Chapter 4: You’re not him
The guest bedroom was a symphony of silver and shadow, embroidered constellations whispering across the walls with a breath Dane couldn’t feel. It was too quiet after the pavilion’s roar, the silence a thick velvet pressing against his ears. The air carried the girl’s perfume—night-blooming jasmine, cloying and sweet.
“How on earth are your brothers wed, and yet you’re unmarried?” she murmured against his mouth, her hands already working the fastenings of his jacket. Her breath was warm, flavored with moon-wine. “You’re the only one with any charm.” She pulled back, her eyes glittering in the low light. “Shame of a rumored rake, no?”
Dane stopped kissing her. The words, so casually flung, landed like stones in the hollow of his chest. He shrugged off the jacket, letting it fall to the floor with a soft sigh of fabric. She moved closer, her fingers deftly pulling his shirt over his head. The cool air of the room kissed his skin.
“I’m not looking to be married,” he said, the bitterness in his voice surprising even him. It wasn’t directed at her. It was for the expectations that hung around his neck like a millstone, for the transactional alliances his brothers had made without a second thought.
She laughed, a light, tinkling sound that didn’t reach her eyes. With a final, pointed look, she turned and slammed the heavy oak door shut. The thud echoed in the quiet room. When she faced him again, her delicate, moth-like wings were trembling, a faint, iridescent shiver. “Apparently not,” she said, closing the distance between them. Her hand came up to trace his bottom lip. “Pity, too. With a mouth like that, you’d make anyone happy.”
Then her mouth was on his again, hungry and insistent. Dane kissed back, his hands settling on her waist, but his mind was a separate thing, floating somewhere near the ceiling. He could feel the feverish tremor in her wings against his sides, a physical manifestation of a desire that was real, immediate, felt. He thought of other wings, other trembling touches in dark rooms. His own wings, heavy and dormant on his back, had never once quivered with that kind of unchecked ecstasy. They were for show, for flight, for preening. Never for that.
She broke the kiss, her lips trailing down his jaw, his throat, her hands pushing at the waistband of his trousers. There was an arrogance to it, a presumption of control. She tried to guide him down, her intention clear.
Dane’s hand shot out, fingers closing gently but firmly around her chin. He tilted her face up to his. The shock in her eyes was briefly satisfying. “Careful,” he said, his voice low, a soft threat wrapped in silk. “I am a prince. And you are… a charming distraction.” He let his thumb brush her lower lip. “If anyone’s going to be on their knees tonight, it’s you. Put that clever mouth to use.”
For a heartbeat, she stared, her wings going perfectly still. Then a slow, understanding grin spread across her face. It wasn’t offended. It was eager. This was a script she knew, a role she could play.
“Yes, Your Highness,” she breathed, the title a thrilling taboo.
She sank down smoothly, the silken layers of her dress pooling around her on the cold floor. Her fingers worked at the buttons of his trousers with practiced ease, never breaking eye contact. That grin remained, a slash of knowing in the moonlight.
Dane exhaled, a long, slow release of breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, as she took him into her mouth. He braced a hand against the cool, constellation-stitched wall, his head falling back. He stared at the shifting silver threads above, trying to lose himself in the physical sensation, the warm, wet pressure that was meant to obliterate thought.
It didn’t.
Instead, his mind clawed its way back to the terrace. To the cold, analytical concern in Wren’s green eyes. To the way his composure had snapped when Dane had called him a puppet. You complicate everything by your very existence. The memory of Wren’s gaze following him across the dance floor, the stifled want in that look, was sharper, more vivid than the feeling between his legs.
He saw the pale, moonlit skin of Wren’s throat where his formal jacket met his collarbone. He heard the soft, resigned cadence of his voice saying, It seems my script awaits. He imagined, with a sudden, punishing clarity, what it might be like to unravel that composure not with spite, but with a touch. To see those blue wings shiver. To hear that measured voice break on a gasp.
