Gabriel didn’t even flinch. "A math competition."
Alexandra choked on her tea.
Damian’s brows lifted, a slow smile forming. "Try again."
There was a beat. Not long. Just enough silence for the air to shift.
Gabriel glanced up, poised and perfectly composed, like a man who had not only expected this confrontation but had already written the rebuttal.
"I took the civil examination," he said, calm as clean glass. "Under a false na. Seventeen. Passed."
Damian stopped in front of him, eyes narrowing, gold and sharp. "Sohow this doesn’t surprise , but why?"
Gabriel didn’t blink. "I just wanted to see if my knowledge and skill were like the tutors said."
There was no bravado in the answer. No need for it. Just the quiet, asured certainty of soone who had already fought the doubt and won.
"And were they?" Damian asked, his voice low, but not unkind. More curious than anything, like a man re-evaluating the past through a sharper lens.
Gabriel tilted his head slightly, the corners of his mouth almost curving. "Better."
Alexandra set her teacup down with the care of soone who knew an emotional detonation when she saw one coming. "He didn’t just pass. He rewrote one of the logic questions in the margin because the formulation was inefficient."
Julian looked up. "Was that you?"
Gabriel shrugged modestly. "It was a flawed question."
"I hated that question," Julian muttered.
Damian didn’t say anything, but sothing in his gaze burned brighter. He approached Gabriel and put his hand on his lower back while watching the contestants trying their best and worst.
He didn’t look at the examinees.
He didn’t need to.
"Line 23, column five. Out." His voice was quiet, unbothered, like he was discussing the weather instead of soone’s future.
He never took his eyes off Gabriel.
A mont passed. Then another. A rustle of movent echoed from the amphitheater floor as a proctor intercepted a pale-faced applicant clutching a pen too tightly, already sweating through a sleeve embroidered with a family crest that wouldn’t save them.
"This is terrifying, Your Majesty," Rafael said, the title tacked on like a survival instinct.
Gabriel said nothing and leaned on Damian just a touch, barely enough to notice unless you knew him well. But Damian noticed. Of course he did. The small shift of weight against his side was quieter than a whisper but more intimate than a kiss.
They hadn’t seen each other in days. Not properly. Not without soone waiting outside the door or Edward reminding them they were twenty minutes behind schedule. Their so-called vacation had cost more than ti—it had left Gabriel exhausted, and Damian’s ether channels flaring with pain when he tried to do too much, too soon.
But Damian kept his promise.
Two weeks of no channel use. He hadn’t even touched the power humming under his skin, despite temptation.
"Everyone had Max telling about how unnatural your hearing is," Alexandra said dryly, eyes sweeping the amphitheater. "But no one listens. I wonder why."
Damian’s lips curved, just a little. "Because they think he exaggerates."
"And you let them."
"I like it when they forget," Damian murmured. "It makes it more entertaining when they rember."
Julian didn’t look up from his papers. "Or when soone dies."
"I said entertaining, not educational."
"Sa thing for you," Rafael muttered, clearly rethinking every life choice that had led him to this table.
Gabriel smiled faintly, head still tilted toward Damian’s shoulder. "Just wait until the logic section starts. That’s when the real weeping begins."
"And the cheating," Alexandra said cheerfully. "You always did bring out the best in people."
Damian glanced toward the applicants. "Line twenty-nine. Column six. About to try sothing stupid."
Damian’s smile deepened, slow and satisfied, like soone watching a storm roll in with the windows wide open.
"I missed you," he said, voice pitched low enough that only Gabriel could hear it.
"I was in the palace," Gabriel replied, dry as parchnt. "You were the one playing shadow gas with Alexander’s reports."
"And you were the one refusing to rest."
Gabriel humd noncommittally, the kind of sound that could an agreent or a polite invitation to shut up, depending on the hour.
Down in the amphitheater, the dood applicant on row twenty-nine finally made his move—fingers twitching toward the cuff of his sleeve, where a narrow strip of etched crystal shimred faintly under the ether lights. It pulsed once.
Gabriel sighed like soone opening a drawer to find the spoons had been rearranged again. "Idiot."
Damian raised a single hand. One of the proctors moved imdiately, quiet as breath. The applicant didn’t even make it to the second pulse. He was escorted out with a silencing charm snapped over his wrist and his exam scroll already nullified.
The silence that followed was thick.
"That’s two out in fifteen minutes," Alexandra said, sipping her tea. "At this rate, we’ll need a second waiting room for the disqualified."
"We do," Julian said without looking up. "It’s called the unemploynt line."
Rafael winced. "That’s cold."
"That’s accurate."
Irina, from her corner, leaned closer. "Do you think they realize they’re being watched this closely?"
"They realize now," Gabriel said calmly, adjusting the silver pin on his robe.
Damian’s gaze lingered on him for a mont longer—on the easy grace, the cutting precision, the absolute control—and then shifted back to the room like a knife sliding back into its sheath.
The ti assigned passed fast for the contestants and painfully slow for the team.
One hour in, the tension in the hall had settled into sothing brittle and tallic, like the air before a lightning strike. Students shifted in their seats, hands cramping, minds racing. The silence was not empty—it was full of calculations, of strategies, of people trying to outwit not only the questions but also the expectations sewn into every line of parchnt.
anwhile, the Departnt of Spite was on its second pot of tea and fourth wave of collective fatigue. Julian had begun organizing the answer sheets based on handwriting neatness, Rafael had developed a quiet tic of recapping and uncapping his red pen, and Irina had taken to muttering silent encouragents to the particularly stressed examinees. Alexandra paced once every fifteen minutes, not out of restlessness but because she said it reminded the room who was watching.
Gabriel, for his part, had only moved to stretch his fingers. He hadn’t spoken again since Damian left.
The Emperor had stayed longer than expected, hovering by Gabriel’s side with a stillness that was more protective than possessive, before finally departing with a word to Astana and a faint brush of fingers against Gabriel’s wrist. His schedule was still packed, the kind of packed that required assistants to invent new color codes and Edward to threaten people before breakfast. And yet, he had stayed.
Now, his absence felt like a door shut behind them.
"I forgot how exhausting this part is," Alexandra muttered, looking down at the scroll listing the nas of those already removed. "They either break too early or take so long to make a mistake it feels like slow death."
Gabriel didn’t look up. "The ones who break late are usually the most dangerous. Desperation makes them clever."
Julian nodded. "Or reckless."
Rafael sighed into his sleeve. "Can I write that on their evaluations?"
Irina, wide-eyed and still valiantly grading one scroll at a ti, whispered, "I thought this was just a test."
Gabriel finally looked at her, gaze steady. "It is. But it’s also a filter. One mistake might lose you an exam. But the wrong one might cost lives in the Palace."
Irina nodded slowly, the weight of it settling in. Then she straightened her shoulders again, hands returning to the scroll with a new kind of focus.
The minutes ticked on, slow and sharp.
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