Chapter 18: Scripted Truths
The air in his brother’s study was always too still, smelling of old parchment, beeswax, and the faint, persistent aroma of sandalwood incense that did little to mask Falena’s nervous energy. Leona slouched in a high-backed chair that was never comfortable, watching a dust mote dance in a sliver of late afternoon sun cutting through the tall window. He’d been summoned. It was never good.
Falena, behind the massive obsidian desk that had belonged to their father, wasn’t looking at parchments. He was looking at Leona with that familiar, weary affection that usually preceded a lecture.
“The reception in the Western Reach went well,” Falena began, tapping a stylus against his palm. “The reports say the locals were charmed. Both of you.”
“We’re a charming pair,” Leona said, his voice a dry monotone. He’d spent three hours smiling at elders and tasting overspiced stew, with Vil at his side radiating a flawless, approachable grace. It had been effortless. That was the disturbing part.
“It’s been, what, nearly five months now?” Falena said, leaning back. His tone was too casual.
Leona’s senses sharpened. “Thereabouts.”
“It’s settled something in you,” Falena observed. “You’re less… prickly at functions. You show up. On time, even. Mother has noticed.”
“Don’t start,” Leona warned, a low rumble in his chest.
“I’m just stating facts.” Falena set the stylus down. “He’s good for you. And for the Savanna’s image. The polling in the coastal regions has improved twelve percent since the… association was made public.”
“The ‘association’,” Leona echoed, the word tasting like ash. He thought of Vil that morning, five months ago, breathless and shattered against his sheets, the taste of him still on Leona’s tongue. He’d left thinking it was a contained event, a bizarre, intense footnote. It hadn’t been a footnote. It had been an opening sentence.
Since then, it was a blur of events. Gallery openings where Vil’s hand felt natural in the small of his back. State dinners where their whispered, sarcastic commentary under the table was the only thing that made them bearable. Late nights in Vil’s penthouse or his own rarely-used city apartment, arguing over takeout containers about inconsequential things, the silences between them never feeling empty.
They’d perfected their public act. The stolen glances, the casual touches—all calculated, all performed. But somewhere along the line, the calculation had stopped. Leona found himself reaching for Vil’s hand not because the cameras were nearby, but because he wanted to. He’d catch himself watching Vil from across a room, not monitoring a performance, but just… looking. Memorizing the way the light hit his hair.
It was a problem. A massive, tangled, silent problem.
Falena misread his silence. A slow, knowing smile spread across the king’s face. “So,” he said, his voice dropping into a conspiratorial warmth that made Leona’s skin crawl. “When are you going to pop the question?”
The world tilted. The dust mote vanished. The stale, perfumed air vanished from Leona’s lungs. He stared at his brother. “What?”
“The question, Leona. The big one. The ring. The kneeling, though gods know you’d complain about your knees.” Falena chuckled, genuinely amused. “It’s the logical next step. The people adore him. The council has stopped sending me dossiers on eligible omegas from allied territories. There’s a… peace.”
Leona stood up. The chair legs shrieked against the stone floor. “It hasn’t been that long,” he said, the words too sharp, too fast. A defensive snarl laced his tone. “Five months is nothing. A season. A fashion cycle.”
Falena’s smile didn’t fade; it just grew more pitying. “Time isn’t the measure. I knew after three months with my wife. Father knew after two with Mother.” He stood, coming around the desk, his posture open, reasonable. “I see the way you look at him. I see the way you are when he’s mentioned. That guard-dog tension leaves your shoulders. You’re happy. Or as close to it as you get.”
“You’re seeing what you want to see,” Leona spat, turning toward the window, his back to his brother. The view was of the inner courtyard, orderly and suffocating. “It’s an arrangement. A mutually beneficial public understanding.”
“An understanding that has you flying back from location shoots just to have dinner?” Falena asked gently. “An understanding where you personally called the editor of Vogue to ‘discuss’ the phrasing of a profile on him last month?”
Leona had done that. The profile had hinted, vaguely, at Vil’s ‘romantic past’. Leona’s call had been brief, brutal, and left no room for misinterpretation about future implications. He’d told Vil it was just protecting their shared asset.
“You need to lock this in,” Falena continued, his voice firming into kingly advice. “Someone else will. He’s Vil Schoenheit. The world is at his feet. Alphas with less baggage and more… consistent attentiveness are undoubtedly circling. If you know he’s the one, make it official. End the speculation. Give the people the fairy tale they’re already writing.”
