Royal covered his mouth with one hand.
Something had been bothering him for a very long time, sitting at the back of everything, and it chose that moment to come forward and be looked at.
The nobles of his kingdom were greedy, and they were terrible men, and he had never once believed they possessed the courage to rebel on their own. Someone had been standing behind them. Someone powerful enough to make cowards brave.
And then the road to Anant. They had been attacked over and over on that road — attacked by people who knew their route, who knew their plans, who kept coming even after the entire world had accepted that Prince Daniel's injuries had been fatal. Everyone believed the prince was dead. And still the assassins had come, without a pause, without an end.
All of the pieces slid together at once.
Royal lifted his head and stared at the man sitting on the edge of the bed, and the horror of it went all the way down.
"It was you," he said. "All of it. Everything that happened started with you."
Lenhard did not appear troubled by the accusation in the slightest.
"Don't call me Your Majesty," he said calmly. "Call me Len."
When he had first met Royal, all Lenhard had wanted was to see him smiling happily, forever, from wherever he happened to be standing. That was all. That was the whole of it.
But during the two months they spent in the same palace, the thing inside him stopped answering to him. He wanted Royal close. He wanted to see him smile, and hear his voice, and be beside him every hour of the day, and the wanting only grew.
So he had proposed a single night together — believing, honestly believing, that it would let him give up on an impossible love.
After that night he understood that the exact opposite had happened.
Instead of forgetting him, he had become more deeply attached than before, as though something had been fastened around him and locked. He was desperate. He thought constantly, obsessively, about how he might keep Royal close to him forever. And he knew what stood in the way: Royal was destined to rule his own kingdom one day. Which meant he would never choose Lenhard. Not ever.
So the first thing Lenhard needed to do was separate him from that kingdom.
Wearing a different identity, he approached the greedy old nobles of the Leroy Kingdom and offered them a deal. They were so selfish, and so hungry for what they did not have, that they accepted a proposal from a complete stranger without asking him a single serious question.
He had given them one condition.
Prince Daniel was to be brought to him alive and unharmed.
The plan failed. The last time those nobles saw Prince Daniel, he was severely wounded — and afterward he vanished completely, and everyone assumed he had died.
When Lenhard received that news he was furious in a way his court had never seen. He blamed those fools for having gone after Daniel's younger brother as well, which had put the entire kingdom on alert and made every man in the palace cautious. Because of that, Daniel had been hurt far worse than he should ever have been.
He searched. He sent people everywhere he could think of and to every place Daniel might have run, and nothing ever came back to him. The not-knowing tormented him until it felt as though his heart would split open along a seam.
To comfort himself, he had eventually reached for the only thought that helped: if Daniel truly was dead, then at least he no longer belonged to anyone else either.
He had wept while he thought it. The tears came anyway, the whole time.
And then Royal appeared in front of him again and smiled at him, and in that instant Lenhard felt the last of his sanity go out of him like a candle in a draught. He would never allow this man to disappear from his life a second time. Never.
"I love you," he said now, looking directly at him. "I love you more than I can hold."
Royal did not move.
"I already know you would never choose me," Lenhard said. "I know there is no future in which we are together. I have known it from the beginning." He reached down and fastened the shackles securely around Royal's ankles, checking each one, and then bent and kissed his feet, gently. "Even if I can never have your love, I'll take your hatred instead. I'll accept that."
"What," Royal said, "do you think you're doing?"
He was shaking. "Why have you locked me up? What is it you want from me? Say it."
"I want nothing," Lenhard said calmly, "except for you to stay beside me forever." He paused. "And you promised to call me Len."
"I made that promise to an honest man," Royal snapped. "Not to someone who betrayed me. How exactly am I supposed to keep it after this?"
"Do you truly consider it betrayal?" Lenhard asked. He said it quietly, without any anger at all. "All I have ever wanted was for you to trust me. If you can't do that, then I'll respect your feelings." He was silent a moment. "You could never truly understand me. I don't blame you for it. I no longer understand my own emotions either. All I know is that I love you."
Royal began to tremble.
He turned his head away, because he could not look at him any longer. "Get out," he said. "Leave me alone."
Lenhard was quiet for a moment. Then he agreed, and left the room.
Royal kicked a chair across it.
Servants came rushing in and begged him to calm himself, and he shouted at them to get out and to bring back his clothes.
"You've locked me in chains like a pet," he said furiously. "Bring me the key. Now."
The servants explained, frightened, that they did not have the key. None of them did.
Royal snatched up the trousers they had brought him and threw them. "How am I supposed to put those on?" he shouted, gesturing at his own ankles. "Look at me. Look. Go and bring me that bastard emperor. Immediately."
The door opened.
"What's happened?" Lenhard asked gently. "Did you call for me?"