Chapter 4: Thorny Confessions
The silence after the meeting stretched into days, each one more brittle than the last. Vil’s perfection became sharper, more cutting. His skincare routine was a military campaign. His posture could have cracked stone. He volunteered to organize the entire NRC inter-house botanical symposium, burying himself in grafting charts and soil pH logs, anything to outrun the ghost of a confession in a sunlit room.
Leona, for his part, just got louder. His laughter in the halls was a grating, performative thing. He started fights during Magift practice that weren’t fun, just brutal. He slept through classes he used to just pretend to sleep through. Ruggie started giving him a wider berth.
The symposium setup ran late. Midnight had come and gone by the time Vil finished his final check in the Pomefiore greenhouse, the heart of the botanical display. His footsteps echoed on the flagstone path. The air was a wet, living blanket, heavy with the scent of loam and night-blooming jasmine that coiled around throats. Overhead, the glass panes were black mirrors reflecting the faint, ghostly glow of bioluminescent vines snaking up the iron supports. They pulsed softly, like lazy heartbeats. In the daytime, this place was riotous color. Now, it was a cathedral of shadows and whispered decay.
He was checking the humidity seals on the rare Seven-Star Roses when he felt it—a shift in the air, a presence that didn’t belong to the flora. The low, rhythmic drip… drip… from a leaky pipe overhead suddenly sounded like a countdown.
“Still here? Should’ve figured. Nobody works harder at avoiding rest.”
Vil’s spine went rigid. He didn’t turn. His fingers, hovering near a velvety black petal, didn’t tremble. “Some of us have responsibilities, Kingscholar. What’s your excuse? Savanaclaw’s exhibit is cacti and succulents. I doubt they require midnight supervision.”
Leona stepped out from behind a towering, shaggy fern. The faint blue light from a nearby moss patch etched the angles of his face in stark relief. He looked tired. Not lazy-tired. Worn-thin tired. “Couldn’t sleep.”
“A consequence of napping all day, perhaps.”
“Perhaps.” Leona took a step closer. The flagstones were damp; his boots made no sound. “Or maybe my room smells wrong.”
Vil finally turned. His violet eyes were cold in the eerie light. “Buy a new air freshener. I’m busy.”
He moved to walk past him, down the main aisle toward the door. Leona’s hand shot out, not touching him, but gripping the iron frame of a nearby shelf, blocking the path. Thorny tendrils of a climbing snake-rose brushed against his wrist.
“You’re always busy,” Leona said, his voice a low rasp that vibrated in the humid air. “Busy pretending.”
“Get out of my way.”
“No.” Leona’s gaze was a physical weight. He looked at Vil, really looked, and Vil felt his perfect composure like a pane of glass, ready to fracture. “I’m tired of this. Tired of walking past you and getting nothing but frostbite. Tired of trying to scrub a memory out of my goddamn skin.”
Vil laughed, a short, sharp, unpleasant sound. “Then perhaps you should try harder. Or see a therapist. My schedule is full.”
He tried to duck under Leona’s arm. Leona moved with him, backing him up until Vil’s shoulders met the cool, slick glass of the greenhouse wall. The bioluminescent vine trailing next to his head pulsed a little brighter, as if curious.
“You know what’s not out of my system?” Leona growled, leaning in. His breath was warm against Vil’s cheek. He wasn’t smiling. This wasn’t a game. “It’s not the potion. It’s not the smell. It’s the feel. I can’t stop thinking about how you felt around me. How tight you were. How you shook.”
The words were crude, brutal. They were also the most honest thing he’d ever said. Vil’s breath hitched. The clinical distance he’d built shattered. Rage and a terrible, clawing want rose in his throat, indistinguishable from each other.
“Shut up,” Vil whispered, his voice deadly.
“Why? It’s the truth. You haunt me. You’re in my bones.” Leona’s forehead dropped against the glass near Vil’s temple. The admission seemed to cost him something, pulling the anger out of him and leaving something raw and desperate in its place. “It’s driving me insane.”
Something in Vil snapped. The careful lies, the dignified denial—it was too much work. The hollow in his chest was back, and it was howling. He shoved Leona back, hard. Leona stumbled, caught off guard by the violence of it.
