Chapter 218: Chapter 218: Right to glare.

Cecil turned his head, looked at Frederik, and smiled.

It was not a large smile. Cecil, like his father, had never needed much movement to alter the atmosphere around him. But approval touched his face plainly enough to be seen from across the room, and that, more than Frederik’s intervention, seemed to finish the matter.

Because Frederik – who had remained composed through the entire exchange with the unnerving self-command of a child far too used to reading a room – went utterly still for half a breath at that smile.

The noble boy noticed it too late.

He bowed, this time properly, murmured something that looked suspiciously like an apology, and retreated with all the dignity available to someone who had just been corrected by another child.

Aylin made a small, satisfied sound. “He lost.”

“Yes,” Rafael said.

Gabriel’s glass touched the arm of his chair with a soft click as he set it down. “Not badly enough for a lesson to become memorable to his parents. But enough.”

Rafael glanced at him. “You say that like you’ve calibrated it.”

“I have.”

That was, somehow, the least surprising thing Gabriel could have admitted.

Across the ballroom, Cecil said something to Frederik. Rafael was unable to hear the words, but Frederik’s face shifted slightly, the severe little line of his mouth easing with something between softness and pride.

It was worse, in Rafael’s opinion, when Gregoris’s son looked quietly pleased. It made the resemblance unbearable.

Then a low male voice, calm and edged with amusement too dry to be called kind, spoke from behind him.

“He did well.”

Rafael did not need to turn to know Gregoris had crossed the ballroom without him noticing, which was both expected and, after all these years, still infuriating.

Aylin lifted her head at once. “Papa.”

Gregoris touched her back briefly as he came to stand at Rafael’s side, his gaze already fixed on Frederik. There was no visible warmth in his expression, nothing overt enough for the room to read, but Rafael knew his husband far too well to miss the quiet satisfaction underneath the stillness.

Nor, Rafael suspected, did Damian.

The Emperor had not moved from Gabriel’s side, but the angle of his head had changed by a degree, his golden gaze settled on the children near the terrace with the heavy, contained focus of a man who saw every line of force in a room before anyone else recognized there was one.

“He intervened early,” Damian said.

Gregoris inclined his head once. “Before it turned public.”

Gabriel looked between them. “You both sound unbearable.”

“We are discussing our sons,” Damian replied.

“You are evaluating them like field officers.”

Damian’s expression did not change. “That too.”

Rafael closed his eyes briefly. “This is exactly why the palace children are terrifying.”

Aylin, apparently deciding this conversation now belonged to her, rested one hand on Gregoris’s shoulder from where she sat on Rafael’s hip and asked with total seriousness, “Did Frederik protect Cecil correctly?”

The silence that followed was brief only because all four adults already had an answer.

Gregoris was the one who gave it.

“Yes,” he said.

Aylin frowned in concentration. “But he looked like he wanted to bite him.”

“He did,” Rafael said.

“Can I bite him if Fred can’t?” Aylin asked with a dangerous glint in her eyes.

The silence that followed was so absolute it briefly achieved architecture.

Then Gabriel laughed.

Damian’s mouth moved at one corner.

Rafael turned his head slowly and stared at his daughter as though reassessing every decision that had led to this moment. “No.”

Aylin blinked at him with all the bright innocence of a child who had asked what seemed, to her, an entirely practical question. “Why not?”

“Because,” Rafael said, in the careful tone of a man explaining civilization to someone alarmingly unconvinced by it, “we do not bite people at palace functions.”

Aylin considered this. “Even if they’re rude?”

“Yes.”

“Even a little?”

“Yes.”

She frowned. “That seems unfair.”

Gregoris, traitor that he was, lowered one hand to Aylin’s back in a gesture so calm it suggested he found none of this alarming enough. “You are four.”

Aylin lifted her chin. “I have teeth.”

Gabriel looked away for a moment, very clearly to hide amusement.

Rafael saw it and pointed at him with his free hand. “This is your fault somehow.”

Gabriel, still visibly entertained, raised a brow. “Mine?”

“You encouraged her earlier.”

“I agreed with her observations,” Gabriel corrected. “Those are not the same thing.”

“They become the same thing in children.”

