Chapter 265: Chapter 264: The First Escape (2)

"You look tired," he said.

"I am," Gregoris replied.

Rafael set the cup down with more care than the sentence deserved. Some of the brightness in his expression softened at once, though not enough to erase the danger of his interest.

"And yet," he said, glancing pointedly at the catalogue, the notes, and then back at Gregoris, "you still found the strength to come in here and judge my perfectly reasonable response to family developments."

Gregoris stepped closer.

"Yes."

Rafael’s mouth curved. "Honest. How unusual."

Gregoris ignored that. He looked at the open property listings, the handwritten notes, and the tea still warm on the low table, and then at Rafael again, taking in the elegant line of him on the sofa, the precise arrangement of his clothes, and the polished calm that had always hidden far more than most people realized.

The house was quiet, but the capital was not. The palace was not. The family certainly was not.

And suddenly he had no patience left for walls between decision and action.

Without warning, Gregoris bent, slid one arm beneath Rafael’s knees and the other around his back, and lifted him cleanly off the sofa.

Rafael let out a short, startled laugh, the sound warm and bright and entirely too pleased for a man being abducted in his own sitting room.

"Gregoris."

Gregoris straightened with him in his arms as though Rafael weighed nothing worth remarking on. The heavy travel coat was still on, cold in places from the outside air, the scent of Donin and ether dust still clinging to the dark fabric. It should have made the gesture awkward.

It did not.

If anything, it made the decision feel more immediate. Less staged. More honest.

Rafael settled against him with the effortless instinct of someone who had been held like this enough times to know exactly how Gregoris carried him. One arm slipped around Gregoris’s neck, more for preference than necessity, and his laughter quieted into something softer.

"This," Rafael said, "is promising."

Gregoris turned toward the door.

"We’re leaving."

Rafael’s brows lifted, though the delight in his face remained untouched. "Immediately."

"Yes."

"With no luggage."

"Yes."

"With me still dressed for tea and scandal."

Gregoris’s grip adjusted minutely, secure and unbothered. "Yes."

That earned him another laugh, lower this time, threaded with affection and the sort of dangerous amusement Rafael reserved for moments when Gregoris became abrupt in ways that felt suspiciously close to romance.

"And where," Rafael asked, "are you taking me so decisively?"

Gregoris reached the door and stopped only long enough to disengage the room seal with a touch of ether through his palm.

"To rest."

Rafael looked up at him. Truly looked.

There was enough intelligence in Rafael’s face to make beauty feel secondary and enough feeling in it to make Gregoris hate how easy it was to read now that the years had done their damage.

"Ah," Rafael said softly.

Gregoris opened the door and stepped into the corridor with him still in his arms.

"Yes," he said. "I’m tired." 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

That was not the whole truth, but it was close enough to travel under its own name.

He was tired.

Tired of reports. Tired of inspected bases and Christian’s offended silence. Tired of ether-laced corridors and imperial offices and the growing noise of a family that seemed determined to expand through dramatic attachment and public consequence. Tired enough that the thought of Rafael by the sea had become less indulgence than necessity.

"With me away from noise," Rafael said, understanding him anyway.

"Yes."

"And near water."

Gregoris glanced down at him once as they moved through the hall. "Yes."

Rafael smiled then. Not brightly. Not socially. Something smaller and infinitely more dangerous to Gregoris’s composure.

"The villa."

That single word altered Rafael’s expression more than all the others had.

For a moment, his usual polish loosened around the edges. Memory passed through him too quickly to be concealed: terraces washed in silver light, salt carried on evening air, the first real quiet after the scandal had broken around them like glass.

The first escape.

Rafael’s arm tightened slightly around Gregoris’s neck.

"Well," he said, and the laugh in his voice had gentled into something warmer, "I suppose I can allow myself to be transported where my husband wants me."

Gregoris said nothing to that, because any response would have been a mistake.

Instead, he turned down the side corridor that led away from the main rooms and toward the private ward gate built into the house years ago for exactly this kind of departure: discreet, expensive, and impossible for anyone outside the family to misuse without being turned to ash by the security net.

The corridor lights shifted as they approached, low ether strips embedded in old wood and carved stone waking under Gregoris’s signature. Behind them, the house remained intact, quiet, and temporarily irrelevant.

Ahead, the ward gate shimmered into view.

It did not look dramatic at first glance. Just a section of dark paneled wall near the end of the corridor, elegant enough to belong there. But as Gregoris drew closer, the embedded ether lines beneath the surface lit up in pale blue and silver, intersecting in old imperial patterns upgraded long ago with modern current control. The air changed around it. Full of restrained power.

Rafael, still in his arms, tilted his head to watch the gate wake fully.

"You really are serious."

Gregoris looked at the ward interface, then at the villa’s destination code blooming in light across the center sigil.

"I am carrying you through a private ether gate in a travel coat," he said. "I thought that part was obvious."

Rafael laughed softly and laid his head against Gregoris’s shoulder for one brief second, the intimacy of the gesture so unguarded it struck harder than anything cleverer might have.

"Yes," he murmured. "Fair."

Gregoris stepped into the heart of the ward.

Ether surged around them, not violently, but with the heavy, silken force of power so well controlled it no longer needed spectacle. Light folded in on itself. The capital disappeared in a clean fracture of space. The scent of tea and polished wood gave way, for one suspended instant, to nothing at all.

Then the sea arrived.

Salt.

Wind.

The low, living sound of water hitting stone beyond the terraces.

They emerged into the receiving hall of the coastal manor in a shimmer of dying light, the ward behind them sealing with a soft pulse into the old marble floor. The villa greeted them with exactly what Gregoris had wanted: quiet so complete it felt expensive; warm amber lighting already risen in response to their arrival; and the distant breath of the sea threading through the half-open inner shutters.

Rafael lifted his head.

For a moment he said nothing.

The entrance hall was as Gregoris remembered it: white stone, dark wood, and discreet ether panels worked so seamlessly into the architecture that the house looked more old-money coastal elegance than fortified private retreat. Beyond the glass doors at the far end of the hall, the horizon had already begun its slow turn toward evening blue.

And below it, the sea.

Rafael’s fingers tightened once at Gregoris’s collar.

"You really brought me here."

Gregoris started walking deeper into the manor without putting him down.

"Yes."

"That is almost offensively romantic."

"I told you," Gregoris said. "I needed rest."

Rafael laughed against his shoulder, the sound echoing low and warm through the quiet house.

"With me away from the capital, near the sea, in the first place we ever escaped to together," he said. "Yes. Completely practical."

Gregoris kept walking.

"Yes."

That only made Rafael laugh harder, though he did not fight him, did not ask to be put down, and did not do anything except remain where Gregoris held him and let the house, the air, and the old memory of safety settle around them both.

At the top of the small interior steps leading toward the west terrace rooms, Gregoris finally paused.

The sea wind touched them even here, softened by glass and distance.

Rafael looked at him, one brow lifting, his expression now threaded through with something almost fond enough to be dangerous.

"So," he said. "What exactly is the plan now that you’ve abducted me in broad domestic daylight?"

Gregoris looked out past him toward the fading line of the horizon.

Then back down at his husband.

"To sleep," he said. "To eat something that wasn’t prepared near gossip. To be alone with you until the rest of them become someone else’s problem."

Rafael’s smile turned slow and luminous.

"Well," he said quietly, "that is an excellent plan."

The end.