Whistling a jaunty, terribly off-key tune he’d picked up from a tavern down by the capital docks, Lioren strolled through the front entrance of his urban manor like a man who’d just won a sweepstakes.
"Evening, Barnaby! Fine night for a scandal, isn’t it?" Lioren chirped, unbuckling his ceremonial sword belt and tossing it toward an umbrella stand. He caught a glimpse of himself in the tall entryway mirror and paused to approve of his own reflection.
In his mind, the night had been an absolute, ten-out-of-ten success. He’d successfully hijacked the timeline, snatched the world’s future destroyer, burnt his royal favor in the most dramatic way humanly possible, and even managed to secure a ridiculously handsome fiancé in the process. Not a single thing had gone wrong. Now, all he needed was a long, hot bath, a cold glass of northern cider, and a solid eight hours of sleep.
He took two steps toward the grand staircase before two heavy hands clamped down hard on his shoulders.
"Whoa... hey!" Lioren blinked, caught mid-stride.
To his left stood Caldrin, looking like a tired executioner who’d been forced to work overtime. To his right stood Therin, whose face was so pale and tight it looked as if his jaw muscles had permanently locked up. Neither man spoke. Without a word, they spun their Grand Duke around and began marching him down the eastern corridor like a prisoner being escorted to the gallows.
"Gentleman, please," Lioren protested, his boots dragging slightly across the expensive rug. "I’m exhausted. My feet hurt, my collar was choking me all night, and whatever terrifying administrative crisis you’re about to dump on my desk can surely wait until breakfast. Or noon. Let’s aim for noon."
Neither man loosened his grip. They shoved open the heavy double doors of Lioren’s private study, steered him squarely toward the plush velvet sofa in the center of the room, and forced him down into the cushions.
Lioren sank into the soft velvet, crossing his legs and looking between his two childhood friends with mild, defensive confusion. "Okay, first of all? Unprofessional. Second of all, if this is about the wine budget for the winter campaign..."
"What in the name of the high heavens was that?" Therin cut in, his voice cracking slightly on the last word.
Lioren blinked innocently, leaning back against the armrest. "What was what?"
Therin opened his mouth to answer, his face flushing a dangerous, blotchy red. He tried to speak, stopped, threw his hands up in absolute, breathless despair, and spun around. He began pacing in front of the cold fireplace, clutching his forehead with both hands. "I can’t. I literally cannot assemble the words. My brain has refused to process the last three hours of my life."
Caldrin let out a slow, raspy breath, stepping forward to take over before Therin had a complete nervous breakdown. He folded his arms over his chest, looking down at Lioren with a heavy, deadpan stare.
"Allow me to clarify," Caldrin said, his tone dry enough to kindle a bonfire. "Your Grace... you just publicly used an priceless royal favor, a favor that could have doubled our territory or exempted the entire North from Crown taxes for a generation, to claim the betrothal contract of Prince Xavion Astervan. An enemy prince. A political hostage."
Lioren’s face immediately lit up with a broad, brilliant grin. "I know! Wasn’t it absolutely epic?"
Therin whirled back around, staring at him in sheer horror. "Epic? Epic?! Your Grace, you are indeed betrothed now, yes, congratulations! But neither I nor Caldrin consider watching our lord throw away our duchy’s political leverage on a whim to be remotely ’epic’!"
"Oh, come on, you two are just in a state of mild shock," Lioren said breezily, waving a dismissive hand through the air. "It’s fine! Honestly, everything is under control. This is actually a fantastic development for us."
"Mild shock?!" Therin almost squeaked, taking a threatening step toward the sofa. "Your Grace, the entire royal court practically shaking! The King looked like he was one word away from exploding, the Ostharian envoy looked like his brain had melted, and Count Vance was turning purple! You turned a formal victory celebration into a high-stakes circus!"
"Well, to be fair, I think there was a small earthquake earlier," Lioren suggested smoothly, tilting his head. "People were probably just off-balance from the seismic..."
"Your Grace," Caldrin interrupted, his voice dropping into that low, dangerous tone. "Stop deflecting. Why him? Why now? Why use the favor on Xavion Astervan?"
Lioren looked between the two stern faces hovering over him. He realized with a tiny, internal sigh that he wasn’t going to be allowed to leave this room without offering some kind of explanation. But he couldn’t exactly sit them down and say, ’Well, you see, I remembered my past life as a guy in an apartment, and this world is a novel, and if I don’t marry that guy he’s going to turn into a black mage and destroy the entire planet.’ They’d have him strapped to a gurney before sunrise.
So, he went with the absolute simplest, most literal truth he could manage.
