The suite Wrohan had given them was luxurious in the way hostile nations liked to be when they wanted their guests uncomfortable without ever allowing them the dignity of complaint.
Everything worked.
That was the problem.
The lighting was perfect. The temperature exact. The windows tall enough to suggest generosity while still being reinforced, monitored, and subtly angled to remind foreign dignitaries that the city beyond them was not theirs. The furniture had the expensive neutrality of pieces chosen by committee. Even the tea had arrived at the correct temperature, as if someone in the palace bureaucracy had mistaken precision for hospitality.
Noah hated every inch of it.
He crossed the sitting room again, turned at the end of the carpet, and came back with the restless violence of a man who would have preferred a battlefield to a diplomatic suite and found the comparison flattering to the battlefield.
"This is obscene," he said for what was probably the seventh time in ten minutes. "No, actually, let me improve that. This is provincial. Obscene at least requires creativity."
Mezos, two paces away and equally incapable of sitting still, shot him a look from across the room. "That's generous. I'd have called it state-sponsored pettiness with delusions of grandeur."
Arik, seated in the armchair nearest the lamp, turned one page.
Neither of them had managed to provoke even a flicker of visible reaction from him yet, which only made Noah more irritated.
The file in Arik's hand had arrived twenty minutes ago through channels Mezos had pried open with a combination of money, insults, elegant blackmail Wrohan still liked to pretend did not exist in its ministries, and one very useful ally.
That ally had arrived nine minutes later through the private service corridor, entered without escort, and looked around the suite with the expression of a man who had been apologizing for his own country since adolescence.
Rex of Wrohan, Crown Prince by birth and disappointment by circumstance, stood near the drinks cabinet with one hand in the pocket of his dark tailored trousers and the other wrapped around a glass he had not yet touched. He was the same age as Arik, with wavy brown hair that never quite committed to court-perfect order and green eyes that made him look, at first glance, more approachable than was strategically sound. Up close, however, approachability gave way to something sharper. Tiredness honed into intelligence. The very specific patience of a man waiting for history to remove his father if politics failed to do it first.
Noah liked him on principle.
Anyone who wanted King George and Felix gone could not be entirely useless.
Rex looked toward the windows as if personally offended by the reinforced glass.
"I'd apologize for the suite," he said at last, "but that would imply surprise, and I refuse to flatter my father into thinking he still has that in him."
Noah pointed at him immediately. "See? This is why you're our favorite local."
Rex gave him a dry look. "I'm your only tolerable local."
"That too."
Mezos took the file Arik had already finished with and flipped to the relevant pages. "Your people have categorized the kingdom's dominant omegas like livestock."
Rex's mouth flattened. "Yes. I know. Try not to sound so shocked. Wrohan has many gifts, but subtle dehumanization has always been one of its core administrative talents."
Arik said nothing.
That, more than Rex's presence, was what kept the room edged.
Noah had known Arik long enough to recognize when silence meant calm and when silence meant a problem was being picked apart so thoroughly that somebody else's future was already deteriorating from it.
This was the second kind.
Noah stopped pacing just long enough to look at Rex. "How bad are the brooches, really?"
Rex laughed once, without humor.
"Bad enough that my father is pretending not to know. It's bad enough that Felix is pretending to know everything. Which, in practice, means no one important is fixing them."
He moved at last, setting the untouched drink aside and coming closer to the low table where Mezos had spread the copied pages.
"The original restriction model was aggressive but survivable," Rex said. "Then Arik stopped the train, embarrassed the security minister, and reminded several mediocre men that they were mediocre. My father responded by tightening usage allowances. Felix agreed because he enjoys state cruelty when it can be billed as protocol."
Noah folded his arms. "And now?"
"And now the owl brooches are overcompensating," Rex said. "The diplomatic corps is being suppressed more heavily than the design should sustain. Your people are not made for this kind of long-term deadening, and the palace knows it. Some of the internal reports are already describing feedback symptoms."
Mezos glanced up from the file. "We'd guessed as much."
"Yes," Rex said. "Well. Stop guessing. It's worse."
Noah exhaled hard through his nose. "I really do hate this country."
"Please," Rex said. "Get in line."
At that, Arik finally placed the last page down on the arm of the chair and looked at the stack in Mezos's hand.
Wrohan, apparently, had sixteen dominant omegas in total.
Sixteen.
The list had been divided with all the warmth of a breeding ledger.
Too young.
Of age.
Too old.
Only five fell into the middle category.
Five dominant omegas in all of Wrohan within a common age range to Arik.
Five.
Rex followed Arik's gaze to the pages, and his expression shifted by half a degree.
"You see the problem."
Noah looked between them. "I see several. Narrow it down."
Rex reached out, tapped the middle section once, then withdrew his hand.
"Three of those five are already being positioned for the reception," he said. "They'll be presented as social decoration, which in Wrohan means weaponized marriage stock with better tailoring. One is too visible to move without half the capital noticing." His eyes slid to Arik. "And one is Canmore."
The room sharpened.
Mezos's expression changed first. "Canmore as in Felix Canmore."
"No," Noah said flatly. "As in Liam Sienna Canmore. Felix is over ninety, Mezos. Try to keep your scandals age-appropriate."
Rex almost smiled.
"Liam is Felix's grandson," he said. "Dominant omega. Brown hair. Red eyes from his mother's line. Brilliant with ether systems, disastrously unsuited to obedience, and one of the few people in this city I would trust near a failing suppressor." A beat passed. "Which is precisely why I assume Felix has plans for him."