Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 260 - 254: Prepare the Shadows

Onscreen, a series of warning sigils flickered—first red, then gold, then blue, and finally green.

The green should have meant stability. It should have meant control.

It didn’t.

Alexander remained standing for a moment, as if gauging the weight of what he carried, then lowered himself into the seat across from the Emperor with a silence that wasn’t reverence, but readiness.

He didn’t waste time.

"Hadeon made a bet," he said.

Damian’s thumb tapped once against the side of the tablet.

Alexander continued, voice flat, precise, a soldier delivering not information, but coordinates for a strike.

"He called it a challenge. He raised his glass in front of half the court and asked them—explicitly—who could ruin the Golden Consort without killing him. His words, not mine. Break him, but keep him pretty. Said the one who succeeds gets his favor. And their relatives... become the next Empress."

The tablet screen stilled.

The air inside the car changed. Just slightly. Just enough.

A single, focused intake of breath marked the end of Damian’s patience.

"He did this publicly?" Damian asked, the words careful, like each one had to pass through the teeth of something larger, something alive just beneath his voice.

Alexander nodded once.

"Rosaline was beside him. Encouraging it. The nobles didn’t recoil. They smiled. The Elders in attendance didn’t walk out. They listened. Some laughed. I marked them."

A sharp crack broke the silence in the car.

The tablet in Damian’s hands, an imperial-grade device reinforced against shock, flame, and minor ether surges, was now broken, shattered along the edge of his palm like glass under pressure. Shards embedded in his skin glowed faintly, humming with disrupted wards, but he didn’t bleed.

He didn’t even blink.

Instead, he leaned back slowly, spine rigid against the velvet-lined seat, head tipping toward the rest like a king waiting for judgment to pass. He closed his eyes, not in calm or grief, but because the alternative was screaming.

And if Damian Lyon screamed now, if he gave voice to the wrath clawing at the base of his throat, the ether around the vehicle wouldn’t just shift—it would detonate.

As it was, the flow had already turned violent, pulsing against the reinforced interior of the car like a living thing trying to escape. The light above them stuttered once. Then again. The glass blurred at the edges with refracted resonance. Even the shields began to hum with containment warnings.

Alexander, who had walked through battlefields laced with dead gods and bent reality to his will in service of the throne, felt his lungs tighten.

Not from fear. From respect.

From the knowledge that he was sitting two feet away from a man who had not simply inherited power—but survived it, buried it inside his bones, and was now seconds from unleashing it like a curse upon the world.

"Breathe," Alexander said quietly, not as a command, but as a reminder.

A pulse of ether lashed the floor between them.

Damian’s hands dropped to his sides, the fractured metal of the tablet still tangled between his fingers. His jaw was locked, golden eyes flickering beneath closed lids like stormlight trying to burn its way out.

"I want their names," Damian whispered. "Every single one of them."

Alexander didn’t hesitate. "Already compiling. Cross-referenced attendance logs, visible responses, ether-heat signatures, and nonverbal cues. Facial data, pulse spikes, sympathetic laughter—if they so much as breathed wrong, I marked them."

"Titles," Damian murmured, eyes still closed. "House, holdings, bloodlines. I want to know who they eat with. Who they sleep with. Who they owe favors to."

"You’ll have it before dawn."

The ether in the cabin tightened, not violently this time, but with purpose—shifting from chaos to clarity, from a storm to a scalpel.

"Then prepare the retaliation files," Damian said. "I want quiet dismantling. Audit their funds. Delay their shipments. Interfere with their protection contracts. I want their foundations soft before they know they’re bleeding."

Alexander nodded once, the motion short and deliberate. "And Rosaline?"

Damian opened his eyes.

The air turned to glass.

"I gave her mercy once," he said, his voice like frost on iron. "She used it to poison my name, then tried to touch what’s mine."

He paused.

"Gregoris."

The second man appeared beside Alexander without a sound, the shadows parting around him like breath through silk. Even before he spoke, the ether in the cabin reacted—thickening, focusing—as if recognizing one of its own.

Gregoris bowed his head. "She’s still at the Erthra ball. Rosaline has not returned to her estate since Edward resolved the pregnancy matter. She’s used secondary locations in the outer belt. Changed cars. Traveled without escorts. But we have her pattern."

"She hasn’t stepped foot in that house in more than three months," he added, unaware of the storm Alexander had just unleashed.

Alexander’s jaw shifted slightly, not in irritation—but restraint. He flicked a glance toward Damian, then back at Gregoris.

"She doesn’t need the estate anymore," Alexander said, his voice low. "Not when Hadeon’s offering her shelter in plain sight."

Gregoris turned his head slightly. "I assumed it was political cover."

"It’s more than that," Alexander replied. "He made a toast. A public toast. A game—Gabriel’s destruction as entertainment. And Rosaline was right there, feeding the fire."

Gregoris froze for a fraction of a breath.

"Fuck, Damian..."

The words fell like a stone into still water. Alexander didn’t flinch. He had been waiting for that shift—when fury stopped being theory and turned into command.

Damian didn’t look at either of them.

His voice was steady, sharp enough to draw blood without raising a blade.

"Ask Delphine to contact Rosaline. She’s to make herself useful again. I want Rosaline contained the moment she steps outside of that bastard’s protection."

He turned his head slightly, just enough to cast his gaze toward the window where the palace gates stood waiting.

"As for the others at that cursed ball..."

His tone shifted—still quiet, still composed, but dipped in something colder than rage.

"...prepare the Shadows for a bloodbath."

Gregoris straightened, the tension in his frame tightening like a drawn bow.

"Not one is to leave unscathed," Damian said. "Not one. I want bruises where they laughed. Scars where they smiled."

The air in the car thickened again—not with chaos, but with heat contained just beneath the shattering point. A storm bottled inside bone.

"It takes every ounce of my control not to burn them all now," Damian continued, his voice a low, vibrating thread of restraint. "But Gabriel is waiting."

Those words grounded him, just barely.

And yet even that anchor could not mask the deeper command buried underneath.

"We will remove every help that bastard has," he said, turning back to Gregoris. "Every spy, every escort, every last second cousin who ever owed him a coin or a vote. Strip him down to shadow and silence."

Gregoris gave a short nod, eyes dark. "I’ll gut the support tree first. Nobles. Staff. Influence brokers. Once we collapse the framework, he’ll have to lean on power alone."

"He won’t survive that," Alexander murmured.

"Good. Start after Patricia’s execution," Damian said and paused, cleaning his hand of shards.

"Let Crista know. She’s done shielding him. Not after this."

Gregoris didn’t ask for clarification.

He vanished. And Damian—finally, finally—turned toward the door of the medical wing.

His palm hovered near the seal, not touching, but close enough for the ether to recognize him. Light shifted across the frame. Access was granted.

He didn’t enter right away.

Because on the other side of that door was not a court to command or a kingdom to tame.

It was Gabriel.

Pregnant. Scanned. Likely furious.

And still waiting—alone.

Damian exhaled once, low and quiet.

Then he stepped through the threshold, leaving vengeance behind.