Chapter 192: Convenient Disasters

"I hate this."

"I know," Arik said.

"No, I need you to understand that I hate this in several directions."

"I assumed."

"I hate that he is funny."

"He is not funny."

"He insulted me while I was medically fragile. That is objectively funny."

Arik looked personally wronged by the universe. "Do not encourage him."

Liam closed his eyes against Arik’s chest, exhausted, irritated, and warm enough that his anger had to work far too hard to remain properly dramatic.

"I am still angry," he mumbled.

"I know."

"And you owe me an explanation."

"Yes."

"When?"

Arik’s hand moved through his hair once, slow and careful. "When you are strong enough to hear it."

Liam forced one eye open. "That is dangerously close to sounding reasonable, which makes me suspicious."

"It should."

"I am giving you one day."

Arik looked down at him.

"One day," Liam repeated, with the strength of a man who absolutely could not sit upright without assistance but still intended to win. "Then you explain the emperor in your soul, the bond, Felix, Nuria, and whatever else you placed under ’not now’ because you thought I was too drugged to notice."

Arik’s expression softened in the worst possible way.

Liam hated that too.

"One day," Arik agreed.

That had been three days ago.

To Arik’s credit, the first day had not been entirely his fault.

George’s death had become official before breakfast, discreetly at first, then violently, because Wrohan’s court had the survival instincts of a chicken in a thunderstorm and the moral flexibility of wet paper. Ray was under investigation, confined, stripped of communications, and apparently discovering that fatherhood did not give him the legal authority to use Liam as a shield, which Liam considered a refreshing development. Felix had vanished into whatever sewer old monsters used when they had overplayed their hand, and Cain had disappeared before either Felix or Ray, which everyone found alarming in the way people found knives missing from a kitchen alarming after realizing someone had already been stabbed.

By the second day, Rex had stopped being "almost king" in any practical sense.

By the third, even the people pretending otherwise had given up.

Rex held the palace, the guard, the treasury keys, the emergency council, the sealed archives, and the sort of exhausted fury that made ministers sign documents before he finished asking. The coronation could happen later. Power had already moved.

Unfortunately, so had the numbers.

Liam sat in Arik’s sitting room wrapped in one of Arik’s dark robes, with a blanket over his knees, a cup of medicinal tea cooling beside him, and the deep resentment of a man who had spent too much of the last month recovering from events that had begun, in some form, when he had met Arik Lyon.

He had recovered from heat, bonding strain, emotional ambushes, political disasters, and Felix’s poison.

At this rate, Liam was considering having "currently recovering" engraved on his nameplate and accepting it as a professional designation.

Across from him, Arik stood near the windows, tablet in one hand, three translucent screens open in front of him. His black hair swept back elegantly, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his forearms, and his expression was calm in the way that indicated he had been awake for too long and had chosen control over basic humanity.

On the largest screen, Rex looked like a man discovering that inheriting a throne should have come with hazard pay.

"The numbers are not wrong?" Rex asked.

Mezos, seated somewhere off-screen, answered, "They have been checked four times."

Rex stared at the files before him. "That is impossible."

"It is unfortunately very possible," Mezos said. "George hid the economic reports behind sovereign restriction. Felix had parallel access. Cain and selected fiscal officers had operational control. Everyone else received summary tables that appear to have been written by an optimist with a head injury."

Liam leaned back against the couch cushions. "That is insulting to people with head injuries."

Arik’s gaze flicked toward him immediately. "You should be resting."

"I am sitting under a blanket drinking tea that tastes like wet bark. This is the most rested rebellion in history."

Rex’s eyes moved on-screen. "Liam, why are you in this meeting?"

"I live here now, apparently."

"You do not live here," Arik said.

Liam looked pointedly at Arik’s robe, Arik’s couch, Arik’s tea, and the bedroom behind him where Liam had been sleeping for days.

Arik did not blink.

Rex rubbed a hand over his face. "I am too tired to process that."

"Focus," Mezos said.

"Yes. Good. The kingdom is economically bleeding." Rex looked back at the numbers, his mouth flattening. "I knew it was bad. Everyone with a functioning brain knew George was using the treasury like a private cellar. I did not know half the development funds were collateralized against future ether exports that do not exist."

"They exist on paper," Mezos said.

Rex only sighed.

Liam reached for the tea, remembered the taste, and lowered his hand again. "So George, Felix, Cain, and their people had the real books."

"Yes," Arik said.

"And Cain vanished before Felix."

"Yes."

"That is not suspicious at all. Perhaps he went on a spiritual retreat to reflect on fiscal transparency."

Rex gave a hollow laugh. "If I find him, I am making him minister of something horrible before I imprison him."

"That seems inefficient," Arik said.

"It would make me feel better."

"Temporarily."

"I will take it temporarily. I am about to become king of a treasury-shaped corpse."

Liam looked at the numbers again, and despite the lingering ache in his channels, despite the fatigue sitting heavy under his ribs, his mind caught. Machinery, systems, financial pipelines, and ether infrastructure—rot looked different depending on where it hid, but it still followed rules.

"Those power contracts," he said slowly. "The ones attached to the industrial subsidies. Open them."

Arik’s eyes sharpened. "Liam."

"I am not getting up."

"You are working."

"I am looking. My eyes survived Felix."

Arik’s expression did not appreciate the joke.

Goliath, faintly at the edge of the bond, did.

Liam’s gaze cut to Arik. "Tell him I heard that."

Arik went still for one magnificent second.

Rex froze on-screen. "Tell who?"

"No one," Arik said.

Liam smiled sweetly. "His Imperial Previousness."

Mezos made a sound that might have been a cough.

Rex stared. "I am missing several Chapters."

"So am I," Liam said, and turned his smile toward Arik. "Repeatedly."

Arik’s face became unreadable.

Which meant guilty.

Liam set the cup down with deliberate care. "You promised me one day."

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