Chapter 66

Back in the cramped bedroom, Lucien scrutinized the young man before him without mercy.

Kosha merely blinked his large eyes, his slender fingers twitching nervously while he endured the crushing weight of the prince’s gaze.

Lucien had already considered the possibility that Kosha was an assassin employed by his rival brother, Bastian. Prolonged observation had allowed him to discard that theory with reasonable confidence, but replacing a domestic political threat with the specter of a Grafen sleeper agent elevated the danger to outright treason.

I would honestly prefer that he had taken Bastian’s or Arabelle’s coin. At least domestic treachery is a familiar danger.

Lucien forced down the paranoia clawing through his mind and finally broke the silence.

“How did you know I was waiting in this room? Did one of the guards tell you?”

“No, Your Highness. I simply felt your presence.”

“You felt it?”

“My magic is deeply embedded in your body,” Kosha confessed softly.

He raised a trembling hand and placed his palm timidly against the center of Lucien’s armored chest.

The electric intimacy of that touch resurrected the visceral memories of the previous night with brutal force. A fine tremor ran through Lucien’s fingertips.

Cold political suspicion collided violently with the blinding heat of their physical entanglement.

His face possesses the refined, aristocratic symmetry of someone born to privilege. Nothing about him resembles a destitute gooseherd.

Why hide in rural obscurity, shoveling manure in Allohen while suppressing his magical presence? A man with this face and such effortless grace could have commanded fortunes in the capital’s highest circles or conquered the merchant guilds through charm alone.

Lucien lifted one hand and slowly cupped Kosha’s pale cheek. The young man flinched at the sudden movement, but only for an instant. Then he melted into the touch, leaning obediently into the prince’s calloused palm without asking a single question.

For someone cursed with such devastating beauty, he is far too docile. His submission feels almost deliberately rehearsed.

Yet one glaring contradiction remained.

The impossible events of the previous day continued to burn behind Lucien’s eyes, completely separate from the carnal intensity that had followed.

Kosha had defied the laws of nature, forcing dormant branches to burst into bloom beneath the season’s killing frost. The vision of pure white petals cascading over his dark hair had possessed a terrifying, almost mythical unreality. Each flower had pulsed with an ethereal radiance, releasing a rich, intoxicating fragrance so powerful that it had left Lucien dizzy.

The sensory force of the miracle had been too complete and too physically convincing to dismiss as a manipulative illusion.

Lucien understood nothing of arcane mechanics. He remained ignorant of the principles involved, the mana such a feat required, or the theoretical difficulty of commanding life itself. Yet the purity of the act had conveyed a profound and irrefutable truth of its own.

The blossoming branch had been a perfect declaration. Spoken defenses would only have diminished it.

Sex is an effective weapon. A spy can counterfeit passion, arrange a seduction, and turn vulnerability into a blade. But can a spy command a dead tree to bloom?

Lucien recalled the raw devotion in Kosha’s voice, the desperate hope that lit up his face, and the single white blossom he had offered with hands that shook violently. His brow furrowed as he sifted through the murky wreckage of his recent memories. Panic gripped his chest when he tried to remember what had happened to the flower. He was certain he had not kept it with him. Everything after Kosha’s offering had turned into a chaotic blur, marking the exact moment Lucien’s rigid self-control had crumbled.

A sharp spike of anxiety pierced his lungs, mimicking the horror of a prosecutor who had misplaced the decisive evidence in a treason trial. Logic insisted that a fragile blossom forced into existence by magic would have withered into brown ruin within hours, but an obsessive need for confirmation gnawed at him.

Are the petals still clinging to the frozen branch?

Soft, fragile blossoms resembling magnolias could never survive Izeland’s vicious climate.

An irrational urge seized him, demanding that he run back to the courtyard and verify the miracle with his own hands, but his suffocating political schedule allowed no such indulgence.

“Your Highness?” Kosha whispered, his large eyes searching the prince’s tormented expression. “Is something wrong?”

The young mage had been nuzzling affectionately against Lucien’s palm, but the sudden darkness in the prince’s expression made him wary. Lucien was a hardened knight who had spent his life wielding a sword, yet his calloused hand carried a surprisingly gentle, grounding warmth.

Is something wrong?

Lucien nearly laughed at the pathetic inadequacy of the question.

