"Honesty had always been my weapon, but with him, it cut deeper than any blade. If I didn't learn to wield it with care, I'd lose the only soul brave enough to stand at my side."
After Niko left, the castle chambers were too vast, too steep in history, for the kind of failure I carried inside me. Firelight burned low in the heart, casting restless shadows across the stone walls, gilded frames, and shelves of old records and glass-encased relics. Beyond the tall windows, the city sprawled in restless light, a kingdom breathing beneath me, its towers lit like beacons against the night. To them, I was the steady hand, the Alpha King who never faltered. But in here, beneath the vaulted ceiling of my private chamber, I was only a man who had spoken too bluntly to the one person who mattered more than politics, and who might have lost him because of it.
