Chapter 122: Chapter 122: Consequences

A few days after the Frasner family dinner, Rafael sat in the manor’s sunroom with a stack of correspondence spread across the low table like a minor threat.

He was dressed for comfort – soft lounge clothes, a house robe, and hair pinned back in the loose way that said, ’I am not receiving anyone unless the Empire is on fire.’ The staff, meanwhile, had entered a new era of devotion: refusing to even entertain the concept that their pregnant lord might so much as look pale while the Duke was at the palace. Someone had placed a glass of water exactly within reach. Someone else had placed a bowl of bland biscuits like they were talismans.

Rafael ignored both and opened letters with the bored elegance of a man reviewing battlefield reports.

There was nothing interesting. Not if one ignored the dozen – no, the dozens – of invitations to galas, luncheons, charity auctions, garden parties, and ’intimate gatherings’ that were clearly not intimate and absolutely gatherings. Every envelope screamed the same thing in different handwriting:

’Congratulations on your marriage.’

’Congratulations on your pregnancy.’

’Please stand near us so the Empire remembers our names.’

He skimmed. He exhaled. He tossed.

Trash. Trash. Trash.

Half the stack was already dead when he reached an envelope heavier than the others. The paper was thick. The seal was familiar.

Rafael paused with a resigned sigh.

He broke it anyway, unfolded the card, and felt his mouth go flat.

An invitation to a gala from Delphine.

I’n honor of Layle returning to the Empire.’

Rafael stared at the words as if they might rearrange themselves into something less insulting.

They didn’t.

He read it again, slower, like speed had been the problem.

Still Delphine. Still a gala. Still the audacity of pretending this was normal.

Rafael’s fingers tightened on the card.

“Of course,” he murmured aloud, voice soft and venomous. “Of course she’s throwing a celebration for my brother’s return like she didn’t threaten to weaponize his children last week.”

A quiet movement behind him from the staff retreating respectfully, as if they could smell the coming storm.

Rafael set the invitation down on the table with care that looked polite and felt like a warning. He stared at it, thinking through angles, through optics, through what Delphine wanted, and what she would call ’appropriate.’

Then the manor’s ether wards shifted. The air changed in that subtle way it always did when Gregoris came home – like the house itself straightened and decided to behave.

Footsteps crossed the corridor.

Gregoris entered the sunroom in a Shadow black uniform, the fit of it making him look like he’d stepped out of a threat assessment. His coat was still fastened, gloves tucked under one arm, and hair slightly wind-tousled in a way that made it obvious he’d come straight from the palace without stopping to pretend he was just a normal duke with a normal day.

His gaze found Rafael first. Always.

Then it dropped to the table. To the opened envelopes. The growing pile of discarded invitations. The one card set apart like a specimen.

Gregoris stopped behind him, close enough that Rafael felt warmth at his back before he felt the hand.

His palm rested on Rafael’s waist, gentle in the way that only Gregoris’ “gentle” could be.

“What is it?” Gregoris asked, tone calm, already knowing it wasn’t nothing.

Rafael didn’t look away from the card. “Mail.”

Gregoris’s breath warmed the side of his head. “That’s not an answer.”

Rafael’s mouth twitched, humorless. “It is. It’s just incomplete.”

Gregoris’s gaze moved over the table again. He leaned slightly, and the silver of his eyes caught the light when he finally read the name on the invitation.

“Delphine,” he said, as if tasting poison and deciding whether it was worth swallowing.

Rafael tilted his head, eyes narrowed. “She’s hosting a gala for Layle in honor of his return.”

Gregoris didn’t blink. “And she sent you an invitation… So that was what I felt through the bond.” He tugged Rafael back and kissed him.

Rafael leaned into the kiss. His shoulder pressed into Gregoris’s chest; his hand found the edge of the uniform coat and curled there, fingers tightening as if he could pull Gregoris closer by sheer will.

And he loved it, as it soothed something in him that had been tense for so long he’d forgotten what ’relaxed’ felt like. In the way his breath stopped catching in warning and started catching from… want.

He’d admitted he liked Gregoris. Out loud. To Gregoris. Like it was a concession and not a confession.

But liking was already slipping out of his hands.

Rafael was aware of it in the small things: how he reached for Gregoris without thinking, how he sought his warmth in rooms that weren’t cold, and how he listened for his steps down the corridor like it mattered more than the world’s noise. How the bond didn’t feel like a chain, he thought it would be, but it felt like a home he hadn’t known he was starving for.

Love was taking shape under his ribs. Love, bright and impossible and terrifyingly simple.

Gregoris let him hold on. He just stayed close, one hand at Rafael’s waist, the other braced on the chair, protective without making it a cage.

Rafael tipped his face up, close enough to feel Gregoris’s breath, and for a second he forgot the invitation existed. Forgot Delphine existed. Forgot about image and politics and the endless polite violence of nobility.

Then Gregoris spoke, low and stripped of everything except the question.

“Are you okay with the consequences she’ll face?”

Rafael blinked once, slowly.

He didn’t pull away. If anything, he leaned in more, forehead brushing Gregoris’s collarbone like he could bury himself there and answer from a place that couldn’t lie.

“Yes,” Rafael said.

“Good.” He slid one of his hands down behind his knees and raised Rafael into his embrace like it was nothing. “Now, dinner before the heir asks for compensation.”

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