Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

+f+ 

He stares up at the portraiture of him and his family, so recent he feels if he were to lay his fingers over the gloss of his own face, the paint would smear beneath them. It would be blatant disrespect to say anything other than the picture was utterly stunning, a sleight against the talented artist who had labored endlessly for hours over the canvas near twice their height. It was beautiful, in the plainest of senses. The strokes and colors worked into a seamless masterpiece. The family it depicted was also gorgeous, at least on the surface. 

But Felix knew otherwise. Beneath the paint was a canvas tapered in greed and corruption. Beneath the canvas was another, torn apart, slashed by someone or another as if to forcefully rip the past history from the castle. While in paint, the ruler’s smiles were kind and gentle, in reality, they were crafted carefully with deceit. 

As for the image of himself laid flat upon the portrait, he saw a happy boy. And that was perhaps the most inaccurate aspect of them all. 

“Your highness.” 

His startle is kept carefully hidden within his smooth skin, fingers only twitching against each other in the slightest. He turns to the source of the voice, glaring weakly, exhaling lengthily. “Minho, don’t scare me like that. You could’ve been any other servant.” 

“I could’ve,” his most trusted servant, one of his good friends, steps forward beside him, throwing all the lawful bounds between them away in a single breath. It helps Felix relax, just a bit, let down a layer of his ever-present mask. Minho gives the portrait a mere glance, distaste in the curl of his mouth. “Which is why I advise you not to stare so unpleasantly at such a...precious artwork out in open daylight, your highness .” 

Felix's sigh is something Minho hears often, perhaps the most if Hyunjin weren’t an existing presence. It’s tamped only slightly in the open hall, a relief pulling at it as he finally tears his eyes from the horridly pretty portrait. “I could’ve simply been admiring my own face. I have to say the curtains here before were a much lovelier shade of red.” 

“And the boy beneath them as well?” 

There was no amusement in Felix's responding eyebrow raise. “His face was unrecognizable, Minh. Unfortunately slashed through.” 

“It wasn’t always. You just had to peek beneath the curtains, catching the glimpse that killed it.” 

Felix winces. He still remembers vividly the day the old picture behind the drawn curtains was destroyed in front of his very eyes. Curiosity had killed the cat, and in this case, the cat had been the last evidence of whoever had ruled this kingdom before Felix's parents ruined them, just as they had ruined everything else. 

He shakes his sleeves so the abundance of the cotton fabric could fall and hide the red of his palms beneath his nails. Minho's shoulder brushes against his, a silent apology both of them could read well. With it, Felix's disrest eases slightly, just enough to quirk his mouth up forgivingly at his servant. “Is there a reason you sought me out?” 

A silent scoff kept behind shut teeth, Minho turning on his heel with a roll of his eyes to pair with. “Other than the fact that I’m supposed to be by your side always. I or another of your servants. It’s nearly dinner time.” 

Frowning, Felix looks beyond that painting he had been transfixed by, seeing that the windows no longer beamed with sunlight, painted blue by the midnight sky. Magicked lights lit the stone walls and smooth floors instead, eerie and cozy alike, it depends on the mood really. Currently, it was a bare somberness, just another day in this cursed castle. 

“Lovely,” he mutters. Minho's grin, though sympathetic, laughed at Felix's misery. Minho would say otherwise, but Felix knew the truth. Another sigh, another titter, and Minho falls in step behind him as he makes his way to his chambers to clean up for another wonderful dinner with his perfect, picture-perfect, family. 

“Complain to Hyunjin, he’s already ready to reciprocate after a day of training the new stable boys.” 

“Doesn’t he just adore them?” A genuine smile of mirth laces his lips as he peers at Minho out of the corners of his eyes. If one thing can bring him joy quick, it’s teasing one of his friends relentlessly. Even being teased by them brings him a sense of joy nothing else can match. 

“From what I heard,” snorts Minho, “Is that he caught them trading butterfly kisses in one of the clean haystacks.” 

Felix's hand shoots to his mouth, a very inelegant chuckle escaping him, eyes wide. “I wasn’t expecting that. I suddenly want to meet them.” 

“As do I, should we arrange a trip on the castle grounds?”

“If you don’t mind.” 

Hyunjin takes one look at them from his place lounging on Felix's overly large bed and pouts. “What are you two scheming?” He props himself up on his elbow, regarding them suspiciously. There’s a spot of dirt on his face, his hair out of place underneath his hat. 

