Still, despite his knees buckling under the pressure, Noxian stood his ground. The suffocating aura around Darius made it hard to even breathe, but he wouldn't back down. Not now.
"He is my brother," Noxian declared with a slight tremor in his voice. "I don't want to see you hurt him again."
Darius said nothing, but his gaze turned colder than before.
"Do you even know what you did to him, Your Grace?" Noxian pressed on, his voice cracking further. "After he left you that night, he... he went too silent. He kept working non-stop, didn't rest, didn't even eat properly. When he saw me, he just kept smiling, but… it wasn't pretty at all."
Faintly visible mana flickered around Noxian's legs as he quietly reinforced them. Without it, he'd have crumpled to the floor. But his blazing purple eyes never left the Archduke's.
"He ended up with a fever so bad, we thought he might not make it. A fever! That may sound like nothing to you, but for us commoners… it's a death sentence."
