Page 118 of The War of Four Winters

"It will take a few minutes," he said, his voice unchanged. "Enough time to complete what must be done."

"And what is that?"

"One final favor. A request from father to son." His eyes held mine without wavering. "Take my head while I still live. Grant me a warrior's death."

The request stunned me into momentary silence. "What?"

"I do not fear dying, Ruith. I have lived long enough, seen enough to accept its inevitability." His voice remained steady, though I noticed a slight tremor beginning in his hands. "What I fear is my soul becoming trapped, unable to join the ancestors among the stars."

"You would have me execute you?" I asked, disbelief coloring my words.

"I would have you grant me the dignity afforded to any defeated warrior." A faint sheen of sweat appeared on his brow as the poison began its work. "My death is certain either way. How I meet it is the only choice remaining."

Something shifted between us in that moment, the hatred I had carried for so long suddenly complicated by this unexpected vulnerability. Here was my father, the man I had fought against for years, asking for the same mercy I would grant any fallen opponent on a battlefield.

"Don't misunderstand," he said, a brief spasm of pain flickering across his features. "This isn't sentiment. The ancient rites must be observed properly. A warrior's death, sword in hand, ensures proper transition. Without it, my spirit might linger, trapped between realms."

"And you trust me to do this?"

He stood, wincing. "Who else remains?" He gestured to the empty chamber around us. "My guards are gone. My allies scattered or dead. There is only you, my son. My blood."

The word struck me with unexpected force. Blood. After everything, after all the betrayal and cruelty, that connection remained, undeniable as the sword in my hand.

Tarathiel moved to the center of the chamber. There, to my surprise, he lowered himself to his knees. The Primarch of the Elven Realms, kneeling before the son who had rebelled against him.

"Make it clean,” he said, presenting his neck.

I moved forward, raising my blade. The weapon felt suddenly heavier, the weight of centuries of ritual and duty concentrated on its edge.

"Wait," he said, looking up at me. "The words. You must speak the words."

I had not performed this ceremony since the northern campaigns, had not thought to ever perform it for him. Yet the ancient ritual came back without hesitation, the words rising from some deep well of memory.

"I send your wisdom to the stars," I intoned, positioning myself behind his kneeling form, blade raised. "Your strength to the earth. May the ancestors welcome you, brave warrior."

Tarathiel straightened his spine, lifting his chin to expose his neck. "Thank you," he said simply, no tremor in his voice despite the poison beginning to work through his system. "Remember what I taught you. Not the cruelty. The strength."

The blade fell in a single clean arc.

There was a sound—wet and final—as my father's head separated from his body. Blood erupted from the severed neck in a crimson fountain, spraying across the polished floor in an expanding pool. The body remained kneeling for one moment before toppling forward, muscles still contracting in their final commands.

I stood motionless, sword still extended, blood dripping from its edge. My father's head had rolled several feet away, coming to rest facing the eastern window where the first light of dawn now streamed in. His eyes were open, his expression almost peaceful, silver hair matted with blood.

In death, stripped of the mask of control he had worn for decades, he looked suddenly smaller. Just an elf, after all. Not the monster of my nightmares, nor the god of my childhood. Just flesh and bone and blood.

The same blood that flowed in my veins.

I cleaned my blade methodically on a piece of tapestry torn from the wall, the practical action anchoring me against the strangeness of what had just transpired. Dawn light had begun to filter through the high windows, casting long shadows across the chamber where a king had fallen and another had risen.

The civil war was over. My father was dead by his own choice, though my hand had completed the act. The throne he had fought so hard to secure now passed to me, not through battles or political maneuvering, but through this private ritual in a locked chamber as the city lay divided around us.

I would carry my father's head to the Assembly Hall and declare the war's end. His loyalists would have little choice but to surrender once they saw their leader was truly gone. We could then turn our united forces against Michail, against the true threat facing all our people.

As I gathered the grisly trophy, wrapping it in a piece of silk from a nearby table, I couldn't help but wonder what Elindir would say when I returned. If he would understand why I had granted this mercy to the man who had caused us both such suffering. If he would recognize, as I now did, the terrible symmetry of fathers and sons, of rulers and rebellions, of deaths that birthed new beginnings.

Ipacedthelengthof our chambers in the Craiggybottom compound, my still-weak legs protesting beneath me. The healers had advised rest, but rest was impossible while Ruith fought his way through the Shikami tunnels to confront his father. Each passing hour stretched my nerves tighter until I felt I might snap from the tension.

My body still ached from the bridge collapse, from the freezing river that had claimed so many lives. Every breath carried the memory of water filling my lungs, of darkness closing in. Captain Yisra had breathed life back into me, but part of me remained submerged in that river, frozen in the moment when I believed everything was lost.

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