The room went quiet for a second.
The silence was like sothing unexpected has been said and everyone is deciding how to react to it.
Christina slowly turned her head toward Lucas.she leaned closer to him.
"Did he just flirt with Mother?" she asked, her voice dropped low.
Lucas looked at Azael. Then back at Christina. "...I genuinely don’t know."
Celestia herself looked faintly surprised. Which, given her default expression, was surprising in its own right.
Azael maintained his calm smile on the outside. On the inside, he was going crazy. Not understanding what wrong thing did he said.
’What did I do wrong? I was just giving a complint. Noblen complint noble ladies like this all the ti. This is completely normal. This is fine.’
It did not feel fine.
"That took so courage," Callius said, with the tone of a man watching sothing unfold from a safe distance and choosing to stay there.
"It’s just how he talks," Arista said quickly, with a laugh that ca out slightly more nervous than she intended. "It’s a habit of Azael. Nothing else."
Aeliana said nothing. But a quiet sound escaped her. Sothing very close to a laugh, which she covered smoothly.
Celestia looked at Azael for a long mont.
Then, slowly, she crossed one leg over the other, leaned slightly forward, and asked.
"Then what would you prefer to call ? Because I have no interest in hearing ’Your Majesty’ from soone who is, by any reasonable definition, family."
Her voice was as cool and even as always. But the question itself was a corner, and they both knew it.
Azael considered his options for approximately one second.
"...Big Sister?"
"Pfft-" Aeliana nearly burst into laughter.
She covered her mouth imdiately but it was unmistakably the sound of a woman trying not to laugh.
Celestia turned to look at her with one raised brow.
"Sothing funny?"
"Nothing at all," Aeliana said, her composure fully restored. "It’s only that you are older than , and hearing him suggest calling you big sister is..."
"Is what?"
"Amusing."
"So basically, you’re calling old."
"Hey I didn’t. I said your are older than . That’s a factual statent."
"Which implies I’m old."
"But I didn’t call you old openly."
Celestia turned back to Azael with the smooth, effortless pivot of soone changing targets.
"Azael. Didn’t you just say I looked young?"
Azael recognized imdiately what was happening and stepped into it without hesitation.
"I did. And I ant it. Honestly, if no one had told , I wouldn’t have believed you were the eldest person in this room."
Aeliana’s gaze swung toward him with a cool, deliberate weight.
"And what does that make ?"
Azael t her eyes.
"The most beautiful woman in the room, obviously." He said it without blinking. "You don’t look like my mother, you look like Arista’s older sister. I actually assud Uncle Callius was the eldest until soone corrected ."
"Excuse ?" Callius turned from the window with an expression of genuine offense. "Young man. I am the youngest adult in this room. How could you possibly—"
"He has good eyes," Sabrina said pleasantly, from beside him.
Callius turned to look at his wife.
Sabrina looked back at him with an expression of complete innocence.
Aeliana’s expression had shifted, the cool edge replaced by sothing softer and quietly satisfied.
"Good answer," she said simply.
"You’re right," Celestia said, almost to herself. "Callius does look the oldest."
"Completely agree," Aeliana replied.
And just like that, the two sisters were talking to each other with the easy, natural flow of people who had entirely forgotten the small argunt they had just been having– leaving Callius sitting between them looking deeply wronged.
Celestia’s gaze drifted back to Azael.
He was smiling calmly. His posture was relaxed.
The sweat on his forehead was less visible, fortunately.
Sothing moved in her expression. Before it settled back into its composed default. Her lips curved by the smallest degree and then returned to nothing.
She tilted her head slightly.
"Azael," she said, her voice dropping into sothing quieter and more deliberate. "Tell , between myself and Aeliana, who looks older?"
The room shifted.
Aeliana turned to look at him.
Arista looked at him with sothing that was like sympathy.
Everyone else waited.
Azael observed both won with genuine consideration. Two remarkable, composed, genuinely difficult to age won sat before him, and he was being asked to choose between them.
He made his decision.
"Truthfully," he said, "you both look the sa age to . I genuinely can’t tell." A beat. "But if you’re insisting on an answer, I’ll say my mother. Because I lived with her for so many yearsmm, and how could I possibly take anyone else’s side?"
Aeliana’s expression lit up. It was quiet and warm, in the way it rarely did.
Celestia raised her brow. A flicker of sothing crossed her face that looked almost like mild displeasure, but sharper underneath. The expression of soone who is not used to coming second.
"You win this ti, sister," she said, her voice dry. "Because you had the advantage of being closer to him."
Azael tilted his head slightly.
"Would Her Majesty like to change that? Because if she actually made the effort to get closer to ." a small, easy smile "I would take her side without a second thought."
Lucas muttered sothing under his breath.
Christina leaned toward him. "What?"
"I said he really has no fear."
"Mama." Mira’s small, serious voice rose from her mother’s lap. She looked up at Sabrina with genuine curiosity. "Is this what flirting is?"
"Shh." Sabrina pulled her daughter slightly closer. "Where did you hear that word?"
"Hehe~" Celestia laughed.
It was brief and light. It arrived and disappeared quickly, but it was there.
"You are smooth," she said, looking at Azael with sothing that was almost appreciation.
"I’ll give you that." Her voice shifted. Still light on the surface but with sothing colder and more deliberate moving underneath it, like deep water beneath a calm surface.
In short she was showing nice expression. But underneath she was not pleased.
"Tell though. If you weren’t considered family here...do you know what I might have done with soone like you?"
The temperature in the room dropped by a degree.
Aeliana’s eyes narrowed in Celestia’s direction.
Callius, very quietly, swallowed his saliva.
Any reasonable person would have apologized. Laughed it off and changed the subject.
Azael glanced at Aeliana once, then looked back at Celestia with a calm, then smile.
’Aeliana. She won’t let anything happen to . I believe that much.’
"Taken for yourself, perhaps," he said pleasantly. "After all, I am fairly handso man."
Pure silence.
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