The following month settled into a routine so quickly that Liam occasionally forgot they had entered Nuria only weeks earlier.
Most mornings began before the city fully brightened.
Deira’s suspended districts were still washed in pale blue when Liam joined Arik for breakfast in the private dining room, where narrow windows overlooked bridges suspended between towers and the slow golden movement of ether beneath them. The imperial residence had gradually lost some of its museum-like stillness as more sections reopened around its returning sovereign. Staff crossed the corridors at all hours now, old systems woke beneath the floors, and rooms sealed for decades were cleaned, catalogued, and returned to use.
Breakfast remained one of the few parts of the day that belonged entirely to them.
Arik usually arrived already dressed for work in dark tailored trousers and a high-collared shirt, his sovereign mark hidden beneath one cuff. Liam preferred softer clothes in the mornings and frequently appeared with his hair still damp, carrying whatever tablet he had refused to put down the previous night.
Afterward, they separated.
Liam’s mornings belonged to Nuria.
Etiquette came first because apparently understanding where to stand during a provincial greeting could prevent three generations of offense. Tradition followed, then modern written Nurian, formal speech, and the beginnings of the regional languages Cassian’s cabinet considered most important.
History was worse.
There was too much of it.
Nuria had developed for decades without outside influence, producing political movements, industrial revolutions, internal conflicts, reforms, and cultural shifts that had no equivalents Liam could use as convenient reference points.
Technical study was different.
That he loved.
The imperial engineering archives occupied three levels beneath the eastern wing, their walls lined with physical volumes despite the existence of digital records. Liam spent hours there with his sleeves pushed to his elbows and several projections open around him, working through modern terminology for energy systems, ether distribution, metallurgy, transportation, and medical engineering.
The language stopped feeling foreign fastest when attached to a diagram.
Unfortunately, Felix’s books refused to cooperate.
They had digitized everything recovered from his private rooms in Wrohan and compared it against Nuria’s surviving editions, but Liam’s literacy was nowhere near advanced enough to understand what bothered the archivists.
He could read the sentences.
He could understand the technical meaning.
What he could not catch were the implications buried underneath them.
Certain phrases carried historical associations that had disappeared from Old Imperial. Other passages used words that looked ordinary until placed beside texts written by particular schools of arcanists. Felix had also marked apparently insignificant sentences in ways the archivists suspected formed a secondary notation system.
Liam hated depending on them to see it.
The senior archivist never complained when Liam stopped her for the fourth time over a paragraph, but the patient explanations made the limits of his knowledge more obvious.
So he studied harder.
The corruption inside his channels remained isolated.
That alone ensured he never lost motivation.
Arik’s schedule was worse.
His memories of Goliath surfaced more frequently during instruction, usually triggered by places, old legal language, or explanations of sovereign mechanisms. They were useful but unreliable, fragmented impressions from a Nuria that no longer existed.
Because of that, his lessons had become increasingly advanced.
Before the oath, Cassian had restricted entire sections of imperial administration because Arik had possessed recognition without formal authority. Now those restrictions were gone.
The sovereign archives opened to him.
So did military structures, Core administration, sealed infrastructure records, provincial agreements, emergency powers, and the deeper workings of the imperial government.
Arik spent most afternoons surrounded by ministers.
Lunch was rarely lunch anymore.
It was a provincial delegation, an industrial council, a military briefing, or representatives from one of the old houses attempting to fit several political objectives between the first course and dessert.
Dinner was often worse.
Liam attended when required, usually dressed in formal Nurian coats that Rubis selected with irritating delicacy, while Arik sat at the head of tables long enough to accommodate twenty or thirty officials.
They learned Nuria partly through lectures.
They learned considerably more through meals.
Mezos had adapted differently.
His injured hand remained partially immobilized, the damaged channels healing slowly enough that physicians refused to clear him for full combat work. Severin had taken him into the imperial security structure anyway.
Technically, Mezos served under him.
Practically, he followed Severin through inspections, training halls, security briefings, and tactical reviews while memorizing every weakness he intended to exploit once his hand recovered.
Liam gave him six months before he began stealing someone’s rank.
Kamal had returned to his former position almost without ceremony.
Of everyone who crossed the Gate with them, he adjusted most easily to the imperial residence because much of what surrounded them was familiar to him already.
The household was not.
That had to be rebuilt.
For decades, the palace had functioned without an emperor, maintained by administrators and ceremonial staff rather than a living sovereign household. Arik’s return changed everything.
Kamal spent his days restructuring it.
Rubis worked beside him, along with senior attendants, financial officers, protocol staff, physicians, security coordinators, and an expanding collection of people Liam had not yet learned by name.
Private apartments were reassigned.
Staff rotations changed.
Guest wings reopened.
Old household regulations were dragged out of archives, examined, and frequently discarded when Kamal determined that nobody had any intention of living as though Goliath might walk through the door tomorrow.
By the end of the month, the palace felt different.
Not theirs yet.
But inhabited.
One evening, Liam returned from the technical archive after sunset and found Arik asleep at his desk, still wearing the black formal coat from dinner, one hand resting over a report concerning western transport routes.
Golden ether moved faintly beneath his skin.
Liam stood in the doorway for a moment.
Beyond the windows, Deira glowed across the suspended horizon.
A month earlier, everything outside that glass had been unknown.
Now Liam could name several districts.
He could read most of the signs without assistance.
He understood why the eastern provinces distrusted central scheduling, why southern manufacturers complained about freight capacity, and why three different regional languages had separate words for the same kind of ether conduit.
It was not home. But it was beginning to become a place rather than a mystery.
Liam crossed the room, removed the report from beneath Arik’s hand, and set it aside.
They still had an empire to learn.
And somewhere inside its history, Felix had left answers waiting for them.