[ More power she starts to say, but it's not just that. Her hands fall back to the arm rests of her chair, scratching at the wood, antsy like a caged animal. ]

Control. [ He would never let a little thing like personal agency get in the way of his plans. ] I assume you've seen his shadow summoning by now. He tore my country in half with it. Hundreds of years ago because he's actually ancient. [ Why is that the bit that annoys her so much? ] Turned the people in its path into monsters that still kill the people desperate enough to try and cross it.

[ She turns her hand, fingers curling around a little sphere of light that's amassed there. As her fist closes it spills out like sand into the atmosphere of her domain, not content to be kept. ]

I thought— [ And she turns her head, letting out a breath because she seems so stupid in retrospect. He hadn't even promised her that, she just let herself believe a carefully worded half-truth. ] —that we were going to destroy it. And that with both of our power we could accomplish that.

[ It's a wonder her sign isn't the fool. ]