Chapter 12: Royal Retribution
The trip to the local market was supposed to be casual. A way to kill an afternoon, to show Vil’s family the “authentic” side of the kingdom, as if royalty ever touched authenticity. Leona moved through the crowded stalls like a storm cloud, the cheerful noise and vibrant colors grating on his already frayed nerves.
Vil, of course, was a vision. He wore a simple, expensive linen sundress the color of sea foam, his hair tied back in a loose braid. He looked effortless and out of place, a pearl among the clay pots and woven baskets. He had perfected the art of the adoring partner, staying close, his hand often finding the small of Leona’s back. Each touch was a brand.
“Look at these, darling,” Vil said, holding up a pair of ridiculously garish earrings to his own ears. He smiled at Leona, a public, polished thing that didn’t reach his watchful violet eyes.
Leona grunted. He was still vibrating from breakfast, from the phantom pressure of Vil’s hand and the searing whisper in his ear. Every glance, every innocent brush of Vil’s arm felt like a calculated move in a game he’d started but was rapidly losing control of.
They stopped at a stall selling hand-dyed silks. Falena and the others lingered a few paces behind, giving the “couple” a semblance of privacy. A low wooden bench, meant for weary shoppers, sat against the stall’s post.
Leona sank onto it, glad for a moment to not be moving. The sun was a relentless weight. He tipped his head back against the warm wood, closing his eyes for a second. A mistake.
He felt Vil’s presence before he saw him. A shift in the light, a hint of his clean, citrus scent cutting through the market’s spice and dust. Then, instead of sitting beside him, Vil simply turned and settled into his lap.
It wasn’t a graceful, hesitant thing. It was a deliberate, smooth descent, the full, perfect weight of him coming to rest squarely on Leona’s thighs. The thin linen of Vil’s dress and Leona’s own shorts were negligible barriers. Vil wiggled, ostensibly to get comfortable, his back against Leona’s chest, and the subtle grind of his ass against Leona’s crotch was an electric shock.
Leona’s eyes flew open. His hands, which had been resting on his knees, spasmed. He instinctively gripped Vil’s hips, as much to still him as to hold him.
“Comfy?” Vil asked, tilting his head back to look up at Leona. His expression was all innocent curiosity.
Leona’s jaw was clenched so tight it ached. He could feel his body responding, a treacherous, humiliating heat pooling low in his gut. He leaned forward, his mouth close to Vil’s ear. His voice was a low, dangerous rumble only Vil could hear. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Sitting with my beloved,” Vil said airily, loud enough for Falena to possibly hear. He reached back and patted Leona’s cheek, his fingers lingering. “You looked tired, sweetheart. Sharing is caring.”
Sweetheart. The endearment, delivered with that cutting sweetness, was a weapon. Vil relaxed fully against him, a living, breathing challenge in his arms. Leona was trapped. Pushing him off would cause a scene. Letting him stay was a form of surrender.
So he sat there, in the middle of the bustling market, with the most beautiful man in seven kingdoms curled in his lap, and burned. He kept his hands on Vil’s hips, fingers digging in more than necessary, a silent warning. Vil just hummed, picking up a swatch of deep blue silk and holding it to the light.
“Don’t you think this would look stunning on me, babe?” Vil asked.
Leona didn’t answer. He was fighting a war on two fronts: one against his own traitorous physiology, and one against the furious, fascinated urge to bite the graceful column of Vil’s neck right there in front of everyone. To mark him. To make this real in the most primal way possible.
Eventually, Vil stood up, as smoothly as he’d sat down. He gave Leona a final, infuriatingly fond smile before drifting over to Falena to discuss the silk. Leona stayed on the bench, waiting for the raging evidence of his discomfort to subside, feeling like he’d just run a gauntlet.
Later, they found a vendor selling ice pops from a colorful cart. The treat was a minor relief in the sweltering heat. Cheka was already covered in sticky red syrup. Leona got a lemon-lime one, its sourness a welcome shock.
Vil chose a deep purple, grape-flavored one. He peeled the paper slowly, his movements fluid and precise. Then he leaned against a sun-warmed stone wall, his eyes finding Leona’s across the small gathering.
He took the first lick. It wasn’t a lick. It was a slow, deliberate slide of his tongue along the full length of the ice pop, his lips closing around the tip afterwards. His violet eyes never left Leona’s, holding a challenge that was both glacial and scorching.
