Noah shook Agostino’s hand. “Thanks.”
A notification on his laptop hijacked Noah’s attention as his two unannounced visitors started discussing dinner plans, the pop-up a flagged email from the Asian Federation to one of its contacts in America. Noah lost any appetite he had. He’d tried, he really had. To tweak the Federation’s spyware, to warn the Foreign Office, to fix this mess he’d found himself in. He’d had some hope at the start, but not anymore, the months he’d spent banging his head against the wall for a solution wasted trying to win against an enemy he couldn’tdefeat.
Noah closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. He still had some time, a couple of weeks in which he could do the impossible and deliver to the Head of Intelligence what she wanted in some other way. There was no salvaging their original plan and there was no fooling the Empire’s systems, no matter what Noah had tried. With Barbatos gone, he had no one he could trust to help him either. He was on his own, forced to do Teresa’s bidding or risk what little of his life he had left.
Still. Maybe he could get creative, trick her somehow into spilling him enough secrets so that he had something worth trading. He did have time to keep trying.
Noah regarded her. A dinner wasn’t the worst idea then, even if his head was killing him and his stomach protested even the thought of food.
“…a new specialty menu. So what do you say, Noah, dear?” Teresa was saying, batting her fake eyelashes at him as she squeezed his shoulder.
“Huh?”
“Up for cuisine from home, or would you rather we have something else?”
Noah shot up from his chair, suddenly feeling too confined in his office. “Right. Yeah, that sounds fine. Let me grab my coat.”
When they left the Embassy building, the sun was still up, but the chill in the air had gotten worse. Noah wrapped the red scarf tighter around his neck caught a whiff of that nostalgic scent that clung to it, and tried his best not to think about how little time he had left here in Seoul. He’d just barely managed to distract himself by steeringhis mind toward another brainstorming session on uncovering state secrets when Agostino ruined it all.
“So, young man, have you started preparing your field report? You’ve got, what, less than a month before you go back to Lisbon?” the ambassador asked once all three of them were seated inside the taxi.
Noah tried not to sound too disheartened. “Yes, I’ve already organized most of the data and results. I’ve yet to structure each section, but that won’t take too long.”
“When are you meeting the Director?”
Unsure, Noah threw a glance Teresa’s way.
“Last I spoke with him,” she picked up with a smile, “he seemed eager to catch up, but I’m afraid he didn’t give me a specific date. You know how busy the Christmas period can be.” She placed her hand on Noah’s thigh, the contact making him want to scream. “So, no worries, dear, you’ve still got some time.”
Noah wasn’t worried. He planned to have it all done within the week, so he could focus his efforts entirely on his more pressing issue. Even if he couldn’t help but wonder as he stared at the moving scenery outside, if there was any point. It just didn’t seem likely that he was going to figure out the Federation’s spyware stuff in two weeks if he hadn’t been able to do it in half a year, so maybe it was better to just accept his fate and enjoy what time he had left.
Could he do that?
He doubted it, but he had a few things he still needed to take care of, like selling his landscape paintings via his contact or storing them somewhere. He could take some of them back with him, but he didn’t want to risk it, and besides, hewasstill making it out of the Empire, sooner or later. The plan hadn’t changed.
The taxi dropped them off at the start of the pedestrian zone, then made a U-turn and drove away. Teresa and Agostino were discussing the latest policies the Church was planning to roll out, something about benefits encouraging people to marry young and start having kids as early as possible, and then said kids enrolling into some new brainwashing program at the age of two.
“I think it’s a lovely initiative,” Teresa fawned, a smile beaming on her face.
Noah barely avoided rolling his eyes at her.How lovely indeed it was to cultivate mindless servants before they were even fully self-aware.He ignored the rest of their chat and focused on the feel of the November air on his cheeks, realizing as they passed the flower boutique with the fountain that this was where the gallery exhibiting his—
“Oh, my!” Teresa gasped, covering her mouth as her eyes zeroed in on one of the paintings Noah had sold.
This one depicted two male bodies entwined together among burgundy silks, their partial nakedness at the forefront of the piece. Their heads were obscured like in most of the paintings he’d auctioned, but he knew exactly which painting it was and exactly who the two men were.
“This is horrible!” Teresa complained, a look of disgust and disapproval sliding across her face as she briefly examined the paintings on display.
Depiction of sexual acts between two men or women was condemnable by the Church, a crime regardless of the artist’s skill. Outside of the Holy Empire, that wasn’t the case. The moment Noah had posted the listings of his works, he’d been bombarded with requests, no one seeming to care about the exact subject as long as the execution was decent enough.
And Noah wasn’t just decent, he wasgood. Maybe it was conceited to think so, but he knew his strengths and weaknesses and how to offset or counter them. It was his dream to make a career out of art and now he’d laid the foundations for that, his alias already gaining traction. All he had left to do was to return to the Empire, bide his time for a while, and once he had the necessary amount of money saved up, he was permanently leaving his old life behind in pursuit of his true passion. Although with where things were headed here in the Asian Federation, he probably needed to look elsewhere.
Noah looked from the painting of the two bodies to the one next to it, regret immediately filling him. This one was of Reign wearing a mask in his demon form. It was one of Noah’s favorites and he couldn’t stand looking at it. It hurt too much, each precise line and brushstroke carrying in it the things he’d felt for Reign, feelings now so obvious and devastating.
Quickly moving on before he’d sank down to the dark place he’d barely survived on the night he should’ve died, Noah looked at the rest of the pieces on display, recognizing the gray-haired man on the chair with the white silk. A smile ghosted over his lips as he remembered his first meeting with the Korean beauty, how shy Eunwoo had been the first time Noah had taken him.
“Openly showing such vulgarity between two men and calling it art,” Teresa grunted, meeting Noah’s glance with a scowl. “The Church would never allow such a disgusting thing.”
With an expression of discomfort, Agostino averted his gaze from the window. “This is what we are here to fix, Teresa. People don’t know any better. You can’t blame them.”
