Chapter 116: Chapter 116: Lunatics

Sylvia, from the armchair, made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a complaint. “Don’t flatter me. I’m not calm. I’m sore.”

Dean paused with one hand on the edge of his bedroom door.

“Sore,” he repeated, turning his head just enough to give her a look. “From what? Being morally superior too hard?”

Sylvia’s eyes narrowed. “From running.”

Dean blinked, genuinely thrown. “Running where?”

“Everywhere,” Sylvia said, deadpan. “All day yesterday.”

Dean’s gaze flicked to her legs automatically, as if expecting to see proof. Sylvia noticed and looked offended on principle.

“Stop that,” she said. “I’m not a horse.”

“You just said you’re sore from running.”

Sylvia lifted her tablet slightly as if it might become a weapon. “With Boreas.”

Dean’s mouth twitched before he could stop it. “Arion’s dog?”

“The very same,” Sylvia said, like she was naming a tyrant. “A malamute the size of a small country who has decided I am his favorite human because I am the only one who does not squeal at his dramatic face.”

Dean’s lips parted in a silent laugh.

Sylvia’s gaze sharpened. “Don’t you dare.”

Dean failed immediately. A soft laugh slipped out of him anyway, quiet, warm, and involuntary, like his body was pleased to find something normal to react to.

Sylvia watched it with the kind of satisfaction only a menace could have. “There. Proof that you’re alive.”

Dean cleared his throat, trying to regain composure. “So you’ve been sprinting around the palace with a furry siege engine, and that’s why you’re here.”

Sylvia shrugged, unbothered. “That and I’m the only one who could physically catch Boreas when he decided to chase a guard’s hat down three corridors. You and Arion were busy, and I didn’t want to ruin the moment.”

Dean’s laughter faded, replaced by the memory of vetiver thickening into a warning, the way the air had started to feel owned. The way Arion’s control had frayed at the edges until it wasn’t control at all, just a man clinging to the last thread.

Dean’s hand tightened on the doorframe without him meaning to.

Sylvia’s gaze flicked to his fingers. “Do you want me to leave?” She asked softly, the menace stripped away.

Dean sighed. “No, I need backup when Sebastian and Zion arrive.”

Sylvia blinked.

Not because she didn’t understand the sentence – Sylvia understood everything, usually against people’s will – but because she’d just realized what he’d actually asked of her.

“Sebastian,” she repeated slowly, as if tasting the name. “The brother who looks at you like the world is his personal enemy?”

Dean’s mouth tightened. “Yes.”

“And Zion,” Sylvia continued, eyes narrowing with curiosity. “The crown prince of Palatine.”

Dean’s gaze snapped to her. “Don’t say it like that.”

Sylvia’s lips parted. “Like what?”

“Like you’re about to start enjoying it.”

Sylvia’s expression turned thoughtful in that dangerous way that meant she was already enjoying it. “Dean,” she said, and then paused, as if savoring the escalation, “I have never met Zion.”

Dean went still.

Sylvia lifted one brow. “Not once. Not even in passing. Not even from across a ballroom. I’ve met Sebastian.” She waved a hand, dismissive. “Technically, when you were around Fitzgeralt mansion, and even then it was barely a social encounter. More like… I watched him scan a room like he was counting exits.”

Dean huffed, because that was accurate and therefore annoying.

Sylvia leaned back in the armchair, her mouth twisting into something wicked. “So,” she said lightly, “let me confirm the situation. I, a civilian…”

“Don’t,” Dean warned.

“—a regular, untitled, unprotected, tax-paying citizen,” Sylvia continued anyway, voice brightening with each word, “has now been invited to attend the arrival of your brother and the crown prince of Palatine.”

Dean’s eyes narrowed into a glare of pure regret. “You don’t pay taxes; your parents do.”

Sylvia’s smile widened, ignoring the jab. “Dean,” she whispered, reverent, “I’m really climbing the social ladder.”

Dean made a sound that was half groan, half laugh, and entirely suffering. “Please stop.”

Sylvia clasped her hands together in mock prayer. “From chasing a dog down palace corridors to greeting royalty. If my mother could see me, she would spontaneously combust. Don’t send her pictures, tho. The combustion comes with scolding.”

Dean pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sylvia.”

“What,” she asked innocently. “It’s practically a fairy tale. The civilian with sore legs and questionable morals gets invited into the palace chaos.”

Dean exhaled hard through his nose, stared at her like a man witnessing the end of his peace, and then turned toward the bathroom with the grim determination of someone going to scrub off both pheromones and decisions.

“I’m going to shower,” he said, already walking. “I need to get clean, and I need you to do something useful before you start fantasizing about curtseying.”

Sylvia’s eyes gleamed. “Do I have to curtsy? Is there a tutorial?”

“No,” Dean said immediately. “No curtseying. No experiments. No ’your Highness’ in a tone that implies you’re collecting gossip like stamps.”

Sylvia put a hand to her chest, affronted. “I would never.”

Dean looked over his shoulder. “You would absolutely.”

Sylvia smiled. “Only a little.”

Dean sighed, then pointed at her like he was assigning a mission in a war room. “Order food.”

Sylvia blinked. “Food.”

“Yes,” Dean said, voice clipped. “For both of us. Something that can arrive fast, something that won’t make me regret existing, and something that won’t stain the furniture.”

Sylvia’s gaze slid to him, amused. “You’re stress-feeding.”

Dean’s ears went faintly pink. “I’m preparing.”

“For a greeting,” Sylvia murmured.

“For chaos,” Dean corrected.

Sylvia nodded solemnly, like she was taking this very seriously. “Understood. What do you want?”

Dean paused, genuinely caught off guard by the question, because his brain had been operating on emergency protocols for so long that preference felt like a luxury.

He tried to think of a safe answer.

He failed.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, frustrated. “Something normal. Something simple. Something that doesn’t taste like palace politics.”

Sylvia’s eyes softened. Just a fraction.

“Okay,” she said quietly. “Normal. Simple. No politics.”

Dean stared at her for a second, the sudden sincerity catching him off guard in the middle of the chaos.

Then he cleared his throat, regained his grip on his dignity, and turned away again.

“And Sylvia,” he added, hand on the bathroom door.

“Yes?”

“If you make a joke about me ’almost having sex’ again,” Dean said, voice deadly calm, “I will order Boreas to sit on you.”

Sylvia’s laugh rang out, bright and delighted. “He already tried.”

Dean closed the bathroom door behind him before she could add anything worse, and the lock clicked like mercy.

On the other side, Sylvia settled deeper into the armchair, tablet in hand, expression amused and alert – the kind of civilian who had accidentally become a strategic asset.

Dean turned on the water and stared at his reflection in the mirror, mouth still too pink, hair still a mess, and eyes too bright for a man insisting he was normal.

He exhaled slowly.

Tonight, Sebastian and Zion would arrive.

Tomorrow, Nero would arrive.

And somehow, the only thing keeping Dean from collapsing under the weight of it was the fact that Sylvia was in his suite, sore from running after a dog, smiling like she’d just been handed a front-row ticket to royalty.

Dean muttered under his breath, “I am surrounded by lunatics.”

From the other room, Sylvia called back, cheerful and unrepentant, “And yet you keep inviting us inside.”

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