Chapter 12: Chapter 12
The city’s rain was a fine, cold mist that seeped into everything, blurring the harsh lines of the palace district into a watercolor of grey and gold. Luke walked. The weight of the bag on his shoulder was nothing compared to the hollowed-out feeling in his chest, a cavern where his title, his future, and his pride had once resided. He had no plan, only a sequence. Leo. Kya. Now, Will.
Will lived in the Warrens, a sprawling, dense neighborhood where the buildings leaned together for support and the glow of holographic signage painted the wet streets in neon tears. It was a world away from marble and stained glass. The air smelled of frying oil, ozone, and the damp wool of too many people living in too-close quarters. Luke moved through the crowds, his head down, the brim of a borrowed cap pulled low. No one looked twice. Here, he was just another tall figure in the gloom.
The entrance to Will’s building was sandwiched between a noodle stall and a boarded-up tech repair shop. The foyer light flickered, buzzing like an angry insect. Luke took the stairs, the concrete steps stained and chipped. On the fourth floor, the sound of a guitar spilled from behind a scarred metal door—a furious, jagged riff that looped and broke apart, only to reform with more aggression.
Luke knocked. The playing stopped. A long silence followed, filled only by the distant thrum of the city.
The door opened a crack, a security chain taut across the gap. Will’s blue hair was a shocking splash of color in the dim hall light. His eyes, usually bright with challenge, were ringed with fatigue.
“Go to hell,” Will said, his voice flat, and began to shut the door.
Luke’s foot shot out, jamming it open. “I’ve just been. It’s crowded. We need to talk.”
“You need to vanish. I said everything in the—”
“You read a script,” Luke interrupted, keeping his voice low, urgent. “I know you did. Elara’s script. Leo confirmed it.” It was a bluff, but a necessary one.
Will’s jaw tightened. He stared at Luke, the resentment in his eyes battling with something else—worry, maybe. Curiosity. After a brutal second, he slid the chain free with a metallic snick and opened the door. “You have five minutes.”
The apartment was a single room, dominated by a rumpled bed, a scattering of music equipment, and a wall plastered with band posters and cityscape photographs. It was chaotic, vibrant, and smelled of incense and old coffee. Will didn’t offer a seat. He leaned against his cluttered desk, arms crossed, a human wall.
Luke set his bag down. The finality of the gesture wasn’t lost on either of them. “I saw the statement. ‘Don’t contact me again.’ Pretty clear.”
“It was,” Will snapped.
“Then I contacted you. What are you going to do, Will? Call the guards? Have the exiled prince thrown out?” Luke took a step closer, his gaze unflinching. “You said I lived in a gilded cage. You were right. Well, I just blew the fucking door off. I am no longer the Crown Prince. I signed it. My father sealed it. It’s done.”
Will’s defiant posture wavered. A flicker of shock broke through. “You… you what?”
“I abdicated. Two hours ago. The paperwork is probably being wired to every news outlet as we speak.” Luke let the words hang, watching them hit home. “So whatever leverage Elara had on you—threatening your place at the conservatory, your family, your band—it’s gone. I’m not a piece on her board anymore. That means you aren’t either.”
Will unfolded his arms, pushing off the desk. He paced the short length of the room. “You don’t know what she said she’d do. She had footage. Not just of us. Of my sister. Her job. She said she’d ruin them, have them investigated, bury them in legal shit they couldn’t fight.” He stopped, running a hand through his blue hair. “And she said if I didn’t make it convincing, if I didn’t make you hate me, she’d make sure you suffered worse. That it was the only way to… to protect you from yourself.”
“Protect the crown from me,” Luke corrected, his voice soft. “Not me.”
“It felt the same!” Will’s shout echoed in the small space. He was vibrating with pent-up frustration and fear. “You dropped this bombshell in front of the entire world and just expected us to catch it! You didn’t ask, Luke. You never fucking ask. You just assume we’ll fall in line with your grand romantic plan. Well, news flash, not all of us can afford to be romantic!”
The truth of it, sharp and deserved, carved into Luke’s already raw nerves. He didn’t deny it. “You’re right. I was an arrogant prick. I thought love was enough to shield you. I was wrong.” He closed the distance between them, not touching, just being in Will’s space, forcing him to look up. “But I’m asking now. Without the crown. Without any fucking thing to offer you except myself, which is currently a wanted man with a single bag of clothes and a lot of enemies. Do you want me to leave?”
Will’s chest rose and fell rapidly. His eyes searched Luke’s face, looking for the prince, finding only the man—exhausted, desperate, stripped bare. The anger seemed to drain out of him, leaving behind a weary vulnerability. “I hated saying those things,” he whispered. “I hated the look on your face when you watched it.”
