Mariel reached out, her fingers brushing against one of the lantern nodes built into the table's edge, tilting it slightly as if it were real and not just light.
"You know what you are doing," she said. Her voice was kind, but not the kind that softens or excuses.
It was the kind of kindness that cut deeper than any lecture, the sort that only lands when someone has already been watching long enough to know what is true.
"Do not let vengeance dress itself as prudence."
He didn't argue. He didn't even let the words sting. He had earned some of the spite that lived in him, and he knew it, but spite was not a driver, not a tool for steering, not something he would let hold the wheel.
It was ballast, something you carried and balanced. "Noted," he said, simple as that. "I want him gone. I want the ones beneath him scattered or silent.
