Chapter 5: Whispered Devotion
The warmth was the first thing he noticed. A solid, breathing heat along his back, an arm flung heavily over his waist. Vil stirred, consciousness returning in slow, thick waves. The room was still dark, the streetlamp glow from the window now a pale predawn grey. Scents assaulted him—his own bergamot and rose, undercut by the musk of sweat and sex and something uniquely, undeniably Leona.
He didn’t move. He catalogued the aches first. A pleasant, deep-set throb in muscles he rarely used. The sensitive sting on his neck where Leona’s mouth had been. The memory of the night unfolded behind his closed eyelids not in a blur, but in high-definition snapshots. The desperation in the greenhouse. The shocking tenderness in the dark of his room. The things Leona had done with his mouth, the words he’d mumbled against Vil’s skin.
So perfect… my perfect Vil.
He’d been too far gone to process them then, his mind hazy with spent pleasure. Now, in the quiet morning aftermath, they echoed.They were just words. Hormones and oxytocin and the biological aftershocks of good sex. People said stupid things. Leona, of all people, wasn’t above it. The potion’s long-dissipated influence was a convenient scaffold on which to hang any uncharacteristic behavior. It was the only explanation that didn’t threaten to dismantle the careful world he’d built.
The body behind him shifted. A low, sleep-rough grunt vibrated against his spine. The arm around his waist tightened, pulling him back more firmly against a solid chest. Leona nosed into the nape of his neck, his breath hot on Vil’s skin. “Mm. You’re thinking too loud. S’disturbing my beauty sleep.”
Vil’s heart did a stupid, traitorous flip. He kept his voice carefully neutral. “You’d need a century of sleep for that to have any measurable effect.”
A low chuckle. Leona’s lips brushed his shoulder. “Cruel.”
They lay there. The silence wasn’t the tense, brittle thing from before.It was… full. Heavy with unsaid things and the physical reality of each other. Vil could feel every point of contact—Leona’s thighs tucked behind his, the steady rise and fall of his chest, the slow beat of his heart. It was horrifically intimate. More intimate than anything they’d done.
He had to break it.
“Your arm is cutting off my circulation,” Vil said, his tone clipped. He wriggled, a half-hearted attempt to escape.
Leona sighed, a puff of warm air. He didn’t let go. Instead, he dragged his thumb in a slow, absent circle on Vil’s stomach, just below his navel. The touch was casual. Devastating. “Drama queen. Your circulation is fine.”
“I have a morning routine. It’s 5:17. I need to start.”
“Your routine is terrifying. And it’s barely dawn.” Leona’s voice was a sleepy mumble. “Ten more minutes.”
“No.”
“Five.”
“Leona.”
“Two.” The thumb kept moving. “Just… two.”
Vil stopped fighting. He closed his eyes. Two minutes. He could allow two minutes of this catastrophic weakness. He focused on the rhythm of Leona’s breathing, the way it slowly deepened again. The heavy arm was a weight, an anchor. For two minutes, he let himself be pinned. He counted the seconds in his head, each one a small surrender.
At exactly 5:19, he carefully extracted himself. Leona made a noise of protest, his arm flopping to the mattress where Vil had been. He didn’t wake up. Vil stood by the bed, looking down at him. In the grey light, asleep, Leona looked younger. The usual guarded sneer was gone, his face smooth, his messy hair fanning across Vil’s pillow. He looked… peaceful. It was a sight Vil knew he’d hoard, a secret treasure he’d examine later in private.
He dressed quietly in soft, clean training clothes, his movements efficient. He didn’t look back as he slipped out the door.
The castle at dawn was a different creature. The usual buzz of student energy was absent, replaced by a hollow, echoing stillness. His footsteps on the marble were the only sound as he made his way to the Pomefiore gym—a mirrored, spotless room that smelled of clean linen and antiseptic. He went through his motions with robotic precision. Sun salutations.Planks. A punishing series of Pilates stretches that made his newly sore muscles burn. He watched his perfect form in the mirror, critiquing every micro-shake. The body was a machine. It required maintenance. It could be controlled.
His mind was a less obedient machine.My perfect Vil.
Stupid. A slip of the tongue. Meaningless.
