"I would not let you enter alone."
"Neither will I."
"You carried me away before there was even a discussion."
"Because you had already decided there would be no discussion."
"I was investigating."
"You had concealed the fragment, disabled the barrier, and reached the door before anyone knew where you were."
"The guards knew."
"The guards were chasing you."
"That still counts as knowing."
Arik’s gaze sharpened. "Would you let me do it?"
Liam looked away.
Deira’s suspended districts gleamed beyond the windows, pale towers drifting among golden ether currents, too peaceful for the argument filling the study.
"No," he admitted at last. "But you are different."
Arik gave a short, humorless laugh. "Of course."
"You are."
"Because my soul is damaged?"
"Because Felix’s poison was created for you."
"And the palace called you an authorized vessel."
Liam folded his arms more tightly, brows furrowed. "I am not fragile."
"Neither am I."
"That is debatable."
"So is your judgment."
Liam’s ether stirred sharply around his feet.
Arik took another step closer, anger finally breaking through the restraint in his face.
"If I told you that I did not care what entering that palace might do to me because I needed the answers, what would you do?"
"I would stop you."
"How?"
Liam said nothing.
"You would seal the bridge. You would call Severin. You would place every physician in Nuria between me and that door." Arik’s voice lowered. "And if I continued walking, you would use your ether against me."
"I would not hurt you."
"Neither did I."
"You threw me over your shoulder."
"We both know that, first, you would have opened the door and bolted into the palace the moment I became distracted for even a second." Arik’s gaze sharpened. "Second, you liked it."
Liam stared at him.
"Your pheromones said so," Arik continued mercilessly. "The bond was considerably less discreet."
"That is irrelevant."
"It seemed relevant at the time."
"My body reacting to you does not constitute consent to being carried through the imperial residence like stolen luggage."
"No," Arik agreed. "Your repeated attempts to escape constituted the reason. Your reaction merely made the experience less objectionable than you are currently pretending."
Liam’s face warmed, and he abruptly decided to change tactics.
"At least perform the consort ceremony with the collar."
Arik went still.
The shift was so abrupt that it took him a moment to understand what Liam had said.
Five days earlier, Liam had known almost nothing about Nurian consort traditions. He had treated the collar as an engineering problem, dismantled it across the study floor, and demanded to test it because an unanswered mechanism offended him personally.
He had not cared about the ceremony.
He had certainly never shown any desire to participate in a ritual belonging to Goliath, Nuria, or a culture that had been entirely foreign to him until they passed through the Gate.
Yet now Liam stood before him with his arms folded and his expression oddly settled, as if the ceremony had become an obvious necessity.
"No," Arik said slowly.
Liam’s brows drew together. "Of course."
"Of course?"
"You do not want to perform the ceremony. You do not want to let me enter Felix’s palace." His voice sharpened with every word. "You do not even want to get me pregnant."
Arik stared at him.
At the beginning of their relationship, the possibility had left him tense enough that Arik had felt it through their incomplete bond even when Liam tried to dismiss it. Arik had promised they had time. He had told Liam that he wanted him, not an heir, and that nothing would happen before Liam was ready.
Liam had relaxed only after hearing that promise more than once.
Now he had spoken as though Arik’s refusal to hurry a pregnancy were another offense to add to the list.
Something was wrong.
"Liam," Arik said carefully, "do you want a child now?"
Liam’s lips parted.
For the first time since the argument began, uncertainty moved across his face.
"I want you to stop avoiding everything that would make me fully your consort."
"You are already my mate."
"That is not the same."
"It was enough for you before."
Liam’s expression tightened. "Perhaps I changed my mind."
"After passing the gate?"
"Yes."
"The same five days during which you became obsessed with completing the collar, began demanding access to Felix’s residence, and discovered foreign ether inside your mark."
Liam’s anger faltered.
Arik stepped closer. "Fill the room with your pheromones."
Confusion replaced what remained of Liam’s fury. "What?"
"Release them."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"I need you to do it once."
Something in Arik’s voice stripped the argument from the request.
Liam watched him suspiciously, then exhaled and loosened the restraints around his scent.
His pheromones spread through the study.
Saint’s breath.
Fresh, faintly sweet, and unmistakably Liam. The rare floral scent moved through the room like cool air after rain, delicate, pulling instinctively at Arik’s heart and the bond wrapped around it.
For the first breath, everything was as it should be.
Then Arik found the undertone.
Lily.
It was faint enough to hide within the sweetness, threaded so deeply beneath Liam’s natural scent that someone unfamiliar with Felix might never have separated the two.
But Arik knew it.
He had smelled it while Goliath’s channels rotted from within. On poisoned wine, in sealed rooms and on the man who had smiled while an empire’s sovereign slowly died.
Arik’s expression emptied.
Liam’s confusion turned to unease. "What is it?"
"Stop."
Liam drew his pheromones back immediately.
The saint’s breath faded.
The lily lingered for half a second longer.
Arik crossed the room and closed one hand around the back of Liam’s neck, fingers spreading over the mark. His grip was firm but careful, while gold ether rose beneath his skin, and every display in the study flickered.
"When did you begin wanting the ceremony?"
Liam frowned. "We were already discussing that."
"Answer me."
"A few days ago."
"Before or after your ether returned?"
Liam hesitated. "After I found out about it."
"And the pregnancy?"
"What about it?"
"You were afraid of becoming pregnant too soon. I promised you we would wait."
"I remember."
"Yesterday, the physicians confirmed that you were not pregnant. Were you disappointed?"
Liam opened his mouth, then stopped.
He looked genuinely confused by his own inability to answer.
Arik’s fear became cold certainty.
"And Felix’s palace?" he pressed. "Why must you enter personally?"
"Because the answers are there."
"Is that what you think, or is that what the fragment wants?"
Liam became completely still.
Arik lowered his face toward Liam’s throat and drew in another careful breath.
Saint’s breath, warm skin, and the familiar depth of their bond.
Underneath it, Lily.
"It is not merely influencing your ether," Arik said.
Liam’s gaze drifted toward the collar resting on the shelf, and something unfamiliar moved through the bond—a fixed, quiet need that did not feel like curiosity or affection.
Arik tightened his hand protectively around Liam’s nape.
"The ceremony would combine our ether and create the final stone," he said. "Pregnancy would deepen the physical changes caused by our bond. And Felix’s palace recognized what entered your mark."
Liam slowly looked back at him.
Arik’s golden eyes had become terrifyingly calm.
"These are not three separate demands," he said. "Whatever Cain placed inside you is trying to make itself more deeply connected to my sovereign ether."