Leona froze, his own pop dripping onto his fingers. Every scrap of blood in his body seemed to head south. He watched, hypnotized, as Vil’s mouth worked. The slow sucks. The way his lips, stained a deeper purple, wrapped around the frozen treat. The faint, obscene sound. It was a performance. A ruthless, targeted piece of sedition disguised as refreshment.
Vil finished with a soft, satisfied sigh, licking a stray drop from the corner of his mouth. “Refreshing,” he said, his voice a purr.
Falena chuckled, oblivious. “You always did have a dramatic flair, Vil.”
“It’s all about the experience, Falena,” Vil replied, his gaze still locked on Leona. “Don’t you think, darling?”
Leona crushed what was left of his ice pop in its wrapper. The cold pulp and sticky liquid oozed over his fist. He didn’t care. He needed the distraction of the minor pain. “Sure,” he growled, turning and walking away before he did something everyone would regret.
The day bled into evening. Dinner was a torment of lingering touches under the table, of Vil’s bare foot skimming Leona’s calf, of “babes” and “darlings” sprinkled through conversation like poison. Leona drank more than he usually would, but it did nothing to dilute the fever in his blood. It just made the edges of his control feel softer, more frayed.
Finally, blessedly, they were dismissed. The walk back to their wing was silent, but this silence was different from the night before. It was thick, charged, a fuse burning down to a powder keg.
Leona followed Vil into his room again. The door hadn’t even clicked shut before Leona had him pinned against it. He crowded him, his body caging Vil’s, his hands braced against the wood on either side of Vil’s head. He was breathing hard, not from exertion, from pure, unadulterated need.
Vil looked up at him, his expression composed, but his pupils were blown wide. The scent of him, usually so controlled, had a sharper, sweeter edge. Omega. Wanting.
“Practice,” Leona hissed, the word a curse. “You call that practice?”
Vil didn’t flinch. He lifted a hand, his fingertips cool as they traced the furious line of Leona’s jaw. “You’re the one who said we needed to get comfortable. I was just… acclimating.”
“You were trying to drive me insane.”
“Is it working?” Vil’s question was soft, genuine curiosity beneath the provocation.
In answer, Leona crashed his mouth onto Vil’s. This wasn’t the slow exploration of the night before. This was a claiming. A punishment. It was all teeth and desperation, a feedback loop of fury and desire. Vil gasped into it, his cool composure shattering. His hands flew up, not to push Leona away, but to fist in his hair, holding him closer, matching his ferocity.
Leona’s hands slid from the door to Vil’s body, gripping his waist, his hips, pulling him flush so Vil could feel exactly what his little performance had wrought. Vil moaned, a broken, honest sound that went straight to Leona’s core. He hitched one of Vil’s legs up around his waist, grinding against him, the thin layers of their clothes a maddening barrier.
“You want to play with fire?” Leona snarled against his lips, his voice ragged. “Fine. But you don’t get to control the burn.”
He spun them around, stumbling towards the bed. They fell onto it in a tangle, a echo of the previous night, but there was no pretense of rehearsal now. This was the real thing, stripped bare.
Leona kissed down Vil’s throat, sucking a mark high on his collarbone, a dark, possessive bloom against his pale skin. Vil arched beneath him, a breathy gasp escaping him. “Leona…”
The sound of his name, raw and unfiltered, hit Leona like a physical blow. He reared back, looking down at Vil sprawled beneath him, hair fanned out, lips swollen and parted, a flush painting his perfect cheekbones. He looked utterly wrecked. And real.
The realization slammed into Leona, dousing some of the frantic heat with a cold, sobering terror. This was the line. The point of no return. If he took this any further, the carefully constructed wall between their arrangement and reality would crumble to dust.
He hesitated, his body screaming to continue, his mind a storm of warning sirens.
Vil saw the hesitation. His eyes, hazy with lust, cleared a fraction. He searched Leona’s face, reading the conflict there. A slow, understanding, and unbearably sad smile touched his bruised lips.
“See?” Vil whispered, his voice hoarse. “It’s not just me.”
The truth of it hung between them, heavier than any touch. Leona, the master strategist, the one who had engineered this whole farce for his own convenience, was just as lost in it. He’d created a monster he could no longer control.
Leona pushed himself off Vil, off the bed, putting physical distance between them like a life raft. He stood by the bed, breathing as if he’d fought a battle. He couldn’t look at Vil.
