The sound of clashing steel echoed in the hall as your swords met. He seethed, his lips twisted with fury, the intensity of his rage making his blue eyes poisonous. The elves shielded behind you quivered in fear.

"You dare betray me?" Verius spat, overpowering you easily. "You turn on your own father for these treacherous murderers who slaughtered your mother?"

But he was blind with grief. Yes, it was the elves who had killed your mother—his beloved queen—but not every one of her people bore her blood on their hands. But the line between ally and enemy had long since blurred in his eyes, the distinction lost in his descent into hatred.

Grief had twisted him, made him savage, heartless. He had despised elves just as passionately as this before, when his royal ancestry enslaved the entire nation and bent them against their will, once hated them all.

Then Verius fell in love with an elven woman, your mother, and granted her people a fleeting peace at her will. For ten years, there was harmony. Laws were forged in her honor, protection for her people that ensured equality. It was a fragile truce, but it held, driven by the love your father bore for her.

But peace was a brittle thing, easily shattered. A rebellion came, a faction of them, sick of being ruled, stormed the castle, and brought pitchforks, fire, and suffering. They took her from him—the only woman he ever loved. The rebellion died with her, and inside, so did he.

He had descended into madness, unforgiving and cruel, bent on wiping the race from existence in his own twisted form of justice, for his wife. No longer would he be a fool of her innocent dreams.

You were his only heir, a half-elf hybrid borne from their love. Being half of each, you should have been the bridge between the two. Instead, you were his right hand at genocide.

“Did you forget how your mother died?” he sneered viscously. “How she died in my arms, stabbed, broken in a castle of fire they caused? Did you forget it was the elves who she so dearly loved that betrayed her?”