(LIAM'S POV)
Silence took over the room.
It was a heavy, suffocating silence that pressed against my ears and made the enormous golden hall feel suddenly small. Vaelion stared at me for a long, long moment. I could not read him. I could not tell whether I had broken through or sealed my own fate. My heart hammered so hard I was certain he could hear it, and inside, I was shaking — shaking so badly I thought my knees might give out. 'Please. Please let it have worked.'
Then Vaelion smiled.
It was a small, strange smile, almost gentle, and it made my blood run cold.
"Yes," he said, as easily as if he were commenting on the weather. "I really have been a terrible father."
Just like that. As if it were nothing. A shrug. A small smile. Eighteen years of abandonment, of cold silence from a golden palace while his children were beaten and broken on the ground, and the Sun God — the 'Sun God'— shrugged it off like a man admitting he'd forgotten an appointment.
