Their plans began, slowly, to take shape.
Above everything else, Royal was determined that the enemy would not get their hands on Laurian first. He had to find him before anyone else did.
Soon afterward the yellow-haired subordinate prepared to leave on an important mission.
"Come back safely," Royal told him. "And quickly. I can't afford to lose anyone else. Not after how many we've already lost."
"Don't worry about me, Your Highness." The man grinned at him. "I'll definitely come back alive."
In the end Royal sent all three of his trusted subordinates out, to three different kingdoms, to secure military and financial support.
Even as he was leaving, one of them admitted that he was honestly more worried about Royal than about himself, and begged him to stay safe.
"I hope you'll come back with good news," Royal said, and changed the subject, and smiled at him until he went.
Afterward he sat alone for a long while, thinking.
He remembered how that same man had warned him about Lenhard, repeatedly, in exactly the tone people use when they know they are not being listened to.
And he admitted to himself that he had wanted to go out there personally, instead of sending other people into it. But there were too many unknown dangers waiting on those roads now, and if he left, there would be nobody able to hold all of this together. Everything would come apart in a week.
So all he could do was stay behind and wait, uselessly, and count days.
Lenhard, seeing the state of him, tried to lift his mood by walking him around the royal gardens.
It did not work. Royal remained low and distracted, and because he was not paying the least attention to where he was going, he caught his foot on a stone and nearly went down.
Lenhard caught him and pulled him in against his chest. "Are you all right?"
Internally, Lenhard offered the stone his sincere congratulations.
"I understand how worried you are about your people," he said gently, aloud. "They've gone into real danger, and you're the one who sent them. But you have to take care of yourself as well."
"Thank you," Royal said quietly.
He looked up at him from that distance, and it occurred to him that Lenhard's manner toward him had been slightly different lately. He wondered whether that was because his subordinates were no longer in the castle.
Then a second thought arrived and made him panic internally, because it was the wrong sort of thought entirely: perhaps I'm reacting this way simply because he's so good to me.
Meanwhile Lenhard was standing there hating the feeling in his own chest. Royal was right here, in his arms, and Royal's mind was somewhere else entirely — on three men out on the roads, on messages that hadn't come yet.
He held him gently anyway.
"I'm fine now," Royal said. "You can let go."
"You promised," Lenhard reminded him, "that you would stop calling me Your Majesty."
Royal flushed. "My apologies. Mr. Len."
"I would prefer it," Lenhard said, shyly, "if you didn't use the Mister either." He leaned closer. "And for some reason, the name Royal suits you far better than Daniel does."
Royal's heart began to pound so violently that he was certain the man could hear it.
He can't know, he told himself, holding his face still by force. There is no possible way he knows.
"Royal is only a false name," he said, calmly. "I've used it for a very long time, so I've grown used to it. But a fake name is still a fake name."
Lenhard lifted a hand and cupped his face in it.
"Royal," he said softly.
Royal looked at him, and his voice came out unsteady. "What's wrong?"
Both of them were racing, and both of them knew it.
"May I kiss you?" Lenhard asked quietly.
"No—" It was out of Royal's mouth before he had decided anything at all.
Lenhard startled as badly as he had. He took his hand away at once and apologized, and there was such open disappointment in his face that Royal's heart hammered harder than before, hard enough that he genuinely believed his chest might come apart.
"Let's focus on work instead," Lenhard said, recovering, trying to lighten it. "It might make you feel better."
He's given up, Royal thought, with relief.
Then Lenhard said, quietly, "I have never once forgotten you. Not since the night we spent together."
Royal went scarlet.
Elsewhere, one of Royal's subordinates finally reached Laurian, and told him that Daniel was alive and safe, and Laurian wept for happiness at the news.
Another came back to the castle with word that the negotiations with the allied kingdoms had gone successfully. They were fully prepared to help the moment they received the signal.
"Everything should be ready within a month," the man said. "Though, honestly — I think you're rushing this, Your Highness."
"If I stay here any longer," Royal said, "something dangerous is going to happen. That's why I want to leave as soon as possible."
His subordinates smiled in relief at that, because it sounded to them as though their prince had finally understood his own situation.
They spent the next while going over the plans in detail — where the support would come from, in what order, how they would move. Royal concluded that they would have to act even sooner than they had originally intended.
Privately, he knew the real reason.
He had begun to feel drawn to Lenhard. He could no longer pretend otherwise, and he had to get out before the feeling grew any stronger. And there was something else, which mattered more: he could not allow Daniel's reputation to be ruined. The body he was living in belonged, technically, to Daniel. Daniel had entrusted him with the kingdom and made him swear, and Royal intended to fulfill that promise no matter what it cost him.