“You want to feel something?” Vil’s voice was a venomous hiss. He closed the distance, grabbing a handful of Leona’s shirt. “You miss the way I felt? Then stop this pathetic, circling dance. Stop pretending this is about confession or conversation or anything other than this…” He gestured wildly between them, his perfect nails digging into the fabric. “This ugly, chemical itch.”
He yanked Leona forward, then spun him, shoving him back against the glass wall. A pane rattled in its lead frame. “Take what you want, Leona. Take it and get it out of your system. And then leave me the hell alone.”
For a heartbeat, they just stared at each other, chests heaving. The challenge hung in the musk-filled air, more dangerous than any spell.
Leona’s eyes darkened. The raw need on his face hardened into something predatory. No more words. He lunged.
It wasn’t like last time. There was no trembling slowness, no careful calibration. This was a collision. Leona’s mouth crashed down on his, all teeth and bruising pressure. Vil bit back, tasting blood—his or Leona’s, he didn’t know. Hands grabbed, pulled, tore. Vil’s meticulously buttoned blazer was wrenched open. His own hands fumbled with the buckle of Leona’s belt, fingers slipping on the leather.
They stumbled away from the wall, crashing into a low stone planter. Soil spilled over the edge. A cluster of moon-white orchids trembled. Leona spun Vil around, pressing him against the rough edge of a wooden potting table. Vials of nutrient solution clattered to the floor.
“Like this?” Leona rasped in his ear, his hands rough on Vil’s hips. “This what you want?”
“Don’t talk,” Vil snarled, pushing back against him, his fingers scrambling for purchase on the splintery wood.
It was fast, brutal, and utterly devoid of tenderness. Leona shoved his trousers down just enough. Vil hadn’t prepared, hadn’t thought—the friction was searing, a dry, painful burn that made him gasp into the crook of his arm. He heard Leona grunt, a sound of effort and frustration, before a vial of aloe-based lubricant, left on the table for plant grafting, was clumsily snatched and used. The cool gel was a shock, then a relief, allowing a brutal, slick slide.
Vil braced himself, his knuckles white. Each thrust drove him against the table’s edge, a promise of bruises. Leona’s grip on his hips was iron, sure to leave marks. The thrill was there, a dark, shameful current under the pain. This was honest. This was what they were: angry, hungry animals in the dark, tearing at each other.
Leona’s other hand fisted in Vil’s hair, pulling his head back. The sensitive skin of his throat met Leona’s open mouth, not a kiss, but a claiming bite. Vil cried out, the sound swallowed by the humid air.
He reached back, tangling his own hand in Leona’s messy hair, pulling just as hard, anchoring himself in the violence of it. His free hand swept across the table, sending pots and trowels flying. His fingers closed around the stem of a Seven-Star Rose. He didn’t think. He brought it up, the thorny stem scraping against Leona’s forearm wrapped around him.
Leona hissed, but didn’t let go. His movements became more frantic, more ragged. “Vil,” he choked out, the name a broken thing.
The thorns bit into Vil’s own palm. The sharp, clean pain mixed with the deep, punishing rhythm, blurring every line. He was close, hurtling toward the edge not on pleasure, but on pure, undiluted sensation—the burn, the bite, the crush of being wanted this desperately, even if this was the only way it could happen.
Release, when it came, was less a wave than a detonation. A silent, seismic crack that locked his spine and tore a ragged, voiceless gasp from his lungs. Leona followed seconds after, a harsh groan muffled against Vil’s shoulder, his whole body going rigid before slumping heavily against him.
The sound of their breathing was obscenely loud in the sudden stillness. The drip… drip… from the pipe continued, indifferent. The bioluminescent vines pulsed on.
Slowly, the world rushed back in. The ache in his hips. The sting in his palm. The throbbing bite mark on his neck. The cold, sticky mess on the back of his thighs.
Leona’s weight lifted. The loss of contact was a chill. Vil heard the soft rustle of clothing being adjusted behind him. He didn’t turn. He pushed himself upright, wincing as the raw skin of his abdomen pulled. His clothes were a ruin. He focused on fastening his trousers with numb fingers, then mechanically trying to smooth his ripped blazer. It was hopeless.
He chanced a glance at his reflection in the dark glass. A stranger stared back—hair a wild tangle, lips swollen and dark, a livid red mark blooming on his neck. His perfect mask was in ruins on the greenhouse floor.
