Chapter 2: The Prince's Dilemma
Leona stared at Crowley like the man had just suggested they all go swimming in the lake of fire. The silence in the headmaster’s office wasn’t just quiet; it was vacuum-sealed, stunned. Then it erupted.
“You have got to be kidding me.” Leona’s voice was low, dangerous. His tail lashed once, a violent sweep that knocked a stray quill off a side table. “A kiss? From any of us? You’re treating this like some twisted party game.”
Crowley held up his hands, a placating gesture that did nothing to calm the rising temperature in the room. “It is not a game! It is a systematic exploration of the narrative solution! If the catalyst is a bond of profound connection, we must test the potential connections available. You are all leaders, figures of significance in his life!”
“My ‘profound connection’ is telling him his hair looks stupid when he uses too much product,” Leona shot back, his ears flattening against his head.
Azul cleared his throat, fingers steepled. “While I understand the desire for thoroughness, Headmaster, subjecting an incapacitated student to… a line of volunteers… feels ethically murky. And from a public relations standpoint, potentially catastrophic.”
Idia’s holographic avatar flickered with agitated pixels. “It’s a privacy violation of, like, epic proportions. Also, gross. The intimacy slider for this scenario is set to ‘creepy’.”
“I’ll do it!” Kalim announced again, smiling brightly. “If it helps Vil, it’s basically just CPR, right? A life-saving measure!”
Jamil, standing silently behind Kalim, pinched the bridge of his nose with a deep, weary sigh.
“It’s not CPR, it’s a narrative constant,” Crowley insisted, waving a thick, leather-bound ledger. “The historical record is indisputable! In every recorded instance of Somnus Envenenum, the awakening agent has been an act of profound romantic devotion, often, but not exclusively, expressed through a kiss from a sovereign figure or a soul-bonded partner.”
Rook, who had been ominously silent near Vil’s still form in the garden, finally spoke. His voice was uncharacteristically flat. “The probability is one hundred percent, oui? Then we must try. For Roi du Poison.” He moved towards the pale, sleeping figure with a frightening solemnity.
Leona watched this, a cold knot tightening in his stomach. The sight of Rook’s devotion, of Kalim’s innocent eagerness, of Azul’s clinical evaluation of the odds—it all curdled into something acid in his throat. He could see the scene play out: a procession of hopefuls leaning over Vil, a grotesque pageant he wanted no part in.
“Statistically, someone in this room could be the key,” Azul mused, adjusting his glasses. “As leaders, we each share a significant connection with Schoenheit. It’s a logical, if distasteful, deduction.”
“Logical?” Leona scoffed, the word sharp. “It’s deranged. You’re all lining up like kids at a carnival for a chance to plant one on the school’s top model because Crowley read a fairy tale.”
He pushed himself off the wall he’d been leaning against, his posture rigid. “I’m not playing. Those stories are bullshit. And even if they weren’t…” He let the sentence hang, the unspoken ‘it wouldn’t be me’ louder than any shout.
A flicker of something painful—witnessing Rook gently brush a strand of hair from Vil’s forehead—made him look away. The jealousy was a live wire under his skin, but he fed it anger, let it burn as resentment. The idea of failing, of pressing his lips to Vil’s and feeling nothing but cold stillness, was intolerable.
Worse was the idea of succeeding. Of being seen.
“If you want to humiliate yourselves, go ahead,” he growled, turning toward the garden’s gilded gate. “Make a spectacle out of him. But count me out. I don’t do puppet shows.”
He didn’t wait for Crowley’s protest or Rook’s pointed look. Each step away from the gathered group, away from Vil’s silent form on the stone bench, felt like a retreat from a truth he had no intention of ever facing. Let someone else wake him. Let someone else be the hero.
The thought tasted like ash.
The stone corridors of Night Raven College felt colder than usual as Leona stalked back to Savanaclaw, the ghost of Vil’s still form haunting every shadow. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, ignoring the way his own breathing sounded too loud in the empty hallways. Each step was an effort, a rebellion against the pull drawing him back to that garden.
Back in the common room, the air was thick with the scent of damp fur and cheap cologne. A group of first-years huddled near the fireplace, their voices a buzzing hive of excitement. “—heard it’s a real sleeping curse, like in the stories,” one said, eyes wide. “And all it takes is a kiss! Think Vil would mind if I gave it a shot?”
Leona froze, the words slamming into him like a physical blow. Disgust, hot and immediate, coiled in his gut. He watched another boy flex in the mirror, practicing a smoldering look. “Gotta get the angle right, you know? For the narrative.”
“Shut up,” Leona snarled, his voice slicing through the chatter. The room fell silent, heads swiveling toward him. “You’re talking about a person, not a party trick. He’s not a wishbone for you to pull on.” He didn’t wait for their stammered apologies, just shouldered past them toward his room.
