Chapter 3: Midair Confessions
The week that followed was a special kind of torture.
Leona would be in a strategy meeting, listening to a councilor drone on about irrigation disputes, and his mind would snag on the memory of a sparkle catching torchlight. He’d be reviewing guard rotations, and the phantom sensation of cool fingers on his jaw would derail his focus entirely. He tried to run himself ragged with physical exertion, spending hours in the training yards or running the palace perimeter at dawn, but the exhaustion only made his thoughts softer, more permeable. In the quiet after the burn, the image of Vil in the morning sun, barefoot and freckled, would surface with startling clarity.
He thought about the kiss. Constantly. The brief, shocking warmth of it, the softness of Vil’s lips against his own, which felt perpetually chapped from the savanna wind. He thought about the faint, sweet-tart taste of pomegranate. He thought about how, for one blinding second, he hadn’t thought at all—he’d just leaned in.
And he wanted to do it again. Not a staged peck for an audience. A real one. To see if it would feel the same, or if the first had just been a fluke born of surprise.
He thought about Vil and his soft lavender omega scent, a subtle trail that had lingered in the corridor long after the car had left. He thought about his pretty amethyst eyes, which weren’t really amethyst at all but a piercing violet, and how they’d looked in the breakfast light—clear and unguarded. He remembered the ridiculous, magnificent sparkly jumpsuit and the audacity of that open back.
He groaned aloud, often, earning strange looks from servants and guards. He grimaced at himself in mirrors. Those thoughts were stupid. Pointless. A dangerous distraction from everything that mattered—his duties, his autonomy, his peace. Vil was simply too beautiful and distracting for his own good. That was all it was. A physiological reaction to a potent stimulus. Like a headache from strong perfume. That was the story he clung to, even as it frayed.
He booked the flight to the Shaftlands with a sense of grim resignation. Vil’s instructions were characteristically precise: an address in an upscale, leafy district of the capital, a firm 7:00 PM arrival time. “Don’t be late. He times the roast.”
The Venue family home was large, a modern structure of glass and pale stone nestled amongst ancient, weeping trees. It was wealth, but a quieter, more cultured kind than the sprawling royal palace. It spoke of success, not dynasty. Leona stood at the door, feeling oddly underdressed in dark trousers and a simple, well-cut shirt, a bottle of expensive Shaftlands red in his hand.
Vil answered the door himself. He looked different again. Softer. He wore dark, slim-fitting jeans and a grey cashmere sweater that looked incredibly soft. His hair was down, brushed to a smooth sheen. He looked like a version of himself meant for catalogues about autumn weekends. “You’re on time,” he said, a note of genuine surprise colouring his tone.
“You said he times the roast,” Leona muttered, handing him the wine.
A faint smile. “Come in.”
The interior was warm, lit by artful clusters of lamps, the walls adorned with dramatic black-and-white photography and modernist paintings. It was impeccably clean, but lived-in. A grand piano sat in one corner, a book of sheet music open on the stand. The air smelled of rosemary, garlic, and roasting meat.
“Leona! Finally!”
Eric Venue emerged from a hallway, wiping his hands on a kitchen towel. He was a tall man, with Vil’s same striking bone structure and platinum hair, though his was cropped short and silvered at the temples. His eyes were a warmer blue, crinkling at the corners. He moved with a dancer’s residual grace, even in simple trousers and a linen shirt. He didn’t offer a hand, but stepped forward and clasped Leona’s shoulder, his gaze appraising but kind. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Mostly from 5 years ago, mind you. My son’s recent reviews have been suspiciously sparse on details.”
“He’s probably editing out the best parts,” Leona said, and was rewarded with a booming laugh.
“Oh, I like him. Come, the wine breathes, and I want the full story of this scorpion. Vil insists it’s true, but it sounds like something from a bad adventure film.”
Dinner was… comfortable. Eric was a gracious, talkative host, effortlessly steering conversation from Leona’s work on the Savanna’s southern border disputes to the politics of the theatre world, to the best soil composition for growing the particular roses climbing the terrace. He spoke of Vil’s mother only once, a passing reference to her love of those roses, her smile gentle and unburdened by overwhelming grief. It was simply a fact of their history, acknowledged with love.
Leona tried. He listened more than he spoke, which wasn’t unusual for him. When he did speak, he was respectful, direct. He asked Eric about his transition from ballet to stage acting. He didn’t pretend to know about theatre, but his questions were sharp, about logistics and stamina rather than art, which Eric seemed to appreciate.
