The room went quiet for a second.

The silence was like something unexpected has been said and everyone is deciding how to react to it.

Christina slowly turned her head toward Lucas.she leaned closer to him.

"Did he just flirt with Mother?" she asked, her voice dropped low.

Lucas looked at Azael. Then back at Christina. "...I genuinely don’t know." 𝑓𝑟𝑒𝘦𝓌𝑒𝑏𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝘭.𝒸𝘰𝑚

Celestia herself looked faintly surprised. Which, given her default expression, was surprising in its own right.

Azael maintained his calm smile on the outside. On the inside, he was going crazy. Not understanding what wrong thing did he said.

’What did I do wrong? I was just giving a compliment. Noblemen compliment noble ladies like this all the time. This is completely normal. This is fine.’

It did not feel fine.

"That took some courage," Callius said, with the tone of a man watching something unfold from a safe distance and choosing to stay there.

"It’s just how he talks," Arista said quickly, with a laugh that came out slightly more nervous than she intended. "It’s a habit of Azael. Nothing else."

Aeliana said nothing. But a quiet sound escaped her. Something very close to a laugh, which she covered smoothly.

Celestia looked at Azael for a long moment.

Then, slowly, she crossed one leg over the other, leaned slightly forward, and asked.

"Then what would you prefer to call me? Because I have no interest in hearing ’Your Majesty’ from someone who is, by any reasonable definition, family."

Her voice was as cool and even as always. But the question itself was a corner, and they both knew it.

Azael considered his options for approximately one second.

"...Big Sister?"

"Pfft-" Aeliana nearly burst into laughter.

She covered her mouth immediately but it was unmistakably the sound of a woman trying not to laugh.

Celestia turned to look at her with one raised brow.

"Something funny?"

"Nothing at all," Aeliana said, her composure fully restored. "It’s only that you are older than me, and hearing him suggest calling you big sister is..."

"Is what?"

"Amusing."

"So basically, you’re calling me old."

"Hey I didn’t. I said your are older than me. That’s a factual statement."

"Which implies I’m old."

"But I didn’t call you old openly."

Celestia turned back to Azael with the smooth, effortless pivot of someone changing targets.

"Azael. Didn’t you just say I looked young?"

Azael recognized immediately what was happening and stepped into it without hesitation.

"I did. And I meant it. Honestly, if no one had told me, I wouldn’t have believed you were the eldest person in this room."

Aeliana’s gaze swung toward him with a cool, deliberate weight.

"And what does that make me?"

Azael met her eyes.

"The most beautiful woman in the room, obviously." He said it without blinking. "You don’t look like my mother, you look like Arista’s older sister. I actually assumed Uncle Callius was the eldest until someone corrected me."

"Excuse me?" Callius turned from the window with an expression of genuine offense. "Young man. I am the youngest adult in this room. How could you possibly—"

"He has good eyes," Sabrina said pleasantly, from beside him.

Callius turned to look at his wife.

Sabrina looked back at him with an expression of complete innocence.

Aeliana’s expression had shifted, the cool edge replaced by something softer and quietly satisfied.

"Good answer," she said simply.

"You’re right," Celestia said, almost to herself. "Callius does look the oldest."

"Completely agree," Aeliana replied.

And just like that, the two sisters were talking to each other with the easy, natural flow of people who had entirely forgotten the small argument they had just been having– leaving Callius sitting between them looking deeply wronged.

Celestia’s gaze drifted back to Azael.

He was smiling calmly. His posture was relaxed.

The sweat on his forehead was less visible, fortunately.

Something moved in her expression. Before it settled back into its composed default. Her lips curved by the smallest degree and then returned to nothing.

She tilted her head slightly.

"Azael," she said, her voice dropping into something quieter and more deliberate. "Tell me, between myself and Aeliana, who looks older?"

The room shifted.

Aeliana turned to look at him.

Arista looked at him with something that was like sympathy.

Everyone else waited.

Azael observed both women with genuine consideration. Two remarkable, composed, genuinely difficult to age women sat before him, and he was being asked to choose between them.

He made his decision.

"Truthfully," he said, "you both look the same age to me. I genuinely can’t tell." A beat. "But if you’re insisting on an answer, I’ll say my mother. Because I lived with her for so many yearsmm, and how could I possibly take anyone else’s side?"

Aeliana’s expression lit up. It was quiet and warm, in the way it rarely did.

Celestia raised her brow. A flicker of something crossed her face that looked almost like mild displeasure, but sharper underneath. The expression of someone who is not used to coming second.

"You win this time, sister," she said, her voice dry. "Because you had the advantage of being closer to him."

Azael tilted his head slightly.

"Would Her Majesty like to change that? Because if she actually made the effort to get closer to me." a small, easy smile "I would take her side without a second thought."

Lucas muttered something under his breath.

Christina leaned toward him. "What?"

"I said he really has no fear."

"Mama." Mira’s small, serious voice rose from her mother’s lap. She looked up at Sabrina with genuine curiosity. "Is this what flirting is?"

"Shh." Sabrina pulled her daughter slightly closer. "Where did you hear that word?"

"Hehe~" Celestia laughed.

It was brief and light. It arrived and disappeared quickly, but it was there.

"You are smooth," she said, looking at Azael with something that was almost appreciation.

"I’ll give you that." Her voice shifted. Still light on the surface but with something colder and more deliberate moving underneath it, like deep water beneath a calm surface.

In short she was showing nice expression. But underneath she was not pleased.

"Tell me though. If you weren’t considered family here...do you know what I might have done with someone like you?"

The temperature in the room dropped by a degree.

Aeliana’s eyes narrowed in Celestia’s direction.

Callius, very quietly, swallowed his saliva.

Any reasonable person would have apologized. Laughed it off and changed the subject.

Azael glanced at Aeliana once, then looked back at Celestia with a calm, then smile.

’Aeliana. She won’t let anything happen to me. I believe that much.’

"Taken me for yourself, perhaps," he said pleasantly. "After all, I am fairly handsome man."

Pure silence.