Chapter 166: Chapter 166: Respectable attempt
"I know you don’t like your father," Arik said smoothly, "but you shouldn’t kill him."
Rex could not hold it anymore the moment Ray’s face emptied of color.
He laughed.
It came out as one sharp breath, almost disbelief, then another, and then it broke from him in a way that made half the room stare at him with fresh horror. He laughed until tears formed at the corners of his eyes, one hand braced against the edge of the table, his shoulders trembling beneath the weight of too many years spent being the reasonable son of an unreasonable king.
"Well, Ray?" Rex asked, smiling through it. "Wasn’t that what Felix wanted? For me to kill George? For the blame to fall on Agaron and me?"
Ray did not answer.
He could not, for once, because he had finally understood the room.
The dead king.
The sealed meeting.
The foreign prince sitting calmly at the head of the table.
Rex laughing instead of collapsing.
Arik’s polite accusation placed in front of every adviser and guard.
The years of resentment George had been cruel enough to parade in public.
All of it formed around him with the merciless elegance of a trap that had not needed to be built from nothing.
It had only needed to wait for Ray Canmore to bring the weapon himself.
Rex wiped beneath one eye with the heel of his palm, still smiling, but there was nothing soft in the expression. "Felix must be furious. He spent so long arranging the perfect room. A king everyone hated. A crown prince with motive. Agaron present as diplomatic pressure. Canmore bloodline drama for extra poison. And you, sitting there with your rings and your resentment, practically gift-wrapped."
Ray’s gaze cut to Arik.
Arik’s smile remained mild.
That was when Ray understood the second thing.
Arik and Rex were not merely politically aligned.
They were not two convenient men standing on the same side because Felix had given them a common enemy. There was something older than the meeting in the way Rex did not look shocked at Arik’s violence, something sharper than treaty in the way Arik had not even glanced at Rex before moving. Rex had not known every second of what would happen, perhaps, but he had known the danger.
He had known Felix wanted George dead.
He had known the blame would need somewhere to land.
And Arik had given it somewhere.
Ray.
The older Canmore’s face smoothed slowly, too slowly to be natural. "You are making a mistake."
Rex laughed again, softer this time. "No. For once, I am watching someone else make one."
"You think this will hold?"
Arik answered before Rex could. "It does not need to hold forever. It needs to hold long enough for Rex to lock the royal house, secure the succession protocol, isolate Felix, and remove you from the board until we decide what you knew."
Ray’s eyes chilled. "We?"
"Yes," Rex said.
The word was simple.
It was also the first real coronation in the room.
Ray looked from Rex to Arik, and for the first time that morning, he seemed to measure them together instead of separately.
Then his mouth curved faintly, not in amusement now, but in survival. "Liam will have questions."
The room cooled.
Arik’s smile disappeared.
Ray saw it.
He had aimed there on purpose.
When cornered, men like Ray reached for the softest visible spot and attempted to turn it into a shield.
"Careful," Rex said.
Ray did not look at him. His eyes stayed on Arik. "He is my son."
"And?" Arik tilted his head slightly. "George was your father too."
Ray’s expression tightened.
Arik’s smile became faint, almost thoughtful. "I am beginning to see where you learned to be useless."
The room went still again.
Ray opened his mouth, no doubt to spill something elegant, bitter, and carefully wounded, but Arik had no intention of giving him space to decorate his cowardice.
"Liam does not feel anything for you," Arik said.
Ray’s face emptied by one quiet degree.
Good.
"You did not care about him," Arik continued, his voice smooth enough to be polite and cold enough to make every guard in the room remember where their hands were. "Not more than you care about your other ten bastards. Not enough to protect him. Not enough to ask the correct questions. Not enough to go against Felix until doing so became personally convenient."
Ray’s jaw flexed.
Rex looked at him then, truly looked at him, and the disgust on his face was quieter than Arik’s but no less real.
"The only reason you saw Liam at all," Arik said, "was because Felix ordered it."
Ray’s ringless fingers curled against the table.
Arik saw the exact moment Ray began searching for the cleanest exit. His eyes moved once, not toward George’s corpse, not toward Rex, not even toward the guards at the door, but toward the thin gap between accusation and proof. It was a narrow thing. A desperate thing. But men like Ray had lived entire lives in such spaces, slipping between responsibility and consequence until they mistook survival for talent.
Rex saw it too.
His laughter faded.
"Oh, Ray," Rex said, almost fondly. "Do not tell me you are already thinking of running."
Ray’s expression did not change, but something in his eyes sharpened.
"I have no reason to run."
"No?" Rex asked. "A dead king is lying on the table. A foreign prince just accused you in front of witnesses. Felix’s plan has collapsed around your feet. You look like a man with several reasons."
Ray slowly straightened in his chair.
The movement was controlled, elegant, and almost offended. It would have worked beautifully in a lesser room, against lesser men, before a lesser corpse. He gathered himself with all the wounded dignity of a noble who had never been forced to explain himself to people beneath him and turned first not to Rex, but to the advisers.
That was his mistake.
He still thought the room was more important than the men who controlled it.
"You are all witnesses," Ray said, his voice smooth, deep, and cold enough to almost sound calm. "You saw what happened. Prince Arik of Agaron killed George. Rex is laughing beside the body of his own father, and now both of them are attempting to place blame on me because it suits their treaty."
Several advisers stiffened.
None of them spoke.
Ray’s gaze moved from face to face, searching for the first crack, the first fool, the first frightened old man willing to cling to procedure because procedure felt safer than admitting the world had changed in the time it took a corpse to hit wood.
He found nothing.
Fear, yes.
Horror, yes.
But belief?
No.
Rex leaned back in his chair, the faintest smile returning to his mouth. "That was a respectable attempt."
Ray’s nostrils flared.
"A respectable attempt?" he repeated.
"At escaping through bureaucracy," Rex said. "George would have appreciated the instinct. Not the execution, obviously. You were always more polished than competent."
Ray’s eyes cut toward him.
Arik remained still, watching him with the quiet, patient interest of a predator deciding whether its prey deserved one more step.
Ray turned toward the guards next.
"Detain Prince Arik," he ordered.
