The Reborn Sovereign of Ruin, Bound by His Star Chapter 164: Ugly family

Arik was coordinating the eting.

Rex was doing nothing out of the ordinary for a crown prince. He was reading reports, confirming periter adjustnts, asking for updated household lists, and making the kind of restrained decisions expected from soone who had been raised to inherit a throne.

George had been picking a fight with him from the mont they entered the room.

Arik sat at the head of the long conference table because everyone had agreed, with varying degrees of reluctance, that Agaron’s security protocols were the only reason the upcoming engagent reception had not already turned into a diplomatic liability wrapped in flowers and bloodline politics. Rex sat to his right, straight-backed, composed, one hand resting beside the briefing docunts. George occupied the chair opposite him like a man who believed the table itself was insulting his authority.

Around them, Wrohanian officials, royal secretaries, two senior guards, and three advisers from the internal royal house sat with the brittle expressions of people who had been trapped in too many versions of the sa argunt.

Ray Canmore was also there.

Not formally leading anything. Not visibly opposing anything. Simply present, seated near the side of the table with one ankle resting over the other, assisting when convenient and watching the royal house of Wrohan devour itself with the faint, lazy interest of a man enjoying bad theatre.

His only saving grace, in Arik’s eyes, was that he was Liam’s father.

Even that was thinning, considering the man beca profoundly useless in anything involving Felix.

"Your Highness," Rex said, ignoring his father’s last interruption with the calm of a man who had learned long ago not to bleed in public, "the reception periter cannot be left under Canmore security."

"Why not?" Ray asked, one of his ringed fingers tapping the report he had never bothered to read. "Are you unsure of us now that Armstrong and Ravenwood have revealed my bloodline?"

Arik considered evacuating Rex and killing the rest.

His temper was starting to slip from his control, the air around his hand cooling where it rested beneath the table. He kept his fingers still, his expression calm, and his gaze on the report because looking directly at Ray Canmore for too long might beco expensive.

Rex did look at Ray.

Only briefly.

"Everyone knows His Majesty and Lord Canmore are no longer on friendly terms," Ray continued, like he was truly important for once. "The issue is not personal pride. We are doing this for Liam."

Arik’s hand clenched beneath the table.

Oh, he was ready to burn them all for this.

Not because the sentence was wrong.

But hearing Ray Canmore say it, hearing him use Liam’s na like a reasonable argunt after being useless in every matter involving Felix, made sothing in Arik’s restraint grind against itself.

Rex’s expression did not change, but his gaze had sharpened. "Then you understand why Canmore security cannot hold the inner periter."

Ray smiled faintly. "I understand why you want that stated by soone nad Canmore, yes."

George’s chair creaked as he leaned forward. "You speak very generously for a man whose loyalty has beco fashionable only after his bloodline was dragged into the public."

Ray’s smile stayed in place, but sothing behind his eyes chilled. "My loyalty has never been fashionable, Your Majesty. But being kept away from my inheritance because you were ashad of ..."

Arik could have vomited from these two n.

They were disgusting.

Ray, with his elegant bitterness and lazy cruelty, was sitting there as if every wound in the room were a private joke he had learned to sharpen into manners. George, with his swollen pride, his temper, and his need to turn every accusation into humiliation because he had never learned the difference between authority and ugliness.

"Well," George said, mouth twisting, "you would have had a chance if Felix did not need to feel stronger outside of bed."

The room went dead.

Rex’s fingers stilled over the report.

Ray’s smile did not move, but for the first ti since Arik had seen him, the amusent left his face completely. Not because he cared about Felix. Arik doubted Ray Canmore had ever cared about anyone cleanly enough for that. But because George had dragged sothing private, obscene, and politically rotted into the middle of a security eting as if it were another weapon he was entitled to use.

One of George’s advisers looked down.

Another actually looked ill.

George saw all of it and, because he was George, mistook disgust for attention.

"You all sit here speaking of Felix as if he were so great shadow," George continued, his voice thick with contempt. "He is not. He is a pathetic man with a clever head and a rotten hunger. Give him a room where no one bows, and he starts looking for a throat. Give him a bed where he is not worshipped, and he crawls out, needing to make soone weaker than him before breakfast."

Rex’s face tightened. "Father."

"No," George snapped. "Since we are all being honest, let us be honest. Felix was never dangerous because he was strong. Strong n do not need every corridor to rember them. Strong n do not need children frightened, won cornered, servants trembling, cousins indebted, and physicians bribed just to feel like their hands an sothing."

Ray’s ringed fingers curled once against the table.

Arik noticed.

The old king’s words were foul, but the data beneath them was worse.

George knew.

Perhaps not the dical history. Perhaps not the poison chanism. Perhaps not the residue and the old obstruction and the way Felix’s touch had burned into Liam’s cheek.

But he had known Felix’s pattern.

The need to dominate after humiliation.

The compulsion to turn weakness into soone else’s injury.

The way his violence was not random but corrective in his own sick mind.

And George had still let him move.

Ray’s voice ca very softly. "Careful, Your Majesty."

George laughed at him. "You are saying that as if you were not one of the people Felix used as furniture for his pride."

The line hit.

This ti, Ray did not hide it quickly enough.

His face did not crack. He was too disciplined for that. Too vain, perhaps. But sothing in his eyes flashed cold and old, sothing that had nothing to do with Liam and everything to do with a history Arik did not yet know and already hated.

Rex’s chair shifted by the smallest degree. "Enough."

George turned on him imdiately. "Do not correct ."

"Then stop making yourself obscene in front of foreign witnesses."

The words landed harder than anyone expected.

Even Ray looked at Rex.

George went purple with rage. "You dare..."

"Yes," Rex said.