The Reborn Sovereign of Ruin, Bound by His Star

"Yes," Liam said. "The brooches are inhibiting your senses too, which is why your people are confused. They can feel that something is wrong, but the devices are dulling the part of them that would normally identify the problem cleanly."

Mezos went very still.

That, Liam thought, was how a competent man reacted when someone confirmed his enemy had not merely restrained him but made him doubt the accuracy of his own body.

"The palace is feeding you yellow ether through a blue mask," Liam continued. "It is not poison. Not exactly. But it is thin, overprocessed, and badly suited to high-flow Agaron channels. Under normal conditions, your people could compensate. With the owl brooches choking their circulation, compensation becomes strain. Strain becomes backlash. Backlash becomes someone collapsing politely near the dessert table while every minister in this cursed palace pretends to be shocked."

Mezos’s eyes cooled.

"What do we need?"

"Blue or white ether," Liam said. "Actual blue or white, not theatrical lighting. Preferably from a brute exploitation source, unsoftened before distribution and not filtered through Wrohan’s palace etiquette."

Mezos stared at him for a beat.

"That is not easy to access in the middle of a state gala."

"No," Liam said. "If it were easy, Wrohan would have ruined it already."

A faint, grim amusement touched Mezos’s face, then vanished.

"Where?"

Liam looked at him for a moment, then toward the glass doors and the reception beyond. Felix was still inside somewhere. George too. The whole room was glittering and lying and humming on low-grade ether dressed in borrowed color.

He hated them.

Felix most of all. Felix with his saint’s face and his predator’s hands. Felix, who had struck him and then tried to arrange him like useful furniture under good lighting.

But Wrohan was not Felix.

The people were not George.

The engineers who kept the poorer districts running on old conduit scraps and overworked storage cells were not the ministers smiling under the palace projection. The country had bones beneath the rot. Good ones, sometimes. Tired ones. Ones Liam had spent too many years trying to strengthen despite every budget cut and every hand closed around his throat.

Mezos watched him carefully.

"Why are you helping?" he asked. "As you said earlier, it is worse for you if you help."

Liam laughed once, without humor.

"Yes. That is generally how my best decisions announce themselves."

"Liam."

The use of his name was quiet enough to be annoying.

He looked back at Mezos.

"I still hate Felix and the Canmores," he said. "And George, obviously. I have taste. But I do not hate the people, and I do not hate the country itself." His gaze moved briefly to the owl brooch visible through the glass on a passing Agaron diplomat, flickering wrong under the palace lights. "And I hate bad engineering more when it is being used to make people suffer politely."

Mezos said nothing, and Liam appreciated it, as he preferred silence when he was doing something stupid.

"I will send Rex coordinates for a source," he said. "If he approves it, meet me there."

Mezos’s brows drew together. "You have access to a brute exploitation source inside the capital."

"I know where one is."

"That is not the same answer."

"No," Liam said. "It is the only answer you’re getting on a balcony."

For the first time, Mezos looked almost openly impressed.

Liam disliked that too.

"It will have to be quiet," Liam continued. "Use normal clothes and no insignia aside from the brooch. If Felix hears that I pointed you toward raw blue ether, he will make this into treason before I finish blinking."

"And if Rex approves?"

"Then it becomes internal cooperation authorized by the Crown Prince of Wrohan for the purpose of preventing a diplomatic medical incident caused by overextended guest protocol."

Mezos paused.

"That sounds rehearsed."

"I am from Wrohan. We learn to make crimes sound administrative before puberty."

A faint smile returned to Mezos’s mouth.

"Useful skill."

"Deeply tragic skill."

Liam pulled out his phone and opened a private line to Rex. His thumb hovered for one second over the screen.

Then he typed the coordinates and sent them.

Almost immediately, the message shifted to encrypted delivery.

Liam lowered the phone.

"Now we wait."

Mezos glanced back toward the reception hall.

"My prince will want to know."

"I assume your prince wants many things."

"Yes," Mezos said. "But this one involves keeping his people upright."

That was fair.

Liam hated that.

He slipped his phone back into his pocket and straightened the long fall of his burgundy coat. The silver ornament pinning it to his cream shirt had shifted slightly during his escape to the balcony, and he adjusted it with the kind of precise, irritated care that suggested he was holding himself together by tailoring and spite.

Then he lifted his chin and made his expression settle in something... not really pleasant.

That would have been ambitious.

But composed enough to suggest he had chosen to be here rather than been placed at the edge of the room like a fuse someone had forgotten to light.

"Well," he said, "we shall see each other tomorrow. For now, I need to leave and meet my family."

A pause.

"The good one."

Mezos’s gaze flicked briefly toward the hall, where Felix’s pale silhouette could still be seen among ministers and old predators pretending to be statesmen.

"I assume that means the Armstrongs."

"It means anyone who sees me as a person before a surname." Liam considered that. "So yes. The Armstrongs."

"Your aunt is arriving?"

"My aunt, my mother, and enough relatives to make Felix remember that not all bloodlines respond to pressure by becoming convenient." Liam looked toward the reception hall and felt his jaw tighten at the sight of the light purple clustered around the Canmore side. "I intend to be visible when they enter."

"Strategic."

"Petty," Liam corrected. "Strategy can happen after dinner."

Mezos’s mouth curved faintly. "I’m beginning to understand why Felix struggles with you."

Liam moved toward the balcony doors, then stopped with one hand near the handle. Through the glass, Arik Oberon Lyon was still somewhere in the royal orbit, black and gold beneath the ether-light, looking like a man who had been built for thrones and disasters with equal ease. Liam did not look directly at him for more than a breath.

That would have been unnecessary.

Also, apparently, noticeable.