“Get out,” Vil said softly to the ceiling, his arm thrown over his eyes. Not angry. Just… exhausted.
Leona went. He didn’t look back. He walked to his own room, closed the door, and stood in the center of the dark, empty space. The ghost of Vil’s taste was on his tongue, the feel of his body imprinted on Leona’s skin.
He had started this as a game of chess. He was now tied to the tracks, watching the train lights grow brighter, and for the first time, the idea of being run over didn’t fill him with dread. It felt, terrifyingly, like a form of release.
The door didn’t close behind him so much as he fled through it, the polished wood a fleeting boundary against the hurricane in his head. The villa’s cool, silent corridors offered no solace. He moved on instinct, feet carrying him past darkened sitting rooms and through archways that bled into the night. The scent of night-blooming jasmine was cloying now, a perfumed lie. He needed air that didn’t smell like desire and deceit.
He hit the beach at a near-jog, the shift from tile to cool, yielding sand slowing his frantic pace. The moon painted a silver road on the black water. The rhythmic crash of waves was the only sound that matched the chaos in his chest. He walked until his lungs burned, until the lights of the villa were distant specks. Only then did he stop, staring at the endless, dark horizon as if it held an answer.
“Couldn’t sleep either?”
The voice, lazy and familiar, came from the shadows to his left. Leona jerked his head, muscles coiled. His brother Falena was sprawled on a low lounger dug into the sand, a tablet casting a soft glow on his face. A half-finished drink sat beside him.
“Something like that,” Leona muttered, shoving his hands into his pockets. He felt exposed, raw under the vast sky.
Falena set the tablet down. “You look like you lost a war and didn’t enjoy winning it. Sit. The sand won’t bite.”
Leona didn’t want to sit. He wanted to keep walking into the sea. Instead, he dropped onto the sand a few feet from the lounger, drawing his knees up. The grainy coolness was a small, tangible anchor.
“Want to talk about it?” Falena asked after a moment of listening to the waves.
“No.”
“Must have been some fight,” Falena mused, taking a sip of his drink. “You only get this quiet and broody when something’s really gotten under your skin. Usually it’s a trade negotiation or father’s latest decree. Not… a person.”
Leona picked up a handful of sand and let it trickle through his fingers. The phantom weight of Vil in his lap, the lewd curve of his mouth around that ice pop, the shattered look on his face when Leona pulled away—it all played on a loop behind his eyes. “It’s nothing. Just a stupid argument.”
“Vil seems… intense,” Falena offered, his tone carefully neutral. “Passionate. That kind of fire is amazing when it’s aimed with you. Exhausting when it’s aimed at you.”
A harsh, mirthless laugh escaped Leona. “You have no idea.” The admission felt too real the moment it left his mouth. He dug his fingers into the sand.
“He’ll come around,” Falena said, shrugging. “Whatever it was. These things happen. You’re both strong-willed. It was bound to combust eventually.”
Leona was quiet for a long time. The confession, when it came, was pulled from him by the lonely vastness of the night, by the unusual, non-judgmental silence of his brother. It was couched in the lie, but the feeling beneath was a truth so sharp it cut his throat on the way out. “He’s infuriating. He’s calculating and manipulative and he plays games with a smile that could stop your heart. He knows exactly what he’s doing, every second. He’s the most controlled person I’ve ever met.”
He stopped, swallowing hard. The next words were quieter, almost lost in the surf. “And when that control breaks… it’s like watching a star collapse. It’s the most real thing I’ve ever seen. And it fucking terrifies me.”
Falena was silent for a beat. Then he let out a low, slow whistle. “Wow.”
Leona braced for a joke, for the easy dismissal.
It didn’t come. Falena’s voice was soft, serious. “You’ve never talked about anyone like that, Leo. Not ever.”
Leona didn’t have a response to that. He just stared at the dark water.
“So,” Falena said, shifting on the lounger. “How do you feel about him?”
The question hung in the salt-tinged air. Leona closed his eyes. He saw Vil’s defiant glare over breakfast, his performative sweetness in the market, his shattered vulnerability moments ago on the bed. He saw the ice pop, the lap, the kiss that wasn't a kiss but a declaration of war. He saw the actor and the man, and he could no longer tell where one ended and the other began, or which one he was fighting against, or which one he wanted.
“I don’t know,” Leona whispered, the words torn from a place he rarely acknowledged. “He makes me feel… awake. All the time. Like every nerve is live. And it’s exhausting. And I can’t stand it. And I don’t want it to stop.”
