Chapter 245: Chapter 245: Only she doesn’t know.

Frederik stared at his father.

Then blinked once.

Then said, very carefully, "What?"

Gregoris, who had already committed the damage and saw no reason to soften it now, remained perfectly calm. "Natalie asked Noah to marry her."

Frederik stayed very still.

Because no, the words themselves were not the problem. The problem was everything attached to them.

Natalie.

Their sister. Gregoris and Rafael’s daughter. Heir to House Frasner-Rosenroth. Military engineer in ether weaponry. Builder of things that exploded with imperial approval and enough mathematical elegance to make senior officers shut up around her if they valued dignity.

Noah Claymore.

Only heir of House Claymore. Son of Adam and Max. Socially smoother than Natalie and easier to underestimate, which usually meant people deserved what happened to them next. If Natalie knew how to design ether weapons, Noah knew how to move them, sell them, price them, bury competitors under market timing, and turn military necessity into money with a face polite enough to survive dinner.

Together they looked less like a couple and more like the beginning of a defense-sector empire wearing formal clothes.

Frederik looked at Gregoris as if his father had just informed him that two neighboring states had quietly merged while he was distracted by romance. "Natalie asked Noah."

"Yes."

"To marry her."

"Yes."

"And Noah said yes."

"Yes."

That was the part that made it worse.

Much worse.

Because if Noah had hesitated, if this had been some terrifyingly unilateral Natalie move born of courage, arrogance, and an insufficient respect for family blood pressure, the situation would at least still have resembled the kind of chaos one expected from this house.

But Noah had said yes.

Which meant this had structure and most likely history.

And Frederik, apparently, had missed all of it.

He sat up straighter in the chair. "Since when?"

Gregoris’s mouth moved faintly. "Long enough."

"That is not a time."

"It is a sufficient answer."

Frederik stared at him. "You knew."

"Yes."

"Rafael knows."

"Yes."

Rafael probably knew the exact tone Natalie had used, what Noah had worn, how many seconds passed before he answered, and whether there had been tea involved. Rafael probably also had three versions of a celebration dinner in mind already, each more expensive than the last.

Frederik looked away toward the dark glass for one second and then back again, because a worse realization had just arrived.

"I thought she was in love with Arik."

Gregoris burst into low laughter, real enough that tears gathered briefly at the corners of his eyes.

It was such a rare, violent break in composure that Frederik could only stare at him in fresh betrayal.

"I swear," Gregoris said at last, still amused in a way that should have been illegal in a father, "you need more training in assessing your environment."

Frederik looked deeply offended. "That is not a normal response."

"It is an honest one."

"That was mockery."

"That was deserved."

Gregoris leaned one hand against the desk, still carrying the remnants of laughter in his voice. For a man whose usual emotional range in command looked like variations of measured threat, the sight was so unsettling that Frederik almost forgot to continue being insulted.

Almost.

"I was not entirely unreasonable," Frederik said.

Gregoris’s brow lifted. "You thought your sister, who has spent years treating the imperial heir like a respected military variable with bloodline attached, was secretly in love with him."

"Yes," Frederik said, now too committed to the humiliation to retreat with dignity. "They were inseparable as children, definitely conspiring as teenagers, and still close even after Natalie slapped Arik. I thought she confessed and Arik lied about his feelings because..." He made a vague gesture with one hand. "Crown prince. The rest of the complications. Consorts. General imperial dysfunction."

Gregoris laughed again, low and entirely too real.

Frederik felt more insulted with each passing second.

"No," Gregoris said. "That was because Arik didn’t tell her about being Goliath. That is why he made everyone who figured it out swear on ether not to tell her."

Frederik stared.

Then blinked.

Then stared some more, as if the statement might, under sufficient pressure, rearrange itself into something less offensively coherent.

"You’re telling me," he said very slowly, "that I mistook one hidden catastrophic truth for an entirely different hidden catastrophic truth."

"Yes."

"That is vile."

"That," Gregoris said, still too amused for paternal decency, "is environmental misreading."

Frederik crossed his arms harder. "No. That is this family being clinically incapable of plain communication."

"Yes."

Frederik exhaled through his nose and looked away toward the dark command glass for one second, because apparently every time he thought the evening had reached the upper limit of indignity, his father found a new ceiling.

Then he looked back.

"So all that distance after the slap—"

"It was not romantic failure," Gregoris said. "It was anger."

"At the lie."

"Yes."

Frederik was silent for a moment.

That, too, reassembled several years of memory into a much cleaner structure than the one he had apparently built for himself out of poor assumptions and secondhand court logic.

Natalie had not looked heartbroken.

She had looked furious.

Sharp in that specific, terrifying way she inherited from Rafael when someone insulted her intelligence and from Gregoris when someone endangered the structure of trust.

And Arik, for his part, had not looked like a man dodging a confession.

He had looked like a man who knew exactly why he had been hit and accepted it as a fair consequence.

Frederik hated how much better that fit.

He muttered, "I need to leave the palace more."

Gregoris’s mouth moved faintly. "You need to observe the palace better."

"That sounded like criticism."

"That was criticism."

Frederik gave him a dead look. "You are having an excellent time."

"No."

"That is a lie."

"That," Gregoris said, "is paternal restraint."

Frederik nearly laughed despite himself, which only made the entire situation worse.

Because now the new structure of it all settled more firmly into place: Arik had known about Noah and Natalie. Natalie had known nothing about Goliath until too late. Arik had protected that line with ether oaths. The slap had been outrage, not heartbreak. And Frederik had somehow looked at all of this and concluded romance in the wrong direction.

Unbelievable.

He dragged a hand through his hair. "Did Noah know before she did?"

Gregoris considered it. "About Goliath?"

"Yes."

"Yes," Gregoris said. "And he was bound by oath not to tell her."

Frederik went still.

Then he looked at his father with the kind of betrayed concentration usually reserved for enemy maps and budget sabotage.

"God help Noah when she figures it out."