He’s the one. The phrase was a spike driven between Leona’s ribs. This was the trap. This was the exact pressure he’d sought to avoid. The expectation to formalize, to legitimize, to own and be owned. A cold sweat broke out on the back of his neck.
“It’s not that simple,” Leona heard himself say, his voice hollow.
“It can be.” Falena clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “Think about it. That’s all I ask. Don’t let pride or some… outdated notion of rebellion cost you something real.”
Leona shook off the hand. He left without another word, the heavy door of the study closing with a final thud that echoed in the marrow of his bones.
He didn’t go back to his apartments. He paced the empty, torch-lit halls of the palace’s east wing, Falena’s words chasing him like feral hounds.
Pop the question. Lock it in. Someone else will.
The thought of Vil smiling at someone else, letting another alpha touch the small of his back, whisper in his ear… it unmoored him. It was a white-hot wire behind his eyes. The protectiveness he felt wasn’t performance anymore. It was a foundational, frightening truth.
But marriage? A permanent bond? The ultimate surrender to the very system he’d spent a lifetime scoffing at? To make real what had begun as a cynical lie?
He thought of Vil’s laugh, sharp and unexpected, when Leona made a particularly crude joke. He thought of the way Vil’s meticulous perfectionism crumbled when he was tired, leaving behind someone softer, younger. He thought of the morning after the pancake confession, waking with Vil wrapped around him, both of them pretending to still be asleep.
His feet carried him to the palace’s old comms room, private and shielded. He activated the secure line, dialing a number he now knew by heart.
It rang three times before the connection clicked open.
“To what do I owe this royal summons?” Vil’s voice was smooth, but there was a background murmur of chatter, the clink of glass. He was somewhere busy.
“Where are you?”
“Studio. We’re shooting the night scenes for the perfume ad. It’s all dry ice and pretending to be enchanted by a glowing bottle.” A beat. “You sound strange. Did the irrigation tariff committee break you?”
Leona leaned his forehead against the cool stone wall. “Falena just ambushed me.”
“Ah.” Vil’s tone shifted, the professional lightness leaching away. The background noise faded, as if he’d moved. “The ‘when are you settling down’ talk? I get those from my agent. Though mine are usually about investing in property, not procuring a spouse.”
“He asked when I was going to propose.”
Silence. A profound, utter silence on the line. Leona could hear his own heartbeat in his ears.
Then, a soft, airy sound—Vil’s breath, carefully released. “I see.”
“What did you tell him?” Vil asked, his voice carefully, impeccably neutral. The actor was back, front and center.
“That it hadn’t been long. That he was seeing what he wanted to see.” Leona’s jaw ached. “He didn’t believe me.”
“Well,” Vil said, and Leona could almost see the elegant, calculated shrug. “It is our jobs to be believable. We may have over-performed.”
This was the out. The chance to reaffirm the lie, to pack sand back into the crumbling dam. A safe, mutual retreat.
Leona didn’t take it.
“Would you?” The question was out, rough and naked, before he could stop it.
Another silence. Longer this time. When Vil spoke, the neutral mask had a hairline fracture. “Would I what, Leona?”
“If I… played along. With the fairy tale.” He couldn’t say the words. Popped the question. “Would you?”
Vil’s laugh was a short, brittle thing. “Is this a hypothetical? A strategy session?”
“No.”
The word hung between them, across the miles of desert and city. Leona heard a distant call on Vil’s end—“Places, everyone!”—and Vil’s muffled reply, “A moment, please.”
When he came back, his voice was lower, a private thread in the chaos. “Leona, you are asking me to consider making a permanent, legal, and wildly public commitment to a man who once told me romance was a biological distraction for the intellectually idle. This, after a six-month arrangement.”
“I know what I said.”
“Do you?” The question wasn’t sharp. It was searching. “Because if this is just the path of least resistance to get your family off your back, the answer is no. I don’t do walk-on roles in other people’s life dramas. Not anymore.”
It was the clearest Vil had ever been. The vulnerability was staggering, a counterpoint to his own.
“It’s not that,” Leona forced out, the admission scraping his throat raw. “It’s… the opposite of that.”
A soft intake of breath.