The careful, worshipful way Leona had touched him in the dark. The look in his eyes afterwards, a searching, raw thing Vil had been too overwhelmed to meet.Just biology. Just the afterglow.
He increased his reps, pushing until his breath came in sharp gasps and his thoughts blurred into a white noise of exertion. By the time he finished his cool-down stretches, his skin was glistening with a light sweat, and his mind felt scoured clean. He was in control.
He returned to his room just after seven, expecting it to be empty. The bed was made. Not by him. The sheets were stripped, the duvet folded with a suspicious neatness. The lingering scent of sex was gone, replaced by the crisp ozone of a quickly-cast cleansing spell. On his nightstand, propped against a crystal decanter of toner, was a single, perfect Seven-Star Rose, its black petals velvety and dewy. No note.
Vil picked it up. A thorn pricked his thumb. He stared at the tiny bead of blood, then at the rose. A peace offering?A trophy? A reminder of the thorns in the greenhouse, of the shared violence that had started this? He had no idea. The ambiguity of it was infuriating.
He crushed the rose in his fist, the petals turning to a damp, fragrant pulp in his palm. He dropped it into the waste bin by his desk.
The day unfolded with a familiar, punishing schedule. Classes were a drone of theory. Meals were a performance of polite conversation. He caught a glimpse of Leona across the Reflecting Chamber at lunch, holding court with his usual lazy smirk, Ruggie chattering beside him. He didn’t look Vil’s way. Not once. The hollow in Vil’s chest, which had been temporarily filled, now yawned wider, a cold cavern. Of course.This was the script. The nighttime was an aberration. Daylight demanded denial.
He threw himself into the final preparations for the botanical symposium. He calibrated humidity spells, shouted at a first-year for mislabeling a tray of ghost orchids, and personally polished every glass pane in the Pomefiore display until it shone. He worked until his hands were raw and his mind was blessedly numb.
By evening, his body was a live wire of exhausted tension. A bath. He needed a bath. His private bathroom was a sanctuary of white marble and gleaming copper. He poured in a vial of obsidian-black bath salts that smelled of petrichor and night-blooming jasmine. The water turned inky, swallowing him as he sank into the scalding heat.
He rested his head against the cool rim, closing his eyes. The steam carried the scent, loosening the knots in his shoulders. He imagined the heat scouring him inside and out, washing away the memory of hands on his skin, the weight of a body next to his, the whispered words that meant nothing.
His phone, resting on a stool beside the tub, buzzed.
Then buzzed again.And again.
He ignored it. It was probably Epel, or the Headmage, or some model agency with a last-minute request. The world and its demands could wait.
The buzzing stopped. A minute of blessed silence passed.
Then it started ringing. An actual call.
With a sound of profound irritation, Vil reached a wet, pruned hand out of the water and grabbed it. The screen glowed. Unknown Number.Again.
He accepted the call, pressing the phone to his ear. “What.”
“You threw away my rose.” Leona’s voice was flat, devoid of its usual lazy amusement.
Vil’s breath caught. He sat up straighter, water sloshing. “How did you know that?”
“Saw it in your trash when I came by to get my jacket.”
“You came back to my room?”
“Forgot my jacket. It’s cold.” A pause. “You crushed it.”
“It was dying. I don’t keep dying things in my room.” Vil’s voice was colder than the bathwater was hot. “It’s unsanitary. And sentimental.”
Leona was silent for so long Vil thought the call had dropped. Then, a low, humorless laugh. “Right.Of course. Sentimental.” There was a rustling sound, like he was shifting. “You working tonight?”
“The symposium is tomorrow. I have final checks.”
“I know. I’ll be there.”
“To admire the cacti?” Vil sneered.
“Maybe.” Another pause. This one was loaded, heavy. “Maybe I just want to see if you’ll be there.”
The line went dead.
Vil pulled the phone from his ear and stared at it. Maybe I just want to see if you’ll be there.What was that? A challenge?A threat? Another meaningless gesture?
He sank back under the black water, letting it close over his head. The world became a silent, dark roar. He held his breath until his lungs burned, until the need for air was the only coherent thought in his head. When he broke the surface, gasping, water streaming down his face, the first thing he saw was his phone, dark and silent on the stool.
