For a moment, Liam did not react.
He simply stared at Arik, his hand still half-raised between them, while the conclusion settled into the silence of the study.
Whatever had crossed the Gate had entered through his mark. It had changed his scent, influenced his ether, and somehow turned three things Liam had either feared or considered unnecessary into urgent necessities.
The collar.
Felix’s palace.
A child.
Liam’s face went pale.
Then his hand flew toward the mark at his neck.
Arik caught his wrist before his nails reached the skin.
"Take it out."
The words came so quickly that Arik almost did not recognize his voice. Liam twisted his wrist once, attempting to reach the mark with his other hand instead, and Arik caught that one too.
"Liam."
"Take it out."
His ether burst around them.
The nearest displays went dark before restarting, papers lifted from Arik’s desk, and a thin fracture of gold raced through the protective formation beneath the floor before the residence compensated for the surge. Liam did not seem to notice any of it. He was looking down at himself with naked revulsion, as though the foreign ether might suddenly become visible beneath his skin.
"There is something of Felix inside me."
"We do not know what it is yet."
"It smells like him."
Arik could not deny that.
Liam swallowed hard, his expression twisting. Five minutes earlier, he had been furious about being carried from the palace. Now even the idea of the place seemed forgotten beneath something much simpler and more visceral.
Disgust.
Not the distant horror Liam had carried after the poisoning, when exhaustion had blunted almost every reaction he possessed, but the immediate response of someone discovering a parasite attached somewhere he could not reach.
"Burn it out."
"No."
"You burned poison out of your own channels."
"And nearly destroyed them."
"Mine are healthy."
"They will remain that way."
Liam pulled against him again, harder this time, and Arik released his wrists only to catch him around the waist when he immediately tried to step away. He drew Liam firmly against his chest, trapping one arm between them and covering the mark with his other hand before Liam could start scratching at it.
Liam went rigid.
"I can feel it."
Arik’s stomach tightened. "The fragment?"
"I don’t know."
That answer seemed to disgust Liam even more.
He pressed his palm against Arik’s chest as if intending to push him away, but the movement lost its strength halfway through. "I don’t know if I can feel it or if I only think I can because you told me it is there. That is worse."
Arik lowered his head, breathing against Liam’s hair. Saint’s breath remained strongest, familiar enough that his instincts responded immediately, but now that he knew where to search, the lily underneath it was impossible to ignore.
Liam looked past him to the collar.
It remained in its case on the shelf where Arik had placed it after Liam finished examining it earlier that morning. Dark Nurian metal curved around the velvet interior, its incomplete centerpiece waiting for the final stone the consort ceremony was intended to create.
Liam had spent hours reconstructing it.
Now his entire body recoiled.
"Get that thing away from me."
Arik did not hesitate.
His ether crossed the study in a golden arc, closed the case, and wrapped around it before Liam had to watch it for another second. Space distorted around the box. The shelf emptied without anyone approaching it.
Liam stared at the vacant space.
"Where did you send it?"
"The imperial archive isolation vault."
"Destroy it."
"Not until we know whether damaging it can affect you."
Liam’s mouth tightened with immediate displeasure, but he did not argue. The fact alone told Arik how badly this had shaken him.
Arik allowed his pheromones to rise.
He kept them low at first, enough to settle around Liam without forcing his body into submission. Warmth filled the space between them, familiar and possessive, carrying the reassurance of the bond beneath it.
Liam resisted automatically.
Then his shoulders slowly lowered.
Arik strengthened his hold when Liam finally leaned into him, forehead resting against his chest and fingers curling into the front of his shirt.
"I want it gone."
"It will be removed."
"I don’t want Felix touching anything in me."
The words were muffled against Arik’s chest, angry rather than frightened, and somehow that made Arik’s fury colder.
Arik stroked his thumb once over the skin beside the mark. "The high arcanists will examine what entered your ether. The physicians will examine your channels. Nobody attempts to remove anything until they understand where it is attached."
Liam shifted enough to look up at him. His face had regained some color, though disgust still lingered around his mouth.
"And Felix’s palace?"
"You are not entering it."
Normally that would have restarted the argument.
Instead, Liam glanced toward the windows, toward the distant section of Deira where Felix’s sealed residence stood beyond several suspended districts.
His expression hardened.
"I don’t want to anymore."
Arik studied him.
That frightened him more than the argument had.
Five minutes earlier, Liam had been prepared to break through another barrier to get inside.
Now he looked sick at the thought.
"We will investigate it," Arik said. "From a distance first. Anything removed from the palace goes directly into containment."
"And afterward?"
"After what?"
"When we have everything useful."
Arik already knew what was coming.
Liam’s eyes narrowed toward the distant palace. "Burn it."
Despite himself, Arik almost laughed.
The fragment might have influenced Liam’s decisions, but apparently it had done nothing to diminish his preferred method of dealing with things he considered irredeemably contaminated.
"We may need the structure intact."
"Temporarily."
"Liam."
"You can rebuild the district afterward."
That was considerably more Liam.
Arik tightened his arms around him and released another quiet pulse of pheromones through the room.
Liam breathed it in and stopped trying to move away.
After several seconds, he muttered, "I spent three hours fixing that collar."
"Closer to four."
"And twenty-seven pages of notes."
"And three diagrams."
Liam closed his eyes, looking genuinely offended now.
"I hate him even more."
Arik pressed his mouth briefly against Liam’s temple.
That, at least, was entirely his own.