Beast Gacha System: All Mine

Chapter 309: Professionally Political

The carriage wheels had scarcely ceased their revolution when Damon was already at the door, his hand on the handle, his shoulder blocking the light in a posture that might have been read as eager had he been capable of such transparency.

He was not.

What he was capable of was performance and today it demanded that Princess Ivy Cassia be received with an enthusiasm that bordered on the unseemly.

"My dear Princess." He pulled the door wide, offered his hand, his smile, the full beam of his political charm. Very, very pleasant. "Iondora’s walls have never looked so well. They were waiting for you, I suspect. Stone has its preferences."

Ivy descended gracefully, unhurriedly. She, after all, had never once in her life worried about the stability of her footwear. Her hand in his was cool and dry.

She was, as always, very, very beautiful. You know, it suggested generations of selective breeding and possibly some eldritch bargain with symmetry itself.

Gold hair caught the afternoon light. Eyes the color of shallow tropical water, so, so blue, assessing everything including the angle of his smile.

"Prince Damon." Her voice carried the faint lilt of Cassia courts. "You look terrible. Have you been sleeping?"

"I’ve been planning," he countered, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm familiarly. That was, for public consumption, entirely appropriate. "It wears the same on the complexion."

They moved up the palace steps together, and behind them, Damon felt it without looking, his three half-siblings arranged themselves in the reception line. They had this rigid discomfort on them, children forced to perform filial piety for a guest they had not been adequately briefed upon.

Gertrude’s curtsy was too low. Reginald’s bow was too shallow. Jove simply stared, caught between the gravitational pull of Ivy’s beauty and the terror of his brother’s peripheral vision.

Yes. Yes. Perhaps they were also shocked to see his moods visibly improved after days of chaos the moment he saw this woman.

Of course it wasn’t because she was akin to a celestial beauty, but just being a celestial beauty wasn’t enough to improve his moods.

Damon escorted her more closely than protocol strictly required. His hand at her elbow. His body angled to shield her from the wind, or the sun, or the possibility of his own family’s scrutiny.

It was, he knew, excessive. It was meant to be excessive.

Let them whisper. Let his father hear that the crown prince had received a Cassian princess almost excitedly. He had missed his mark, after all, but he was still allowed to calculate the angles of approach.

"You’ve never come to us before," he observed, guiding her through the great doors where the Iondora crest glared down from every surface. "I always had to make the journey. Cassia’s cliffs, Cassia’s wine, Cassia’s interminable poetry about the sea. I began to suspect you were avoiding my hospitality."

"I was avoiding your dungeon," Ivy said pleasantly, her smile unwavering for the courtiers who lined the hall. "It has a reputation. Though I hear your sister has made it... habitable?"

"Why are we talking about her?" Damon narrowed his eyes. But she smiled back teasingly, making him show a bit of a smile in return too.

They paused at the threshold of the reception chamber. Damon turned to face her fully, searching her face for... what? Recognition? Reciprocity?

Some sign that the political friendship they had constructed over years of negotiation might support a different architecture altogether?

She looked at him, the detached affection in her eyes was one she might offer a talented colleague whose company is genuinely enjoyed but whose marriage proposal would, regrettably, complicate the succession.

That was their history, after all. Almost. Almost married.

Other than that, he noticed that she looked familiar. Every time he saw her. This nagging familiarity...

A configuration of bone, perhaps, or the angle of her jaw when she turned to examine a tapestry. He had felt this before, this feelings that Ivy Cassia existed in his memory prior to their first introduction.

"You seem distracted," Ivy noted.

"Mm, mourning what could have," Damon said, but Ivy knew he was just talking. It wasn’t serious at all, and Damon could say it because he knew she knew.

Behind them, Prime Minister Qinryc Lukas descended from the second carriage. As usual, he was Cassian efficiency made flesh, and Damon noted his presence, appreciating fellow professionals.

The reception chamber opened. Damon led Ivy in, still holding her arm with the same proximity that his half-siblings would parse and misinterpret and report to their mother, who would in turn calculate its implications for her ongoing campaign of assassination.

"Your fiancé," Damon said, as if only just remembering, "the albino crow. Prince Magnus. He does not accompany you?"

"Magnus is consulting with his tribe’s elders. Don’t treat me as if I’m married already. I still don’t know everything about him." Ivy hissed, her tone suggested that she found this as amusing as Damon might have, had he been permitted the luxury of shared humor.

"He sends his regards. He thinks highly of you, actually. He says you have ’the soul of a man who wishes to be elsewhere.’"

Damon laughed, startling everyone except them. "He has no idea how right he is."

They stood together at the center of the room, the Iondora court arranged around them like a held breath, and Damon felt the old what-if.

The parallel life where he had accepted Ivy’s refusal with more grace, where he had pressed his suit with Queen Isla, her younger sister, with more conviction, where he was not standing here performing eagerness for a woman already promised to a beastman who could fly.

He should have married one of them.

He should have married one of them and been done with it. Decorative. Useless. Free.

"You’re doing it again," Ivy said softly, for his ears alone. "That face. The one that looks like you’re calculating how much poison it would take to kill everyone in the room."

He hissed back. "Shut up."

She squeezed his arm with a brief pressure, almost affectionate, entirely fatal to his composure.

"I came because we have business, Damon. The south and the north is moving. Your father is prophecied. And you need to decide if you’re going to be the monster they fear, or something else entirely."

Damon looked at her. The future they had both declined...

The marriage that would have united two kingdoms and destroyed two people who valued their respective autonomies more than any alliance.

Their impossible-to-align ideals had seemed insurmountable at twenty. At twenty-seven, they seemed almost quaint. Almost negotiable.

"Welcome to Iondora," he said, for the court and the record.

Ivy glared, pinching his arm, making him chuckle despite himself. For fuck’s fuck, this woman was perfect. She was smart and dangerous and perfect.

He could’ve had a chance to destroy her and be destroyed by her. Could’ve been corrupted by and corrupt her in turn.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Never did he think he’d regret not consuming the fire that would have definitely burned him when it was right in front of him. Right in front of him.

Then it passed. Professionalism reasserted itself. The performance continued.

Behind them, Qinryc Lukas began the formal greetings, and Damon’s half-siblings arranged themselves into postures of welcome that fooled no one.

But before Damon’s smile could entirely settle, the Emperor finally arrived.

The crowd parted. He was smaller than his presence suggested. He wore no crown. He had never needed one.

"Damon is a difficult child," Emperor Zircon greeted. "It’s proven by how he can only appreciate a woman of your stature and quality, Princess."

That was it. Damon’s mood was completely ruined now. Reducing a woman for their stature and using the word ’quality’ on them? Classic Zircon Iondora, the Emperor.

"Difficult is a... word for it," Ivy shook her head.

The old man chuckled, a sound like gravel in a dry creek bed.

"Welcome, Princess."

And Ivy curtsied.

In front of her was the very man prophecied to be assassinated. A prophecy by his own sanctified Saintess.

"Your Majesty is kind to receive me," Ivy said, her voice steady. "Cassia sends its regards, and its concerns."

"Concerns." The Emperor’s violet eyes flickered. "How delightful. We shall dine, and you shall tell me everything that troubles you. My son will sit at your left, and we shall see if he has learned to be less difficult."