But it didn’t work. Because every time Sebastian Grey tried to embrace nothingness, the war came back and embraced him.

He saw it. Felt it. Again. All those things for which frankly, once had been more than enough.

And so he opened his eyes. Because then all he saw was his rather ordinary bedchamber, with its rather ordinary bed. The quilt was green, the curtains gold. His desk was wood.

It was quiet, too. During the day there were the regular sounds of the city, but at night this part of town almost always fell silent. It was amazing, really, to actually enjoy silence. To listen to the wind and maybe the song of birds without always keeping one ear perked for footfall, or gunshot. Or worse.

One would think he’d be able to sleep in such a happy quiet.

He yawned again. Maybe he’d read. He’d picked a few books from Harry’s collection this afternoon. There hadn’t been much to choose from; Harry liked to read in French or Russian, and while Sebastian knew both of those languages as well (their shared maternal grandmother had insisted upon it), they did not come as naturally to him as they did to Harry. Reading in anything but English was work, and Seb just wanted to be entertained.

Was that too much to expect from a book?

If he were to write a book, there would be excitement. Lives would be lost, but not too many. And never any of the main characters. That would be much too depressing.

There ought to be a romance, too. And danger. Danger was good.

Maybe a little of the exotic, but not too much. Sebastian suspected that most authors did not do their research properly. He’d read a novel recently that took place in an Arabian harem. And while Seb definitely found the idea of a harem interesting-

Very interesting.

– he couldn’t imagine that the author had got any of the details right. He liked an adventure as best as the next man, but even he found it difficult to believe that the plucky English heroine managed to escape by hanging a snake out the window and sliding down to safety.