Sebastian shut the door between them and kept walking.
By the time he reached the lower gallery, the music from the reception had faded into little more than a dull vibration through the palace walls. Cold November air slipped through the arches opening toward the inner courtyard and hit his overheated face, but it did very little to settle him. His hands were still shaking, and the keys Layle had given him dug into his palm because he had been gripping them far too tightly since leaving the corridor.
He loosened his fingers and forced himself to breathe.
Compatibility. The dispatches. The way Nero had deliberately worsened his instability. The visions he had already known about while forcing Sebastian to admit them anyway.
Every revelation had arrived before Sebastian had enough time to understand the previous one, and his anger had become too tangled with hurt to separate cleanly anymore. He did not know what he wanted from Nero yet. He did not know what any of it meant for the marriage they had entered barely two days ago.
He only knew that he could not stay beside him while feeling like this.
The older car waited beneath the western arcade.
Sebastian slowed when he saw it.
Nero had offered it to him back in May, almost casually, after Jax had spent half an afternoon campaigning for ownership of it. Sebastian had never actually driven the car. He already had vehicles of his own, and taking one of Nero’s had felt too much like accepting another small piece of the life Nero had been quietly arranging around him.
Tonight, that irony almost made him laugh.
He unlocked the car, slid behind the wheel, and immediately had to adjust the seat forward. The cabin had been modified for Nero’s absurd height, leaving even Sebastian, at nearly two meters, farther from the controls than he preferred. He spent several seconds correcting the seat and mirrors, familiarizing himself with the layout while the engine remained silent beneath him.
Once everything sat where it should, Sebastian placed both hands on the wheel and stared through the windshield.
He had no destination in mind.
He wanted road, distance, and enough time for his thoughts to stop cutting into one another.
That was all.
He started the engine.
The low growl of it filled the enclosed cabin, deep enough to travel through his hands and settle in his chest. Sebastian shifted into gear, but movement in the rearview mirror made him pause before releasing the brake.
Nero had reached the courtyard.
Even at that distance, Sebastian could tell something had changed.
Nero was normally frightening because of how controlled he was. Anger made him quieter. Fear made him precise. He could walk through a military crisis looking almost serene while everyone else around him understood that one wrong decision might turn catastrophic.
This was different.
He crossed the courtyard quickly, long black coat moving behind him, one hand wrapped around the second set of keys while his chest rose and fell hard enough for Sebastian to see it under the gold-detailed fabric. His white-blond hair had loosened from its fastening, and there was something in the way he moved toward the new car that made Sebastian’s stomach tighten.
Nero had lost perspective.
Sebastian knew that look.
Distance had always been the one thing Nero handled badly.
"Nero, don’t."
The words disappeared inside the car.
Nero opened the driver’s door of the new vehicle.
Sebastian released the brake.
The older car rolled out beneath the arcade and crossed the interior court, the palace lights sliding across the dark hood before he passed through the inner gate and onto the descending road toward Altera.
He pressed the accelerator harder than necessary.
The response was immediate.
The car had more power than Sebastian expected, and for the first several turns he had to learn it as he went, adjusting to the weight, the steering response, the slightly longer frame created for Nero’s proportions. He had driven enough high-performance vehicles over the years that the adaptation came quickly, but his attention kept drifting back toward the mirror.
Nothing appeared at first.
Sebastian drew a slow breath, trying to force the pressure out of his chest.
He would drive for twenty minutes.
Perhaps thirty.
He would stop somewhere, think, and return when he could look at Nero without wanting to hurt him.
That was still the plan when the first red haze moved across his vision.
Sebastian blinked.
The highway remained in front of him, but another landscape had begun to surface over it, translucent at first and growing darker with every breath.
A sea stretched beneath him.
Red from horizon to horizon, its surface moving in slow, heavy waves beneath a sky that seemed to have no stars and no edge. Sebastian knew the place immediately.
And in the middle of it was the serpent.
It was larger than anything living should have been, black scales breaking through the red water with deep purple glinting along their edges. In every previous glimpse, the enormous body had curved back upon itself until the creature’s jaws closed around its own tail, forming an endless circle that had made no sense to Sebastian no matter how many times he tried to understand it.
This time, the serpent’s mouth was empty.
Its tail lay somewhere beneath the red sea.
Its head had risen above the water.
Deep purple eyes were looking directly at him.
Sebastian’s breath caught.
Recognition arrived with such force that his grip tightened on the steering wheel.
Nero.
He did not know why he had never understood it before.
The impossible scale. The black and purple. The terrible stillness wrapped around something powerful enough to destroy whatever stood in its path. Most of all, those eyes fixed on Sebastian with a concentration so complete that the rest of the world might as well have ceased to exist.
The serpent began moving toward him.
Sebastian blinked hard, and the road snapped back into focus.
The car had drifted toward the center line.
He corrected immediately, pulse hammering against his throat, and drew another breath that did nothing to calm him.
"Fuck."
He looked into the mirror.
Headlights appeared at the top of the road behind him.
Sebastian stared at them for a second before the shape of Nero’s new car became unmistakable.
Of course.
His anger returned with enough force to push the vision aside.
He had asked for one hour.
He had not threatened divorce. He had not said their marriage was over. He had not even decided what he wanted from Nero yet. He had asked for enough space to stop being furious before they said things that would damage whatever remained between them.
Apparently even that was too much.
Sebastian pressed harder on the accelerator.