Chapter 329: Signal
Arik removed the crown the moment the last ceremonial doors closed behind them.
Rubis had objected before they left the Golden Court. Cassian had reminded him that the formal portraits were not finished. Arik had listened to neither.
Now the crown rested on a low black table in the private reception room, still carrying enough sovereign ether to cast gold over the polished stone around it.
Liam dropped into one end of the long sofa beside him. Several hours of ceremony had loosened his brown hair around his shoulders, and the gold in his eyes remained after the Gate opening. His charcoal ceremonial coat was still fastened perfectly because Rubis had apparently designed it to survive war.
Mezos shut the doors behind them and exhaled.
His own formal clothing had suffered more. The collar of his dark ceremonial jacket was open, one cuff had been undone, and he looked ready to remove the entire thing if another official approached him.
Instead, he crossed to an old storage case waiting beside the wall.
"I had these brought up."
The seal released.
Three phones and two communication units lay inside.
Arik recognized his immediately.
The black casing was scratched at one corner from an inspection in southern Agaron before they crossed the Gate. It looked absurdly ordinary beside the crown.
He turned it on.
Mezos did the same.
Liam barely had time to wake his screen before all three devices found the new external network.
The room filled with vibration.
Arik’s notifications climbed too quickly to count.
Government messages arrived first. Military reports. Meeting requests. Approvals that had expired months ago. Secure notices from ministries that had apparently continued sending work to a missing crown prince on the assumption that bureaucracy should remain optimistic.
Arik scrolled through the first weeks.
Then the second month.
Then the third.
"They kept assigning me work for almost three months."
Mezos looked over from an armchair. "That sounds like Agaron."
Liam leaned against Arik’s shoulder to read. "When did they stop?"
Arik continued downward.
The answer appeared gradually.
His responsibilities began moving to Cecil.
First temporary approvals.
Then military briefings.
Then representation on councils Arik had previously attended himself.
None of that surprised him.
Arik had known from the moment the Gate sealed that if he remained missing long enough, Cecil would become Crown Prince. Damian could wait for proof. He could search. He could refuse to declare his eldest son dead for as long as possible.
He could not leave Agaron without an heir indefinitely.
More than six months after Arik disappeared, the formal notice appeared.
Cecil Lyon had been named Crown Prince of Agaron.
Arik read the declaration once and kept scrolling.
Liam studied him. "You expected it."
"Yes."
There was no relief to discover and no title to mourn. Arik had already accepted Nuria before the outside world had officially released him from Agaron.
His next notification mattered more.
It came from the imperial household rather than the government.
Cecil and Frederik had married.
Arik opened the attached photographs.
Cecil stood beside Frederik in formal imperial clothing, the insignia of the Agaron crown prince fixed at his chest. He looked more mature than when Arik had last seen him. More settled.
Happy.
Arik’s thumb remained over the image.
Liam looked over his arm.
"They actually did it."
"Apparently without waiting for me."
"Rude."
Arik smiled faintly.
Then he noticed the dates beneath the photographs.
Messages from Cecil surrounded them.
They had started much earlier.
At first they were practical.
Father is still trying the Gate.
No change.
They transferred your southern review to me. I hate you.
Later:
I know you’re not receiving these.
And weeks after that:
I’m still sending them anyway.
Arik stopped scrolling.
Government work continuing without him meant nothing. Agaron had functioned exactly as it should.
His brother continuing to write into a dead communication channel was different.
Farther down were messages from Gabriel. From Damian. Shorter in his father’s case, often separated by days, but still there long after any reasonable person would have stopped expecting a response.
His family had known the messages were going nowhere.
They had sent them anyway.
Across the room, Mezos had become very quiet.
He sat forward with both forearms against his knees, phone close to his face.
Arik recognized the name at the top of the screen.
Mezos’s father commanded one of Damian’s military regions in southern Agaron and had spent most of his son’s childhood treating parenthood as an extension of officer training.
Strict did not adequately describe him.
Arik had once watched the man correct Mezos’s posture at a military dinner when Mezos was already an adult officer.
The general would probably suffer a stroke if he ever heard the way Mezos now spoke casually to Arik.
Mezos scrolled farther.
"He called me."
Liam glanced over. "Your father?"
"Thirty-one times."
That was enough to make Arik look up fully.
Theron did not call his son.
He summoned him.
He sent orders.
On exceptionally emotional occasions, he might send a message containing two complete sentences instead of one.
Thirty-one calls was practically a breakdown.
Mezos opened the earliest messages.
They were exactly what Arik expected from the general.
Report your status immediately.
Military command cannot confirm whether you crossed the Gate.
Contact me upon receipt.
Then the language changed.
Mezos, answer your phone.
Later still:
I have spoken with His Majesty. Search operations are continuing.
And eventually, stripped of rank, command, and military phrasing:
Son, if you receive this, call me.
Mezos stopped.
His thumb rested against the edge of the screen.
Arik deliberately looked back at his own phone.
He understood the impulse.
Work had moved on.
Positions had moved on.
His office belonged to Cecil now. Mezos’s military appointment had been marked inactive pending confirmation of his status, with duties redistributed across the southern command.
That was administration.
The messages were something else.
Months after Arik’s staff stopped sending reports, Cecil had still written to him.
Months after Mezos’s command stopped expecting him to return, General Theron had still tried to call.
The world had continued without them, but their families had refused to treat silence as an ending.
Mezos opened his father’s contact.
His finger hovered over the call icon.
"He is going to kill me."
Arik glanced across the room. "After confirming you are alive."
"Then he will kill me."
"Probably."
That pulled a brief laugh from Mezos.
His hand still shook slightly when he lowered the phone.
Beside Arik, Liam’s device continued vibrating.
Arik looked toward it.
Hundreds of messages covered the screen.
Liam had not opened a single one yet.
He simply stared at the names accumulating there.
Arik reached over and covered Liam’s hand with his.
The work could wait.
It always had.