By evening, Liam woke drowsily, as if his body had sunk too deep into warmth and he did not entirely remember how to climb out.

The suite had dimmed around him, the pale afternoon brightness replaced by the soft glow of ether lamps and projection screens. Beyond the windows, Wrohan glittered under evening light, all glass towers, suspended tramlines, and gold-white ward veins, pretending the city was cleaner than it was.

Liam blinked at the ceiling.

Then at the blanket wrapped around him.

Then at Arik.

The Crown Prince of Agaron was still at the desk, because apparently sleep was something that happened to other people. His coat had been removed, his dark sleeves rolled again, and the faint gold glow of the projected reports carved his face into something focused and almost too beautiful to tolerate.

Liam stared at him for three seconds before remembering he was supposed to be irritated.

"I slept again," he muttered.

Arik looked up immediately. "You needed it."

"That was not an accusation I gave you permission to answer."

"You sounded betrayed by the concept."

"I was."

Arik’s mouth curved faintly, but the amusement faded as his gaze moved over Liam with quiet assessment.

Liam felt it too.

The heat had not come back violently, not yet, but it had reshaped itself under the suppressants.

The sharpness had dulled into something stranger. Softer. A slow compliance sitting under his skin, waiting for instruction with an ease that made his pride recoil and his body relax.

Arik’s expression shifted with immediate understanding.

"Shower," he said gently. "Then food."

Liam opened his mouth to argue, but the words caught in his throat.

The order settled warm through the haze, clean and simple and horribly comforting.

"...Fine," Liam said, hating how easy it was.

Arik stood and came closer, keeping his pheromones low and steady, warm stone and ether threading into the room until Liam’s nerves stopped trying to sharpen themselves against his bones.

"Can you walk?"

"Yes," Liam said, offended.

Arik lifted an eyebrow.

Liam slowly amended, "Probably."

"That was more believable."

"I dislike you."

"No, you don’t." 𝙛𝒓𝓮𝒆𝔀𝒆𝙗𝓷𝒐𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝓶

"That is becoming harder to prove."

The shower helped.

Food helped more.

Arik made him eat something warm and light while Liam pretended this was not exactly what his body wanted. The compliance lingered beneath every motion, not mindless, not gone, but easier to steer than resist. Arik saw it every time Liam’s focus drifted, every time his fingers went slack on the spoon, every time he looked for him before Liam knew he was looking.

He never mocked him for it.

That was probably why Liam let him tuck him into bed afterward.

That, and the fact that the suppressants had made his limbs heavy again.

"There," Arik said, drawing the blanket over him. "Rest."

"I am not a child."

"No," Arik agreed. "You are an adult who nearly argued with soup."

"The soup was condescending."

Arik’s mouth twitched as he placed the restricted ether systems book on the bed beside him. "Then defend yourself with this."

Liam’s eyes brightened despite the haze. "You brought the book back."

"You were sleeping on it earlier."

"I was absorbing knowledge."

"You were drooling on Agaronian infrastructure regulations."

Liam looked personally wounded. "That is slander."

"It is also true."

He reached for the book anyway, fingers closing over the dark cover with obvious possessiveness. Arik’s expression softened before he could stop it.

A knock came at the outer door, and the softness vanished.

Mezos entered a moment later, silent and severe in dark formalwear, his presence filling the room like a security protocol given bones.

"The fortune teller has arrived," he said.

Liam blinked sleepily, trying to tell if the fortune teller was his imagination or if Mezos had actually said that.

Arik nodded. "I will go to meet her now."

Liam’s fingers tightened slightly around the edge of the book.

The motion was small and instinctive.

Arik saw it.

Mezos saw it too and wisely pretended he had not.

"I’ll stay with him," Mezos said.

Liam frowned. "I do not require guarding."

"No," Mezos replied. "You require supervision."

Arik leaned down and brushed Liam’s hair back from his forehead, the gesture brief enough to be deniable and tender enough to make Liam forget how to complain for a full second.

"Read," Arik murmured. "Sleep if you can. Mezos stays until I return."

The heat-softened part of Liam wanted to ask him not to go.

The sane part remembered Mezos was in the room.

The prideful part chose violence.

"If you take too long, I’m stealing this book."

"It was already yours the moment I handed it to you."

Liam went silent.

Arik smiled faintly and left before Liam could recover enough to retaliate.

—

The old woman waited in one of the eastern wing’s reception rooms.

Not the grand room meant for ambassadors or ministers, but a smaller one with matte glass walls, pale stone floors, and ether lamps set low enough to make the room feel private rather than ceremonial. Outside the sealed doors, Agaronian guards held the corridor. Inside, she sat alone near the window, wrapped in layered fabric, her small hands folded over a plain walking stick.

She looked exactly as she had in the market.

Poor. Old. Unimpressed.

The kind of woman most nobles would forget the moment they looked away.

Arik knew better.

She lifted her milky eyes when he entered.

"There you are," she said.

Arik crossed the room and set the transfer tablet on the low table between them.

"The watch sold," he said. "The full amount is yours. The transfer authorization is ready. I added enough to cover any fees, relocation, and protection if you want it."

The old woman glanced at the tablet only briefly.

Not at the number.

At his hand.

Then she laughed quietly.

Arik stilled.

It was not mocking laughter.

That would have been easier.

It sounded fond and very much tired. As if she were looking at something impossibly old wearing a new face.

"You didn’t change at all," she said.

Arik’s gaze sharpened.

"What does that mean?"

She leaned back in the chair, eyes bright beneath the deep lines of her face. "You could have sent anyone with the money. You could have forgotten about me the moment you left the market and never looked back." Her mouth curved faintly. "But, as always, you are fair enough to finish a bargain yourself, no matter how humiliating other nobles would think it is."

Arik frowned. "I keep my word."

The old woman chuckled.

"Yes," she said softly. "You always did. Even without the memories."

The room seemed to thin around that sentence.

Arik went still.

Outside the matte glass walls, the corridor remained guarded. The ether lamps glowed softly. The diplomatic palace hummed with its usual polished machinery.

And yet the air had changed.

"What do you know?" Arik asked.

The old woman’s smile faded into something older as she was recalling memories dear to her heart.

"Not enough to save you then," she said.

Arik’s fingers curled once at his side.

Then she lifted her hand.

It should have been nothing. An old woman reaching across a low table in a quiet waiting room, but the wards did not stop her.

The guards outside did not enter. The ether in the walls did not flare.

Her fingertips pressed lightly against the center of Arik’s chest, directly over the place where Liam’s scent had awakened something old and terrible the night before.

"Find it here," she whispered.

The words landed like a command against something buried beneath his mind.

Arik inhaled sharply.

The waiting room fractured.

Gold etherlight stretched into sunlight.

The scent of old fabric became ink.

The polished stone beneath his feet became black marble veined with imperial fire.

For one heartbeat, he was standing in Wrohan.

For the next... Goliath was in his office.