27. Solving for Moral Accountability #2
“Yes, you did.” King Faisal met Griffon’s eyes without wavering. “But the man I saw this morning wasn’t the man I thought I’d hired five years ago. The one I heard rumors about. A man who was ruthless, merciless. A cold-blooded killer.”
Gannet’s warning bounced around my mind. The queen’s assassin. A killer of innocents. Life matters little to him. He relishes ending it.
“What I saw today was a man who protected someone weaker than himself,” the king continued. “A man who showed restraint instead of deadly violence. And control when he could have shown rage.” His voice softened. “You are not the villain I thought you were, Griffon.”
“I’m no hero either.” Griffon's words came out rough, almost angry.
“None of us are,” the king said before gesturing to me. “But the girl beside you looked at you with complete trust as you pulled her from the pyre. She risked her life to solve an impossible puzzle to save yours. That kind of faith isn’t given to monsters.”
Heat rose up my neck. I hadn’t considered what people would have taken from that moment. But of course, it was obvious. My face broadcasts every emotion like a town crier delivering a proclamation. Attention everyone: Wren is experiencing feelings. I repeat: Wren has feelings.
Griffon’s head slowly turned in my direction.
I looked up to find something raw and uncertain in his eyes.
Then he cleared his throat and reached for the cup he’d ignored until now.
He didn’t drink, just held it as he stared down into the dark liquid.
There was tension in his frame, a war happening beneath his skin.
“I don't know how to be that person,” he murmured.
“There’s no easy answer to that,” the king said. “We just wake up each morning with the determination to try. That’s all Helios asks of us—to never stop trying.”
Griffon looked at me again, and something fragile passed between us. As if he were telling me he didn’t want to have to do it alone. What I saw in his eyes made my chest feel too small and too full all at the same time.
No one spoke for a few moments. And the silence this time felt less like the thick static before a storm and more like the feeling of dust having been washed away by the time it was over.
“Why are you telling us this?” Griffon finally asked. “Why admit any of it?”
“Because I thought you needed to hear it.” The king’s voice softened.
“And because I believe Helios guides us more than we realize. The decisions we made five years ago. The two of you showing up in my throne room looking as if you’d been drug through the desert.
Wren solving the tapestry to save your life.
And the miracle this morning in the temple all led us to this moment. ”
“You think your god planned this?” Griffon said skeptically.
“I think the world is full of patterns we don’t see until we look back,” the king said with a small smile. “It may all be coincidence. But there may also be something larger at work. Either way, I choose to find peace in it.”
“Convenient theology,” Griffon muttered.
I mean, he’s not wrong. ‘Everything happens for a reason’ is easier to accept when you’re the king and not the one who was almost set on fire.
“You may be right.” The smile fell from the king’s face.
“I won’t pretend I’m a good man. I’ve made some hard decisions and have had to live with the consequences.
All I can do is honor the gifts I’ve been given.
The throne. This kingdom. Mali. And try to be better than my brother.
Better than those that came before me,” the king paused for a breath.
“And be better than I was yesterday.” His eyes held Griffon’s. “That’s all any of us can do.”
The tension seemed to ease in the room. Griffon’s shoulders dropped slightly.
“I don't forgive you,” Griffon said.
“I know.”
“And I don't trust you.”
“I wouldn't expect you to.” The king inclined his head. “But perhaps we can part as… complicated allies rather than enemies.”
Griffon studied King Faisal’s face, then gave a slow nod. “Perhaps.”
The desert breeze held a chill as the sun descended. The temperature fluctuated from warm to cool and back again as we walked between the dozens of lit braziers in the courtyard.
The king emerged with the Staff of Helios held high, the fire opal throwing a kaleidoscope of dappled patterns across the crowd. Cheers erupted so loudly that the ground seemed to shake.
Griffon studied the king with an intensity I couldn’t name. His brows were lowered, but his eyes weren’t angry. It was as if the king suddenly looked different, and he was unsure how he felt about it.
I leaned closer to his ear. “You alright?”
Several seconds went by before he looked down at me. “I don’t know.” The crowd quieted, but Griffon still spoke into my ear. “He admitted it. All of it. But somehow that makes it both better and worse at the same time.”
He pulled back to look me in the eye.
“Because now you can’t hate him completely,” I said.
He exhaled slowly. “He’s not a good man. But he’s not entirely a monster either. Just…” he trailed off.
“Just like you,” I finished gently.
Uncertainty flickered in his eyes before he nodded.
Moral complexity was definitely the theme for the evening. First, the king was revealed to be a sympathetic conspirator, and now we’re all standing around having feelings about it. Soon the guards would be organizing a support group.
The lighting of the ceremonial brazier pulled our attention away as the flame spread around the rim and, with a whoosh, burst high into the air.
We both stilled.
I reached over, took Griffon’s hand and leaned into him. He gave me a soft smile.
Two servants carried the tapestry forward.
The gray weaving looked almost silver in the firelight, the twin stars of Castor and Pollux shimmering one last time.
Hermes's final tapestry. A love letter to a dead princess, hidden in geometry and grief.
The crowd fell silent as the servants lifted it high.
“For sixty-five years,” the king declared, “this tapestry has hung in our great hall. A reminder of what we lost, of the walls we built around our hearts as well as our kingdom.” He paused.
“But tonight we are reminded that, just as the darkness yields to the dawn, what is lost can be found. What is broken can be made whole.”
He nodded to the servants, and they dropped the tapestry into the flames.
It caught instantly, the old thread burning with surprising speed.
The stars of the Sideri religion, of light and dark, of order and chaos, curled and blackened and disappeared in seconds.
Sixty-five years of shame and grief, of closed borders and bitter memory, reduced to ash.
Griffon's hand tightened around mine until it almost hurt.
I wondered if watching that tapestry burn felt like watching his old life turn to ash. Everything he'd been trained to be, all the horrible things he'd done for people who didn't care if he lived or died… just burned away. And he held someone's hand through it all.
The crowd cheered, but Griffon remained silent, his eyes fixed on the dying flames. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough. “I want it to burn away to nothing. But there’s still ash.”
I looked up at him, at the firelight playing across his cheekbones, at the vulnerability he was letting me see. “The past can never truly be erased.”
And yet, Griffon’s proven that we are not defined solely by our worst moments. We are also defined by what we do after them. By whether we choose to wallow in that darkness or fight our way toward the light.
Hermes stole the headpiece in grief and rage.
Furious with a theology that believed his love was blasphemous.
But then he created the tapestry. The riddle.
A puzzle that required both Sideri knowledge and Soli understanding to solve.
Maybe that’s what he wanted. Not just for the headpiece to be found, but for us to realize both had value.
That light and dark didn’t need to be enemies.
Even after everything that happened, he didn’t just weave a tapestry to hide a relic; he wove it to build a bridge between the two worlds.
A testament that love could transcend even doctrine.
When Griffon met my eyes again, there was a trace of something new. I don’t think the hard edges would ever disappear, but underneath it all, I thought I saw a glimmer of hope.
“And maybe that’s okay,” he finally answered
The drums began to pound, and the voices rose again in celebration.
But we stayed where we were, with our hands linked, and watched long after the tapestry had been devoured by embers.
Just existing in a moment where two emotionally stunted people could silently pretend they weren’t completely terrified about what would happen next.