For a few monts neither of them spoke. The only sounds were the muted tick of the clock above the door and the faint hiss of the tea service cooling on the sideboard. Sunlight shifted slowly across the pale oak panels, warming the edges of the low table between them.
Caelan didn’t reach for his cup or clear his throat. He simply sat back in his chair, one arm resting loosely along the armrest, the other on his knee, his posture a careful study in patience. His green eyes stayed on Lucas, steady but not pressing, the look of a man who had learned that silence could do more than questions.
Lucas felt the weight of it, not oppressive, but disorienting. In his first life the rooms had always been noisy: Christian’s clipped orders, lawyers reciting clauses, the clatter of glass, Misty’s lies and Ophelia’s fake laugh. This stillness was stranger, harder to hold. His fingers flexed once against the armrest before he made them go still again.
He could sense Caelan waiting, as if giving him space to breathe. No words, no demands, just the quiet presence of a man who knew exactly how much room he occupied. It only made the old ache sharper, the contrast between the rescuer he had imagined and the Emperor sitting calmly across from him now.
Lucas drew a slow breath and let it out, shoulders easing a fraction. He straightened a cuff that didn’t need straightening, eyes flicking to the teacup and then back to Caelan’s face. ’You ca here to finish this,’ he reminded himself. ’You’re not a boy waiting for rescue anymore.’
"Your Majesty, I was under the impression that you wanted to talk with ." Lucas said, his voice way calr than he expected it to be.
Across from him, Caelan’s mouth curved just slightly, not quite a smile. He stayed back in the armchair, legs crossed at the ankle, one hand loose on the armrest, as if giving Lucas the room to fill the silence in his own ti.
"I did," Caelan said at last, voice low but even. "But sotis it’s worth waiting to see how a person enters a room before you start speaking." His green eyes held Lucas’s without hardening, a gaze that asured but didn’t pin. "You’ve walked into enough rooms to know the difference."
Lucas sighed, rembering that even if Caelan was the Emperor, he still had Trevor and Serathine at his back now. He wasn’t alone anymore, and yet the old instinct to fold himself small in front of power still brushed his nerves like static.
"Your Majesty, I don’t want to be here, and both of us know it," he said, his voice steady but quieter than before. "What do you expect of ?" He paused, clenching his long, pale fingers on the armrest until his knuckles whitened. "I’ve inford Sirius and Lucius that I’m not interested in being acknowledged as an imperial prince."
Caelan didn’t flinch at the words. He set the untouched cup back on the table with a small, deliberate click and leaned back, one ankle resting over the other knee. The movent was unhurried, not a reprimand but a signal that he had ti.
"I know," he said simply. "They told ." His voice stayed low, almost conversational. "And I’m not here to drag you into a ceremony you don’t want."
Lucas blinked at him, thrown for a second by the absence of argunt. The muscles in his forearm eased but didn’t fully relax. "Then why call ?"
Caelan’s gaze softened just enough to make it feel dangerous. "Because whether you carry a title or not, you’re still part of this family. You are still my son, and despite what Trevor thinks of , I’m not one to run from responsibility."
Lucas said nothing; there was nothing to say to a man who, in the end, had saved him by sending Serathine. Maybe if Caelan had known in the other life, he would have done the sa. Maybe there had been a chance, once, that soone would have reached for him before Christian did. The thought made sothing old and raw stir under his ribs.
"I’m respecting your wishes and not announcing that you are my son officially," Caelan went on, lifting the teacup with an easy grace, "but I won’t smother the rumors."
Lucas’s fingers flexed once against the armrest. He’d sworn he wouldn’t ask, but the words blurted out of him before he could stop them. "How did you know where I was and that I needed help?"
Caelan sighed, set the teacup down with a soft click and reached into the inside pocket of his jacket. When his hand ca back, it held a single piece of paper, folded neatly in two. He placed it on the table and slid it across the polished wood toward Lucas.
Lucas hesitated, then reached out. His hand looked steady but felt cold as he unfolded it.
It was a letter, his own handwriting, unmistakable. A scrawl he had seen in old notebooks, on scraps of paper left for himself when he was half-asleep, as though he were leaving breadcrumbs for another version of him to follow. The ssage was simple, almost clinical: Misty Kilr has a son. Lucas Oz Kilr. Birth date. Temple before coming-of-age ceremony. Lines of dates and locations like coordinates.
He stared at the paper, throat working, the room tilting slightly around the edges. He rembered writing things like this in his first life when desperation had driven him past sha; he had hidden notes, whispered nas to sympathetic strangers, and tried to plant a trail no one would ever pick up. He had never expected to see one of them here, on Caelan’s table.
His fingers tightened on the paper until it crinkled. "This... is mine," he said, voice low, almost accusing. "But I never wrote it."
"Well, soone did," Caelan replied quietly. "And it was confird by more than one specialist that it is indeed your handwriting." His green eyes shone with a kind of calm certainty that made the room feel even smaller. "That, unless..." he let the pause stretch, "...Serathine and Trevor’s feud with the church is more than a simple quarrel." His gaze held Lucas’s, steady but not cruel. "So, tell , Lucas... how many lives did you see?"
Lucas’s pulse roared in his ears. He forced himself to breathe, to keep his shoulders loose, and to not look away from those green eyes. How many lives... The question cut deeper than he’d expected. He felt the instinctive urge to deny, to laugh it off, to slide the mask back into place, but the crumpled paper in his hands burned like proof.
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