Chapter 87: Chapter 87: Go.

The return to the Capital felt like stepping back into a machine that had never stopped turning.

Sun and salt were replaced by marble and glass, by corridors that carried the low echo of voices, and by the constant, invisible pressure of schedules and expectations. Rafael slipped into it with ease. His posture straightened, his expression settled into calm composure, and whatever softness the sea had coaxed into him folded neatly back into place.

Gregoris noticed.

With the same alert, assessing attention he gave to borders and battle maps. Rafael was not withdrawing. He was aligning himself again, fitting back into a world that demanded precision.

It was only later, in the quiet of Gregoris’s office, when the doors were closed and the palace noise became a distant murmur, that the subject Damian had warned him about finally surfaced.

Delphine.

Gregoris laid out the situation without embellishment. The censorship contracts she had maintained for years were being withdrawn. Payments to certain news outlets, social columns, and discreet “independent” gossip channels had stopped. The Emperor’s intelligence confirmed that, in parallel, offers of amplification were already circulating – subtle ones, framed as coincidence and editorial interest. Rafael’s name, once carefully absent, was being prepared for reintroduction.

Gregoris spoke first. “Your mother is dismantling her own silence.”

Rafael barely reacted.

“No,” he said calmly. “She’s dismantling her part of it.”

Gregoris looked at him. “Explain.”

Rafael met his gaze without flinching. “The censorship didn’t start with her. She only paid the visible layers – the newspapers, the gossip networks, and the social registries. The parts that leave receipts.”

Gregoris’s eyes narrowed. “And the rest?”

Rafael exhaled slowly. “The rest was me.”

Silence fell between them, heavy and sudden.

“I built the suppression protocols,” Rafael continued, voice steady. “Legal delays, archival misplacements, quiet influence over which names circulated and which didn’t. I made it… inconvenient to talk about me. Delphine only reinforced what already existed. When she withdrew her money, the structure remained. Because it’s mine.”

Gregoris stared at him.

For a moment, the world narrowed to the space between them and the realization settling into place.

“You managed your own disappearance,” Gregoris said slowly.

“Yes.”

“And let her believe she controlled it.”

Rafael’s mouth curved, faint and humorless. “It was easier that way.”

Something dangerous flickered behind Gregoris’s eyes, his pheromones becoming colder.

“She tried to weaponize your name,” he said.

“She always has,” Rafael replied. “This time she just stopped pretending it was for my protection.”

Gregoris let out a short, incredulous laugh, the sound edged with something that was not amusement so much as disbelief sharpened into humor.

“Why am I not surprised?” he muttered quietly, more to himself than to Rafael.

He turned away for a moment, pacing a step, then another, the way he did when information had just rearranged an entire mental map. The office was built for command with broad windows, dark wood, and a desk that had seen campaign plans and execution orders alike. For a heartbeat, it felt too small for the shift in the air.

“You didn’t just protect yourself,” Gregoris said at last. “You built an entire shadow infrastructure and let your own mother think she was the architect.”

Rafael leaned back against the desk, arms folded, unbothered by the weight in the room. “I learned early that if someone wants control badly enough, they’ll accept the illusion of it. Delphine wanted to believe she was the one keeping my name out of circulation. So I let her fund the visible mechanisms while I handled the parts that actually mattered.”

Gregoris studied him with a look that belonged on a battlefield rather than in a sunlit office. Not anger at Rafael. It was the cold, brutal fury reserved for those who mistook possession for care.

“She is withdrawing her money now to force exposure,” he said. “To make the world say your name until you can’t escape it, then stand back and claim innocence.”

“Yes,” Rafael answered simply. “She’ll say the press is curious, the public is nostalgic, and the timing is coincidental. That she never ordered anything. Technically, she won’t be lying.”

Gregoris’s hand curled slowly against the edge of the desk. The wood creaked under the pressure.

“That is a provocation,” he said.

“I know.” Rafael’s voice was steady, but there was steel beneath it. “That’s why I told Damian the truth before she could twist it. And that’s why I’m telling you now.”

Gregoris lifted his gaze to him again. “You were never surprised when I warned you.”

Rafael shook his head once. “No. I just confirmed a pattern.”

Silence settled again, denser this time. Gregoris’s aura, usually contained with military discipline, sharpened into something lethal and focused. The man who commanded shadows and ended threats before they fully formed was very clearly considering solutions that did not involve courts or headlines.

Rafael saw it instantly.

“Don’t,” he said.

Gregoris’s eyes flicked to him. “Don’t what?”

“Decide she’s a problem you can erase.” Rafael straightened, closing the small distance between them. “She’s mine to handle. You don’t get to solve this the way you solve insurgencies.”

Gregoris’s jaw tightened. “She is deliberately trying to destabilize you despite my warnings.”

“Yes,” Rafael agreed. “And I will not reward that by turning her into a martyr or a mystery. I won’t have her disappear. I won’t have her die. And I won’t have you make the choice for me.”

The words weren’t soft. They weren’t pleading. They were the calm assertion of someone who had spent years surviving power and understood its cost.

For a long moment, Gregoris said nothing.

Then, slowly, he exhaled, the tension in his shoulders easing by a fraction, as if he were forcing a blade back into its sheath.

“I will not touch her,” he said. “Not without your consent.”

Rafael held his gaze. “And you won’t look for ways around that sentence either.”

A faint, dangerous smile curved Gregoris’s mouth. “You really did grow up in a court.”

“And you really did grow up in war,” Rafael replied. “That’s why we’re having this conversation instead of a funeral.”

Gregoris’ expression softened slightly, not into gentleness, but into respect.

“Very well,” he said. “She remains alive, visible, and politically inconvenient. Exactly where you want her.”

Rafael nodded once. “Exactly.”

“Now, Marin is waiting for you for the checkup,” Gregoris said, as if they had just finished discussing supply routes instead of media warfare and maternal sabotage.

Rafael turned to him slowly. “I feel fine…”

“You go now.” The tone left no room for debate.

Rafael narrowed his eyes. “You realize that in the last week Damian ordered Gabriel not to flee his own coronation and marriage, declared half the court on emergency watch, and grounded the most dangerous omega in the Empire like an unruly cadet. That alone qualifies as a surprise-heavy schedule.”

Gregoris lifted one brow.

It was the same expression he wore when a general tried to argue logistics with him. Calm. Patient. Faintly pitying.

“There may be another,” he said.

Rafael stared. “That is not comforting.”

“It is informative.”

Rafael exhaled through his nose, long and theatrical, the sound of a man who knew exactly when he had lost.

“…You’re impossible.”

“Yes.”

“And you enjoy this.”

“Yes.”

Rafael closed his eyes for a second, then opened them and pushed away from the desk. “Very well,” he said, resigned but not defeated. “I will submit myself to Marin’s professional curiosity and invasive concern.”

Gregoris’s mouth curved, barely. “Good.”

Rafael paused at the door, glancing back. “If this ’surprise’ involves blood, prophecy, or anything glowing, I’m blaming you.”

Gregoris’s gaze softened a fraction. “Go.”

Rafael shook his head, half-amused, half-suspicious, and left for the medical wing, already composing several future complaints in his mind.

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