Rex leaned back in his chair, eyes sweeping across them. Titles and roles, structures and symbols, he could see the skeleton of it already. Aurex hadn't been a fool. He'd known he couldn't rule alone.
So he'd bound these four to himself, given them weight and authority, forged a faction that could balance against the nobles who circled like vultures around the throne.
And apparently, one of their contingency plans, should the court try to reduce Aurex into nothing more than a trophy king, was to create a law.
A rule sharp enough to cut through all the noble games.
A rule Rex would now have to uphold.
"…I say one child per consort would keep the chances of any one line dominating the power scale low, and the next Gambit would remain controlled," Inis murmured, almost to herself, though the words carried clearly in the quiet of the room. She had papers scattered across the table before her, ink smudges at the edge of her fingers from where she had been annotating, drawing, revising plans without pause.
Rex watched her a long moment. She looked steadier now, her composure rebuilt brick by brick since the night before. The jagged grief had dulled just enough that she could stand and speak, her posture taut but unbroken.
Still, he knew the weight she carried, her sister was gone, laid to rest without him present, without Aurex. Inis had been firm about that, "Don't come. You don't remember her, and your presence would make her sacrifice look like a play."
So he had obeyed. He let her grieve alone, let her grieved Sini with her own hands, and tried to pretend that was enough.
But this, this discussion, this cold strategy about controlling powerscale and bloodlines, this was something he hadn't prepared for.
"…consort?"
The word scraped out of his throat like a dying goat's bleat. His own voice betrayed him, pitching up with disbelief and a crack of panic. Consort.
He slumped back in the high-backed chair, staring around the room at faces far too calm for what had just been suggested.
Marriage? Offspring? Whole dynasties planned on his shoulders?
His mind went blank, then lurched violently toward protest. He had never even had a wife. Never courted one, never wanted the shackle of a binding promise. He had places, casual, fleeting, nameless places, where he had dealt with urges, with needs, but they were exactly that... temporary relief, not chains.
Nothing remotely close to the cage they were now painting as necessity.
And yet here they were, speaking as if it were already decided. As if he were a stud horse.
Rex rubbed his temple hard, dragging his palm over his eyes until colors sparked in the dark. "You've got to be kidding me," he muttered under his breath.
But no one laughed.
Mira Lilith was the first to cut through his fumbling protest.
"Consorts…" she corrected smoothly, lips curving into that amused, wicked grin of hers. She didn't even bother to soften the word. She made it plural, deliberate, almost savoring the sound, like she wanted him to choke on the implications. More than one. Not just a wife.
Rex blinked at her, throat tight. Wives?
Before he could find a retort, Shin Lan's voice filled the room, steady.
"That would keep the nobles from holding too much power in court. As long as Aurex sits the throne, they'll push their favorites, their daughters, their very own pawns. They'll try to force your hand into choosing a queen."
He leaned forward and jabbed one finger at the great map unfurled on the table. Inked symbols and neat lines traced borders, rivers, strongholds, but Rex's eyes were drawn to the cluster of marks that Shin Lan indicated... eighteen marks, the crests of the houses that had their claws in the throne.
Eighteen noble families that had ruled not through crowns but through chokeholds, wrapping chains around every king who sat here before.
Shin Lan's green eyes flicked toward him, sharp as a drawn blade. "If you let them, they'll drown you in their schemes before the year is out."
And then Inis spoke, her voice cool, flat, carrying the weight of a blade pressed to the heart.
"The previous king let them fight. He thought balance meant chaos, that their claws dull each other when turned inward. Instead, it made the court a battlefield. And those nobles, the very ones you saw cheering at your crowning, do you think they celebrated for you?"
Her eyes lifted from the scattered papers, pinning him in place. There was no gentleness there, only iron.
"They celebrated, yes, but not your triumph. They celebrated their own, with you as the most visible piece of their victory"
The word struck harder than he expected. He had spent his whole life clawing his way free from the hands that tried to move him. And yet here he was again, dressed in fine robes, seated at a king's throne, and still someone's piece in a game called his shitty life.
That made Rex's brow crease, his frown deepening. But Inis didn't falter, she only pressed on, her voice cutting with the precision of someone stripping a truth bare piece by piece.
"A twice-removed baron's son," she began, almost spitting the words, as if the title itself were laughable. "Dragged from obscurity, yet somehow managed to endure long enough within the King's Gambit."
Her hand lifted, fingers uncurling one by one as she laid out the points like evidence at an execution.
"Given my sister as your childhood friend whose bloodline has, generation after generation, been bound as vassals to the King's children. As if such loyalty was a gift you earned, rather than a shackle placed upon you."
Rex's mouth tightened. Each word pressed against something half-familiar, half-wrong, like echoes of a life he should remember but didn't.
"You were forced through noble training," she continued, the second finger raised. "Every gesture, every lesson, hammered into you until you moved like one of them, whether you wished it or not. You even attended the Academy."
Her third finger lifted, the motion sharp, deliberate. Rex thought of uniforms he couldn't picture, lessons he had no memory of.
"And most importantly," she paused, letting the silence tighten around them like a noose, before raising her last finger. Her stare, unflinching, cut straight through him.
"You were betrothed to one of the King's daughters."