Its long minutes of silence between these two men thrust into the politics of power, and for what feels like hours they simply let those words brew within their souls.

  “You want all of it, don’t you? You want every single nation from those northern kingdoms to the Hegemony itself, that’s what this is for. This plan, this vision… you want all of Ensolia.” Zai accuses his father-in-law. “Is there any end to the festering greed of your Empress?”

  This was something Arden could defend against. “This is the second part of it. Zai, we barely won the Third Stygian War. The Axial Powers, they were winning. Your Dominion was pinned between their naval invasion and the Amorian front, the Hegemony’s logistics train was barely holding together…” He doesn’t need to list out any more examples, instead turning to the threat at hand.

  “The Axials could’ve won it.” Arden makes the silence stretch, letting the thought settle for a few seconds for dramatic effect. “All because Ensolia is fractured. We’re a continent of disparate Kingdoms, barely held together by a common enemy. To win the next war, or to even survive the future, we need to consolidate… somehow.”

  “United in one Imperium.” The Crown Prince of Tianci grimly murmurs.

  “United by something more than the Axial Powers and the threat of republicanism they bring.” Arden corrects. “If we can build bridges with economics, with culture, and with information then all of a sudden we’re not so different anymore. No longer foreigners fighting for our own survival, but sisters and brothers fighting for each others’.”

  There is no glimmer in Zai’s eye, there is no hope for him as he gives no respect to this salesman of the Silver Throne. “And you shall build these bridges with your Imperial economy, your central ensolian culture, and the information curated by your throne. How incredibly convenient.”

  He’s completely right.

  The words from this oceanic soul carve Arden like a ceramic saber, sinking deep into his very being. And for just a single horrible moment he glances at his own monstrous reflection in this vast, imperial machine—a machine that he helped build, a political slaughterhouse that has ground, and is grinding nations beneath its weight.

  Zai Tianci, for just a single terrifying moment, has made the Emperor-Consort of the Imperium doubt himself.

  So Arden quickly steadies his mind, turning the conversation to another topic before more damage could be done: a desperate attempt at bridging these two together once more. “How are things with Sophia?”

  Zai Tianci doesn't make eye contact with him, not at the mention of this monstrous presence now tied to him. “She’s… it’s going as well as it can.”

  Arden scoffs. “You think she’s actually here to destroy the Dominion? Take it over from the inside?”

  “Why else is she here?” Zai hangs onto that impression, onto those intelligence reports and personnel profiles. “Dominion Intelligence knows who she really is, don’t try to play coy with me.”

  There’s that royal authority, and it's Arden’s way in.

  “Are you sure?” The Emperor-Consort breathes, trying to hide a laugh. “You’ve spent the past three months with her out here, is that what you get from my daughter?”

  No, it wasn’t.

  It was not what Zai got from her.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Not from her donut addiction (this was a chronic addiction, Zai had realized), not from the most unfiltered things that would come out of her mouth, nor that nervous anxiety that always seemed to permeate around her whenever they visited town; Sophia Elise was anything but a destroyer to the uninitiated.

  “She’s…” Zai catches himself mid-lie, that stupid part of him still forcing him to keep to that oath spoken earlier in this conversation. “I don’t get that impression from her.”

  “But you still think she’s trying to pull a fast one on you? That she’s this ‘great political schemer,’ the Silver Demon of the Elise line?”

  “What else could she be?” The Crown Prince of Tianci darkens his gaze. “You put her beside me, after all.”

  And there’s that great mistake, that grave misunderstanding Arden was looking for. And like a parasite, he goes for the open wound.

  “You think you’d do better with any of the rest?” Arden tries to soften the blow. “My wife and I talked about this for a long, long time. It was one of the hardest decisions we had to make… ever. Giving away a child in a political marriage… it’s denying them love, the love that we had. It hurt both of us, destroyed both of us I think.”

  He’s genuine, the Prince detects the pain within him. This choice, forced upon the two, broke them down like nothing ever did before.

  “Zai, do you think you’d do better with Naomi, Natan, even Beatrice? If you could’ve chosen, would you have chosen someone else?”

  The General, the Merchant, the Diplomat; placed before him. An agency once ripped from his hands suddenly thrust back like an unwanted gift, this theoretical crushing his heart as he really thinks it through.

  “Naomi would’ve stabilized it all.” Zai thinks. “If it was her, would she have brought the First Legion with her? Made the Amorian Republic back off from our borders with the ‘Sword of the Adranic?’”

  “She would’ve brought the entire legion, yes. She’s always the feisty one, looking for a fight.” Arden agrees. “But Naomi would’ve violently crushed the Southern insurgencies without a second thought, bringing civil war to your nation like a torch to hay.”

  “Beatrice could play the High Court in the palm of her hands.” Zai continues to ponder, taking a longing sigh. “I’ve seen her speak when I was much younger. She’s… a force of nature in diplomacy.”

  “And Natan?”

  The Crown Prince thinks of that man, at that possibility. “His wealth, his acumen, could be critical in securing our economic future. To sell our arcanite fairly, get food to those in need… reinvest in our nation.”

  Arden chuckles at that complement. “You have no idea how much those words would mean to him.”

  The joke doesn’t hit at all, both sitting in silence.

  “So why Sophia Elise?” Zai asks his father-in-law coldly. “Why her?”

  Arden lets the question sit for a few moments before telling him. “Naomi’s First Legion, Natan’s millions of silver, and even Beatrice’s beautiful mind; you know what they see in you, Zai Tianci?”

  He shakes his head subtly.

  “They pity you Zai. They see you, and they see something not someone; you’re something to protect against a world that has wronged you. They see you as a general with no soldiers, a penniless beggar who is starving for bread, and a man who has no allies to support him.”

  Arden Marchland shakily breathes as he plays the political game against his own children. “They wouldn’t have come as partners for you: not a wife or husband to rebuild the Dominion. No, they would’ve come as conquerors, even if they didn’t realize it.”

  “And what about Sophia, what’s different about her?”

  “Sophia is…” Her own father has a hard time finding the correct word for this. “Sophia is peculiar.”

  “Holder of the Silver Hand?” Zai grimly assumes.

  That rumored title still makes Arden laugh, despite its incredible prevalence. “If she was, she would've run away from home a long time ago; put into self-imposed exile from any responsibility of that sort.”

  Sounds in character for her.

  “Sophia is different.” Zai’s father-in-law continues, pausing slightly. “Zai, what do you see when she looks at you?”

  The Crown Prince of Tianci sighs, his eyes flickering slightly at his own memory. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, but yet you know.” Arden pushes heavy now, taking a long sip of that rich coffee in his cup. “The way you two talked over dinner, to the way you both spoke while cooking that dinner with me. Zai, I know what you’re doing to her.”

  any of you make an Invincible "are you sure" brain rot comment I will demolish you.

  https://youtu.be/xCRgTSak8o4?si=bUbmRawZnajkl9Pr&t=47

  Knightly for winning the giveaway! Thank you all who entered.