Herbalists' Cache hold my cup

blackfell exhales. he feels the answer he must give her deep in the marrow of his bones. and when he looks at her, really looks at her, for the first time in this conversation, he hesitates. yet persists: i do not like him. honesty that twitches his jaw, rippling tension beneath the scarred skin.

but he is strong.

the words feel like pulling steel from flesh, reluctant but irrefutable. blackfell cannot deny what is true. sun eater is a leader. a warrior. he does not rule with fear, nor with cruelty. he holds his people together as tightly.

but—

you bow before him. you were not born to bow.

there. the truth of it.

he does not hate sun eater. he resents him. resents that he has her. resents that he has what blackfell had once wanted, long ago, when the halls of blackmarch were still warm with her presence, when she was not yet a wife, a mother, a queen of men who were not her own. yet blackfell has his own path now. his own woman, his own future. and still—

still.

i do not think he is a bad man, resignation, then. but i do not think he knows the woman he has.

he meets her gaze, steadfast.

does he?