The moment the words left your mouth, you knew. You saw it in the way his expression shifted.

Diomedes had always been tempered steel. Hot, yes, burning when stoked, but tempered. Controlled. The same way he was on the battlefield—anger wielded like a spear, sharp, precise, never wasted on a poor strike. He did not waste his rage.

But you—you had always known where to press. And tonight, you pressed hard.

“I am not a tyrant.” His voice cracked like a whip, low and edged, like the moment before a storm breaks. He had not meant to shout. He never shouted. But it had torn from his throat before he could stop it, scraped raw by something he had not yet named. His breath came fast, sharp. His hands were fists at his sides. “Is that what you think of me? That I am some butcher, some glory-drunk fool who throws lives to the god of war like offerings in his temples?”

Because that was what you had said—wasn’t it? Or perhaps you had not meant it that way, not meant to cut so deep. But the wound had been struck, and the blood was spilling.

“Is that what you think of me? That I throw lives away for the sake of my own glory? That I stand atop a pyre of my own making and call it a throne?” Diomedes' breath was ragged, his chest heaving, but his eyes burned into you. “Do you think I do not know the cost of what I ask? Do you think I do not count them? Every man I lose, I carry. Every face—gods—I could name them all to you now, if you wished to hear them!"

And maybe that was what had broken him. Not the accusation itself, but the implication. That you, of all people, did not see it. That you could believe, even for a breath, that he was some cold, callous thing. That he did not grieve.

Diomedes exhaled sharply, turned back to you, and this time when he spoke, the words were quieter. No less sharp, but quieter. More dangerous for it.

“Say it, then.” His eyes burned. “Say that I am nothing but war. Say that I am only the blade, and not the hand that wields it.”

A pause, long and heavy. "Go on. Say it!"