Unholy Hunger
Seren watched his face watched the calculation there, the weighing of consequences, and underneath it, very carefully buried, something that looked almost like feeling.
"It will cost you everything you are," the Warlord said.
"Then it costs everything I am." Kael glanced back at her one quick look, loaded with everything he wouldn't say in front of his father. Then back. "Stand aside."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I do it with you watching," Kael said, "and you get to explain to your other eight children why the seventh chose a mortal woman over an eternity of nothing. Which would you prefer?"
Another silence. Longer this time.