novelraw Chapter 286: Ripe
Chapter 286: Ripe
Arkai caught him looking. One eyebrow rose. "What?"
Roarke shook his head. "Nothing."
Yep. Arkai had completely changed.
He was assured now. The assurance of a young man playing at confidence? No. Also not the brittle certainty that came from being told he was the best and believing it because he had to.
This was something old. Something that had been tested, and held, and come out the other side knowing exactly what it was worth.
Arkai changed to become... experienced.
Not in the way of a boy who had seen things, done things, collected moments like trophies. Which in a way, he previously was.
This was the experience of someone who had lived through something that could have broken him and had not. Who had looked at the worst parts of himself, of his family, of his world, and had not looked away.
Arkai felt more like the patriarch than the patriarch himself.
He was confident. Absolute yet quiet. Without the need to announce itself or proof anything to anyone.
Arkai became relaxed. For someone who had always been controlled, careful, and held himself like a blade waiting to be drawn, Roarke felt this difference the most.
Now he sat in the carriage with his legs stretched out, his arm along the window ledge, his shoulders loose, his breathing easy. While spitting dry jabs at his father.
He was still stern and strict. Still the man who would not let a single detail slide, who held himself and everyone around him to a standard that would break lesser men. But you get it, right?
He was ripe
. That was the only word Roarke could find, the only word that fit.
Like a man who had reached the first peak of his prime and had not yet begun to descend after a long, long time. Like a blade that had been forged, and tempered, and was now, finally, exactly what it was meant to be.
"You’re different now." Roarke whispered. "You keep one-upping your father like you’re intentionally rage-baiting him..."
Arkai smiled lopsidedly.
"I am," he whispered back. His face totally enjoying this particular satisfaction of a son who had finally learned exactly which buttons to push.
Roarke’s eyes widened. "Bro—"
"Then, is she promising the same thing to that golden man down south?" August’s voice cut across the carriage, resuming his round of questions.
Arkai turned from Roarke, his expression smoothing into something patient, almost bored. "She didn’t need to."
August’s brow furrowed. "What does that mean?"
Arkai shrugged. "We already know we’ll all get the benefit of her alliance. We’re all her man, after all."
August blinked. His hands, which had been folded in his lap, tightened. "’Man’..." He shook his head, as if clearing it. "I meant Eliam Edengold. Not Eastiel Edengold."
Arkai’s eyebrow rose just a fraction. He had forgotten, for a moment, that his father’s generation existed separately from his own.
Eastiel wasn’t the patriarch of Edengold in this world (yet). There was still his father, Eliam.
The man across from him, asking questions about alliances and promises, was not asking about his son’s generation, but about his own.
"I’m sure he won’t ask." Arkai muttered, almost to himself. "Since he’s not as petty as you."
"Arkai Dawnoro!" August snapped.
Roarke flinched, his face pale. It seemed he needed to get used to this!
He turned and saw Arkai, beside him, who did not even blink. "But Eastiel knows. Just like I know." He met his father’s eyes. "Satisfied?"
August stared at him.
He was flabbergasted for the nth time today. Not only did he have no clue where his son was taking him on this trip, but he also felt unbearably awkward.
This boy. His boy!
When had he gotten this sharp?! So quick and witty!
He was the patriarch of the Dawnoro house. He had buried a wife and raised a son and held his house together through things that would have broken lesser men!
He had no idea where they were going, what his son was planning, or why Roarke specifically had been brought along.
Arkai had always been clever and precise, always been the kind of son who answered questions before they were asked and solved problems before they were named.
But this—
What was this blade that had been sharpened on something August didn’t recognize?!.
Not to mention the strength.
In the training ground, that night, he had become one of the boys who had moved faster than sound and struck harder than lightning. August had watched his son fight and do things that should have been impossible for a man his age. Heck, for a man of any age!
He and Eliam and Baswara had stood together at the edge of that ruined yard and agreed on one thing. None of them could match even one of the boys. Three of the adults together, wouldn’t be comparable to just one of them!
The speed. The destructive power. The precision. The innovation, the creativity, the sheer impossibility of what they had done.
Even if he was happy, and he was, he was so proud he could barely breathe sometimes, it was alarming. Was this still his son?
Also, would his son, the son he knew, get suspended?! No, would Arkai Dawnoro go and have an orgy along with two other men in his fiancee’s dorm room?!
But then again...
These past few nights, Arkai had been coming home. He had practically ignored his school dormitory and the student council office, even less wherever it was young men went when they wanted to escape the weight of their fathers.
Yes, thank God, he didn’t go into another orgy, but still.
He came home. That was weird!
He ate dinners with August, sitting across the table, talking about nothing and everything, staying until the plates were cleared and the servants had left and the only sound was the crackle of the fire.
He walked August to his room, sometimes.
They would work together, sometimes.
Side by side, papers spread across the desk, the quiet rustle of documents the only sound between them. And then, when the hour grew late and August’s eyes grew heavy, Arkai would rise.
"You need to start drinking supplements," he said the first time. "Manage your stress. Warm foot baths at night. Warm water before bed. Cut the caffeine."
August had stared at him. "I’m not an old man."
Arkai had looked at him with those dark eyes and said nothing.
"I’ll tell the servants to arrange everything," he continued, as if August had not spoken. "And let’s check with the doctors more often."
He had left then, closing the door quietly behind him, and August had sat on the edge of his bed, alone in his room, and tried to understand what had just happened.
His son was worried about him...?
August did not know the truth, of course.
He wouldn’t know that his son, somewhere, in some other world, had already watched him die.
Arkai had seen what happened to a man who carried too much and worked too hard, letting stress and exhaustion and the weight of a family name eat him from the inside out.
He wouldn’t know that every time Arkai sat across from him at dinner, walked him to his room, and said drink warm water and manage your stress, the boy was trying to relieve the regret from a world where he no longer existed.
So of course Arkai was worried. At the end of the day, he was still the man who taught him enough to be the man he had become.
Despite how he hated some of his father’s ways.
"Fine. Just tell me where we’re going." August ordered.
Arkai shrugged nonchalantly, deliberately annoying again. "It’s a surprise."
"Arkai—"