Christopher fled.
He simply removed himself from the palace before the situation escalated into the sort of chaos that historians would one day politely label "unfortunate ceremonial complications." He left strategy meetings, security briefings, and a very determined king behind and retreated straight to the one place in Saha where logic still existed.
Ethan's hospital room.
The imperial medical center carried that unsettling, expensive quiet of institutions where everything is sterilized, precise, and terrifyingly efficient. Every corridor looked like it had never known dust. Every door whispered instead of opening. Whatever Dax paid these people, it clearly wasn't enough, because they did the kind of work that made gods nervous.
Christopher knocked once out of habit and walked in.
