does not change. “So you starved two thirds of your people to save the Star-blessed third by ripping them from their families after five summers?”
He lets out a short huff of frustration.
“I made a calculation,” he corrects, and there is no softness in it now. “One you have the luxury of condemning because you were not the one watching gods tear this realm apart.”
A grating flicker moves through her chest at that—but she does not yield.
“I have the luxury?” she repeats incredulously.
“You’re right, Thalmyr. I was not the one watching the gods tear this realm apart.
I was too busy in the slums—starving, magic-bound, orphaned, and hunted.
Was I meant to be doing something else, Your Highness?
” she snaps, sarcasm dripping from every word.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. He paces before the throne, forest-green robes dragging across the floor in a spill.
“You don’t understand,” he begins, but Elyssara doesn’t let him continue.
“Then explain it to me,” she says, stepping closer still. “Explain why children had to beg for scraps while your people dined on gold-plated fruit.”
Thalmyr stills, his gaze hardens.
“Because those children would have died anyway.”
Silence slams into the room.
Seren stiffens behind her. Ronyn goes utterly still, his hand gripping his bow a little firmer from the corner of her eye.
Elyssara’s magic flickers, just once.
“Careful,” she says softly. “Pissing me off won’t end well.”
But Thalmyr doesn’t back down. Lightborne magic flares at his palms, too.
“You forget where you are, Elyssara,” he says, voice tight and measured. He doesn’t say it as a threat. He says it as fact. And the army moves off the wall and takes a single step in, swallowing the open space in an instant.
“I know exactly where I am—my fucking kingdom,” she snarls, and her Fallen all reach for their weapons. Pure instinct. As though drawing steel against kings was something they’d all survived before.
Teddy says nothing, but the room shifts subtly around him anyway. Like even Starborn armies understand what kind of man survives becoming General of War of Zerynthia.
But Thalmyr ignores it all. His muscles are relaxed, his magic does not flare. He seems… exhausted.
“They have no magic,” he continues as if nothing has happened, voice steady, brutal in its honesty.
“No protection. No way to withstand what was coming. I could have spread resources thin, watched all of you starve slowly, watched the Royal Guard get picked off by Ilyra’s Shades.
Not a massacre on the battlefield. It would’ve been a slow, painful, unending slaughter. ”
A beat.
But six words snag in her mind.
Get picked off by Ilyra’s Shades.
Her mind swims.
“Get picked off by who?” she asks.
Thalmyr huffs an exasperated sigh. “Ilyra’s Shades. They’re assassins, not just messengers, Elyssara. Lost the only Dravari Shadowweave to them only recently. She’s been planning this for years.”
Reality bends, the past rewriting itself in real time. But she needs to keep going.
“So what… you just chose to do the same thing… only quicker?” she bites.
“I chose to preserve what could survive long enough to fight back. I chose to put the Starborn behind a Barrier until…” he trails off.
“Until what?” Elyssara snaps.
He sucks his teeth.
“Until you. Until you enacted the prophecy. Until you realized who you are.”
The words settle. Messy. Scrappy. Jagged. But… understood.
And that is the worst part.
Not that he is wrong.
That she can see exactly how he got here.
“But you’ve been importing threvenar from Zerynthia. You’ve been rewriting our history,” Elyssara accuses, though her voice wobbles, less sure of herself.
Thalmyr shakes his head, frustrated. “So Ilyra couldn’t have it! Maldrak sold it to the highest bidder. I was simply trying to keep it out of her hands. Ilyra’s Shades intercepted it, of course. Held it in their reserves… but that won’t last forever. They’ll come for Zerynthia next.”
Elyssara inhales slowly, her chest tightening despite herself. No matter how noble he makes the intention sound, the outcome is always the same.
“The Starborn army,” she says. “That was your solution?”
His gaze flicks to her again, sharper now.
“That was my only option.”
He steps forward—not aggressively, but with intent.
“An army that could survive what is coming,” he says. “Not children. Not citizens. Weapons. So that’s what I made them.”
He does not flinch. Does not balk at his own callousness. And his eyes land on Calira. She lifts her chin, like she’s proud of being his weapon. The Crown’s Blade.