He barely made it three steps before a familiar, earnest presence blocked his path. Jack Howl stood with his arms crossed, his usually relaxed posture stiff with concern. “Leona. I just heard. About Vil.” Jack’s brow was furrowed, his tail low. “Is it true? The alchemy accident?”
“Yeah, it’s true,” Leona said, trying to edge past. “Crowley’s turned it into a kissing booth. Go sign up if you’re curious.”
Jack didn’t move. “I’m not curious, I’m worried. We grew up together, him and me. His family’s estate bordered the woods near mine.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a old habit. “He used to hide from his acting coaches in my treehouse. This isn’t some game.”
“Tell that to the fan club forming in my lounge,” Leona muttered, gesturing vaguely behind him.
“Did you try?” Jack asked, his voice dropping. The question was quiet, direct. “When you were there. Did you at least try to wake him up?”
Leona let out a short, harsh laugh. “No. I didn’t try.” He leveled a look at Jack, all sharp edges and defiance. “And I’m not going to. Satisfied?”
Jack’s expression crumpled from concern into something harder, more disappointed. “What’s wrong with you? He could be stuck like that! You’re just going to walk away because it’s… what, beneath you? Because you’re too proud?”
The words hit a nerve, raw and exposed. Leona’s ears flattened, his composure cracking. “You don’t know a damn thing about it,” he snapped, his voice rising. “You think it’s that simple? You think he’d want this circus? Me, lining up with the rest of the idiots, hoping for a magic fix?” He took a step closer, the air crackling between them. “If you’re so bent on being the savior, Jack, then stop yapping at me and go do it. Go be the childhood friend who fixes everything. See how that story ends.”
He pushed past, leaving Jack standing alone in the corridor, the weight of the accusation hanging in the stagnant air. Leona’s door slammed shut with a finality that echoed through the stone, a period at the end of a sentence he refused to read aloud.
Leona stood in the center of his dark room, the echo of the slam vibrating up his arm. He listened, ears twitching, for any sound from Jack in the hallway. There was only silence, thick and accusing. He let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding, the force of it shuddering through his ribs.
His room was a cave of shadow and disarray, textbooks stacked like precarious monuments, a forgotten half-eaten sandwich fossilizing on his desk. The normal clutter felt offensive now, a testament to his messy, unperfected life. He stared at his own reflection in the dark window, seeing only the outline of his own scowl against the night. Vil’s room, he knew, would be immaculate, every vial aligned, every surface gleaming under soft, curated light.
The image of Vil on that stone bench flashed unbidden—the unnatural slackness of his jaw, the perfect hair fanned out like a fallen banner. It was wrong. Everything about Vil was precise, controlled, a testament to will. This was a violation. Leona’s claws dug into his own palms, the sharp pressure a welcome anchor.
He sank onto the edge of his bed, the mattress complaining. He thought of Rook’s hand, gentle on Vil’s forehead. A hunter’s touch, yet tender. The memory was a hot coal in his chest. He thought of Kalim’s bright, guileless offer—“I’ll do it!”—and the casual way the others discussed the logistics of a life-saving kiss. It made his skin crawl.
It wasn’t jealousy, he told himself. It was propriety. Vil would despise this spectacle. The idea of a queue of near-strangers, of peers, of Azul possibly calculating the market value of such an act… Vil’s perfection was being turned into a public experiment. Leona’s tail thumped once, hard, against the floor.
But under the anger, cold and sure, was a quieter truth. He pictured himself crossing the garden, pushing past the others. He imagined the weight of Vil’s shoulders as he leaned down, the faint, clean scent of him now mixed with alchemical decay. He imagined the absolute silence afterward. His own failure, witnessed.
Of course it wouldn’t work. The very notion was a children’s story. But if it did work for someone else… His mind supplied the image, sharp and cruel: Rook, perhaps, his theatrical devotion rewarded. Vil’s eyes fluttering open, focusing on another face. Recognition, soft and grateful, meant for someone else.
A harsh, dry sound escaped him. It was almost a laugh. Him? The lazy prince, the second-born, the one who mocked Vil’s drive and wasted his own talent? The idea was absurd. Vil’s true love, if such a thing existed, was probably his own reflection in a polished mirror. Or his craft. Not a cynic who hid in the shade.
The anger surged back, a protective flare. He was angry at Crowley for suggesting it. At the school for gossiping. At Vil, for a reckless moment in the lab. At himself, for caring which smiling idiot got to play the hero. He let the heat of it burn away the colder, more vulnerable feeling pressing behind his eyes.
He stood abruptly, stripping off his jacket and throwing it toward a chair. It missed, slumping to the floor. He didn’t pick it up. The fatigue hit him then, not physical, but a deep weariness in his bones. The day’s tension had coiled him too tight, and now the spring was broken.
