Chapter 182: The emperor (3)

Felix’s mouth softened at the edges. To anyone else, it might have looked like vulnerability.

To Arik, it looked rehearsed. To Goliath, then, it had looked like restraint.

"I wanted to ask if I had offended you."

Goliath arched a brow. "Recently?"

Felix exhaled, almost a laugh, but it did not live long enough to become one. "I am serious."

"A terrible habit."

"Then humor me."

Goliath turned toward the window, where the capital spread beneath the palace in clean, sunlit layers, with towers and roads and ether lines running through the city like veins under skin. "If you had offended me, Felix, you would know."

Felix was quiet for a second.

Then, softly, "Would I?"

Goliath looked back at him.

The question hung between them with more weight than it should have carried.

Felix stepped closer.

"I have been at your side for over eight years."

"Near my side," Goliath corrected.

Something passed through Felix’s eyes.

Arik felt his own attention sharpen within the memory, and the old soul beneath him recoil and lean closer all at once.

Goliath had noticed the flicker.

He had simply named it impatience.

Felix lowered his gaze again. "Near your side, then."

"You dislike precision now?"

"I dislike distance."

Goliath said nothing.

Felix took in a deep breath. "The court already assumes what this will become. Olivier assumes it. The southern envoys assume it. Your ministers speak around it as if the words themselves might burn their tongues." His fingers tightened once at his side, then relaxed. "And yet you still keep me outside your rooms."

Goliath’s expression did not shift.

The old emperor was silent long enough that most men would have begun apologizing.

Felix did not.

He lifted his eyes instead, violet and bright beneath the chamber light.

"Why?"

The word was simple but not humble.

Goliath watched him with the calm of a man who had outlived several generations of people convinced that urgency was the same thing as fate.

"You are thirty," he said.

Felix’s face did not fall.

That was what Arik saw.

That was the thing the memory had preserved without understanding.

Felix did not look disappointed.

He looked angry.

Only for a breath. Less than that. A fracture beneath the perfect surface, a flash of insult so raw it almost looked like pain until one looked closer. His jaw tightened, and his eyes sharpened before he lowered them again.

Goliath had seen the lowering of the eyes.

Arik saw what came before it.

The old soul beneath his ribs went very still.

"I am not a child," Felix said.

"No," Goliath agreed. "But you are young."

"For an ordinary man, perhaps."

"For me," Goliath said.

The answer landed flatly, without apology.

Felix’s fingers curled once at his side. "Dominant omegas and alphas do not age like ordinary people."

"I am aware."

"Then why speak as though I will break from being touched?"

Goliath’s gold eyes narrowed slightly.

Felix recognized the warning and stopped, but the words were already spoken.

Goliath turned fully toward him. "Do not make the mistake of thinking I avoid your bed because I believe you fragile."

Felix’s throat moved.

Goliath continued, voice even. "Hugo was forty-three when he entered my household. Seraphina was forty. Both had already lived beyond their family expectations, survived court, politics, and enough disappointment to know the difference between desire and position."

Felix’s face was very still.

"Both came to me with open eyes," Goliath said. "Both were given time, contracts, counsel, and enough room to refuse me without being destroyed by the consequences. They were not given my bed because nobles became bored of waiting for a scandal."

Felix’s smile was faint. "And now both have given you sons."

"Yes," he said softly. "They have." The room chilled with his low words.

Felix lowered his gaze again. "Then you understand why the court expects—"

"The court expects entertainment," Goliath cut in. "It expects heirs, rivalries, favors, bedsheets turned into policy, and people used as signatures beneath alliances. The court will survive the tragedy of not receiving every vulgar answer it wants."

Felix’s eyes lifted.

Goliath stepped closer, his tall frame shadowing Felix.

"You look at Hugo and Seraphina and see what they were granted," Goliath said. "You do not see what I owed them before I accepted anything from them."

Felix’s voice was quiet. "And what do you owe me?"

"Time."

The answer seemed to offend him more than refusal would have.

Goliath saw the slight stillness.

Arik saw the fury beneath it.

Felix said, "I have already waited eight years."

"To you, eight years is patience because eight years is a meaningful portion of your life." Goliath’s voice did not soften, but neither did it become cruel. "To me, it is barely another season."

Felix’s lips parted, then closed.

Goliath let the silence sit.

"You want me to spend the night with you," he said. "You want me to mate you. You want what the court has already decided should happen because the court enjoys arranging other people’s bodies into neat political conclusions."

Felix’s cheeks colored faintly with anger.

"I want what is mine to ask for," he said.

"Yes," Goliath replied. "To ask for. Not to receive because you asked beautifully."

Felix’s eyes flashed.

Arik felt that fury like a blade sliding beneath the ribs.

Goliath had meant to be fair.

Felix had heard denial.

"You think I am not ready," Felix said.

"I know you are not."

The cruelty of that answer was not in its harshness.

It was in its certainty.

Felix smiled then, small and polished. "Because I am thirty."

"Because you are thirty and furious that I consider it relevant."

For the first time, the mask nearly broke.

Felix recovered quickly, but not quickly enough for Arik, standing decades later inside the memory, seeing the thing Goliath had seen and softened into impatience because he had not wanted to name it hunger.

"You are ambitious," Goliath said.

Felix’s smile held. "So are your consorts."

"Yes."

"And that does not offend you."

"Ambition offends me only when it is stupid."

"Then why does mine offend you?"

"It does not." Goliath’s gaze remained steady. "Your entitlement does."

Felix bowed again, flawless and beautiful and already elsewhere inside himself.

"As you command."

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