Crista's entrance was the signal that the party started officially. Conversations dipped, smiles brightened, and the air shifted like silk drawn taut. She didn't bother with ceremony. Instead, she extended her arms toward Gabriel with the imperious ease of a woman who had ruled both family and empire long before he had set foot in the palace.

"Give him here," she said, and without hesitation Gabriel passed Arik into her embrace. The Dowager cradled the child like he was spun of light and bone china, her gaze sharp enough to cut through the wave of noblewomen already circling. The room reoriented itself instantly: Crista in the center, Arik nestled against her chest, and Gabriel at her side while the others were doing their job in dispersing the attention.

The nobles cooed, pressing closer with the subtle desperation of women smelling legacy in swaddling cloth. Questions fluttered, comparisons whispered, and his hair, his eyes, and his little fists curled like a soldier's.

'He's just a baby for fuck's sake.' Gabriel thought while making sure that no one was touching his son.

On the balcony, Damian leaned against the carved rail, the faintest shadow of a smile at his lips. Gregoris stood before him in a half-formal uniform, delivering a clipped report on border maneuvers. Yet both their gazes kept straying, Damian's toward Gabriel, Gregoris's toward Rafael. The latter was managing three dowagers with the polite indifference of a saint, his dove-gray suit gleaming faintly with ether-thread. Gregoris looked like he'd very much preferred to drag the omega out and never let him go again. Damian, amused, let him stew.

Gabriel angled a step closer to Crista, making a show of listening to one of the matrons simper about Arik's "perfectly symmetrical features," as though the baby had already passed an imperial medical screening. Ether lights glowed soft and gold along the ceiling moldings, flickering faintly with every shift in the palace grid, and polished drones drifted between clusters of guests with trays of tea and sugared citrus.

It was while he was half-distracted, cataloguing which lords' wives were here to gossip, which were here to maneuver, that he felt it. Faint, subtle, just a thread woven wrong into the weave of scents. At first it was almost indistinguishable from the potpourri installed in the wall vents: spice, resin, sharpness. But then it slid closer, oily and wrong, cutting through the cloying rosewater and powder with the acrid edge of clove and the throat-stinging sting of camphor.

Arik twitched in Crista's arms, a little frown pinching his soft mouth. Gabriel's eyes cut instantly sideways, scanning. And there she was, an omega in sleek violet silk, her hair glossed perfectly, her smile bright while talking with one of Crista's ladies-in-waiting. She moved just a little too close to Crista, her fan moving her perfume towards them, the scent coiling thicker now with every step.

Crista's expression didn't change. She kept one hand steady on Arik's back, her voice still smooth as she answered another woman's question about the academy. But Gabriel knew she felt it. Crista always felt poison in the air.

He moved before anyone else could.

The ether bent around him, soundless, a ripple that flickered across the embedded glass panels of the salon like static. Security feeds crackled for a fraction of a second before stabilizing, the barrier dropping around Crista and the baby like tempered glass snapping into place. Omegas in the crowd stiffened, instincts flaring as the atmosphere sharpened.

The young woman froze mid-step, her perfume thick in the sealed air now, her painted smile faltering under Gabriel's gaze.

"Huh, and I thought I'd seen it all," Gabriel said, his voice low and even. The ether around him sliced down, precise as a surgeon's scalpel.

One beat she was standing, ambition trembling through her posture, perfume clawing the air… the next she collapsed as though her body had been cut from the inside out. No cry, no blood; just silence, and the sick scent gone in an instant.

Every noble present knew exactly what had happened, but none of them could have explained it. Ether crackled in the walls, then stilled again.

Crista adjusted Arik on her hip, brushing a hand over his hair as though nothing had disturbed her. Only her eyes, cool and razor-bright, flicked to Gabriel for a moment.

"I did say he should learn the difference between a courtier's smile and a wolf's grin," she murmured, her voice pitched just enough to carry to the nearest circles.

For a moment, the salon held its breath. Ether still hummed faintly in the walls, like glass cooling after fire, and every courtier knew if they so much as gasped too loudly, they might be next.

Gabriel's face was calm, smooth as a sheet of glass, his hand steady where it rested on the barrier he'd raised around Crista and Arik. But Damian knew better. He'd felt the spike of his mate's ether even from the balcony, the jagged flare of panic he could never hide when it was about their child.

That was why, in the heartbeat between the omega falling and the whispers beginning, Damian was already there. The air folded, shadows cracking like displaced pressure, and when they blinked, the Emperor stood behind Gabriel, close enough his presence alone darkened the space. His hand came down over Gabriel's shoulder, golden eyes raking over him with the kind of sharpness that could split armor.

Gabriel didn't look back. He knew who was there.

But his mind, Damian could feel it thrumming like an engine forced past safety limits, a snarl of fury and something dangerously close to fear.

"Enough," Damian said. It rolled through the salon, silencing whatever questions had been forming on trembling lips. He let his gaze sweep the crowd, pinning each noble where they stood until they flinched or dropped their eyes. Then, he reached around Gabriel and lowered the barrier with a flick of his own ether, folding it away like a curtain drawn shut.

Arik stirred faintly in Crista's arms but didn't cry. Crista only arched one brow, her expression carrying both satisfaction and a silent warning to any who thought to turn this into gossip.

The corpse on the floor might as well have been an insect, unnoticed. What mattered was the man at the center, the Emperor's consort, who had just killed without blinking and the Emperor himself, who hadn't stopped him.

Damian leaned closer, his voice low enough for Gabriel alone. "Breathe."

Gabriel's mouth curved faintly, a humorless echo of a smile. "I am."

"Gregoris," Damian called without raising his tone, his voice cutting through the salon like a wire drawn taut. "Dispose of the disturbance."

The Shadows' commander moved before the syllables had fully settled, his boots striking against the polished ether-lit floor in controlled rhythm. He didn't ask how or where, the order was enough. The body lifted under Gregoris's grip with all the weight of a broken doll, the faint shimmer of the omega's poisoned perfume still clinging to the air. A twist of ether and a pulse from the walls swallowed both in silence, erasing them as if they had never been.

The nobles watched, horrified and entranced, caught between the instinct to recoil and the sick, magnetic pull of power displayed without apology.

Crista didn't flinch. She adjusted Arik against her chest, the baby's small hand batting idly at her necklace, as though imperial death sentences were no more disruptive than a draft of cold air.

Damian didn't spare the fallen omega a glance. His hand remained heavy on Gabriel's shoulder, fingers curling just enough to remind him he wasn't alone, that he didn't need to keep the calm mask plastered to his face by sheer will.

"Back to your tea," Crista said suddenly, her voice smooth, cultured, and not raised but carrying all the same. The words slid through the crowd like a command, scattering tension with the imperious weight of someone who had ruled both thrones and gossip tables for decades. "The Empire doesn't pause for insects."

And like well-trained courtiers, they obeyed, whispers muted, teacups lifted, and rehearsed laughter straining back into the air. But their gazes kept darting, to Gabriel, to Damian, to the child now resting against Crista's shoulder, the silent axis around which all their futures turned.