Chapter 274: Chapter 274: Decorative Hazards

Thomas left Arion’s office with the restriction order folded in his inner pocket and the weight of his own future sitting behind his ribs like something too large to breathe around.

The corridor outside was quieter than it should have been.

Perhaps it was not truly quiet. The palace was still alive around him, with aides walking briskly past intersections, guards posted beneath carved archways, and secretaries moving between offices with the particular efficiency that came after military crisis, when everyone wanted normal work to look normal again as quickly as possible. Somewhere farther away, someone laughed. Somewhere else, doors opened and closed, paper shifted, and shoes clicked over polished stone.

Thomas heard all of it and none of it.

He walked until the corridor opened toward one of the side gardens, then stepped outside without thinking too much about where he was going.

The evening air was cooler than the office. Summer still held the stones, warm from the day, but the sky had begun to darken at the edges, turning pale gold into blue. The garden smelled of trimmed grass, wet stone, flowers, and the distant metallic trace of palace fountains. It was painfully peaceful, which seemed almost rude considering the state of his life.

Thomas stopped near a low balustrade and looked up at the sky.

He had known what he was doing.

That was the worst part.

Andrea had not hidden his distance well enough to fool him. Thomas had felt every withheld response, every careful absence, every time Andrea stood beside him as the assigned dominant omega and kept his warmth sealed behind polished control. Thomas had told himself it was an adjustment. Pride. Fear. Resentment that might fade once the arrangement stopped feeling like a second-best outcome forced on him by other people’s ambitions.

He had told himself many things.

He had been very convincing.

Central had held, and that had become his excuse. No one had died. No line had fallen. No civilian annex had been breached. No soldier under his direct command had broken past recovery. Thomas had compensated carefully and quietly, with that kind of discipline commanders praised when they saw only the result and not the cost of keeping it clean.

He had shielded Andrea from consequence because some humiliating, hopeful part of him had wanted Andrea to notice the protection and choose differently.

That had been stupid.

Worse, it had been selfish.

A cry for help, perhaps, but one made through silence, directed at the only person who could have helped him while also being the person he could not bring himself to ask.

Arion had understood that too quickly.

Of course he had.

Arion had always been merciless when naming things people tried to survive by leaving unnamed.

Thomas lowered his gaze from the sky and rubbed one hand over his face. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

His mother would be furious.

Marianne Lancaster had raised him to understand that restraint was not the same as concealment and that pride killed more soldiers than fear ever did.

Heather would be worse in a different direction.

The Queen of Rohan would not rage first. She would become calm, practical, and devastatingly efficient, which meant by the time she expressed disappointment, three committees, two deployment reforms, and one private interrogation would already be arranged.

Thomas deserved it.

That did not make him enthusiastic.

He was still standing there, considering whether he would rather face Andrea, Marianne, Heather, Hendrik, or a freshly infected beast with three heads, when rapid footsteps scraped against the gravel path.

Thomas turned slightly.

Sylvia came down the garden path from the western terrace with the expression of a woman who had stared into madness and decided madness needed better scheduling. Her hair was slightly disheveled, one sleeve of her jacket pushed higher than the other, and she was muttering to herself with the intensity of someone negotiating with invisible enemies.

"No, Dean," she said under her breath, walking straight ahead. "You cannot flee to the restricted zone because your father, your terrifying noble mother figure, and Mia are coming to help with your wedding. That is not a survival plan. That is a headline. Also, Arion would retrieve you by the collar, and everyone would pretend not to know."

Thomas blinked.

Sylvia did not see him.

She did not see the fountain either.

The decorative fountain sat in the middle of the path ahead, wide, low, and entirely visible to anyone whose soul had not been scraped thin by Dean Fitzgeralt’s wedding-related panic. Sylvia walked toward it with unwavering dedication, still talking.

"And then he had the nerve to ask me whether infected beasts understand boundaries better than wedding planners. I said yes, obviously, but that was not encouragement."

Thomas moved.

He caught her by the back of her coat and one arm a fraction before her boot met the fountain edge, pulling her back just as her balance tipped forward toward cold, ornamental water.

Sylvia made a sound halfway between a shriek and an insult.

For one suspended second, she dangled backward against his hold, arms lifted slightly, eyes wide, staring at the fountain she had nearly entered with her entire body.

Then she looked up.

Thomas looked down.

There was a long silence.

Sylvia’s eyes narrowed. "Did that fountain attack me?"

Thomas considered the safest possible answer.

"No."

"Unhelpful."

"You walked into it."

"I walked toward it with an emotional burden."

"That does not change the direction."

She stared at him for another second, then sagged slightly in his grip with a groan. "Oh god. I’m tired."

Thomas released her carefully only once he was certain she had her footing. "Are you hurt?"

"No. Just spiritually sanded down." She straightened her jacket, then glanced back toward the western wing with the haunted focus of a veteran returning from a siege. "Dean is trying to pre-elope."

Thomas’s brows drew together. "Pre-elope?"

"He hasn’t decided where yet. The restricted beast zone was mentioned. Twice. Arion is not helping because every time Dean panics, Arion says something calm and affectionate, and then Dean gets distracted by imagining him in wedding suits."

Despite himself, Thomas stared.

Sylvia nodded grimly. "Exactly."

"I see."

"You don’t. No one sees. That is the problem." She pointed toward the palace with the manic exhaustion of someone who had been asked to mediate between love, politics, and expensive fabric. "Lucas and Ethan are coming. Serathine is coming. Mia is coming. Minerva is already here and apparently functioning as an imperial wedding siege engine. Dean has realized there will be fittings, ceremonial choices, political seating, and family emotions in the same week. He is one minor floral discussion away from committing a border incident."

Thomas absorbed that in silence.

Then, very carefully, "And you were sent to convince him not to run."

"I volunteered," Sylvia said, then immediately grimaced. "Which was my first mistake."

"You are Dean’s friend."

"Yes, and that is why I should know better." She inhaled deeply, then looked at Thomas properly for the first time. Her expression shifted, sharpening beneath the exhaustion. "You look worse than I do."

Thomas almost smiled. "That seems unlikely."

"No, no. I look like I argued with a wedding panic. You look like someone handed you consequences in a sealed folder."

Thomas went still.

Sylvia’s eyes widened slightly. "Oh. That was accurate?"

"Unfortunately."

"Do I want to know?"

"No."

"Is it about the terrifyingly beautiful red-haired omega who looks like he was designed by a committee of people who hate emotional honesty?"

Thomas stared at her.

Sylvia lifted both hands. "I notice things when I’m not walking into fountains."

"So I see."

She looked him over again, and for all her chaos, there was something direct and oddly kind beneath it. Not softness exactly. Sylvia did not seem like a soft person. But she had the kind of blunt sympathy that did not try to dress a wound in ceremonial language.

"Did he hurt you?" she asked.

Thomas’s first instinct was to say no.

It rose automatically, trained by months of making Andrea’s distance smaller than it was, neater than it felt, and safer than it had become.

Then he thought of Arion’s office. The folder. The restriction order. Every instance of withheld stabilization that you noticed. Every time you compensated for him.

"Yes," Thomas said.

The answer surprised him with how cleanly it left his mouth.

Sylvia’s face changed. The manic edge did not vanish entirely, but it quieted. "That sucks."

Then she straightened with the abrupt decisiveness of a woman who had decided grief required logistics.

"Let’s drink it down!"