A few months later, Nero found himself in one of the private entertainment rooms reserved for young royals, staring at a giant television while a racing game he had not chosen informed him for the third time that he had crashed into the same barrier.
Dean, stretched across the other end of the sofa like a man personally wronged by leadership conferences, did not even laugh.
That was how tired they both were.
The summit for young future leaders had ended two hours earlier, which meant they had already survived handshakes, moderated discussions, performative optimism, a collaborative policy exercise in which three heirs had nearly come to blows over water security, and a closing reception full of adults smiling too hard at teenagers in tailored clothes. The entire thing had been designed, according to the official program, to encourage diplomacy, innovation, and mutual understanding among the next generation of power.
