Chapter 207: Locked Out [Win-Win]

Liam had been abandoned.

Technically, Arik had left him in a private suite guarded by Stanford, two Shadows, Marin’s ward, three layers of royal security, and a tray of approved snacks.

Emotionally, abandoned.

Arik had gone to see the piano.

The potentially cursed, possibly Nurian, definitely suspicious piano sitting in one of George’s old waiting rooms like a decorative object with criminal intent. Rex had sealed the room personally, Mezos had inspected the wardline, and Arik had left one hour ago with the calm expression of a man intending to interrogate furniture.

Liam had wanted to go.

Marin had said no.

Arik had said no.

Stanford had said nothing, which was worse, because silence from Stanford meant agreement with Marin while pretending to remain professionally neutral.

So Liam had been left with documents.

At first, that had almost been tolerable.

The files recovered from Felix’s manor had arrived marked under Gate-related references, which had raised Liam’s hopes in a foolish and frankly embarrassing way. For twenty minutes, he had believed he might find Goliath’s original notes, old design parameters, boundary equations, material tolerances, ether-channel architecture, or even one properly annotated cross-section.

He found none of that.

What he found were failures.

Pages and pages of failures.

Engineers hired by Felix across decades, perhaps longer, each trying to understand fragments they clearly did not have enough context to read. Some had treated the Gate like a transport mechanism. Others like a sealed refinery core. One particularly offensive man had labeled a containment loop as decorative stabilizing geometry , which had made Liam sit upright so fast Marin’s ward pulsed blue in warning.

"Decorative," Liam had said to the empty room. "That man deserved whatever happened to his reputation."

There had been no Goliath.

No signature.

No Nurian original.

No old imperial annotations.

Just Felix’s scavenged collection of dead-end attempts, each one proving that the old man had possessed enough fragments to be dangerous and not enough knowledge to be useful.

Which, Liam thought bitterly, was perhaps the most Felix thing possible.

Then, after exactly twenty minutes, the ether tablet locked.

The screen dimmed.

A polite message appeared.

Review period complete. Rest interval required. Physician override active.

Liam stared at it.

Then he pressed his thumb to the access mark.

The tablet glowed once.

Denied.

He tried again.

Denied.

He narrowed his eyes and adjusted the angle, because sometimes biometric systems were tragically stupid.

DENIED.

Then a second message appeared.

Lord Canmore, do not attempt to outsmart the medical lock. — Marin

Liam slowly lowered the tablet onto the table.

"I hope your tea is cold," he said.

The door opened.

Kamal entered carrying a latte.

Liam looked at him.

Kamal looked back with the serene patience of a man who had served emperors, survived Nuria, endured Felix, returned from poisoning, and still somehow found himself delivering coffee to a convalescent engineer who had been locked out of his own documents.

"I brought the drink you requested," Kamal said.

"I requested documents."

"You requested documents and then called the tablet an underdeveloped tyrant. His Highness anticipated a second request and approved the latte."

Liam stared at him. "Arik approved coffee?"

"Marin approved half of it."

Liam looked at the cup.

It was large.

Suspiciously large.

Kamal placed it on the table. "The rest is steamed milk."

Liam’s expression flattened. "This is a supervised latte."

"Yes."

"I hate all of you."

"That has been noted by the household."

Liam took the cup anyway.

It was good.

That annoyed him further.

Kamal stood near the table, hands folded behind his back, posture immaculate. He did not hover like Arik. He did not judge like Marin. He simply existed there with old-world discipline and tired eyes, as if waiting for Liam to decide whether he wished to speak or throw something soft.

Liam took another sip.

Then, because the tablet was locked and boredom was a crueler prison than politics, he asked, "What was Nuria like?"

Kamal’s eyes moved, briefly, toward the window, toward the afternoon light spilling across the carpet, as if some part of him expected to see another palace there, another sky.

"I do not remember enough," he said. "The palace just... vanished the moment until I woke up."

"You were in the palace when it disappeared?"

Kamal’s expression did not change, but his silence became heavier.

"I was in Deira," he said at last. "The capital, but that disappeared too. We had to leave it for Amara’s safety."

Liam’s fingers tightened around the cup. "The capital vanished?"

"Deira vanished," Kamal said. "The imperial palace, the administrative districts, the old ward towers, the military archives, the inner city, the outer rings... and most of the northern empire with it."

Liam stared at him.

"How much is most?"

Kamal’s eyes lowered briefly. "Nearly eighty percent of the old empire."

The room went very still.

Liam forgot about the latte in his hand.

"What the fuck? How would that be even possible?"

Kamal did not reprimand him for the language.

That, more than anything, made Liam’s stomach tighten.

"I do not know," Kamal said.

Liam stared at him. "You don’t know."

"No."

"You are telling me almost eighty percent of an empire vanished, including the capital, the palace, the administrative districts, and whatever else was in the north, and no one knows how?"

Kamal’s expression remained controlled, but his eyes had gone somewhere very far away. "If anyone knew, they did not tell me."

Liam leaned back slowly, the latte forgotten between his hands. Marin’s ward gave a soft blue pulse beneath his shirt, either in warning or in judgment. Probably both.

He ignored it.

Liam closed his eyes. "That is not a disappearance. That is a geographical insult."

Kamal’s mouth moved faintly, but the expression did not become a smile. "That is one way to describe it."

"No, it is the only reasonable way to describe it until someone gives me measurements." Liam opened his eyes again. "What was left?"

Kamal was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, "The countries you already know, Agaron was the third strongest, and then the smaller ones that Damian didn’t conquer. Pais, Wrohan, Donin, and in-between. Enough for people to survive. Not enough for Nuria to remain Nuria."

"That has to have a justification," Liam said, his brows furrowing with engineers’ doubt. "Did Felix do it?"

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