CHAPTER 82: THE TWO PRINCES

Leroy blinked. Then laughed, his laugh low, amused, and dangerous.

"Really?" he drawled, lips curling into a smirk. "You’re going to duel me with a fan?"

The fan snapped open with a flick, catching the moonlight on its lacquered edge. But it was no ordinary fan. Its ribs gleamed like blades, sharpened to a vicious edge.

The figure shifted his weight, silent and graceful. No words. No threats. Just intent.

Leroy’s grin widened. "Alright then," he murmured, raising his sword. "Let’s dance."

Steel met lacquered steel with a hiss. The fan slashed like a crescent moon, fast and unpredictable, its sharpened edge grazing Leroy’s arm as he barely deflected it. The impact sang through his blade. This was no assassin; this was a trained duelist.

Leroy twisted, parried, and struck.

The fan snapped shut and was used like a dagger, driving toward his ribs. Leroy caught the attacker’s wrist mid-thrust, twisted, and the fan opened mid-spin, cutting a shallow line across his cheek. Blood dripped warm.

"Who the hell trained you?" he grunted, breathless, almost impressed.

The attacker spun, using momentum and height, heel flying toward Leroy’s temple. He ducked, swept a leg under his, and both stumbled. Leroy caught himself against the ledge. The fan came again. This time, Leroy didn’t block.

He baited.

Let it come close.

At the last moment, he caught the fan’s edge between his sword’s guard and hilt, twisted hard, and wrenched it free.

The fan clattered to the rooftop tiles below.

Leroy’s blade was instantly at the attacker’s throat. A sigh. The veil dropped.

Dark curls. Gold eyes.

Prince Damian.

Leroy stared, stunned. "You?"

Damian smiled faintly. "Just wanted to clear a doubt."

After Lazira had, with eyebrow-raised grace, accepted him into her fold, Damian had begun trailing shadows, spying, watching, and listening. Leroy had become his primary subject. At first, he thought he’d find something worth reporting, something to make Lorraine question the man she’d chosen. But the Kaltharion prince slipped through fingers like smoke. One moment present. The next... he was gone.

Tonight, while scouting the Arvand estate, purely precautionary, of course, he spotted a hooded figure climbing into the lord’s chambers. That silhouette, that gait. He had to confirm it.

And now he had.

So it was Leroy who’d strung up Lord Cassian like a festival lantern during the victory ball.

Maybe... just maybe... he did deserve Lorraine.

Maybe. Just a little.

Leroy’s lips curled into a smirk. "Did you brag already?"

"About what? To whom?" Damian asked, casually leaning back on the steep roof tiles, nonchalant.

Leroy matched his ease. "You finished what was already finished. You should be ashamed."

Damian’s smirk faltered for a beat, then returned. "Doesn’t matter. She believes it was me. That’s all that counts."

He braced subtly, expecting a retaliation. That line had to sting.

But Leroy only chuckled. That smug, infuriating sound rattled Damian more than a blade.

Did he not care? Was this man so secure that he didn’t flinch?

Leroy’s thoughts, however, were somewhere else entirely. Who else could she love but him?

His little porcupine could bare her spikes at the world, but she was his—his alone. She might pretend otherwise, but she’d always return to his hand like a wild little mouse pretending not to know the scent of home.

He offered Damian a last look. "The one you’re reporting to might want to know that Hadrian will move soon."

And then, with a fluid grace, he leapt from the ledge and vanished into the night.

Damian stared after him, scratching his head. Who was following whom? How the hell did Leroy know he was reporting to someone?

And more importantly... how long had Leroy been watching him?

Damian still decided to take Leroy’s advice. As much as it annoyed him to admit, the prince had a point. He hadn’t come to the Arvand estate just for a midnight stroll. Something about tonight felt off. Either Leroy had done something to provoke the Grand Duke... or it was a trap.

He weighed the risk and reward like a true prince of court.

If there was even the smallest detail worth reporting, Lorraine deserved to hear it. He wanted to see that crooked smile tug at her lips again—that rare, sly amusement she reserved only for chaos she didn’t have to clean up herself.

So Damian crept along the slanted rooftop, moving in silence, until a sharp scream split the night.

A woman’s voice. Shrieking.

He followed the sound to a window and crouched low, positioning himself for a better view. The flickering candlelight inside revealed a chaotic scene: Elyse, red-eyed and furious, clutching a thick handful of her own hair.

"My hair! My hair!" she wailed, voice cracking.

Damian narrowed his eyes. Her golden locks, once her crowning glory, now hung in jagged, shoulder-length chunks. She raked her fingers through it, and even more strands fell, as if sliced by a razor.

Her maids rushed to her side, panicking.

Damian barely stopped himself from laughing out loud.

A noblewoman’s hair was her pride. Cutting it was akin to stripping her of her virtue. Public humiliation at its peak. No coming back from that scandal.

Was that Leroy’s doing?

If so, it was savage. And kind of beautiful.

Whatever. Elyse deserved it.

Then he spotted Hadrian storming into the room. The Grand Duke fell to his knees beside his daughter, placing a hand on her trembling shoulder. But his eyes—those fists clenched so tight, they trembled.

Damian’s smirk faded. That wasn’t fatherly grief. That was fury.

Hadrian wasn’t going to take this lying down.

"Well," Damian murmured under his breath, backing away into the shadows, "that prince was right."

Hadrian will make a move.

And the first head to roll... might just be Leroy’s.

------

Sylvia stood outside the steward’s office—Aldric’s room. The flicker of the oil lamp still danced beneath the door. He hadn’t gone to bed yet.

She didn’t know what she was doing there.

Her skin burned with restless hunger. The kind that wasn’t sated by wine or warm baths or the comfort of her silk sheets. She missed the heat of a man, missed being wanted, touched, ruined with purpose. That was the reason, she told herself.

Just that.

If it were anyone else, it would’ve been simple. But it wasn’t anyone else. It was Aldric. And it had been her who ended their arrangement. Her, who said she didn’t want anything more. So why was she standing here again? Why him?

Before she could knock, the door creaked open.

Aldric stood there, sleeves rolled up, ink smudged at the corner of his hand. His eyes widened when he saw her, equal parts confused and caught off guard.

"Sylvia... what are—?"

She stepped in, pushing the door shut behind her.

His breath hitched as she looked up at him, eyes glinting with something dangerous and raw. Then she pressed herself into him, arms coiling around his neck, lips brushing hungrily against the curve of his throat.

Her hands slid down his chest... slow, purposeful, aching.