CHAPTER 67: CHAPTER 67: SORRY

Elias’s fingers curled tight around the mug, knuckles whitening as he stared down into the dark tea rather than at the man across from him. The silence pressed in, thick and stifling, and though he didn’t speak, the air around him flared with the tension in his frame.

He set the mug down with particular care this time, not looking up, not trusting himself to. A long breath slipped through his nose, steady but thin, and he rose from his chair without a word.

Victor’s eyes tracked him immediately, the faint shimmer along his ether‑lined veins pulsing once, as though responding to something unspoken.

"Elias... I don’t like repeating myself."

Elias paused mid‑stride, his back to Victor, shoulders squared but rigid, his hands loose at his sides as if he were forcing them not to curl into fists. The tension running through him was palpable, sharp enough to taste in the still air of the dining room.

"I have work to do," Elias said finally, the words quiet but clipped, each syllable precise.

Victor didn’t answer right away. The silence stretched, heavy, his crimson gaze fixed on Elias’s back, the faint glow of his ether shimmering again along the thin channels visible near his wrists. When he spoke, his voice was low, steady, threaded with something dangerous beneath the calm.

"You’re still angry," Victor said at last. It wasn’t a question, just a statement, sharp enough to cut through the air.

Elias didn’t answer. There was nothing to say; this man, no, this god, had no idea what he’d done wrong or that he had done anything wrong at all.

His hand closed around the door handle, intent on leaving, when the faint shimmer of crimson flared at the edge of his vision. The lock clicked shut with a muted snap, Victor’s ether latching onto the mechanism like invisible claws.

Elias froze, then turned slowly, fury sparking in his chest, in his eyes. "What are you doing?" His voice was low, steady, but trembling with restrained anger.

Victor’s gaze was calm, almost too calm, but the cold edge in his voice could have frozen steel. "Sit down," he said softly. "Talk to me... before I make you."

The words settled into the room like frost, the faint hum of Victor’s power crawling along the walls, unseen but unmistakable. Elias’s heart thudded once, hard, his breath quickening as the weight of the command pressed against his skin.

"You think that’s how this works?" Elias asked, stepping back from the door, his shoulders squaring, chin lifting in quiet defiance. "You think locking me in here and ordering me around will magically make me spill my thoughts to you?"

Victor leaned back slightly in his chair, crimson eyes gleaming like banked coals, and folded his hands atop the table.

"I think," he said slowly, each word deliberate, "that running won’t solve what’s boiling under your skin. And I am not in the mood for a tantrum."

Elias’s breath hitched, anger sparking hotter than he intended, the words cutting free before he could temper them.

"Well, your godhood," he said, spitting the word like a curse, "maybe you should have thought about that before taking every decision and twisting it until it shoved me here."

Victor’s expression didn’t shift, but the shimmer of crimson ether along his knuckles pulsed faintly, like distant lightning threading through storm clouds. His voice, when it came, was steady, almost quiet, but carried with it an unshakable certainty.

"I’m not your family, Elias," he said. "I want to be. But I didn’t manipulate you." His gaze sharpened, unwavering. "You chose to ask for my help."

Elias laughed once under his breath, bitter and disbelieving.

"Chose?" Elias’s fingers dug into his arms, nails pressing through the thin fabric of his sleeves until it hurt, until it grounded him. His voice sharpened, low and raw.

"You call it a choice when every other road was already gone? When the people I trusted burned them down behind me?"

Victor tilted his head slightly, the motion unhurried, his posture still as a shadow in the dim light. The faint pulse of crimson ether traced higher along the thin channels of his hands, catching the glow of the lamps like molten threads just beneath the skin.

"I didn’t burn those roads," he said softly, but there was no softness in the way his eyes held him. "I’m blunt, Elias, cruel sometimes, but not manipulative. Whatever storms you’ve carried here, I didn’t plant them."

His tone shifted, quieter now, edged with something that felt unsettlingly sincere.

"I found out about you only after you walked into my office less than a month ago." His gaze stayed locked on Elias, unflinching, the weight of it pressing like gravity.

"So no," Victor continued, each word precise, considered, "whatever paranoia is circling in your mind... it wasn’t me."

Elias’s lips parted, but no sound came.

The words he wanted: accusations, defenses, anything to keep the wall between them intact, dissolved before they could leave his tongue.

Victor’s eyes didn’t waver, and that was the problem. There was no lie there, no deflection. Just that calm, cutting honesty that Elias had both hated and, somewhere deep down, relied on.

The night before rose unbidden, sharp and bruising: Matteo’s voice twisting in his ear, the shadows outside the terrace doors, that awful realization that the boy who had once brushed his hand in quiet hallways might have been something far worse all along.

Elias dragged a hand through his hair, his shoulders slumping a fraction as the fight bled out of him. His jaw clenched once, then loosened, and when he finally spoke, his voice was quieter, frayed around the edges.

"...I don’t know what to say," Elias admitted, the words tasting bitter and reluctant but true. He looked down at the table, at the faint rings left by his tea mug. "You’ve been honest with me. Always blunt. And I..." He stopped, exhaled, and tried again. "Last night, it’s been... a lot. Matteo..." His throat tightened, the name was a knife he didn’t want to pick up again. "I thought I knew him. But if that’s what he really is, if that was just the surface, then I don’t even know what to think anymore."

Victor said nothing, but the air between them shifted, his crimson gaze softening by a degree only Elias would have noticed.

Elias’s fingers curled against the edge of the table, knuckles pale, before he forced himself to meet Victor’s eyes again. "I shouldn’t have taken it out on you," he said finally, the words quiet, raw, and an admission that scraped on the way out. "I’m sorry."