“You were good. You sold it.”
“Shut up.” Will’s hand came up, fisting in the front of Luke’s damp shirt. It wasn’t a push. It was an anchor.
Their mouths met in a collision that was all relief and residual terror. It was nothing like the violent claiming with Leo, or the numb transaction with Kya. This was a drowning man gasping for air. Will kissed him back with a fierce, needy hunger, his tongue sweeping into Luke’s mouth, his teeth catching Luke’s lower lip. The taste of him—cheap mint toothpaste and the inherent sweetness that was just Will—flooded Luke’s senses, a grounding point in the chaos.
“You idiot,” Will murmured against his lips, tugging at his shirt. “You glorious, fucking idiot.”
They stumbled toward the bed, a tangle of limbs and frantic hands. Will’s fingers worked open Luke’s trousers, shoving them down over his hips. Luke did the same, pulling at Will’s jeans until they pooled around his ankles. They fell onto the mattress, a nest of crumpled sheets and discarded chords.
Luke rolled, pulling Will on top of him. He needed to feel Will’s weight, his solidity. Will straddled him, his smaller frame a perfect fit. In the dim light from the window, his blue hair was a halo of electric color. He reached between them, wrapping his hand around both their cocks, already hard and leaking. The first touch was a bolt of pure, undiluted sensation that made Luke arch off the bed.
“Fuck, Will…”
Will squeezed, his palm slick with pre-come, setting a rough, swift rhythm. He leaned down, his breath hot against Luke’s ear. “You’re really nobody now?”
“Nobody,” Luke gasped, thrusting up into that delicious friction.
“Good.” Will bit his earlobe. “Then nobody can tell me I can’t have you.” His hand moved faster, the slide becoming wetter, messier. The obscene, slick sound filled the room, a counterpoint to their ragged breathing.
Luke’s hands found Will’s hips, digging in, guiding him. He needed more. “Will… inside. I need you inside me.”
Will stilled for a heartbeat, his eyes widening. It was a request Luke rarely made, a surrender he almost never offered. It broke the last of Will’s resistance. He scrambled for the bedside drawer, fumbling out a half-empty bottle of lube.
Luke spread his legs, bending his knees. Will coated his fingers, his touch turning clinical for a moment before he pressed one digit against Luke’s entrance. He pushed in slowly, watching Luke’s face. “Okay?”
“More,” Luke grunted, the stretch a bright, welcome pain. “Don’t treat me like glass.”
Will added a second finger, scissoring them, stretching him open with a focused intensity. His own cock, thick and flushed, lay heavy against Luke’s thigh. When he was satisfied, he slicked himself up, the bottle clicking as he set it aside.
He positioned himself, the blunt head pressing against Luke’s loosened ring of muscle. He held himself there, his body trembling with the effort of control. “Last chance to be a prince,” Will whispered, a ghost of his old smirk touching his lips.
“Fuck the prince,” Luke said, and pushed down.
Will drove up, sheathing himself fully in one deep, relentless thrust. The breath was punched from Luke’s lungs in a choked moan. It was fullness, a claiming that felt nothing like violation and everything like homecoming. Will began to move, setting a pace that was hard and steady, each stroke pushing a broken sound from Luke’s throat.
“This what you needed?” Will panted, his hips pistoning. “To be fucked like a commoner? To know you’re mine, not the kingdom’s?”
“Yes,” Luke hissed, his nails scraping down Will’s back. “Gods, yes. Harder.”
Will obeyed, slamming into him with a force that shook the bedframe against the wall. The room was filled with the sound of skin slapping against skin, of grunts and shuddering breaths. Luke gave himself over to it completely, to the raw physicality that burned away thought, memory, regret. He wrapped his legs around Will’s waist, pulling him deeper, meeting every thrust with a surge of his own hips.
Will’s rhythm began to fracture. “Luke… I’m close…”
“Do it,” Luke commanded, his own orgasm coiling tight in his gut. “Fill me up. Show me I’m yours.”
With a ragged cry, Will buried himself to the hilt and came, his body bowing as he pulsed hotly inside Luke. The feeling of that intimate flood triggered Luke’s own release. He came untouched between their sweat-slicked stomachs, stripes of white painting his skin, his vision whiting out at the edges as he clenched tight around Will’s still-throbbing cock.
Will collapsed on top of him, breathless, his face buried in Luke’s neck. They lay like that for a long time, hearts hammering in tandem, the sweat cooling on their skin.
