Chapter 506. Son-in-Law to the Celestial Throne

Chapter 506: 506. Son-in-Law to the Celestial Throne

King Theron and Queen Isolde joined the proceedings partway through the main course, and their arrival didn’t bring the stiff, suffocating formality one might expect from royalty.

Instead, they settled into their seats with an easy grace that seemed to amplify the existing warmth of the room. The shift in atmosphere was immediate; it felt less like a diplomatic dinner and more like a family gathering that had been long overdue.

Isolde laughed outright at Kaela’s retelling of the market incident, the story of how a poorly placed apple basket had sent a ’disguised’ spy tumbling into a fountain.

The fruit vendor’s delighted shout was still fresh enough in the retelling to send the whole table into fresh waves of hysterics.

"I would have paid good silver to see that myself," Isolde said, wiping a tear of mirth from her eye, her regal composure momentarily forgotten. "A master spy defeated by a basket of Granny Smiths."

"Honestly, Kaela, I’m going to be telling that story for years."

"It wasn’t my finest moment, Your Majesty," Kaela admitted, though she was laughing too hard to sound genuinely embarrassed. "I think I spent more time apologizing to the apples than I did chasing the target."

Theron, for his part, seemed content simply to observe. He watched the table with a quiet, settled contentment that William hadn’t witnessed in him during the weeks of suffocating tension that had preceded this reprieve.

The King’s usual careful reserve of the armor he wore to protect both his kingdom and his family had loosened, melted away by good food and even better company.

In this light, he didn’t look like a sovereign weighing the fates of nations; he looked like an ordinary father enjoying an ordinary dinner with his daughter’s friends.

"I don’t believe this palace has hosted a dinner this loud in a very long time," Theron remarked at one point, speaking to no one in particular.

His voice held a rough, genuine timbre, and the way his eyes crinkled made it clear that this wasn’t criticism; it was the highest possible compliment he could offer.

As the meal progressed, the noise settled into a comfortable hum.

It was somewhere in the quiet lull between the main course and the arrival of dessert while Ellie and Clara were locked in a surprisingly passionate, almost scholarly debate about whether rosemary enhanced or overpowered roasted root vegetables that William felt his attention begin to drift.

His gaze wandered toward the tall, arched window at the far end of the hall. Outside, the world had surrendered to the night.

The sky was a deep, velvet indigo, scattered with stars that burned like distant, cold diamonds. The absolute stillness of the darkness beyond the glass pulled at him, dragging his thoughts toward a thread that had been coiled like a sleeping serpent at the edges of his mind for weeks.

’The Hollow Circle.’

The memory of Corwin’s confession surfaced unbidden, cold and sharp against the warmth of the dining hall.

Years had passed, but the words still echoed with the same chilling certainty: ’I was only a single piece on a board considerably larger and older than my own life. Someone else holds the lock.’

Who was the architect?

Who held the key to a conspiracy that had swallowed lives like Corwin’s?

The mystery felt like a wound that refused to scar, a puzzle with missing pieces that seemed to vanish every time he drew close to understanding them.

A sudden warmth against his thigh snapped him back to the present. Beneath the table, hidden from the eyes of the king and queen, Catherine’s hand found his.

Her fingers laced through his with a steady, grounding pressure. She didn’t turn to face him; she kept her attention seemingly fixed on Clara’s increasingly heated defense of rosemary, but her grip tightened a deliberate, intimate squeeze that told him she had read his expression perfectly. She knew exactly where his mind had fled.

"It’s still waiting for us," she said.

Her voice was barely a breath, pitched so low that the words belonged exclusively to the two of them, cutting through the ambient noise of the feast like a blade. "I know... I think about it too, some nights."

William turned his hand within hers, interlacing their fingers properly, anchoring himself to her. The darkness of the Hollow Circle was still there, waiting in the shadows of his mind, but for now, he chose the light.

"Not tonight, though," he whispered back, his voice rough with the effort of pushing the shadows away.

"No," Catherine agreed.

A small, private smile, one meant only for him, touched her lips before she turned back to the table, the queen once more, leaving the ghosts of the past to wait in the dark. "Not tonight."

William forced himself to release the thought. He did it deliberately, with the practiced discipline of a soldier setting down a heavy rucksack at the end of an exhausting march.

He pushed the specter of the Hollow Circle back into the darkness where it belonged, refusing to let it poison the present.

He chose to simply be there to feel the ambient warmth of the room, to hear the crackle of the dying hearth, and to see the candlelight dancing in the eyes of the people he loved. Whatever horrors lurked in the shadows of the world could wait.

Tonight belonged to something gentler, something human.

The following morning, however, the gentle reprieve proved to be short-lived. Breakfast turned out to be its own peculiar kind of trial.

William discovered the moment he took his seat that King Theron’s enthusiastic, unguarded question from the night before had traveled through the palace like wildfire, already having been dissected and analyzed by the entire traveling party.

"So," Olivia said, not even bothering to mask her mischievous grin as she slid a basket of warm bread across the table toward him. "I hear congratulations are in order."

"Son in law to the Celestial Throne."

"That’s quite the promotion from Zero Class Instructor, don’t you think?"

William felt the heat creep up his neck.

"It is not official," he said, attempting to maintain as much dignity as possible while simultaneously trying to navigate a mouthful of eggs.

"Oh, please," Clara interjected, not looking up from her journal.

She was scribbling with alarming focus, treating the morning meal like a high-stakes court hearing. "The Queen has already begun working on preliminary seating charts."

"I believe that qualifies as ’reasonably official’ under most royal traditions and historical precedents."

William paused mid-bite, his fork hovering uncertainly. "She closed the notebook."

"She closed it after drawing a detailed diagram," Clara corrected primly, tapping her quill against her chin. "I saw the layout before Theron intervened."

"There was already a sketched arrangement for at least forty guests."

"The logistics alone suggest a wedding date is being considered."

Kaela, seated directly beside William, had been visibly vibrating with suppressed mirth for several minutes.

Finally, she lost the battle entirely. Letting out a choked noise of amusement, she collapsed sideways, burying her face against William’s shoulder as her entire frame shook with silent laughter.

"I did warn you," she managed to muffle against his shirt, "that my parents get attached quickly."

William sighed, though there was no real anger in it. "You undersold it significantly, Kaela."

"’Attached’ implies a mild interest... This feels more like a tactical annexation."

"I wanted it to be a surprise," she teased, finally lifting her head, her eyes bright with mischief.

"It was certainly a surprise," William admitted, setting his fork down. "A very specific, very overwhelming, and very alarming surprise."

Ellie, who had been watching the entire exchange with open delight, reached across the table. Her hand landed on William’s with a comforting, almost patronizing pat.

"For what it’s worth, Instructor Wade, I think you’d make a wonderful addition to the royal family. You’re very patient."

William stared at her, incredulous. "Thank you, Ellie... Truly... That is not helping at all."

"I wasn’t trying to help," Ellie replied cheerfully, popping a piece of fruit into her mouth.

The table erupted into fresh waves of laughter at his expense. As William sat there, surrounded by the teasing barbs of his friends and the overwhelming implications of his future, he found himself accepting his fate.

He leaned back, letting out a long, resigned breath, accepting the chaos with the weary but fond patience of a man who knew exactly what he had gotten himself into and knew he wouldn’t have it any other way.