He couldn't finish. His throat closed up, the words choking him.
Elena watched him struggle, and something flickered across her face. Not sympathy. Something else. Something that might have been satisfaction at seeing him hurt the way she was hurting.
"Who else knows about this?" she asked, her voice flat again, controlled.
"Just the core advisors. I haven't told your mother yet. I wanted to talk to you first."
"Mom would never agree to this."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement of absolute certainty.
"No one is agreeing to anything," he said firmly, trying to inject some authority back into his voice, trying to sound like he had control of the situation instead of drowning in it.
"Elena, look at me. Please."
She stopped her pacing, wrapping her arms tighter around herself. The defensive gesture made her look younger, vulnerable, and it broke his heart all over again.
But when she looked at him, her eyes were hard.
"I am going to find another way," he said, putting every ounce of conviction he could muster into the words.
"There's always another option, another angle to explore. I'll go back to them tomorrow with new proposals. I'll make them see reason. I'll...."
"You'll what?"
She cut him off, her voice dripping with scorn.
"Offer them what, exactly? Money they don't need? Land they already have? You said it yourself, they made it clear this is their only offer. Their final offer."
"Then I'll make them reconsider. I'll...."
"You'll what, Dad?"
She was advancing on him now, her fear transforming into anger, into something sharp and vicious.
"Win a war we've been losing for three years? Suddenly discover a diplomatic breakthrough that's eluded everyone? Pull a miracle out of your ass?"
"Elena...."
"I'm not stupid."
The words came out hard, clipped.
"I read the casualty reports. I know the numbers. I know how bad it is, how desperate things have become."
She stopped directly in front of him, close enough that he could see the tears she was fighting to hold back, the way her jaw trembled before she clenched it tight.
"But I don't care."
The words hung in the air between them, cold and final.
"I don't care how many people are dying. I don't care how desperate the situation is. I will not marry that beast. I will not be sacrificed to those wild creatures of darkness."
She said it with absolute conviction, with a coldness that shocked him.
"Elena, you don't mean that...."
"Don't I?"
She stepped back, her arms still wrapped around herself, but her posture was rigid now, defensive in a different way. Not vulnerable. Armored.
"Why should I care about people I've never met? People who've lived their lives while I've been locked away in this house, hidden from the world like some shameful secret?"
Her voice grew sharper, more bitter.
"You kept me away from everything. Kept me sheltered, protected, and isolated. No public appearances, no friends outside carefully vetted circles, no normal life whatsoever. And now you want me to throw myself into the worst situation imaginable for their sake? For people who don't even know I exist?"
"We kept you protected because we love you...."
"You kept me hidden because I was politically inconvenient!" she shouted, her control finally breaking.
"Because having a daughter in the public eye was a liability, a weakness that could be exploited. Don't pretend it was for my benefit."
"That's not true...."
"Then why are we having this conversation?"
The question came out quite again, but no less sharp.
"If politics doesn't enter into it, if I'm your daughter first and always, then why are you even considering this? Why didn't you tell them to go to hell and walk out?"
Marcus felt the floor dropping out from under him. Because she was right. Because he was considering it. Because even as he promised to find another way, part of his mind was already calculating, already weighing her life against the thousands dying in the war.
That was what leadership had done to him. It had turned him into someone who could think about sacrificing his own daughter and call it duty.
"This isn't your burden to carry," he said weakly.
"Isn't it?"
She met his eyes, and he saw a terrible understanding there, a clarity that cut through all his justifications and excuses.
"That's what it means to be the President's daughter, isn't it? Everything is political. Even me. Especially me."
"No."
He reached for her again, desperate to make her understand.
"You are my daughter first, last, and always. Politics doesn't enter into it. You are not a bargaining chip. You are not a tool of statecraft. You are my child, and I will not let them have you."
"Then why are we having this conversation?"
The question hung in the air between them, unanswerable.