Chapter 207: Chapter 207: Recommendations

Marin did not blink. “That was not a suggestion.”

Rafael turned slightly toward Gregoris with quiet betrayal written into every elegant line of his face. “You brought me to a man who sides with you on instinct.”

Gregoris, entirely shameless, folded his arms. “I brought you to a physician.”

“A distinction without emotional meaning.”

Marin made a small motion with one hand, the kind a man made when he had no intention whatsoever of participating in nonsense beyond a professionally acceptable amount. “Rafael.”

Rafael exhaled through his nose, long and suffering, then climbed onto the table with the dignity of a prince walking toward a public execution. “For the record,” he said as he settled himself, “I am cooperating under protest.”

“For the record,” Marin replied, moving toward the diagnostic panel built into the wall, “you are cooperating because your husband can teleport and because you know perfectly well I won’t let you leave without checking you.”

Rafael frowned. “I dislike how thoroughly everyone in this palace understands me.”

Gregoris’s hand found the small of his back, steady and warm through the coat. “You could try being less predictable.”

Rafael gave him a flat look. “I chose you twice. I have never claimed sound judgment.”

That, at least, earned the faintest shift at the corner of Gregoris’s mouth.

Marin activated the scan field with a press of his hand against the lit ether panel. Soft blue light rose in a curved arc from either side of the examination table, forming a translucent frame over Rafael’s body. The air changed all at once, becoming cleaner and sharper, with the low crystalline hum of diagnostic ether synchronizing with pulse, temperature, hormone levels, and the deeper internal signatures it was designed to read.

Rafael immediately looked suspicious.

“I hate that sound,” he muttered.

“You hate anticipation,” Marin corrected, pulling a second display into view. “The machine is incidental.”

“I do not hate anticipation.”

“You do when it cannot be controlled.”

“That,” Rafael said, with offended precision, “is a much fairer statement.”

Marin’s eyes moved across the projected readings with practiced ease. He checked one panel, then another, then reached for Rafael’s wrist himself, two fingers settling briefly against the pulse point as if he trusted his own senses more than the palace systems. Which, Rafael suspected, he probably did.

The silence stretched.

Rafael stared at Marin’s face with growing distrust. “You are taking too long.”

“I have been examining you for less than thirty seconds.”

“It has been at least five minutes emotionally.”

Gregoris’s thumb moved once against Rafael’s back in a slow grounding stroke. Rafael hated how much it helped.

Marin ignored both of them and moved the panel. More lines of light unfolded across the screen – hormonal markers, early gestational readings, stabilization patterns, and baseline nutrient demands. Then, because he clearly enjoyed denying Rafael dramatic timing, he took another few seconds to verify everything before finally looking up.

“Well,” he said.

Rafael straightened at once. “You see? That word means something.”

Marin folded his hands loosely. “Congratulations. You are pregnant.”

Gregoris moved before Rafael could decide what expression he wanted to wear.

One moment Rafael was still staring at Marin with all the brittle, suspended stillness of a man who had expected the answer and yet had not been prepared for the reality of hearing it said aloud. The next moment, Gregoris’s hand was already at the side of his face, broad palm warm against his cheek, thumb resting just under his eye as if to steady something far more delicate than Rafael would ever tolerate being named.

Then Gregoris kissed him.

A kiss placed directly over the first stunned breath Rafael had failed to hide, as if Gregoris had heard it and chosen to answer. It lasted only a few seconds, but it felt longer because there was nothing hurried in it.

Rafael made the smallest sound against him before he could stop himself.

Gregoris’s thumb shifted once against his cheek.

Rafael hated, with immediate clarity, that Marin was still in the room.

When Gregoris finally drew back, he did not go far. His forehead almost brushed Rafael’s temple for a brief moment, breath warm, gaze lowered to Rafael’s mouth and then back to his eyes with the kind of focus that made Rafael feel seen in ways that were frankly unreasonable before noon.

Rafael blinked once.

Then twice.

“This is unfairly effective in reminding me why I love you,” Rafael said with a soft sigh. Then, because he had no intention of letting tenderness interfere with priorities, he turned his head just enough to address the physician. “Marin, give me something for nausea.”

Marin, who had the look of a man refusing to acknowledge that he had just been forced to witness a marital exchange capable of altering atmospheric pressure, moved one panel aside and pulled open a narrow cabinet built into the wall.

“So romance survives,” he said dryly. “Good. Now we can proceed to pharmacology and recommandations, I’m sure Gregoris would make sure are followed.”

Gregoris, who had not moved back nearly far enough to count as restraint, said only, “He will.”

Rafael turned his head with offended elegance. “You both speak around me as if I’m decorative.”

Marin selected a small amber vial, then a sealed strip of tablets from the cabinet. “No. I speak around you as if you were the kind of patient who hears the word ’recommendation’ and begins drafting ’counterarguments.’”

“That is slander.”

“It is pattern recognition.”

Rafael opened his mouth, clearly prepared to defend his honor, then thought better of it when Marin set the vial into Gregoris’s hand instead of his own.

He stared.

Then he stared harder.

“You are not even pretending I can be trusted with my own medication.”

Marin closed the cabinet with a light push. “You can be trusted with it. You cannot be trusted to take it at the correct moment instead of deciding to endure for dramatic effect.”

“I have never once suffered for dramatic effect.”

Both men looked at him.

Rafael narrowed his eyes. “That pause was disrespectful.”

Gregoris examined the label on the vial with infuriating calm, as though this had always been his rightful role in life: husband, commander, unwilling witness to Rafael’s theatrical suffering, and now keeper of anti-nausea medicine. “When does he take it?”

“At the first sign,” Marin said. “Not after he has gone pale, not after he has decided tea is his enemy, and not after he has spent twenty minutes insisting it will pass through discipline alone.”

Rafael drew himself up. “I do not appreciate being medically profiled in my own presence.”

“You should,” Marin said. “It’s why you’re getting useful care.”

He took the tablets next and held them up between two fingers. “These are for the worse episodes. Limited use. They’re stronger and will make him drowsy, so only if the nausea escalates or if he can’t keep food down.”

Gregoris nodded once. “Understood.”

Rafael looked between them with increasing disbelief. “Remarkable. Truly. My own body becomes a committee issue the second I conceive.”

Marin ignored that. “He eats small amounts often, not one elegant meal and indignation until evening. Dry foods first thing in the morning if needed. Hydration constantly. Rest when dizziness starts. Less coffee.”

Rafael’s face changed at once. “No.”

“Yes,” Marin said.

“No. You may have my schedule. You may have my blood. You may apparently have my compliance under duress. You may not have my coffee.”

Marin’s expression remained dry. “I said less, not none.”

“That is how decline begins.”

Gregoris slipped the tablets into the inner pocket of his coat beside the vial. “You’ll have less coffee.”

Rafael turned toward him with slow, betrayed horror. “You, above all people, should know that I am not pleasant enough for that.”

“You’ll survive.”

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