Chapter 579: Retirement

Otto did not answer Arion on the palace steps.

He simply adjusted Theo higher against his chest, glanced once at the staff and security officers gathered around the entrance, and turned toward the interior.

"Inside."

Arion stared after him.

Dean caught his arm before he could follow too quickly.

"Not here."

Arion exhaled through his nose and went after his father.

Theo, entirely unaware that his grandfather had just dropped something politically significant into the middle of their arrival home, rested comfortably against Otto’s shoulder with the wooden dragon wedged between them.

"Grandpa, Dragon needs a room."

Otto looked down at him.

"A room?"

Dean immediately stepped in.

"A shelf. At most."

Theo twisted around.

"He needs somewhere to sleep."

"He has your bed."

Otto considered the matter with far too much seriousness.

"We can arrange a shelf."

Dean pointed at him.

"You are not commissioning furniture for the wooden dragon."

"I said a shelf."

"That is how it starts."

Arion barely seemed to hear them.

His attention remained fixed on Otto all the way through the private corridor and into one of the smaller family sitting rooms near the western garden.

The room had already been prepared.

A low table stood between two dark-green sofas with coffee, tea, cold water, fruit, sandwiches, and several plates of pastries arranged neatly across it. A small fire burned beneath the pale stone mantel despite the mild afternoon, taking the chill out of the room after their journey. Heavy curtains had been drawn halfway across the tall windows, softening the late sunlight over the carpets and polished wood.

Minerva was conspicuously absent.

So was Rina.

Dean noticed immediately.

Otto set Theo down beside the rug.

"There are toys in the cabinet."

Theo looked toward it, then down at the dragon.

"He comes too."

"At this point I assume he does."

Theo carried the toy toward the cabinet.

Arion remained standing, arms crossed over his large chest.

"Father."

Otto crossed to the drinks table instead.

"Sit down first."

Arion’s expression made it very clear that he disliked being managed inside his own home, but he sat at the edge of the sofa anyway.

Dean joined him and reached for the coffee.

"You should take something."

"I’m fine."

"You have the face."

Arion looked toward him.

Dean took a sip.

"The one where everyone else starts wondering whether they need to leave the room."

Otto gave Dean a brief, appreciative look before pouring himself water.

Arion ignored both of them.

Once Otto finally settled into the chair opposite, Arion leaned forward, forearms resting against his thighs.

"You told me you were planning to retire."

There was no question in his voice this time.

Otto rested the glass against his knee.

"I am."

Arion’s jaw tightened.

Otto lifted one hand before he could interrupt.

"I have not announced anything. The council does not have a date; there is no transition schedule waiting behind your back, and nobody has started preparing a coronation while you were in Draxil."

Dean lowered his coffee slightly.

That removed several possibilities immediately.

Otto continued.

"I spoke to Minerva first. After that, I asked legal counsel to review the formal succession procedure because I wanted to know what retiring voluntarily would actually require. That is as far as it has gone."

Arion leaned back, but the tension did not leave his shoulders.

"You decided this while we were away?"

"No. I have been thinking about it for months."

That answer changed the room more than the announcement on the steps had.

Arion studied his father.

Otto looked older suddenly. Not frail; he was still as tall as Arion and his posture straight.

Not ill either. Seven would’ve broken any rule to tell them if something serious was happening.

Simply older than Arion tended to allow himself to notice.

Sixty-seven years carried well on him, particularly when he was dressed formally and occupying an imperial council chamber, but here, sitting beside a fire with his grandson scattering wooden animals across the carpet, the years were easier to see around his eyes and in the silver threaded through his hair.

Otto seemed to know exactly what Arion was thinking.

"I am healthy," he said. "That is part of the reason I want to do this now."

Arion frowned.

Otto leaned back in his chair.

"I spent most of my life assuming an emperor ruled until his body decided for him. Illness, age, incapacity, death. Pick whichever one arrived first."

"That is a cheerful list," Dean murmured.

Otto smiled faintly.

"It is also a stupid way to plan the final years of your life."

Arion’s expression shifted.

Otto looked toward Theo.

Their grandson was sitting cross-legged on the rug with the black dragon planted in the middle of a line of carved horses.

"I am sixty-seven. I would like to retire while I am still capable of enjoying retirement."

Arion remained silent.

Otto gave him time.

"I want mornings when nobody is waiting outside my bedroom with ministerial reports. I want to travel with Minerva without receiving briefings every three hours. I want to take Theo somewhere without someone deciding it is an imperial appearance."

Theo looked up at the sound of his name.

"Where?"

Otto smiled.

"We’ll decide later."

Satisfied, Theo returned to arranging his animals.

Dean looked back toward Arion.

The anger had gone out of him.

What remained was something more complicated.

Arion had always known the crown would eventually become his. He had been trained for it long before Dean met him. He already performed enough of the work that outsiders occasionally forgot where the formal authority still rested.

But eventual succession had remained conveniently abstract.

Otto retiring turned it into a real future with council procedures, dates, and public announcements.

A crown moving from father to son while both men were still alive and standing beside each other.

Arion stood and crossed toward the windows.

"I thought you would stay longer."

Otto followed him with his eyes.

"So did I."

Arion looked through the glass toward the western gardens.

"What changed?"

"Nothing dramatic."

That seemed to be the point Otto wanted him to understand.

"I simply realized I was staying because I knew how to stay."

Dean set his cup down.

Otto continued quietly.

"You have your own household. Your own family. You have spent years handling matters that would once have remained entirely on my desk. I watched you become capable of carrying this without me hovering over every decision, and somewhere along the way I stopped being able to explain why I was still waiting."

Arion turned back.

"That does not mean I want you gone."

"I am not going anywhere."

Otto’s voice remained calm.

"I am stepping away from a position, Arion. Not from you."

Something in Arion’s face softened.

Dean watched him return to the sofa, slower this time.

Otto did not rush him.

"I will not announce anything until we have planned it together," he added. "I reached the decision privately. The transition will not happen privately."

Arion rested his elbows against his knees again, but the posture no longer looked defensive.

"And Minerva?"

"She told me I should have done it sooner."

Dean laughed.

That sounded exactly like Minerva.

Otto smiled.

"She has apparently been waiting several years for me to develop common sense."

Arion rubbed one hand across his mouth.

"She wants to travel."

"She has a list."

"Of course she does."

"Several lists, actually."

Dean leaned back into the sofa.

For the first time since they arrived, the conversation began to feel less like an impending disaster and more like what it really was.

A change.

A significant one, but not an emergency.

Otto looked toward his son.

"I do not need an answer today."

Arion met his gaze.

"I know."

"I wanted you to hear it from me before anyone else knew enough to turn it into politics."

That, more than anything, seemed to settle something in Arion.

He nodded once.

Across the room, Theo raised the wooden dragon.

"Grandpa."

Otto looked over.

"Dragon needs a house."

Otto considered the toy solemnly.

Dean immediately sat forward.

"Do not encourage him."

Arion finally laughed.

Otto smiled at his grandson.

"Apparently I may have more free time soon."

Dean groaned.

"There goes retirement."