By the time Dax returned, the palace had gone quiet, muffled enough to pretend the kingdom had stopped asking for things.
Nero had been put to bed an hour earlier after resisting sleep with the stubborn dignity of a much older tyrant. His nannies had taken over from there, which meant the nursery wing was now someone else's battlefield.
Chris had no intention of volunteering for a second shift.
He was already in bed, freshly bathed, wearing a loose dark sleep shirt, his short black hair still a little damp at the ends. One knee was raised under the covers, his phone in hand, thumb scrolling with the grim concentration of a man exhausting himself further on purpose. Doom-scrolling, at this hour, in that posture, with his black eyes narrowed at the screen, made him look less like a consort and more like a beautiful threat being mildly inconvenienced by civilization.
Dax stepped into the bedroom, loosened first by private rooms and the absence of witnesses.
