Bound by the Mark of Lies (BL)-Chapter 359 - 353: Marriage proposals

Alexandra didn’t blink. "He won’t."

Gabriel gave her a look. "You say that with an alarming amount of confidence."

She met his gaze without flinching, her voice softer and steadier. "Because he would blame the stars first before blaming you."

Irina looked up, paused in mid-motion, her fingers resting on a pale blue envelope shaped like a swan.

Even Crista looked over.

Gabriel didn’t answer right away.

His hand rested over the gentle rise of his stomach again, almost absentmindedly. The motion was instinctive now, something he did when the noise got too loud, when the walls pressed too close. The child hadn’t moved in the last hour, but the weight was there, solid and warm and constant beneath his palm.

A dozen scrolls lay unread in front of him, with more on their way, containing wishes, bribes, and veiled threats hidden in verse. Nobles waited like circling hounds, pacing just outside the walls, hungry for a smile, a whisper, a name.

The door opened.

Damian entered with the kind of quiet authority that needed no introduction. The kind that drew the attention of the room without asking for it. The faint gold glyphs along the edges of the office pulsed once, as if recognizing him and immediately correcting their stance.

He wore red, imperial red, the color worn only by monarchs and bloodied banners, stitched through with gold so fine it caught the low light and refused to let go. The embroidery wasn’t ostentatious. Like Damian himself, it existed to remind others who they were speaking to.

His gaze landed on the desk first.

Then on Gabriel.

His jaw shifted, not tight, but set with displeasure, as if someone, somewhere, would regret today.

"Why," Damian said, low and flat, "does it look like a stationery vendor was murdered in your office?"

Gabriel didn’t lift his head. "Because the Empire loves me."

Alexandra smirked, sharp and unapologetic. She twirled a scroll delicately between two fingers, letting it roll across the table like a threat with good calligraphy.

"Some of them even tried to propose marriage," she said, entirely too pleased. "The scroll in the shape of a flower cart might be my favorite. It plays music when you open it."

There was a beat of silence.

Damian blinked once. Slowly.

The kind of blink that suggested death, or worse, was being weighed behind gold eyes. No raised voice. No slammed doors. Just a pause heavy enough to clear a room if he wanted it.

Then he turned his head and looked at Gabriel like a question that had already answered itself.

"Burn them," he said.

Gabriel didn’t look up from the tea he hadn’t touched.

"You said we should be polite," he murmured, his voice calm in the way only someone exhausted by diplomacy could manage.

"That was before they thought my mate and fiancé was free to have another spouse," Damian said, the words clipped, almost clean. "I thought the secretaries had vetted all the mail. I thought they’d know better than to let even one marriage proposal reach you."

Alexandra exhaled quietly through her nose, watching the two of them like one might watch an incoming thunderstorm: fascinated, but with a healthy instinct for self-preservation.

Irina had gone completely still, halfway through opening a box of baby linen that now felt wildly inappropriate.

Crista sipped her tea. Not a single reaction on her face, which was, in its own way, worse.

Gabriel raised the cup to his lips and took a long, unhurried sip of tea that had long gone cold.

"Imperial jealousy," Gabriel said finally, dry as dust and twice as old. "How flattering."

Damian didn’t smile.

But his brow lifted just enough to be dangerous.

"Gabriel."

Gabriel didn’t look up from the tea, one hand still loosely curved around the cup like he could will it to taste like anything other than dried fruit and polite malice.

"I’m right here," he muttered.

"Yes," Damian said mildly. "And buried under enough scented parchment to fuel a winter siege."

Gabriel’s fingers tapped once, lightly, against the porcelain. "I thought you were in a meeting."

"I was," Damian replied, glancing at the pile of still-glittering scrolls with something halfway between amusement and insult. "But then Edward informed me that House Lindemere sent a silver rattle and a declaration of lineage rights in the same envelope."

"I didn’t get to that one yet," Gabriel muttered.

"Good," Damian said. "Now you won’t have to."

He reached for the offending scroll without hesitation, cracked the wax seal, and read the first two lines.

His brow twitched.

"—’May the child of Lyon carry both blood and legacy as a bridge between dynasties,’" Damian quoted flatly.

He held up the scroll, fingers pinching it like something mildly offensive. "Emeka. This is their name suggestion."

Gabriel blinked once. Slowly.

"We didn’t even inform them of the baby’s gender."

"No," Damian said, already setting the scroll aside. "But apparently House Lindemere believes in prophetic entitlement."

"Or strategic delusion," Gabriel murmured, dragging a hand down his face. "Emeka. Gods. It sounds like an investment portfolio."

Alexandra snorted into her cup.

Irina whispered something about it being a strong name, then immediately apologized when Gabriel gave her a look.

Damian picked up the second page of the scroll, glanced at it, and made a soft sound, something between a breath and a scoff.

"They attached a crest mock-up."

Gabriel looked up. "A what?"

"Family merging," Damian replied blandly, holding the parchment between two fingers like it might stain. "Split sigils. A phoenix choking on a lion’s tail."

There was a pause.

Gabriel took a long, long sip of tea, the kind that pretended everything was fine only because giving in meant war.

He didn’t even blink when he set the cup back down.

"The imperial crest is a wolf," he said. "They just... translated your name?"

Damian nodded, flipping the parchment around again. "They thought it would create a more ’universal’ legacy symbol."

"A phoenix," Gabriel repeated. "Strangling a lion’s tail."

"Artistically rendered," Damian added, with the tone of someone who had already decided the artist should be exiled.

Alexandra leaned in, mildly horrified. "Did they at least put it on good paper?"

"Embossed vellum," Damian said. "Gold flake. Custom dye."

Crista hummed. "Expensive delusion."

Irina hesitated. "I thought phoenixes were supposed to rise?"

Gabriel rested his hand against the side of his stomach again, almost thoughtfully. The movement was calm, habitual by now, part comfort, part reminder of why he hadn’t set anything on fire.

"I want it recorded," he said slowly, tone flat and dangerously reasonable, "that I remained civil in this madness. We should have eloped. Married in some nameless border town. Come back once the child was born and the nobles too disoriented to protest."

Damian didn’t flinch. Didn’t blink.

"I suggested that," he said.

"You did not."

"I did," Damian replied, deadpan. "Twice. You said you didn’t want to give the court the satisfaction of a scandal."

"I was naive," Gabriel said.

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