Chapter 167: Chapter 167: Remove another pawn
"Detain Prince Arik," he ordered.
No one moved.
The two senior guards standing by the heavy oak doors did not flinch. They did not reach for their weapons. They did not even look at Arik.
Instead, their eyes moved deliberately, heavily, to Rex.
Ray felt a cold, unsettling crawl beneath his skin as the realization finally settled. It was the sickening drop of a man stepping confidently onto a stair that simply was not there. For over twenty years, he had operated under the assumption that his name, his bloodline, and his connection to Felix provided him with a permanent, invisible shield.
That shield had just shattered against the reality of a dead king.
"That was an order," Ray said.
His voice was a fraction too tight. A fraction too loud.
Rex rested his elbows on the table, steepling his fingers just inches from his father’s frozen corpse.
"Guards."
The two men snapped to rigid attention, their uniforms clanking sharply in the quiet room.
"Your Highness."
"The King has been assassinated," Rex stated, his voice completely stripped of the laughter from moments before. What remained was the hard, unyielding iron of a man who had already accepted the crown before anyone dared place it on his head. "Lord Canmore has just attempted to command royal security to arrest a foreign dignitary without authorization. What does that suggest to you?"
The guard on the right did not hesitate.
"Complicity, Your Majesty."
Ray’s breath hitched.
Your Majesty.
The words landed worse than any accusation.
They confirmed what the room had already chosen.
Rex looked at him, and the faintest trace of satisfaction returned to his mouth.
"Yes," Rex agreed softly. "It has a nice sound to it, doesn’t it?"
Arik watched Ray with eyes that glowed like old gold in the ambient light. He had not moved to defend himself. He had not needed to. He simply sat there, perfectly relaxed, letting Rex wear his new crown and letting the sheer weight of it crush Ray into the floorboards.
"You cannot do this," Ray said.
At last, the elegance began to peel away.
Not entirely. Ray was too old, too experienced, too proud to fall all at once. But the wounded dignity frayed at the edges, revealing something sharper and far less composed beneath it.
His gaze darted from the advisers to the guards, then finally landed on Rex.
"Felix will not allow this. If you take me, if you pin George’s death on me, he will tear Wrohan apart from the inside out."
"He will try," Rex said. "Or perhaps he will decide you are no longer worth retrieving. Either way, he will be fighting Agaron and Wrohan at the same time. And he will be doing it without his puppet on the throne, without his immunity, and without you."
Ray’s face hardened.
"You overestimate your position."
"No," Rex said. "I finally understand it."
Then he nodded toward the guards.
"Detain Lord Canmore."
This time, they moved.
They crossed the room in heavy, synchronized steps, and with every footfall, the story became more real. The advisers watched. The secretaries watched. The guards watched each other, and no one dared to break the shape that was forming in the room.
Ray Canmore had killed the king.
Ray Canmore had tried to redirect blame.
Ray Canmore had invoked Felix.
Ray Canmore had attempted to flee through authority and failed.
By the time the guards reached him, their hands closing over his arms, the room no longer needed proof.
It had a culprit.
Ray did not struggle at first. He was a creature of influence, not force, and physical resistance was beneath him even at the end. But when the heavy iron cuffs snapped around his wrists, the dull click echoed in the silent room like a gavel striking wood.
Arik finally stood.
The movement was smooth and languid, like a predator stretching after a satisfying kill. He walked around the edge of the conference table, his shoes making almost no sound against the polished floor, until he stood directly in front of Ray.
Ray stared at him, stripped of his lazy cruelty, stripped of his political armor. For the first time, he looked exactly like what he was.
A pawn who had mistaken proximity to the player for power.
Arik leaned in slightly.
"Tell Felix," he whispered, his voice pitched so low that only Ray could hear, "that Liam is completely out of his reach."
Ray’s pupils tightened.
Arik smiled.
"Tell him," he added, gold eyes shining with something older and colder than anger, "that the god he killed has returned for revenge."
Ray’s face went slack.
It was quick.
A single, involuntary failure of control.
But Arik saw it, and the sight amused him enough that a quiet chuckle slipped past his mouth.
"Oh," he murmured. "He did not tell you?"
Ray did not answer.
He could not.
Arik’s smile widened.
"That is why George could move again after half a century under Felix’s control," Arik said softly. "He mistook that little freedom for alliance. He thought he could use me. He thought he could bargain with what crawled back from the grave."
Ray’s breathing turned shallow.
Around them, the room continued to believe the version it had been given. The advisers saw Arik speaking to an accused murderer. The guards saw a foreign prince delivering a private threat to the man who had allegedly killed Wrohan’s king. Rex saw everything and said nothing.
"You..." Ray breathed.
Arik tilted his head.
"Yes?"
Ray’s lips pressed together, his hatred trembling so violently beneath his skin that for one second it almost looked like fear.
"You killed him."
Arik’s eyes softened with terrible amusement.
"Of course I did."
Ray went still.
Arik leaned closer, his voice barely more than breath.
"But they will remember that you did."
Then he stepped back.
The guards tightened their hold on Ray, as if the distance between him and Arik had given them permission to remember their duty. Ray’s gaze remained locked on Arik’s face, the last remnants of his composure burning away beneath the knowledge that he had not merely been defeated.
He had been used.
Rex turned toward the guards.
"Take him to the lower holding wing. Full isolation. No visitors. No private communication. No Canmore access."
Ray’s head snapped toward him.
"You cannot cut off my house."
"I can," Rex said. "I am king now."
The words were calm.
That made them worse.
Ray’s mouth opened, perhaps to call on Felix again, perhaps to threaten, perhaps to make one last appeal to the room that had already abandoned him.
No sound came out.
The guards began dragging him toward the doors.
Only then did he resist.
The advisers lowered their eyes. One secretary began typing with trembling fingers. Minister Stark whispered something to the man beside him, and the words regicide and Canmore passed softly through the room like the first draft of history.
At the threshold, Ray twisted once more.
"Felix will come."
Arik smiled.
"I know," he said. "That is why I am removing his toys before he arrives."
The doors closed behind Ray without giving him anymore space for words.
For several seconds, no one spoke.
Then Rex looked at the advisers, at the guards, at the corpse still lying across the polished mahogany table.
"Record Lord Ray Canmore’s detention," he said. "Charge him with regicide pending investigation, treason, unlawful interference with royal security, and conspiracy with Felix. Seal all Canmore channels. Freeze Felix-linked assets. No message leaves this palace without my approval."
No one hesitated now.
Pens moved.
Terminals lit.
Orders were transmitted.
Wrohan, cowardly and wounded and long overdue, began to obey.
Rex looked at his father one last time.
His expression did not soften.
"Remove him," he said. "And clean the table. We have work to do."
