"Because dead families do not command press cycles."

The room did not breathe.

Lady Vale stared at him, and for one short, naked second, all the polish vanished. Not because she thought Arion would have her dragged out and executed in some primitive display of royal temper. Alamina was modern. Its palaces had glass walls, biometric locks, encrypted archives, financial oversight, legal committees, human rights councils, and enough international cameras pointed at the royal family to make old-fashioned bloodshed inconvenient.

No.

She understood exactly what Arion meant.

A dead family did not need bodies in graves.

A noble house could die on paper.

Access revoked. Accounts frozen. Trust networks severed.

Titles reviewed. Boards abandoned.

Invitations retracted before ink dried.

Every foundation, company, marriage prospect, military advisory seat, and political committee cut loose from the family name until Vale became something people lowered their voices around in corridors, not because it still had power but because associating with it had become contagious.

Lord Vale’s face had gone gray.

Their counsel looked down at his tablet as if the device had personally betrayed him by continuing to exist.

Otto did not reprimand Arion.

That was the second most frightening thing in the room.

The first was that Arion did not look angry anymore.

He looked bored.

"You should have begged for mercy," Arion said.

Lady Vale’s lips parted.

He continued before she found whatever poisoned little sentence she intended to use next. "You should have sat in this room and explained who gave you the drafts, who read them, who copied them, who passed them to Andrea, who approved the payments, and which media contacts were approached. You should have admitted that your son acted out of malice and that your family protected access to documents you had no right to possess. You should have apologized to the emperor, to Palatine, to Rohan, to Thomas Lancaster, and to Dean."

His voice cooled further.

"Instead, you blamed my mate for being chosen."

Lady Vale’s mouth tightened at the word "mate."

Arion saw it.

So did Otto.

Lord Vale spoke first, and his voice cracked once before he forced it steady. "Your Highness, my wife spoke recklessly."

"She spoke honestly," Otto said.

Lord Vale went still.

Otto leaned back in his chair, his face unreadable, his blue eyes fixed on the family across the table. "That is why this meeting has been useful."

Lady Vale’s hands had finally stopped pretending calm. Her fingers were clenched so tightly around each other that the knuckles had whitened beneath the soft skin. "Your Majesty, I will not apologize for pointing out realities. Dean Fitzgeralt is young. Arion is the Crown Prince. The public may adore romance, but they also enjoy scandal. The age difference, the sudden engagement, the timing after Andrea’s removal—"

"Andrea was never removed from a place," Arion said. "He invented one."

"He was compatible."

Arion laughed.

This time, the sound was quiet enough to be worse than if he had raised his voice.

Lady Vale froze.

"Compatible," he repeated. "Is that the new shelter you want to hide under?"

She lifted her chin. "Pheromonal compatibility is not trivial. You know that better than anyone. Andrea was raised with the understanding that his match prospects placed him close to the crown because his compatibility with you was significant."

"Barely fifty percent," Arion said.

Silence cracked through the room.

Lady Vale’s eyes flashed. "That is still higher than most candidates."

"It made him suitable for temporary rut management," Arion said, each word clean enough to cut. "Not for mating, marriage, nor the throne. Not for assumption, entitlement, or years of your family allowing him to mistake biochemical tolerance for destiny."

Lord Vale looked down.

The counsel shut his eyes.

Lady Vale’s face flushed darkly.

Arion did not spare her. "You knew the numbers. Your family reviewed the compatibility charts. You knew Andrea’s field could stabilize me at a functional threshold under controlled conditions, with medical oversight and without emotional bond formation. You knew that did not make him my future."

"He was still the best Alaminian candidate."

"Yes," Arion said. "And still not enough."

Lady Vale flinched as if the sentence had crossed the table physically.

Arion leaned forward, eyes fixed on her. "Dean is over ninety percent compatible with me."

Lord Vale’s head lifted.

Lady Vale went very still.

Otto did not move, but the corner of his mouth rose by a fraction.

For years the Vale family had tiptoed around the truth, wrapping their son’s proximity to Arion in silk and numbers and suggestion. They had let Andrea believe that usefulness was promise, that access was claim, that being tolerated alongside power meant that power had ever belonged to him.

Now Arion looked at them, and all the language they had hidden behind began to rot in the open.

"Over ninety," Arion repeated softly. "Pheromonal, biological, and instinctive compatibility so high the medical team ran the analysis three times."

Lady Vale’s lips parted.

Arion did not give her room to speak.

"That was before we even met," Arion continued. "Before Dean insulted me to my face. Before Palatine reluctantly allowed me near him. Before he decided I was tolerable enough not to stab socially on sight."

