"Turn your enemies against you. This, is my greatest advice."
Furia did not speak at first.
Her head hung low, hair wild across her face like ink spilled in anguish. The blood on her lip had dried into a scab she refused to lick away, pride still clinging to her like tattered armor. But it was her eyes that betrayed her—those orange stars that once gleamed with certainty now trembled, uncertain, storm-tossed.
Serina waited.
She always waited.
She knew the precise moment when a soul cracked—not when it screamed, but when it went quiet. When grief began to whisper louder than rage. She stood barely a breath away, hands clasped before her like a priestess at the altar of a dying god.
"You still love him," Serina said softly, "don't you?"
Furia twitched—barely—but it was there.
Serina tilted her head, voice laced with velvet cruelty. "Even after he hollowed out your bloodline like rotted fruit. Even after he shaped your life to orbit his legacy. You were born a royal, but you were made a shadow."
Furia raised her head slowly. Her voice came out rasped and dry.
"I owe him my life."
"No." Serina knelt down before her, eye level again. "You owe him your chains."
For a long moment, they stared.
And then—finally—Furia laughed.
Not the bold laugh of a victor or the cruel one of a Sith Lord. It was sharp, bitter, broken. The sound of a woman standing at the edge of a cliff, realizing she had wings she never knew were there—and that they were built from bone and spite.
"Is this what you want, then?" Furia whispered. "You want me to hate him. To kill him. To turn on my own brother like some petty little apprentice trying to buy favor in your court of silk and venom?"
Serina stood.
"I want you to know the truth," she replied, circling again. "And once you do, I want you to make a choice—not for me, not for Jutrand, not for any Empire or war machine... but for you."
She stopped behind the throne once more, hands resting gently on Furia's shoulders.
"No one ever gave you that."
Furia closed her eyes.
Behind her lids, the palace halls of Velmor faded. The faces of cousins. The laugh of a mother. The echo of a scream, her own voice, ringing in the dark.
And her brother's hand on her shoulder as they fled the fire.
How many of those fires had he lit?
The silence stretched until Serina thought she had lost her.
Then Furia whispered:
"…if I fall… I'll fall into something."
Serina's lips curled into a soft, victorious smile. She leaned down and whispered into Furia's ear, each word like a kiss laced with poison.
"No, darling. You won't fall."
"You'll rise."
