Chapter 167: Run

Chapter 167: Chapter 167: Run

The silence lasted long enough for Sebastian to stop hoping he had misunderstood Nero’s expression.

Nero stood several meters away beneath the warm corridor lights, his shoulders held too straight beneath the black coat, one hand hanging motionless at his side while the other had curled slowly against his palm. He was not avoiding Sebastian’s eyes, which somehow made it worse, because the answer sat there with nowhere left to hide.

Sebastian swallowed against the tightness in his throat.

"You knew."

Nero’s mouth moved before any sound came out.

"I knew you were seeing something."

Sebastian turned his face away and stared toward the windows, where the dark gardens reflected faintly against the glass. His own image looked back at him in fragments between the lights: green suit, black hair, wedding ring, the posture of someone still standing when he suddenly wanted very badly to sit down.

"How long?" He asked, hands clenching into fists.

"A few years."

Sebastian closed his eyes.

His hand rose to his mouth and remained there for several seconds while memories rearranged themselves with brutal efficiency. Nero asking what he had seen. Nero pressing whenever Sebastian became distant after a vision. Nero refusing to let the subject go until Sebastian finally admitted that the nightmares were fragments of other lives, other timelines, other versions of them that sometimes felt more real than his own memories.

All that time, Nero had already known there was something to uncover.

Sebastian lowered his hand.

"You made me fight you for information you already had."

"I knew the visions existed. I didn’t know what was inside them."

"And you decided that gave you the right to corner me until I told you."

Nero’s jaw tightened, but he did not defend himself.

Sebastian laughed softly, the sound exhausted rather than amused, and dragged his fingers through the hair at his temple.

"Of course you did."

Nero’s expression changed at that.

The words had found him.

Sebastian could see it in the slight contraction around his eyes, in the way his shoulders lost some of their rigid control before he forced them back into place.

He should have felt satisfied.

Instead, the ache in his chest worsened.

The longer Nero spoke, the more years of Sebastian’s life seemed to acquire another layer underneath them, one he had never been allowed to see.

Nero took a careful step toward him.

Sebastian moved away before he consciously decided to.

The sole of his shoe scraped softly across the polished stone.

Both of them noticed.

Nero stopped at once.

His hand lifted several centimeters, almost reaching before he let it fall again.

Sebastian looked at that hand and remembered it around his waist, remembered Nero sliding a ring onto his finger in front of the political world, remembered how steady those fingers had been.

He could not bear to be touched by them now.

"I need to get away from you for a while."

Nero’s entire body tightened.

"Sebastian."

"I am not leaving you." Sebastian’s voice came out rougher than he intended, and he paused long enough to regain control. "I am asking for enough distance to think before I turn this into something neither of us can repair."

Nero watched him without blinking.

"You can have space here."

Sebastian stared at him.

For several seconds, disbelief kept him silent.

Even now, after admitting that he had manipulated Sebastian’s choices for years, Nero’s instinct was to decide where Sebastian was permitted to go.

Sebastian pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek and looked down briefly, trying to contain the anger gathering beneath his ribs.

When he lifted his eyes again, his expression had gone colder.

"Do you hear what you just said?"

Nero’s fingers flexed against his thigh.

"I don’t want to walk out of this palace when you’re this angry."

"You don’t get to decide that."

"I am trying to keep you safe."

Sebastian’s head tipped back slightly as a humorless breath left him.

"After what you just told me, you should probably stop using safety as an argument."

Nero’s face tightened as though Sebastian had struck him.

The sight hurt.

Sebastian hated that it still hurt.

He turned away and walked several steps down the corridor, needing movement simply to keep the fury from settling into his hands. His fingers had begun trembling again, so he shoved them into the pockets of his coat and curled them tightly inside the fabric.

Behind him, Nero remained where he was.

Sebastian stared at the closed doors at the end of the hall.

"I love you."

Nothing moved behind him.

Sebastian continued before he could lose his nerve.

"That is why I’m leaving this room instead of staying here and finding the cruelest possible thing to say to you."

He turned back.

Nero had gone pale beneath the warm lights.

His violet eyes were fixed entirely on Sebastian.

"I know exactly where to hurt you," Sebastian said quietly. "You’ve given me enough material over the years. If I stay while I feel like this, I am going to use it, and afterward I will hate myself for doing it."

"You can say anything you want."

Sebastian’s brows pulled together.

"That is not what I want."

Nero took another step forward, slower this time, as though approaching something wounded.

Sebastian’s shoulders stiffened immediately.

Nero stopped again.

The space between them had become unbearable.

Yesterday Sebastian would have crossed it without thinking.

Tonight every additional centimeter felt necessary.

"I need twenty minutes," Sebastian said. "An hour, if that is what it takes. I need to be somewhere where I cannot see your face and remember another thing you decided for me."

Nero’s breathing had become slower and deeper, the way it did when he forced his pheromones under extreme control.

"I can’t let you walk away like this."

Sebastian’s gaze sharpened.

"I am not asking whether you can."

"Nero."

The voice came from neither of them.

Footsteps had reached the adjoining gallery without Sebastian noticing, and Cassian and Layle appeared around the corner, still speaking to one another until they saw the corridor ahead.

Both stopped.

Cassian’s eyes went first to Sebastian, taking in the rigid posture and clenched jaw, before shifting toward Nero.

Layle said nothing.

He was holding a set of car keys.

Sebastian noticed them immediately.

For the first time in several minutes, the decision in front of him felt simple.

He crossed the corridor.

Layle watched him approach and must have understood enough from his expression not to ask questions, because when Sebastian held out his hand, Layle placed the keys into it without hesitation.

"Thank you."

Sebastian turned toward the staircase.

Nero moved behind him.

"Sebastian."

Sebastian shut the door behind him.