He turned. Leona was leaning against the planter, head bowed, looking at the scratches on his arm welling with tiny beads of blood. He looked… empty. Not satisfied. Not purged. Drained.
“There,” Vil said, his voice hoarse and flat. “Feel better?”
Leona looked up. His green eyes held no triumph, only a bleak exhaustion that mirrored the hollowness in Vil’s own chest. He didn’t answer.
“Good,” Vil said, answering for him. He bent, with a wince, and picked up the shattered stem of the Seven-Star Rose from the floor. He held it for a moment, feeling the thorns prick his already wounded palm. Then he dropped it into the soil of the planter. “Now we’re even. It’s done.”
He walked past Leona, his steps uneven on the flagstones. He didn’t look back. The greenhouse door hissed shut behind him with a final, soft sigh.
Leona stayed in the shadows for a long time. He looked at the scattered soil, the overturned pots, the thorny rose stem lying in the dirt. He brought his scratched arm to his mouth, licking away a thin trail of blood. It tasted like salt and failure. The memory of how Vil felt was still there, wrapped now in the fresh, sharp layers of pain and silence. It wasn’t out of his system. It was worse.
He had taken what he wanted. And it had never felt more like losing.
And it had never felt more like losing. The scent of crushed leaves and wet soil clung to him, a pathetic cologne. He stared at the closed door, half-expecting it to open again. It didn’t. The silence was a tangible thing, thick and accusing. He righted an overturned pot, the action hollow, pointless.
A sharp, clean thorn was embedded in the meat of his palm, a tiny black dagger. He plucked it out. A perfect bead of blood swelled in its place. It was the only thing that felt real.
Vil’s walk back to his room was a study in dissociation. The castle corridors were empty, their usual grandeur reduced to a series of cold, dark tunnels. He barely felt the floor beneath his feet. His body was a catalogue of damages: the throbbing at his neck, the rawness between his legs, the sting in his hand. Each one a brand. He passed a tall, gilded mirror in an alcove and forced himself to stop. To look.
The mark on his throat was livid, a stormy purple already blooming into the shape of Leona’s mouth. He touched it with trembling fingers. A producer from the Rose Kingdom would have a fit. A stylist would reach for the high-coverage concealer. Vil just stared. This wasn’t a blemish. It was evidence. It felt more honest than his entire face.
He arrived at his door. The sanctuary of his room, with its curated scents and ordered chaos, now seemed like a set from a play that had ended. He locked the door behind him and leaned against it, sliding down to the floor. He didn’t cry. He just sat there in the dark, listening to the frantic, animal rhythm of his own heart. The ghost of the potting table’s edge still pressed into his bones.
His scroll buzzed in his ruined blazer pocket. Once. Then again. He fished it out, the screen’s light harsh in the darkness.
An unknown number. The message was plain text, no signature.
The scratches got infected. Your problem.
A second followed.
Greenhouse. Now.
Vil’s breath froze. The arrogance was monumental. The demand, absolute. He should ignore it. He should block the number. He should take a scalding shower and scrub every memory from his skin. He read the words again. Your problem. He thought of the thorn, the blood, the shared carelessness. A flimsy excuse. Transparent.
He stood up. His body protested, a symphony of aches. He went to his alchemy cabinet, the glass vials clinking softly. He selected a small jar of salve, his own formulation for accelerated tissue repair and discreet antiseptic magic. He held the cool glass in his wounded palm.
Then he turned, and walked back out into the hall.
Leona was exactly where he’d said he’d be, slouched on the same stone planter they’d wrecked. He hadn’t cleaned up. The spilled soil was still there. The rose stem lay where Vil had dropped it. He looked up as Vil entered, his expression unreadable in the pulsing vine-light. He held out his forearm, where the parallel scratches were an angry, puffy red.
“See?” he said, his voice rough. “S’welling.”
Vil walked over, his steps measured. He didn’t speak. He took Leona’s wrist, his touch clinical. The skin was hot. It probably was irritated. It wasn’t infected. He unscrewed the jar, the herbal scent of the salve cutting through the greenhouse musk. He dipped two fingers in, the cool gel a shock against his own skin.