Falena let the silence stretch, the truth of Leona’s words dissipating into the sound of the surf. He took another slow sip of his drink, the ice cubes clinking softly.
“Okay,” Falena said finally, his voice thoughtful. “But I’m going to ask you something, and I want you to answer me honestly, as my brother.” He paused, turning his head to look directly at Leona in the dim light. “In all that, I didn’t hear you say you love him.”
The question landed like a physical blow to Leona’s solar plexus. His breath hitched. Shit. Yeah, he was supposed to say something like that, wasn’t he? That was the whole damn point of this performance. The script called for it. But the word felt like a boulder in his throat, too vast and heavy to lift into the lie.
He shifted in the sand, the grains suddenly abrasive. He forced a shrug, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near strained. “I didn’t feel like I had to say it,” he muttered, the defensiveness in his tone too sharp. “It’s a given.” He stared at his hands, digging his fingers back into the cool, damp sand beneath the surface layer. “Vil is… a difficult person to love.”
The statement hung in the air. And he weirdly didn’t feel like he was lying. It was true. Vil was meticulous, controlling, prideful, and ruthless in his games. Loving him wouldn’t be a gentle sunrise; it would be a permanent negotiation with a brilliant, volatile storm.
Leona swallowed, the next words coming out low and rough, scraped from a place he didn’t recognize. “But I still want him despite that.”
The admission was quieter than the waves. It felt more dangerous than anything he’d said all night.
Falena exhaled, a long, satisfied sound. He leaned back into his lounger, a wide, genuine smile spreading across his face. “Good,” he said, his voice warm with relief. “That’s… that’s really good, Leo. That’s the stuff that lasts.” He grabbed his tablet and stood, brushing sand from his trousers. “He’ll come back from whatever fight you had. Someone who looks at you the way he does isn’t going anywhere.”
With a final, reassuring clap on Leona’s shoulder, Falena turned and ambled back toward the villa, leaving Leona alone with the echoing crash of the ocean and the reverberations of his own honesty.
The way he looks at me. Leona replayed the words. He thought of Vil’s looks: the calculated charm, the defiant challenge, the unveiled hunger, the shattered hurt. Which one was real? Which one did Falena see? The cold knot in Leona’s stomach tightened. His brother, the future king, a man who dealt in state secrets and diplomatic nuance, had bought it. He had heard the raw edges in Leona’s voice and mistaken them for romantic truth.
The performance was too good. He was too good at it. Leona pushed himself to his feet, his body feeling leaden. The sand fell from his hands. He started walking back, not toward his own empty room, but toward Vil’s door. The hallway was a tunnel of shadows. He stopped before the dark wood, his hand raised to knock, hovering an inch from the surface.
He could still taste the grape popsicle. He could still feel the devastating grind of Vil’s hips in his lap. He heard his own voice, gritty with a confession meant for an audience of one: I still want him despite that.
Wanting was a trap. It was a biological imperative, a strategic complication. It was the one variable his cynical calculations had never accounted for—his own relentless, inconvenient desire. He lowered his hand. He didn’t knock. He stood there in the silent hall, a prince trapped outside a door he himself had locked, realizing the most convenient lie had become the only truth he had left.
He stood there in the silent hall, a prince trapped outside a door he himself had locked, realizing the most convenient lie had become the only truth he had left.
The cool wood of the door under his palm felt like a final barrier. On the other side was a complication, a challenge, a man who had turned his strategic escape into a personal siege. Leona took a breath, a sharp, deliberate inhale that did nothing to steady him, and slid his key card through the lock.
The soft click was deafening in the quiet. He pushed the door open slowly.
The room was dark, lit only by the thin blade of moonlight slicing through a gap in the curtains. Vil was a shape under the rumpled duvet on the massive bed, curled on his side facing the window. He didn’t move at the sound of the door.
“Schoenheit?” Leona’s voice was rough, unused.
No response. Leona stepped inside, letting the door sigh shut behind him. He approached the bed, his footsteps silent on the plush rug. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the details. The usually pristine hair was a tangled spill of platinum on the pillow. One pale hand was curled near his face, the knuckles looking sharp in the low light.
And his face. Even in shadow, Leona could see it. The faint, damp track on his cheek catching the moonlight. The slight redness around his eyes, visible even in the gloom. Vil looked carved from something fragile, something that had cracked.
