Chapter 57

Lucien stared down at the trembling mage in momentary bewilderment. Then he wrinkled his aristocratic nose and released a light, dismissive laugh.

“You possess an absurd amount of gratitude for such basic necessities. Did that wretched neighborhood permanently lower your expectations of human decency?”

Kosha harbored no resentment toward his former home, but the prince evidently regarded the settlement with utter revulsion.

“A man of your talents had no business rotting alone in a place like that.” Possessive fury darkened Lucien’s voice. “If I had left you there for another month, those parasitic villagers would have picked your bones clean. The complete lack of basic security enraged me as well. Does every common vagrant possess the right to wander through your front door whenever he pleases?”

Kosha frowned faintly, genuinely uncertain what qualities defined a man like himself in the prince’s eyes.

“To think those ignorant peasants dared to reduce you to a simple goose herder.” Lucien’s disgust was palpable. “The absurdity is almost offensive.”

Kosha worried his lower lip between his teeth. Social grace had always eluded him, and the intricate web of human emotion constantly entangled his tongue. Yet as he gazed into Lucien’s fierce, protective eyes, instinctive trust blossomed within his chest.

He knew with absolute certainty that the prince would understand his fractured thoughts.

“Your Highness,” Kosha breathed, surrendering to the overwhelming need to bare his soul. “I survived in Osterbeek as a solitary goose herder from my fourteenth winter onward. It is a harsh settlement inhabited by common laborers. In isolated communities like that, titles gradually replace identities. People call for the blacksmith, the carpenter, the mason, or the herder. When a village requires only one master of each trade, names become unnecessary. Legends claim our ancient ancestors never even bothered naming their children.”

Lucien remained perfectly still, absorbing the frantic, unpolished confession spilling from the mage’s lips. His quiet, unwavering attention fed Kosha’s rapidly building courage.

“I was eighteen when our paths first crossed, and I offered you flowers, Your Highness.” Kosha’s voice softened to a reverent whisper.

Lucien said nothing. His dark eyes remained fixed intently on the mage’s face.

“You asked me for my name,” Kosha confessed, his chest heaving beneath the weight of phantom emotion. “In four grueling years of isolation, not a single human soul had bothered to ask me for it.”

He stripped away every defensive barrier guarding his heart.

“For the first time in more than four years, I forced my tongue to pronounce my own given name. When Your Highness repeated the syllables back to me, the sound shattered my entire reality. No one had addressed me as a human being in nearly half a decade.”

In that fleeting yet monumental exchange, he had ceased to be a nameless herder or a discarded noble heir. He had simply existed as Kosha. The moment resurrected a sensation buried since infancy, a profound validation of self that his title-obsessed family had systematically destroyed.

“So, I…”

Kosha faltered as his throat tightened.

A sudden wave of terrifying vulnerability threatened to silence him, but he forced himself through the panic. If he swallowed the truth now, the unspoken words would scatter into the autumn wind and be lost forever, like the ashes of an abandoned dream.

He raised his gaze to meet Lucien’s, his gemstone eyes wide and painfully earnest.

“I desperately needed to thank you for asking my name. That single question marked the exact moment I finally understood that I was truly alive.”

The rest poured from him in a breathless, disordered litany.

“This devotion has been rooted in my soul since the first day you looked at me, since the exact moment you stopped and picked up that fallen apple for me. No one had ever offered me such a simple kindness. I had resigned myself to crawling through the mud to retrieve my own burdens, entirely numb to the humiliation. Then Your Highness knelt, picked it up, and placed it back into my hands.”

Lucien likely possessed no memory of a stray apple or a fleeting act of mundane charity. Kosha had never expected the royal heir to preserve such trivial encounters within the vast archives of his mind.

The prince’s ignorance of the event held no importance.

Lucien’s fleeting smile, his casual inquiry, and his effortless grace had accumulated within Kosha over the years. Each fragmented moment had settled upon the last until they formed an immovable mountain of devotion.

To utter something as ordinary as I like you would have been a pathetic and insulting understatement of the inferno consuming Kosha’s heart.