Did anything resembling normalcy exist within the royal family? His blood brothers plotted one another’s murders as routinely as other men discussed the weather, gladly financing any atrocity that promised a rival sibling’s gruesome death.

Authorizing Bastian’s latest military expedition would create enormous logistical complications, but the maneuver itself belonged to the ordinary warfare of the court. The deployment represented an inevitable tactical progression, and Lucien had survived far more lethal political ambushes.

If he had to identify the single catastrophic anomaly destroying his equilibrium, it stood before him with wide, innocent eyes.

Unable to endure Kosha’s gaze, Lucien turned sharply toward the wall and dragged one hand through his dark hair.

A vicious impulse urged him to seize the boy by the scalp, throw him against the floorboards, and wrench the truth from him through brutal interrogation. Years spent surviving palace intrigues, however, had taught Lucien that rushing a suspected sleeper agent usually destroyed the very intelligence one hoped to extract.

Animal instinct and cold aristocratic reason crashed together inside his skull, tangling into a paralyzing mess. His frayed nerves screamed for relief.

He had abandoned critical state duties to ambush the mage in these cramped quarters, foolishly hoping Kosha’s physical presence might soothe his paranoia. Instead, the sight of that faultlessly beautiful face only intensified the pressure crushing his chest.

A feather-light touch against his armored shoulder broke the spiral.

Pat. Pat.

Kosha’s dry, warm fingertips tapped rhythmically against the metal pauldron, unconsciously imitating the soothing gesture a mother might use to comfort a frightened child.

“Your Highness, are you feeling unwell?”

Lucien remained motionless.

“Is there any magical or physical service I can provide to ease your burden?”

A ragged, exhausted sigh tore from Lucien’s lungs. His rigid posture finally collapsed, and he pitched forward, closing both hands around Kosha’s slender shoulders.

Lucien buried his face in the crook of the mage’s neck and deliberately allowed the full weight of his armored body to bear down upon the smaller man. Kosha stumbled beneath the sudden assault, but his arms instinctively circled the prince’s waist, catching him securely before either of them struck the floor.

“You want to help me?” Lucien muttered against the pulse fluttering in the boy’s throat.

The words dripped with searing, deliberate sarcasm intended to humiliate him. Whether protected by complete obliviousness or driven by sincere, suicidal devotion, Kosha only tightened his embrace and nodded fervently against the prince’s armor.

Feeling that desperate, yielding motion, Lucien released a dark, hollow laugh.

The entire Grafen theory rested upon paranoia and conjecture, without a single fragment of actionable proof. Allowing unverified suspicion to cripple his judgment was a weakness unworthy of any man who intended to become king.

More importantly, the intense physical exchange of the previous night had served only to satisfy a mutual bodily need. Even if hostile foreign agents had deliberately planted Kosha in his bed as part of some labyrinthine assassination plot, using the boy’s body changed nothing about the broader political reality.

“Come to my private chambers before sunset.”

Lucien delivered the command as a rough whisper directly against Kosha’s ear. The delicate cartilage immediately burned with embarrassed heat beneath his lips.

“Your… your room?” Kosha’s breath caught. “You mean…”

“The master bedroom,” Lucien clarified without hesitation. “As you correctly observed, several deeply troubling events have occurred. I will remain exceptionally stressed and occupied throughout the night.”

Kosha swallowed loudly.

“Therefore, we must make every possible physical effort to preserve what remains of my sanity.” Lucien’s grip tightened fractionally around his shoulders. “Do we understand one another?”

Kosha’s face, beautifully flushed with pure and terrified distress, was a sight to behold. After a pause that felt suffocating, he managed the smallest possible nod. This gesture was so subtle that only Lucien, whose forehead still rested against the mage’s collarbone, could sense the submission through their physical contact. The surrender was immediate and seamless, feeling far too easy. This lack of resistance reignited the lingering doubts within Lucien’s mind, pulling him back into the same miserable cycle of political suspicion.

Another dry, joyless laugh escaped his throat.

He truly stood at the edge of madness if he was wasting valuable tactical energy obsessing over the motives of a bed warmer. In the merciless arithmetic of war, sex amounted to nothing more than friction and release. So long as he ruthlessly severed every trace of romantic sentiment from the transaction, using the boy presented no strategic danger.

The missing white magnolia, therefore, meant nothing.

Lucien had a kingdom to secure, enemies to destroy, and countless matters of far greater importance demanding his immediate and merciless attention.

***