“Thought I might find you out here,” she said softly.
Sebastian didn’t turn immediately. “Needed air. And distance. And a five-minute break from people asking if I’ll be speaking to Parliament.”
Harper padded closer. “Will you?”
“I don’t know.” He finally turned, his expression unguarded. “There are still questions to answer. Lawsuits, depositions. The Foundation messalone could take years. And I keep getting asked whether I’ll join one of the commissions investigating aristocratic misuse of power. Imagine that. Me. On a commission.”
A beat of silence stretched between them. The wind stirred the hedges, soft and perfumed.
“I think I’m leaving the Chronicle,” Harper said suddenly.
Sebastian blinked. “Wait—what?”
“I haven’t told anyone yet,” she added quickly. “And I don’t know for sure. But I got moved to the business desk months ago, and… I could stay. It’s respectable. Safe. But I don’t know if I want to keep reporting like this.”
Sebastian watched her, carefully. “Then what do you want to do?”
“I’ve been thinking about writing a book,” she said. “Non-fiction. About power. Media manipulation. How a man like Charles Hawthorne can build an empire of lies so convincing the truth barely stands a chance.”
“Sounds dangerously close to being about me,” he said lightly, but there was no edge in it.
She met his eyes. “It’s not. But it’s also notnot.”
He nodded, solemn now. “You should write it.”
“You’re not worried it’ll drag everything up again?”
“Please, my name’s already in the tabloids. At least this time it’d be for something that matters. You were right, I can’t really hide away from everything.” He paused. “Besides, I trust you.”
The words surprised them both.
Harper studied him, heart caught somewhere between fear and gratitude. “That might be the most dangerous thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“And yet, here we are.” He glanced back toward the palace, where golden light spilled through high windows. “Everything in there is built on appearances. Bloodlines and traditions and carefully curated headlines. But out here—” He looked around at the quiet garden, the open sky. “This feels real.”
Harper wrapped her arms around herself. “So what do we do now? After the wedding. After all of it.”
Sebastian stepped toward her, not too close, but close enough to be ananswer.
“I think we stop pretending we don’t want this. That it’s not already happening.”
She didn’t look away. “Even if it complicates everything?”
“It already does,” he said. “But maybe we stop waiting for perfect timing and accept that our lives are always going to be messy. And public. And politically inadvisable.”
Harper gave a small, pained laugh. “You make it sound almost romantic.”
He tilted his head. “What if it is?”
“I might not even stay in the city.”
“I’ll find you,” he said, simply. “Wherever you end up.”
Another silence, but this one was full of possibility instead of tension.
Harper stepped forward and rested her forehead lightly against his. “Okay. But just so we’re clear: we’re not calling this a relationship yet.”
“Of course not,” he murmured. “This is strictly an extended moment of mutual delusion.”