Outside the office, Isaac and Rowan crossed paths.
Isaac showed no reaction, his face obscured by the nose mask, his eyes fixed straight ahead as he walked past with the calm, unhurried stride of a man who challenged words. But Rowan paused by the door, his hand hovering over the handle.
Even with the mask and the ordinary clothes this man was wearing, he just felt too different, too out of place in this ordinary environment; his beauty seeped from behind the mask, and the graceful aura he carried just added more to him.
For some reason this stranger felt like a threat.
Was he Sienna's patient too? Or perhaps…
Rowan shook the thought away before it could fully form. No. Sienna doesn't have time for relationships. She barely had time to eat, sleep, or exist outside the walls of this hospital. The thought of her with anyone, let alone someone like that, was absurd or just too much to bear.
Reassured, he pushed open the door.
And stopped dead.
The office was... clean. Organized. Papers that had once filled every surface had been put into neat stacks. If it weren't for Sienna sitting behind the desk, he would have assumed he had walked into the wrong room entirely.
"Good day, Director." Sienna looked up from the file in her hands, her expression carefully neutral.
"Good day, Sienna." He stepped inside, his gaze sweeping the transformed space. "What suddenly motivated you to arrange your office?"
"I misplaced a document," she said with a forced smile. "I had to arrange everything to find it."
It was a lie; he could feel it, but he had no proof and no reason to push.
"That's nice." He moved further into the room, watching her. "You suddenly disappeared, so I came to find you. But it seemed you had a patient."
His voice carried a faint hint of questioning, and Sienna tucked her hair behind her ear then stood.
"Yes. I had a patient."
She offered no explanation. Just a simple statement that closed the door on further inquiry.
As she rounded the desk, Rowan's eyes caught on her lips. They were swollen. Pinker than usual, slightly parted, with a softness that hadn't been there this morning. His heart clenched, a sharp, unwelcome ache in his chest, but he forced the thought away. He was imagining things. Reading meaning where there was none.
"Come on, let's head back, Director." Sienna stepped past him toward the door.
And then he saw it.
Her shirt, the clean, tailored blouse she always wore tucked in, was hanging loose over her skirt. The hem was crooked, and the buttons slightly misaligned. It was such a small thing, so utterly insignificant, but it was a deviation from the meticulous version of Sienna he had ever known.
"Sienna."
She turned.
"The person who just left." The words came out rougher than he intended. "Was that your boyfriend?"
His heart pounded against his ribs. He waited for her answer like a man waiting for a verdict.
Sienna's brows furrowed, genuine confusion flickering across her face. "What are you talking about, Director? He's my patient."
Her expression was open, genuine, utterly devoid of the defensiveness that would accompany a lie. Rowan's chest loosened slightly.
"Your shirt is not tucked in," he said quietly.
Sienna looked down. Her face flushed, a deep, mortified red that crept up her neck and flooded her cheeks. She reached for her blouse immediately, fingers fumbling with the fabric as she tucked it back into place with hurried movements.
"I must have forgotten," she said and laughed, her laugh too bright, "when I went to ease myself."
"Okay." Rowan forced the word past the tightness in his throat.
He wanted to believe her, so he did.
They walked out of the office together casually, but something Rowan couldn't name was pressing against his chest like a weight.
-—
On Isaac's end, as soon as he got to the car, his composure shattered.
The moment the door closed behind them, he exhaled, a long, ragged breath; his jaw was tight; his hands pressed flat against his thighs, and when he spoke, his voice was rougher than Craig had ever heard it.
"Drive to the nearest hotel."
Craig didn't need to ask why. He understood without being told.
"Yes, Master."
The engine roared to life, and Craig drove faster than usual.
Isaac leaned his head back against the seat, eyes closed, and tried to will his body into submission. He needed a cold bath; he needed the memory of her skin beneath his hands, her lips against his, and the sound she had made when he touched her. He needed all of it to stop playing on an endless loop in his head.
The car sped through the streets of Dilrik, carrying its restless passenger toward the only relief he could find.
---
By 2:00 that afternoon, Dilrik struck every military base in Subrind.
The missiles fell with devastating precision but found nothing. Empty bunkers. Abandoned military installations. Facilities stripped of anything valuable. Subrind suffered not a single loss.
For three hours, it was silent.
Until 5:00 PM, King Draven Deema posted a message across all major platforms. His face was smug and triumphant, his gloating practically spilling from the screen.
"Best country, my foot. Subrind remains unscathed and victorious till the end."
The taunt was a deliberate slap in the face of a nation still reeling from Subrind's initial strike.
And then Dilrik did something crazy.
At 5:17 PM, a missile struck one of Subrind's largest public markets. What followed was horrifying. Smoke, fire, and bloodied bodies in the streets. The wounded were crying out beneath rubble that had once been stalls selling vegetables, cloth, and children's toys.
News stations across the world broadcast the devastation. Death tolls climbed by the minute: twelve, thirty-seven, sixty-eight. The numbers were endless, the numbers of people killed in a single moment. Condemnation poured in from every corner of the globe. Dilrik had committed a huge war crime.
At 7:00 PM, Dilrik released a statement.
"The Republic of Dilrik maintains that its military operations conducted today were executed with adherence to the laws of armed conflict. The civilian casualties reported at the Subrind Central Market are the sole consequence of the Subrindian government's actions.
Intelligence confirms King Deema's administration intentionally put high-value military assets within populated civilian areas to evade our initial 2:00 strikes. While the king claimed to be 'unscathed,' he was actively using public spaces as a munitions hideout.
Dilrik engaged a legitimate military target. The secondary explosions, which caused the majority of the devastation, prove that explosives were stored within civilian stalls.
By using non-combatants to shield military assets, Subrind has committed a grave war crime. Dilrik bears no responsibility for the loss of life resulting from Subrind's decision to turn a public marketplace into a battlefield. We will not be deterred by propaganda."
---
The public view shifted, though not fully; there were still some who called the statement an excuse, a smokescreen for inexcusable violence, but there were also those who accepted it. Debates erupted everywhere. News channels were filled with experts arguing international law. Social media became a battlefield of its own, each side armed with images, statistics, and righteous fury.
Who had committed the war crime? The nation that struck a market, or the nation that hid weapons beneath it?
Originally the war began because Dilrik had tried to dominate and colonize Surbrind, and Subrind had refused to go down without a fight. But now it just seemed the two nations were only bent on killing innocent citizens.