"I was merely repaying a debt," Lioren said, settling his hands over his knee and looking up at them with a completely straight face. "He saved my life earlier this evening."
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the study.
Therin stopped pacing. Caldrin raised an eyebrow.
"He... saved your life?" Therin repeated slowly, as if trying out a foreign language he didn’t understand.
"Yes!" Lioren sat up straight, his face darkening into a look of profound, theatrical solemnity. "It was horrifying, Therin. I was taking a peaceful stroll, when a piece of that damn pastry caught in my throat. I couldn’t draw oxygen. I was bent over a pillar, fighting for my very existence. Had Prince Xavion not happened upon me and struck my back with the precision of a master physician, I wouldn’t be sitting here right now!"
He gestured wildly toward himself. "Instead, I would be a cold corpse on the marble tiles! The headlines tomorrow wouldn’t read ’Grand Duke Secures the Border’, they would read ’Lioren Roscaire, the Defeated Lord Who Choked on a pastry’! Do you have any idea how embarrassing that funeral would have been? You two would have had to give eulogies explaining that a piece of baked crust defeated the hero of the North!"
Therin stared at him. His mouth opened slightly, then closed. He blinked once. Twice.
Caldrin slowly pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a long, wheezing sigh that sounded like air escaping a punctured tire. "Your Grace... are you seriously sitting on that sofa telling us that you proposed a royal betrothal to an imperial hostage because you choked on a piece of pie?"
"It was a honey tart, actually, and yes!" Lioren insisted, puffing out his chest. "His kindness was a huge deal to me! I know he thinks it was nothing, but I don’t see it that way. He saved my life, Caldrin. And you know me. I have never, ever left a life-debt unpaid."
"Your Grace," Therin said, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of exhaustion and rising fury. "There are roughly ten thousand ways to repay a man for slapping your back when you choke on a pastry. You could have given him a sack of gold! You could have bought him a house! You could have sent him a very nice basket of fruit! You do not offer him your hand in marriage!"
Lioren rubbed the back of his neck, coughing awkwardly into his fist. "Well... okay, fine. Maybe a full betrothal is a slightly larger repayment than strictly necessary. A bit of an overcorrection, if you will. But I still believe it was the right choice."
Therin looked ready to tear his own hair out by the roots. He stepped closer, leaning over the mahogany table. "Why, Your Grace? Give me an actual, logical reason! Why are you tying House Roscaire to a fallen, ruined prince who carries zero political value?"
Lioren fell silent.
The theatrical, dramatic front slowly melted away. The easy, chaotic posture he’d maintained all evening softened into something far quieter, far heavier. He looked down at his own hands, his eyes turning dark and steady under the warm lamplight.
When he raised his head again, the playful grin was completely gone.
"Because if I didn’t take him... someone else would have," Lioren said softly, his voice dropping into a tone so serious that both Caldrin and Therin instantly froze.
The air in the room grew noticeably still.
"I can’t explain everything to you right now," Lioren continued, his gaze locking onto Therin’s eyes.
He leaned back, offering them a small, tired, but deeply genuine smile. "I’m asking you to trust me. Just this once. I didn’t burn that favor out of stupidity, and I didn’t do it just because the prince has nice hair, though, frankly, his hair is incredible. I did it because placing him under my protection is going to bring something good. For him, for our duchy... for everyone."
He stared at his two closest companions, letting the quiet sincerity of the moment hang in the air for a long, heavy beat.
Then, without missing a single beat...
Lioren slapped his hands onto his knees, popped off the sofa with the energy of a hyperactive golden retriever, and beamed at them with his usual, ridiculous grin.
"Anyway! That’s enough deep emotional bonding for one night!" Lioren announced loudly, patting a thoroughly bewildered Therin on the shoulder and giving Caldrin a hearty thwack on the back. "We can talk more about this tomorrow! Right now, I am tired, I am legally betrothed, and I am going to bed!"
He spun on his heel and strode toward the study doors, pulling them open with a grand flourish. He paused at the threshold, looking back over his shoulder with a brilliant, totally unhinged wink.
"Good night, dudes!" Lioren chirped, and vanished down the hallway, his boots clicking cheerfully away into the darkness.
Silence reclaimed the study.
The doors slowly creaked shut, leaving the two men standing motionless in the warm candlelight.
Slowly... very slowly... Therin turned his head.
He looked at Caldrin.
Caldrin looked back at Therin.
Neither man said a word. But in the quiet, flickering light of the private study, their shared, exhausted expressions carried a single, silent thought:
Our lord has officially lost his mind.