Chapter 229: Nothing Will Happen

"Nothing will happen," Liam said for the third time after leaving the mansion, once in the car, and now while stepping into Canmore Palace.

Arik looked at him.

Mezos looked at him.

Stanford looked at him.

Even Mara, who was waiting just beyond the entrance hall with her tablet clutched to her chest and the expression of a woman who had already regretted agreeing to be involved, looked at him.

Liam frowned. "Why is everyone staring?"

"Because," Arik said, "you keep saying that."

"It is reassuring."

"It is ominous."

"It is statistically grounded."

Mezos’s mouth curved faintly. "Many disasters have begun with similar confidence."

"This is not a disaster. It is a retrieval operation." Liam gestured toward the long corridor ahead. "We enter, go to the temporary laboratory, collect the calibration files, seize useful components, speak to Mara, and leave."

Mara lifted a hand. "I am already here."

"Excellent. One objective completed."

"That is not how objectives work," Stanford said.

"It is how morale works."

Canmore Palace did not look like a place preparing for an execution.

The floors still shone. The lamps still glowed with their expensive ether-fed warmth. Servants moved quietly in the distance, too well trained to stare and too frightened not to know exactly who had arrived. Outside, beyond the sealed windows, Wrohan was counting down the hours until Ray Canmore died in public.

Inside, the old family house tried to remain elegant.

Liam hated it.

He had grown up in these corridors, with portraits that watched without seeing and doors that opened only for the right blood, the right rank, and the right permission. Today, the palace felt less like the gates of hell.

Arik stayed close to him, not touching, but near enough that Liam could feel him.

"Stop hovering," Liam muttered, his crimson eyes narrowed at all the people around him.

"I am walking."

"You are walking with intent. I’m just following you."

"You taught me that phrase."

"Regrettably."

Mezos moved ahead with two Shadows, scanning the corridor through a projected map. The temporary laboratory is still sealed. No unauthorized access recorded in the last forty-eight hours."

"That sounds promising," Liam said.

Mara made a small, doubtful sound.

Liam turned to her. "What?"

"Nothing, my lord."

"Mara."

She shifted the tablet against her chest. "The seal records door access. It does not record whether anyone used the old service line behind the cooling wall."

Liam stopped.

Arik stopped with him.

Mezos’s smile appeared slowly.

Liam closed his eyes. "I forgot about the service line."

"You forgot," Arik repeated.

"I was poisoned and politically busy."

"Reasonable," Mezos said, sounding delighted. "Still ominous."

Stanford’s hand shifted near his weapon.

Liam pointed at all of them. "Nothing has happened yet."

The temporary laboratory was three levels below the main palace, past a restricted stairwell and two modern security doors that had been installed after Liam left, which he found personally insulting. The first recognized Mara. The second recognized Stanford. The third recognized no one and had to be opened by Mezos after he looked at it for six seconds and apparently decided it was embarrassing.

The doors slid apart.

Liam stepped inside and went still.

The lab smelled the same.

Metal, sterilized stone, old coolant, heated ether insulation, and the faint bitter trace of overworked circuits. It was smaller than Lab V, more cramped, less elegant, and arranged according to Liam’s old habits rather than anyone’s idea of presentation. Whiteboards stood along one wall, half erased. Storage shelves lined the back. A dismantled test housing sat beneath a dust cover near the central bench.

For a moment, Liam was not engaged and not recovering.

Not a political symbol, not a medically monitored national asset, not Arik Lyon’s future consort, not the man half of Wrohan had decided to watch because hope had become fashionable again.

He was simply back in one of the first rooms where the Vanguard had tried to become real.

And his chest tightened.

He had been avoiding it since the moment he marked Arik. Perhaps even before that. It had resurfaced in pieces: when Arik called Agaron home without thinking, when Gabriel spoke of preparations, when Damian’s people sent imperial schedules, when every private document about the engagement quietly assumed that Liam would leave Wrohan at some point because Arik could not remain there forever.

Enia saying that she wanted Liam to leave, he understood why she was trying to do the same thing as she did with his two siblings. But Felix kept Liam in Wrohan.

Liam would have to go to Agaron soon enough that the thought had stopped being theoretical.

He looked at the whiteboards, at the half-erased equations, at the storage labels written in his own hand, and at the old test housing that had almost exploded twice before they understood the pressure behavior, and felt something inside him fold sharply inward.

This was not the best laboratory he had ever used.

It was not even his favorite.

But it was one of the places where his life had made sense before everything became bloodlines, marks, old emperors, poisoned channels, and public hope.

Mara’s voice softened behind him. "My lord?"

Liam blinked.

Arik had stopped beside the door, looking at Liam as if he was about to break the world for him.

"I am fine," Liam said.

Arik did not answer immediately, which meant he was deciding whether to be difficult.

He chose difficult.

"No."

Liam turned his head. "That was not an invitation for contradiction."

"It was a lie."

"It was a statement of operational capability."

"You looked like someone had taken something from you."

The words landed too cleanly.

Liam looked away.

Across the room, Stanford’s posture quietly became more alert because apparently Liam’s emotions now counted as a security condition.

Mezos, standing near the corridor feed, said nothing at all.

Liam walked farther into the room, letting his fingers brush the edge of the central bench. Dust had collected beneath the protective cover. Not much. Mara must have had someone maintain the space. The thought helped and hurt at the same time.

"I will have to leave," he said.

The room went still.

Mara looked down at her tablet.

Arik’s expression changed.

Not surprise. He had known. Everyone had known. That was the problem. It had been sitting under every conversation like a document no one wanted to open.

"With you," Liam added, because apparently he had decided honesty should injure everyone present. "To Agaron."

Arik came closer slowly, stopping on the other side of the bench. "Yes."

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