Chapter 169: Chapter 169: Personal Assessment

Nero’s face, which had been carrying the easy calm of a man entertained by Dean’s suffering, cooled by a degree.

“That,” Dean said, very softly, “is vile.”

“It was dealt with,” Voss said at once. “The student was expelled. Charges followed. The university restructured half its internal security after that. Separate instructional corridors, supervised transitions for certain groups, scent-suppression emergency fields in designated halls, private reporting channels, faculty drills, and protected attendance provisions.”

Dean looked ahead at the corridor branching in two directions, old stone reinforced with discreet modern systems so seamlessly embedded that the security looked like architecture unless one knew what to look for.

“Protected attendance provisions,” he repeated. “That sounds bureaucratic enough to be dangerous.”

“It mostly ruins scheduling,” Voss admitted. “But it works.”

That won a brief look of approval from Dean.

They entered the next building, where the hall opened wide beneath a high ceiling ribbed in dark wood and pale carved stone. Portraits of former rectors lined one wall, while the other held clean digital panels displaying schedules, room allocations, faculty notices, and enough institutional language to make Dean feel preemptively insulted.

Voss gestured toward the split ahead. “The dominant omega instructional halls are primarily east. Dominant alpha sequences are west. Some advanced labs, research rooms, archives, policy seminars, and specialist lectures take place in mixed spaces with stronger regulation systems.”

Dean looked from one corridor to the other. “So I’m meant to choose a direction like a politically inconvenient fairy tale.”

“In ordinary circumstances,” Voss said carefully, “your designation would place you in the dominant omega academic structure by default.”

Dean’s brow lifted. “Ordinary circumstances.”

“Yes.” Voss adjusted his glasses. “But you are marked, publicly protected, and your status was filed with very specific exemptions.”

Dean’s fingers brushed once, absently, against the pearls at his throat.

Voss continued before that silence could become awkward. “Because your bond is already formal and stable, you have more freedom than an unmarked student would. You may attend the omega sequence and mixed advanced modules where approved and certain alpha-track lectures if the faculty agrees and the timing permits. In practical terms, your schedule may be built around coursework rather than protocol alone.”

Dean blinked. “So I get educational flexibility because my life became politically inconvenient.”

Nero, beside him, said mildly, “That does seem to be the institutional conclusion.”

Dean pointed at him. “You do not get to comment. You are the greater insult here.”

Voss made the mistake of answering honestly. “His Highness of Saha has a reduced-residency arrangement.”

Dean turned to him at once. “Of course he does.”

Sylvia stared at Nero. “Wait. What?”

Voss, now committed, went on. “He usually attends for approximately two weeks each semester, completes his required assessments, sits examinations, meets with the relevant faculty, and returns to Saha.”

There was a beat of silence.

Then Dean turned slowly toward Nero.

“You,” he said, with careful clarity, “are one of those profoundly irritating people who make systems worse by surviving them too efficiently.”

Nero’s mouth twitched. “I do the reading.”

“That is not a defense.”

“It has worked so far.”

Sylvia looked openly offended. “That’s revolting.”

“Thank you,” Dean said to her, then turned to Nero. “Why is your life like this?”

“Because my parents raised me as the menace I am and didn’t try to make me feel normal like yours.”

Dean stared at him.

Sylvia made a scandalized sound. “That is one of the most appalling self-assessments I’ve ever heard from a prince.”

“It wasn’t self-assessment,” Nero said. “It was family history.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “Excuse me.”

Nero looked at him with infuriating calm as they kept walking beside Voss through the eastern corridor, their pace moderated only by the fact that Voss seemed dimly aware he was escorting the academic equivalent of an unstable diplomatic package.

“My parents let me choose,” Nero said. “Because they care about outcomes more than aesthetics. Yours,” and here his gaze sharpened just slightly, “wanted you and Sebastian to have something that looked normal.”

Dean’s mouth flattened.

For a second, the humor in him thinned, not gone, only pulled back enough for the truth beneath it to show.

“That,” he said, “is a very elegant way of describing state-sponsored denial.”

Sylvia glanced at him.

Nero’s expression shifted by a degree. “Maybe.”

Dean let out a short breath through his nose. “No, not maybe. Definitely. Lucas and Trevor took one look at two sons with enough family complications to destabilize smaller governments and decided the solution was schooling. Ordinary, respectable, properly scheduled schooling. Uniforms. Timetables. Socialization.” He paused. “As if any of that was ever going to make Sebastian less Sebastian.”

“Or you less you,” Sylvia added.

Dean looked at her. “Exactly.”

Voss, to his credit, kept his face entirely neutral, though his grip on the tablet adjusted ever so slightly with the tension of a man overhearing private aristocratic dysfunction while pretending it was orientation.

Nero glanced ahead, then back at Dean. “Would you rather they had done what my parents did?”

Dean opened his mouth, then closed it.

That alone was answer enough to be irritating.

Because no, not exactly.

Not in full.

Dax and Chris had raised Nero like a carefully weaponized natural disaster and then, apparently, trusted him to pursue knowledge the same way: ferally, efficiently, and with minimal institutional interference. That only worked because Nero was Nero: brilliant, disciplined when it mattered, impossible to steer unless he chose the direction first.

Dean could admit, privately and under torture, that there were advantages to that model.

He could also admit that if he had been handed the same freedom at sixteen, half the empire might have ended up regretting it.

“I’d rather,” Dean said at last, “that my parents had chosen ’normal’ with slightly less commitment to the theater of it.”

Nero’s mouth moved faintly. “That sounds more accurate.”

Sylvia folded her arms. “You say that now, but if they’d let you study by private tutors and examinations only, you would have become worse.”

Dean looked offended. “That is an accusation without evidence.”

“You’ve been here less than an hour,” Sylvia said. “You’ve already threatened the architecture, insulted the university, and emotionally attacked a scheduling system.”

“It deserved that.”

“It did,” Nero said.

Dean turned to him at once. “Don’t agree with me in that tone.”

“What tone?”

“The one suggesting I’m entertaining instead of correct.”

“You can be both.”

“That is a dangerous philosophy.”

Voss cleared his throat gently, as if re-entering a conversation only after confirming it would not bite him. “If I may,” he said, with the careful diplomacy of a man stepping between young royals and a philosophical dispute, “there are advantages and disadvantages to both structures.”

Dean looked at him. “Go on. Since apparently this has become educational in multiple directions.”

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