CHAPTER 191: CHAPTER 191: QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANSWERS

Elias had been quiet for longer than usual, his fork pushed aside, his eyes fixed on some point past the fire. When he finally spoke, his voice was calm enough to make the hair on the back of Ruo’s neck rise.

"Uno," he said. "What does ether corruption really mean?"

The fork in Uno’s hand stilled. His blue eyes slid lazily from his glass to Elias, a smile still resting on his mouth but thinner now, sharpened.

Across the table, Ruo froze mid-breath, her tablet forgotten. Connor muttered something under his breath that sounded like a prayer. Robert’s jaw set hard enough to creak, and Ashwin shifted his weight like he was bracing for impact.

Victor’s crimson gaze flicked once to Elias, unreadable, then back to Uno. His arm didn’t move from the back of Elias’s chair, but his pheromones thickened in the air, smoke pressing low and heavy.

"Ether corruption," Elias repeated, tone even, though his pulse beat too fast at his throat. "Not the red either, not what Victor told me. The real thing. What does it mean?"

Uno leaned back in his chair, setting the fork down with the grace of a man who had just been handed a far more interesting toy. "That," he said softly, "is a dangerous question."

Elias didn’t blink. "Then give me a dangerous answer."

The fire cracked in the hearth, a snap that felt like punctuation.

Uno’s grin widened again, teeth flashing, but his eyes... his eyes were bright with something ancient. "Corruption," he said, voice laced with amusement and something colder, "is when Victor would decide to tell you."

The words landed like a stone in water, rippling through the silence.

Elias’s brows drew together, the calm line of his mouth tightening. "So you’re dodging."

"No," Uno corrected lightly, reaching for his glass again. "I’m deferring. Because the rules of corruption aren’t mine to speak aloud. They were his." He tilted his head toward Victor, casual as if he’d just pointed out who brought the wine to the table. "Executioner gets to define the rot, not the Creator. Strange little paradox, isn’t it?"

Victor’s thumb pressed more firmly against Elias’s shoulder, a subtle weight of warning. His crimson gaze sparked across the table, molten and sharp. "He’s baiting you," he said quietly.

Uno’s grin sharpened, blue eyes bright. "Always."

Elias turned his head, meeting Victor’s gaze head-on. "So, will you tell me?" His voice was calm, but there was expectation under it, a flicker of challenge.

Victor’s mouth curved slowly, all teeth and velvet shamelessness. "I will..." he said, leaning in just enough that his breath brushed Elias’s ear, "...after you’re my soulmate."

Elias blinked at him, a short laugh escaping despite himself. "That’s blackmail," he muttered.

Victor’s crimson eyes glinted, thumb tracing one slow circle at the back of his neck. "That’s incentive," he corrected, low enough for only Elias to hear.

Uno chuckled into his wine, clearly enjoying every second. "Oh, the drama," he said lightly. "Do you two ever do anything without making it sound like a myth?"

Elias exhaled through his nose, resisting the urge to bury his face in his hands. "Gods help me," he said dryly. "I’m negotiating with an executioner and a creator over dinner."

"We are already helping you," said Uno, utterly unbothered.

The meal wound down after that, the table breaking into uneasy fragments of conversation, with Ashwin feigning casual remarks about the destroyed lab, Connor murmuring about his evening prayers, and Robert saying nothing at all as he carved his last bite of meat with surgical precision. Even Ruo, who rarely let silence fall around her, kept her tablet dimmed, her gaze flicking between Victor and Elias like she was waiting for someone to misstep and turn the whole room into an execution ground.

Elias didn’t press again. He’d already set the fire burning, and he could feel its heat in the way Uno’s smile lingered like smoke and in the way Victor’s thumb hadn’t once left his shoulder. So he let the talk drift away from him, let the plates be cleared, and let the air grow thick with things unspoken.

By the time the hearth burned low and the others excused themselves one by one, the manor had quieted into its evening pulse: low voices in distant halls, the hush of polished shoes against marble, and the weight of old stone breathing with them.

Elias remained where he was, his fork set neatly aside, his gaze fixed past the fire as if he were listening to something in the walls. Only when the last of the footsteps faded did he realize Victor hadn’t moved either. Crimson eyes rested on him with the kind of patience that was anything but gentle.

For a moment, Elias almost asked again. Almost demanded answers and demanded to know what corruption meant and what kind of game he’d been dragged into. But the words stayed lodged in his throat, because beneath the demand lurked something else, something sharper.

How had he ended up here? Sitting beside Victor Numen, heir to a family that bent nations, with Uno grinning across from him like a devil fresh from scripture, with generals and heirs and god-blooded creatures treating him as if he belonged in their orbit? He was an engineer, a recessive omega who should have been forgettable, invisible. Yet here he was, caught in the gravity of powers that moved empires.

The realization sat heavy in his chest. He’d been quiet too long, and Victor noticed, it was there in the tilt of his head, the way he leaned back slightly in his chair as though to study Elias from a better angle.

"You’re thinking too loudly," Victor murmured at last, his voice low enough to sound like it belonged to the firelight itself.

Elias turned his head, dry amusement flickering across his features despite the churn of thought. "Wondering," he admitted, "what I could have possibly done to attract the attention of men who could burn the world if they sneezed."

Victor’s mouth curved, slow and dangerous, as he reached for his glass. "You looked at us," he said simply. "And didn’t flinch."

The words should have sounded ridiculous, but the way Victor said them made Elias’s pulse jump. He held the other man’s gaze for a long, unbroken beat, then exhaled and leaned back in his chair, eyes sliding shut as if conceding some private war with himself.

The fire cracked again, softer this time. Alone with Victor, Elias felt the edges of the evening close in, not as a cage, but as a promise.