Chapter 149: Chapter 149: Stupid

Sylvia’s apartment was not built for men like Nero.

That became obvious the second he stepped inside.

Not because the place was small, exactly. It was decent by city standards, a clean two-room apartment in a good Alamina building, with warm lighting, books stacked in mildly unstable piles, a narrow kitchen that opened into the living area, and a couch she had once described to Dean as “perfectly functional if no one dramatic sits on it wrong.”

The problem was that Nero was seven foot five and built like someone had taken the concept of a royal bodyguard and then added a crown.

He filled the entryway first, then the living room, then, with quiet inevitability, her entire couch.

Sylvia stood in the kitchen doorway holding the delivery bags and stared.

Nero, halfway through taking off his jacket, noticed. “What?”

She shut the door with her heel. “Nothing. I’m just accepting that my furniture has never faced a challenge like this before.”

His gaze flicked once to the couch.

“It seems stable.”

“It is,” Sylvia said, walking in and setting the food on the coffee table. “But it was built with normal people in mind. Men under seven feet. Men who do not look like they should come with battle music.”

That got another smile from the man, and Sylvia considered the evening a win.

She shrugged out of her coat, kicked off her boots near the door, and gestured toward the table. “All right. Civilization.”

Several paper bags, too many containers, a scandalous number of fries, and enough wings to count as a tactical operation sat between them.

Nero had removed the leather jacket now, leaving him in the white shirt that stretched more noticeably across his shoulders than it had downstairs. Sylvia, who valued honesty, decided privately that the shirt was fighting for its life.

He sat down carefully, as if aware that ordinary civilian furniture had limits and he was trying not to violate international law by snapping her couch in half.

Sylvia dropped onto the opposite end with less dignity, tucked one leg under herself, and started unpacking containers.

The apartment filled almost immediately with the smell of hot oil, spice, salt, and sauce.

It was, she thought, the first truly good thing to happen all evening.

Nero took one of the containers she handed him. “This is a lot of food.”

Sylvia looked up. “That from you is deeply unconvincing.”

“It’s still a lot.”

“You’re enormous,” she said. “I made peace with the portions.”

That got a quiet exhale through his nose that might have been the ghost of a laugh.

For a while, they ate.

It was not elegant. Thank God.

No palace silver. No ceremonial pacing. No staff appearing every three minutes like summoned spirits. Just boxes on a coffee table, soda bottles sweating faintly against the wood, and the low hum of the city outside her windows.

Sylvia reached for fries. “All right. Official review.”

Nero glanced at her while tearing apart a wing with alarming efficiency. “Of what?”

“The evening’s survival strategy.”

“That implies there was strategy.”

“There was. Mine.” She pointed a fry at him. “Step one: leave before I witness another dominant incident. Step two: prevent a foreign prince from getting photographed in a limited-edition car outside a wing restaurant. Step three: feed him enough protein that he does not become society’s problem.”

Nero swallowed and reached for another wing. “Reasonable.”

Sylvia nodded. “Thank you. I thought so.”

He ate like a man who had in fact needed protein, which she found vindicating.

She watched him for a second, then reached for her soda. “You know, this is the strangest relocation outcome I could’ve imagined.”

Nero looked over. “Relocating to Alamina?”

“Yes. Arion gave me an apartment, Dean gave me stress, the palace gave me a near-death experience via pheromones, and now I’m having takeout with a Sahan prince who looks like he could throw my coffee table through a wall.”

Nero’s gaze dropped briefly to the table.

“I wouldn’t,” he said.

Sylvia smiled into her drink. “That’s what makes you guest-qualified.”

That one got a more visible flicker of amusement.

The mood in the apartment settled slowly into something almost easy.

Nero said little, but he wasn’t frozen anymore. Sylvia talked enough for two when necessary, and when she didn’t, the silence wasn’t harsh.

She told him, with full seriousness, that one of her neighbors vacuumed at midnight like it was an act of war. He informed her, equally serious, that one of his tutors in Saha had once tried to ban fried food from his diet for six months and had nearly caused a constitutional incident. She laughed hard enough at that to nearly choke on a fry.

He waited until she recovered before saying, very dryly, “You’re fragile.”

“I’m thriving,” Sylvia said hoarsely, reaching for her soda again.

He looked unconvinced.

A while later, with two large containers already half-empty and the apartment warm with food and late-night fatigue, Nero’s phone buzzed where he had set it near the edge of the coffee table.

The sound was quiet.

Still, Sylvia felt the change before she fully saw it.

Nero picked up the phone, glanced at the screen, and his entire body seemed to still by half a degree.

It was subtle. So subtle that anyone else might have missed it.

Sylvia set down her drink.

Nero typed something back with one hand. Then he locked the phone and placed it screen-down on the table.

He reached for another fry.

Did not eat it.

Sylvia watched him for a second, then set down her drink. “That looked like bad news.”

Nero lifted his eyes to hers. “Not exactly.”

That answer was too clean to be true.

Sylvia tilted her head. “Do you want to talk about it?”

For a moment he said nothing.

Then, with that same flat calm, he said, “It’s stupid.”

Sylvia looked at him.

Nero’s gaze had already shifted away, toward nothing in particular, his expression composed in the manner of men who actively refused to be transparent.

She leaned back into the couch and folded one leg beneath herself. “Is it?”

“Yes.”

He said it too quickly.

Sylvia let that sit for half a second, then asked, very evenly, “Is love stupid?”

That got his attention.

Nero looked at her fully then, violet eyes sharp, expression unreadable for one beat too long.

Sylvia held his gaze.

She had no pheromones to weaponize, no title worth swinging around, and no intention of pretending she had missed the problem just because no one had handed her names. She was asking because she had watched the mood leave his body the second that message arrived and because sometimes the cleanest way through a thing was straight.

Nero’s jaw tightened once.

“That’s not what I said.”

“No,” Sylvia replied. “You said it was stupid. I’m clarifying the category.”

A pause stretched between them.

The city hummed faintly beyond the windows. Somewhere outside, a car passed. The apartment remained warm with fried food, soda, and the strange intimacy of late-night honesty that nobody had planned for.

Nero leaned back into the couch, his massive frame making her furniture look even smaller than usual. One arm rested along the back cushion, the other still near the untouched fries on the table. For a second, he looked less like a prince and more like a man who hated being cornered by his own feelings.

Finally, he said, “Sometimes.”

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