I stared at the floor, focusing on the grain of the obsidian, because looking up at him now would either cause me to cry or shout.
“That is better,” he murmured. “You forget who you speak to, little flame. I may be your Solea, but this is my city.”
The flush across my cheeks deepened until it felt unbearable. My throat tightened and my body trembled, but I stayed still.
“I respect you but I do not need to respect your choices.”
“You have made that publicly obvious. Do you wish to make me look a fool?”
My head snapped up. “No. But, perhaps, if you trusted me, I would not be the fool myself.”
“What would you like to know, Kaelia?”
“Everything.”
A muscle feathered in his cheek. “You do not need to cause a scene to get your way with me.”
I scowled. “If I asked you, would you have told me?”
“Yes.”
“You would have admitted to keeping an innocent man locked in a cell?” I countered.
“That is not how this goes.”
“Then tell me how it goes,” I pleaded.
I shifted closer without thinking, until my chest brushed the hard line of his knee.
Talon sighed, his hand coming up to rest at the nape of my neck.
“Xylos’s father,” Talon began, his voice growing darker with each syllable, “led the Umbral before I, and many centuries ago, he allied himself with the High Court in a way that compromised life in both realms.”
“And he was not good?”
“He was not good,” he confirmed. “When Xylos bonded with Thora, his father saw it as a direct violation of the order he had worked so carefully to preserve. He believed mortals and Veythar should never mix. That our worlds must remain separate.”
My stomach twisted. “So he locked his own son away for it?”
“He surrendered him,” Talon corrected. “Offered him to the High Court as proof that even his own blood would not be spared for breaking the law.”
I stared at him. “What kind of monster could condemn his child to that?”
“A man who valued power more than blood,” Talon replied. “The High Court agreed. They turned it into a spectacle—declared the bond an abomination and used Xylos as the example that would seal the law into place.”
“And he is still here?”
“Yes,” Talon said softly. “Because as long as he remains in that cell, the reason for the law remains standing with him.”
He exhaled slowly.
“The High Court told the human kingdoms it was proof that the Veythar despised their kind enough to imprison one of our own. A grand display of our supposed cruelty.”
His mouth curved without humor. “It served their narrative very well.”
A quiet anger crept into his voice as he continued.
“But Xylos’s existence threatens them. It proves something they cannot afford to admit.”