Chapter 55: Better Reasons

And then there were only two of them in the Sun Room.

Liam remained exactly where he was, his face still calm, but his eyes were filled with the need to murder someone. Preferably the human waste called George of Wrohan.

Arik, bastard that he was, looked entirely too at ease with that.

For a moment, neither spoke.

The room had changed with the others gone. The sunlight was still there, broad and expensive and curated into false peace, but without George’s voice in it, the air felt less filthy.

Liam looked at Arik for one long second.

Then another.

Then said, "Did you actually ask for this, or is George hallucinating again?"

Arik did not answer immediately.

Which was, in Liam’s opinion, already an answer.

The Crown Prince of Agaron stood near the tall windows with one hand loose at his side, sunlight catching on the sharp line of his white shirt and the faint glint of gold at his throat. He looked like a man who had just been handed a kingdom’s political scandal wrapped in silk and found the presentation acceptable.

"I did," Arik said, his voice low and oddly warm.

Liam stared at him.

The answer landed cleanly.

Not George’s invention, then. Not one of Felix’s little layered traps moving through a puppet with a crown. Not a miscommunication made worse by royal optimism and Wrohan’s apparently terminal commitment to stupidity.

Arik had asked for it.

Arik, Crown Prince of Agaron, had looked at the ruin of Liam’s life, at George of Wrohan’s desperation, and at Felix Canmore’s gathering disaster and decided the most reasonable conclusion was marriage.

Liam felt something in his expression threaten to crack.

He stopped it out of spite.

"I see," he said.

Arik’s mouth curved faintly. "Do you?"

"No," Liam said. "But I understand that you enjoy saying things in a way that makes people want to attack you with furniture."

"A useful diagnostic skill."

"For what?"

"Courage. Temper. Reflexes." Arik said, shrugging.

"My reflexes are excellent."

"I noticed."

Liam hated that he believed him.

He turned away first, mostly because remaining still under Arik’s golden gaze felt too much like allowing himself to be inspected by something ancient and interested. The sunroom was insultingly beautiful around them. Tall glass, pale marble, old paintings, flowering branches suspended in water, gold-veined tables, and the entire curated softness of a palace trying to pretend it had not been built on buried bodies and committee-approved lies.

Wrohan was good at that.

Liam knew. He had spent twenty-three years watching rot arrange itself tastefully.

"You asked George to make it sound as if we were being considered for marriage," Liam said slowly.

"That is because we are," Arik said.

He moved from the window with the calm, lethal ease of someone who did not cross rooms so much as claim them by degrees. He stopped in front of Liam, close enough that the sunlight behind him turned the edges of his dark hair and white shirt into something almost holy.

Liam raised his red eyes to him. "Oh, really?"

Arik looked entirely unmoved by the warning in his voice.

"There are several reasons this situation works."

"Of course there are," Liam said. "Men like you never commit public disasters without a numbered list." 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

The corner of Arik’s mouth shifted.

Liam hated that he noticed.

"And what are those reasons?" he asked.

Liam didn’t expect much from the question; he just wanted to show Arik how ridiculous this proposal was.

"Common revenge on Felix," Arik said. "You have your reasons. I have mine. That is why I’m here. I still need access to Lab V, and Rex can only cover for me and my people for so long without making George nervous enough to become useful to the wrong person."

Liam’s fingers curled once at his side. All the arguments were normal, good, and logical, but there was something more to it, and he couldn’t explain it.

’Liam, don’t get sentimental now.’ He told himself while he moved his crimson gaze to the window again.

He should have focused on the practical parts. Lab V. Rex. George. Felix. The grotesque little framework of power currently tightening around all of them.

Instead, his mind caught on the first sentence.

’Common revenge.’

As if Arik had simply placed a blade on the table and expected Liam to recognize the handle.

’There is definitely more to it than revenge.’

"That’s all?" Liam asked, frowning.

"No."

The answer came too quickly.

Liam’s gaze sharpened.

Arik held it.

"And I like you," he said.

For one dreadful second, Liam’s brain did absolutely nothing useful.

The Sun Room remained insultingly bright around them. The flowers remained arranged in expensive, lifeless perfection. Somewhere beyond the tall glass, a gardener was probably trimming a hedge into a shape that implied dynastic stability.

Inside, Liam stared at the Crown Prince of Agaron as if the man had just declared war on physics.

"You," Liam said carefully, "like me."

"Yes." Arik said, tilting his head and letting the warm light catch the strands of his hair.

"Based on what? My hostility? My refusal to be auctioned? My ongoing desire to hit several monarchs with a chair?"

"All of those are promising."

Liam blinked, taken aback by this shameless man. There was no way the man was real; he was reaching for something, and Liam could only hope it was Lab V engineering rather than anything personal.

’Liam, you are so stupid.’

Arik’s expression remained calm, which made the situation worse for Liam’s poor heart.

"You cannot be serious." Liam was ready to hit this irritating man; maybe if he did it, Arik would lose interest in him... but Liam was as interested as Arik; he just wasn’t ready to unpack it.

"I usually am."

"That is not an answer."

"It is one you keep receiving."

Liam exhaled once through his nose and looked away before his expression betrayed something unforgivably human.

’No. Absolutely not.’

He was not going to stand in George’s sunroom, after being publicly maneuvered like a decorative treaty clause, and feel anything because an Agaron prince with old violence in his eyes had decided to say something dangerously direct.

"You don’t know me," Liam said, recalling how Arik told him the same thing in lab V.

"I know enough." The prince didn’t acknowledge the jab.

"That is exactly the sort of sentence that gets people poisoned in old family dramas."

"I am difficult to poison."

"Congratulations. I am not." Before Arik could react or say anything, Liam talked. "And you already have your consorts home in Agaron."

"I don’t anymore," Arik said.

Liam looked at him.

For one second, he honestly thought he had misheard.

The Sun Room remained offensively bright around them. Gold trim. Glass. White flowers arranged with imperial levels of self-importance. Somewhere outside, Wrohan continued committing monarchy. Inside, Liam stared at the Crown Prince of Agaron and tried to decide whether this conversation had become more absurd or simply more honest.

"You," Liam said slowly, "don’t have consorts anymore?"