“Coffee,” he said, voice even again.
“Two,” I said.
We moved on, steps matching, masks settling, the taste of him tucked under my tongue like a secret I would carry through the day.
The door to the dining room was ajar. My father stood at the window with a cup gone cold in his hand. He had not slept. Or he had slept the way men do when the morning will ask too much. Élodie poured coffee and pretended not to hear anything she should not. The air smelled like toast and old paper and the bergamot he always wears when he wants to look calm.
“Good morning, Papa,” I said.
He turned, and the worry on his face softened. “Come here.”
I did. He pulled me into a proper hug, the kind that makes time loosen. When he let go, he kept a hand on my shoulder like an anchor.
“I’ve been thinking about what to say to you,” he said, quieter now. “Speeches are easy. Being a decent man is harder. Today, be the second thing.”
“I can try.”
“Don’t try,” he said, and the smile reached his eyes. “Be who you are. Lead with what’s right. If that costs us comfort, we’ll pay it together. If you make a mistake, admit it, fix it, and keep walking. No theater. No tricks. Just you.”
I nodded. The knot in my chest loosened.
“You don’t have to please everyone,” he added. “You only have to tell the truth and do the work. The rest… we’ll carry as a family.”
“I won’t disappear when it’s hard,” I said.
“I know.” He brushed a bit of lint from my lapel, the most father thing in the world. “Look them in the eye. Listen more than you speak. And when you speak, let them hear your mother in you.”
“That’s dangerous advice,” I said, and he laughed—real, brief, exactly what I needed.
“Off you go,” he said, kissing my temple. “I’m proud of you. Whatever happens out there, that won’t change.”
Élodie stepped in as I turned for the door, eyes bright and bossy. She straightened my collar, pressed a warm cup into my hand, and lowered her voice. “Do exactly that.”
I squeezed my father’s hand once more and left, feeling steadier than when I’d come in.
Viktor slid the comms hook behind my ear in the corridor and checked the fit with two fingers at my jaw. The touch burned through the morning like a small sun I refused to look at.
“Testing,” he said. “Say anything you like so I can calibrate.”
“You are very handsome,” I said.
The smallest pause. Then a quiet, “Clear,” that sounded likelaughter buried under duty. He handed me a pocket square like it mattered and gave me the route with his eyes.
Akintola’s liaison waited in a small sitting room with two maps spread on a coffee table and a pen he clicked without noticing. She had the air of someone who has slept in a chair and woke prepared. She pointed at colored circles.
“Stage in the southwest corner,” she said. “Loud but controlled. We seeded two kettles we can form if the crowd surges. Your mark is here. Two steps forward when you want to lower volume without raising temperature. He will be at your shoulder.” She nodded at Viktor without making it sound like a concession. “If you go off script, you tell me before you do it.”
“There is no script,” I said.
She did not roll her eyes. It was a near thing. “Then you tell me before you go off the script you do not have. We will try to keep up.”
“What of provocateurs,” Viktor asked. “We saw chatter last night for off-book optics.”
“We have plainclothes in the middle and on the edges,” she said. “We are not grabbing for smoke bombs unless they spark. We are not making a body where there does not have to be one. You say the line about knives. We will use it.”
“Good,” Viktor said.
We walked from there to the motor court with the palace moving around us like a machine that had decided to be kind. The cars idled. Drivers awake in their eyes. Rain still biding its time.
