Chapter 148: [X] - 148: ULTIMATE TECHNIQUE : CUTE BABY FACE!!!
Alex looked at both of his parents standing near the side alcove.
The last of the banquet guests were still filtering out of earshot, their final polite goodbyes fading into the wider corridors.
The remaining attendants were occupied with clearing tables and extinguishing the secondary crystal lamps.
The space around the alcove had become private enough for a real conversation, the kind that did not need to be performed for an audience of allied houses.
He did not waste the opening on formal padding.
The evening had already been full of it.
"Mom I want a birthday gift!"
The request was clearly stated.
Alex did not elaborate courtesy or use any careful framing.
He just gave the statement, delivered it at the exact moment when the hall was empty enough that only his parents and Zara would hear the details.
Alessio and Vespera exchanged a short glance.
Vespera’s expression was already half amused, the look of someone who had seen this particular tone from her son before and knew it usually preceded something more interesting than a simple request.
Alessio’s was already wary, the expression of a man who had spent the entire banquet watching the political currents and was not prepared to open a new front on his son’s birthday.
"What do you need?" Vespera asked.
Alex answered without hesitation.
"I want to visit the Royal Treasury."
The words landed with more weight than a normal child’s request should carry.
Even at ten years old he understood the value of timing, and he had waited until the hall was nearly empty before speaking them.
The treasury was not a place people casually asked to enter.
The fact that he had asked at all was already a statement.
Alessio did not agree easily.
His posture straightened.
The easy atmosphere of the birthday banquet tightened around the edges of his voice.
"The treasury is not a playroom, Alex."
"The formations are layered for a reason."
"They are not something a child walks through for entertainment."
"The inventory lists are restricted for a reason."
"Opening those vaults because it is your birthday sets a precedent I do not want circulating among people."
Alex listened without interrupting.
He let the full list of objections land, one after another, without offering a counter argument or a plea.
He had learned years ago that arguing with his dad only hardened the refusal.
Silence and timing worked better.
He simply waited until his father had finished speaking and the weight of the formal objections had settled.
’ULTIMATE TECHNIQUE : CUTE BABY FACE!!!’
Then he turned to his mother and deliberately put on the most carefully constructed cute baby face he could manage.
Soft eyes.
Slight head tilt.
The exact expression that had worked on her more than once in the past, the one that made continued refusal feel unnecessarily harsh even when the refusal was reasonable and well founded.
Vespera’s resistance softened almost immediately.
The shift was small but visible.
She looked at Alessio with the calm tone that usually ended arguments between them when she had already decided the outcome.
"Let him visit and him take something if he wants it."
"It is his birthday, and the vaults will still be standing tomorrow."
"The formations can be adjusted for a short window."
"The clerks can record whatever leaves, give them your name, or give them my name."
"There is no need to turn a simple request into a political crisis on the same night we just hosted half the capital."
Alessio still hesitated.
"Vespera you... you really need to know when to refuse him..." But he did not really push the topic any further, arguing with her wouldn’t result to anything right now, and he knew it.
The calculation was visible in the way his jaw set and his eyes moved briefly toward the far end of the hall where the last guests were disappearing.
He weighed the risk of the vaults being opened for a child, the possibility that Alex would choose something politically inconvenient or historically restricted, and the simple fact that once the precedent existed it would be harder to refuse the next request, or the one after that.
The other houses paid attention to these things.
If he was not careful, word traveled faster than official reports, and a story about the Third Prince walking into the Royal Treasury on his tenth birthday would not remain private for long.
Zara stood half a step behind Alex the entire time, silent and watchful.
Through the open bond and her own eyes she followed every shift in the conversation.
She found the whole performance quietly funny.
’Hehe! He is actually been planning something this big?!’
The way Alex had timed the request for the exact moment the hall was emptying, when the political audience was gone and only the family remained.
The way he had saved the practiced innocent expression until his father’s list of objections was already fully underway, so that the contrast between the formal refusal and the soft look landed harder.
The way Vespera folded first, as she so often did when the boy used that particular combination of timing and expression.
The slow, visible erosion of Alessio’s authority under the combined pressure of wife and son.
None of it was accidental.
All of it was working with the quiet precision of someone who had already decided the outcome before he asked the question.
She had watched him do versions of this before, but rarely with stakes this high or a target this restricted.
’But he should have informed me! Where is the trust!’
Alessio exhaled through his nose, the sound of a man accepting a loss he could not elegantly avoid without creating a larger argument in front of what little audience remained.
"Fine..."
"You may go in."
"You may take one single thing."
"Only One."
"Whatever you can carry out under your own power and nothing more."
"The formations will be adjusted for a short window, and the inventory clerks will record exactly what leaves."
"I will inform them I am taking something I need so your name doesn’t come up."
"You are neither powerful enough nor old enough to enter the treasury, and I do not want another rumor spreading at this time."
"The border conditions have deteriorated enough, and I don’t want more on my table right now."
"That is the limit."
"Do not test it, Alex."
Exactly at the moment the reluctant permission left his mouth, Zara’s amusement peaked.
Her posture stayed correct.
Her eyes stayed forward.
But the bond carried her clear feeling at how thoroughly the ten year old Third Prince had just negotiated his way into the most restricted vault in the kingdom with nothing more than timing, a practiced look, and his mother’s soft spot.
Alex inclined his head, the picture of a polite son who had simply asked for a reasonable birthday gift and received a reasonable answer.
"Thank you dad."
The agreement was sealed.
’I pulled it off...I actually pulled it off!’
The path into the treasury was open!
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End of ULTIMATE TECHNIQUE : CUTE BABY FACE!!!
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