The image was so potent, so utterly forbidden, that it crashed over him with the force of a wave. His stomach clenched. His breath hitched. A sound tore from his throat—raw and entirely involuntary—as he reached his peak, his mind obliterated not by the woman on her knees, but by the phantom of the Moon Prince’s cool, assessing eyes watching him fall apart.
For a moment, there was only silence and the ragged sound of his own breathing. The room came back into focus, harsh and real. The constellations on the wall seemed stupid, a cheap imitation of a real sky.
The girl rose, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, that same triumphant grin on her face. “See?” she said, her voice husky. “Happiness.”
Dane looked at her, at the smug satisfaction in her posture. He felt nothing. A profound, yawning emptiness. He bent, gathered his shirt and jacket from the floor, his movements stiff.
“You should go,” he said, not looking at her. “Before your father wonders where the Emissary’s precious daughter is.”
Her grin faltered. “You’re not staying?”
“No.” He pulled his shirt on, the fabric clinging unpleasantly to his damp skin.
She watched him, confusion turning to a flicker of anger. She’d played her part, and now the prince was dismissing the player. Without another word, she smoothed her dress and left, the door clicking shut behind her with a finality that echoed.
Alone, Dane finished dressing with clumsy fingers. The room felt colder. The liquor from earlier curdled in his gut, mixing with a self-loathing so acute it was a taste in his mouth. He found the bottle he’d brought from the pavilion, half-full, on a delicate silver vanity. He drank from it directly, the burn doing nothing to cleanse the phantom taste of jasmine and regret.
He stumbled out into the corridor, the bottle dangling from his fingers. The palace was a tomb of polished moonstone and shadow, the only sound the distant, melancholic drip of water from some hidden fountain. His footsteps were too loud. His wings felt like lead weights.
You are a blur of gold and impulse.
Your rebellion is just a smaller, more predictable enclosure.
Wren’s words chased him, each one a lash. He was drunk, but not drunk enough. Not enough to silence the echoing chamber of his own thoughts. He had orchestrated a petty victory, forced a stay, all to prove a point to a man who likely saw it as just another erratic variable in need of containment. And in doing so, he’d proven nothing except his own pathetic reach for any shred of power, any way to feel seen.
He took another swig, the world tilting gently on its axis. He didn’t know where he was going. He just needed to move, to outrun the perfect, silvered stillness of this place and the reflection it forced him to see.
He just needed to move, to outrun the perfect, silvered stillness of this place and the reflection it forced him to see.
He rounded a corner and nearly collided with a moon-fae guard. The guard’s armor, etched with phases of the moon, gleamed under the corridor’s soft glow, and his face was an impassive mask of duty. He held a polearm loosely, but his posture shifted to one of careful recognition.
“Prince Dane,” the guard said, his voice a low, even baritone. “You appear… displaced. May I escort you to your chambers?”
Dane managed a sloppy, half-formed salute with his bottle. “Lead on, my celestial sentinel. I’m a bit turned around in all this tasteful gloom.”
The guard gave a slight, patient nod and began walking. Dane fell into step beside him, the silence stretching. The quiet was worse than the man’s judgment.
“So,” Dane said, his voice echoing more than he intended. “Night shifts. Must be dull as hell when everyone’s asleep. You ever just… talk to the portraits? I swear that one of the lady with the crescent-moon hair just winked at me.”
The guard’s mouth twitched, barely. “The vigilance is its own reward, Your Highness.”
“Right, right. Noble.” Dane took a final, draining pull from the bottle, the liquor now warm and sickly-sweet. He tossed the empty vessel onto a plush runner; it rolled with a hollow thunk before settling against the wall. “You know what’s not noble? This headache starting behind my eyes. Your moon-wine is deceptive. It’s like being stabbed with an icicle.”
They ascended a broad, curling staircase of pale wood. The air grew cooler, carrying the faint, mineral scent of mountain stone. The guard paused at the top of a long, quiet hallway lined with identical silver-webbed doors. He gestured to the one on the left.
