The ogre princess’s dark wild eyes lost a bit of their sharp edge for a mont.
Her shoulders eased a fraction, and her lips parted as though she were about to speak sothing, perhaps a word of comfort, perhaps a concession, but before the sound could form—
Benjamin turned Titania gently but firmly in his arms, cupping her small face with both hands so that she had no choice but to et his gaze.
Then he kissed her lips; he wasn’t rough, and the kiss wasn’t possessive.
But it occured with a simple, unwavering tenderness that silenced whatever words Dynamis had been about to offer.
"You idiot," he murmured against her mouth, pulling back just enough for his piercing blue eyes to lock onto her tear-filled violet ones. "I said I love you, didn’t I? I said I was going to marry you, and that we’d have lots of kids. I ant every single word of that."
Titania’s eyes dropped more tears; they slid down her cheeks in glistening trails.
Then she looked away, her cheeks burning scarlet, unable to hold his stare.
Benjamin continued, his voice low and steady, with each word deliberate.
"I love you... But I also love the Amazons. I love Elara, and Sara, and all the others. And I haven’t seen them for a while now. That doesn’t change the fact that I love you too. So please... stop forgetting that."
"I’m... sorry..." Titania muttered softly, her voice small and trembling.
She pressed her forehead into his chest, hiding her face against the soft grey knit of his shirt as though she could disappear into him. "I won’t do that again..."
[...What is this? He has completely tad that brat?!] [Dyna]
"Ahem..." Benjamin cleared his throat, "as for your request, Dynamis..."
[Now he chooses to address without honorifics?!] [Dyna]
Benjamin’s face turned serious, the childish lightness vanishing as though a veil had been lifted.
His jaw set, his shoulders squared, and the playful glint in his eyes hardened into sothing far more resolute.
"I have a ho to go to," he said quietly. "I don’t want to keep going on adventures without seeing my brown-skinned beauties. At least let see them once before we go to your kingdom."
"Despite what you naively state," Dynamis replied, her voice calm and even, though a faint undercurrent of steel ran beneath it, "if any Amazon sees you, they will never let you leave their sight again. And Titania will be in real trouble with three powerful won."
"Why can’t you understand ?!" Benjamin’s voice rose a bit, though not in anger, but in deep, aching frustration. "I said I miss my family! Can you not be so blatantly greedy?"
"Hmph." Dynamis exhaled through her nose, the sound heavy with centuries of hard-won pragmatism. "Boy, you are a god-touched from another world. You know nothing of how things are done in Elyndor. This place is darker than you think. Greed is necessary for a nation to survive and thrive."
"At the expense of one’s life?" Benjamin asked, voice dropping again, sharp and pointed.
"Yes, at the expense of another’s life." Dynamis t his gaze without trembling. "Understand sothing, god-touched—"
"My na is Benjamin." He interrupted her, with his tone flat and final.
Dynamis paused, only for a heartbeat, then corrected herself with deliberate calm.
"...Understand , Benjamin. One nation cannot have a god-touched while the others fold their hands and stay quiet. We did that once, and now Shishi-no-su has Kurosawa Ren in their hands."
She leaned forward from her couch, her powerful forearms resting on her thighs, the golden adornnts glinting as she gestured subtly toward him.
"You do not understand that god-touched individuals are continent-level weapons if trained correctly... Kurosawa Ren once claid three thousand lives within fifteen seconds in a war around twenty years ago, effectively bringing that entire conflict to a close in a single breath.
"You are already at his level, and you are not even one month in Elyndor. Do you realize how anomalous you are? Elara cannot simply have you for herself. It’s threatening to Goliathens particularly because we both exist on the sa continent. We shall get struck first the day she decides to fight us."
"She won’t do sothing like that!" Benjamin interjected, voice rising again with conviction.
"You do not know that... Benjamin." Dynamis clasped her large hands together, the knuckles whitening slightly. "My tribe cannot bet on that. We do not trust ourselves, we nations. And besides, Verdant Spire is too isolated; we do not know what truly transpires inside those forests. If Elara had not fallen into temptation to gloat about her new toy, we might never have realized a new god-touched was upon us."
"Personally," she continued, voice lowering to sothing almost confessional, "I believe we should pass you around the entire seven great kingdoms of the world, and have you choose whom you will serve. Better still, if you decide to serve none at all."
Benjamin looked directly into Dynamis’s eyes.
And what he saw there was not cruelty or blind ambition...
But what he saw was a woman trying, in her own rigid way, to be reasonable. Even if it irked him to his core.
Then he decided to speak to her from a political level instead.
Not from the level of a man torn from his ho and treated as a trending item, but from the level of soone who understood stakes.
"Dynamis," he began with a steady and asured voice, "I have understood your plight."
And Dynamis was taken aback by how levelheaded he suddenly sounded.
One mont he had been a frustrated, emotional young man; sothing she expected from him.
But the next, his eyes carried the weight of soone who had already shouldered far more than his apparent years suggested.
Like he had turned from naïve boy into an emperor in the span of a single breath.
He continued, calm and professional:
"God-touched are sowhat like nuclear weapons here, no?"
[Nuclear what?] [Dyna]
Dynamis’s dark eyes narrowed slightly at the unfamiliar term, a faint crease forming between her brows as she processed the word.
Nuclear? It sounded foreign, sharp, and sohow chanical...
Nothing like the ancient, primal forces she was accustod to in Goliathens.
Yet the way Benjamin had said it, I’m that calm and certain deanor, made it feel like sothing far more dangerous than any simple spell or dragon fire she knew.
Benjamin continued without pausing, his voice still steady and asured, carrying the calm authority he had slipped into monts earlier.
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