Gabriel sighed like a man burdened personally by the gods. "Next time, keep it out of the public eye. Preferably on the training modules."

For one suspended second, silence held.

Then Rafael turned his head very slowly toward him. "I’m sorry?"

Gabriel lifted his glass again with perfect elegance. "I said next time."

Natalie blinked once.

Cecil, who had been standing in that unnerving imperial stillness of his a little behind the older cluster, looked abruptly interested in the floor. Which meant, Rafael knew, that he was hiding amusement. Frederik did not even bother with that much courtesy and straight up grinned.

Arik, the traitor at the center of all this, actually looked as though he had been struck twice.

Rafael stared at Gabriel in disbelief. "That is your response?"

Gabriel gave him a cool glance. "Would you prefer I waste time scolding her for having accurate instincts?"

"I would prefer," Rafael said, bright with offense, "that no one normalize my daughter slapping princes."

Damian, beside Gabriel, finally spoke. "Only this prince."

That was worse.

Much worse.

Rafael looked from one imperial menace to the other and saw, to his continuing private irritation, that Natalie was visibly recovering by the second simply because someone with actual authority had declined to treat her like the problem.

Natalie’s mouth curved by the smallest degree. "I can work with that."

"You will not," Rafael said at once.

Gabriel ignored him. "You may, however, exercise judgment."

Natalie tilted her head. "He insulted my intelligence."

"Yes," Gabriel said. "And he was stupid enough to do it in a place with witnesses. That was poor strategy on his part."

Arik accepted that in silence.

Wise.

Gregoris’s gaze rested on him with the calm of a man who had already begun reorganizing the next month of his life into a punitive education. "It was poor strategy everywhere."

"Yes," Arik said.

Rafael folded his arms. "I would like it noted that I am the only one here still appropriately scandalized."

"No," Gabriel said. "You are the only one being decorative about it."

That almost made Damian smile.

Natalie, who was now visibly more composed, glanced once at Arik and then away again with enough cold precision to qualify as a formal warning. "There won’t be a next time if he remembers condition one."

Gabriel’s brow lifted slightly. "Condition one?"

Arik answered before she could. "Never lie to her like that again."

That produced a brief, terrible stillness in the adult cluster.

Gregoris looked at Arik. "Good. You can remember things under pressure."

Arik did not answer that. Also wise.

Gabriel, however, gave the smallest nod. "A sensible condition."

Rafael turned to Natalie, indignant and aghast. "There are conditions?"

"There are now."

"You negotiated?"

"No," she said. "I set terms."

Gabriel’s expression softened by half a degree. "Better."

Rafael put a hand briefly over his heart as though personally injured by the entire imperial line. "I need all of you to understand that I am trying very hard not to overreact."

Damian looked at him. "You are failing."

"Thank you, Damian. Your support is a pillar in my life."

"I know."

That, somehow, made Gabriel’s mouth move again.

Cecil, from behind them, said in a tone of quiet observation, "I think this is going better than it should."

Noah, who had drifted close enough to be annoying and far enough not to be formally included, immediately added, "That’s because no one has started yelling."

Frederik looked at him. "Yet."

Noah brightened. "Excellent."

Rafael closed his eyes for one beat. "This family is a punishment."

Gabriel took a measured sip of champagne. "Yes. But a refined one."

Then he looked again at Natalie, then at Arik, and let the ease drain back out of his voice just enough for the real instruction to settle.

"Still," he said, "my advice stands. Next time, somewhere private. Or on the training modules. Fewer witnesses, better acoustics."

Natalie, to her credit, kept her face composed.

Arik looked as though he were reconsidering the value of surviving the evening.

Gregoris said, with total calm, "The training modules remain available."

Rafael turned to him, scandalized and delighted all at once. "You are impossible."

"No," Gregoris said. "I’m being helpful."

Damian’s gaze moved once over the gathered children, the polished ballroom beyond them, and the fragile state of order currently pretending to hold. "Enough. Natalie stays visible. Arik goes elsewhere. The rest of you stop listening like spies."

Noah looked offended. "I wasn’t spying."

Cecil said, "You were."

"Observing."

"Badly," Frederik added.

That ended it.

The cluster loosened. Natalie stayed beside Rafael for one extra heartbeat, which he chose not to acknowledge because he was a generous father and not because the gesture relieved something raw in his chest. Arik inclined his head once toward Gabriel, once toward Damian, and then, with the grim acceptance of a man now trapped between his own conditions and Gregoris’s dawn, he stepped back into the ballroom current.

—

The last guests were gone by the time Rafael and Gregoris finally made it back to their private suite.

The western residence had shifted from gala mode to a quieter night rhythm. Ether lines glowed low in the walls, no longer brightened for spectacle but feeding the residence’s night lighting, climate wards, private security arrays, and the steady background hum of a palace built to look beautiful while functioning like a living machine. Somewhere deeper in the floor grid, mana currents adjusted as service staff cleared the final reception halls and lowered the event wards from high-traffic settings back to household normal.

Rafael stood near the open sitting-room doors for a moment and let the silence settle.

Behind him, the suite was warm and softly lit, the amber ether lamps turned low. Someone had already sent up tea, fruit, and a late tray, demonstrating the kind of foresight that kept palace life manageable. Rafael was still half dressed for the gala, jacket gone, collar loosened, and cuffs opened, and he looked exactly like a man who had survived elegance by sheer violence of will.

The door closed behind him.

Gregoris.

Rafael did not turn right away. He only felt the shift in the room, the subtle change that always came when Gregoris entered a private space and stopped being a commander for everyone else. A second later, warm hands settled at his waist from behind, and Rafael let his head tip back a fraction.

"There you are," he murmured.

"There I am."

Gregoris drew him back against his chest, just enough to take the weight of the evening off him by degrees. That, Rafael thought with long-standing irritation, remained one of the more unfair things about marriage. Gregoris could fix part of his mood simply by standing in the correct place.

"You’re still planning to make Arik suffer," Rafael said.

"Yes."

There was no hesitation in it. None at all.

Rafael smiled, tired and delighted in equal measure, and finally turned in his arms. "Good."