The walk back from the kitchen was completely different.
Kaelen wasn't dragging her. He was walking beside her, a strange, thoughtful silence hanging between them. The atmosphere wasn't just not tense; it was... satisfied.
Elara, warm, full of noodles, and wrapped in his massive cloak, felt, for the first time since arriving, genuinely good. She was no longer just a hostage. She was the hostage who had just introduced the concept of comfort food to a Bronze Age tyrant. She wasn't just his oracle; she was his personal chef.
This gave her a new, and slightly giddy, sense of power.
He led her back to her luxurious prison-room. The tension immediately returned as he gestured to the chair. He sat in his own, picking up the obsidian dagger from the Black Sun Empire. The "ramen glow" was gone. He was all business again.
"You performed well in the kitchen," he said, which Elara realized was the highest form of praise Kaelen was capable of giving. "Now, you will perform here."
He tapped the dagger on the table. "The Black Sun. Your... history... what is their secret? Why are they a threat?"
Elara sat down, her mind racing. She was full, sharp, and feeling... bold.
She knew the truth. The truth was boring. The truth was: they had better cavalry, superior logistics, and a ruthless strategy. If she told him that, he would just ask her for a counter-strategy. She would become his General, his weapon, and she'd have more blood on her hands.
She did not want to be his weapon. She just wanted to survive, and maybe get some more of that surprisingly decent bread.
So, she decided to lie. Not a small lie. A big, ridiculous, monumental lie.
She pressed her fingers to her temples, squeezed her eyes shut, and pretended to be in great psychic pain.
"Ah... yes..." she moaned, channeling every bad psychic she'd ever seen in movies. "The Black Sun... they are... coming into focus..."
Kaelen leaned forward, his golden eyes fixed on her. He bought it. He bought it completely.
"I see..." Elara continued, her voice now a raspy whisper. "Their name... it is the key. The Black Sun..."
"A dark star? A prophecy?" Kaelen asked, his voice intense.
"No, no," Elara said, shaking her head. "It's... it's their hair!"
Kaelen froze.
"...Hair."
"Yes!" Elara said, opening her eyes, her face a mask of fake, divine seriousness. "Why else would they call themselves that? It's not the sun! It's their hair! It is black. Magically black. Black as the void. It gives them unnatural strength! And... and... speed!"
Kaelen's face was a stone-cold picture of deep, analytical thought. He wasn't laughing. He was considering it. He lived in a world of oracles and flood myths; magic hair was not a stretch.
"So," he said, his mind clearly going to a dark, tactical place. "If we scalp them..."
"NO!" Elara yelped, a little too loud. She had to correct this. "No, no, if you cut it, it just... angers the hair! It comes back twice as strong. You can't fight it with swords or fire, Your Majesty. That's what they want you to do."
"Then what?" he demanded. "What is the weakness? Every magic has a weakness."
Elara thought fast. What was the most absurd, non-lethal, and harmless thing she could think of?
"I see..." she whispered, closing her eyes again. "I see their great weakness... It is... a fruit."
"A poisoned fruit?"
"No," Elara said, barely holding back a smile. "A sour fruit. Their magic hair... it is... it's very oily. The source of their power is the oil."
"So we burn it?"
"You're obsessed with burning," she sighed. "No. You have to neutralize the oil. You must fight their dark magic with... acid."
She looked him dead in the eye.
"Lemons," she declared. "The weakness of the Black Sun Empire... is lemons."
The most powerful man in the world stared at her. He processed the information. He was trying to find the flaw, the trick. But he couldn't. She was his oracle. She had predicted the flood. She had made the miracle-soup. Why would she lie about fruit?
"Lemons," he repeated. His voice was flat.
"Yes!" she said, warming to her theme. "The smell... the zest... it disrupts their dark-hair-magic! It makes them weak! They hate it. They... they are probably allergic! If your soldiers... say... launched lemons at them... it would throw their entire army into chaos!"
Kaelen stood up.
He was silent. Elara's heart was hammering. Had she gone too far? Was he going to call her a fool?
He walked to the door, his back to her. He paused, his hand on the handle.
"Hair," he mused, "and lemons. A strange, twisted strategy. My generals would never have seen it."
He turned, and his golden eyes were shining with a new, terrifying admiration. He truly believed she was a genius.
"You have done well, Oracle," he said.
He left, pulling the door shut. Elara was left alone in the sudden silence.
She counted to five.
Then, she heard his voice, muffled, in the corridor outside his other door, booming at his guards.
"Find me the Minister of Agriculture!" Kaelen commanded. "I want every lemon tree in the southern provinces counted and seized by dawn! We are going to war."
Elara fell back onto the silk cushions, covering her mouth, shaking with silent, uncontrollable laughter.
She had just saved the world with a lie about citrus.