Chapter 506: Royal Final Battle (4)
"Don’t think this absolves you," she rasped, words gravel-rough from smoke and battle‐screaming. "You’re still a killer."
The sentence should have struck like a thrown knife; instead it landed with the brittle sound of broken glass already on the floor. Lyan felt it, accepted it. He did not flinch, only met her gaze and let the truth stand between them.
"I know," he answered, voice low enough the sound slid beneath the echoing arches. He held the acknowledgement a heartbeat longer so she would taste sincerity. "But I don’t kill when I have a better choice."
He saw the words brush her anger—not quenching it, only confusing it, like wind tilting a candle flame without blowing it out. Inside, Griselda crackled with proud approval, while Cynthia offered the faintest hum of relief. Lyan exhaled through his nose, easing tension from his neck.
Ara’s whisper arose beside them, fragile as a snowflake landing on hot stone. "Kassia... he saved us." The princess’s voice wavered, trembling on the border between loyalty to her sister and reluctant gratitude toward her savior. Conflict painted her face in quick strokes: eyebrows pinched in worry, mouth trembling, eyes wide enough to show the pale ring around each iris.
Kassia’s jaw flexed. Lyan noticed how her knuckles whitened around the hilt of the discarded mirror-blade, fingers twitching as if memory still begged her to swing. Fatigue—deeper than anger—made her arms shake. Her lips parted, but words failed, replaced by a rough breath. She turned her head away, shoulders stiff. The gesture was not surrender, only an admission that she had no reply yet.
Lyan respected the wall she threw up. Some wounds demanded privacy to bleed.
He tugged loose the linen scrap tucked beneath his belt—a red banner once marched under Varzadia’s sun, now faded almost pink. Quick fingers tore it into a long strip. The cloth carried dusty rose-oil scent, a smell from better days; he wondered which parade it had decorated before war twisted meaning. He looped it under Ara’s forearm, the back of his hand brushing her skin. She hissed softly when the fabric touched raw flesh, then stilled, breathing through the pain.
"Sorry," he murmured. "The salve will sting, but it draws the heat out."