“I need you more than the support of that man.” For a moment the weariness and the worry shown through. Annoyance was more befitting a man such as Lord Judgment than fear, and so he twisted it into that. Righteous outrage, frustration… Anything but the fear that things might still fall apart. There was no guarantee he could hold the realm together on his own and he knew it. And if she had died… It wouldn’t come down to Mehkal’s fault. As if any of that would have mattered. He had sent her. He had selected each and every guard accompanying her himself. The responsibility for failure lay with him. He offered no comment on her disapproval of the new title. Perhaps he should have been worried about alienating the woman who would rule over him soon, but that logic was a distant protest in the back of his mind for now. Those words gave it all away though, muttered as they were, the waver in them almost indiscernible but present nonetheless. It was likely blaring for someone trained to read such things, as she was.
So it may have been harder to buy the hard gaze that she was fixed with a moment later. It might have been hard not to see through the façade, no matter how admirably he held it up, and witness the struggle there beneath the surface. Mikino’s troubles stemmed from caring too much for too many. He could not protect them all. “You sound like Moreau. Out with it then, tell me what I have purchased with royal blood.”
A cost, by the sound of it that he would not find acceptable no matter her answer. He was the one who had told her they were all expendable, even Queens. Truth was often enough a bitter thing. If anyone knew as much, surely it was Mikino Alcaeyn, who had been denied anything else his entire existence. He came to hate it now and again.