Chapter 589: Balance of Power

Elowen’s eyes went wide, and the throne room that had been a constant hustle and bustle of arguments only moments earlier froze completely.

Nobody seemed to know how to react to Grey barging into an Imperial meeting in nothing but boxers, lifting the newly crowned Empress off her throne, and kissing her like the dozens of watching dignitaries simply didn’t exist.

Amunet’s expression darkened immediately, Mauve looked almost amused somehow, while everyone else was caught somewhere between stunned silence and disbelief.

The people who actually knew Grey were mostly the quiet ones. They had seen him kill Guardians, tear apart the Goddess, and decide that entire systems of authority were worthless, so at this point nobody was foolish enough to think palace etiquette would suddenly restrain him.

The representatives from the former Territories were another matter entirely, because several of them looked like they had just witnessed someone spit on an altar.

Where was the professionalism? Where was the respect? More importantly, who the hell was this half-naked lunatic?

Then whispers started spreading.

A few of the younger geniuses who had participated in the Culling hurriedly leaned toward their elders, explaining in low voices exactly who Grey was, and one expression after another began to change. Shock gave way to recognition, recognition to realization, and realization to something considerably more cautious.

Slowly, they started to understand that the bastard currently making out with the Empress was the primary reason they no longer had Empires of their own.

Grey finally let Elowen come up for air.

Her cheeks had flushed so deeply that they were nearly the same rusty amber as her hair, and when she tried to say something, all that came out was a stutter. Her hands were still resting against Grey’s biceps while her head hung slightly backward, and for several seconds her entire body seemed to have forgotten that it was responsible for keeping itself upright.

Grey nodded to himself.

"Still got it."

He lowered Elowen back onto the throne before patting himself down like he had just completed some especially difficult task. "Feel free to kiss me whenever you want, Princess—actually, Empress now, right? Either way, next time make sure I’m not about to pass out afterward, it’s terrible for my reputation."

"Uh..."

Elowen apparently still hadn’t recovered enough to produce complete sentences.

Grey swept his gaze across the room until it landed on Amunet, who sat with her arms crossed and an expression so deadpan it almost wrapped around into hostility. His grin widened immediately, and he gave her a pair of finger guns.

"You can hop on whenever you please."

"Over my dead fucking body."

"You know, there’s probably a joke somewhere in there about you being drop-dead gorgeous—which, true, by the way—but my brain’s still too foggy to put the whole thing together."

Amunet actually stared at him.

There was shameless, and then there was whatever Grey was currently doing. He had just kissed Elowen in front of the entire throne room, was standing there in boxers like he had wandered into the wrong meeting after getting out of bed, and apparently decided that now was the perfect time to start flirting with her too.

Her eyes flickered downward before she could stop herself. Then she immediately looked away.

Grey’s grin became insufferable.

He opened his mouth, clearly about to say something that would make the situation significantly worse, when a gruff voice cut across the room.

"Who the hell are you?"

Grey slowly turned.

A broad man with hair so brilliantly white it almost hurt to look at was glaring toward him from among the foreign representatives. His clothing was richly embroidered and his bearing practically screamed former royalty, though Grey couldn’t immediately remember which Territory the bastard had come from. Not that he had ever known in the first place.

"We were discussing matters of considerable importance," the man continued. "If this supposed Empress intends to behave so flippantly that she allows some half-dressed—"

Grey flicked one finger.

White-gold strands crossed the room instantly.

They hooked into the man’s lips in a series of tiny loops, pulling them outward and apart until his mouth stretched into something resembling a science experiment conducted by a particularly sadistic dentist.

The man’s eyes widened as his hands flew toward his face, only for him to realize that his Holy Energy wasn’t responding at all.

The man’s expression changed from fury to alarm.

No matter how hard he tried to circulate his Holy Energy, it remained completely dead inside him, every pathway pinned beneath Grey’s control as easily as if someone had flipped a switch. For the first time since Grey entered the room, several of the former monarchs straightened with genuine attention.

Brad leaned against the open doorway with his arms crossed, the Dominion hammer resting against his back, and a low chuckle slipping from his lips.

These people had been annoying as hell for days. ℴ

Every former Emperor and Empress gathered here possessed strength roughly comparable to the woman Grey had just killed, and while none of them were individually invincible, dealing with several at once was another matter entirely. Even Xerchen couldn’t easily suppress all of them together, especially while Melix’s own side was still recovering from a civil war that had torn its upper hierarchy to pieces.

One Dukedom had effectively collapsed. The Pope was dead. The Guardians were gone.

The Church had fractured, the Palace had been destroyed and rebuilt, and half the people who should have been maintaining order were either injured, dead, or trying to figure out what the hell came next. Melix still looked powerful from the outside, but beneath that surface they were barely holding themselves together.

That weakness had encouraged the former monarchs.

They had accepted Mauve’s bargain because losing their Territory protections entirely would have been worse, but once they arrived in Melix, they started testing boundaries almost immediately.

Every discussion turned into pressure, every negotiation into another attempt to claw back some of the authority they had lost, and because Elowen needed their cooperation to keep the consolidated Territory stable, they had been forced to endure far more than any of them liked.

Brad’s smile widened as he watched Grey standing in the center of the room.

They had endured because they knew something the former rulers didn’t: Grey was going to wake up eventually.

And now that he had, the balance of power had just changed completely.

Grey smiled lightly. "I’d watch your mouth if I were you."