The Reborn Sovereign of Ruin, Bound by His Star

Arik stared at his father for several seconds.

"Cecil likes being Crown Prince."

"He does," Damian said.

"He likes having authority."

"Very much."

"He has spent most of his adult life complaining that everyone treats him like my younger brother instead of trusting him with anything important."

Gabriel finally surrendered and laughed, setting what remained of his pastry onto the small porcelain plate before him.

"All of that is true, and he is still going to give you an earful."

Arik leaned back in his chair, the dark fabric of his imperial coat pulling slightly across shoulders that had become considerably broader since he crossed the Gate.

"For becoming emperor?"

"For disappearing."

"That was not intentional."

"That distinction will not save you."

Max rested his chin lightly against one hand, green eyes bright with amusement. "I recommend not opening with that defense."

Noah nodded. "Or telling him fate did it."

"I was not planning to blame fate."

Gabriel’s smile widened. "Good, because Cecil already has a very specific list of things he intends to blame on you personally."

Arik could imagine it.

His younger brother had embraced the Crown Prince position with considerably more enthusiasm than anyone pretending to sympathize with him wanted to admit. Cecil liked responsibility, liked being included in decisions that once reached Arik first, and had apparently discovered a particular satisfaction in having senior ministers stop referring every question upward to his older brother.

None of that changed what had happened before.

Cecil had married Frederik while Arik was missing.

What should have been one of the happiest days of his life had carried the possibility of becoming a memorial before the celebrations were even finished.

Arik had seen the recordings after Nuria reopened.

Cecil had looked immaculate in ceremonial black and silver beside Frederik, smiling beneath lights that transformed the palace halls into something almost unreal, while the royal family had performed happiness for cameras because no one could tell the country that every message arriving at Damian’s side might contain confirmation that its Crown Prince was dead.

Arik’s expression lost its amusement.

Gabriel noticed.

"He was happy," his mother said, quieter now. "Do not make the mistake of thinking he wasn’t. He loves Frederik, and he wanted that wedding."

"I know."

"But he was angry too."

Arik rubbed his thumb along the edge of his signet ring.

"He had every right to be."

Damian lowered the tablet onto the table.

"Cecil spent most of the reception watching my security staff."

Arik glanced at him.

"Every time someone approached me, he thought we had received news from the Gate."

That landed exactly where Damian intended it to.

Arik looked toward the terrace, where the late afternoon had begun turning warmer and deeper beyond the arches. Deira stretched below in layers of ancient stone and newer glass, its elevated transit lines gleaming between towers while the mountains beyond caught the last hard light of the day.

"I should have been there."

Gabriel reached over and touched his forearm.

"You could not have been."

"I know."

"That does not mean Cecil is required to be reasonable about it."

Arik looked back at him.

Gabriel smiled.

"He is your brother. Reasonable was never promised."

Noah laughed first.

Max followed, and even Damian’s mouth curved.

Arik shook his head.

"So I allow him to yell at me."

"You listen very attentively," Gabriel corrected. "Preferably without pointing out logical inconsistencies."

"That seems excessive."

"You vanished before his wedding, accidentally abdicated your position onto him, reappeared married, nearly a head taller, and emperor of an ancient empire."

Max lifted his coffee. "I would personally let him have at least twenty minutes uninterrupted."

"Thirty," Noah said.

Damian considered it. "An hour."

Arik stared at his father.

Damian’s bright smile returned.

"I have heard the full version."

That made Gabriel laugh hard enough that he had to lean back in his chair.

For several minutes, the table became what it should have been from the beginning: family rather than sovereigns, treaty partners, former heirs, and unfortunate products of reincarnation politics.

Then the laughter faded.

Arik’s attention returned to the tablet.

There had been something else he wanted from Damian, something far more important than discovering exactly how much suffering Cecil intended to inflict when he arrived in Nuria.

Arik reached across the table and drew the device toward himself.

His thumb moved across the screen until a security file opened.

Felix’s face appeared.

The atmosphere changed so quickly that Noah straightened before Arik said anything.

Max set down his coffee.

Gabriel’s expression hardened.

Damian looked at the photograph without moving.

Arik placed the tablet flat between them.

"Where the fuck is Felix?"

No one laughed.

Damian folded his hands loosely before him.

"If I knew, you would already have him."

Arik’s gold eyes lifted.

"That is not reassuring."

"It was not intended to be."

Felix had vanished before the trial could finish swallowing what remained of his power, escaping while Nuria was still sealed and every intelligence service outside the Gate understood only fragments of what had happened inside.

Two months had passed since Nuria returned.

Felix was still missing.

Arik had spent those two months rebuilding borders, dealing with governments resurrecting treaties from dusty archives, reorganizing an imperial administration that had awakened into a century it barely recognized, and resisting the increasingly tempting urge to assign half his intelligence apparatus to one man.

He had resisted because he assumed Damian already had.

"What have you found?" Arik asked.

"Evidence that his disappearance was prepared," Damian replied. "Accounts moved gradually rather than emptied at once, identities created years before anyone would have considered them useful, and transport routes that end before they reach anything we can trace."

Noah frowned. "He planned for losing."

"He planned for the possibility of needing to disappear," Max corrected, and the easy warmth had vanished from his green eyes. "That is different."

Arik looked at him.

Max continued, "Felix did not panic and run. He used an exit already built."

"Who built it?"

"We do not know yet."

Arik hated the word.

Yet.

It implied progress without producing anything he could put his hands around.

Gabriel leaned forward, forearms resting against the edge of the table. "Agaron is not the only country searching."

"I know."

"Then you also know Felix cannot remain invisible forever."

Arik looked at the photograph again.

Felix had known too much about Nuria.

About Enki.

About the Gate.

About systems that should have been buried behind seventy-seven years of deliberate isolation.

And now the world was remembering Nuria again, reopening old connections nobody had realized they possessed.

"That is exactly what concerns me," Arik said.

Damian’s gaze sharpened.

Arik turned the tablet toward him.

"The world just remembered an empire existed. Governments are digging through archives they ignored for decades, old families are discovering agreements with Nuria, and networks that should have died seventy-seven years ago are suddenly becoming relevant again."

Max understood first.

His expression went completely still.

"You think Felix was waiting for the Gate to open."

"I think Felix knew there were doors we had not found yet."

Silence settled over the table.

Damian looked down at Felix’s photograph.

Then he smiled.

It was the same bright smile that had warned Arik Cecil was coming to make his life difficult, except there was nothing familial behind it now.

"Good," Damian said.

Arik raised an eyebrow.

His father slid the tablet back toward himself.

"Now we know what to look for."