They asked him why, and Leon thought back to Pride's premonition.
The brothers accepted his refusal. Then they offered him one gift before they departed, to celebrate his engagement: a glass of wine.
Somehow, he found himself in disguise, waking in a tavern.
The whipping was relentless, and the screams of the victims filled the room while Prince Leon begged Pride to stop, because his people were dying.
She teased him, asking why he had shown up late for their date. Because he had been too busy drinking the night away with these people. She whipped another man and let out a peal of maniacal laughter, because she had not known a human being could make such a sound from that kind of pain.
To make it worse, Pride had known this was going to happen. She had seen Leon's future. She had seen all of it from the day she met him, and it had been making her so jealous.
He pleaded with her, admitting that he had chosen to spend the night with his people rather than the morning with her. He wanted to take responsibility for all of it.
Pride used that to turn the tables on him again. What he had done would be considered treason against Pride, and by extension against the Kingdom of Frieia. That was grounds for Frieia to launch an immediate invasion of the kingdom of Anemone.
He began to shake as she told him, in a sarcastic tone, that he had humiliated her, and that they were going to raze his whole nation to the ground.
If the folks from the tavern were the ones to blame, they would be executed here and now. But if he was the one to blame, then it would be war.
He squeaked out, "I'm not to blame."
She laughed even harder and said, "That's what I thought," while the hanging people begged and cried that he was wrong, that they were innocent.
Pride asked Leon whether he loved her. He told her, "I love you. I love you. I love you," in desperation.
And so she threw her blade down beside him. She wanted him to prove it, and to do his people all by his own hand.
She went on taunting him. Still he slashed with fury, and pierced them one after another, until every one of them was dead.
That was the dream he woke from, in the tavern.
The place was lively. Two girls came up to him, checking whether he had been left behind. Since he had shown up here like this, the men wanted him to have as much fun as possible — after all, the men who had left him here had left a huge bag of money behind for everyone to enjoy.
They all cheered at the idea of drinking until the sun came up.
Leon's vision was blurry. He was so close to their voices and their smiles, exactly as close as he had always wanted to be. He remembered someone telling him not to leave the castle, though he could not remember who it had been. He had a feeling the warning was very important.
The girls lifted him up, and he remembered the woman telling him that he would be forced to drink excessively, and that he would lose the trust of his people and of his father. They reached for his face, and he was desperate not to let it happen.
Then rock flooded the room. Everything went dark. Val had the prince safely in hand and made his way out.
Stale teleported the squad to where Val was waiting outside. He had moved the pretty boy to exactly the spot Pride had asked for beforehand. Of course, Val had followed her instructions to a tee, getting the prince out without a single person recognizing his identity. He pulled away the wall of rock and revealed the sleeping prince.
Pride looked down at him with a hurt expression and had Stale send Leon back to be cared for.
Caleum Bordeaux, third division knight captain of Frieia, was leading there. Judging by Leon's condition, he suspected the prince had been drugged, and drugged hard. Val recognized it, having come out of the underworld himself. The concoction was likely a combination of sleeping pills and narcotics, which in his experience was especially useful for human trafficking.
Caleum assumed someone had drugged Leon at the pub. Val already knew otherwise: Leon had been drugged before he ever left the castle. He had watched two men carry Leon to the pub, force alcohol on him, throw down some money, and leave.
Everyone was in shock at that — Leon had been drugged inside the castle — while Pride put the sequence of events together in her head.
Then she grew angry, and announced who had done it. The ones who drugged Leon were the second prince, Irwin, and the third prince, Homer.
In the game, the two of them frequently came to visit their heartbroken brother. Then, when Tiara entered the Leon route, she happened to meet them outside his room and learned a little of the truth of what had happened two years earlier. They had been jealous of their older brother being next in line for the throne, and they had spread bad rumors about him. All the talk of his flirting and his womanizing was lies with no basis whatsoever.
When Tiara probed further, the brothers said they had only given him a little alcohol. They told her that Leon got drunk on some celebratory wine, and that they had tended to him and left him in his room, and that he must have wandered drunkenly out of the castle on his own. Leon believed them.
Once Tiara uncovered all of it, she eventually revealed the truth to him.
Pride was shaking with anger. She had thought it would be enough to convince Leon not to leave the castle. She was not going to let the brothers get away with this. As a royal, she refused to let such an absurdity stand.
Leon woke to find Caleum watching over him. His head was still hurting. When he learned he was at the pub, he began to panic. He had to hurry home and see his fiancée.
Pride walked in and told him there was no need. She had been so concerned after giving him that advice the other night that she had come here undercover to see him. Seeing Stale, he realized the prince consort had come as well.
Leon went at once to bow, and Pride stopped him. A member of the royal family should never beg pardon over a false charge like this one.
Leon felt terrible all the same. She had gone out of her way to warn him, and here he was. But she told him what she knew: that he had been drugged and made to leave the castle against his will, and that the rumors about him womanizing around the town were entirely groundless, because the ones who drugged and framed him were his own younger brothers.
Leon could not believe it.
He did not want Pride to tell his father. They would lose heirs to the throne. And his brothers must have done what they believed was best for the kingdom.
Pride told him that was enough of that. Where did his purpose lie? What was his heartfelt desire? Right now, she and her knights were on his side, and she was sure that if they went to the king now, he would listen to what Leon had to say.
She asked him what it was that he loved above all else.
With a shaking voice, he told her that he loved her, and her alone.
She shoved him off and told him to give it up. He had not said that with his heart.