"Don’t you dare."
Cassian entered the office in sleeping clothes.
A dark silk shirt hung open at the throat beneath a long dressing coat, one side of the collar folded incorrectly. His silver hair had escaped its usual binding and fell loose around his face. Soft indoor shoes made almost no sound against the floor, which only made the force of his arrival more alarming.
Two physicians followed him.
Neither appeared willing to pass him.
Cassian stopped inside the open doors and looked at the room.
The awakened maps.
The active archives.
Mezos standing with one arm immobilized.
Liam barefoot in a white sleeping robe.
Arik in an imperial bathrobe, his damp hair swept back and gold shining through the bandages around both hands.
Then Severin, standing beside the desk as though emerging from sealed imperial offices after midnight, remained a perfectly reasonable use of his time.
Cassian briefly closed his eyes, like a parent catching their children doing stupid things after their bedtime.
"Don’t you dare," he repeated, quieter now, "tell me there was a good reason for this."
"There was," Severin said.
Cassian pointed at him without looking. "You rendered a physician unconscious."
"He entered without permission."
"He was treating the sovereign."
"He was interrupting an assessment."
"You attacked the sovereign."
"I assessed him too."
Cassian’s eyes opened, clearly more annoyed than before.
They moved to the torn collar of Arik’s robe, then to the fractured plaster visible through the open passage beyond the office.
His face became terrifyingly calm.
"You put him against a wall."
"He responded appropriately."
"He is leaking ether through both hands."
"Less than before."
Cassian turned to Arik.
"And you."
Arik raised one brow.
The expression made something dangerous flicker beneath Cassian’s exhaustion.
"You were instructed to rest."
"I showered."
One of the physicians made a strained sound.
Cassian stared at Arik.
"A shower is not sleep."
"I found it restorative."
"You opened an imperial office that has been sealed for over half a century while wearing a bathrobe."
"The robe was provided by the palace."
"That is the part you chose to defend?"
Liam leaned lightly into Arik’s side.
Cassian noticed at once, and his anger shifted toward concern.
"You should not be standing."
"I wanted to see whether the lock opened."
Cassian looked at Severin. "You woke a recovering patient to test a sovereign ward?"
"I did not wake him."
Liam lifted one hand. "I woke when everyone began threatening each other."
The first physician stepped forward cautiously. "Your Majesties, Chief Mezos—"
Mezos moved half a step away.
The physician stopped.
Cassian pointed toward him. "Do not run from the physician."
"I did not run."
"You vanished from a sedated room through a concealed passage."
"I walked quickly."
Cassian looked between the three injured men, then at Severin.
"You."
Severin’s watery jade eyes narrowed slightly.
"You are the only person here who was not ordered to remain in bed."
"Correct."
"Which means you were responsible for preventing this."
"I caused it."
Cassian pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose.
The unfinished continuity order still hovered above the desk behind them, surrounded by reopened files and the glowing notice bearing Felix Canmore’s name.
When Cassian lowered his hand, his gaze caught on it.
Everything else disappeared from his expression.
He crossed the room slowly.
The fury remained, but grief moved beneath it, older and far less controlled.
"You opened the archive," he said.
"The office opened it," Arik replied.
Cassian stopped beside the desk.
His eyes moved across Goliath’s unfinished writing.
For a moment, he looked less like the prime minister who had maintained Nuria for seventy-two years and more like the man who had once stood in this room while someone he loved tried to prepare an empire for his own destruction.
"He never finished this," Cassian said.
"No," Severin answered.
Cassian did not look at him. "I know."
His fingers hovered over the document but did not touch it.
"You were here," Arik said.
Cassian’s jaw tightened.
"Yes."
The memory stirred inside Arik before Cassian could explain.
Goliath leaning over the desk, one hand shaking so badly that gold stained the edge of the page.
Cassian beside him, arguing that the order could wait until the physicians had stabilized the poison.
Goliath refusing because he knew there was nothing to stabilize anymore.
Cassian taking the pen from his hand in a rare act of defiance.
Arik’s breath changed.
Cassian heard it.
"What did you remember?"
"You took the pen."
Cassian went still.
"You told him the empire could survive one night without another command."
The grief in Cassian’s face broke open.
"He told me empires did not collapse because of one night," Cassian said. "They collapsed because everyone believed someone else would still be there in the morning."
Arik looked at the unfinished sentence.
Silence settled over the office.
The physicians no longer attempted to approach.
Even Severin’s shadows became still.
Cassian looked toward the reopened file.
"Why did the office select that record?"
"Because Felix came through the Gate twenty-five years ago," Arik said. "Using Goliath’s appearance and stolen ether."
Cassian’s gaze snapped to Severin.
"You told him."
"Yes."
"You were ordered never to disclose that without council authorization."
"The sovereign asked."
"He is not—"
Cassian stopped.
Arik waited.
The office glowed around them, every ward open, every system answering the ether beneath his skin.
Cassian looked at him.
"He needed to know," Severin said.
Cassian released a slow breath.
"Yes," he admitted. "He did."
Arik activated the Felix record again.
"He was draining Wrohan and targeting Agaron’s imperial core because he was preparing another attempt. We thought his own pheromones had poisoned him and that he needed the ether to survive."
"He likely did," Cassian said. "But Felix never pursued only one objective."
"He wanted enough sovereign-grade ether to stabilize the imitation."
"And access Nuria again," Severin added.
Cassian stared at the file and then at Arik.
"You reached that conclusion tonight?"
"Severin supplied the missing event."
"And none of you considered that this analysis could wait until morning?"
"No," Liam said.
Cassian looked toward him.
Liam’s eyes were open now, crimson and entirely alert despite the hour.
"Felix poisoned me too," he said. "I would prefer not to wait politely while everyone else decides which part of his plan concerns me."
Cassian’s anger vanished.
His gaze moved immediately to the mark at Liam’s nape, then to the way Arik held him close.
"With the same compound?" he asked.
"A modified version."
Cassian looked at Arik.
"You brought him through the Gate while he was recovering from Felix’s poison?"
"The Gate took him first."
Cassian closed his eyes again.
When he opened them, he looked at Severin.
"You allowed them to leave the room."
"They were determined."
"You command special troops."
"They are unusually difficult patients."
Cassian’s gaze returned to Arik’s glowing bandages.
"Five minutes," he said.
Arik’s brow rose.
"You have five minutes to review whatever the office opened for you. Then the physicians examine all three of you, Liam returns to bed, Mezos is sedated properly, and you stop leaking ether into imperial archives."
"I cannot promise the last one."
"Then promise to attempt it."
Arik looked at the old man standing before him in disordered sleeping clothes, grief still visible beneath his authority.
"I will consider it."
Cassian became motionless.
Severin looked away.
Mezos’s mouth tightened, trying his best not to laugh in this moment.
Liam sighed, knowing what the other thought.
Cassian stared at Arik with the exhausted horror of a man hearing the same answer across two lifetimes.
"Of course you will."