Months passed quickly and loudly, with the country's expectations hanging off every hour like a second shadow.
The palace returned to its usual rhythm: meetings, briefings, appearances, and decisions that looked small on paper and changed everything in practice. Dax and Chris slid back into their roles while still quietly learning how to fit love into the machinery of rule without letting it get crushed.
They were rulers.
They were parents.
They were still very much in love and still very much in each other's space.
Chris had the increasingly inconvenient suspicion that his son - his babbling, angelic son - was conspiring with his other father for siblings. Nero had perfected the art of looking innocent while doing maximum emotional damage, which meant Chris would take one look at him and think, 'We could do this again.'
And then the entire palace would react like Chris had calmly announced he planned to duel the concept of recovery.
