The Reborn Sovereign of Ruin, Bound by His Star

Arik was coordinating the meeting.

Rex was doing nothing out of the ordinary for a crown prince. He was reading reports, confirming perimeter adjustments, asking for updated household lists, and making the kind of restrained decisions expected from someone who had been raised to inherit a throne.

George had been picking a fight with him from the moment they entered the room.

Arik sat at the head of the long conference table because everyone had agreed, with varying degrees of reluctance, that Agaron’s security protocols were the only reason the upcoming engagement reception had not already turned into a diplomatic liability wrapped in flowers and bloodline politics. Rex sat to his right, straight-backed, composed, one hand resting beside the briefing documents. George occupied the chair opposite him like a man who believed the table itself was insulting his authority.

Around them, Wrohanian officials, royal secretaries, two senior guards, and three advisers from the internal royal house sat with the brittle expressions of people who had been trapped in too many versions of the same argument.

Ray Canmore was also there.

Not formally leading anything. Not visibly opposing anything. Simply present, seated near the side of the table with one ankle resting over the other, assisting when convenient and watching the royal house of Wrohan devour itself with the faint, lazy interest of a man enjoying bad theatre.

His only saving grace, in Arik’s eyes, was that he was Liam’s father.

Even that was thinning, considering the man became profoundly useless in anything involving Felix.

"Your Highness," Rex said, ignoring his father’s last interruption with the calm of a man who had learned long ago not to bleed in public, "the reception perimeter cannot be left under Canmore security."

"Why not?" Ray asked, one of his ringed fingers tapping the report he had never bothered to read. "Are you unsure of us now that Armstrong and Ravenwood have revealed my bloodline?"

Arik considered evacuating Rex and killing the rest.

His temper was starting to slip from his control, the air around his hand cooling where it rested beneath the table. He kept his fingers still, his expression calm, and his gaze on the report because looking directly at Ray Canmore for too long might become expensive.

Rex did look at Ray.

Only briefly.

"Everyone knows His Majesty and Lord Canmore are no longer on friendly terms," Ray continued, like he was truly important for once. "The issue is not personal pride. We are doing this for Liam."

Arik’s hand clenched beneath the table.

Oh, he was ready to burn them all for this.

Not because the sentence was wrong.

But hearing Ray Canmore say it, hearing him use Liam’s name like a reasonable argument after being useless in every matter involving Felix, made something in Arik’s restraint grind against itself.

Rex’s expression did not change, but his gaze had sharpened. "Then you understand why Canmore security cannot hold the inner perimeter."

Ray smiled faintly. "I understand why you want that stated by someone named Canmore, yes."

George’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. "You speak very generously for a man whose loyalty has become fashionable only after his bloodline was dragged into the public."

Ray’s smile stayed in place, but something behind his eyes chilled. "My loyalty has never been fashionable, Your Majesty. But being kept away from my inheritance because you were ashamed of me..."

Arik could have vomited from these two men.

They were disgusting.

Ray, with his elegant bitterness and lazy cruelty, was sitting there as if every wound in the room were a private joke he had learned to sharpen into manners. George, with his swollen pride, his temper, and his need to turn every accusation into humiliation because he had never learned the difference between authority and ugliness.

"Well," George said, mouth twisting, "you would have had a chance if Felix did not need to feel stronger outside of bed."

The room went dead.

Rex’s fingers stilled over the report.

Ray’s smile did not move, but for the first time since Arik had seen him, the amusement left his face completely. Not because he cared about Felix. Arik doubted Ray Canmore had ever cared about anyone cleanly enough for that. But because George had dragged something private, obscene, and politically rotted into the middle of a security meeting as if it were another weapon he was entitled to use.

One of George’s advisers looked down.

Another actually looked ill.

George saw all of it and, because he was George, mistook disgust for attention.

"You all sit here speaking of Felix as if he were some great shadow," George continued, his voice thick with contempt. "He is not. He is a pathetic man with a clever head and a rotten hunger. Give him a room where no one bows, and he starts looking for a throat. Give him a bed where he is not worshipped, and he crawls out, needing to make someone weaker than him before breakfast."

Rex’s face tightened. "Father."

"No," George snapped. "Since we are all being honest, let us be honest. Felix was never dangerous because he was strong. Strong men do not need every corridor to remember them. Strong men do not need children frightened, women cornered, servants trembling, cousins indebted, and physicians bribed just to feel like their hands mean something."

Ray’s ringed fingers curled once against the table.

Arik noticed.

The old king’s words were foul, but the data beneath them was worse.

George knew.

Perhaps not the medical history. Perhaps not the poison mechanism. Perhaps not the residue and the old obstruction and the way Felix’s touch had burned into Liam’s cheek.

But he had known Felix’s pattern.

The need to dominate after humiliation.

The compulsion to turn weakness into someone else’s injury.

The way his violence was not random but corrective in his own sick mind.

And George had still let him move.

Ray’s voice came very softly. "Careful, Your Majesty."

George laughed at him. "You are saying that as if you were not one of the people Felix used as furniture for his pride."

The line hit.

This time, Ray did not hide it quickly enough.

His face did not crack. He was too disciplined for that. Too vain, perhaps. But something in his eyes flashed cold and old, something that had nothing to do with Liam and everything to do with a history Arik did not yet know and already hated.

Rex’s chair shifted by the smallest degree. "Enough."

George turned on him immediately. "Do not correct me."

"Then stop making yourself obscene in front of foreign witnesses."

The words landed harder than anyone expected.

Even Ray looked at Rex.

George went purple with rage. "You dare..."

"Yes," Rex said.