Chapter 453: Enough Diplomacy

The weeks after Renata’s birth passed in small discoveries that became far more important to the household than anything happening in government.

At first, she seemed composed almost entirely of sleep, hunger, and outrage whenever either condition was interrupted. Slowly, however, she began learning that her body belonged to her.

Liam spent one morning on the carpet of the family room watching her stare at her own fist with extraordinary concentration. She rotated it clumsily in front of her silver eyes, flexed several fingers, and immediately smacked herself in the cheek.

Renata froze.

Her lower lip trembled.

Arik was already leaning forward.

“She attacked herself.”

“She discovered momentum,” Liam said.

Renata released an offended sound.

Arik lifted her from the blanket and settled her against his chest as though responding to a genuine injury.

Liam watched him soothe her with one enormous hand covering most of her back.

“She is fine.”

“She disagrees.”

“She has disagreed with existence since birth.”

“That means she has standards.”

Liam laughed and returned to the technical report resting across his lap.

Family life had developed its own rhythm around them. Liam had resumed much of his work, though meetings frequently ended with Renata asleep against him or someone carrying her into his office because she had decided the nursery was unacceptable. Arik balanced government with an apparently irresistible need to check on his daughter whenever there was a gap in his schedule, while Renata continued discovering increasingly fascinating things such as her feet, the texture of blankets, and the fact that grabbing Arik’s hair produced immediate results.

Outside Nuria, Ayla had created a considerably larger family event.

Lucien survived Arik’s private conversation.

He survived Henry afterward.

Enia was calmer but considerably harder to reassure, while Mirelle proved to be the most exhausting of them all because she never threatened him outright. She simply asked questions in a pleasant voice until Lucien looked as though he had endured another coronation.

He proposed anyway.

Ayla accepted.

By the time the engagement became public, both governments had spent weeks shaping the announcement carefully enough that nobody could credibly describe Ayla as a political offering passed between countries. She was marrying Lucien because she wanted him, and Lirya’s new king had apparently decided that surviving her family was preferable to living without her.

Arik accepted the situation with the restraint of a man who remained one bad headline away from reconsidering everything.

The rest of the world interpreted it differently.

The first formal inquiry reached his office within days.

Arik read the letter twice.

Across from him, Cyran sat in one of the low chairs near the desk, watching the emperor’s expression become steadily less charitable.

“They want Simon.”

Cyran folded his hands loosely over one knee.

“Their second princess is sixteen. They are proposing preliminary conversations for the future, nothing immediate.”

Arik placed the letter flat on the desk.

“Simon is seventeen, heir to Ravenwood, and Wrohanian.”

“All true.”

“He has no political function in Nuria.”

Cyran’s mouth shifted slightly.

Arik narrowed his eyes.

“Whatever you are finding amusing, keep it internal.”

That only made Cyran look more entertained.

Arik leaned back.

The calculation behind the proposal was embarrassingly obvious.

Simon Ravenwood was Liam’s brother. Liam was Empress Consort of Nuria. Ayla was engaged to the King of Lirya. Henry Ravenwood headed one of Wrohan’s old noble houses, and Simon would eventually inherit its title and estates.

Someone had taken those relationships, drawn several lines between countries, and decided the youngest Ravenwood represented another route toward Nuria.

Arik hated the logic.

He hated more that it made sense to people who viewed families like maps.

The second country showed slightly more restraint and considerably less intelligence.

Their foreign ministry sent a beautifully polished inquiry about possible marriage opportunities involving a royal relative and “a suitably positioned Nurian noble house with close access to the imperial family.”

Mezos read the message in silence from the chair near the windows.

When he finished, he lowered the tablet.

“They want what they think Lirya gained.”

“Lirya gained Ayla.”

“Who also happens to be Liam’s sister.”

“She is not a trade agreement.”

“I know that. They apparently need clarification.”

Arik rubbed a hand across his face.

“One king falls in love with someone from the extended family, and suddenly every court thinks I am maintaining a supply of strategically useful relatives.”

Cyran glanced at the message.

“We can reject both without creating a problem.”

“They are already rejected.”

Arik signed the response before either man could say more.

For three days, the matter appeared finished.

On the fourth, Rubis entered Arik’s office carrying a cream envelope edged in another country’s royal colors.

He stopped in front of the desk.

Arik looked up from a provincial development report.

Rubis’s expression was unreadable in the particular way it became when protocol encountered something too ridiculous to classify properly.

“What happened?”

“There has been another marriage inquiry.”

Arik rested his pen on the desk.

“For whom?”

Rubis hesitated long enough for Mezos, who had been reading near the windows, to look over.

At last, Rubis placed the envelope in front of Arik.

“Princess Renata.”

The room became silent.

Arik stared at the envelope.

His daughter was two months old.

He opened it carefully.

The proposal had come from a minor royal house whose crown prince had recently become a father. Every sentence was wrapped in ceremonial language about friendship, dynastic continuity, future unity, and an early expression of mutual respect between houses.

Arik read to the end.

His face grew calmer with every paragraph.

Mezos closed his file.

Rubis shifted his weight subtly toward the door.

Arik placed the letter on the desk with remarkable precision.

“They asked for my infant daughter’s hand in marriage.”

Rubis cleared his throat.

“It is technically framed as a symbolic future understanding rather than a binding arrangement.”

Arik looked at him.

Rubis decided that explanation had reached its natural conclusion.

Mezos walked closer and picked up the letter.

He read several lines, frowned, and placed it back down.

“This may actually be the stupidest correspondence anyone has ever sent you.”

“Gerard once sent me a tariff proposal assembled by three ministries that contradicted itself before the second page.”

Mezos glanced toward the envelope.

“This is worse.”

Arik rose.

The office suddenly felt smaller despite the broad windows opening over the palace gardens.

Two months old.

She could not sit upright.

Someone had already calculated her value as a future diplomatic connection.

Arik turned away from the windows.

“I have had enough.”

Cyran had entered quietly during the discussion and now stood near the door, taking in the envelope, Mezos’s expression, and the particular calm settling over his emperor.

“Enough of the proposal?”

“Enough diplomacy.”

Cyran closed his eyes briefly.

Arik began gathering the open files on his desk.

Mezos watched him with growing suspicion.

“What exactly are you planning?”

“I restored an empire, reopened foreign relations, negotiated trade, created an elected government, supported another country through a succession, trained a king, attended more weddings than any sensible person should endure, and spent years preventing ambitious idiots from turning family members into political currency.”

Rubis folded his arms.

Arik picked up the marriage proposal between two fingers.

“Now someone has sent me a request involving a child who only recently discovered she has toes.”

Cyran’s expression tightened.

“That can be answered with a refusal.”

“I am aware.”

Arik dropped the letter back onto the desk.

“That is why I am bored.”

Mezos stared at him.

The gold in Arik’s eyes had brightened.

“Arik.”

The emperor looked at him and smiled.

“I think I am going to war.”

Nobody spoke.

Cyran pinched the bridge of his nose.

Rubis slowly turned toward Mezos.

Mezos sighed with the resignation of a man who had known for years that peace would eventually become too quiet for Arik.

Somewhere in the private wing, Renata was probably still trying to catch her foot.

Her father had apparently decided diplomacy had run its course.