Lying back on the stiff sheets, he stared at the cracks in the ceiling. The distant, muffled sounds of the dorm felt like they were coming from another world. He closed his eyes, but the darkness behind his lids was just another screen for the same unwanted pictures. Vil, still as death. A line of suitors. A single, saving kiss.
His throat tightened. He pressed the heels of his hands hard against his closed eyes, seeing bursts of color. A stupid, fairy-tale solution for a real problem. A real person. He swallowed against the knot, his breathing uneven. He would not cry over this. He wouldn’t cry over him.
It was the brutal, simple calculus that finally undid him: he was not the answer. He was never the answer. The kiss would never be his to give, because the person Vil needed was someone better, someone worthy. He let that truth settle into the quiet of the room, a final, heavy weight on his chest.
Tomorrow, he would resume his indifference. He would skip any council meetings about the “quest.” He would mock anyone who participated. He would be Leona Kingscholar, perpetually annoyed and relentlessly unbothered. But here, in the dark, he let the silence press down on him, a solid, lonely thing. He turned his face into his pillow, and did not make a sound.
He turned his face into his pillow, and did not make a sound.
Four days passed.
The change in the alchemy lab was subtle, but to Leona it screamed. The oppressive, chemical air had softened, replaced by the cloying sweetness of too many floral tributes left by well-wishers. They were wilting already, their petals browning at the edges. Someone had brushed Vil’s hair. His hands, previously splayed, were now folded neatly across his chest. This forced serenity was worse than the initial chaos.
Leona stood in the doorway, his daily reluctant pilgrimage complete. Each morning, a magnet in his gut pulled him here before dawn. He would watch the slow, barely-there rise and fall of Vil’s chest for one minute, two, confirming he was still anchored to this side of the waking world. Then he would leave, as silently as he came, his tail a stiff line of tension behind him.
The gossip had mutated. The initial carnival atmosphere had curdled into a superstitious dread. Where students once joked about taking a number, they now spoke in hushed clusters. “Maybe it’s a specific kind of love,” one whispered in the hall yesterday. “Something… more.”
Another had answered, “Well, if all his friends and half the school couldn’t manage it, what does that mean?” The unspoken answer hung in the air, heavy and awful. It meant Vil Schoenheit might be profoundly, terminally alone.
Rook was now a permanent fixture, a silent, elegantly dressed sentinel in the corner. His usual flamboyance was gone, replaced by a hollowed-out focus. He acknowledged Leona’s visits only with a slight, weary nod. On the third day, Epel was there too, small and fierce, polishing a single perfect apple he’d placed on the table beside Vil. “He’ll want something healthy when he wakes up,” he’d muttered, defiance cracking his voice.
The summons for another housewarden meeting felt like a collar tightening. Leona went because not going would have required an energy he no longer possessed. The chamber was shrouded in a defeated silence. Idia’s avatar was muted, a dim blue ghost. Azul was scribbling notes in a ledger, the frantic scratching of his pen the only sound. Kalim stared at his own hands in his lap.
Crowley looked exhausted, his usual theatrical flair flattened. “The, ah, window of viability is narrowing,” he began, without preamble. “Seventy-two hours, approximately. We have exhausted the student body volunteers. We have revisited all known sovereign-linked artifacts in the vault.”
He paused, placing both hands flat on the table. “We have explored every narrative variable. Every bond of friendship, admiration, and professional respect has been tested.” His gaze, heavy and unavoidable, landed on Leona. “There is one significant connection left untested.”
The air left the room. Jamil let out a soft, understanding sigh. Azul stopped writing.
“Me?” Leona’s voice was deceptively soft, a low rumble. “You’re scraping the bottom of the barrel now, Crowley. Our ‘significant connection’ is me telling him his new moisturizer smells like a petting zoo.”
“This is not a joke, Leona!” Crowley’s fist came down on the table, a rare crack in his composure. “This is a process of elimination! You are the housewarden who shares the most contentious, the most engaged dynamic with him. Your interactions are frequent and energetically charged! That is a form of profound connection!”
“You mean we argue,” Leona said flatly. “That’s your grand theory? That my ability to piss him off is a secret love spell?” He stood up, the chair legs screeching against the floor. “This is desperate. And stupid.”
Rook spoke from the corner of the room where he leaned against the wall, his voice raw from lack of use. “Is it pride, Leona? Or is it fear?” He didn’t look up. “You have watched for days. You come and you stand and you watch. And you do nothing.”
Leona felt the words like a physical shove. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Hunt.”
“I know that every other possibility has been removed from the board,” Rook said quietly, finally lifting his gaze. His eyes were red-rimmed. “I know that in three days, the venom in his veins will settle, and his heart will stop. I know that you are, whether you adore the fact or not, the last piece on the board.”
