They were still under the same rules…
Arturo processed that. His jaw tightened another fraction, he didn't like it, but he understood it.
Orion's response came back in under ten minutes.
He simply accepted.
And he added, with the specific elegance of someone who wants their generosity on the record, that there were undoubtedly many honors to be distributed among many entities, large and small, and that nobility would not be noble if its rules were not applied with equal rigor to all. It was a way of saying that the ceremony was where he intended his new order to be made public, and that delaying it only accumulated losses that Julius could spare himself.
Julius responded in the same register. He expressed appreciation for the consideration. He noted that precisely out of respect for that principle, the ceremony required preparations that honored tradition, and that tradition had its own protocol regarding attendance by lineage.
One lineage, one limited delegation.