Otto’s mouth twitched faintly.

Arion’s eyes stayed on Lady Vale. "Every noble knew why I went to Palatine. Every relevant house knew the compatibility report existed. The court whispered about it for weeks. Your family knew too."

Lady Vale’s hands tightened.

"And still," Arion said, "you let Andrea build himself a throne out of fifty percent."

Lady Vale opened her mouth, but whatever answer she had prepared died before it could become sound.

Fifty percent.

She had known the number. The Vale family had built years of implication around that number, had polished it, inflated it, and dressed it in opulence and expectation until Andrea’s closeness to Arion had begun to resemble destiny to anyone willing to squint.

But spoken aloud beside Dean’s ninety, beside the medical records, beside the open secret of Arion’s visit to Palatine, beside the fact that Dean had stabilized what Andrea could barely manage under controlled conditions, the number became humiliating.

Lord Vale closed his eyes.

The fight drained out of him all at once, leaving only the hollow, terrified shell of a man who had finally understood that he was not negotiating with offended royalty. He was sitting across from two apex predators, and his family had already bled too much on the table to pretend the wound was theoretical.

"Your Majesty," Lord Vale whispered.

His voice shook badly enough that even his wife turned toward him.

"We ask for mercy. Not for Andrea." He swallowed, and whatever remained of his pride cracked audibly beneath the words. "He brought this upon himself. But for House Vale. We have served Alamina for generations."

Otto looked at him.

The Emperor of Alamina did not look angry. Anger would have been warmer. He looked like a man reading a ledger that had come up unacceptably short after decades of tolerating inflated value.

"House Vale," Otto said, his voice carrying the crushing, immovable weight of imperial rule, "ceased to exist in any meaningful form the moment you decided classified royal documents were useful enough to keep and dangerous enough to sell."

Lord Vale flinched.

Otto continued, "You served Alamina when it benefited you. You betrayed Alamina when silence became more profitable. Do not confuse longevity with loyalty."

The legal counsel sat very still for three seconds.

Then, with the slow care of a man choosing survival over professional obligation, he reached across the table and closed his tablet. The soft click sounded obscene in the silence. He slid it into his briefcase, stood, and bowed deeply to Otto first, then to Arion.

"Your Majesty. Your Highness."

He did not look at his former clients.

Then he walked out.

Neither Otto nor Arion stopped him.

Lady Vale watched the door shut on the lawyer, her cream silk dress suddenly feeling less like courtly elegance and more like a shroud.

Otto folded his hands perfectly on the table. "Your assets are frozen pending review. Your capital estates are seized for investigative purposes. Your royal clearance is revoked. Every Vale-linked foundation, trust, political channel, and advisory seat connected to stabilizing placement, military containment, or secondary gender policy is suspended."

Lord Vale’s lips parted, but no sound came.

"You will be removed from the capital," Otto continued. "You will return to your provincial manor, where you will remain under permanent monitored restriction until the investigation is complete. Any attempt to contact the press, other noble houses, foreign intermediaries, your son, or anyone tied to Caelan’s proposal chain without authorization will be treated as active treason against the Crown."

"Your Majesty," Lord Vale gasped, the color entirely gone from his face.

Otto’s eyes did not soften.

"You are dismissed."

It was not a request.

Two Royal Guards stepped forward from beside the heavy conference doors, their expressions blank and unyielding.

Lady Vale rose first.

She did it with all the dignity she could still scrape together, but dignity was thin in that room. Her pearls rested against her throat like a decorative noose. Her eyes moved once to Arion, full of hatred sharp enough to cut if hatred still held power here.

Arion stood.

He did not spare the Vales another glance.

They were already ghosts to him. Dead on paper. Removed from the board. Stripped of access, influence, and the illusion that their name could still shield them from consequence.

Exactly as he had promised.

He buttoned his jacket with slow, meticulous care and turned toward his father.

"Well," Arion said, exhaling once, "this was a productive morning."

Otto looked at him.

The two Royal Guards were already escorting Lord and Lady Vale toward the door, but the statement made Lady Vale’s spine lock for half a second before she was guided forward again. Lord Vale did not turn back. That was the first intelligent decision the man had made all morning.

The conference room doors sealed shut behind them.

Only then did Otto lean back in his chair.

"You nearly killed Andrea."

Arion adjusted his cuff. "No."

Otto’s eyes narrowed slightly.

"I considered it," Arion corrected. "There is a difference."

The legal secretary, still seated near the wall, lowered her gaze to her tablet with heroic discipline.

Otto looked at her. "Leave us."