He dragged his gaze away from the prince and focused instead on a towering, gnarled tree clinging stubbornly to the cliffside. Although Kosha possessed little botanical expertise, the primal forces of nature had always yielded eagerly to a mage’s desire.

He extended one arm and drew his dry fingertips across the tree’s rough, ancient bark.

Arcane power flooded the root system, seized control of the organism’s biological flow, and violently altered its life cycle to obey the mage’s silent command.

Vibrant green foliage erupted across the barren late-autumn branches in a shocking display of accelerated time. Spring conquered the surrounding cold within a ten-foot radius. Plump buds swelled rapidly before bursting open in an explosion of lush, immaculate white blossoms.

A magnificent canopy of magnolias bloomed in defiance of the freezing autumn wind, summoned into existence because a lonely mage wished to offer a floral tribute to the man he adored.

One heavy, blossom-laden branch dipped toward Kosha in silent offering.

He carefully snapped a single, flawless magnolia from its tip. The snowy petals bore not even the faintest blemish and exuded a decadent, intoxicating sweetness that almost begged to be tasted.

Yet when Kosha proudly extended the flower toward Lucien, the prince’s expression shattered his fragile hope.

A dark and complicated storm ravaged Lucien’s handsome features. He appeared shocked, deeply conflicted, and dangerously enraged all at once.

Panic closed around Kosha’s chest.

He had forced the ancient tree to bloom solely to draw a smile from the prince, yet he had clearly committed some grievous offense. Did Lucien despise the scent of magnolias? Had the crude display of magic offended his royal sensibilities?

Kosha opened his mouth to stammer an apology, but Lucien surged forward with the speed of a predator.

The mage braced himself for the prince to snatch the offering. Instead, Lucien’s massive hand bypassed the blossom entirely and clamped around Kosha’s slender wrist.

Their bodies collided with bruising force, and Lucien’s mouth crashed against his.

All strength immediately deserted Kosha’s arm. His fingers slackened, allowing the pristine blossom to tumble from his grasp. The white flower fell between their tightly pressed bodies, glanced off their chests, and landed in the dirt with a muffled sound.

Their heavy boots shifted during the struggle, crushing the delicate bloom into the mud.

The spotless petals bruised beneath the friction. Kosha stared blankly at the ruined offering for one brief instant before his eyelids fluttered shut in complete surrender.

Lucien kissed him with ravenous desperation, worrying the seam of his lips until Kosha parted his teeth and yielded to the forceful invasion.

Rational thought disappeared, leaving him with no capacity to mourn the mangled magnolia.

Its loss meant nothing beside the vastness of his devotion.

An entire canopy of fresh blossoms still hung above them, and if Lucien demanded a thousand more, Kosha would tear the life force from the earth itself to provide them.

Arcane manipulation always demanded a cruel price.

The ancient tree, violently forced from hibernation to satisfy the mage’s desperate romantic gesture, would remain barren and lifeless throughout the coming spring.

Kosha accepted the destructive consequence without the slightest guilt. Trading the forest’s future for the chance to shower this one man in beauty seemed a perfectly balanced exchange.

“You are going to drive me insane,” Lucien growled against his mouth.

Their lips refused to separate completely.

Every frantic syllable they attempted to exchange resulted in slick friction, wet skin, and mingled, desperate breath. Whenever the saliva between them threatened to break the seal, Lucien abandoned every attempt at speech and returned to biting and sucking Kosha’s swollen lower lip.

“I…” Lucien rasped.

His fingers dug into Kosha’s delicate shoulders as he shoved the smaller man backward. More accurately, the prince was wrenching himself away from the addictive temptation of the mage’s body.

The bruising grip coaxed a soft whimper from Kosha. His eyelids fluttered open, revealing wide, bewildered, gemlike irises.

The cloying scent of crushed magnolias saturated the dry autumn air. Their perfume fused with the natural sweetness rising from Kosha’s heated skin, reducing Lucien’s brilliant strategic mind to primitive carnal instinct.

The prince had entirely failed to register the original gift of the flower. His universe had narrowed to the golden afternoon light threading through Kosha’s reddish hair and the devastating beauty of those eyes gazing up at him with naked, vivid affection.

How could any mortal man survive being regarded with such pure and agonizing devotion?

A sharp spike of anxiety pierced Lucien’s chest.

He remembered the infuriating way Kosha constantly degraded himself by hiding behind the title of goose herder. Only now did Lucien fully comprehend the crushing psychological weight behind that habit, as well as the extent to which he had worsened it.

He had demanded the mage’s given name under the guise of false intimacy, yet he had never bothered to use it. For years, he had barked dismissive labels such as Mage or you over there, completely oblivious to the wounds he was deepening.

“I never meant to…” Lucien choked.

The apology shattered before it could fully form. Voicing his regret felt like stepping across an irreversible threshold, but the gravity of Kosha’s gaze left him utterly defenseless.

“Kosha,” Lucien whispered.

The two syllables slipped from his lips like a desperate prayer carried upon the wind, but their intimate proximity ensured that Kosha heard every agonizing nuance of his name.

The mage’s vacant shock dissolved at once. His wide eyes curved into brilliant, ecstatic crescents, and his pale, gaunt face lit with a radiant joy that outshone the magnolias blooming above them.

A muffled, needy sound escaped Kosha’s throat as their mouths collided again.

Lucien drove forward, pressing the mage’s back against the rough bark of the ancient tree. The impact sent a heavy tremor through Kosha’s body.

An intoxicating sweetness seemed to vibrate in the air between them, blurring the distinction between the crushed blossoms and the mage’s natural, bewitching scent. Lucien’s blood boiled with a blinding, territorial hunger.

He blamed his rampant arousal on Gosrick, silently cursing the incompetent bastard for failing to procure a functional libido suppressant before this exact disaster could occur.

Lucien’s hand bypassed Kosha’s heavy outer robe and slipped beneath the fabric, closing firmly around his slender waist. Kosha eagerly accommodated him, winding both arms around Lucien’s thick neck.

Taking advantage of the surrender, Lucien forced one knee between Kosha’s thighs.

The softness of the mage’s inner leg, vivid even through the thin layer of his trousers, shattered what remained of the prince’s restraint. A feral impulse urged him to press closer and seek relief against that vulnerable warmth.

“Ah, fuck,” Lucien groaned, burying his flushed forehead in the crook of Kosha’s neck.

A vicious stream of curses spilled against the mage’s collarbone. Fortunately, Kosha remained far too dazed by the sensory assault to comprehend the full vulgarity of Lucien’s words.

Summoning every fragment of his collapsing willpower, Lucien reached up and attempted to pry Kosha’s soft, pliant arms away from his neck.

“Please,” Kosha whimpered, the thin, breathless plea vibrating against Lucien’s chest.

Blissfully ignorant of the dangerous boundaries he was erasing, the mage merely tilted his head back. He exposed his pale, vulnerable throat to the prince like a sacrificial offering and waited to be consumed.

Kosha clung to Lucien’s broad shoulders with the desperation of a freezing man seeking shelter inside a raging furnace, naturally gravitating toward the prince’s intense body heat.

Defeated by the display of absolute surrender, the final remnants of Lucien’s strength deserted him. His fingers slipped uselessly from Kosha’s wrists.

“I did not bring you here for this,” Lucien forced out, his voice hoarse with sexual frustration. “I swear I did not. We need to leave before I completely lose my mind.”

The dazed mage could only stare up at him through half-lidded eyes, his flushed cheeks betraying utter confusion at the abrupt rejection.

Despite Lucien’s professed reluctance, Kosha’s body revealed an unmistakable arousal that mirrored the prince’s own desperate need. The mage burned so fiercely that mounting the horse for the return journey would have been agonizing, and even walking down the hill seemed beyond him.

Lucien’s groin throbbed mercilessly beneath his restrictive clothing, aching for the friction of Kosha’s soft body. Need cramped through his abdomen, and his vision blurred beneath a haze of carnal static.

“Your Highness,” Kosha whispered, shy vulnerability softening every word. “Shall I help you find relief?”