The question hit Fia two days later, not in a council chamber, not in the heat of a briefing—just…quietly.
They were in the upper garden paths, the ones that wound along the palace's older walls where ivy clung to pale stone and the air smelled like winter rosemary. Seraphine had insisted Lucien get fresh air "so we can watch him breathe and confirm he's not secretly a priest in a prince suit."
So Lucien walked, escorted by all five of them like he was an oddly handsome prisoner who'd somehow convinced his captors to let him admire the scenery.
He didn't complain.
He even looked genuinely pleased, hands behind his back, head tilted as he examined the palace architecture like a tourist with better posture.
"This wall is older than our eastern keep," he observed. "You can tell by the mortar. Your masons were artists."
"You are not here to audit our masonry," Seraphine said.
"I'm not," Lucien agreed cheerfully. "I'm appreciating it. Vacation."
Elira made a soft gagging noise.
Mira ignored both of them, walking close enough to Fia that their sleeves brushed occasionally—accidental touches that were never really accidental. Lyriel trailed slightly behind with her notebook tucked under one arm, gaze scanning the ward lines that ran invisibly through the garden like a second, hidden lattice. Seraphine kept the outer line of the group, a quiet, controlled presence.
Fia walked in the middle, as usual.
Dragon warmth under her ribs.
Illness quiet, for now.
And the nagging question she'd been turning over since the last report from the border.
They'd repelled another siege attempt. Another wave. Another set of "hostile force: 20,000" numbers stamped onto paper in clean ink, as if the world was made of tidy columns and not people who bled.
Valgard kept sending bodies.
Over and over.
And they never seemed to run out.
Fia slowed near a stone bench, fingers brushing the winter leaves of a low shrub just to give her hands something to do.
"Lucien," she said.
He turned immediately, attentive in a way that would've felt charming if her stomach weren't tight.
"Yes, Lady Calamity?"
Fia's mouth twitched at the nickname. She didn't correct him.
"Why?" she asked simply.
Lucien blinked.
"Why what?"
"Why does your kingdom send so many soldiers without running out?" Fia asked. "We've broken siege towers, burned supply lines, collapsed bridges, cut off roads. We've killed commanders. We've routed entire battalions."
Elira's jaw clenched at the word killed, as if she didn't like hearing it spoken plainly in a garden.
Fia kept going anyway.
"And still," she said, voice controlled, "Valgard keeps producing more. It's like fighting a tide that never recedes. How do you have that many men?"
The air changed.
Not magically.
Socially.
Lucien's easy tourist posture faltered by a fraction.
Seraphine's gaze sharpened.
Mira's hand hovered near Fia's sleeve, ready to steady her if the answer landed like a blow.
Lyriel's eyes narrowed behind her glasses, already predicting three grim possibilities.
Lucien looked away, out over the palace gardens where the lower terraces stepped down toward the city. For a moment, he didn't look like a prince at all—just a tired young man measuring the distance between what he knew and what he could say.
Then he exhaled.
"We don't," he said quietly.
Fia frowned.
Lucien turned back, expression stripped of humor.
"We don't have endless soldiers," he repeated. "We have endless bodies. Those aren't the same thing."
Elira's fingers flexed at her sides.
"What does that mean?" she asked, voice low.
Lucien's eyes flicked to her, then to Seraphine.
He seemed to make a choice.
"The armies you fight at the border," he said, "are mostly prisoners of war."
Fia's breath caught.
Mira went very still.
Lyriel's pen scratched once against the cover of her notebook in a sharp, involuntary movement.
Seraphine's voice came out like winter.
"Explain," she said.
Lucien nodded.
"In Valgard," he said, "a captured enemy soldier isn't simply held. He's cataloged. Assessed. Then offered a contract."
"A contract," Lyriel repeated, tone flat.
Lucien's mouth tightened.
"Earn your freedom," he said. "Earn food. Earn a bed. Earn the right to stop being a number in a cell."
Fia felt the dragon under her ribs coil tighter, heat building.
"And how do they earn it?" she asked, already knowing, hating herself for knowing.
