Chapter 214: Chapter 214: Kiss

Frederik blinked.

Not because he disliked the idea. Quite the opposite. The sudden sharpening of his attention revealed him right away.

Rafael, naturally, noticed.

“Yes,” he said, with the calm satisfaction of a man dangling civilization before a highly dangerous child. “A controlled one. Not the Shadow operational systems, before anyone in this room becomes overexcited. A training-grade simulator. Closed environment. No live access to the estate grid, no actual maintenance shafts, no real security delays for you to exploit while giving me heart failure.”

Natalie’s smile deepened.

Across the projected board, Arik leaned in with immediate interest. “The ones the Shadows use for response drills?”

Gregoris answered this time. “A lower-level version.”

Arik looked mildly disappointed. “That’s less fun.”

“That,” Rafael said, without taking his eyes off Frederik, “is because you are both part of the problem.”

Frederik was still listening too intently to care about the insult.

“A simulator,” he repeated.

Gregoris set his glass down and stepped closer, expression unreadable in the way that usually meant he was already considering feasibility, permissions, hardware requirements, and whether giving a six-year-old a virtual tactical environment was responsible or simply inevitable.

“It can be done,” he said. “The Shadows use ether-structured training spaces now. Layered projection, reactive wards, false terrain, and controlled threat mapping. Safe enough for skill development if the permissions are locked and the system is scaled correctly.”

Rafael lifted a brow. “Note how he says that as though we are discussing music lessons.”

Natalie, completely traitorous, said, “For Frederik, it sort of is.”

Rafael looked toward the ceiling again. “There is no loyalty in this house.”

Frederik, meanwhile, had gone very still in that deeply suspicious way he always did when hope struck him hard enough to require containment.

“You’d let me use it?” he asked.

Frederik was never the entitled or spoiled child, neither of the three there were.

Just careful disbelief, as though he had already prepared himself to be told no and did not entirely trust the shape of permission when it arrived.

Rafael’s expression softened at once.

“Yes,” he said. “Under supervision. With rules. Very many rules, in fact, because I value my peace and your continued existence in one piece.”

Arik, monstrous prince that he was, said through the projection, “Can I watch?”

“No,” Rafael said immediately.

Natalie tilted her head. “Can I?”

Rafael looked at her. “Why do I feel like that question is less innocent than it sounds?”

“Because it is,” she said.

Gregoris smiled.

Frederik looked between them, then back at Rafael. “I wasn’t doing it only for fun.”

Rafael paused.

The room quieted again, though this time without tension.

Frederik glanced once at Gregoris, then back at Rafael, and answered with the same disarming honesty that kept ruining the family’s ability to remain properly sarcastic for long.

“I wanted to know if I could.”

Ah. That was different. Not reckless curiosity for its own sake. Not exactly.

Something more structural than that. More Frasner, unfortunately. The need to test a limit personally rather than trust that the world had described itself correctly.

Rafael studied him for a long moment.

Then he sighed with deep, ancestral weariness. “Yes. Of course you did.”

Natalie smiled like she had predicted that answer from the start.

Gregoris crouched slightly so he was more level with Frederik. “The simulator is for that too,” he said. “To test what you can do without putting yourself in live systems before you’re ready.”

Frederik absorbed that.

Then, very seriously, “Will it have blind spots?”

Rafael closed his eyes.

Arik laughed so hard the projection flickered.

Natalie pressed her lips together, visibly trying and failing to behave with dignity.

Gregoris, curse him, answered as if this were an entirely ordinary question from an entirely ordinary child.

“If it does,” he said, “you’ll be expected to find them.”

Frederik’s whole attention snapped to his father immediately.

Rafael pointed at Gregoris without opening his eyes. “You see? This is exactly how these situations escalate.”

“They escalate anyway,” Gregoris said.

That, infuriatingly, was true.

Rafael opened his eyes and looked at Frederik again, at the pale lashes and silver focus and the impossible little stillness of a boy who was already halfway to becoming a problem in systems, architecture, and expensive clothes.

Then he touched his son’s cheek once more, gentler this time.

“If you want to test yourself,” he said, “then we give you a place to do that properly. You do not need to crawl through maintenance passages to prove you have a brain.”

Frederik nodded once.

“And,” Rafael added, “if the simulator is approved, you will not treat it like an invitation to become feral.”

Frederik considered that with suspicious care. “Define feral.”

Natalie broke first.

Arik made a choking noise through the screen.

Gregoris looked away for a second, which was effectively the same as laughter in his case.

Rafael stared at his son in profound betrayal. “That,” he said, “is your father’s face and my punishment.”

Then, because standards still mattered even in defeat, he straightened Frederik’s collar again and said, “Go wash your hands. Then we will discuss whether your future includes supervised virtual infiltration instead of real architectural trespassing.”

Frederik, in a movement so quick and so unguarded that it slipped past all his usual stillness, rose onto his toes and kissed Rafael’s cheek.

Rafael froze.

Not because affection from his children was rare. It wasn’t. Quite the opposite. Rafael loved his children openly, and they had grown up knowing with complete certainty that they were loved back. Natalie climbed into his lap whenever she pleased. Frederik, quieter by nature, leaned close in his own more careful way. Neither of them had ever been made to wonder whether they were wanted.

But Frederik was not usually impulsive.

Frederik lowered himself back onto his heels at once, the tips of his ears turning faintly pink.

“Thank you,” he said, quieter now.

Rafael looked at him for one long beat.

Then his whole expression softened into something warm and immediate, the kind of softness he reserved for very little and very few.

“Oh, my love,” he said, with that helpless tenderness children pulled from him far too easily.

He took Frederik by the waist and drew him in without the slightest hesitation, lifting him fully into his arms as though six years old were still small enough to fit there properly, and in Rafael’s view, it was.

Frederik came without resistance. He simply let Rafael gather him close, settling instinctively against his father’s chest with the quiet trust of a child who had never been denied comfort and had no reason to treat affection like something scarce.

Across the room, Natalie’s eyes widened at once.

Then narrowed with immediate, practical longing.

“I want one too,” she said.

Rafael looked up, still holding Frederik easily against him, one hand spread warm and steady over the boy’s back.

“Natalie.”

She rose from her chair anyway, dignity intact despite the obvious agenda. “I am twelve,” she informed him with perfect seriousness, “not dead.”

Arik made a strangled sound through the ether projection.

Gregoris, traitor that he was, did not help in the slightest.

Rafael stared at his daughter.

Natalie stared right back, calm and entirely confident, because she knew perfectly well that being older did not place her outside the reach of affection in this house.

He had raised them loved.

Now they behaved accordingly.

Hopeless.

Rafael adjusted Frederik a little higher in his arms, then opened his free arm toward Natalie. “Come here, then.”

Natalie’s face lit at once.

She crossed the room and leaned into his side without hesitation, tall enough now that it was less climbing and more a graceful claiming of space she had occupied all her life. Rafael bent and kissed her forehead first, then her cheek, because if she asked, she got to have it. That was simply how things were.

“There,” he murmured. “Satisfied?”

“For now,” Natalie said, which was a deeply threatening answer from a child with silver eyes and growing political instincts.

Arik leaned into the projection, openly delighted. “You look very outnumbered.”

Rafael pointed at the etherboard without taking his attention from his children. “I can still disconnect you.”

“You won’t.”

Unfortunately, Arik was correct.

Gregoris bent down, looked at Frederik, who had fallen asleep, and asked low. “Where is mine?”

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