Sairant lunged. He didn’t have a warrior’s steel—only his heavy kitchen knives. He threw his weight between them, the blunt force of his intervention knocking Luavier back and forcing Morgant’s fan wide.
Sairant grabbed Luavier by the collar, dragging his limp body toward the weapon rack as Morgant reset his stance. They collapsed against the wood, slowly, Luavier pushed himself up, his good arm trembling, as Sairant rose beside him.
"Wha—what is the aning of this..."
Sairant wheezed. His voice trembled, thick with shock and the agony.
"...Councilor Morgant?"
Morgant didn’t answer with words. He snapped his blade fan open, the tal ribs clicking into a lethal crescent that he used to mask the lower half of his face. Above the steel, his eyes flashed with the unmistakable hunger of a killer.
The black blades of the fan began to sizzle, smoking as they drank. The steel wasn’t just wet; it was absorbing the blood, pulling the red stains into the tal until it pulsed with a dark, suffocating heat.
Sairant stared at the pulsing weapon, his breath hitching in his chest. The realization hit him.
"You truly are from the House of Blackheart. I thought the stories were just legends to frighten children, but here you are. A blood drunk murderer. A butcher hiding behind a title."
He braced himself against the weapon rack, his knuckles white. The respect he had once held for the man—the reverence for a leader of the realm—disintegrated into ash.
"You were a Councilor! You were supposed to be the shield of this city, not the blade that guts it! Why? What could possibly be worth this? Look at them! These were your n, your brothers in arms! Give an answer, you coward! Why are you slaughtering your own?"
Luavier leaned heavily against the weapon rack, his breath coming in ragged, wet gasps. He spat blood onto the floor, his eyes locked on the smoking fan.
"It’s the old ghost, isn’t it? Still carrying the rot from when King Drakovitch passed you over. You weren’t chosen for the Dragonguard, and ever since, you’ve been drowning in that humiliation."
Luavier forced himself to stand taller, though his arm hung useless at his side.
"We all heard the whispers... How you grew crueler with every year. How your hatred for the King festered into a sickness. How you clawed your way up to beco the youngest ever Councilor, just to make the King regret choosing your... sister over you."
The silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by the hiss of blood evaporating off the black fan. Morgant just plainly looking straight at them, then, a low, jagged sound vibrated from behind the steel ribs—a laugh that carried no warmth.
"My sister... yes, you are correct. I have grown hateful of the King... watching him hand his blood to her, when I am the one who taught him how to kill!"
His eyes darkened, burning with old pain.
"This night... it has brought back the most traumatic day of my life... seeing him choose her over . But you—yes, all of you—have given my hatred a body to slash, a vessel to pour my RAGE into!"
Luavier and Sairant trembled. Morgant’s voice carried a poison deep into their bones. Morgant continued,
"But you two are clearly foolish thinking that is why I bleed you..."
He lowered the fan just an inch, revealing a mouth twisted into a thin, cruel line. The smoke from the weapon curled around his face.
"You speak of ’House Mottoes’ and ’shields of the city’ as if they are anything more than nursery rhys for the weak,"
he said, stepping over the crumpled form of a fallen soldier without looking down.
"Drakovitch didn’t pass over because I was unworthy. He passed over because he feared what I would beco if he gave real power. He wanted a guard he could control. He wanted a dog that would wag its tail."
His eyes drifted to the weapon rack, tracking the tremor in Sairant’s hands.
"I didn’t beco Councilor to make him regret his choice. I beca Councilor to see the rot from the inside. To watch how easily a kingdom crumbles when its ’shields’ are nothing but sentintal fools like you—Sairant."
Morgant paused, the black fan snapping shut with a sound like a bone breaking. He leaned in, his gaze piercing.
"Because that shield you think you’ve saved... that man you’re standing beside... is the traitor."
Sairant froze, his hands still gripping the kitchen knives as his heart hamred against his ribs. Beside him, Luavier’s face went cold, his breath hitching as he stumbled back a half step, his eyes darting between the Councilor and the floor.
"I sensed it the mont the celebration began. Sothing in the wind was wrong. The traitors wouldn’t miss an occasion like this; they would see the wine and the laughter as the perfect ti to strike."
He took a slow, deliberate step toward them.
"You think I do this because I hate the King? I may despise the man, but my love for this kingdom is greater than any grudge. I beca Councilor to get close—to join the King in rooting out the filth hiding in his own shadow. I am not the butcher here, Sairant. I am the surgeon cutting out the cancer!"
Morgant’s gaze shifted, looking through them as if peering into the past.
"It began with the Council... The seven of us, gathered before Drakovitch. I played my part well—the dissenting voice, the one who sneered at his obsession with using low born won to expand his lineage. I let him believe I was his greatest critic, the one most likely to snap."
The air seed to shimr with the mory of that hall. The King had stood tall, his voice promised fire for any who crossed him.
"And if anyone—ANYONE interferes with the expansion of my lineage again, I will not be in such a ’giving’ mood."
Morgant leaned forward, his eyes sharp as needles.
"I watched them all in that mont. Every flinch, every blink, every tightening of a jaw. Most were terrified. But I caught a flicker... a shadow of sothing else, on the face of the House Leader of the Verdant Wings. Your grandfather, Luavier. Your patriarch wasn’t afraid. He was guilty."
He turned his attention back to Luavier.
"The Verdantwings didn’t co here to witness the birth of the next generation of Dragonborn. They ca to end it... teaming up—AGAIN—with other Primordial blooded."
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