Nero kept smiling until he was out of Dean’s sight.

That was the first rule of court.

Not one his fathers had taught him directly. Dax had taught him many other things: where to place his weight before a strike, how to make an insult sound like a compliment, and how to let people underestimate you exactly once. Christopher had taught him restraint, which was far more annoying and far more useful. Smile before the wound shows. Bow before the room notices. Leave before someone clever and affectionate decides to make it their problem.

Nero had been loved well enough to learn all of them.

That was the inconvenient part.

People thought affection made children soft. Nero had always found that ridiculous. Being loved by Dax and Christopher meant being seen too clearly to get away with cowardice. It meant Dax laughing while teaching him to survive things that should have broken him. It meant Christopher touching his cheek with gentle fingers and then saying, very calmly, that if Nero tried to turn pain into cruelty, he would be dragged home by the ear regardless of rank, age, or international law.

It meant they knew him.

Unfortunately.

Minister Arven was waiting near the Sahan delegation with the expression of a man who had sent a message to retrieve a prince and was already regretting that the prince had obeyed.

"Your Highness," Arven said. "The formal presentation to His Majesty is in twelve minutes."

"I am aware."

"You were speaking with Crown Prince Arion and Lord Dean."

"I was also aware of that."

Arven’s gaze moved over his face with the cautious suffering of an official trying to determine whether the young prince had detonated something personal in public.

"Should I ask?"

"No."

"Was it political?"

"Unfortunately."

"Was it personal?"

"Even more unfortunately."

Arven inhaled once, then wisely surrendered to silence.

Nero adjusted one cuff and let the ballroom settle back around him. Alamina’s birthday gala sparkled with cold discipline, all white stone, gold light, and nobles pretending the beast season hadn’t already crept into every conversation. Arion had returned to his greetings. Dean remained near him, flushed and irritated and trying very hard not to look like he had said autumn aloud and meant it.

Dean.

Nero nearly laughed.

Dean had spent years noticing everything except the one thing Nero had not hidden nearly as well as he thought.

The way he watched Sebastian across training halls. The way he took the harder flank without being ordered. The way, during beast skirmishes, Nero always ended up where Sebastian’s pheromone output could drop because Nero was already carrying the worst of the fight.

Dean could identify poison in a smile and politics in a seating chart but somehow had needed Arion to throw Sebastian’s name like a knife before realizing Nero had spent years orbiting his older brother.

Unbelievable.

Affection made clever people stupid.

Or perhaps family did.

"Your Highness."

The voice was lower than Arven’s, steadier, and far less interested in court diplomacy.

Nero turned.

Hale stood near the screened edge of the Sahan reception post, dressed in black with dark green accents, with no ornament except the security mark at his collar. He had served Dax and Chris for years, long enough to become less an officer and more a fixture of Sahan survival.

Officially, Hale was chief of security to the Sahan Queen.

Unofficially, for the beast season, he had been assigned to Nero because Christopher had looked at him once over breakfast and said, "You will need someone who knows when you are lying politely."

Dax had grinned.

Hale had not.

That was how Nero knew the assignment was serious.

"Hale," Nero said. "You look festive."

"I am armed."

"That is festive for Saha."

"We need to discuss camp strategy."

Nero glanced toward Arven.

The minister looked relieved to hand him over to a man more comfortable with field maps than emotional warfare. "Ten minutes, Your Highness."

"No," Hale said, already knowing that Arven was agreeing only because he wanted permission to breathe. "I was going to say that is for tomorrow. We do not rush this."

Nero turned his head slowly. "How considerate."

"It is not consideration. It is basic competence."

"Cruel distinction."

Hale’s gaze did not soften. "You just left a conversation involving Lord Dean, Crown Prince Arion, and Sebastian Fitzgeralt’s name. You are not reviewing deployment maps tonight."

Nero’s smile remained perfectly in place.

Arven suddenly developed great professional interest in the floor.

"What a dramatic assumption," Nero said.

"What an accurate one," Hale replied.

Nero looked at him for a moment, then laughed under his breath. "Chris sent you with instructions."

"Both your fathers did."

"That sounds excessive."

"It sounded loving."

"In Saha, those often overlap."

"Yes," Hale said. "That is why I am telling you to finish the presentation, accept congratulations, smile at three more people, and then go sleep."

Nero’s brows rose. "Do you schedule my suffering too?"

"I try. You improvise too much."

Arven made a small choking sound and turned it into a cough.

Nero’s smile brightened. "Minister?"

"Nothing, Your Highness."

"Good. Let us go deliver the gift before Hale decides I require a bedtime."

"You do," Hale said.

Nero sighed. "Tyranny."

He stepped back into the gala before Hale could answer, long white-blond hair shifting over one shoulder, green and gold catching the light, purple eyes bright enough for the court to believe whatever performance he offered them.

He presented the Sahan gift to Otto with perfect grace.

He smiled for ambassadors.

He endured three noblewomen asking whether Dax had truly sent a royal forge blade or whether Saha was making a statement.

He told them, sweetly, that with Saha the answer was usually both.

By the time the gala ended, his jaw ached from smiling.

By the time he reached the Sahan wing, his head was full of maps he had not seen yet and one northern route he could already imagine too clearly.

He slept badly.

He awoke too frequently, his eyes opening to dark ceilings and the familiar shape of Sebastian’s name in Arion’s mouth.

By morning, Nero was dressed before Hale knocked.

The Sahan quarters in Alamina’s guest wing had been converted overnight from royal accommodation into a functional command room. The sitting chamber had lost half its decorative furniture and gained folding map tables, field slates, supply manifests, and a portable communications board secured under Sahan encryption. Alamina’s palace had the kind of old stone that pretended to despise modern technology, but the hidden ports had accepted Saha’s systems with suspicious ease.

Nero approved.

Grudgingly.

He was standing at the largest table when Hale entered, sleeves already rolled, hair tied back with a black ribbon, expression far too awake for a man who had likely slept no more than Nero had.

"You’re early," Hale said.

"I’m eighteen. We recover beautifully."

"You look like you slept three hours."

"Beautifully, for three hours."

Hale set a sealed field slate on the table. "Breakfast."

Nero looked at the slate.

Then at him.

"Unless that opens into coffee and bread, your definition of breakfast is upsetting."