The receiving is over. The party begins—which only means the choreography changes shape.
Conversation arranges itself into rings around money, rumor, and the people who make both move. The quartet slips darker, then brighter. Servers ferry gold in shallow coupes. A wall-sized mirror pretends to be a window and throws the chandelier back twice as bright.
Adrian is shepherded toward a gallery off the main hall, a space of chrome and calm where the cameras can breathe. A sculpture like a frozen river coils through the room; it reflects him as a taller, steadier boy he has never met.
Damien is already there.
He has found the angle that lets every lens worship his profile. He stands closer to Adrian than the etiquette diagram would draw—close enough for the edge of his jacket to brush air across Adrian's sleeve when he turns, close enough for smoke–spice–citrus to lay a claim the flowers can't compete with.
Lucien stands on Adrian's other side and does not move. He has become a line the room is built around. When his eyes pivot, the air temperature follows by two degrees. [SEC] tracks the gaze and redraws the room without stepping on anyone's shoes.
A [PRESS] mic slides toward them on an eager hand. "Mr. Duskborne, how does it feel, a 98.9% compatibility? The nation is breathless."
"Numbers are numbers," Lucien says. "We'll proceed with the schedule."
The cameras murmur at his tone—cold enough to shine.
"Mr. Vale?" another reporter leans in, eyes bright with hungry kindness. "Your thoughts?"
Adrian lets the circuitry [PA] taught him engage. "It's… a lot of kindness in one room."
Frames flicker. Feeds purr at the human answer.
Damien lifts his glass but doesn't drink. "Kindness," he repeats, tasting the word like he's checking its acidity. He tips the rim toward Adrian in a toast the cameras can't decode. "Generous."
[SEC] shadows recalibrate—two body lengths become one and a half. [PA] pretends to read a live dashboard and is really watching Damien's shoes.
"Legacy? Heirs? Timeline?" someone scatters bait.
"Another question—" a reporter begins, but the light bank stutters; a cascade of flashes falls like a curtain drop.
Damien uses the brightness the way a thief uses shadow.
He turns in, silk shouldering the air, and lowers his head until Adrian can count the threads in the bow tie. Breath cools the space under his ear.
"You're not suited to him," he says, velvet over knife. "Your scent is too faint."
The chandelier trembles. Or maybe Adrian does.
BEEP. The ceremony scanner detonates in his skull. BEEP. A bell taps metal in his ribs. BEEP. Ozone—Lucien's afterstorm—surges for one heartbeat, colliding with smoke–spice and the metallic taste of blockers on his tongue.
His heel slips half a step, instinct betraying training. Crystal kisses silver on the tray behind him—clink—and the server flinches. [SEC] glances. [PRESS] lenses twitch, hunting the tremor.
"Careful," Damien says aloud, smile widened for the room like concern. "Crowded."
The sentence lands like an alibi.
Adrian nails his breath to the floor. He straightens, finds a microphone with his eyes, and offers the night a safe sentence. "I'm fine, thank you," he says. He sets his glass down so his hand won't show it is not.
His palm stings where a thumb drew a line earlier. A different hand overlays it for half a second—a phantom from another world, warm and steady, ring humming like a small sun. He blinks and returns to the room his body is in.
"Mr. Cross," a reporter calls, delighted to have him centered, "any message for House Duskborne on this auspicious night?"
Damien doesn't look at the reporter. He looks at Adrian, then at the hard edge of Lucien's jaw—as if measuring the cut of a blade he intends to steal. He watches like a man reading cracks in glass.
"House Cross always wishes our… friends… every success," he says, diplomacy worn like silk. Smoke–spice blooms like a flag no one can confiscate.
Lucien's eyes move once, the barest pivot—enough to turn the gallery two degrees colder. "This conversation is over," he tells [PA], which means it's over for the room.
"Of course," Damien replies, agreeable as rain. He doesn't step back.
A server appears at Adrian's elbow. "Water?" she asks, voice pitched beneath the microphones.
"Yes." The word feels like permission. The water tastes like nothing, and he is grateful.
"Mr. Vale," a woman says from too near his shoulder—not Damien's voice, but in the Cross orbit: perfect bun, perfect posture, perfect smile. "You're luminous on camera. If you ever—"
A [SEC] shadow occupies the air between them without touching either body. The woman's smile edits itself and drifts away.
"Thank you," Adrian says to no one, because he cannot say it to [SEC] and have it still be what it is.
His phone shivers once against his ribs—silent mode set by policy, vibration small enough to feel like a thought. A notification ghost touches the edge of his mind. Aether:Log if you need. Or don't. I'll be where you left me. He keeps his hands still. He keeps the idea of the message warm in the place the blockers cannot numb.
"Back to the main floor, please," [PA] murmurs, guiding them with a smile that moves mountains. "Garden doors for photos—the light is perfect."
They are poured with the crowd toward a set of glass doors glossed with night. The chandelier above them is brighter here, a crown trying to be a moon. Outside, rain threads the dark; the scent of wet stone nosedives in through the seam.
"Closer," a photographer calls, meaning the composition.
Adrian takes half a step because his body has been taught to obey. Damien notches in the same degree because his has been taught to inhabit space other people leave.
"Not you," the photographer tells Damien, very sweet. "You're perfect."
Damien laughs softly, as if perfection were a chore he doesn't mind.
Lucien stands on Adrian's right, an axis. Ozone. Steel. Rain. A forecast that makes rooms listen.
"Mr. Vale," a reporter near the doors says, ribboning the last question, "how does it feel to be the nation's favorite Omega tonight?"
The word Omega lands like a crown with teeth. Adrian answers the way a person trapped in amber breathes: carefully, and only if he must. "It feels," he says, "like a lot of people being very generous with their attention."
"Beautifully said," the reporter purrs, already writing the caption in their head.
He can feel Damien smiling.
"Another one," the photographer says. "Chins up. Eyes here. Three, two—"
Flashes sew white across the dark.
In that pocket of blindness, Damien leans. The syllables thread the noise cleanly, meant for the seam between questions. "You smell afraid," he says, curious as a sommelier. "You hide it well."
Adrian keeps his gaze on a hinge in the door. "I'm not afraid," he says. It is almost true. The fear is smaller than the anger.
"Even better," Damien murmurs. "You're angry."
He wants to put a heel on Damien's polished shoe and leave a mark he can name later as "accident." He wants to say You don't get to smell my life. He wants a garden with koi that loop without needing permission.
"Mr. Cross," someone from the council calls across the noise. "Two minutes?"
"Moment," Damien answers without looking away. He is a man who believes minutes will wait for him.
Lucien's voice cuts, level and soft. "We're finished here."
Cameras feel the sentence and reposition. [SEC] resets the geometry. [PA] steps into a reporter's path with a smile that reflects, not absorbs.
Damien finally turns his head—as if remembering the rest of the room exists—and strolls the three paces that put him fully into the light. He places his empty hand at his side the way men place weapons on tables to be seen. The chandelier crowns him with a spear of gold.
"Just one last—" a reporter says, hungry to be the one quoted.
Damien doesn't look at the reporter.
He looks at Adrian for one bright, impolite heartbeat.
Then he looks at Lucien as if the night were a chessboard he could tilt.
And he says it where every microphone can hear and no one can misquote:
"Your true mate," he tells Lucien lightly, "should be me."