His ears were warm.

Liam slowly lowered the book.

Across the room, Aunt Mirelle did not look up from her embroidery. "Someone is speaking of you."

"I hate that superstition."

"Yes, dear."

"It has no scientific basis."

"Many accurate things survive without your approval."

Liam glared at her.

She continued stitching with perfect serenity.

From the sofa near the window, Enia Ravenwood turned a page of her own book without looking at him. "Perhaps it is Felix."

"Then my ears would be bleeding."

Aunt Mirelle hummed. "George, then."

"My ears would be asking for a lawyer."

Enia finally lifted her eyes. They landed on Liam’s face first, as they had been doing all evening, checking the disguised swelling, the corner of his mouth, and the stiffness he could not quite hide.

Her expression cooled.

Liam looked away first.

That was another intolerable part of being home.

In Lab V, damage became data. A bruise was an inconvenience. Pain was a variable. Weakness could be buried beneath work until it became irrelevant.

At Ravenwood Manor, his mother looked at him as if every hidden mark had a name and every name deserved punishment.

"It is probably Rex," Liam said, reopening the book with more force than necessary. "He is likely telling someone I made poor decisions."

"You did," Enia said.

"I made efficient decisions under unusual constraints."

"You disappeared from this house with a treated head injury, crossed half the city, entered Lab V, used displacement against medical advice, and returned only after helping the Agaron delegation bypass state suppression devices."

Liam paused.

Aunt Mirelle’s needle stopped.

The room became too quiet.

Liam looked up slowly. "Who told you that last part?"

Enia’s smile was small and very much maternal, which in Liam’s terms meant danger.

"You are under house arrest, Liam. Not under information protection."

"I dislike this household."

"No, you dislike consequences," Aunt Mirelle said mildly.

"I dislike informed consequences."

Enia closed her book. "You will remain here tonight."

"I have work."

"You have a face that looks like Felix should lose a hand."

Liam’s jaw tightened. "Mother."

"No." Enia stood, and the room seemed to stand with her. "I am barely keeping myself in check this time. The old bitch had the nerve to hurt you because you refused to marry Rex, and in that rotten little mind of his, your refusal became permission to put his hands on you."

"Mother..."

Enia looked at him.

Whatever Liam had intended to say died very wisely in his throat.

For one moment, she was not the elegant lady of Ravenwood Manor, not Henry Ravenwood’s wife, not the woman who could make an entire household move with one glance. She was Enia Armstrong, and every inch of her looked like the family line had been bred specifically to survive wars and ruin the men who started them.

"You know what?" she said, her voice low. "I am done being nice."

Aunt Mirelle’s embroidery lowered fully into her lap.

Liam went still.

That was worse than shouting.

When Enia shouted, people panicked. When Enia became calm, people needed wills.

"Mother..."

"Mirelle," Enia said, not looking away from Liam, "send the proof about Ray being George’s son out. All of it. Registry fragments, sealed bloodline comparison, Felix’s private correction notes, the capital physician’s old record, and the royal archive mismatch."

Liam’s blood went cold.

Aunt Mirelle did not ask whether Enia was certain.

That, more than anything, made the room tilt.

She only set her embroidery aside and reached for the slim comm tablet on the side table with the serene competence of a woman who had been waiting years for permission to become inconvenient.

"Public channels or targeted release?" Mirelle asked.

Liam’s mouth opened. "Absolutely not."

Enia’s eyes flashed toward him. "Sit down."

"I am sitting."

"Then remain so."

"You cannot just—"

"I can." Enia’s voice cut through the room, as only a scorned mother’s could. "And I should have done it years ago."

Liam took a deep breath and tried to calm her. "Mother, this is not the first or second time Felix has hit me; it’s not that big of a deal."

The silence was so brutal that Liam felt it in his bones.

Aunt Mirelle’s hand stopped above the comm tablet.

Enia went perfectly quiet, her eyes widened in shock while her mind was already trying to map any unusual behavior of Liam from birth until now.

Liam realized his mistake at once. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"Oh," he said.

Mirelle slowly set the tablet down. "Liam."

"No."

"You do not get to say no after that sentence."

"I was trying to de-escalate."

Enia’s voice came quiet. "How many times?"

Liam looked at her.

His mother’s face had gone pale beneath her anger. The fury had opened, and something worse had looked out: grief, sharp and white and disbelieving.

"Mother."

"How many times?"

"It was never—"

"Do not finish that sentence," Enia said.

Liam’s mouth closed.

Aunt Mirelle rose from her chair, all softness gone from her expression. "Liam Sienna Canmore."

"That full name is unnecessary."

"It became necessary the moment you admitted Felix has been striking you often enough for you to develop categories."

Liam looked away.

That did not help.

Enia’s breath shuddered once. She pressed one hand against the back of the sofa, not for balance, but because without something under her fingers she might have crossed the room and begun a war with her bare hands.

Liam did not see the point in hiding it anymore.

"I don’t know."

The words fell too quietly.

Then he saw how his mother changed.

How Aunt Mirelle changed.

Something older and colder passed through both women at the same time, as if the entire Armstrong bloodline had risen from within them and decided civilization was an entertaining costume but not a binding agreement.

Liam swallowed.

"I don’t know," he repeated, because apparently honesty, once started, became an engineering failure with no emergency shutoff. "He hit me personally twice. This time and once when I was nineteen. But..."

Enia’s fingers tightened on the sofa back.

Aunt Mirelle’s voice was soft. "But?"

Liam looked down at the old ether grid book still open on his lap, at the neat diagrams of pressure, flow, and consequence. Machines were kinder than people.

"There were odd accidents," he said. "All the time. Usually after I did something that pissed him off."

The room went very still.

Liam forced himself to continue, because if he stopped now, his mother would ask, and he was not certain he could survive the questions.

"A stabilizer coil misfired after I refused to sign over the municipal regulator patent. The safety lock on a lower corridor door failed the week after I blocked Cain’s access request to Lab V. A scaffold collapsed in the west maintenance shaft after I told Ray I would not attend that dinner with the eastern families. Nothing obvious. Nothing anyone could point to and say Felix did it."

Aunt Mirelle had gone pale.

Enia had not.

Enia had gone perfectly calm.

Liam gave a small, humorless laugh. "They were always plausible. That was the point. Old systems. Overworked labs. Underfunded maintenance. My own terrible habit of standing near things that might explode. Very convenient, really."

"Liam," Enia said.

He did not look at her.

"If I looked too closely, I had to do something with the answer," he said. "And I had work. I always had work."

Mirelle closed her eyes.

For one second, the elegant, composed woman who had terrified department heads into apologizing before soup looked deeply, horribly human.

Then she opened them again.

"Dates," she said.

Liam blinked. "What?"