When Will finally stirred, he didn’t pull away. He shifted to the side, keeping them connected, his arm thrown possessively across Luke’s chest. The neon sign from across the street painted shifting blue patterns on the ceiling.
“So what now?” Will asked, his voice hoarse.
Luke stared at the patterns. The weight of the question was immense, but for the first time all day, the panic was dormant. “Now,” he said, “we disappear. For a little while. Let the storm blow through the palace without us in it.”
Will propped himself up on an elbow, looking down at him. His eyes were clear now, resolute. “I know a place. Up north, near the mining towns. A friend of the band has a cabin. No one goes there.”
A fragile hope, thin as the dawn that would soon break, began to stir in the cavern of Luke’s chest. He reached up, tracing the line of Will’s jaw. “Will you come with me?”
Will’s answer was a kiss, soft and lingering. When he pulled back, he simply said, “Try and stop me.”
They left before the sky lightened from black to grey, catching a private hydro-lev that skimmed north over the rain-pocked river. Will wore a bulky sweater and kept his head down. Luke watched the palace spires diminish into specks, then vanish entirely. The hum of the engine and Will’s warm shoulder pressed against his were the only real things. He slept, a dreamless void, and woke to pine forests and jagged granite cliffs.
The cabin was exactly as Will described: isolated, weathered, and small. It clung to a rocky outcrop overlooking a vast, ink-blue lake. The air smelled of damp earth and resin. Inside was a single room with a stone fireplace, a worn sofa, and a bed under a sloping ceiling. It was cold. Will immediately built a fire while Luke stood at the window, watching the water.
“Home sweet shit-hole,” Will said, striking a match. The kindling caught with a hungry crackle. “It’s got running water, but the heater’s a demon. We’ll have to chop wood tomorrow.”
“I can do that,” Luke said. The simplicity of the task was absurdly appealing.
For three days, they did nothing but exist. They chopped wood. They drank bitter coffee. They fucked, often, with a desperate, absorbing intensity that felt like rewriting their history on each other’s skin. It was in their second week, tangled in the sheets one grey afternoon, that the aimlessness began to curdle.
Will was on his back, Luke’s mouth working slowly down his chest, his stomach. The cabin was silent except for the spit of the fire and Will’s increasingly ragged breaths. Luke took Will’s cock into his mouth, swallowing him deep, his tongue pressing hard along the sensitive vein underneath.
“Christ, Luke,” Will gasped, his hips lifting off the mattress.
Luke pulled off with a wet pop. “Tell me what you’re thinking about.”
“Right now? How good your fucking mouth is.”
“Before that. At the window. You were a million miles away.” Luke stroked him, a slow, tight twist of his fist.
Will groaned, pushing into the friction. “I was thinking about Elara. Smiling. Drinking her fancy wine in your old rooms.” His voice was thick with pleasure and bitterness. “She won. She gets everything. The throne, the respect… she gets to erase you.”
Luke’s hand stilled. The cold air of the cabin bit at their exposed skin. He crawled up Will’s body, aligning their faces. “Is that what you think? That she erased me?”
“Didn’t she?” Will’s eyes searched his. “You’re here. She’s there. That’s how it works.”
A slow, dangerous smile touched Luke’s lips, one Will hadn’t seen since the Game Room. It wasn’t playful. It was sharp enough to cut. “No. That’s not how it works at all.” He rolled off Will and sat up on the edge of the bed, the firelight painting his back in gold and shadow. “She thinks the game is over because I left the board. But I just changed the game.”
Will sat up, the sheet pooling around his waist. “To what?”
“To one where I know all her moves.” Luke looked over his shoulder. “You said she had footage. Of your sister. Other leverage. How did she get it? How does she coordinate it all?”
Will’s expression shifted from post-coital haze to focused understanding. “She has people. Lawyers. Security. They dig.”
“They communicate. They send orders. They keep records.” Luke’s voice was low, certain. “Nothing truly vanishes, Will. Not in our world. It just gets buried in layers of encryption and trusted servers.”
A fierce light ignited in Will’s eyes. He scrambled from the bed, naked, pacing before the fire. “Marek.”
“Who?”
“Marek. Our old sound engineer. A total chaos goblin. Got booted from the conservatory for… creatively redesigning the administration’s database. He’s a hacker. A good one. He hates the palace more than I do.” Will stopped pacing, pointing a finger at Luke. “He used to bitch about how the royal comms network had backdoors installed during the last regency. For ‘security.’ He said a child could listen in if they knew the drip-points.”
