Chapter 239: The Balcony

"Stop following me!" Liam said firmly while trying his best not to run through a foreign palace while being followed by Rubis, the attendant from earlier, and what appeared to be half of his staff.

"Your Majesty, please don’t run," Rubis said, with a sigh he clearly tried to hide and failed. "You can get lost."

"I am not running," Liam said through his teeth.

"You are walking very quickly in a palace you do not know."

"That is called exploration."

"That is called alarming the household." Rubis insisted while instructing the rest of the staff to be careful with a tilt of his head.

"I want my mate."

The words came out sharper than Liam intended.

Every servant behind Rubis went still.

Liam hated that.

He hated the way they lowered their eyes at the word "mate," as if it confirmed something sacred to them. As if his panic was simply proof of a role they had already decided he occupied.

Rubis softened at once. "His Majesty will be informed."

"Not His Majesty," Liam snapped. "My mate."

Rubis blinked.

Liam did not have the patience to explain Arik, Goliath, impossible reincarnation, fragmented souls, or why everyone here was apparently living inside a vanished empire that should not have existed anymore.

He turned and continued down the corridor.

The palace was too real, and that was a big problem.

A dream would have blurred. A trap would have repeated patterns. A constructed illusion would have made mistakes, small ones, the sort Liam could identify and pull apart until the entire lie collapsed.

But the marble beneath his bare feet was cold.

The carved gold vines along the walls had minute imperfections where a craftsman’s tool had slipped.

The columns held faint scratches at hand height.

A blue flower in a ceramic vase had one bruised petal.

Liam touched everything.

The wall. The carved doorframe. The edge of a table. The cold glass of a lamp filled with glowing ether.

A ridiculous golden ornament shaped like a bird, which he lifted, turned over, and set back down because apparently even his panic had standards.

Everything was real.

"Your Majesty," Rubis tried again, following with a speed that suggested he had been trained for noble emergencies. "Please, the physicians advised rest."

"The physicians can advise a wall."

"They were very worried."

"They could swallow fire for all I care."

Rubis made a soft, distressed sound.

Liam ignored him.

He needed Arik.

He needed the bond to stop feeling stretched thin over impossible distance. He needed the warm, vicious certainty of Arik’s presence, the annoying safety of his hand at Liam’s waist, the ridiculous calm with which he said no to things Liam very much intended to do anyway.

The bond flickered.

Closer than before?

Liam stopped, brows furrowing.

Rubis nearly collided with him.

"Your Majesty?"

Liam lifted one hand. "Quiet."

The staff obeyed instantly.

That was disturbing too.

Liam closed his eyes and reached through the bond. He was met with the same golden abyss, but under that white noise he could feel the bond a little stronger now, moving through something Liam couldn’t explain.

Arik .

His breath caught. "He’s coming."

Rubis’s face changed into relief so intense it almost looked like faith. "His Majesty?"

Liam opened his eyes. "Do not make that face. It is unsettling."

"I apologize."

"You do not seem sorry at all."

"No, Your Majesty," Rubis said with something close to awe.

The corridor opened into a wider gallery, and light spilled across the floor in long, molten bands. Wind moved through gauze curtains ahead, carrying the scent of sky, water, flowers, and something bright beneath all of it.

Liam walked toward it.

Rubis stiffened. "Your Majesty, that leads to the eastern balcony."

"Excellent."

"The railing—"

"I know how railings work."

"I am beginning to suspect Your Majesty knows how they work in theory."

Liam ignored him and pushed through the curtains, and the world opened in front of his eyes.

He stopped so abruptly the breath left him.

Below the imperial balcony, Deira floated in the sky.

White towers rose from islands of stone suspended among clouds, their spires threaded with gold light. Bridges stretched between districts like strands of sunlight made solid. Waterfalls fell from the edges of floating terraces into open air, dissolving into mist before vanishing beneath the clouds. Great rings of golden ether turned slowly around towers and beacon-spires, humming in a rhythm that seemed to pass through Liam’s ribs.

He realized that he imagined Nuria and Deira each time Arik or Kamal was talking about it, but he never would have thought that this dreamy land was Goliath’s empire.

Liam gripped the balcony rail, his fingers tightening around warm gold.

"No," he whispered as his eyes were trying to get everything at once.

His mind tried to measure distance, structure, support, energy requirements, gravitational stability, ether circulation, load distribution, impossible, impossible, impossible...

The city did not care.

It floated.

Rubis stopped behind him, his voice quiet. "Deira, Your Majesty."

Liam laughed once, breathless and sharp. "Of course it is."

The balcony tilted.

No.

His body tilted.

Liam’s grip slipped on the rail.

Rubis shouted.

Someone moved behind him.

Liam’s foot caught on the edge of the robe. The world lurched into cloud and gold, the city sweeping beneath him in a blur of light and height.

For one terrible second, he was falling forward into the impossible height below.

Then a warm, strong arm locked around his waist and pulled him back against a solid chest.

Liam froze, his breathing faster than he would ever admit.

The grip was firm, the embroidered sleeve of his clothing scratching Liam’s arm.

A warm breath touched his hair.

Gold flooded the bond like before, hiding Arik under its vastness.

Liam’s hands shook against the railing, behind him, the arm held tighter.

And for the first time since the Gate swallowed him, Liam stopped trying to prove the world was real.

He already knew.

The person holding him was.

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