Damian finally spoke, his voice smooth with that terrible near-humor that always made Rafael distrust the next thirty seconds of his life. “She identified the problem accurately.”

“That,” Rafael said, “is not the issue. The issue is that she has now proposed assault as a follow-up.”

Aylin looked offended. “Not assault. Help.”

Gregoris’s shoulders shifted once. On anyone else, it would have meant nothing. Rafael knew better. It was Gregoris trying not to laugh.

“Do not,” Rafael told him.

Gregoris did not answer quickly enough.

Aylin, sensing weakness in the adults around her, pressed forward with the ruthless instinct of the very young. “If someone is rude to Cecil, and Frederik is busy, I could do it. I am small. No one would expect it.”

Damian’s gaze slid to Gregoris.

Gregoris’s gaze met Damian’s.

And in that single exchanged look was the deeply unhelpful recognition that Aylin’s logic, while socially catastrophic, was tactically sound.

Rafael saw both of them and nearly closed his eyes in despair. “I hate this room.”

Gabriel’s smile was faint and beautiful and entirely untrustworthy. “No, you don’t. You live for rooms like this.”

“I live for winning in rooms like this. I do not live for my daughter becoming an unsanctioned covert weapon.”

Aylin brightened at once. “What is covert?”

“Nothing useful to you,” Rafael said immediately.

“Something you are not becoming,” Gregoris added.

Aylin narrowed her eyes, suspicious now. “That sounds like lying.”

“It is parenting,” Gabriel said.

Across the ballroom, oblivious to the legal and moral collapse currently occurring in the adults’ corner, Cecil said something low to Frederik. Frederik inclined his head, his posture still composed, but just softened enough at the edges to be visible to those who knew him. The sight of it, somehow, only encouraged Aylin further.

“Fred did good,” she declared.

“Yes,” Gregoris said.

“And Cecil liked it.”

No one answered immediately.

Because again, she was not wrong.

Aylin’s blue eyes moved from one adult face to another, triumphant now in the way of children who had stumbled onto a truth and intended to stand on it until removed. “So if someone is rude again, we are helping Cecil.”

Rafael corrected her at once. “Frederik is not starting a campaign.”

Aylin looked at Gregoris instead, clearly aware that in questions of tactical violence her father might not be the most reliable authority in the group. “Papa?”

Gregoris, still watching the children across the room, answered in the maddeningly even tone that meant he had already considered far too much. “No biting.”

Aylin sighed as though this were a tragic and deeply personal restriction on her freedoms.

“But,” Gregoris added, and Rafael felt doom arrive in real time, “you may tell an adult.”

Aylin thought about that. “That is less fun.”

“Yes,” Rafael said. “That is why it is the correct answer.”

Gabriel folded one leg over the other, perfectly composed. “You say that as though she will not simply report the offense with such precision that the responsible adult can do the social equivalent of biting for her.”

Aylin turned toward him, fascinated. “Can I?”

Rafael made a strangled sound.

Damian’s eyes, still on Cecil and Frederik, gleamed faintly. “Within reason.”

“Damian.”

“What?” he asked, with complete false innocence. “Reporting discourtesy is a court skill.”

“At four?”

“At four, she can begin observation.”

Gabriel nodded once. “That part, I approve.”

“Of course you do,” Rafael muttered.

Aylin, now thrilled to have acquired an official framework for future menace, settled more comfortably against Rafael and looked back across the ballroom with renewed purpose. “I can observe.”

“You can,” Gregoris said.

“And report.”

“Yes.”

“And not bite.”

She was quiet for a full three seconds.

Then she asked, with solemn disappointment, “Can I glare?”

Gabriel smiled into his glass.

Damian’s mouth curved.

Gregoris said, “Moderately.”

Rafael looked at all of them as if abandoned by civilization itself. “There is not one responsible person here.”

Aylin rested her cheek against his shoulder, satisfied with the terms of engagement now established. “I am responsible.”

“That,” Rafael said, “is exactly what worries me.”

And across the ballroom, under ether light and chandeliers and the polite hum of imperial power, Cecil remained untroubled, Frederik remained at his side, and the evening continued – unaware that behind one elegant floral arrangement, a four-year-old had just been granted the right to glare.

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