“I have to go,” Vil said finally, his voice hushed. “They’re waiting. This… we can’t do this here. Not now.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow. Dinner. Your place. Order something awful and greasy.” A pause. “And Leona? Don’t ask me questions like that over the phone unless you’re prepared for an answer.”
The line went dead.
Leona stood in the dark comms room, the receiver buzzing in his hand. He had no plan, no strategy. Only a terrifying, exhilarating freefall, and the distant, glowing possibility of a tomorrow.
The glow from the phone call faded by sunrise, replaced by the dull, persistent throb of reality. Leona spent the next day in a suspended state, attending to minor royal duties with his body present and his mind fracturing. Falena’s words—lock it in, someone else will—replayed alongside Vil’s quiet, devastating question over the phone: Is this a hypothetical?
By evening, the freefall feeling had hardened into a familiar, claustrophobic panic. The pressure was a physical weight on his chest. This was exactly what he’d wanted to avoid. Commitment. Expectations. The permanent closing of doors he wasn’t ready to see shut. He wanted Vil, with a hunger that scared him, but wanting and having were different. Having meant contracts, ceremonies, a life scripted by throne and tradition. He ordered the greasy takeout anyway, a conscious rebellion against the fine china of his own life.
Vil arrived precisely on time, a vision in charcoal gray silk that seemed to drink the low light of the apartment. He smelled of cold night air and his own subtle, clean fragrance. He didn’t smile. His violet eyes were cool, assessing.
“Long day with the enchanted bottle?” Leona asked, the attempted levity falling flat in the tense space between them.
“It paid for the wine,” Vil said, placing a bottle on the counter with a soft clink. His movements were precise, controlled. He surveyed the containers of food, the two plates set out on Leona’s simple wooden table. “This is… domestically austere.”
“You said greasy.”
“I did.” Vil finally looked at him. The searching softness from the phone call was gone, walled up behind a polished, impenetrable facade. “So. Talk.”
They served the food. They sat. The silence was a living thing, chewing up the space where easy conversation used to live. Leona pushed noodles around his plate, his appetite vanished.
“About last night,” he began, his voice too loud in the quiet room.
“The phone call,” Vil clarified, his tone neutral. He took a deliberate sip of water.
“Right.” Leona set his fork down. “I was… wound up. After talking to Falena. He got in my head.”
Vil watched him, waiting. The silence pressured Leona to fill it, to clarify.
“The pressure,” Leona forced out, the words jagged. “It’s the same pressure, just wearing a different suit. Before, it was ‘find someone suitable.’ Now it’s ‘make it official.’ It doesn’t stop. It just changes shape.” He took a breath, steeling himself. “What I said… asking you that… it was a reaction. To him. To the feeling of being cornered.”
Vil’s perfect posture didn’t change, but something in his eyes shuttered. “I see.”
“It’s too early,” Leona continued, the backtracking gaining momentum now that he’d started. Saying it felt like building a dam against the terrifying tide of his own feelings. “We said six months. It’s been five. This arrangement… it’s working. Why complicate it with… bigger questions?”
“Bigger questions,” Vil repeated softly. He placed his own utensils down, aligning them perfectly beside his plate. “Like marriage.”
“Like anything permanent.” Leona heard the defensiveness in his own voice and hated it. “Being tied down… even if it’s to something you… even if it’s good… it’s still being tied down.” He couldn’t say even if it’s you. The words stuck in his throat, a final betrayal.
Vil looked down at his untouched food. A muscle in his jaw feathered. The boiling silence was back, but now it was simmering with a new, dangerous heat. Leona could see him composing himself, the rise and fall of his chest measured, the long fingers of one hand pressing into the tablecloth.
“Why would you even bring it up then?” Vil asked, his voice dangerously calm. “If you were just going to fold under the pressure of a single conversation with your brother?”
“I wasn’t folding—”
“You are. You’re retreating so fast I can feel the wind.” Vil’s gaze lifted, sharp and bright. “You asked me a question that, for people like us, is a foundational question. It’s not ‘what are you doing next weekend?’ It carries weight. And now you’re saying it was just… panic? A knee-jerk reaction to royal nagging?” A cold, mirthless smile touched his lips. “I feel like a fool.”
“Don’t,” Leona snapped, his own frustration flaring. “Don’t be dramatic. It was a conversation. We’re having another one now. Can’t we just enjoy the dinner?”
