CHAPTER 87: CHAPTER 87: THE QUIET AFTER

Victor didn’t wait for Elias to answer.

He simply turned, carrying him as if his weight were nothing, his stride smooth and deliberate as he left the greenhouse behind without a glance at the lingering tremor in the air. The door opened for him before his free hand even touched it, Adam was still there, but now his gaze flicked briefly to Elias, reading more than either of them said aloud.

"Adam," Victor said, voice even, unhurried. "No one comes in today. No calls. No meetings. Not unless I ask for it."

"Yes, sir," Adam replied, stepping back without another word.

The door shut behind them, sealing the greenhouse and the morning’s battle in silence. The sound of it closing seemed to strip away the last thread of Jonathan Clarke’s presence, leaving only the muted hush of the manor’s upper hall. Here, light fell softer, dimmed by heavy curtains and gold-leaf cornices; the air was warmer, quieter, as if the walls themselves understood the necessity of holding the moment intact.

Elias could feel the difference at once. The residual hum beneath his skin, remnants of the ether’s touch, didn’t vanish, but it loosened its grip. His breathing evened. His fingers, still resting against Victor’s shirt, stopped their subtle twitch.

Victor didn’t take him to the study, or the dining room, or anywhere formal. Instead, he walked into one of the smaller private rooms that overlooked the eastern gardens, a space lined with books and deep chairs, the kind of place where conversations happened in low tones over brandy, where the light through the window was filtered through green and gold.

He didn’t set Elias down right away.

Instead, he crossed to the low velvet couch near the window, lowering himself with the same smooth care he had shown in lifting him, letting Elias settle across his lap as though the transition were part of a single, uninterrupted movement.

Elias found himself leaning into the curve of Victor’s shoulder without meaning to, the steadiness of him grounding in a way the silence alone couldn’t.

"You didn’t have to carry me," Elias said finally, though the words lacked bite.

"I know," Victor replied. His hand came up, fingers brushing once over Elias’s temple in a touch that was neither casual nor hesitant but somewhere between apology and reassurance. "But I wanted to."

For a moment, they stayed like that, Elias listening to the steady beat beneath Victor’s shirt, Victor keeping his touch light, as if gauging how much Elias would allow. The world outside the door, outside the manor, could have been another country for all it mattered here.

"I’m fine," Elias said calmly. "I’m just not used to so much power."

Victor’s gaze lingered on him, steady and unblinking, the way one might look at a blade they’d sharpened too well.

"You will be," he said after a pause, not as a promise, like he already knew what Elias would grow accustomed to, what he would one day stand beneath without so much as a blink.

Elias let his head rest against Victor’s shoulder, the heaviness in his body no longer just the aftermath of ether pressing into his bones but the quiet exhaustion of having kept himself perfectly still under it, refusing to bend where Jonathan might have seen.

Victor’s thumb traced once along Elias’s hairline, painfully slow, the gesture almost absent-minded yet unmistakably intimate. "It’s different when you feel it in the room," Victor said quietly. "The stories, the numbers, the history, those are abstractions. They’re safe. They don’t press against your skin or crawl into your lungs."

Elias made a faint sound that could have been agreement or mockery, it was hard to tell. "You mean they don’t breathe down your neck."

Victor’s mouth curved at that, but not into amusement. "Exactly."

The silence in the room thickened, grounding. The warmth of the filtered sunlight through the windows softened the lingering chill that had settled under Elias’s skin, and he realized that the tremor was gone from his hands. It had been replaced by a steady heat, anchored by the solid weight of Victor’s arm around him.

Victor’s gaze flicked once toward the closed door, his tone turning deliberate. "Adam will keep them away," he said, as if to answer something Elias hadn’t voiced. "Today is ours. No interruptions."

Elias arched a brow faintly. "And tomorrow?"

Victor’s hand stilled in his hair, but his voice didn’t falter. "Tomorrow is negotiable. Today isn’t."

Elias hummed, "Isn’t the symposium supposed to be tomorrow?"

Victor’s eyes didn’t leave his, the faintest tilt of his head acknowledging the reminder without conceding the point.

"It is," he said, calm as if the prospect of standing in front of a hall full of academics and rivals was something as easily shifted as moving a chair. "But that’s tomorrow’s problem."

Elias could almost laugh at that, at the sheer, deliberate arrogance of dismissing a major event like it was an errand that could be postponed for weather. Almost. Instead, he let the quiet stretch, his own mind replaying the morning as another turning point in his life. Jonathan Clarke would be halfway across the city by now, no doubt seeking out Ana with the tremor of someone who’d realized too late that the board had been rigged from the first move. They hadn’t just chosen the wrong strategy; they’d chosen the wrong alpha entirely.

"You’re enjoying this," Victor murmured, catching the subtle pull at the corner of Elias’s mouth before he could smooth it away.

"I’m entertained," Elias admitted, settling more comfortably against him. "There’s a difference."

Victor’s thumb brushed his jaw once, like he was weighing whether to call the bluff. "Mm. I’ll take it either way."

The room was warm, the sunlight shifting in slow arcs across the spines of the books behind them, dust motes drifting lazily in the air. The quiet was no longer fragile, it had shape now, solid enough that Elias could lean into it without feeling like it might shatter. The ache at the base of his skull was fading, replaced by the low, steady hum of exhaustion that was as much mental as physical.