The Technical University of Wrohan looked better before the city fully woke.
That was not praise.
At dawn, most of Alexandria softened. The ministry towers lost some of their theatrical glow. The palace grid dimmed its ornamental pulse. The transport rails hummed in lower frequencies, carrying students, engineers, night-shift workers, and the sort of exhausted bureaucrats who had not yet had enough coffee to remember they were paid to lie professionally.
The university, however, did not soften.
It endured.
Built on the eastern rise above the old industrial district, it sprawled in a deliberate collision of black stone, reinforced glass, exposed ether conduits, and weathered bronze plaques that still carried the names of donors who would have fainted if they had known what students did to the equipment after midnight. The main engineering court opened between four long academic buildings arranged around a central fountain.
Except it was not water that flowed there.
Ether rose in a slow, controlled spiral from the basin, caught inside a transparent containment ward shaped like a glass bell. It moved like liquid light, thick and luminous, streaming upward in ribbons of blue-white before falling back into itself without ever touching the air beyond the ward. The pulse was steady. Clean. Much cleaner than anything the palace had tried to disguise the night before.
Liam stood in front of it with his hands in the pockets of his coat and watched the flow with the grim satisfaction of a man looking at one of the few things in Wrohan that still did its job.
The fountain was officially called the Founders' Circulation Display.
Students called it the Brute Bowl.
Because students, unlike ministers, understood honesty.
He checked the time on his phone.
Five minutes.
If Rex had truly approved the coordinates and had not been intercepted, delayed, threatened, or burdened by whatever fresh incompetence his father considered governance, then Rex and Mezos should arrive in five minutes.
Liam did not enjoy waiting.
Waiting gave thoughts too much room.
His face still hurt.
Less than the night before, but enough. Colette's treatment had done what it could, and Enia's physician had done more, and Henry had spent the remainder of the night ensuring Liam did not 'accidentally' return to any Canmore-controlled rooms under the delusion that stubbornness qualified as a security strategy.
His mother had been worse.
Not loudly worse. Quietly worse.
Which, in Enia's case, meant Liam had spent the night in the Armstrong residence under a level of protection that could have safely housed a disputed royal infant, a cursed artifact, or a very expensive hostage.
He had slept badly. He had woken early. He had left before Enia could decide breakfast required emotional cross-examination.
That had been, in his opinion, reasonable.
Mirelle had sent him a message ten minutes after he left.
'Your mother knows you escaped. I admire your optimism.'
Then, a second message:
'Do not die before lunch. I have plans.'
Helpful. Deeply comforting.
Liam looked up from his phone and back at the fountain.
The containment ward shimmered faintly as the ether rose, its surface catching the first pale sunlight that slid between the university buildings. The ward was old, older than the current reconstruction of the court, older than several donor scandals, old enough to have survived three curriculum reforms and one spectacular student protest involving animated chalk diagrams of cabinet ministers.
It held because students maintained it, not administrators.
That was usually the difference between survival and branding.
He stepped closer and let his senses open slightly.
The ether inside the ward answered at once without bleeding into the air but pressing against perception with the clean, dense weight of a true blue-white source. Brute exploitation, yes, but not uncontrolled. The university drew from an old channel beneath the campus, one Felix had never managed to fully privatize because too many research grants, industrial contracts, and public infrastructure studies depended on leaving it technically 'academic.'
Technically.
Liam loved that word.
It had saved more useful things in Wrohan than morality ever had.
"Liam."
Rex's voice cut through the wandering thoughts of Liam.
He looked up.
The eastern gate had opened without ceremony, which meant Rex had used one of the university access routes most people forgot existed unless they were either crown princes, senior engineers, or students trying to smuggle unauthorized equipment into the turbine hall.
Rex stood just beyond the edge of the courtyard, dressed down enough to pass for almost ordinary if one ignored the quality of his coat, the quiet confidence of his posture, and the fact that two campus security drones immediately pretended they had not seen him. His wavy brown hair was wind-touched, his green eyes alert in the pale morning light.
Beside him stood Mezos in dark modern clothes, red hair tied back. The owl brooch was still pinned at his collarbone, silver feathers dulled beneath the daylight, but Liam could see the wrongness in it even from the fountain.
The pulse was not stable.
Of course it wasn't.
Liam's gaze shifted to the third man.
Then stopped.
Arik Oberon Lyon had come too.
Naturally.
Because apparently instructions were only decorative when addressed to imperial heirs.
He was dressed in black, stripped of ceremony and still somehow more dramatic than he had any right to be. No imperial coat, no gold-threaded formal insignia, no crown prince's theatrical armor. Only a long dark coat, fitted clothes, an owl brooch near his collar, and a stillness that made the morning feel less peaceful around him.
Liam stared at him for one long second.
Then looked at Rex.
"I said no dramatic people."
Rex lifted both hands slightly. "I approved one additional person."
Liam narrowed his eyes, sighed, and accepted that this was his life now.
"Fine." He turned to Arik with the careful, weaponized politeness of a man who had been raised around monsters and bureaucracy and therefore knew how to make etiquette sound like a threat. "Liam Sienna Canmore."
Arik looked at him.
Not at the hand he did not offer. Not at the Armstrong red in his eyes. Not at the brown hair tied back at his nape or the faint bruising still hidden badly beneath expensive treatment.
At him.
"Arik Oberon Lyon," he said.
"Yes," Liam replied. "I gathered."
Rex made a low sound that might have been amusement if he had less survival instinct.
Mezos, traitor that he apparently was, looked toward the fountain as if the containment ward required his full philosophical attention.
Arik's mouth curved faintly. "Then we are introduced."
"Wonderful," Liam said. "Follow me."
He glanced toward Rex next.
"And you. Be useful and activate a ward to hide…" He made a vague gesture toward Arik, Mezos, and Noah, who had just crossed the courtyard after parking the car and looked entirely too foreign, too expensive, and too memorable for a university campus before breakfast. "Them."
Noah stopped mid-step. "I feel objectified."
"I don't know you," Liam said. "You could be an object to me."
Noah stared at him.
Then he turned slowly toward Arik. "I like him."