Chapter 6: The Exhibition Match
The splintered end of the practice sword lay on the marble floor between them, a broken tooth. The hall was silent, save for Taehyung’s heavy breathing and the dull, ringing pain in Leonid’s side. The young prince tossed the remaining hilt aside; it clattered like bones.King Kai’s slow, approving clap echoed under the vaulted ceiling. “There. A proper lesson.”
Leonid kept his eyes lowered, the taste of iron sharp on his tongue.He could feel the gaze of the courtiers, a weight against his skin. He could feel Jennie’s stare, a hot, focused point from the dais. And he could smell, beneath the polished oak and torch-smoke, the sharp, petulant sweat of Taehyung’s triumph.
“Stand up,” Taehyung commanded, dusting his hands on his trousers as if touching the wood had soiled him.
Leonid pushed himself up, the movement sending a hot spike through his ribs.He kept his posture subservient, his shoulders slightly rounded.
The prince stepped close, his voice dropping to a conversational tone meant only for Leonid’s ears. “You move like a ghost in there.Like you’re not even trying. That’s what infuriates me.” He leaned in.“Do you think it makes you look noble? It makes you look pathetic.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
Taehyung’s smile was thin. “My father thinks a few broken ribs will teach you your level. I think you need a more lasting reminder.” His eyes flicked downward, then back to Leonid’s face. “Something everyone can see.”
King Kai’s voice boomed across the hall, dismissing the spectacle. “The show is over. Emissary Vesa, I trust that was instructional.”
Vesa, who had watched the entire display with the placid interest of a man observing a chess match, gave a shallow bow. “Most. The southern style, even restrained, is… distinctive.” His eyes lingered on Leonid for a half-second too long before turning to the king. “Your son possesses a determined spirit.”
The court began to dissipate, a murmur of conversation rising to fill the space where violence had been. Jennie rose from her throne.Her movement was fluid, regal, betraying nothing. But as she descended the steps, her scent reached Leonid—a single, crushing wave of distressed omega, instantly stifled as she passed by him, her suppressants working like a slammed door. She didn’t look at him. She linked her arm through the king’s, her laugh at something he said a light, perfect chime in the charged air.
Leonid was left standing alone in the center of the vast floor.A servant scurried over, not meeting his eyes. “The queen requests your presence in her solar. After you have… cleaned up.”
The water in the attendant’s basin was lukewarm and turned rust-colored almost immediately. The servant, a beta boy with nervous hands, dabbed at the split on Leonid’s lip.He worked in silence. There was nothing to say. From a high window, the fading afternoon light bled across the stone floor, not reaching the dim corner where Leonid stood, being patched back together for his owner’s use.
When he entered Jennie’s solar, she was standing by the fire, her back to him. The room was smaller, more intimate than her chambers, lined with books and maps. The air smelled of dried lavender and the faint, indelible trace of her, seeping through the chemical veil.
“Close the door,” she said, without turning.He did.The latch clicked softly.She turned then. Her face was composed, but her eyes were dark pools of fury. “Did you let him win?” The question shot out of her, sharp as an arrow.Leonid blinked. “My lady?”
“In the sparring.Before he… resorted to that. Did you let him strike you?”
He understood. Her pride was twofold: her slave’s prowess, and her son’s failure.The latter was a public wound.The former was her private treasure, now tarnished. “The wooden sword made contact three times in the sanctioned bouts.They were glancing blows. He is fast, but impatient. He opens his guard when he lunges.”
He stated it like a field report.He did not say that Taehyung fought like a boy who had never been truly hit back.
Jennie paced to her desk, her nails tapping on the polished wood. “He looked like a fool.And Kai praised him for it.” Her voice dropped to a venomous whisper. “He praised him for beating a kneeling man. My son.”
She finally looked at him, her gaze traveling over the fresh bruise darkening on his jaw, the careful set of his shoulders that hinted at the pain beneath his tunic.Her anger seemed to drain, leaving something weary and brittle. “Come here.”
He approached.She reached out, her fingers cool against his bruised jaw. “He wants to mark you,” she murmured. “To prove he can.” Her thumb brushed his lower lip, avoiding the cut.“I cannot stop him from being his father’s son. But I can stop him from taking what is mine.”
“He only took his pride back,” Leonid said quietly.
Her eyes flashed.“Do not defend him.”
“I am not.I am stating his purpose. It had little to do with me.”
She stared at him, a complicated frustration tightening her features. In these moments, he knew she hated his clarity. It was a mirror held up to the messy, violent theatre of her family. She pulled him closer, rising on her toes to press her nose against the skin of his throat, inhaling deeply. She was checking for something—Vesa’s scent, perhaps, or the lingering stink of her son’s rage. Finding only his own dark, earthy musk and the metallic hint of blood, she made a small, dissatisfied sound.
“You need to be unavailable,” she said, thinking aloud.“For a few days.Something… visible. An injury from training.”
“I have several.”
“A real one.” The idea solidified in her eyes. “Not from him.An accident. Something that keeps you in the healer’s ward, away from court. Away from Vesa’s eyes and Taehyung’s… lessons.”
He understood.She was creating a pretext to hide her asset.To keep her toy safe in its box. The love in her planning felt like a hand over his mouth.“As you wish,” he said.
She kissed him then, a hard, possessive press of her lips against his.It was not tender. It was a stamp.When she pulled back, her expression was resolved, the queen fully restored. “Tomorrow morning.The training yard. Be convincing.”
Later, in the narrow, dark cell that was his assigned sleeping space when not summoned to her bed, Leonid lay on his thin pallet. The stone wall was cold against his bruised back. He replayed the crack of the wood on his ribs, the king’s approving nod, the devastating sound of Jennie’s laugh as she walked away on the king’s arm.He thought of the broken practice sword on the floor. A tool, used until it snapped.
His fingers traced the old ridge of a scar on his abdomen, a souvenir from a real battle, for a real cause. Then they drifted to the newer, raised welts on his back, gifts from his queen.
From the high window of the barracks, a sliver of moon cast a weak blade of light across the floor.It did not reach him. He lay in the dark, planning the fall he would take tomorrow, the angle of his wrist, the sound his bone might make against the practice dummy’s base.A performance, for an audience of one. His soulmate.He closed his eyes. For the first time, the dream of the southern pines felt not like a memory, but like a story someone else had told him. The scent of home was fading, replaced by the cloying, complicated perfume of sanctuary and ruin.