"And I will do it again."

The brightness of Felix’s smile made the words worse.

As if killing an emperor, destroying a world, and standing beneath the portrait of the man he had brought low were all simply accomplishments polished enough to display.

Liam’s eyes remained fixed on the portrait, his mind already making connections he didn’t like at all.

Liam swallowed once.

"Are you insane?" he asked, without looking away from the portrait.

Felix laughed softly. "Oh, no. I am quite well."

"That is not the reassuring answer you think it is."

"No," Felix said. "It was not meant to reassure you."

He looked down at his watch, delicate and deliberate. The gesture made Liam want to break the hand wearing it.

"We still have fifteen minutes," Felix continued. "Seeing your surprise at that man... at Goliath, I assume Arik never told you his little secret."

Goliath.

The name slipped into place with a click so sharp Liam felt it in his teeth.

Goliath was a name Liam had seen on the partial blueprints of the Gate, written in old annotations that should not have survived in technical files. It was the name George had spoken while stroking the keys of an elegant piano, his voice carrying that strange, careful amusement of a man testing how close he could step to a grave without falling in.

Arik’s fury at Felix.

The way ether bent toward him.

Liam’s stomach clenched.

Felix saw it.

And now...

Now Liam’s stomach clenched at the realization of what Felix wanted to say.

Felix saw it.

"Oh," he said, delighted. "He really did not."

Liam forced himself to look away from the portrait.

Felix’s eyes were shining.

"Well," Felix said, almost tenderly, "he is the reincarnation of Goliath’s soul."

The room seemed to go very still.

Not because Liam believed Felix entirely; he was not that stupid, but many things started to make sense now.

Arik’s impossible control over ether. The way the old systems like the gate bent toward him as if recognizing a command. The fury that moved through him when Felix’s name was spoken. The golden eyes that sometimes looked too ancient for his face. The way George had believed, even for a moment, that Arik could be used against Felix.

Liam hated that Felix had given him the missing piece.

He hated more that the piece fit.

Felix closed the space between them, his cane tapping once against the floor. He lifted one gloved hand, extending one pale finger toward Liam’s chest as if he had any right to touch him there, over his heart, over the bond that had dragged the most dangerous prince in Agaron across Wrohan for him.

Liam raised his hand to catch Felix’s arm but didn’t get to.

A hand, large, pale, and radiating the coldness of pure ether, shot past Liam’s shoulder.

It closed around Felix’s wrist.

Felix’s smug, shining expression froze.

Liam felt the sheer force of it wash over his back, a tidal wave of golden, suffocating pressure that made the hairs on his arms stand up. He didn’t need to turn around to know who had just rewritten the laws of physics to reach him. The room suddenly smelled of scorching heat and burning ozone.

"Fifteen minutes," Felix said.

"No," Arik replied.

His voice did not sound human. It was a dark vibrating frequency that made the heavy floorboards shake under their feet and the glass in the windows groan in their frames.

Arik stepped smoothly to Liam’s side, his grip on Felix’s arm tightening until the leather of the old man’s glove began to snap under the strain.

Arik was not looking at the massive portrait of Goliath. He was looking at Felix.

His golden eyes blinding, burning with the ancient, merciless fury of a sovereign who had finally cornered the architect of his ruin. The air around him shimmered, distorted by the volume of ether pouring from his open channels. His shirt was slightly unfastened at the throat.

"You do not have fifteen minutes," Arik whispered, the frost spreading from his shoes in jagged, white-blue webs across the expensive rugs. "You do not have fifteen seconds."

Felix tried to pull his arm back.

He couldn’t.

Arik’s fingers were a steel vise that didn’t yield. With a casual, terrifying twist of his wrist, Arik used only a fraction of his strength.

Snap.

The bone beneath Felix’s tailored sleeve broke with a sharp, sickening crack.

Felix let out a wet, breathless gasp, his light purple eyes widening in genuine, unmasked shock as the pain finally struck him. The elegant cane clattered uselessly to the floor. Felix looked from his shattered wrist up to Arik’s face, the realization dawning on him that the Agaron prince had bypassed miles of city blocks, elite security, and poison perimeters in the literal blink of an eye.

"How..." Felix breathed, his face draining of color, the mask of the untouchable mastermind finally fracturing.

Arik tilted his head, a cruel, utterly dead smile curving his mouth.

"You seem to be under the delusion that we are playing the same game, Felix," Arik said, his voice dropping into a lethal, velvet calm. "We are not."

Arik’s glowing gaze flicked briefly to the massive portrait of his past life on the wall, and then back to the fragile, trembling monster in his grasp.

"And you talk entirely too much about things that do not belong to you."

The words fell softly.

Felix’s broken wrist trembled inside Arik’s grip, the fine leather of his glove splitting beneath the pressure. Pain had stripped some of the brightness from his face, but not enough. Not nearly enough. His light purple eyes were still sharp, still calculating, still waiting for the moment when another person’s love became more useful than their hatred.

Liam saw that.

He saw the way Felix’s mouth remained curved despite the shattered bone. He saw the way his gaze flickered, not to Arik’s hand, not to the door, not even to the portrait of Goliath looming above them.

To Liam.

A cold, exact warning moved through Liam’s mind.

Felix had not come here without an exit.

Felix had not let Arik catch him by accident.

The room was too prepared. The dried ether-blooms in the glass cases, the old imperial fragments, the strange warmth beneath the unlit fireplace, the faint sweetness that had never truly left the air even after Felix claimed to have kept his word.

Liam opened his mouth, but it was too late.

Something thin and sharp slipped through his ether channels like a wire drawn under the skin.

His breath caught.

A hot, wet line slid from his nose.

Arik noticed before the first drop reached Liam’s lip.

Everything stopped.

The frost stopped crawling across the floor. The glass stopped trembling in the cabinets. Even the ruined pressure around Felix’s wrist seemed to hold still, suspended between one heartbeat and the next.

Arik’s golden eyes left Felix.

They found Liam.

And all the ancient, merciless fury in them turned, with horrifying speed, into something much worse.

Fear.

Fear, controlled so tightly it looked like murder waiting for permission.

"Liam."

"I’m fine," Liam said.

It was a lie.

A bad one.

The blood reached the corner of his mouth.

Arik unclenched his hand instantly.

Felix vanished the second he was free.