He got out of the bath. He dried himself with a rough, methodical ferocity. He dressed in simple, elegant black trousers and a high-necked sweater that hid the mark on his neck. He applied his evening skincare regimen with ritualistic focus. He didn’t look at his reflection.
At ten o’clock, he walked back to the greenhouse. The castle was quiet again, but this was the quiet of held breath, not sleep. The symposium banners hung in the halls, fluttering slightly in the draft from unseen vents.
He pushed the greenhouse door open. The air was different.Cleaner. The scent of crushed leaves and turned earth was gone, replaced by the organized perfume of hundreds of displayed flowers, a cloying, competing symphony. The exhibits stood in neat rows under soft magical lights. Savanaclaw’s section of resilient, spiny plants was to the left. Pomefiore’s elegant, rare blossoms dominated the center.
He wasn’t alone.
Leona leaned against the entry arch to the Savanaclaw exhibit, arms crossed, watching him. He was wearing his uniform jacket. He looked tired again, but his eyes were alert, tracking Vil’s every move from across the room.
Vil’s heart hammered against his ribs. He forced his feet to move, walking with deliberate slowness down the central aisle, feigning examination of a display of crystal-blue forget-me-nots. He could feel Leona’s gaze like a physical touch.
“Thought you’d have a team of minions for this,” Leona’s voice echoed softly in the hushed space.
“I prefer precision over delegation,” Vil said, not looking at him. He adjusted a placard that was already perfectly straight. “Shouldn’t you be ensuring your… succulents haven’t been vandalized?”
“They’re fine.Tough. Don’t need babysitting.”
Vil finally turned. Leona had pushed off the arch and was walking toward him, his steps slow, deliberate. The soft light cast long shadows behind him.
“What do you want, Leona?” The question came out wearier than he intended.
Leona stopped a few feet away. He looked at Vil, then at the crushed rose stem Vil had discarded, now conspicuously absent from the waste bin near the potting table. His gaze came back to Vil’s face. “You tell me.”
“I want to finish my work and go to bed.”
“Liar.”
The word hung between them. Simple.Blunt.
Vil’s composure cracked. “What do you want from me?” he snapped, his voice rising.“A review? Feedback? You got what you came for last night. Multiple times. Isn’t that enough?”
Leona flinched, almost imperceptibly. A flicker of something painful crossed his face before it shuttered again. “Is that what you think last night was?”
“What else would it be?”
“I don’t know, Vil!” Leona’s voice wasn’t a shout, but it was sharp, frayed at the edges. He ran a hand through his hair, making it more disheveled. “You tell me! You’re the one who’s got everything figured out, right? Perfect Vil with his perfect plans and his perfect little life. So you tell me what the hell this is. Because from where I’m standing, it feels a lot like you running every time it gets real.”
“Real?” Vil let out a brittle laugh. “You think the greenhouse was real? That was a mistake. A messy, chemical mistake we’re both too stupid to let go of. And last night… last night was just the cleanup. Tying up loose ends.”
Leona stared at him. The green of his eyes seemed to darken. “Loose ends.” He repeated the phrase as if tasting something foul. He took a step closer. “You’re unbelievable. You can stand there and tell me that after…” He stopped himself, his jaw tight. “You cried. Last night. When I was… you cried. And you held onto me like you were drowning.”
Heat flooded Vil’s face. Shame, hot and acute. He had. In the peak of it, when the pleasure had been so overwhelming it crossed into something else, tears had leaked from the corners of his eyes. He’d thought Leona hadn’t noticed. He’d buried his face in the pillow to hide it. “I did not,” he whispered, the lie pathetic.
“You did.” Leona was right in front of him now. He didn’t touch him. The space between them vibrated. “So don’t give me this ‘loose ends’ crap.
The accusation hung there, ugly and real. Vil’s vision blurred at the edges. He could smell the damp soil, the too-sweet perfume of the night blooms, and underneath it, the clean, sharp scent of Leona’s sweat. His own heartbeat was a frantic drum in his ears. He wanted to claw the memory from Leona’s mind, from his own skin. He wanted to rewind time and never let those tears fall.