Lucien met her eyes.
"By walking back to the battlefield wearing Valgard colors," he said.
Silence cracked across the garden like thin ice.
Mira's voice came, small and sharp.
"That's…not freedom," she said. "That's…slavery dressed up as mercy."
Lucien's eyes flickered—pain, anger, resignation, all layered.
"Correct," he said. "But it's an effective lie. Some of them believe it. Especially at first."
Elira took one step forward, and for a heartbeat Fia thought she might actually hit him.
"You're telling me," Elira said, voice shaking with controlled fury, "that we've been cutting down prisoners who were forced to fight."
Lucien didn't flinch.
"I'm telling you the truth," he said. "Because you asked."
Seraphine's posture was perfectly still, but her hand had gone white where it gripped the edge of her coat.
"Valgard uses enemy prisoners as front-line fodder," she said, each word precise. "And your father calls that strategy."
Lucien swallowed.
"He calls it efficiency," he said.
Lyriel's eyes sharpened into something dangerous.
"And your actual soldiers?" she asked. "Where are they?"
Lucien let out a humorless breath.
"In Valgard," he said, "the true army is kept close. The palace guard. The altar guard. The inner legions. The ones trained from childhood and loyal enough to die without question."
He gestured vaguely eastward, toward where Valgard lay beyond mountains and winter roads.
"The bodies you fight are not our sons," he said softly. "They are yours. Or they were yours, before we broke them into uniforms."
Fia's stomach turned.
Mira made a small sound—something between a gasp and nausea.
Fia's own hands clenched so tightly her nails bit her palms.
"And you," Fia said, voice rough, "you came here and ate cake in my palace."
Lucien's gaze didn't waver.
"Yes," he said. "Because if I'm going to ask you to believe I'm not here to claim you, I need to be willing to tell you the ugly parts too."
Elira's laugh was sharp and bitter.
"Congratulations," she said. "You're honest. That doesn't undo the bodies."
Lucien's jaw tightened.
"No," he said. "It doesn't."
Seraphine spoke again, quieter now, somehow worse.
"You said prisoners of war," she said. "Mostly. What does 'mostly' mean?"
Lucien hesitated.
Then he answered.
"Criminals," he said. "Debtors. Dissidents. Men who spoke too loudly at the wrong table. Men who refused to kneel. Men who showed mercy when my father wanted cruelty."
Lyriel's eyes narrowed.
"You punish kindness," she said softly.
Lucien's mouth twisted.
"My father does," he corrected. "In his mind, mercy is treason. If you hesitate to kill, you might hesitate to obey."
Fia's throat felt tight.
"So Valgard rarely sends actual soldiers," she said slowly, repeating the shape of it, "unless they're hated…or too kind."
Lucien nodded once.
"Or politically inconvenient," he added. "A noble's third son who embarrasses the house. A captain who questioned an order. A knight who refused to step on a prisoner's throat hard enough."
Elira's fists trembled.
Mira looked like she might be sick.
Seraphine's eyes burned.
Lyriel's voice went very calm, which usually meant she was furious.
"What do you call these units?" she asked.
Lucien's gaze slid away.
"The Redemption Banners," he said. "The Penitent Lines. The Reclaimed."
"Reclaimed," Mira whispered, disgust in every syllable. "As if they were property."
Lucien didn't deny it.
Fia stared at him, trying to reconcile the tourist prince with the machinery he described.
"You're telling me," she said, "that your kingdom is fighting wars with men who don't want to be there."
Lucien's expression tightened.
"No," he said. "I'm telling you my father is fighting wars with men he has convinced the world are disposable."
The dragon under Fia's ribs made a low sound, like a furnace drawing breath.
This is why they do not run out, Ardentis rumbled. They are burning stolen wood.
Fia swallowed hard.
"And what happens," she asked, "if a prisoner survives long enough to 'earn freedom'?"
Lucien's smile didn't reach his eyes.
"Sometimes they're released," he said. "Sometimes they're sent to another front. Sometimes they're…kept on as 'volunteers' because the only life they know now is war."
