Sebathine's arm was still braced against the wall, his body close enough that Lucian could feel the faint heat radiating through the narrow space between them. Neither spoke for a moment. It wasn't silence so much as the kind of stillness that made the air feel tight, pressing down on the skin.
Lucian tilted his head ever so slightly, the movement deliberate, slow, like a man studying an animal that might bite if provoked. His smirk returned faint, cutting, the sort that belonged to someone who knew the weight of his own effect and wasn't afraid to wield it.
He didn't answer Sebathine's demand. That would have been too simple, too giving. Instead, he leaned in by the smallest degree, closing the invisible gap until his voice had to slip between them like smoke.
"Don't you want to leave this place?" His tone was unhurried, more suggestion than question. Then, softer still, lips barely curving, "Or… is something holding you back?"
The shift in Sebathine's jaw was minuscule, but Lucian saw it, the controlled tightening, the flex beneath the skin. He didn't speak, but his silence was heavier than words. And in that silence, there was a flicker, a sharp glint in his eyes that Lucian recognized for what it was: the kind of truth a man tries to keep buried.
Lucian's pulse quickened, not out of fear, but because he knew he had struck something raw.
What Lucian couldn't know—not fully—was the truth threading beneath Sebathine's stillness.
Sebathine had not stayed in the palace out of duty to the crown, nor because the corridors and chambers offered him comfort. His reasons were far more deliberate, anchored by two truths he would never speak aloud.
The first: to stay close to Lucian.
The second: to dig, quietly and without the stench of rumor, into the tangled shadows surrounding Reniel's death. He was hunting, not for the whisper of gossip or the easy suspect, but for the sort of proof that couldn't be denied when finally laid bare. The real killer was still out there, and until Sebathine had their name and the blade to take them down, he would not leave.
Lucian, of course, could only guess. But he read people as other men read maps, tracing every line, noting every omission. And Sebathine's silence, the refusal to answer when most men would fill the gap. Was telling.
His eyes narrowed just a fraction, as if weighing the man in front of him like a gem he wasn't sure could be cut without shattering.
So… there was something.
Lucian leaned back slightly against the wall, not retreating, but repositioning. "You don't answer," he murmured, the smirk never leaving his mouth, "which tells me more than words would."
Sebathine's gaze didn't soften. If anything, it sharpened, like a blade under a whetstone.
Lucian felt the subtle shift in the air, the unspoken acknowledgment that whatever tied Sebathine to this palace might also tie him to Lucian. That thought settled deep in his mind, curling in on itself like smoke seeking the ceiling. If Sebathine's reason for staying could be bent just slightly toward his own goals, then perhaps he could use the Grand General's loyalty, or whatever it was, to his advantage.
But it wouldn't be easy.
Unlike Alaric or Alistair, Sebathine didn't move when pushed. He didn't reveal himself with little prods. No, he was the kind of man who stayed exactly where he meant to, who spoke only when speaking served him, who let you see just enough to make you wonder what you'd missed.
The tension between them thickened, stretching taut like a rope pulled from opposite ends. Neither man moved for several long seconds, each studying the other as if the next breath might break the standoff.
Then, finally, Sebathine stepped back.
It wasn't rushed. It wasn't defeat. It was the calculated withdrawal of a soldier who knows when to end the engagement without losing ground. The weight of his presence lingered in the air even as he put distance between them.
His voice came low, the words not a threat but a promise. "Stay out of places you don't belong, Lucian."
And then he turned, leaving the corridor as quietly as he had appeared, the echo of his boots fading into the emptiness of the eastern wing.
Lucian stayed where he was, back still resting against the cool stone, his heart steady but his thoughts moving fast.
He'd gotten nothing in the way of an admission, but the silence Sebathine had given him was almost better, it was an absence heavy enough to carry meaning. Whatever the man's reasons for staying here, they were strong enough to keep him tethered.
And now Lucian knew two things:
Sebathine could not be swayed easily.
And… Sebathine would not leave.
A slow smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. That was fine. Some pieces were more valuable when they stayed on the board.
He pushed away from the wall, straightening his sleeves as though the encounter had been nothing more than a polite exchange. But the imprint of Sebathine's presence stayed with him, like the echo of heat after fire.
The eastern wing felt even quieter now, the air lighter without Sebathine's looming weight. Yet somehow, Lucian felt the space had shifted not in the walls, but in the game they were both playing.
And he fully intended to play it to the end.