Chapter 5: Found

Chapter 5: Chapter 5: Found

By noon, Melanie Cast had checked Sebastian’s assigned suite twice, the eastern library once, both private dining rooms, the royal gymnasium, and the temporary office Palatine had given the Fitzgeralt delegation.

She found evidence of him everywhere.

Sebastian himself remained irritatingly absent.

"He signed these twenty-three minutes ago."

Melanie stood in the middle of the delegation office with one hand planted on her hip and the other holding a tablet. She was short enough that the enormous walnut desk made the position slightly less intimidating than intended, but the expression behind her round glasses compensated. Brown hair had been pinned away from her face that morning and was already escaping around her temples.

Across the desk, Irena Lovendahl examined the authorization Sebastian had apparently approved while both of them were searching the opposite side of the palace.

Dark red hair was pulled into the same low military bun she wore on deployment, her charcoal uniform immaculate despite the wedding chaos spreading through every public wing. The silver insignia at her collar identified her rank to anyone who did not already know she served directly beneath Sebastian in Palatine’s military hierarchy.

"He was here," Irena concluded.

Melanie stared at her.

"I gathered that."

"Recently."

"That was also implied by the twenty-three minutes."

Irena’s hazel eyes lifted.

Melanie pushed her glasses higher.

For perhaps the first time in their professional relationship, they had discovered a common enemy.

Sebastian Fitzgeralt.

More specifically, Sebastian Fitzgeralt avoiding them.

"He never does this," Melanie said.

"He avoids meetings."

"He complains about meetings. Then he attends them, finishes them faster than everyone else, and spends the next hour explaining why they were unnecessary."

Irena considered that accurate.

Sebastian’s work was not the problem.

That made the situation stranger.

Every report Melanie had sent him that morning had returned reviewed. Corrections were precise. The Fitzgeralt estate correspondence was answered. Three wedding-security permissions requiring the Marquis of Fitzgeralt’s approval had been digitally signed before breakfast.

Irena had experienced the same thing.

Two deployment assessments had come back annotated. An Alaminian liaison request had been approved with one paragraph of changes. Sebastian had even identified a logistics discrepancy in a supply projection before Irena had noticed it herself.

The man was working.

He simply appeared determined to accomplish all of it without allowing another human being within five meters of him.

Melanie glanced toward the open doorway.

"He knows the service passages."

"He grew up here."

"So did half the royal family."

"Half the royal family isn’t trying to escape you."

Melanie turned slowly.

Irena’s expression did not change.

"I am his secretary."

"Yes."

"He needs me."

"Apparently from a distance."

Melanie narrowed her eyes.

Irena smiled, knowing she was playing dangerously.

"Where would he go?" Melanie asked.

Irena looked toward the tall palace windows.

Outside, the capital stretched beyond the royal grounds beneath a clear afternoon sky, modern glass towers rising beyond older limestone districts. Within the palace, wedding preparations continued. Staff crossed the courtyard carrying arrangements of white flowers. Security personnel checked temporary barriers along the western garden. Somewhere downstairs, someone was testing music loudly enough for the bass to travel through three floors of stone.

Sebastian disliked noise when he worked.

"He’ll find somewhere quiet," Irena said.

Melanie’s face changed.

"The old strategy rooms."

They moved at once.

The oldest administrative section of the palace sat behind the eastern state apartments, where ceremonial rooms had gradually become irrelevant after newer offices were built. The corridors there were narrower, with dark parquet floors and pale walls covered in portraits of dead monarchs who looked personally offended by modern electricity.

They found Sebastian in the third room.

The door was open.

He sat at the end of a long conference table beneath a tall window, one ankle resting over the opposite knee, reading from a projected military report.

He looked entirely comfortable.

That alone made Melanie suspicious.

Sebastian wore dark trousers, polished black shoes, and a fitted forest-green shirt with the sleeves rolled to his forearms. His jacket hung over the back of another chair. Dark hair had been pushed away from his forehead, and there was enough natural color in his face that nobody looking at him casually would have guessed he had spent part of the morning coughing blood into a sink.

He noticed them before either spoke.

His green eyes moved from Irena to Melanie.

Then toward the secondary door on the opposite wall.

Melanie immediately crossed the room and stood in front of it.

"No."

Sebastian leaned back.

"I haven’t done anything."

"You were looking at the door."

"I enjoy architecture."

Irena entered behind Melanie and closed the main door.

Sebastian looked between them.

"This feels unnecessarily coordinated."

"It is," Melanie said.

"That concerns me."

"It should."

Sebastian glanced down at his report again.

The red began at the edge of his vision.

A thin smear at first.

He blinked once.

It remained.

Pain followed a second later, drilling behind his eyes and down the back of his skull.

Sebastian kept reading.

His pulse accelerated.

Please, not here.

The red widened.

For several horrible seconds, Irena’s dark uniform acquired a crimson edge. Melanie’s voice became distant beneath the low roar building inside his head.

His pheromones pushed against his control.

Sebastian pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek until pain sharpened his focus.

The room returned.

Melanie was placing three documents in front of him.

"You moved the estate conference."

"Yes."

"You moved it without telling me."

"It was badly scheduled."

"You scheduled it."

"I was wrong."

Melanie stopped.

Irena’s brows rose faintly.

Sebastian looked up.

"What?"

"You admitted you were wrong," Melanie said.

"I occasionally experiment with personal growth."

She stared at him long enough that Sebastian almost smiled.

The pressure beneath his ribs intensified.

He reached casually for the glass of water beside the projection.

His hand did not shake.

Irena took the chair opposite him and placed another tablet on the table.

"I need your decision on the northern rotation."

"I sent it."

"I need to discuss it."

"No, you don’t."

"Yes."

"Irena, if you needed to discuss it, the report would have contained a problem requiring discussion."

"It does."

"The third unit?"

"The third unit."

"Move them forty-eight hours later and overlap with the second."

Irena paused.

"That solves it."

"I know."

Melanie looked offended on Irena’s behalf. "You cannot make us search half the palace and then resolve everything in thirty seconds."

"I didn’t make you search."

"You disappeared."

"I relocated."

"Without your phone."

Sebastian glanced beside the tablet.

His phone was there.

Melanie followed his gaze.

"That is not helping you."

A pulse of red swallowed half the room.

Sebastian’s fingers tightened beneath the table.

The medication should have been working.

Instead, something hot and vicious rolled beneath his skin, urging him toward movement, violence, release—anything except sitting still while two familiar voices occupied too much space inside his skull.

He breathed slowly, and control returned by force.

Sebastian rose.

Both women watched him.

He collected his jacket and shrugged it on with unhurried movements.

"Anything else?"

Melanie checked her tablet. "Four signatures."

He signed them.

Irena handed him one authorization.

He read every line before approving it.

By the time Sebastian returned the tablet, Melanie’s suspicion had faded into ordinary irritation.

"Family dinner at seven," she reminded him.

"I know."

"You said that yesterday and arrived at eight."

"That was strategic."

"That was rude."

"Family survives."

Irena stood and adjusted one cuff.

"You look tired."

Sebastian smiled.

"Wedding week."

The answer was simple enough.

Melanie accepted it with a sigh. Irena gave him one final assessing glance before following her into the corridor.

The door closed.

Sebastian remained standing until their footsteps disappeared.

Then his smile vanished.

He gripped the back of the chair.

Red flooded his vision.

This time, it did not recede.