The finality of it, stated so plainly, dismantled the last of his defenses. Three days. Seventy-two hours. The math was brutal and inescapable. He had been so sure someone else would solve it. Rook with his relentless devotion. Epel with his fierce loyalty. Even some random admirer with a pure enough heart. He had banked on it, needed it to be true.
The dread he’d been fighting solidified into a cold, hard stone in his stomach. Vil could die. The man he loved could die, and the only thing standing between him and that was Leona’s own petulant, terrified ego.
He looked at their faces—Crowley’s desperate hope, Rook’s exhausted resolve, Azul’s clinical assessment waiting for his answer. They were all waiting for him to stop being himself for five minutes. The pressure was a physical weight on his shoulders.
He said nothing. Turning on his heel, he left the room, the sound of the door closing behind him quieter than a sigh. He walked, his footsteps loud in the empty corridor, his mind a silent, white roar. He wasn't going to the gardens. He wasn't going to his dorm. He was just moving, each step carrying him toward an outcome he could no longer outrun.
He was just moving, each step carrying him toward an outcome he could no longer outrun. The stone corridors were a gray blur, his own breathing harsh in his ears. He ended up at the Mirror Chamber, its vast emptiness a hollow echo of his own thoughts.
Seventy-two hours.
The number pounded in his skull like a second heartbeat. He leaned against the cold glass of a darkened mirror, his forehead pressing against the smooth, unforgiving surface. Behind his closed eyes, he didn’t see darkness.
He saw Vil, years ago, finding him napping in the botanical gardens. “This is why you’ll never surpass me, Kingscholar,” Vil had said, not unkindly, brushing a leaf from Leona’s shoulder. “Your talent sleeps in the sun, while mine is working.” He’d said nothing, just watched Vil walk away, the sunlight catching the platinum of his hair.
He saw the meticulous notes Vil took in every class, the fierce set of his mouth during exams. He saw the single, almost invisible crack in that perfection the day a potion grade came back an A-minus. Vil’s hand had trembled, just once, before he straightened his spine and vowed to do better.
He heard his own voice, dripping with lazy sarcasm, cutting Vil down in the cafeteria. “Going for ‘palest in the room’ this season, Schoenheit? It’s a bold choice.” Vil’s retort had been swift, surgical, leaving Leona oddly satisfied by the engagement, the heat of it.
The memory of Vil’s still form on the stone bench overwrote them all. The silence where there should have been a biting rebuttal. The horrible, waiting stillness. It wasn’t right. Vil fought for everything. He didn’t just… stop.
“Is it pride, Leona? Or is it fear?” Rook’s exhausted voice sliced through his memory. The hunter had seen him lurking at the edges of the lab for days, a spectre in his own story. He’d done nothing. Said nothing. Just watched, a prisoner of his own conviction that he was the wrong answer.
A harsh, raw sound escaped him, there in the empty chamber. It wasn’t a laugh. It was the sound of something breaking. The image of those wilting flowers by Vil’s bedside, the browning petals, flashed before him. They were a metaphor he hated, cheap and obvious, but true. Time was rotting the edges of this, of Vil, and he was just letting it happen.
Because he was scared. Terrified. Not of failure, though that was part of it. Of what it would mean if it worked. Of having to look at Vil afterward, with everything laid bare and undeniable between them. Of being seen, truly seen, by the one person whose opinion had always scraped against his soul.
His reflection in the dark mirror was a smudge of green eyes and shadow. He looked away.
Pride or fear? The question was a trap. They were the same thing. His pride was a fortress he’d built from his fear of being second-best, of being unwanted, of being a disappointment. He’d let Vil die behind those walls. The stone in his stomach turned to ice, then to fire.
He pushed off from the mirror.
His feet were moving again, retracing his path. The outcome was no longer something to outrun. It was the only path forward. The click of his boots on the flagstones was decisive now, a drumbeat pushing him back the way he came. The portraits on the walls seemed to watch, judgmental and silent.
He didn’t think. Thinking was the enemy. He just moved, a current pulling him back to the source of the ache. The weight of his choice settled on him, heavy and final. It wasn’t heroic. It was necessary.
The door to the meeting room was still ajar, a sliver of lamplight cutting into the dim hall. He heard Crowley’s muffled, despondent voice. “…must prepare for the other… contingencies…”
Leona didn’t knock. He shoved the door open. It hit the wall with a thud that made everyone jump.
All eyes snapped to him. Crowley froze mid-sentence. Azul’s pen hovered over his ledger. Rook, leaning against the far wall, went very, very still.
Leona stood in the doorway, his chest tight, the words a physical thing he had to force past the barrier of his own stubbornness. He looked past them all, his gaze landing on nothing, fixing on a point on the far wall.
“Fine,” he said, the single word rough as gravel. He swallowed, his throat dry. “I’ll do it.”