Elira spat to the side, a sharp, ugly sound against garden stone.
"That's not a system," she said. "That's a grinder."
"Yes," Lucien said quietly. "It is."
Seraphine took a step forward at last, moving into Lucien's space like a blade sliding out of a sheath.
"And you," she said, voice soft and lethal, "are telling me this because you feel guilty."
Lucien looked at her for a long moment.
Then, very carefully, he said, "I'm telling you because I want you to understand the kind of king my father is."
Seraphine's eyes narrowed.
"That's the same thing," she said.
Lucien's gaze flicked to Fia again.
"I'm the weakest prince," he said quietly, as if returning to an earlier thread. "Not because I can't fight. Not because I can't kill. But because I keep looking at systems like that and thinking…this will rot us from the inside."
Lyriel's voice was mild.
"And yet it continues," she said.
Lucien's jaw clenched.
"Because I'm not the one with the crown," he said. "And because the people who benefit from it are terrified of losing it."
Mira's fingers found Fia's hand this time, a firm grip.
Fia realized she'd started trembling.
Not from fear of Lucien.
From rage.
From grief.
From the sick, disorienting realization that the men they'd been burning on the border might have been trapped in Valgard's version of "freedom."
"What do you want from me?" Fia asked suddenly, voice sharp. "If you're not here to fight and not here to propose and not here to scheme, what is this?"
Lucien didn't answer right away.
He looked out over the city again, jaw tight, eyes distant.
Then he said, "Nothing."
Fia blinked.
Lucien looked back, expression almost pleading in its exhaustion.
"Nothing," he repeated. "I'm on vacation. I'm not recruiting you. I'm not bargaining. I'm not asking you to save my kingdom. I'm just…telling you what you're up against."
Elira scoffed.
"That's still a kind of asking," she said.
Lucien's mouth twisted.
"Maybe," he admitted. "But I'm not going to pretend you can fight Valgard like it's a normal war."
Lyriel's eyes sharpened.
"Because it isn't," she murmured.
Lucien nodded.
"You can break a trained army," he said. "You can scare them, rout them, starve them, turn their commanders into ash. But you can't 'deter' a king who's willing to feed prisoners into the grinder until the border drowns."
He paused.
"And you can't rely on counting corpses to predict when we'll stop," he added. "Because my father will always have more bodies as long as he has enemies to capture and citizens to punish."
Seraphine's voice was tight.
"So your strategy," she said, "is to drown us in stolen lives until we collapse."
Lucien's eyes darkened.
"My father's strategy," he corrected.
Fia swallowed, forcing her breathing to stay even.
"This is why the troops look different," she murmured, more to herself than anyone. "Less discipline. More desperation. Too many young faces. Too many…empty eyes."
Mira's grip tightened.
"I've seen them," she whispered. "The ones we take alive. The way they flinch when you offer water. Like kindness is a trap."
Elira's voice broke, just a little.
"We should've known," she said, furious at herself. "The way they charge into fire like they've already decided dying is simpler."
Lucien's expression flickered, something raw crossing his face.
"They're not cowards," he said quietly. "Most of them are just…done. And the ones who still want to live will do anything if you tell them the right lie."
Lyriel's eyes went cold.
"And you want us to feel pity," she said.
Lucien's gaze snapped to her.
"No," he said sharply. "I want you to feel clarity. Pity doesn't win wars. But misunderstanding loses them."
Seraphine held his stare.
For a moment, the queen looked like she might order him executed on the spot just for being the messenger.
Then she said, controlled, "You're still complicit."
Lucien didn't argue.
"Yes," he said. "By blood. By title. By the fact that I haven't died trying to tear it down yet."
That last word—yet—hung there like a blade.
Fia studied him.
"You're telling me this," she said slowly, "because you want me to be prepared."
"Yes," Lucien said.
"And because you want me to hate your father more than I hate you," Elira added bluntly.
Lucien's mouth twitched.
"I'd prefer you hate the correct person," he said.
Mira's eyes narrowed.
"And why should we trust anything you say?" she asked.
