Osric closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, the softness had hardened, not into cruelty, but into the tempered steel of a man who had lived long enough to know when love must yield to principle.
She had spilled so much blood over the years that violence had become second nature to her: an instinct, not a decision. The way her hand had so easily closed around that shard and turned on him proved it more than any confession ever could. To think that she could raise her hand against him—her uncle, the man who cradled her when she was young, who taught her how to read, who shielded her from courtly vultures when she was just a girl, without even pausing…
That was how deeply her soul had been darkened.
Osric understood then, with a bone-deep sorrow, that it wasn't about the broken vase or the moment's rage. It was about what she had become.