He applied it to the scratches, his movements precise, smooth. Leona hissed, a sharp intake of breath, but didn’t pull away. His arm tensed under Vil’s grip. The only sound was the relentless drip… drip… from the pipe.
“You didn’t have to come,” Leona muttered, staring at Vil’s focused face.
“I know.” Vil didn’t look up. He smoothed the salve along the inflamed lines. His thumb brushed the underside of Leona’s wrist, just once, where his pulse hammered. A touch that could have been an accident.
Leona’s free hand came up. It didn’t grab, didn’t pull. It simply curved around the back of Vil’s neck, his fingers sliding into the disheveled blonde hair. It wasn’t forceful. It was a question. Vil’s hands stilled on his arm. The jar of salve almost slipped. He caught it, his breath catching with it.
He looked up, finally meeting Leona’s eyes. The bleak exhaustion was still there, but beneath it, a stubborn, waiting heat. No words this time. No challenges thrown like weapons. Just the humid air, and the touch, and the vast, silent understanding that nothing was solved. That it wasn’t out of their systems. That it might never be.
Vil leaned in. It wasn’t a collision. It was a surrender. Their lips met, slower now, a silent exchange of salt and regret and relentless want. The taste was familiar. Leona’s hand tightened in his hair, a gentle pressure. Vil’s fingers, sticky with salve, came to rest against Leona’s jaw.
When they parted, it was by a fraction, foreheads touching. Their breathing synced, ragged at the edges.
“This is a mistake,” Vil whispered, the words ghosting against Leona’s mouth.
“Yeah.” Leona’s agreement was immediate, soft.
“No one can know.”
“Obviously.”
Another pause. The vine pulsed. A petal drifted down from somewhere above.
“Your room or mine?” Leona asked, the casualness of the question belying the gravity in his eyes.
Vil straightened. He recapped the jar of salve, his movements deliberate. He looked at the mess around them, then back at Leona. “Mine. The sheets are already ruined.”
A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched Leona’s lips. Not triumphant. Just acknowledging the sheer, fucked-up reality of it. He stood, flexing his newly salved arm. He didn’t offer his hand. He just waited, following a half-step behind as Vil led the way out, turning off the greenhouse lights and leaving the shadows to swallow the evidence of what they had started.
The walk back was silent, a tense procession through the sleeping castle. Every echoing footfall on marble sounded like an accusation. Vil’s mind was a white noise of static, his body a collection of smarting wounds humming with adrenaline. He didn’t check to see if Leona followed. The presence behind him was a tangible pressure, a warm, solid shadow he could feel in the spaces between his shoulder blades.
He unlocked his door, the click deafening in the empty hall. He stepped inside, the familiar scents of his sanctuary—clean linen, bergamot, the faint ozone of stagnant potions—washed over him. It felt like stepping onto a stage after forgetting all his lines. Leona entered and closed the door softly behind them. The lock engaged with a final, quiet thunk.
For a moment, they just stood there in the dark. Streetlamp glow from the window cut sharp lines across the floor, illuminating floating motes of dust and the precarious towers of books. The rumpled bed from weeks ago was still unmade, a stark reminder. Vil’s composure, meticulously reassembled during the walk, shattered. A frantic energy seized him. He turned and pushed Leona back towards the bed, his hands gripping the worn fabric of his shirt.
“Just—get on the bed,” Vil muttered, his voice strained, trying to reclaim some phantom control from the greenhouse wreckage. He moved to shove Leona down, to pin him, to orchestrate this chaos into something he could manage.
Leona caught his wrists. Not hard. The grip was firm, unyielding. He stopped Vil’s momentum completely. “No.” The single word was quiet, but absolute.
Then he reversed their positions. It was seamless, a single fluid motion of guided weight. Vil’s back met the soft duvet, Leona’s body following him down, settling over him. The breath left Vil’s lungs in a soft oof. He stared up, wide-eyed. Leona’s face was shadowed, his features unreadable in the low light, but his eyes caught the faint glow, holding a fierce, quiet intensity that erased the greenhouse’s hollow emptiness. This wasn’t the potion’s artificial heat. This was something else, deliberate and deep.
He kissed him. It wasn’t the biting clash from before. It was slow. Consuming. His mouth was insistent but thorough, mapping Vil’s lips with a reverent hunger that felt startlingly new. One hand cradled the side of Vil’s face, thumb stroking his cheekbone. The other rested beside his head, taking Leona’s weight. Vil melted into the mattress, a soft, helpless sound escaping into the kiss. His own hands, trapped for a moment, came up to clutch at Leona’s shoulders.