“You’re imagining things,” Vil spat, but the words lacked force, cracking on the second syllable. He turned away, pretending to examine a waxy leaf. His fingers trembled against its surface. “The light was poor. You were… distracted.”
“I wasn’t distracted.” Leona’s voice was closer now, right behind his shoulder. “I was right there. I felt it. So don’t you dare downgrade it to some… some transactional mess. You felt something. I felt something. That’s the loose end. And it’s not tied up. It’s a fucking knot.”
Vil whipped around. The carefully reconstructed wall of his composure was rubble. “What do you want me to say, Leona?” The question was a raw scrape in his throat.“That it meant something? Fine. It meant I was tired. It meant you’re passably good with your mouth. It meant I needed a release and you were convenient. Is that the profound revelation you were hunting for?”
Leona’s expression didn’t change, but something in his eyes went flat and cold. It was worse than anger. It was a slow, dawning disappointment. “Convenient,” he repeated, the word toneless.
“Yes.” Vil’s chest ached. He barreled forward, the words like glass shards in his mouth. “You want more? You want me that bad?” He flung his arms out, a gesture of utter surrender that felt like defeat.“Fine. You can have me whenever you’d like. Use me whenever you want. My door’s unlocked. Just don’t expect a conversation afterwards.”
He said it like he was exhausted. Like he was reading from a script for a role he never wanted. His shoulders slumped, the fight draining out of him and leaving only a hollow, cold fatigue.
Leona just stared. His confusion was a palpable thing in the space between them. He’d been ready for a fight, for more sharp words and deflections. This… this limp offering, this numb permission, was incomprehensible. His brow furrowed, the predatory certainty melting into something unsettled and lost. “Use you,” he echoed, voice low.
“Isn’t that what this is?” Vil’s laugh was a dry, broken sound. He looked past Leona, at the perfect, silent rows of flowers. “You get what you need. I’ll… derive what I can from it. No expectations. No messy feelings. Just a mutually agreed-upon outlet. Efficient.”
Silence swallowed the greenhouse. The drip from the pipe was the only sound. Leona searched Vil’s face, looking for the cruelty, the sarcasm, the hidden trap. He found only a devastating, weary emptiness. The fire in his own gut guttered and died, leaving ash. This wasn’t victory. It was a dismissal far more complete than any door slammed in his face.
He took a slow step back. The distance felt colder than the night air outside.
“Efficient,” he finally said, the word tasting like dust. He gave a single, slow shake of his head, his eyes never leaving Vil’s defeated posture. He didn’t understand. The confession he’d been trying to wrench out, the truth he’d been circling, had somehow turned into this: permission to treat Vil like a tool. A thing. It made his stomach turn.
He turned and walked toward the door, his footsteps heavy on the flagstones. He didn’t look back. The door clicked shut with a soft, final sound.
Vil stood alone, shaking. He felt the ghost of Leona’s warmth at his back, the memory of his hands, the shattered sound of his own voice offering himself up as a convenient thing. The scent of crushed rose from his own waste bin seemed to fill the air. He had gotten exactly what he thought he wanted: a clear, emotionless arrangement. Why, then, did it feel like he had just broken something that could never be put back together?
The emptiness in the greenhouse after Leona left was a physical weight. Vil stood frozen for a long time, listening to the absent rhythm of his own breath. The crushed rose in his waste bin back in his room seemed to pulse with accusation from across the castle grounds. He’d gotten what he framed as a clean, emotionless deal. It tasted like ashes and regret.
He didn’t sleep. He went through the next day’s botanical symposium in a pristine, autopilot haze. He smiled with perfect teeth at judges, explained plant properties with crystalline clarity, and accepted Pomefiore’s first-place ribbon with a graceful bow. He saw Leona once, across the crowded greenhouse, leaning against a support column near the Savanaclaw cacti. Their eyes met for a fractured second. Leona’s gaze was flat, unreadable stone before he turned to say something to Ruggie, his smile easy and empty. The cut was clean, deep, and utterly silent.
The days hardened into a new routine. A painful inverse of the previous tension. Before, Leona’s presence was a constant, irritating pull. Now, his absence was a vacuum. Vil knew he’d said something lethally wrong that night, had offered himself as a thing to be used, and Leona had taken it as the insult it was meant to be. The rejection wasn’t dramatic. It was absolute.
