"Explain," he said.
Cecil laughed once, entirely without humor. "Gladly. Gabriel offered me a medically and politically sound solution to a marking issue with Frederik. Frederik then said no, because apparently our relationship remains structurally identical whether or not there is a hidden mark on his body, which is an infuriatingly sensible thing to say and therefore impossible to defeat. So now I'm angry. And since part of the reason any visible progression in this family becomes a court event is because you, the imperial heir, remain romantically unprocessed and publicly unmarried, I am here to ask why you haven't fixed that."
Arik listened to the entire thing without interruption.
Which should have been reassuring.
It was not.
By the end of it, one of his brows had lifted a fraction.
Only a fraction.
On Arik, that was practically a weather alert.
