Chapter 124: Chapter 124: Follow through. (2)

Delphine felt it first in her teeth. A subtle shift in the ether that made the room’s air go strangely dense, as if the mansion itself had inhaled and decided not to exhale until permission was granted.

The music and the laughter continued. The blue ether whale continued its obscene little performance overhead, but the world around Gregoris bent.

There was only the sensation that reality had accepted a new rule: they were not supposed to be heard.

And then, in the next second, the ballroom was gone.

Delphine blinked and found herself on a balcony.

Cold night air brushed her skin, crisp and clean compared to the sugar-thick perfume below. The distant lights of the capital glittered like a threat. Somewhere inside, the gala kept breathing, unaware that its hostess had lost two people to a private pocket of consequences.

Delphine still had her champagne.

The glass sat in her hand as if nothing had happened, bubbles rising dutifully while her pulse hitched once before she pulled herself together.

Delphine turned her head slowly toward Gregoris and smiled like a woman who had never been cornered in her life. She refused to look shaken even when she had every reason to.

“So,” she said lightly. “We’ve progressed from warnings to kidnapping.”

Gregoris leaned against the balcony rail as if it belonged to him. His posture was almost relaxed. His eyes were the only honest thing about him – silver, sharp, and unamused.

“This is not kidnapping,” he said. “This is privacy.”

Delphine laughed softly, but there was a faint tremor under it now, like she’d felt the bend and didn’t like being reminded she wasn’t the one bending it. “You can’t threaten me.”

“I’m not threatening you,” Gregoris replied. “I’m informing you.”

Delphine’s smile sharpened. She lifted her glass a fraction, the gesture elegant and very much weaponized. “You’re forgetting something, Duke.”

Gregoris didn’t blink.

“The Emperor,” Delphine continued, voice smooth as silk. “Damian needs me. The court needs me. This Empire needs the alliances I carry in my pockets. You can’t go against me without going against him.”

She took a slow sip, eyes locked on Gregoris over the rim. “And you don’t go against the Emperor.”

For a beat, the only sound was the wind and the distant, muffled thrum of music through stone.

Then Gregori’s expression was that of a man who’d just been handed an excuse.

Delphine’s lashes lowered, pleased – misreading it the way arrogant people always did. “There it is,” she murmured. “You do understand.”

Gregoris didn’t answer.

He reached into his coat as if Delphine had bored him, pulled out his phone, and woke the screen with his thumb. The glow lit the hard planes of his face and made his eyes look paler and colder.

Delphine’s smile faltered.

Gregoris pressed the call button, then the speaker.

He already knew Damian’s answer. He’d known it the moment he’d issued the first warning, because he wasn’t going to do something against the man he swore his life to.

Gregoris was only adding salt to the wound, the kind of thing Delphine understood better than kindness. He wanted her to feel it: the terror of realizing the highest authority in the Empire was not her shield but the door closing behind her.

A breath.

A crackle.

Then Damian’s voice came through the speaker, calm as usual.

“Gregoris.”

Delphine’s grip tightened on her glass until the champagne shivered near the rim.

Gregoris didn’t bother with a preamble.

“Do you need Delphine?”

Silence stretched just long enough to be obvious, but also, just long enough to let it land in her chest like a weight.

Damian responded unhurriedly.

“No.”

Delphine’s face held for half a second, a trained expression refusing to collapse.

Gregoris watched that half-second with mild interest.

Damian continued, voice even, the low timber of his voice confined to the balcony area as Gregoris secured it without Delphine feeling anything.

“Is she causing problems?”

“Yes,” Gregoris said simply.

“Then handle it,” Damian replied after a short pause and the faint shuffle of papers. “And don’t involve Gabriel. He doesn’t need the headache.”

“I won’t,” Gregoris said.

“Good.” A faint edge entered Damian’s tone. “And Gregoris?”

“Yes?”

“Finish her tonight. I have no more patience for people like her.”

Delphine didn’t move.

Her smile held on muscle memory alone, trembling at the edges. The champagne glass remained in her hand, but her fingers had gone too tight around the stem, white at the knuckles. The bubbles inside kept rising, bright and stupidly cheerful.

Gregoris didn’t react the way most men would react to an imperial command. There was only a quiet stillness, as if something inside him clicked into place and locked.

“Understood,” he said, voice calm.

There was a beat of silence, Damian listening for something that wasn’t said.

Then the call ended.

For a moment, the balcony seemed larger than it should have been – night air, distant lights, and the muffled thrum of the gala behind the glass. The Empire carried on below them like this wasn’t happening.

Gregoris lowered the phone and slipped it back into his coat with no hurry.

Delphine’s throat worked once.

“You can’t mean…” she started, voice soft, careful, as if volume could change reality.

Gregoris looked at her, like a commander looking at a problem that had finally been authorized to be solved.

“I can,” he said.

Delphine’s lips parted again, searching for the right weapon: tears, outrage, charm, or indignation. Something that had always worked.

“You would do this to Rafael’s mother,” she tried, sweetly, desperately. “To his blood.”

Gregoris didn’t blink.

“She did this to Rafael first,” he replied, like this was the most boring thing Delphine could say.

Delphine’s smile twitched. “Rafael doesn’t want this.”

Gregoris’s gaze stayed steady, and for the first time there was something almost gentle in it – not for Delphine, but for the truth he was carrying.

“He’s okay with the consequences,” Gregoris said.

The sentence was simple.

It was also the last thing Delphine expected.

For the first time, real fear cracked through her composure. It was just a shift in her eyes, a realization that came like cold water: she wasn’t dealing with a man she could pressure, shame, or steer. She was dealing with a man who had asked the only question that mattered, received the answer, and made peace with it.

Delphine’s grip on her glass trembled.

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