Vil stared at him. The polished actor vanished, leaving behind someone raw and brutally present. “No.”
The word was simple, final, and quiet. It echoed in the space.
“No,” Vil repeated, standing up from the table. He didn’t raise his voice. He looked exhausted, a deep weariness that seemed to leach the color from his skin. “I can’t enjoy this dinner. I’ve spent five months performing a fairy tale for the public, and it seems I started performing it for myself. And for you. That’s on me.”
“Vil—”
“Our contract is for six months,” Vil continued, cutting him off. His voice was flat now, all emotion carefully incinerated. “One month left. Then this mutually beneficial arrangement concludes. You go back to fending off suitors with your bad attitude, and I go back to fending off producers with mine. Clean. Simple.”
Leona stood now too, the chair scraping harshly. “It’s not that simple and you know it.”
“I know that you dangle something real in front of me and then snatch it back the second it requires a single, genuine commitment from you!” The control cracked, finally. Vil’s words were swift and sharp, a volley of flung knives. “You get to have all the benefits—the companion, the ally, the distraction—with zero of the cost. You get to play house without ever buying it.”
“That’s not what this is!”
“Then what is it?” Vil demanded, his hands clenched at his sides. “Tell me what we’re doing, Leona. Because from where I’m standing, I’m just another obligation you’re trying to skip out on.”
The accusation landed with the force of a physical blow. Leona flinched. It was too close to the truth he’d told himself for months. It’s just an arrangement. A temporary solution.
“You’re not an obligation,” he growled, the words ripped from somewhere deep.
“Could have fooled me.” Vil took a step back, creating distance. The hurt was out in the open now, transmuting into a cold, protective anger. “You know, I’m glad. I’m glad you showed your hand tonight. I’m glad you ‘backtracked,’ as you put it.”
He looked Leona directly in the eye, his own violet gaze glacial.
“Because if you had actually asked? If you had gotten down on one knee with some royal heirloom ring after five months of this half-life?” Vil’s smile was a razor cut. “I would have said no. I’d never say yes to someone like you.”
The world narrowed to the space between them, to the brutal finality in Vil’s voice. Someone like you. A prince who saw relationships as strategy. An alpha who used romance as a shield. A man who ran from anything that looked like forever.
Leona stood completely still, the air knocked from his lungs. Every instinct screamed to fight, to refute, to close the distance and take and claim. But the truth of the insult held him pinned. It was the reflection of his own deepest fear, thrown back in his face with perfect, devastating aim.
Vil didn’t wait for a response. He turned, the silk of his jacket whispering against the quiet room, and walked out. The apartment door clicked shut with a soft, definitive sound.
Leona was left alone with the scent of untouched, greasy food and the echoing silence of his own choices.
Leona was left alone with the scent of untouched, greasy food and the echoing silence of his own choices. He stared at the closed door, his body coiled tight, waiting for it to reopen. It didn’t.
The silence in the apartment was absolute. He listened to the hum of the refrigerator, a faint siren echoing from the streets far below. He felt the exact shape of the hollow space where Vil had been standing just moments before.
He stood there until the takeout containers stopped steaming. He stood there until his legs ached from stillness. Then he moved, a single, violent sweep of his arm clearing the entire table.
Plates shattered against the far wall. Food splattered the pristine white paint in abstract, greasy stains. The crash was profoundly satisfying for exactly half a second.
Then the emptiness rushed back in, deeper and colder. He breathed heavily, staring at the wreckage. Someone like you. The words were embedded in his skull now, shrapnel from his own detonation.
His phone sat silent and dark on the kitchen counter. He thought about calling. He thought about texting something sharp, something that would cut back. He didn’t move.
Instead, he poured a drink, something amber and potent from a high shelf. He didn’t sip it. He stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, watching the city’s indifferent lights flicker, and let the ice melt until the glass was tepid in his hand. He replayed every word, every hesitation, every moment he’d chosen cowardice over courage.
I would have said no. That was the truth he couldn’t outrun. Vil had seen the retreat in his eyes before he’d even finished it. He had predicted the entire pathetic arc of Leona’s fear and held up a mirror to it.
Somewhere across the city, in a penthouse that smelled of orchids and clean linen, Vil Schoenheit was also not sleeping. He stood on his own balcony, the night wind pulling at his silk pajamas. The cool air did nothing to quell the hot, sick shame in his gut.
