Arik’s smile did not fade.

If anything, it settled deeper, quieter, as if Liam’s accusation had pleased him in a way that should have required legal oversight.

"The diplomatic palace," Arik corrected.

Liam stared at him. "Do not hide behind architecture."

"I do not. I don’t want to be associated with that cursed design. I feel like someone put everything expensive and ugly and someone regurgitated it on the floor."

For one full second, Liam forgot he was angry.

He turned his head and stared at Arik with the blank expression reserved for machinery exploding after being sworn to be completely stable.

"You," Liam said slowly, "are insulting your own diplomatic palace?"

"I am insulting Wrohan’s architectural crimes," Arik said. "The building is theirs. We are merely enduring it."

"You just called the place you are taking me cursed."

"Yes."

"And expected that to reassure me?"

"No. I expected accuracy to reassure you."

"That has never reassured anyone normal."

Arik’s mouth curved. "Fortunately, you are not normal."

Liam’s eyes narrowed. "Careful."

"I am."

"You are absolutely not."

"I am being very careful," Arik said, glancing out the darkened window as the motorcade slowed. "If I were not careful, I would tell you what I truly think of the eastern façade."

Despite himself, Liam looked.

The diplomatic quarter had opened around them with broad, manicured severity. Wrohan had clearly designed the avenue to impress foreign visitors, and every line of stone was an unintentional self-reflection. The road was too wide. The trees were too perfectly cut. The façades of the delegation houses stood behind high fences and decorative gates, each one competing in a silent war of wealth, taste, insecurity, and whatever disease made nobles believe columns solved political anxiety.

Then the Agaronian diplomatic palace came into view.

Liam understood at once why Arik had said cursed.

The building was enormous, naturally. Wrohan didn’t know how to house significance without making it look like it was embalmed in marble. Pale stone rose in layered terraces, each level heavier than the last, with too many carved balconies, too many gilded arches, and too many ornamental reliefs of owls, vines, shields, stars, and what Liam sincerely hoped was not meant to be a dragon because if so, someone had seen a lizard once and lied with confidence forever after.

A broad staircase led to the main entrance, flanked by columns twisted into elaborate patterns that appeared less carved and more bullied. Gold inlay ran along the edges of the windows in aggressive lines, catching the light with the desperation of a man screaming about his wealth in front of a room full of creditors.

And then there were the additions.

Agaron had clearly tried.

That, somehow, made it funnier.

Deep crimson banners dropped from the upper façade in clean vertical strips, each bearing Agaron’s gold crest. Matte metal shielding had been applied to several of the more offensive decorative panels, masking the worst of the gilding. Sleek security pylons stood at regular intervals along the drive, with sharp lines and a disciplined blue-white ether glow. The guards were elegant and severe in black uniforms, and their presence made the building look less like a diplomatic residence and more like an occupying force had politely placed a napkin over a corpse.

Liam stared.

Arik watched him.

"Well?" the prince asked.

Liam did not answer immediately. 𝕗𝗿𝕖𝐞𝐰𝗲𝕓𝐧𝕠𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝐨𝚖

The motorcade rolled through the gates, passing beneath an arch carved with so much decorative nonsense that Liam’s eyes began rejecting individual details for their own safety.

Finally, he said, "It looks like Wrohan designed a wedding cake for a tyrant with a bird fixation."

Arik laughed.

The sound was immediate, low, and far too pleased.

Liam looked at him, suspicious.

Arik’s eyes were bright. "That is generous."

"It is not."

"It is. You called it a cake. That implies structural coherence."

Liam glanced back at the façade. "Barely."

"The western wing has nine false balconies."

"False balconies?"

"They do not open."

"Why?"

"Symmetry."

Liam closed his eyes. "I hate this country."

A breeze of late-summer air entered the car as one of the guards opened the door.

"Let’s know each other," Arik said.

Liam opened his eyes.

Every sense he possessed immediately warned him that something dangerous was about to happen.

A danger with tea, doors that closed properly, and a prince who thought knowing people was an acceptable thing to say after kidnapping them using diplomatic architecture.

Liam looked at him. "That sentence has the moral nature of a trap."

Arik stepped out of the car first. "Most worthwhile things do."

"That is exactly what people say before committing crimes with excellent posture."

Arik turned and offered him a hand.

Liam looked at it.

The hand remained there for only a second before Arik lowered it without comment.

That, somehow, annoyed Liam more than if he had insisted.

He got out on his own.

The air outside the vehicle was cooler than expected, touched by late summer and the faint metallic hum of Agaronian security wards. The diplomatic palace rose before him in all its cursed glory, an enormous Wrohanian monument to money without restraint, dignity without taste, and architectural decisions that should have been investigated by a committee with moral authority.

The building was still ugly.

There was no saving that.

The pale stone was too pale. The gilded window frames too aggressive. The roofline still bore those ridiculously carved owls, all of whom stared outward with the dead-eyed confidence of symbols that had never been challenged by anyone brave enough to survive afterward.

But Agaron had tried.

No. That was too weak.

Agaron had intervened.

The entrance doors had been replaced with dark reinforced panels, sleek and severe, their surface broken only by thin lines of gold ether circuitry. The ornamental columns remained, unfortunately, but someone had cut black metal braces through their bases, turning decoration into structure by force. The lanterns had been replaced with narrow blue-white ether fixtures. The old courtyard pattern had been overlaid with a clean grid that directed movement instead of merely flattering the dead.

It was still Wrohan’s disaster.

But someone with taste, anger, and authority had brought furniture to the corpse.

Liam stepped through the entrance and found that the interior was worse and better in the same breath.

The foyer itself had clearly once been unbearable. He could see the original bones of it: the ceiling was too high for warmth, the walls were covered in pale panels shaped like fake arches, and the old floor pattern was still showing at the edges like a bad memory. Wrohan had wanted foreign envoys to enter and feel small, impressed, and grateful for permission to breathe.

Agaron had stripped most of that nonsense out.

Black stone runners covered the central floor. The reception tables were new, walnut wood, and clean-edged, with no clawed feet, no gold trim shaped like vines, and no little carved birds hiding in the corners like symptoms. The chairs along the wall were modern, low-backed, and upholstered in deep charcoal fabric. A long console held a single wide bowl of polished black stones instead of flowers.

"Well, I’m impressed by the speed of rearranging this, but what money can’t do?" Liam asked while thinking of at least three projects that could use that type of funding.