“Your apartment, Prince Dane.” His voice dropped to something approaching a whisper as they passed the door immediately to the right. “I must ask for quiet, however. This wing houses… sensitive quarters.”
Dane blinked, his foggy brain processing the implication. He stared at the door to the right, plain except for a single, elegant carving of a clouded leopard curled in a circle. Wren’s animal.
A raw, incredulous laugh bubbled in his throat, but he choked it back. The irony was a physical cramp in his side. Of course. His cage was directly adjacent to the keeper’s. His father’s maneuver had a poetic cruelty he could almost appreciate.
“Sensitive quarters,” Dane repeated, matching the guard’s hushed tone with a mocking lilt. “Wouldn’t want to disturb the royal beauty sleep. Got it.”
The guard said nothing, just opened the door to Dane’s room with a small bow. Dane stumbled inside, the door clicking shut behind him with a sound of profound finality.
The room was as cold and pristine as he remembered from his earlier, cursory inspection. Moonlight streamed through the large, un-shuttered window, painting everything in monochrome. The bed looked like a slab of carved ice. The bottle was gone. The noise was gone. There was only the yawning silence and the ghost-taste of jasmine.
The alcohol, held at bay by adrenaline and spite, finally claimed its due. It hit him like a collapsing wall. The room swam. His legs refused their assignment. He didn’t make it to the bed. He sagged against the wall beside the door, the cool stone a relief against his feverish temple. His golden wings slumped, dragging on the floor with a sound like settling leaves.
His last coherent thought was a blur of silver and green, of a voice saying You complicate everything, before the darkness at the edges of his vision surged forward and swallowed him whole.
He didn’t dream. There was just a formless, heavy blackness, a drowning sea of nothing. Then, a sound punctured it. A soft, precise click. A door, opening and closing. Not his door. The one next to his.
Dane surfaced through layers of thick, oppressive unconsciousness. He lay on the floor, his body one solid ache, his wings pinned painfully beneath him. The moonlight had shifted. A pale, pre-dawn grey now seeped into the room, doing nothing to soften the sharp, drilling pain behind his eyes. His mouth felt stuffed with ash and old wool.
The sound hadn’t been loud, but in the absolute stillness of the wing, it was a gunshot.Wren. Leaving or returning? The question was a faint flicker, instantly extinguished by the throb in his skull. He didn’t care. Curiosity was a luxury for the hydrated and the morally upright.
With a groan that scraped his throat raw, he shoved himself onto his hands and knees. The world pitched violently. He crawled the short, agonizing distance to the window. The cool, pre-dawn air was a merciless assault. He grabbed two fistfuls of the heavy, silver-black curtain and yanked with all his waning strength, plunging the room into a blessed, stuffy darkness.
He collapsed onto the floor again, this time within arm’s reach of the bed. He didn’t have the strength to climb into it. Sleep reclaimed him instantly, a brutal, uncompromising thief.
The noise this time was not a click. It was a sustained, percussive violence against wood.Boom. Boom.BOOM.
It wasn’t knocking. It was an assault. Each impact resonated through Dane’s skull as if the door were inside his head. He jackknifed into a sitting position, a bolt of white-hot pain shearing through his temples. Nausea roiled in his gut. The room was still dark, but a thin, hostile line of light bled under the door.
“Get up.” The voice from the hallway was unmistakable.Wren. But it was a sound Dane had never heard before—strained, razor-edged, vibrating with a fury that seemed to warp the very air. “Dane. Get up now.”
Dane groaned, a sound of pure animal misery. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, as if he could push the pain back in. “Go away,” he croaked, but it was a pitiful whisper lost in the pounding.
The hammering didn’t stop. If anything, it intensified. The door shuddered in its frame.
“Seven hells,” Dane spat. He rolled, pushed himself onto unsteady feet. The room spun, a carousel of nausea and shadow. He took a blind step toward the door, his bare foot catching on the leg of a small, elegant writing stool he hadn’t noticed last night.
