Mezos and the Shadows had been guarding until now and got their fill of ether; their expressions clearly relived.

Arik was... looking at the gate.

Liam followed his gaze instinctively.

The structure stood on the upper platform beyond the suspended bridge, tall enough to dwarf the reinforced walkways around it. Dark steel rose in a narrow arch embedded directly into the wall of the chamber, its surface cut through with metallic veins that should have remained dormant.

Instead, they pulsed in the rhythm of Arik’s breathing.

The first line brightened slowly near the base the moment Arik stepped fully into the marked zone. Then another answered farther up the frame. A third followed after that, spreading through the old channels like light moving through living arteries.

Liam’s breath slowed.

"That was not doing that earlier," Alexander said quietly.

"No," Liam replied automatically, though his attention never left the Gate.

The Vanguard hummed beneath them.

White ether rose in clean currents from the relay spine, brushing against the edges of the interference field where Arik stood. Around Mezos and the other Shadows, the ether behaved normally, absorbed in disciplined streams by trained arcanists relieving the pressure left by days beneath the owl brooches.

Around Arik, it changed.

White turned gold the moment it touched him.

The ether coiled around his hands and shoulders in slow, luminous currents that behaved less like energy and more like something alive, finally recognizing a familiar presence after centuries of silence.

Mezos noticed it immediately.

Even now, after previous visits, the contrast remained unsettling.

He absorbed ether like an elite High Arcanist.

Arik stood inside it like the Vanguard itself had decided he belonged there.

Liam gripped the railing harder as his mind settled around one clear objective.

’Find out why the Gate reacts to Arik.’

’And, for fuck’s sake, figure out how to open it.’

Because this was no longer a theoretical curiosity buried in forgotten schematics and dead languages.

The Gate was responding.

The gold veins pulsing through the dark steel frame had synchronized completely with Arik’s breathing now. Every inhale sent another wave of light through the old channels embedded in the arch. Every exhale dimmed them fractionally before they brightened again in that biological rhythm.

Liam hated that.

Machines were supposed to follow rules, systems, inputs, and outputs.

Not this.

Not whatever impossible thing was unfolding in front of him while the Crown Prince of Agaron stood surrounded by golden ether like the Vanguard itself had decided to kneel.

Arik stepped closer to the platform.

The Gate brightened immediately.

A low vibration rolled through the chamber, deep enough that the metal beneath Liam’s hands trembled once. Somewhere below, the Vanguard’s turbine rings adjusted automatically to the pressure shift, the massive structure humming louder as high-grade ether surged upward through the relay spine.

Alexander swore softly under his breath.

"Do you have the blueprints for this?" Arik asked, ignoring Alexander.

"No." Liam’s eyes remained fixed on the Gate. "I saw them. I had parts of them, but Felix kept the complete set secured."

His voice slowed as the memory returned with unpleasant clarity.

"It was five years ago," he said. "I was eighteen, and I still had free access to Canmore Manor."

Alexander looked toward him sharply.

"You never mentioned that."

Liam did not look away from the Gate.

"I never had a reason to admit I almost stole from Felix before I learned how to do it properly."

Arik’s gaze shifted to him.

There was no amusement in it now.

Only focus. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮

Liam could feel the shape of the thought forming before it fully became a decision. The Gate stood ahead of them, dark steel threaded with gold, breathing in time with Arik like an old thing waking under a familiar hand. The Vanguard could feed it. Arik could trigger it. Liam could read parts of it.

But without the original blueprints, they were blind.

And Felix had them.

Of course Felix had them.

The man collected dead empires the way other nobles collected art: stripped of context, locked behind reinforced doors, and brought out only when useful.

Liam’s fingers tightened around the railing until the metal bit into his palm.

"The secured wing," he murmured.

Alexander went still.

"No."

Liam finally looked at him.

Alexander’s expression had gone flat in the way that meant he was already furious and trying not to raise his voice in front of foreign royalty.

"No," Alexander repeated, quieter and significantly more dangerous. "Absolutely not."

Arik turned toward Liam slowly, head tilted slightly, golden eyes tracking him with the same unnerving focus Liam had become painfully aware of over the last days.

Especially during the heat.

Especially during the moments Liam barely remembered clearly afterward, when instinct had stripped away caution and left him frighteningly willing to follow whatever Arik asked of him.

Arik remembered all of it perfectly.

Liam could see that realization settle behind the prince’s eyes now.

"Are you saying," Arik asked softly, "that you want to enter Felix’s manor?"

The tone alone should have convinced Liam to deny it immediately.

Unfortunately, the Gate existed.

And Liam’s common sense had abandoned him the moment the impossible became technically interesting.

"I’m saying the blueprints are probably there," Liam replied carefully.

"That was not the question."

"It was adjacent to the question."

"It was evasive."

Liam folded his arms.

"You do that constantly."

"I am a crown prince," Arik said calmly. "My evasions are a diplomatic necessity."

"Mine are engineering."

Arik did not even blink.

"That explanation stops working when the engineering involves infiltrating the private archive of a hostile noble patriarch with a documented history of hitting you hard enough to burst blood vessels in your cheeks."

Silence.

Absolute.

Even the Vanguard seemed quieter for half a second beneath the weight of the words.

Liam stared at him.

Alexander looked sharply away toward the lower relay systems with the abrupt professionalism of a man pretending he had suddenly become fascinated by turbine maintenance.

Mezos remained motionless near the bridge, though something in his expression hardened almost imperceptibly.

The Gate pulsed once behind them.

Gold moved through the dark veins of the steel arch like a slow heartbeat.

Liam swallowed once before recovering enough to speak.

"That was one time."

Alexander’s head turned toward him slowly, the expression on his face daring Liam to continue being catastrophically stupid in front of witnesses.

Liam immediately regretted the sentence.

Arik’s eyes cooled further without being outwardly angry.

That would have been easier.

Instead his face became precise and controlled, in the way only very dangerous men ever managed.

"Leave us alone for a minute," he said quietly to Alexander, Mezos, and the Shadows.