Luke felt the plan crystallize, cold and hard and beautiful. “Can you reach him? Discreetly?”
Will was already grabbing his discarded trousers, digging out a personal comm unit. “He lives off-grid. But he checks a dead-drop forum. I can get a message into the pipe.” He started typing, his thumbs flying. “What are we looking for?”
“Everything.” Luke stood, the blood singing in his veins. This was a better game. “The orders to you and Leo. The threats to Kya. The source of that photograph. Financial trails. Medical records—she had to coerce the court physician, too. I want the whole architecture of her conspiracy. I want to see the strings.”
Will sent the message, then tossed the comm unit onto the sofa. He looked at Luke, a wild, matching grin spreading across his face. “And when we have it all?”
“We don’t leak it to the press.” Luke walked to him, gripping his shoulders. “We deliver it, personally, to the one person she can’t bully or blackmail. The only person whose authority still outranks hers.”
Understanding dawned. “The Royal Council of Lords. The old guard. They tolerated her as Regent, but they never liked a woman with that much power.” Will’s grin turned feral. “They’d have to call a Tribunal. It would be a fucking earthquake.”
“An extinction-level event,” Luke corrected softly. He pulled Will in, their foreheads touching. “But we need it all, love. Every single shard. We only get one shot.”
The reply from Marek came two days later, a single line in the forum’s code: For the revolution. Access granted. A data packet followed, a tiny, terrifying key to a hidden digital vault.
It took a week of relentless, clandestine work. Will navigated the shadowy pathways Marek had unlocked, his face lit by the ghostly blue of a screen in the dark cabin. Luke sat beside him, cross-referencing names, dates, financial ledgers that scrolled past like nightmares given form. The scale of it was breathtaking.
They found the explicit threats to Will’s sister, the legal frameworks drawn up to dismantle Leo’s family holdings, the bribes to the physician to falsify Kya’s initial paternity scan. They found the photographer’s invoice for the cliff house, paid from a blind account that traced back to Elara’s private secretary.
And they found the orders to their father’s personal guard, authorizing the “containment” of the Crown Prince by any means necessary.
“She was playing him,” Luke whispered one night, his eyes raw from staring at the screen. A string of encrypted messages, decrypted, glowed before them. They were between Elara and the King, from the weeks leading up to the proposal. “Look.”
Will read aloud, his voice hollow. ”His sentiment is a weakness the Council already fears. We must steer him toward a mistake so public, so irredeemable, that his removal becomes their demand, not our request. A martyr to his own heart.” He scrolled. ”The Glick boy is the vulnerable pressure point. Apply it. I will handle the commoner.”
Luke’s father’s replies were shorter, colder. ”See it done. The line must be secured.”
The fire popped. Luke felt the last pillar of his old world crumble to ash inside him. It wasn’t just Elara. It was a collaboration. His father had sanctioned the systematic destruction of his relationships, his reputation, pushing him toward a brink from which abdication was the only escape. He had been curated into exile.
Will’s hand found his, squeezing tight. “Luke…”
“It’s fine,” Luke said, and his voice was terrifyingly calm. The emotional fracture was so complete it felt like silence. “It just clarifies the target.” He turned to Will, his blue eyes reflecting the screen’s cold light. “We don’t just ruin Elira. We burn the whole fucking playbook to the ground.”
He leaned in, kissing Will with a possession that held no tenderness, only pact. “Pack your bag. We’re going back.”
“To the palace?”
“To the city. We stay in the shadows. Marek gets this whole cache to the Council Lords, anonymously, but timed perfectly.” Luke’s mind was moving ahead, plotting steps on a new, invisible board. “We need one more thing. A witness. Someone they’ll have to believe.”
“Leo?” Will asked, hesitant.
“No. He’s too broken. And he’s still a noble; they’ll say he’s protecting his interests.” Luke shook his head. “Kya. She’s carrying the ‘heir.’ She’s the perfect victim. And she’s furious enough to watch them burn.”
“Will she talk?”
Luke remembered the cold calculation in her eyes, the clinical way she’d used him. “She’ll talk. For the right guarantee. Safety. A new life. A promise that her child will never be a pawn in their game again.” He stood, the momentum pulling him upright. “We offer her the chance to tear it all down. I think she’ll take it.”
Will looked at the screen, at the horrific tapestry of manipulation they’d unraveled. He then looked at Luke, who was no longer a prince in exile, but something far more dangerous: a man with nothing left to lose and the keys to the kingdom’s secrets.
“Okay,” Will said, powering down the terminal. The room plunged into near-darkness, lit only by the dying embers. “Let’s go start the fire.”