He went down hard, his knee and palm hitting the floor with a sickening crack. A blistering curse ripped from him, vicious and fluent. He kicked the stool, sending it skittering across the stone with a screech that made his teeth ache.
He lumbered up again, fueled by rage and a profound desire for the noise to stop. He fumbled for the door latch, his fingers clumsy, and finally yanked it open.
The light from the corridor was a physical assault. He squinted, raising a hand to shield his eyes. His vision swam, then focused.
Wren stood there, backlit by the soft morning glow of the hall lanterns. He was fully dressed in princely regalia, a tunic of deep grey edged in silver, his posture rigid. But his face was a revelation. The cool composure was shattered. His skin was paler than usual, almost translucent, and dark, bruise-like smudges stained the skin beneath his fiercely bright eyes. His mouth was a tight, bloodless line. He looked like he hadn’t slept at all. He looked livid.
Dane’s aching brain struggled to compute. This wasn’t the irritated prince from the terrace. This was something else entirely.
Dane leaned heavily against the doorframe, mustering every ounce of his depleted will to conjure a smirk. His voice was a ragged scrape. “Are you trying to break my door down? They have this thing called knocking. It’s quieter.”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He turned his back on Wren, stumbling toward the vanity where a porcelain basin and pitcher sat. The indifference was a performance, and a poor one. He poured water, the splash alarmingly loud, and cupped his hands, dumping it onto his face.
The shock of it helped, a little. He did it again, droplets flying, soaking the front of his rumpled, stale shirt. He straightened, water sluicing down his neck and chest. He pushed his damp, tangled hair back from his forehead, his wings giving an involuntary, stiff flex behind him, shaking off droplets that pattered onto the floor.
He didn’t turn around. He spoke to Wren’s reflection in the dark, polished surface of the vanity mirror.
“Look,” he said, his voice clearer now but hollow. “I get it. My father strong-armed your father into this… summer arrangement. You drew the short straw. But you don’t actually have to do the babysitting job. Just point me toward the library or the stables or whatever scenic boredom you have planned and leave me to it.” He finally turned, leaning back against the vanity, crossing his arms over his damp chest. He met Wren’s furious, exhausted gaze. “It’ll be better for everyone if you don’t try to… what was it? ‘Educate’ me. I’m a poor student.”
Wren didn’t move from the doorway. His chest rose and fell with a controlled, deep breath that did nothing to ease the storm in his eyes. His gaze swept over Dane—the water-soaked shirt, the disheveled hair, the shadow of yesterday’s recklessness etched into every line of his face. He took in the room: the empty bottle by the wall, the overturned stool, the curtains ripped shut against the day.
He took in the room: the empty bottle by the wall, the overturned stool, the curtains ripped shut against the day.
“Babysitting,” Wren repeated, the word a flat, dangerous thing. His voice had lost its music. It was scraped raw and cold as stone. “Is that what you think this is?” He finally stepped inside, his movements precise and tightly wound. The door swung shut behind him, sealing them in the dim, messy room. The air grew thinner. “Look at this. Look at yourself.”
“I’m looking,” Dane said, forcing a shrug. The motion sent a fresh spike of pain through his temple. “Seems fine to me.”
“Fine.” A muscle twitched in Wren’s jaw. He took another step forward, the soft soles of his boots whispering against the stone floor. “You reek of spirits and poor decisions. You’ve been here less than a full night and already you’ve publicly humiliated a visiting dignitary’s daughter.”
Dane barked out a laugh. It sounded ugly in the quiet room. “Oh, was that a humiliation? Seemed pretty mutual to me. She got what she wanted.”
“And what did you get?” Wren shot back, his green eyes blazing. “Besides a trophy for your collection of regrets?”
The question was a direct hit, landing squarely on the bruise in Dane’s chest. He had gotten nothing. Less than nothing. He had crawled back to this room feeling emptier than when he’d left it. He stared at Wren, at the palpable, sleepless anger vibrating off him. It was so much hotter, so much more alive, than the usual cool disdain.
