"Apologize," Sienna-Rose said flatly. "If you had done so from the beginning, this war would never have happened."
Dorian remained seated upon his throne, his posture rigid, his chin lifted in defiance. He didn't answer, not because he lacked words, but because the very concept of apology had never existed in his world.
From the moment he was born, he had been raised as the emperor of Thaluria, the strongest empire on the continent, a ruler before he was a man. People bowed to him. Kingdoms bent. Apologies were things demanded from others, never offered by him, and now, faced with that single word, his pride locked his jaw shut.
"I said apologize," Sienna-Rose repeated, her voice rising, the calm she had maintained until now beginning to fracture.
Thessaly flinched almost imperceptibly at the shift in tone, because she knew Sienna-Rose too well. On Earth, or in this world, anger rarely reached her so quickly; she was patient, calculating, and always in control.