Leona didn’t just avoid him. He enacted a policy of utter neutralization. In the halls, if their paths converged, Leona would simply turn and walk the other way, mid-sentence with his companions. In Magift class, he called plays that deliberately avoided Vil’s quadrant of the field. It wasn’t ignoring. It was erasure.
During a housewarden meeting in the Mirror Chamber, Vil tried to provoke him. It was an old, familiar dance. He criticized Savanaclaw’s contribution to the upcoming cultural festival, calling their planned mock-battle display “predictably brutish.”
He waited for the lazy, venomous retort, for the spark of engagement. Leona, slouched in his chair, didn’t even look up from where he was picking at a loose thread on his uniform sleeve. “Yeah, probably,” he said, his voice devoid of any interest whatsoever. He glanced at a point over Vil’s left shoulder. “Anything else, or can we move on?”
The dismissal was more brutal than any argument. Vil felt himself flush, a hot, humiliated prickling up his neck. He had become irrelevant. The flame Leona had been circling for months had finally burned him, and now he was treating Vil like cold, dead ash.
Headmage Crowley, oblivious, clapped his hands together. “Now, onto more delightful news! As a bridge toward better inter-house relations and seasonal cheer, we will be hosting the Sleeping Beauty Ball!” He beamed, his golden eyes gleaming behind his mask. “The botanical gardens will be transformed into a wintry fairy tale! An excellent opportunity for… hm, how to put it… for unspoken sentiments to find their voice! Confessions bloom in such magical settings, do they not?”
A polite murmur rippled through the room. Vil kept his eyes fixed on the polished table, feeling the phantom sting of thorns in his palm. His secret, foolish hope unfurled instantly, a desperate weed in the cracks of his pride. Maybe. Here, in this formal, romantic setting. Maybe Leona would…
He risked a glance. Leona was examining his own nails, a portrait of profound boredom. He showed no reaction to Crowley’s pronouncement. The weed in Vil’s chest withered.
The invites started the next day. Slips of high-quality stationery appeared in his Pomefiore mailbox, tucked into his textbooks, even left with a blushing first-year at his dorm room door. They were from students across all houses, boys and girls alike. A guitarist from Scarabia who admired his “artistic spirit.” A spunky vice-housewarden from Heartslabyul who challenged him to a dance-off. A quiet, brilliant student from Ignihyde who wrote a painfully sincere algorithm about his beauty.
He read each one with a detached sort of courtesy, then filed them neatly in a drawer. None of them were on crinkled, spare parchment. None were written in a lazy, slouching script that smelled faintly of sand and sunlight. He checked his mailbox three times a day, his heart performing a traitorous little spike of hope each time he turned the brass key. It was always empty of what he wanted.
The ball was a week away. His suit, a masterpiece of midnight velvet and silver thread, hung in his wardrobe. It looked like a costume for a role he no longer wanted to play. The gardens were being enchanted with glittering frost flowers and whispering, twinkling lights. The entire school buzzed with a nervous, romantic energy that felt like a personal attack.
On the eve of the ball, he found himself back in the now-familiar silence of the Pomefiore greenhouse. The symposium displays were gone. It was just him, the dormant roses, and the rhythmic drip from the pipe. He stood where Leona had pinned him weeks ago, where he’d offered his body as a transaction. The glass felt cold against his back.
He pulled out his phone, his thumb hovering over a new message screen. The cursor blinked, an impatient metronome. He typed and deleted three different things. Are you going? Pathetic. Who are you taking? Desperate. The roses are dormant. Insane.
He put the phone away. He already knew the answer. Leona was going. He’d be there with some easy, smiling person who asked no questions and demanded no messy feelings. Someone convenient. The thought was a physical nausea.
He had broken it. He had taken the fragile, desperate thing between them and called it a convenience. And Leona, prideful and scorched, had finally listened. Vil was left holding the pieces, alone in a room full of sleeping beauty, waiting for a prince who would never come. The dance was tomorrow. His suit hung waiting. His door, once metaphorically unlocked, now felt like the entrance to a very empty room.