Chapter 110: Dominance

Kai entered the palace and practically gasped at the interior design. A human palace did not need this much gold, and by gold he meant gold. It was worked into the walls, the frames, the railings, the ceremonial fixtures, everywhere the eye settled long enough to notice excess.

"These have got to be fake."

[Negative.]

[Material composition confirmed as genuine gold.]

[According to original game lore, the royal house of this kingdom accumulated visible wealth as a method of dominance display rather than civic investment.]

[Historical records attached to the route describe successive rulers maintaining power through heavy taxation, punitive enforcement, and inhumane treatment of lower-district citizens.]

[Public beauty in the capital was frequently funded by private suffering.]

Of course it was, Kai thought. Capitalism in a crown, polished until the blood underneath looked decorative. He didn’t consider to stop walking, he moved foward with intent, stopping randomly might make him visibly show disgust and disgust...was not a good look for as somewhere as formal as the royal palace.

Duke walked behind him intently, humming a tune and just happy to be there...they continued walking until they reached what appeared to be a checkpoint. Two guards blocked the inner approach and looked directly at Kai.

"Are you Kai Valerius?"

"In the flesh," Duke answered in Kai’s stead.

Kai had chosen Duke for the escort and left Neet at the residence. That had seemed efficient to avoid conflicts in the Future, he wasn’t about to play favourites for people he was still getting to know, identity and motives alike..

But there was something about Duke that made people get on thier tippy toes when they are close to him, he had some kind of dominating aura that caused your heart to accelerate and makes you imagine the worst.

Their faces stiffened when they assessed Duke properly. One swallowed hard before speaking.

"Nobody except Kai Valerius is allowed past this point."

"Oh?" Duke’s deep voice sounded from behind he tilted his head, and Kai felt trouble gathering in him at once. He turned and gave him a look. Duke understood it, sighed, and stepped back.

"Understood."

He returned toward the carriage without argument. Useful and obedient, Kai thought. A rare combination.

Kai faced the guards again.

"Lead the way."

They did.

The route took him through a hallway lined with ancestral portraits, down a stairway, and into a reception chamber large enough to make the furniture look isolated inside it. A long table cut across the room in a hard diagonal line, and the surrounding space remained so wide that the setting felt less like a dining room and more like a stage built to remind guests of their scale.

The guards handed him to a group of maids. There were too many of them for the task. They gathered around him, guided him to the far end of the table, and seated him with synchronized politeness.

"Please wait. His Highness will be with you shortly."

Then they left in a cluster. Kai watched them go and felt unimpressed. One or two attendants could have done the same work faster, he thought. The palace seemed to confuse manpower with importance.

He also felt no eagerness.

Where was the host? Protocol said Evander should have been present before the guest, or at least close enough to make the arrival feel intentional. The idea of facing him again after the flower maze sat badly under Kai’s ribs. He had spent the walk preparing for exactly this dinner, this room, and the man who had fucked him among the hedges and then remained crown prince by morning as if the sequence required no recovery.

Get through the meal. Leave cleanly. Do not become a recurring appointment, he thought.

The doors opened.

Evander entered looking every inch the noble he was born to perform. He wore a white tucked shirt under a dark formal waistcoat, fitted trousers, and polished boots, clean and deliberate without the heavier outer coat. The simpler arrangement made him look less ceremonial than he had at the ball and more dangerous for it.

Kai rose as courtesy demanded and bowed slightly.

"My prince."

Evander took his hand and kissed the back of it.

"We meet again, gorgeous."

They looked at each other a beat too long. The maze sat between them without needing to be named. Evander showed no shame and no hesitation. Then he guided Kai back into his seat and, of all the chairs available in that oversized room, sat directly beside him.

Barely tolerable, Kai thought.

Evander rang a small bell on the table. Servants entered at once with trays of meat, sauces, bread, fruit, pudding, and fish, more variety than two people could finish without waste. Kai looked over the spread and felt the same irritation from the golden hallway return in quieter form. Performance again, he thought. Abundance arranged for display.

The platters were set down. The servants bowed and left quickly.

Evander looked at him and sighed.

"God, I am hungry. Are you? Because I am famished as hell."

"Were you doing something before I came?"

"Yes. I was practicing spells."

That caught Kai’s interest despite himself.

"What kind?"

"Elemental ones. I was looking for ways to combine two elements into one powerful attack."

"How intriguing," Kai muttered.

Now that his mana channels were open, the idea no longer belonged entirely to other people. One day he might learn something like that through study rather than crisis, he thought, and filed the possibility under survival instead of admiration.

Evander portioned pudding onto his own plate, then onto Kai’s without asking. He moved through the platters with easy confidence, cutting and serving as if feeding another person at a royal table were the natural extension of being prince.

"Do you eat chicken?" he asked.

Kai nodded. Evander cut a piece and set it on his plate.

"I am more of a fish man myself," Evander said, taking fish for himself.

He repeated the routine with the rest of the dishes, asking preference each time and filling Kai’s plate according to the answers. By the end, Kai had a complete formal dinner arranged through someone else’s hands. Intimate in a different way from the maze, he thought. The maze had been impulse. This was deliberate attention, or a polished performance of it.

They ate in near silence. Evander kept looking over between bites until Kai could not endure it.

"What?"

"I am trying to figure out what kind of person you are."

"What? You could just ask me."

Evander dropped his fork and smiled, and Kai wondered why some men preferred observation when direct speech was available.

Then Evander did ask.

"What do you do?"

Kai set his own fork down, took a gulp of water, wiped his mouth, and steadied himself before answering.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean what have you been doing all these years? What are your interests?"

The original Kai’s memories surfaced whether he wanted them or not, painful even secondhand. That history did not belong on this table, he thought. Full honesty would only hand a crown prince more leverage.

"I was an adventurer for some time."

"Adventuring?"

"Yes."

"Solo or in a group?"

"I had a group for a while, but I am done with adventuring for now."

"Why?"

"I am just tired of the constant danger. It is aggravating."

That much was true. Danger had stopped feeling like momentum and started feeling like a loop. Survive one crisis, inherit the next, collect more people, collect more consequences.

A short silence followed. Evander took a sip of wine. Kai did the same and hoped the conversation would move toward magic, court matters, anything less personal than the direction he could already feel coming.

Then Evander set the glass down with too much energy.

"Okay. Million-dollar question."

Kai braced for nonsense.

"Have you ever been betrothed?"

He almost scoffed. Ball. Maze. Dinner. Proposal logic, he thought. Of course the road bent back here.

"You mean like having a partner I wanted to marry?"

"Yes."

"No. Not particularly."

Evander’s smile stiffened at the edges, less from disappointment than from calculation finding an opening.

"How do you feel about entering a mutual partnership with me?"

Kai understood immediately.

"What? Like marriage?"

"Yes. Yes."

Evander tensed, clearly prepared for a favorable answer, and the oversized room went quiet enough to make its scale noticeable again. He pushed forward with the confidence of a man who rarely heard refusal in settings this expensive.

"I promise to treat you right. The wedding would be grand."

Kai sighed. These men and their marriage proposals, he thought. Different mouths. Same chain. He could already map the advantages if he wanted to: protection, status, resources, structured magical instruction, a softer political landing than remaining independent under too many watching eyes. Advantages were not consent.

"So," Evander asked, eyes fixed on him, "what do you say?"

Kai picked up his fork and knife again and returned to his plate as if the question belonged to another dinner entirely.

"No."