Chapter 348: Lying Daughter

Chapter 348: Chapter 348: Lying Daughter

Amara was waiting beside the eastern windows when Arik entered the reception salon, standing with her back to the room while morning light caught along the silver embroidery of her dark blue dress.

For a moment, the sight of her was almost exactly what memory expected.

Her white hair had been gathered into a thick braid that rested over one shoulder and reached nearly to her waist, while deep lines marked a face that had aged far more severely than it should have. The damage to her channels had cost her years long before the Gate closed, and the poison had continued taking from her afterward, leaving her looking well beyond ninety despite not having reached it yet.

What had changed was the way she stood.

No cane waited beside her. No physician hovered near her elbow, and there was none of the careful distribution of weight Arik remembered from Wrohan, when even crossing a room had required calculation.

She turned when the door closed behind him.

Her clear blue eyes widened.

"Goliath."

Arik allowed himself the smallest pause before smiling.

"Amara."

Emotion crossed her face quickly, softening features age had made harsh, and she came toward him with surprising steadiness.

Arik opened his arms.

She stepped into them without hesitation.

Her body felt painfully light against the frame the Gate had given him, and her forehead barely reached his chest now.

"You are enormous," she murmured.

"So everyone keeps telling me."

Amara pulled back far enough to look up at him. "You were already too tall."

"That sounds like a complaint."

"It always was."

Her smile looked familiar.

So did the hand she lifted toward his face.

Arik let her touch him.

Her fingertips traced the edge of his cheekbone with the familiarity of someone touching a face she remembered beneath another one, and Arik simply let her. Once, contact like this might have unsettled something inside him, loosening memories before he was ready for them, but her ether barely registered against his now-completed soul. Nothing shifted beneath the surface, and no fragment of Goliath’s past rose to meet her touch.

Exactly as he expected.

Amara’s expression softened further.

"You finally came home."

Arik glanced beyond her toward Deira.

The city stretched between the mountains beneath clean morning light, ancient structures threaded with restored ether lines and newer transit routes that would have been unimaginable when Nuria disappeared seventy-seven years earlier.

"Eventually."

"You should never have been kept from it."

Arik looked back at her. "No?"

"This was always yours."

The phrasing interested him.

Arik gave her a faint smile and gestured toward the seating area.

"Sit before Marin somehow learns I let you stand for an hour."

"He has already threatened me enough."

"That means he likes you."

"It means he is intolerable."

"That too."

She laughed and lowered herself into one of the dark upholstered chairs arranged around a narrow tea table.

Arik took the seat opposite her.

For the next several minutes, he let Amara decide what mattered.

She asked about the palace first.

Not Nuria’s population, not the condition of Deira after reopening, and not how the people had adapted to an outside world that had nearly forgotten them.

The palace.

"How much of the eastern wing survived?"

"Most of it."

"And the northern royal residence?"

"Restored."

Something brightened in her eyes.

"My apartments?"

Arik leaned back slightly.

"They still exist."

Amara exhaled with visible relief. "Good."

"You expected otherwise?"

"Seventy-seven years is enough time to lose everything."

Her answer was reasonable.

So was the way she looked around the salon afterward, taking in the restored gold inlays, black stone walls, and imperial motifs incorporated into the architecture.

"But some things should remain," she added.

Arik reached for the tea.

"Some do."

Amara studied him while he poured.

Arik found the person in front of him very interesting. Why is not Amara asking about her mother’s home? How about Seraphine’s grave? She never even tried to mention her mother or his infant brother killed in cold blood under her eyes.

"You do not seem bothered by me calling you Goliath anymore."

Her voice reached Arik’s mind softly, delivered almost cautiously.

Arik handed her one of the cups before answering.

"I have remembered enough that arguing over every old name seems idiotic at this point."

Her shoulders eased.

"I hoped the core would help."

"It did."

"And being here?"

"That too."

Amara smiled into her tea, her blue eyes clearer than they ever had been in the last decades.