The affection part was harder. He followed Vil’s lead. When Vil reached for the salt, his hand brushed Leona’s wrist, a deliberate, casual touch. Leona didn’t flinch. He let it happen. Later, when Vil made a wry comment about a director they both knew, Leona nudged Vil’s foot under the table with his own—a small, stupid retaliation that made Vil’s eyes flicker with surprised amusement. It felt less like acting and more like a bizarre, silent conversation.
What Leona noticed most, however, was Vil himself. Around Eric, the meticulously constructed public figure dissolved. His posture, while still elegant, lost its theatrical rigidity. He argued with his father about the correct way to tie a roast, his nose scrunching in a way that was utterly undignified and real. He laughed without first checking how it sounded. When Eric teased him about his childhood obsession with a particularly flamboyant stage magician, Vil actually blushed, a faint pink staining his cheeks, and threw a linen napkin at his father’s head.
He was at ease. Truly, unguardedly at ease. Leona had seen glimpses—over breakfast, in the quiet of the guest room. But this was sustained. This was Vil in his native habitat, not performing for a crown or a camera, but simply existing as a son. It was subtle, the relaxation in his shoulders, the lack of calculation in his smiles, but Leona noticed it. He catalogued it. This version of Vil was somehow more vivid, more dangerous, than the one in the sparkly jumpsuit.
After dessert—a lemon tart that was admittedly incredible—Eric shooed them out of the kitchen. “Go, sit. Talk. I’ll handle this. Vil, show him the garden before the night chill sets in.”
The terrace was cool, strung with delicate fairy lights. The city glittered in the valley below. For a moment, they just stood in silence, the sounds of Eric clattering dishes a comfortable domestic backdrop.
“He likes you,” Vil said finally, his voice low. He leaned against the stone balustrade, looking out.
“He’s easy to like,” Leona replied. “He’s nothing like you.”
Vil snorted. “Thank you.”
“It wasn’t an insult.” Leona moved to stand beside him, not too close. “You’re different here.”
“I’m home.” Vil said it simply. Then he glanced at Leona. “You did well. Thank you.”
“I didn’t do anything. Just sat there.”
“Exactly. You didn’t try to dominate the conversation. You didn’t posture. You were just… present. He values that.” Vil paused. “It’s why the scorpion story worked on him. It’s action, not words.”
Another quiet stretched. The lavender scent was faint here, mixed with the night-blooming jasmine from the garden below. It was easier to think it was all from the flowers.
“My mother,” Vil said, the words seeming to escape without his permission. “She was an omega too. A costume designer. Died in an accident when I was two. I don’t remember her at all. Just stories and photographs. Dad never… he never presented anyone else to me. It was always just us.”
Leona didn’t know what to say. “Sorry” felt hollow, useless. He just gave a slow nod, acknowledging the offering.
“He worries,” Vil continued, almost talking to himself now. “That I’ve built my whole life into a character. That I won’t let anyone see the cracks, so no one can ever really… get in. He thinks I’ll end up alone behind a very beautiful wall.”
Leona looked at Vil’s profile, etched in the soft light. “Are you?”
Vil turned his head, their eyes meeting. The vulnerability from the kitchen was gone, replaced by a familiar, guarded sharpness. “Isn’t that the entire premise of our arrangement, Kingscholar? A mutually agreed-upon wall with a very convincing gate?”
Before Leona could formulate a response—and what would that have been?—Eric called from inside. “Vil! Where do you keep the cloths for polishing silver? Not the display stuff, the everyday!”
Vil pushed off the balustrade, the moment shattered. “Duty calls. The guest room is at the end of the hall. Make yourself at home. We leave for the airport at seven.”
Leona stood outside for a long while after Vil left. The city lights blurred into a haze. A wall with a very convincing gate. The problem was, Leona was starting to wonder what was on the other side. And the even bigger problem was that part of him, the stupid, pointless part, really wanted to find out.
He found the guest room. It was pristine, decorated in shades of cream and charcoal. Too quiet. His own thoughts were too loud. He changed, washed up, and lay in the dark, foreign bed, listening to the muffled sounds of father and son moving through the house below, their voices a soft, indistinct murmur.
