Mezos tried to move the fingers of his right hand and discovered, through an immediate and deeply educational burst of pain, that at least one bone remained broken, along with several ether channels the physicians had described as "badly strained" because apparently palace medicine preferred polite language to accuracy.
The Gate had thrown him into the column like a fucking fly.
He clenched his left hand against the white marble, directly over the long crack his body had left behind, while the support field around his injured shoulder tightened in warning.
There was no Gate anymore.
Only the damaged column, a faint distortion in the ward pattern, and several readings so poor that even Nuria’s engineers had stopped pretending they constituted useful evidence. Severin had informed him that no one inside the boundary had ever observed a Gate for more than a few seconds, much less measured one before it vanished.
That information had placed Mezos in a foul mood.
Below the open terrace stretched Deira, its towers, suspended roads, and layered gardens floating above a sea of cloud as though an entire capital had decided gravity was beneath it. It should have been impressive.
Mezos felt only panic.
If they could not find a way out, Arik would have to accept the oath, become the sovereign of an empire none of them had known still existed, and somehow explain to Agaron, assuming they ever reached it again, why its crown prince had acquired another throne while missing for what might become weeks, months, or years.
That was before anyone considered what would happen if Nuria returned to the outside world.
If it returned.
"You look like hell," Arik said.
Mezos turned.
Arik leaned against the column opposite him, dressed in a white shirt and dark brown trousers the palace staff had prepared, his hands still bandaged but no longer cracked or leaking gold ether. Several days of enforced rest had stabilized him considerably, although Mezos remained undecided whether to feel impressed, alarmed, or personally offended by the final form the Gate had chosen for him.
Arik did not appear to be changing anymore.
He had gained more than ten inches in height, and the Gate had broadened him into something built less like a young crown prince and more like a weapon designed for siege warfare. His black hair, now tipped in gold, had been swept away from a face sharpened by the transformation, while his eyes carried a molten light Mezos disliked because it belonged equally to Arik and the sovereign this empire had spent seventy-two years waiting to reclaim.
"The column broke my hand," Mezos said.
"You broke the column with your body."
"The distinction does not improve my hand."
Arik’s gaze moved to the support field. "The physicians told you not to come here."
"They told you not to open sealed imperial rooms."
Arik hummed, as if answering were beneath him.
Mezos looked at him.
Arik’s mouth shifted faintly before his attention moved to the empty space between the columns.
"This was where it appeared?"
"Yes."
"And there is nothing left."
"The ward engineers found residual stress, but no structure, anchor point, or stable ether signature. From inside Nuria, the Gate does not exist."
Arik’s amusement disappeared.
Mezos released the column and flexed his left hand, although the impulse to strike something remained.
"The imperial core recorded our arrival," he continued, "but only after we crossed the boundary. It recognized a rupture, impact, and foreign ether entering the capital. It did not record where the passage began or how to reproduce it."
"So the Gate was visible from Wrohan’s side but not from here."
"Apparently."
"Can the core search outside the boundary?"
"Not without more sovereign authority than it currently has."
Arik’s expression hardened. "The oath."
Mezos nodded.
The council had been clear about that part. A fully bound sovereign might awaken systems that had remained inaccessible since Goliath’s poisoning, including deeper layers of the border and whatever mechanism had once connected Nuria to the wider world.
Might.
Mezos had developed a violent dislike for that word.
Arik moved closer to the scar in the marble, studying it as though stubborn attention might force a door to reappear.
"What about the communication devices?"
"Checked."
"All of them?"
"Our communicators, the emergency units, the field relays, and Liam’s phone."
Arik glanced at him. "Why does that sound like a separate category?"
"Because Liam’s phone contains more unauthorized modifications than our military equipment."
"That sounds normal."
"It is not."
Mezos had spent most of the previous afternoon with three Nurian technicians, two translators, and a deeply offended palace engineer trying to connect Agaronian devices to a power system that used different ether frequencies, current regulation, and interface standards.
They had eventually succeeded.
Technically.
Charging a communicator from Nurian equipment required a conversion plate large enough to power a small surveillance station, and even then the process moved with agonizing slowness. Liam’s phone had gained fourteen percent charge in nearly five hours, becoming hot enough that Mezos had disconnected it before the Nurian engineers could describe the event as an interesting compatibility response.
"The devices work," Mezos said. "They store information, open local files, and recognize one another when placed close enough together. There is no external signal, no network response, no emergency military frequency, and no trace of the relay beacon we left near the Gate."
"No delayed messages?"
"Nothing."
"Could the boundary be blocking them?"
"It could be blocking everything, or there could simply be nothing on this side for them to connect to."
Arik looked beyond the terrace toward the clouded horizon.
For a moment, the sovereign light in his eyes dimmed enough for Mezos to see the man underneath it—the son separated from his parents, the crown prince cut off from his empire, and the mate who had no certainty that Liam’s family even knew he was alive.
"At least the information survived," Arik said.
"Yes."
That should have been reassuring.
It was not.
Their communicators contained military encryption protocols, command contacts, limited deployment records, emergency routes, and enough operational data to create problems if anyone gained access. Liam’s phone was worse in an entirely different way. It held technical notes, laboratory files, fragments of turbine designs, personal messages, photographs, and whatever else Liam had considered necessary to carry without ever expecting to be thrown into another empire.
Mezos rubbed his forehead with his left hand.
Arik noticed. "What?"
"We need the information to understand how the Gate opened from our side."
"Yes."
"Which means we may have to share Agaronian and Wrohanian records with Nurian engineers."
"Yes."
"If you take the oath, you become Nuria’s sovereign."
Arik’s gaze sharpened.
Mezos continued before either of them could pretend the problem was not obvious.
"At that point, if we use restricted Agaronian information to strengthen Nuria’s systems, reopen its boundary, or prepare it for contact with the outside, is that still rescue work?"
Arik said nothing.
"Or," Mezos added, feeling the beginning of a headache settle behind his eyes, "are we conducting espionage against our own empire in favor of yours?"
"Nuria is not mine yet."
"The core disagrees."
"I have not taken the oath."
"You have ten days."
"Nine."
"That correction did not help."
Arik looked back at the invisible place where the Gate had vanished. Then he folded his bandaged arms over his chest. "You are remarkably unhelpful today."
"I broke my hand against a doorway that no longer exists. Optimism is currently unavailable."
A breeze moved across the terrace, carrying the cold scent of cloud and stone between them.
Then Arik said, "We separate what is necessary from what is strategic. Gate mechanics, energy readings, and the relevant Lab V research can be reviewed under our supervision. Military records remain sealed. Nothing is copied into Nurian systems without our approval."
"And if the council orders otherwise?"
"They can attempt it."
Mezos looked at the man the Gate had made taller, stronger, and increasingly difficult to distinguish from the sovereign Nuria already believed it owned.
"That answer becomes complicated if you take the oath."
Arik’s jaw tightened.
"Yes," he said. "It does."
Mezos looked again at the crack in the column, then at the communicator in his pocket, holding information from a world that might as well have been on the other side of death.
A new headache began forming behind his eyes.
At least one part of him remained entirely functional.