The emperor sat on the sofa with Princess Eva by his side, Alex sat alone as he previously did, and his parents sat with Ariana at the centre between them on a different sofa placed opposite of the emperor.
The knights stood behind the emperor in a semicircle, their white armours gleaming, and only their eyes were visible as their whole bodies were covered in plated armour. Their eyes were still as stone walls, as if they were already prepared to strike at any provocation before the emperor even had to lift a single finger.
"Your Majesty, you could have informed us beforehand and we would have arranged a proper welcome for you," Shane said as he met the emperor's gaze, his voice carrying the weight of something old and unresolved, a resentment that Alex could not quite understand. It seemed strange to Alex that his father would speak so directly rather than with the deference and reservation one would naturally offer an emperor, and yet the implication behind his words was clear enough: why had the emperor come unannounced?
Alex turned to look at the emperor who sat as though he were in his own territory, legs crossed and back pressed leisurely against the sofa. If Alex had to describe the emperor in a single impression, it was this: the man looked like nothing less than something dangerously beyond human.
Alex had always heard about the emperor through the princess and had spent considerable time trying to learn about the emperor's true prowess, nudging both his father and his grandfather for details that neither of them ever seemed willing to fully give.
From his findings Alex had learnt that the emperor was considered the strongest in the whole Evernight Empire, partly because he had never been defeated after resuming the title of emperor and partly because no one in recent time had dared to challenge him at all. And now, meeting the emperor in flesh for the very first time, Alex understood entirely why no one had ever tried.
The man looked nothing less than a god made real. His black eyes were so murkily dark that they seemed capable of swallowing the whole world inside it, and Alex had to pull his gaze away because he felt himself being drawn into their depths like a man losing his footing at the edge of still water. The emperor was more powerful than any story Alex had ever heard, more commanding than any description could capture. The very air around him seemed to tremble beneath the weight of his presence.
"I had not thought that I would need to come so urgently myself, but I bring news that I believe will please you greatly, Shane," the emperor said, resting his hand against his chin in a slow, deliberate manner, his eyes sizing up Alex's father with the unhurried confidence of someone who had never once needed to rush. He continued, "You have always been against this marriage agreement between my daughter and your son, have you not?"
The emperor raised his left eyebrow as he said it, and the effect was immediate. Shane and Sera both froze where they sat, and Ariana, who had been nestled between them on the sofa, perked her head up at once, feeling the shift in the atmosphere, a change so palpable that even Alex, seated entirely alone on his separate sofa, felt it from a distance.
A quiet tension filled the room, and the emperor seemed to guide the very tension in the palm of his hand. Princess Eva sat beside him in complete silence, small and still like a frightened creature by the hidden implication behind the emperor's word.
"What exactly are you implying, Your Majesty?" Sera replied in place of her husband, her hands resting on her knees with her fingers curled into fists, her knuckles slowly draining white.
"I am only saying that after considering the future of my daughter," the emperor began, and then his gaze swept across the room toward Alex and settled there, sizing him up slowly, thoroughly, with the kind of look that made Alex feel as though every secret and every shortcoming he had ever carried had been laid bare in an instant, "and after seeing how utterly worthless your son is, I have decided to annul the engagement."
The room collapsed into a deathly silence.
Alex felt his throat tighten and his chest close inward as the air left him entirely, his heart hammering so loudly in his ribacage that the sound of it was the only thing left in the world for a moment.
"What?" Ariana was the first to cry out, her face draining of colour as the full meaning of the emperor's words reached her, her voice breaking with the weight of it. Shane sat frozen with his eyes almost bulging from their sockets, and Sera looked as though she wanted nothing more than to scream at the emperor with everything she had inside her.
And Alex, he wanted nothing more than to stop this conversation from going any further, to seal the emperor's lips before another word could be uttered, to reverse the last thirty seconds of his life entirely. Princess Eva had turned her head toward her father instantly, and the colour had fled her face completely.
"Father, how could you?" the princess mumbled, her voice so low and so broken that Alex only heard it because the room was so silent that even the sound of breathing carried.
"I could, and I will, and it is for your wellbeing, my daughter," the emperor said, turning to look at her with something almost gentle in his expression as he patted her head with one slow hand. "I have arranged someone far more worthy for you. Someone who has not been stuck at level one all this time."
The words entered Alex one by one like something cold and sharp, and he felt his heart stop in the middle altogether. He opened his mouth to speak, to rebut, to push back against the emperor's words with something, anything at all, but no sound came out of him.
***
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