Hours later, a soft creak in the hallway pulled him from a shallow sleep. His door cracked open. Silhouetted in the low hallway light was Vil, holding a glass of water. He peered in, apparently checking if Leona was awake.
Leona stayed still, breathing evenly, feigning sleep.
Vil didn’t come in. He just stood there for a long moment, a statue in the doorway. Then, so quietly Leona almost missed it, he heard a whisper, not meant for anyone, a raw exhale of thought: “…too convincing.”
The door closed with a soft click.
Leona’s eyes opened in the darkness. His heart was pounding a hard, frantic rhythm against his ribs. The scent of lavender and night-blooming jasmine clung to the air in the room, though no flowers were there.
He spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling, the three words echoing in the silent dark.
Too convincing.
Leona didn’t sleep.
The whisper echoed in the silent room, a ghost of a confession that changed the shape of everything. He lay rigid, dissecting the two words until they lost all meaning. Too convincing. Did Vil mean the performance was exceeding expectations? Or did he mean the line between performance and reality was becoming dangerously thin? For which of them?
Dawn eventually bled grey light through the blinds. He showered, the hot water doing nothing to scour the confusion from his mind. He dressed mechanically. When he wandered into the sunlit kitchen, the scene was disarmingly normal. Eric was flipping pancakes at a wide stove. Vil, already impeccably dressed in tailored trousers and a soft-looking cream sweater, was setting the table. He moved with a studied grace that felt, to Leona’s newly suspicious eye, like a deliberate return to form.
“Good morning!” Eric sang out, gesturing with his spatula. “Hope you’re hungry. I make enough to feed a corps de ballet.”
“Coffee,” Leona managed, his voice gravelly.
Vil wordlessly poured him a cup, sliding it across the marble countertop. Their fingers didn’t brush. His expression was a smooth, pleasant mask. The vulnerability from last night had been sealed away, like a secret in a vault. It made Leona’s skin feel too tight.
Breakfast was a cheerful affair, dominated by Eric’s easy chatter. He asked Leona about the flight details, offered to have a driver take him to the airport later. “Plenty of time,” Eric said, passing a platter of syrup. “A whole day to enjoy. Though I suppose you two would rather be off alone.”
Vil took a precise bite of pancake. “Leona has his own schedule to keep, Father. We won’t monopolize your entire day.”
“Nonsense,” Eric waved a hand. “It’s a pleasure. You know, Leona, when Vil was at Night Raven, he’d write these long letters home. Mostly critiques of the catering or his classmates’ ‘artistic illiteracy.’” He chuckled, sipping his orange juice. “But once, he mentioned you.”
Leona froze, his fork hovering. Across the table, Vil went very still, his eyes fixed on his plate.
“Did he,” Leona said, aiming for neutral.
“Oh, yes. Said the Prince of the Sunset Savanna was attending. I asked what you were like.” Eric’s eyes twinkled with fond mischief. “My son, who could write three pages on the poor stitching of a uniform, simply said, and I quote, ‘He’s better when you just look at him instead of talk to him.’” Eric laughed, a warm, booming sound. “I remember thinking, what a brutally honest review! Who would have ever thought you’d end up dating him, Vil?”
The air in the sunny kitchen evaporated.
Leona felt a sharp, immediate spike of offense. It was a casual cruelty, the kind he’d heard a thousand times—that he was a pretty face with a foul mouth. Hearing it come from Vil, even years ago, lit a familiar, defensive fire in his gut.
But then he looked at Vil.
A vivid, startling blush was spreading up Vil’s neck, staining his cheeks and the tips of his ears a furious crimson. He was staring at his plate as if he could vaporize it with his gaze. His knuckles were white around his cutlery. It was the most purely, honestly flustered Leona had ever seen him. The offense morphed, curdling into a different, hotter emotion.
He was focused entirely on one part of the statement. You told your father I was handsome?
A slow, incredulous grin spread across Leona’s face. He leaned back in his chair, the tension melting into pure, unadulterated amusement.
“Is that right?” Leona drawled, his voice low and full of knowing delight. “I’m ‘better when you just look at me’?”
Vil refused to look up. “It was an observation of your generally uncooperative demeanor,” he said tightly, his voice strained. “Not an aesthetic critique.”
“Sounded like an aesthetic critique to me,” Eric chimed in, blissfully unaware of the silent warfare across his maple syrup. “He was very particular about beauty, even then. If he said you were nice to look at, it was high praise.”
