Habits born from years of watching your own back don’t just pack up and vanish because someone fluffed your pillows.
When Xavion opened his single eye, the sky outside the tall, arched windows was still a murky, bruised indigo. The sun hadn’t even thought about breaking over the capital rooftops yet. He lay completely motionless under the heavy velvet quilt, his breathing slow and shallow, listening to the house wake up.
He’d slept maybe three hours. Four, if he counted that restless, half-conscious drowse where every distant footstep in the corridor made his hand twitch toward a sword that wasn’t on his hip.
It had been the exact same story back at the imperial guest palace. Surrounded by armed guards, fussed over by silent, smooth-faced servants who bowed too low, he’d learned the hard way that sleep was a luxury for people who didn’t have enemies.
Safety was a fragile, slippery thing. You think you’ve caught hold of it, and then the floor drops out beneath your boots. Being escorted across the northern border and handed off to a new family didn’t magically wipe his instincts clean.
Xavion shifted slightly, his gaze trailing across the high plaster ceiling, before drifting down toward the small table sitting right beside the bed.
The mug was still sitting there.
The spiced tea Lioren had carried up the stairs with such breathless, dramatic fuss had long since gone stone-cold.
Xavion stared at it for a long moment.
Last night, when Lioren had stood in his doorway, Xavion had accepted the mug with a quiet word of thanks. But he hadn’t taken a single sip. Not one drop. The moment the door had clicked shut and Lioren’s cheerful footsteps had faded down the carpeted hallway, Xavion had set the silver cup down on the table and simply walked away.
Call it paranoia. Call it cynical. But when you’ve already had your magic systematically dissolved by a colorless, odorless poison slipped into a victory goblet, when you’ve felt your own magic burn through your veins like liquid glass until your right eye went useless, you don’t drink unsealed liquids brought to your bedchamber at night. Even if the man handing it to you has a remarkably straightforward face and a bad habit of running into doorframes.
It was the same exact discipline he’d used during dinner. That mountain of food Lioren had ordered the kitchen to haul out, it had all looked and smelled extraordinary. But Xavion had eaten like a man navigating a minefield. Small, deliberate mouthfuls. Taking a slice from the edge of a platter rather than the center, chewing slowly, waiting five, ten, fifteen minutes between dishes to see if his stomach would seize or his throat would tighten up.
Nothing had happened, of course. No sudden spikes of agony, no cold sweat, no metallic tang on the back of his tongue.
Yet Xavion knew better than to celebrate early. Some poisons were loud and theatrical, others were patient. The cocktail that had shattered his life hadn’t announced itself until three days after the banquet, when he was already three hundred miles away from the capital on horseback. Even now, sitting in this warm, quiet room, a small, dark corner of his mind was still waiting for the delayed blow to fall. So far, though... nothing. Just the quiet hum of an empty stomach.
He lay there until the sun had fully risen, and after some time...
Knock, knock, knock.
"Your Highness?" a soft, hesitant voice called from the hall.
"Come in," Xavion called out, his voice instantly clear and awake, showing none of the grogginess of a man who’d been staring at a ceiling since dawn.
The latch lifted, and three maids filed into the room carrying brass ewers of hot water, crisp linen towels, and a freshly ironed dark tunic draped over one arm. Leading them was Martha, her apron spotless and her graying hair pinned up in a neat, tight bun.
"Good morning, Your Highness," Martha said, curtsying with crisp efficiency while the younger girls hurried over to the washstand to fill the porcelain basin. Steam immediately rose into the chilly morning air, smelling faint of rosewater and sweet soap. "Did you rest comfortably? Was the fire kept warm enough through the night?"
"I rested well enough," Xavion replied, swinging his legs out from under the covers and reaching for his eyepatch on the nightstand. He slipped the black silk band over his head with a quick, practiced motion, adjusting it over his right brow before looking up. "Thank you. The room was very warm."
"Good, good," one of the younger maids said immediately, her expression brightening. "That’s very good to hear."
"We were a little worried," the other admitted, setting the folded towels down beside the washstand. "I thought perhaps we’d disturbed you earlier."
Martha nodded, looking satisfied, but as she stepped closer to strip the bed linens, her sharp eyes caught sight of the bedside table. She froze, her gaze locking onto the untouched silver mug.
Her brow furrowed into a deep, tragic line of distress.
"Oh, dear," Martha murmured, lifting the mug with two fingers and peering inside. She looked at Xavion as if he had just sustained a severe personal injury right in front of her. "His Grace brought this up himself, didn’t he? And it’s gone completely cold! Oh, Your Highness, I am so sorry, we should have checked on you earlier! I can have the kitchen whip up a fresh batch of hot spiced tea right this second, or perhaps some roasted..."
