Chapter 165: Chapter 165: Foolish nobles and children (4)

The viscount stopped speaking so abruptly he looked as though the sentence had been cut from his throat.

The etherline along the nearest pillar gave a faint pulse, reacting to the Emperor’s proximity and the minute rise in ambient ether pressure around him. A subtle shimmer under carved stone, like light moving through ice.

Modernity existed in the Empire.

So did old instincts.

The palace itself knew when its ruler was displeased.

“Harmless,” Damian repeated, golden eyes unreadable. “You are discussing my son, Gregoris’s daughter, and Max’s child as future leverage while standing in front of their families.”

The viscount opened his mouth, perhaps to apologize, perhaps to die verbally.

Damian did not give him the chance.

“If you have enough idle time to plan marriages for children who cannot form complete sentences, then I clearly need to expand your duties.”

Silence hit harder this time.

Max looked delighted again.

Adam looked resigned in the way of someone married to that delight.

Rafael stared into the middle distance with the expression of a man trying not to laugh in front of the Emperor.

Gregoris remained expressionless, which, in Gregoris, was roughly equivalent to approval.

Arik, oblivious to the social execution occurring around him, touched Damian’s collar and found the gold clasp interesting.

“Shiny,” he informed him.

Damian looked down immediately, all the sharpness disappearing from his face as if someone had drawn a curtain.

“Yes,” he said, quieter. “It is.”

Arik leaned back a little and pointed with grave authority toward Rafael’s arms. “Baby.”

Damian followed the tiny finger toward Natalie, then toward Noah in Adam’s hold.

His gaze softened again.

“Two babies,” he said, echoing Arik’s earlier verdict.

Arik beamed, pleased that the adults were finally keeping up.

“Two baby,” he corrected.

Gabriel laughed under his breath.

Damian glanced at him, and for a brief moment the hall, the nobles, the politics, the warded walls, the hum of the ether grid, and everything else thinned around the edges.

He took in Gabriel holding himself with that poised, cool grace that fooled outsiders and never fooled him; the way Gabriel’s eyes were still sharp from dealing with nobles and warm from holding their son; the way Arik had reached for both of them in the same breath as if this arrangement was not imperial but natural.

When Damian looked back to the nobles, what remained in his expression was no longer anger but cold neutrality.

“The next person I hear discussing alliances involving these children,” he said, voice carrying with no effort at all, “will discover what ’reassigned to provincial audit oversight’ means in practice.”

There was a collective shift in posture across the nearby crowd with small bows, lowered eyes, and retreat disguised as etiquette.

Alexandra’s smile became almost innocent.

Max leaned toward Adam and murmured, not quite quietly enough, “See? Efficient.”

Adam did not look at him. “You are impossible.”

“Yes,” Max said cheerfully. “But I’m not wrong.”

Rafael finally surrendered and laughed outright, Natalie blinking in his arms at the sound. Gregoris’s hand slid more fully around Rafael’s waist, grounding and possessive, while his gaze tracked the withdrawing nobles with the detached focus of a man already memorizing faces.

Damian, apparently done with court for the next five blessed minutes, shifted Arik higher on his hip and stepped closer to Gabriel until their shoulders nearly touched.

Arik put a hand on Damian’s cheek, then reached toward Gabriel again just to make sure both were still there.

“Papa,” he said to Gabriel.

Then, patting Damian’s shoulder with equal solemnity, “Papa.”

Gabriel’s expression softened into something so brief and unguarded it would have been missed by anyone not standing inside the circle.

“Yes,” he said, voice low. “Both of us.”

—

The moment held for a breath longer, warm and dangerous in the way only family moments in public could be.

Then reality, in the form of three increasingly tired children, began to collect its debt.

Natalie’s warning came first.

It started as a small, offended sound in Rafael’s arms, the kind she made when the world had failed to continue entertaining her at the appropriate pace. She twisted against his chest, fists flexing, mouth turning down with tragic seriousness. A heartbeat later, Noah followed with the slow-building stiffness of a child nearing the edge of patience, his face going blank in that ominous way babies did right before deciding everything was terrible.

Arik lasted another thirty seconds out of pure force of personality.

Then he yawned directly into Damian’s collar, blinked hard, and immediately became offended by his own exhaustion.

“No,” he said to nobody in particular, voice thick with sleep.

Gabriel closed his eyes for half a beat, as if in prayer for the inevitable.

Alexandra’s mouth curved. “There it is.”

Arik, now limp in the dramatic boneless manner of an overtired toddler, put one hand on Damian’s jaw and repeated with fading authority, “No bed.”

Damian, who could command armies and bend a council room into silence, looked at his son as if personally betrayed by biology. “You are falling asleep on me.”

“No,” Arik said again, already losing the battle.

Max made a soft, delighted noise that he didn’t even try to hide. “The prince rejects reality.”

“He gets that from this side of the family,” Gabriel said, dryly.

Max looked deeply pleased by that.

The palace staff, who had the survival instincts of prey animals and the training of elite tacticians, arrived without fanfare. Two nursemaids from the imperial wing approached with the kind of respectful precision that allowed them to enter a circle containing the Emperor, the Empress, two Shadow commanders, the Claymore heir, and several people capable of ruining careers before breakfast without disturbing the atmosphere.

Another attendant came for Noah, and a second for Natalie, already holding a warmed wrap and a small satchel that probably contained enough emergency baby supplies to withstand a siege.

“Your Majesties,” one nursemaid said softly, bowing first to Damian and Gabriel, then inclining her head to the others. “If it pleases you, we can settle His Highness.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep