The moment he was alone, Daniel seized the orb and called Royal, and did not bother with a greeting.
"Come back. Right now."
Royal, busy somewhere far away, was visibly annoyed. "What is it this time?"
"Hurry up and get back here and take responsibility for this," Daniel hissed. "The emperor has started flirting with me."
"That's nonsense."
"It is not nonsense—"
"I'll come back in another two or three months," Royal said, and cut the connection.
After that, Daniel began avoiding Lenhard as thoroughly as a host could avoid his own guest. Whenever they were to share a meal he made certain to bring other people along, so that the two of them would never once be alone together. At one point he even pretended to be ill, in the hope that a sick prince would finally drive the man out of his palace.
Instead, Lenhard came to him personally, and sat with him, and took care of him with great attention.
Some time later, Lenhard announced that he would soon be leaving the kingdom.
Hearing it made Daniel so happy that he had to work not to show it. At last, he thought. At last I will be free of all of this.
Outwardly he said, politely, "It would have been nice if you could have stayed longer."
Lenhard tilted his head. "Would you be upset if I left?" he asked, teasing. "Perhaps I should extend my stay another month."
Daniel had no words at all. Please, he begged in the privacy of his own skull, stop saying terrifying things.
For his part, Lenhard had come to a conclusion of his own, and it did not comfort him. Perhaps, he thought, his heart had simply stopped being drawn to Daniel for the time being. Yet deep down he still believed his heart belonged to no one else. Perhaps the feeling would fade with time. It would have to. Daniel was royalty, and Lenhard knew perfectly well that he could never simply take him away.
That night, when his escort asked whether he wished to visit the prince again, Lenhard said no.
He asked to see the king.
Royal was asleep when the orb woke him, and Daniel's voice came out of it in a panic.
"Come back to the palace. Immediately. The emperor has gone insane — he wants to buy a single night with me."
Royal sat up in the dark, completely stunned. "What exactly has happened?"
He returned as fast as the road allowed, and when he saw the state Daniel was in he thought, seriously, that the man might actually die of stress before the week ended.
"He wants to spend one night with me," Daniel said. "He means it."
"And the king? Has my — has your father agreed to a proposal like that?"
"He left the final decision entirely to me."
Royal frowned. "Then what was the price? It can't have been anything ordinary, or you wouldn't look like that."
Daniel told him.
If they accepted, the kingdom would receive ten years of completely tax-free trading rights across all five continents.
Royal sat with that for a moment and understood immediately why no one had simply thrown the offer back in the emperor's face. Nobody on any throne anywhere could reject a thing like that easily.
"Fine," he said. "I'll spend the night with the emperor instead."
Daniel's head came up. "Are you truly sure about this?"
"If you hadn't saved me that day," Royal said, "my life would have ended miserably a long time ago." He shrugged, one shoulder. "And I've dealt with plenty of terrible people since I came to this world. You know what it was like when I first arrived."
He did know. Both of them knew what had been done to a man with no name, no country and no proof of anything, in the days before a prince found him in the rain.
"I can handle this too," Royal said. "I'm your shadow. Everything dark and ugly that comes at this house should fall on me, not on the prince."
Daniel looked at him and found that he could not refuse him any longer. Reluctantly, he agreed.
"Leave it all to me," Royal told him. "I'll deal with the emperor personally."
Meanwhile, in the guest wing, Lenhard was drowning in regret over his own actions. How, he demanded of himself, could he ever have made such a shameful request? What kind of man looked at someone like that and then put a price on him?
Earlier, he had gone to the king with the proposal, and the king had heard it out with open shock on his face.
"What is the true meaning behind this?"
Lenhard had expected exactly that reaction, and said nothing to soften it.
The king admitted, frankly, that the offer was so enormous that refusing it would be nearly impossible. But he also explained that his son managed nearly all the affairs of state, and so the final decision would remain entirely in Daniel's hands. He acknowledged, without any pretense of not seeing it, that Lenhard appeared to care very deeply for his son.
Even so, he said, he intended to respect Daniel's own choice.
Now, alone, Lenhard wanted desperately to cancel the whole thing. To take it back before it touched anyone. And for some reason he could not make himself do it.
The butler approached and reminded him, gently, that he ought to change his clothes first.
Elsewhere in the palace, Royal was thinking about something Daniel had told him — that he had completely failed to notice Lenhard's feelings for him.
Royal admitted to himself that perhaps he had known, somewhere underneath, and had simply never shown the emperor any clear reaction at all. He regretted it now. If he had made his feelings and his expressions more obvious earlier, perhaps Lenhard would have understood the whole situation differently, and none of this would ever have been asked.
But there was no point in regretting it anymore.
He went and found the emperor.
"I have spoken with my father regarding your proposal," Royal said. "Is the offer still valid?"
"It is," Lenhard said.
And behind his own steady voice he was thinking: there is still time. There is still time to confess honestly what I feel, and to pretend that I never made such a deal at all.
Before he could say any of it, Royal held out a note.
Lenhard took it in surprise and looked down. There was an address written on it, and a time.
"We'll meet there," Royal said lightly, and smiled, and left him standing with the paper in his hand.