He had let the performance become the reality. He had written himself a starring role in a romance that only existed between the lines of a contract. He, the master of artifice, had been utterly, completely real with a man who treated authenticity like a tactical error.
A dry, humorless laugh escaped him. It was almost funny. The great Vil Schoenheit, undone not by a rival or a critic, but by his own pathetic desire for a man who saw commitment as a cage. He walked back inside, the marble floor cold under his bare feet.
He picked up his phone, not to call Leona, but to pull up a number labeled with a legal firm’s impersonal logo. His thumb hovered. One more month. That was all that was left on their agreement. Four more weeks of public appearances, of shared smiles, of private turmoil.
He couldn’t do it. Not for a single day. The thought of facing him, of having to perform that familiar, easy closeness, made his skin crawl. It would be a desecration of whatever genuine thing had almost, briefly, flickered between them.
Vil tapped the call icon. It connected after two rings. “Jerome. It’s Vil. I need you to execute the termination clause in the Kingscholar agreement. Effective immediately.”
The voice on the other end was calm, procedural. “There’s a financial penalty for early termination, Mr. Schoenheit. A significant one, as per clause 7b. It’s prorated, but given the sums involved…”
“I don’t care,” Vil said, his voice flat and final. He looked out at his own dark reflection in the glass. “Send the notice tonight. Process the refund for the remaining term. All of it.”
“Understood. I’ll draft the communication for your approval and handle the transfer.”
“Just do it.” Vil ended the call. He felt nothing. No relief, no sadness. Just a vast, sterile emptiness. He had ended a major studio film for less. This was just another professional dissolution.
He sent one final, separate email himself. It was not from his lawyer. It was from him. He typed it quickly, not allowing himself to edit, to soften, to perform.
Leona,
The contract is terminated. My lawyers have handled the financial recalculation; you’ll see the refund for the remaining term. Consider the obligation void.
Last night clarified everything. This was a performance, and I have lost the script. More importantly, I have lost my taste for the role. I cannot spend another month pretending a fairy tale I no longer believe in, especially with a co-star who walks offstage the moment the curtain threatens to stay up.
Good luck with your kingdom and your pressures. Find someone who doesn’t mind being a temporary solution.
V.
He hit send before he could think. Then he powered off his phone, tossed it onto a sofa, and went to bed. He did not cry. He planned his next day, a photo shoot for a winter campaign. He thought about what he would wear. He fell into a deep, dreamless sleep just as the sky began to lighten.
---
Leona woke with a dry mouth and a headache that wasn’t from the drink. He’d fallen asleep on the sofa, the lights still on, the wreckage of the dinner still on the floor. The sunrise was a harsh orange glare through the windows.
He fumbled for his phone, squinting against the light. Notifications littered the screen—emails from the palace scheduler, a news alert, a missed call from Falena he’d ignore.
And one email, flagged as important, from Vil’s legal team. Sent at 1:47 AM.
His thumb felt thick and clumsy as he tapped it open. The language was dry, legalese. …termination of agreement… effective immediately… prorated refund processed… His eyes skimmed the words, not fully absorbing them.
Then he saw it. A second email, from his bank. A deposit notification. The sum was large, familiar. It was the retainer for the final month of their contract, plus a calculated extra for the “breach.” Vil had refunded him. In full.
A cold, concrete weight settled in his stomach. This was real. This was legal. This was Vil drawing a line in the sand with the clean, sharp edge of a contract.
He closed the banking app, his pulse a dull thud in his ears. Then he saw it. Another email, sent at 2:02 AM. The sender was just V. No last name. No subject.
He opened it.
The message was brief. Brutal. He read it once. Then again, slower, each word a separate, precise cut.
…lost my taste for the role… a co-star who walks offstage… a temporary solution.
The phone screen blurred. He realized he’d stopped breathing. The hollow feeling from the night before expanded, caving in his ribs, filling him with a vacuum of pure, undiluted understanding.
He had done this. His hesitation, his fear, his royal, cowardly backtracking—it hadn’t pushed Vil away. It had given him the clarity to leave.
Find someone who doesn’t mind being a temporary solution.
The words were a perfect, final judgment. He sat alone in the morning light, the silence now complete, the refunded money sitting in his account like a tombstone, and understood exactly what he had thrown away.