Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 283 - 278: Praise the Omega, Damn the Emperor

Damian stood without a word.

The silence between them was volcanic. Contained, for now, but only just. Even Edward, who had remained by the door like a morally superior coatrack, chose that moment to vanish without a sound. Shadows or not, no one interfered when Gabriel used that voice. The one that wasn’t loud, but final. The one that meant now.

Marin didn’t look up again. "You’re stable," he said simply. "Which is more than I can say for the emotional environment in this room. Get dressed before you both start rewriting palace architecture."

Gabriel swung his legs off the recliner with deliberate precision, ignoring the mild ache in his lower back. Damian didn’t move to help, and that, more than anything, told Gabriel how serious this was. He dressed in silence, aware of Marin snapping the logbook closed and slipping the Shadow-marked vial into a locked drawer.

He didn’t ask where the key was.

He already knew Marin would eat it before letting anyone else touch it.

When Gabriel finished dressing, he stood in front of Damian, eyes level. "We’re not doing this here."

Damian inclined his head once, jaw tight. "Private wing."

"Yours or mine?" Gabriel asked.

"Ours."

—

The halls were a blur. Gabriel didn’t remember walking. He remembered the way the corridor lights flickered once, the ether pulse responding to the charge in Damian’s bloodstream, no longer contained. He remembered the guard who opened the door to the Emperor’s private chamber without being asked, and how he immediately backed out and shut it the moment the two of them crossed the threshold.

Gabriel waited until the latch clicked.

Then he turned.

"You promised to tell me everything after the heat," he said, quietly.

Gabriel stared at him.

"I don’t know how to say it."

Damian, the man who could command armies with a breath, who could dismantle entire bloodlines with a word, didn’t know how to say it.

"That’s not comforting," Gabriel said slowly, each syllable edged with restraint. "You’re not meant to fumble this. You’re supposed to have the answers. You always have the answers."

"I have them," Damian said. "But none of them are clean. None of them end with you untouched."

Gabriel inhaled through his nose, slow and sharp. "Start from the worst, then."

Damian’s jaw flexed. "The worst is this: I can’t separate you from the tether without breaking something. It’s not like a chain I can cut. It’s braided into your ether stream. And the child’s."

Gabriel didn’t move.

"The contract was made to hold a soul fragment," Damian went on. "Olivier’s. It wasn’t supposed to activate unless you bonded with imperial blood. That was the trigger. Not just a pregnancy—my blood."

Gabriel’s throat tightened, but he forced his voice steady. "So I set it off."

"You were always going to. The moment you chose me." Damian’s voice was low. "That’s why they picked you. Why they made you what you are."

The words sank like poison.

Gabriel’s expression didn’t change, but the silence that followed was sharp enough to cut.

"You knew that," he said quietly. "You’ve known for a while."

"I suspected," Damian admitted. "I confirmed it when I broke the wall at the base. That wasn’t anger. That was recoil. From the realization that the child wasn’t just proof of our bond—it was the final key."

Gabriel’s heart beat once, hard enough to ache.

"To what?" he asked.

Damian’s gaze met his. Unflinching. Devastated.

"To bring Olivier back. Through you. Through the child. The contract would override your soul tether the moment you weakened. And the baby—" His voice caught for the first time. "—wasn’t meant to survive you. Just to carry him."

Gabriel’s knees almost gave, but he didn’t fall. Not now. Not when it mattered.

"So what did you do?" he asked, softly. "What did you change?"

"I ordered Alexander to write a bypass," Damian said. "We can redirect the soul feed into the Empire’s core. It’ll burn the fragment out—obliterate it completely. But it has to be done before the sixth month. Before the tether finalizes."

Gabriel nodded once. "And the cost?"

Damian’s silence was answer enough.

Gabriel stepped closer. "What is the cost, Damian?"

Finally, Damian answered.

"My ether channels. Some of them, I don’t know the extent yet."

Gabriel didn’t speak for a full two seconds. Then—

"Let me process this. My brain imploded," he said, his tone clinically flat. "So, to remove Olivier’s soul, you’re planning to reroute the ether he feeds on—from me and the child—to the core of the Empire. Then let the core chew on it until there’s nothing left. But to do that, you need to build new channels. And you’re going to use yours?"

Damian had the audacity to look slightly sheepish. "Why are you so smart?"

Gabriel stared at him like he’d grown antlers. "That’s what you’re going with? I’m standing here contemplating ritual infanticide by imperial leyline, and you are flirting?"

"It wasn’t flirting," Damian said.

"It was definitely flirting," Gabriel shot back. "Praise the omega’s intellect while casually confessing you’re about to become the world’s most decorative power outlet."

"I wasn’t going to tell you until I stabilized the failsafe," Damian said, which was, evidently, the wrong thing to say.

Gabriel took a slow, measured breath that did nothing to hide the fury in his eyes. "So let me guess. Step one, you rewrite the bond. Step two, you carve out your own ether veins like a bloody offering. Step three—you die quietly in a glowing pit somewhere and call that a victory?"

"I wouldn’t die," Damian said. "I’d—retire."

Gabriel blinked at him. Once.

"Retire," Gabriel repeated, slower this time, like he was trying to make sure the word wasn’t some hallucinated echo. "You’d retire?"

"As a High Arcanist," Damian clarified. "Not from—" he gestured vaguely between them, helplessly sincere, "this. I will still be the Emperor. And your husband."

Gabriel just looked at him.

Then blinked.

Then said, with all the dry edge of a man trying not to scream, "Oh. Well. That clears everything up. You’ll just retire from being one of the most powerful ether-wielders alive—permanently damage your channels—tie your worth to a stone—and then go to committee meetings like it’s fine. Damian, that’s not retirement. That’s assisted suicide with paperwork."

"I wouldn’t die," Damian said, his tone too calm for someone proposing magical dismemberment. "Just... stop using ether. Mostly."

"Oh, mostly," Gabriel repeated. "Well, in that case, let me schedule a vacation and knit you a new nervous system while we’re at it."

"Gabriel."