"I knew Nuria would give you back to yourself."

Arik took a slow sip and chose not to correct her.

The silence appeared to reassure her more than agreement would have.

Their conversation moved naturally from there, although the direction became increasingly obvious.

She asked which parts of the old royal household had been restored, whether pre-Gate seals remained legally recognized, and how much authority the reopened archives placed in hereditary titles.

Finally, she set her cup down.

"The council still recognizes the imperial family?"

"Where applicable."

"And adopted blood?"

Arik met her eyes.

"You are asking whether your position survived."

"I am asking whether it can be restored." She said, for the first time, truly touching what was interesting to her.

Arik rested one arm along the chair, his wedding ring gleaming in the sunlight.

"You were Goliath’s adopted daughter."

"I was a princess of Nuria."

"You were."

"I represented the crown, maintained my own household, held estates under my name, and had access to sections of the council and archives that were not open to ordinary nobility."

Arik tilted his head. He truly tried to keep the laugh from forming under control.

Amara was eighteen when Goliath fell. She hated administration as much as Goliath himself. Seraphiana was the one that managed everything Amara got from him.

"And you want those privileges returned?"

"Yes."

There was no embarrassment in the answer.

She leaned forward slightly, pale fingers folding together over her knee.

"I spent seventy-seven years outside a country the world barely remembered. I lost my household, my authority, my name here, and nearly my life afterward. Nuria exists again, Goliath. I want to exist inside it as myself."

A good statement.

Almost moving.

Arik let his expression soften. He was quite proud of how well he could keep his temperament under control.

"And you want your place back."

"I do."

He smiled in a way anyone knowing him would know is trouble.

Amara relaxed.

"There will be formalities."

"Of course."

"The legal structure changed while the Gate was closed, and old holdings cannot simply be reassigned without review."

"I expected that."

"The northern apartments will also need inspection before anyone occupies them."

Her expression shifted so slightly most people would have missed it.

"Anyone?"

Arik smiled apologetically.

"Administrative language. The entire wing is still technically under crown management."

Amara accepted the explanation.

They continued for another twenty minutes, discussing staff, archive access, ceremonial precedence, and which of her former estates had survived in recognizable form.

Arik gave her enough to encourage confidence while committing to almost nothing.

When she called him Goliath, he did not object.

When she referred to the northern rooms as hers, he let it pass.

By the time he stood, she looked considerably more comfortable than she had when he entered.

"Come," he said.

Amara rose. "Where?"

"I want to see how much Marin exaggerated your condition."

"He always exaggerates."

"No, he usually underestimates how stubborn his patients are."

They left the salon together.

The corridor outside was deliberately quiet, morning light falling through narrow windows in long bright strips across the polished black floor while hidden security fields hummed faintly beneath the walls.

Arik kept his pace moderate.

Amara did not need him to.

Her steps remained steady and controlled, with none of the weakness he remembered from Wrohan.

"You recovered remarkably well."

"I worked for it."

"Marin expected permanent limitations."

"He was wrong."

"He rarely is."

"He was this time."

Arik glanced at her.

Amara smiled.

They reached the junction leading toward the northern royal wing.

She slowed.

"My apartments are through there."

"They were."

She stopped.

"Were?"

Arik turned toward her.

The warmth disappeared from his expression so completely that Amara noticed before he moved.

"Goliath?"

He stepped closer.

She stepped back.

Then again.

Her shoulders met the stone wall.

Arik placed one hand beside her head.

"What is this?"

His other hand closed around her throat before she could shift away, pinning her against the wall with controlled force.

Amara’s hands snapped around his wrist.

Arik looked down at her grip.

Then back into those clear blue eyes.

The expression staring at him now was no longer that of an old princess reunited with her father.

Something sharper had surfaced.

Arik smiled.

There was nothing of Goliath in it.

Nothing paternal. Nothing welcoming.

Only Nuria’s emperor looking at someone who had entered his palace believing she understood him.

He leaned closer.

"You really had to take all from him?"