Dane had never cared for rules. He never liked being caged, not even in one laced with golden glory. He slips into quiet reflection, staring at Wren from across the room. It baffled him how perfectly at ease it seemed to him, to live out your life wearing composure like a collar. Yes, it was true, Dane wore a mask, but the more he looked at Wren, the more Dane realized the Moon Prince wore one too. Wren was a performer too—but of a different kind.
Dane studies every little detail in Wren. His eyes, the presentation of his clothes, the way his muscles looked tense and rigid under the fabric. Wren was beautiful, even with spite pouring out of his tongue towards him. Maybe even more so because of it.
“I got a good night’s rest,” Dane lied, spreading his hands. “Or I was trying to, before the siege of my chambers began.”
“This is not a game,” Wren said, his voice dropping low. He took another step. They were only a few feet apart now. “Your father may see your stay as a political bargaining chip, a way to keep you out of trouble in his own court. But you are here, in my home.” He emphasized the last two words, each one a hammer strike. “Your actions have consequences here. They reflect on my family. On me.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m just a variable in your equations,” Dane snarled, the terrace words coming back like a toxin. “Something to be calculated and contained. Don’t worry, your highness. I’ll stay in my little box. I’ll be a good, quiet pet.”
“You are not a pet.” Wren’s composure cracked fully then, his voice rising. “You are a liability who walks around with a lit torch in a room full of parchment! You think I wanted this? Any of this? To have you shoved into the room next to mine, to know that every stupid, selfish thing you do will land at my feet to clean up?”
He was breathing heavily now, a flush of color high on his pale cheeks. The perfect prince was gone, replaced by someone ferocious and unspooling. “You think I enjoy seeing you like this? Wasted and stumbling and determined to prove every low opinion everyone has ever held of you?”
Dane’s own anger evaporated, doused by the unexpected flood of Wren’s. He just watched, mesmerized, as the mask shattered. This was real. This was the raw, unfiltered truth he’d glimpsed on the terrace, now unleashed. It was terrifying. It was magnificent.
“Then what do you want, Wren?” The name fell from his lips, stripped of title, a bare and vulnerable sound.
Wren stared at him, chest still heaving. The silence stretched, taut and fragile. When he spoke again, the fury had burned down to a hard, glowing ember of resolve. “I will be shadowing you for the duration of your stay. Every hour. Every day.”
Dane blinked. “What?”
“You will behave,” Wren continued, his words measured and sharp as shards of ice. “You will act with a decorum befitting a prince of a allied court. You will attend your lessons, you will observe our customs, and you will not embarrass yourself or anyone else again.” He took a final step, closing the last of the distance between them. “Because I see you, Dane Aerion. I see you are not as indifferent as you pretend to be. Your performance is spectacular, but it is just that. A performance.”
This strikes a cord in Dane, and he steps closer too until they’re inches away from each other. He could smell the crisp, clean scent of him, like night air and pressed linen, a stark contrast to his own sour musk. He could see the faint flecks of silver in Wren’s storm-green irises, the almost imperceptible tremor in his tightly clasped hands.
Dane tilts his head, a slow, deliberate motion. His heart was pounding against his ribs, a wild drum against the quiet tension. “Aww,” he breathed, his voice a low, intimate taunt. “Are you gonna set me straight then?” He leaned in, a fraction of an inch. The space between them crackled. “Only a Moon Prince heir would have that much faith in someone so… what was it you said? Reckless? Infuriating?”
Wren didn’t retreat. He held his ground, his gaze locked on Dane’s. The anger was still there, but it was mixing with something else, something more complicated. A challenge. A recognition.
“Yes,” Wren said, the word barely a whisper. It wasn’t an answer to the question. It was an acknowledgment of everything in the room—the mess, the tension, the unbearable, unwelcome truth hanging between them.
Outside, the first true rays of dawn finally pierced the ripped curtains, painting a single, brilliant stripe of gold across the floor between them, illuminating the dust in the air like suspended stars.