"There is no need," Xavion interrupted gently, raising a hand to stem the sudden tide of domestic panic. "It was entirely my fault. I simply... forgot it was there. By the time I remembered, it had already cooled, so I thought it best to leave it."
It was bizarre, really. Back in Ostharia, if a servant noticed an untouched tray, they’d usually scowl, assume you were being an ungrateful snob, and report it to the head steward so it could be logged in a ledger. Here, the woman looked like she was about to launch a formal internal investigation into why a cup of tea had been allowed to go cold under her watch.
Lioren’s household, it seemed, took their master’s chaotic, overbearing instructions with terrifying, absolute seriousness.
"Where’s the lavender oil?"
"On the second shelf. No, the other bottle. That’s rosemary."
"Oh. Right. This one?"
"Yes. And don’t pour too much this time."
"I barely used any yesterday."
"You used enough to make the entire room smell like a garden."
"Hey, that’s too hot."
"It’s not. I tested it."
"With your hand?"
"Obviously."
"You said that last time and nearly scalded yourself."
Xavion stepped into the bathing chamber, where the tub had already been filled with fresh, steaming water. He washed himself in silence, letting the heat loosen the stiffness that had settled into his shoulders after another restless night. By the time he emerged, his blue hair was damp at the ends, and some of the tension had finally left his face.
He dried himself with a linen towel before allowing the maids to help him into the dark charcoal tunic, well-tailored with subtle silver embroidery along the cuffs that matched House Roscaire’s colors without being overly loud. He stood patiently while one of the girls smoothed down the collar.
"Is this crooked?"
"A little."
"Here?"
"No, you’re making it worse."
"I’m not."
"You are."
He watched them in the tall standing mirror out of the corner of his single eye.
There was no hostility here. None. He searched their faces, the quiet focus of the girl buttoning his sleeves, the brisk, motherly efficiency of Martha folding his discarded clothes, looking for that telltale tightness around the jaw, that tiny, dismissive drop of the chin that usually accompanied people dealing with a fallen general. People usually saw one of two things when they looked at Xavion Astervan: a dangerous exile, or a disgraced prince reduced to little more than the memory of the commander he used to be.
These people didn’t seem to see either. They just treated him... well, like a guest. A slightly fragile, highly important guest who needed to be fed and kept away from drafts.
"His Grace mentioned he’ll be waiting for you for breakfast," the younger maid said softly. "He said there’s no rush at all, he told us specifically to let you take your time and not to wake you if you were still resting."
Xavion paused, his eyes narrowing slightly in the mirror’s reflection.
It was endless. Lioren had spent the entire previous day micro-managing every single detail of Xavion’s arrival, from the smiles on the front steps to the temperature of his bathwater, and now his servants were carrying out those orders like a squad of highly trained soldiers executing a tactical campaign of aggressive comfort.
Why? What was the angle here?
Every noble house wanted something. Power, land, prestige, trade routes, political leverage. A betrothal between the Grand Duke of Werestia and a disgraced prince of Ostharia was, on paper, a brilliant piece of border diplomacy to keep the peace. But Lioren wasn’t acting like a cold-blooded politician securing a treaty. He was acting like a man who had adopted a stray dog off the street and was currently trying to convince it that the kitchen floor wasn’t going to bite.
Was it a performance? A very long, very elaborate game designed to lower his guard so House Roscaire could extract some hidden imperial secret later on? Or was Lioren truly just this... absurdly, recklessly kind?
Xavion couldn’t tell. Not yet.
"Thank you," Xavion said smoothly, stepping away from the mirror as the maids finished their work. "Everything is in order."
The servants curtsied in unison, gathering their basins and empty linens, before quietly retreating from the chamber.
Left alone once more in the quiet room, Xavion walked over to the window. He pushed back the heavy velvet curtain just an inch, looking down into the courtyard below.
Inside his own chest, Xavion couldn’t deny the plain, undeniable truth: House Roscaire had treated him better in twenty-four hours than his own family had in years. The bed was comfortable. The food was incredible. The servants were attentive, and no one had thrown a single insult or pitying glance his way.
But a day wasn’t a lifetime. One night of pine-scented bathwater and untouched tea didn’t mean he could afford to lay down his shield. There was still a vast, unknown territory between him and the young Grand Duke waiting downstairs, the politics, hidden motives, and a betrothal that neither of them had truly asked for.
He would observe. And he would see what Lioren Roscaire had planned for them.