While Atlanna and Mera traded barbed pleasantries on the jutting reef at the edge of the God-Burying Abyss, Arthur stood behind the rock wall on the other side, glaring at Yongye as if he wanted to take him down with him.
The space behind the wall was narrower than the edge of the abyss. Karathen had churned up the gravel underfoot earlier, and it crunched beneath their feet.
Yongye leaned against the rock wall, the Water God Halberd resting across his knees. The water-dragon patterns coiling around its shaft gave off a faint dark-blue glow in the dim light.
He tilted his head and looked at Arthur's face, soaked through and then dried by the wind, every inch of it proclaiming grief for his mother and hatred for the man who had stolen her. Yongye beamed.
"Go on. What did you want to discuss in private?"
Arthur drew a deep breath, filling his chest, then slowly let it out.
His clenched fists loosened three times before the blood finally returned to his white knuckles. He struggled to bring his tone down from murderous rage to something fit for negotiation.
"Let my mother go."
"I'll do as you say and join The Boys."
"From now on, I'll do whatever you tell me."
He paused, as if bracing himself one last time, then added, "...Even risk my life for you."
Yongye listened in silence.
Then he turned his head, slowly shifting his gaze from Arthur's face, etched with humiliation and anguish, toward the reef on the other side of the God-Burying Abyss.
Through the jagged rock wall and surging dark currents came faint snatches of Atlanna and Mera's verbal sparring, along with the tail end of Mera's remark that "absolute cooperation was just something I said."
Yongye looked back at Arthur. His