Leona found himself sitting on the edge of the mattress, the movement automatic. The bed dipped under his weight. “Hey,” he said, the word softer than he intended. “You okay?”
Vil jerked, a small, startled movement. He turned his head slowly on the pillow. His violet eyes were wide, glistening in the dark. He quickly swiped a hand across his cheek, a futile attempt to erase the evidence.
“I’m fine,” he said, his voice thick, strained. He cleared his throat, turning fully to look at Leona. The defensive mask was sliding back into place, but it was crooked, cracked. “You startled me. What are you doing here?”
“My room key works on your door. Security thing.” Leona shrugged, his gaze not leaving Vil’s face. “You’re not fine.”
“I am,” Vil insisted, pushing himself up to sit against the headboard. He pulled the duvet up higher, a silken shield. “It’s nothing. Just… a professional disappointment. The role I wanted, the one I told you about during the drive here? It went to someone else. A lesser talent, naturally.” He gave a weak, theatrical sigh, looking away toward the window. “It’s merely pride. It will pass.”
Leona stared at him. He heard the lie in the too-perfect cadence, in the rehearsed quality of the grievance. This was Vil Schoenheit, an actor who had weathered critics and bad reviews and industry politics for years. A lost role wouldn’t reduce him to this silent, middle-of-the-night weeping.
He chuckled. It was a low, dry sound in the dark room.
Vil’s head snapped back toward him, eyes flashing with immediate, indignant annoyance. “You’re laughing at me?”
“Yeah,” Leona said, the truth easy now, somehow. He wasn’t laughing at the fictional lost role. He was laughing at the sheer, desperate drama of the lie itself. At the spectacle of this proud, controlled creature trying to hide a shattered heart behind a script. “You’re so dramatic.”
Before Vil could form a retort, Leona toed off his shoes. He swung his legs up onto the bed, settling back against the headboard beside him, not touching, but close. The space between them hummed with the ghost of every touch from the day—the lap, the popsicle, the crushed kiss against the door.
Vil stared at him, incredulous. “What are you doing?”
“Getting comfortable.” Leona looked at him, at the tracks on his cheeks, at the proud, wounded set of his mouth. The anger from earlier, the desperate want, it had burned down to something quieter, more terrifying. He smiled, a soft, unfamiliar tilt of his lips. “Relax. I like that about you.”
The words landed in the quiet space between them, disarmingly simple. Vil’s breath caught. A faint, shocked blush crept up his neck, staining his pale skin in the moonlight. He looked away, suddenly fascinated by a weave in the duvet. “You have a terrible way of showing it,” he mumbled, but the bite was gone from his voice.
Leona watched the blush spread, a visible sign of a truth Vil couldn’t act his way out of. He let the silence sit for a moment, heavy with everything unsaid—the market, the bed, the running away. “Sorry,” he said, the word foreign on his tongue. “For leaving. I needed a breather.”
Vil’s fingers tightened on the duvet. He didn’t look up. “You were the one who insisted on all the… practice. The acclimating.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“I know.” Leona leaned his head back, staring at the shadowed ceiling. “Turns out I’m a shit teacher. Can’t handle the curriculum.”
A faint, almost imperceptible sound escaped Vil. It might have been a fractured laugh. Or a sob. He drew his knees up under the covers, making himself smaller. “So what now? Do we call a recess? Declare the experiment a failure?”
Leona turned his head to look at him. Vil was watching him now, his beautiful face a landscape of exhaustion and wary hope. The popsicle, the lap, the whispered practice—all of it had been a weapon, yes. But it had also been a question. Leona had just spent an hour on a dark beach giving his brother the only honest answer he had.
I still want him despite that.
He shifted, turning onto his side to face Vil fully. The mattress sighed under his weight. “No,” he said, his voice a low rumble in the intimate dark. “I think we keep going. But maybe… without the audience for a bit.”
He reached out, his movement slow, giving Vil every chance to pull away. His fingers brushed a strand of hair from Vil’s damp cheek, tucking it gently behind his ear. The touch was nothing like the claiming grip from earlier. It was simple. A point of contact.
Vil flinched at first, then stilled, his eyes searching Leona’s face for the trap, the trick. He found none. He let out a shaky breath, his rigid posture softening by a degree. He slowly leaned back, his shoulder coming to rest lightly against Leona’s arm, accepting the shared warmth, the fragile truce in the dark.