Chapter 84: The Weight of Inheritance
Dax pulled the phone away from his ear, staring at the blank screen for a beat too long.
The sharp click of the call ending still echoed in the silence of his private study, cushioned by velvet walls and framed in gold. He stood by the tall windows, overlooking the lush sprawl of the Sahan palace gardens—trimmed, perfect, as artificial as half the people who walked them.
He exhaled through his nose and lowered himself into the nearest armchair, one leg slung over the other with the elegance of a man who knew exactly how far his reach extended.
"So," he murmured aloud, to no one in particular. "Trevor Fitzgeralt finally married. And to him, of all people."
Dax pulled the folder closer, the weight of it more symbolic than physical. Pages worn at the edges, some still faintly scented with southern ink, the kind used in backroom clinics and forged registries. His thumb brushed over Lucas’s name—newly appended, now bearing the full force of House D’Argente behind it—and for a moment, his expression stilled into something unreadable.
He would’ve taken him.
From anyone else, he would have.
But not from Trevor.
Because Trevor Fitzgeralt was not a man who took things lightly. And Dax—more than anyone—knew what it meant to wear a crown that was never meant for you. Knew the ache of inheriting ruin. Knew the violence of making it yours anyway.
They were too alike, carved from mirrored shapes of power: one forged in the slow-burn discipline of northern loyalty, the other in the raw aftermath of betrayal and blood. Trevor had taken his title out of duty, not ambition. Just as Dax had slaughtered his way to the throne of Saha when his brothers bled the kingdom dry with greed and left him the carcass to bury.
He glanced again at the closed folder, at the shadow of a boy now woven into two of the most dangerous legacies in the Empire.
Lucas Oz Kilmer.