Lucien looked at her, then down at her hands—the healer's hands, steady even when everything else shook.
"Don't trust me," he said. "Verify it. Ask your prisoners. Ask your scouts what they've seen in Valgard camps. Ask the ones who escape."
His voice dropped.
"If you want proof, I can even tell you what the contracts look like," he said. "What phrases they use. What stamps. What lies."
Lyriel's pen moved in a fast, tight line.
Seraphine's gaze didn't soften, but it shifted—calculating now, not just furious.
Fia felt something inside her twist.
Not sympathy.
Not forgiveness.
Just…the sick certainty of a larger horror.
Valgard wasn't just attacking fortresses.
It was harvesting people.
Turning captured lives into ammo.
And the man standing in front of her—this inconvenient prince with hero-favored eyes—was admitting it with the weary calm of someone who'd grown up watching the machine eat.
Fia's dragon stirred again.
If the king feeds men into the fire, Ardentis rumbled, then burn the king, not the men.
Fia's fingers curled around Mira's.
She looked at Lucien.
"And you're still on vacation," she said, voice flat.
Lucien actually gave a small, pained laugh.
"Yes," he said. "Because if I stop being on vacation, I become a prince again. And the moment I become a prince, I'm a liability. I'm watched. I'm managed. I'm used."
He spread his hands slightly, helpless.
"Right now, I'm just…a man with a mouth," he said. "And I can use it to tell you something true."
Elira snorted.
"You have the most annoying way of being useful," she said.
Lucien's mouth quirked.
"I've been told," he said.
Seraphine's voice cut in, crisp.
"This changes nothing about our refusal," she said, as if re-staking a boundary. "Fia is not going to Valgard. Fia is not marrying anyone from your line. Your father will not have her."
Lucien nodded immediately.
"Good," he said. "I like it when you say it out loud. It makes it harder for the universe to pretend otherwise."
Lyriel glanced at him sharply at that—universe—but didn't comment.
Fia felt her pulse steady.
Still fast, but not spiraling.
"Thank you for telling us," she said finally, surprising herself.
Mira's head snapped toward her.
Elira made a small sound of disbelief.
Seraphine's eyes narrowed.
Lucien blinked too, like he hadn't expected it either.
Fia held up a hand before anyone could speak.
"Not because it absolves you," she said, voice firm. "Not because it makes you safe. But because knowing the shape of the enemy matters. And I'd rather hear it from you than discover it when another 'army' breaks and I realize too late that I'm burning prisoners."
Lucien's face went still.
Then he nodded once, solemn.
"Fair," he said.
The garden air felt colder.
Not because the sun had moved.
Because the world had.
Seraphine turned slightly toward Fia, her shoulder brushing hers—an anchor.
"We'll adjust our tactics," the queen said quietly. "We'll prioritize capture. Interrogation. Disruption of their contract lines."
Elira's eyes were bright with violent purpose.
"And we'll start targeting their handlers," she said. "The ones driving the prisoners forward. The ones who keep them from surrendering."
Mira's jaw tightened.
"And we'll prepare," she said, voice tight, "for what it means to treat enemy wounded who weren't enemies by choice."
Lyriel's gaze was distant now, already building models.
"If their front line is disposable," she murmured, "then the real spine of Valgard is elsewhere. Altars. Inner legions. Control systems. We need to find the hinge."
Fia's dragon purred low, hungry and grim.
Fia looked at Lucien one last time.
"You can keep your vacation," she said. "But understand this: if your father thinks he can buy my life with other people's freedom…he's going to learn what fire does to contracts."
Lucien's eyes held hers.
For a heartbeat, the hero-favor around him flickered—like even the weave leaned in to listen.
Then he nodded.
"I believe you," he said quietly.
And for once, he didn't add a joke.
He just stood there in the winter rosemary scent, a prince who had admitted his kingdom's ugliness, while five women—queen, healer, captain, witch, dragon—turned that truth into something sharper than fear.
Plans.
Clarity.
A new kind of rage.
The kind that didn't burn blindly.
The kind that aimed.