For one brief, treacherous second, Damian actually laughed, low and warm and entirely too entertained for Gregoris’s peace of mind.

Gregoris opened his eyes and looked at him with the kind of stare that had once made grown officers reevaluate their careers.

Damian, unfortunately, had long since become immune.

"You find this funny," Gregoris said.

"I find," Damian replied, still far too amused, "the idea of you escaping the next generation by declaring retirement very optimistic."

"It is not optimism. It is planning."

"No," Damian said. "Planning requires follow-through. This is fantasy."

Gregoris’s expression did not move. "You are becoming irritating in your old age."

Damian leaned back slightly in his chair, grin still there, entirely unrepentant. "And you are not retiring."

"I just said I would."

"Yes," Damian said. "And I’m telling you now that if Arik comes back from Wrohan with a mate, I will not be dealing with it alone."

Gregoris narrowed his eyes.

Damian’s grin sharpened.

"Better share the trauma."

Gregoris stared at him in flat silence.

For a moment, the only sound in the office was the low hum of ether running through the walls and the distant pulse of the imperial grid beneath the palace floors. The modern systems hidden inside old stone gave the room its usual restrained vibration, but right then it only made Gregoris feel as though the building itself were mocking him.

"You say that," he said at last, "as if this is some communal burden meant to bring people together."

Damian leaned back slightly in his chair, entirely too pleased with himself. "It is to me."

Gregoris looked at him with open hostility. "That explains why you sound cheerful."

Damian’s mouth twitched. "I’m not cheerful. I’m realistic."

"No. You’re entertained."

"That too."

Gregoris exhaled slowly through his nose. He had returned from Donin with a clean inspection, a stable Shadow base, and enough secondhand exposure to Christian’s refined suffering to last a month. He had expected paperwork, perhaps a drink, and then several days of silence with Rafael while the city remembered how to exist without demanding things from him.

Instead, he was standing in Damian’s office discussing shared trauma as if the next generation becoming progressively more feral were a logistical weather pattern.

"This family," Gregoris said, "is becoming structurally unsound."

Damian actually laughed again, low and brief and profoundly unhelpful.

"No," he said. "It’s functioning exactly as designed."

Gregoris folded his arms tighter across his chest. "Cecil marks Frederik, Christian turns Donin into a personal mourning ceremony because Astana is in Agaron for a few days, and now you’re telling me that when Arik inevitably drags some elegant disaster home from Wrohan, I’m expected to stand beside you and call this continuity."

Damian regarded him with the steady patience of a man who knew he was right and intended to enjoy it.

"Yes."

That single word was so calm it bordered on violence.

Gregoris closed his eyes for a second.

When he opened them again, his voice had gone flat enough to count as prophecy.

"If Arik returns from Wrohan attached to one more political complication, I am disappearing into the mountains."

Damian tilted his head. "You hate the mountains."

"I’ll take Rafael with me," Gregoris said. "Then anything can be bearable."

That stopped Damian for exactly one beat.

The grin returned, slower this time, with the distinct shape of genuine amusement beneath it.

"That," he said, "is unfortunately convincing."

Gregoris gave him a flat look. "It was not meant to convince you. It was a statement of survival."

"No," Damian said. "It was a statement of devotion disguised as tactical withdrawal."

Gregoris stared at him in silence.

The hum of ether through the office walls suddenly seemed far too loud for a room containing that sentence.

"You are becoming insufferable," he said at last.

Damian’s mouth twitched. "I’ve had good examples."

Gregoris exhaled once through his nose, which was safer than acknowledging that Damian was not entirely wrong. Rafael in a mountain cabin would still be Rafael - dramatic, elegant, and beautiful - but he would also be Rafael away from the palace, away from corridors full of gossip and children full of dynastic intent and whatever fresh problem Arik might yet drag home from Wrohan.

Yes. That would be bearable.

Possibly even restful... for everyone except the mountains.

Damian watched him with the deeply irritating calm of a man who had already understood too much. "So you’re not retiring."

"I am."

"No. You’re relocating temporarily with your husband and pretending that counts as escape."

Gregoris sighed.

He knew perfectly well Damian would never let him retire.

Damian would drag him back from hell with a report, a border incident, or sheer imperial entitlement before the ink on any retirement fantasy had even dried.

Still.

The idea of leaving for a while with only Rafael was becoming more appealing by the second.

Not the mountains, necessarily. Damian was right about that. Gregoris hated the mountains. He hated unnecessary climbing, decorative isolation, and anything that turned weather into personality. But Rafael in a quieter house, somewhere the ether traffic was thinner and no one knocked unless they valued their life, was a different matter entirely.

That part, annoyingly, sounded close to peace.

Damian, who was still watching him with the calm of a man who understood too much and intended to enjoy it, said nothing.

Gregoris disliked that even more.

He pulled one glove fully into place, then the other. "You are pleased with yourself."

"A little."

"That is unbecoming."

"I’m not the one trying to call a romantic disappearance a strategic withdrawal."

Gregoris gave him a look as flat as winter steel. "I’m calling it survival."

Damian’s mouth twitched. "Of course you are."

Gregoris should have left then.

Instead, because exhaustion loosened honesty into shapes he usually kept under tighter control, he said, "The palace is getting louder."

Damian’s expression shifted almost imperceptibly.

Gregoris looked out the window rather than at him, at the pale shimmer of the ether grid beyond the reinforced glass, the city illuminating beneath it in lines of light, old stone, and modern current.

Damian leaned back slightly in his chair. "Then take the few days."

"That sounds dangerously like permission."

"It’s practical."

"From you, that usually means the same thing."

Damian did not deny it.

Gregoris looked at the door, then back again, already halfway there in his mind - not to the mountains, not even completely away, but somewhere with fewer voices and Rafael.

"Yes," he said at last, more to himself than to Damian. "That does sound better."

Damian’s gaze sharpened with faint amusement. "You’re getting sentimental."

Gregoris turned toward the door. "No. I’m getting tired."

"Hm."

That sound was insufferable.

At the threshold, Gregoris paused just long enough to say, "If Rafael has already begun planning anything involving flowers, guest lists, or furniture placement, I’m sending him to you."

Damian looked entirely untroubled. "He’ll enjoy that."

"That is exactly why it’s a threat."

Then Gregoris left, carrying with him the familiar exhaustion of duty, the lingering irritation of being understood too well, and the increasingly dangerous thought that a few days alone with Rafael might be the closest thing to rest he was going to get.