When Leona broke the kiss, he didn’t go far. He pressed his forehead to Vil’s, their breath mingling. “Just… let me,” he whispered, the words rough with an emotion he couldn’t name. It wasn’t a command. It was a request.
He shifted down the bed, his movements sure. His hands slid under Vil’s thighs, coaxing them apart. Vil stiffened for a second, a flutter of vulnerability seizing him. He was exposed, every mark and ache on display. “Leona, what—“
“Shhh.” Leona’s voice was a low vibration against his skin. He dipped his head, and his mouth found the inside of Vil’s thigh, just above the knee. The kiss there was soft, almost apologetic. Then another, higher. A trail of open-mouthed kisses, each one a brand that seared away the memory of rough handling. Vil’s fingers twisted in the sheets, his head falling back.
And then Leona’s tongue was on him, a slow, deliberate stroke that made Vil jolt as if shocked. A punched-out gasp tore from his throat. It was nothing like he’d imagined, nothing like the clinical descriptions he’d read. This was wet, hot, impossibly intimate. Leona took his time. He explored with a focused patience that was utterly foreign to him, licking into him with a rhythm that was both gentle and devastatingly persistent.
Vil’s hips lifted off the bed involuntarily. “God—“ he choked out.
Leona hummed against him, the sound vibrating through Vil’s entire nervous system. One of Leona’s hands rubbed soothing circles on his stomach, a stabilizing anchor in the rising storm. “You taste…” Leona murmured, his voice thick, kissing his inner thigh again before returning with renewed focus. “…incredible. Always so perfect. Even here.”
The words, raw and unfiltered, lit a fire in Vil’s chest. This wasn’t dirty talk. It was awe. It was worship performed by clumsy, earnest hands. Leona’s tongue curled, pressing firmly just there, and Vil saw stars. A high, thin whine escaped him. His back arched.
“That’s it,” Leona breathed, lifting his head just enough to speak, his lips glistening. “Just like that. Let me hear you.” He didn’t wait for a reply, diving back in with a deepened hunger, one hand sliding under Vil’s hip to tilt him up, to take him deeper. Every flick, every suck, was a word Leona couldn’t say aloud. I want you. I need this. You’re mine. It was a confession written in a language of sensation.
Vil’s understanding was purely physical, a seismic shift building in the pit of his stomach. He didn’t parse the meaning, the desperate hope behind each action. He only felt the coil of pleasure, tight and relentless, so different from the harsh friction in the greenhouse. This was a slow unraveling. His breaths came in ragged sobs. One hand found its way back to Leona’s hair, not pulling, just clinging, his fingers threading through the messy brown strands.
“Leona, I’m—I can’t—“ he gasped, a warning and a plea.
Leona’s answer was to slide a finger inside him, alongside his tongue, curling upwards. The dual sensation was catastrophic. Vil cried out, the sound broken and loud in the quiet room. His body clenched, shattered, waves of pleasure crashing through him with an intensity that bordered on pain. He shook through it, Leona’s mouth gentling, working him through the last tremors until he was oversensitive and twitching.
Slowly, carefully, Leona crawled back up his body. He looked down at Vil, whose eyes were wet and unfocused, his chest heaving. Leona wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his own breathing uneven. He didn’t smile. He just searched Vil’s face, his green eyes desperately trying to read a response in the glazed violet, hoping the message had been received, translated, understood.
Vil reached up, his hand trembling. He touched Leona’s jaw, his thumb tracing the line of his lips. He was utterly spent, blissfully wrecked. The hollow ache was gone, replaced by a glowing, satiated fullness. He didn’t understand the vocabulary of this desperate, physical poem. But he wanted the writer.
“Your turn,” Vil whispered, his voice raw. He tugged Leona down for a kiss, tasting himself on Leona’s tongue, an intimacy deeper than any they’d yet shared. He rolled them over, straddling Leona’s hips again, but this time there was no frantic calibration, only a slow, deliberate settling. He took him in, a smooth, aching slide that made them both groan, and began to move with a rhythm that felt less like taking and more like coming home.