“Father,” Vil warned, the word tight.
Leona’s grin turned wicked. He savored the sight of Vil’s composure cracking, the perfect porcelain finish developing a hairline fracture. All the previous night’s mystery and tension condensed into this single, delicious moment of payback. “So all those arguments,” Leona continued, leaning forward on his elbows. “All that time you spent telling me I was a lazy, wasted talent with the strategic grace of a stampeding rhino… you were just distracted by my face?”
Vil’s head snapped up. His violet eyes were blazing, but the blush only deepened, betraying him utterly. “I was critiquing your character,” he hissed.
“From a safe distance,” Leona purred. “Because it was better to just look.”
Eric laughed again, clearly enjoying the banter. “See? This is what I miss. Someone who gives it back to you.”
Vil shot his father a look of pure betrayal. He then turned his glare on Leona, but the effect was ruined by the persistent blush. “You are utterly impossible.”
“But nice to look at,” Leona finished, unable to resist. He took a smug bite of pancake. “According to the source.”
The rest of breakfast passed with Vil nursing a dignified, flustered silence and Leona in an uncharacteristically good mood. The earlier confusion and the haunting whisper were temporarily drowned out by the simple, visceral pleasure of having gotten under Vil Schoenheit’s famously thick skin. He had seen the raw data behind the performance: a teenage Vil, writing home, admitting—however begrudgingly—that he found Leona physically striking.
It was a weapon. A tiny, perfect piece of leverage.
After they helped clear the plates, Eric shooed them out onto the terrace again. “Go, enjoy the morning. I have calls.”
Once the glass door slid shut, the dynamic shifted. The sunny terrace felt like a cage. Vil stood with his back to Leona, hands braced on the balustrade, looking over the garden. His shoulders were tense.
“Don’t,” Vil said, before Leona could speak.
“Don’t what?” Leona asked, leaning against the doorframe. He could still see the faint pink on the back of Vil’s neck.
“Don’t make this into something it wasn’t. It was an idle comment from a teenager.”
“It was specific,” Leona countered, his voice losing its teasing edge. It was just a fact now. “You could have said I was an ass. You could have said I was lazy. You told your dad I was good to look at.”
Vil turned around slowly. The blush was gone, replaced by a cool, analytical expression. The performer was back, but Leona had seen the cracks now. He knew where to apply pressure. “Is your ego so fragile it needs validation from my childhood letters?”
“No,” Leona said, pushing off the doorframe and taking a step closer. “My ego’s just fine. I’m curious about your data collection methods. You were compiling a report.”
Vil held his ground, his chin lifted. “I observe everything. It’s my job.”
“This wasn’t a professional observation.” Leona was close enough now to see the faint gold flecks in his violet eyes. Close enough to catch the subtle, clean scent of his soap over the lingering lavender. “This was personal. You told your father about the pretty alpha prince who was too much of a pain to talk to.”
A muscle feathered in Vil’s jaw. His gaze flickered away for a fraction of a second, then returned, hardened. “And if it was? What does it change, Leona? We had a contract. We have a performance. A childhood crush is irrelevant.”
The word hung in the air between them. Crush. It was so simple, so adolescent. It shouldn’t have felt like a seismic disclosure.
Leona stared at him. The morning light caught in Vil’s pale lashes, gilded the strands of his hair. He remembered the feel of Vil’s lips, the shock of that kiss in the courtyard. He remembered the whisper in the dark. Too convincing.
Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was the residue of that delicious, teasing victory from breakfast. Maybe it was the raw, unvarnished look on Vil’s face right now, stripped of pretense.
Leona closed the last step between them. He didn’t touch him. He just stood there, invading his space, looking down at the flawless, frustrated face. “Irrelevant,” he repeated, his voice a low rumble. “Is that what last night was? Irrelevant?”
Vil’s breath caught. His eyes widened, just a little. He hadn’t known Leona was awake. He hadn’t known he’d been heard. The realization was a tangible thing, a shockwave through his carefully maintained posture.
He opened his mouth to say something, to deflect, to perform.
Leona didn’t let him. “My flight’s at seven,” he said, cutting him off. He turned and walked back inside, leaving Vil alone on the terrace, the ghost of a confessed crush and a whispered doubt hanging in the quiet morning air between them. The momentum of the encounter pulsed in his veins, a live wire of unresolved tension. The performance had just acquired a new, dangerous layer of truth.