Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)

Later that afternoon

In the Emperor's private study, the atmosphere was markedly different from the sharp-edged rhythm of the council chamber. The low hum of the ether fireplace filled the space, its steady glow casting soft gold across shelves of sealed ledgers and stacks of pending reports.

Damian sat in the high-backed chair by the desk, one arm securely around Arik, the other holding a sheaf of documents he read aloud in a low, deliberate tone. The words themselves, border inspection reports and military requisitions, were hardly the stuff of lullabies, but the cadence was enough to keep the child's golden eyes fixed on him with quiet, unwavering attention.

Not that Arik's composure was typical. The nannies had nearly resigned after the first week of his royal fussiness, Edward's term, delivered with the bone-dry precision only he could manage. The boy would accept no substitute for one of his parents, his demands escalating from plaintive whimpers to imperious cries until the situation was corrected.

Damian had found the solution simple: keep him close.

He turned the page of the report, shifting Arik higher against his chest without losing his place. "...and the patrol along the eastern pass intercepted..."

The door opened without a knock. Gregoris stepped inside, closing it with the quiet finality of a man who'd never been told to wait.

Damian didn't look up from the report. "If you're here to drag me to another meeting, you'll be disappointed."

"Not today," Gregoris said, his gaze flicking first to the child, then to the pile of documents. "I came to deliver my report on the Empress in waiting's return to work."

That earned him Damian's attention.

Gregoris crossed the room, stopping a precise distance from the desk. "He's efficient. The council barely had time to mount their usual games before he dismantled them. Two nobles will be licking their wounds for weeks."

Damian's mouth curved faintly. "As expected."

Gregoris's gaze drifted to Arik again. The boy blinked back at him, steady, unafraid, and golden-eyed.

"Edward told me…" Gregoris said, the words edged with the dry bite of a man who disliked learning palace secrets secondhand, "…that his royal fussiness might be the former Emperor Goliath."

Damian didn't look up from the report in his hand. "Might," he echoed, the single word deliberate.

Gregoris's mouth curved faintly, though there was no humor in it. "I saw Goliath once, when I was a boy, after the poisoning. He was a shadow of what he'd been, but the eyes…" His gaze returned to Arik, unblinking. "They were the eyes of a man chosen by the ether itself. I've only seen that mark twice in my life, once on him, and once on you."

Damian finally set the report down, adjusting the blanket over Arik with a slow, deliberate motion. "Well, it might be that… or the ether has chosen him without the trial."

Gregoris tilted his head, studying him. "Do you believe that?"

Damian's gaze didn't waver from the boy in his arms. "No." His voice was calm, but the certainty in it carried like steel through water. "Gabriel is right—this is Goliath. The one who unified the Empire. The one who bent it to his will and held it together long enough for it to survive the worst of itself."

Gregoris's brow furrowed slightly, though his tone stayed neutral. "And now he's your son."

Damian's golden eyes lifted, sharp and deliberate. "Now he's ours. And this time, no one will burn his ether out of him."

"Lucky you, Your Royal Highness." Gregoris's reply carried the faint curl of a man who'd seen too many coincidences to believe in them. He stepped closer and, with an unusual gentleness for someone whose hands were more accustomed to killing than cradling, took the child from Damian's arms. "Or…" his gaze held steady, the pause a punctuation of what he said next "…did you plan for it?"

Arik only gooed, unconcerned with the weight of the conversation, and reached for the black-metal insignia pinned to Gregoris's chest. Tiny fingers closed over the Shadow Commander's emblem, tugging at it with the unthinking persistence of the very young.

Gregoris glanced down at the grip, one corner of his mouth twitching before his eyes returned to Damian, still waiting for an answer.

Damian didn't give him one directly. Instead, his gaze rested on the golden irises staring back at him from a face still too small to know what it carried. "Goliath taught Gabriel strategy," he said at last, voice quiet but edged. "If anyone could drag fate to its knees and demand a second life, it was him."

Gregoris chuckled, the sound low and almost fond in a man whose fondness usually came with a blade. "Then let me train him when he is old enough."

Damian's head tilted, the faintest smirk touching his mouth. "You'd like that, wouldn't you? Another shadow to mold. A weapon before he's a man."

"Better that than a crown before he's ready," Gregoris countered easily, bouncing Arik once on his arm. The boy reached for his insignia again, determined, as if already claiming what he wanted.

Damian's gaze lingered on the small hand, then rose to meet Gregoris's. "We'll see," he said, the words carrying the weight of a man who intended to decide not only when but how the boy's power would be sharpened. "You have Rafael to deal with."

Gregoris's expression shifted into something halfway between resignation and mild irritation. "You're sending me from potential empire-shaping history to babysitting your consort's pet viper?"

"You were the one who sent his mother a marriage proposal without talking to him," Damian said, the faintest curl of amusement in his voice. "If you're going to poach from my court, at least have the courtesy to inform me first."

"That wasn't poaching," Gregoris replied, though the dryness in his tone did nothing to hide the flicker of satisfaction beneath it. "It was strategy."

Damian's gaze was pointed, golden eyes pinning him like a pinned specimen. "Strategy born from boredom and Alexandra's bright idea at the pregnancy banquet, if I remember correctly. Something about the two of you being the only ones left unattached."

A rare flash of humor touched Gregoris's mouth. "She said we'd suit each other. I agreed… mostly to see the panic in his eyes."

"And now?" Damian asked, faintly amused at the man's delusion of not being chest-deep in it.

Gregoris didn't answer immediately. He shifted Arik higher in his arms, buying himself the moment, though the tightening at the corner of his mouth gave him away. "Now," he said at last, "I find it… less amusing when other people speak to him."

"Possessive already." Damian's tone made it sound like an observation on weather patterns rather than human behavior.

Gregoris's reply was almost too smooth. "Please don't give me an earful about who's possessive or not; you took Gabriel after two months, found where he was and, a few days after you met him, had him marked."

Damian's smirk deepened by a fraction, the kind that never reached his eyes. "I knew what I wanted."

"So do I," Gregoris said, and there was no humor now, only the quiet, pointed certainty of a man stating a military fact. "The difference is, I didn't get to walk in with the Emperor's crown and strip every rival from the board in a single move."

Damian let that sit for a beat, golden gaze steady. "No, you're walking in with my approval instead. And as a friend, not Emperor, I warn you that Rafael has commissioned some scandalous suit for the next gala, open chest or back; I didn't care to remember."

Gregoris's brows rose a fraction, though the rest of his face stayed carved from its usual composure. "Did he now?"

"Alexandra encouraged it," Damian added, the faintest hint of amusement curling at the edge of his mouth. "And before you ask, yes, she knew exactly what she was doing."

Gregoris made a low sound in his throat, somewhere between a hum and a warning growl, shifting Arik higher in his arm as if the child could somehow be shielded from the mental image. "She's playing with fire."

"She's playing with you," Damian corrected. "And if I recall correctly, you're the one who walked into it five months ago out of boredom."

Gregoris's mouth tightened, the memory of the banquet flashing unbidden, Alexandra's sly remark that they were the only ones in the room left unclaimed, Rafael's startled glance, and the delicious edge of panic in those blue eyes. "Boredom doesn't explain everything," he said at last, tone low enough that even the ether hum in the room almost drowned it out.

Damian's smirk deepened. "No. But obsession does."