Swift, Felix rushes to remove him. “Get off my bed,” he hisses, pushing him with all his strength, “Did you even take a wash after parading around stool-covered stalls before rolling around my royal sheets? I could have you jailed, prick.” 

Whining, Hyunjin plops on the floor, rubbing his back as if Felix had taken a sword to it. “I’m always pristine, your highness. You’re just being rude. An abuse of power. What if I exposed you to the people?” 

In Hyunjin's old spot, Felix rests, kicking off his sandals and crossing his legs, the luxurious sheets and blankets cushioning his tired body. Voice softening with an age-old tiredness he hums back, “Go ahead. I hope they chase me from this horrid kingdom with pitchforks in hand.”

“They might ruin your pretty hair if they did that,” Minho comments from where he’s actually working, fixing Felix's only slightly ruffled appearance, making him presentable and beyond for his ice-hearted parents. He runs said hair through his fingers, the gentle precise touch heavenly. 

“I’d like that too.” 

Both Hyunjin and Minho look at him plainly, used to the behavior. “How will you ever find a princess with that behavior?” Hyunjin tuts, getting up on light feet and padding over to Felix's vanity to clean the dirt from his face, frowning at his reflection. “Those stupid stable boys.” 

There’s a twitch in Felix's face as he frowns at that, leaning to accommodate Minho's busy hands. “Finding a princess is the least of my concerns. Only if it will allow my parents to be dethroned.”

Hyunjin mutters beneath his breath, “And I’m the one who’s in danger of treason.” 

Done with their antics, Minho pinches the back of Felix's neck, eliciting a sharp yelp from the prince, shocking Hyunjin where he sits on the lush cushion, the cloth in his hand hitting the white surface of the vanity, the mirror showing his displeasure. Neither of them wants to deal with any further of Minho's consequences if they even begin to bicker. 

“You two are the sweetest people I know.” Minho harshly places a pearly pin above Felix's ear, tilting back to reach Felix's crown on his nightstand. “Why do you insist on annoying each other the most when all you feel for each other is affection?” 

The prince and servant’s eyes meet in the glass reflection, mouths curved fondly. “I can’t annoy anyone else,” Felix offers almost in question, “You excluded.” 

“If I have the privilege of annoying the Pretty Prince, I’m going to exploit it.” 

Minho throws a pin at Hyunjin and places Felix's crown upon his head, shutting them up effectively. Felix's mouth clicks shut as he feels the weight immediately settle and travel through his neck and spine. It’s a burden both physical and otherwise, pure gold, the jewels plucked from the dirt with bloodied hands and the pearls scavenged from black waters. He hates it, but his parents won’t see him without it, the crown having grown along with him. 

He’s wearing it in his portrait and he suspects he’ll be wearing it in his royal grave. Melded into the brown of his hair and intertwined with the bone of his skull, pearl upon ivory. 

The room is silent now as Felix dons an embroidered vest. Minho helps Hyunjin quickly change into their formal outfits, Hyunjin's usual uncuffed blouse and grass-stained trousers switched out for stiff slacks and a stiffer button up, ruffled at the collar and not in the way he likes. Minho steps into the same attire with much more ease and less reluctance, having no preference for the more comfortable fashion that Hyunjin has. 

There’s a gold band on Felix's wrist that never leaves, though it is so much lighter than the crown, having no origin he knows of. He plays with it idly as he lets his friends get ready in peace, keeping his toiling mood at bay for their sake. Dinner with his parents was at least a weekly occurrence, and he hated each one more and more. 

He’s lost enough in his fidgeting to not notice when Hyunjin sits beside him, laying his head on Felix's shoulder and flicking his twisting fingers. Felix blinks and looks at him, swallowing as the silence continues but the support and determination in Hyunjin's eyes are enough to fill the room with a white noise calm enough to put any beast to sleep. “We’ll be there to ward off the evil parents, your highness,” Hyunjin says boldly, if any loyal servant were to hear him, he’d be in chains by the next week. 

It’s a boldness Felix greatly appreciates, not possessing the same confidence within himself. 

Clearing his throat, Minho opens the chamber's door, nodding as if in agreement with Hyunjin and gesturing for them to leave. Taking a mighty deep breath, Felix lifts his heavy legs from the bed, landing on the floor and stepping out of the room, his tongue still in his mouth as he observes the hall, looking in the direction of the ‘small’ dining room, where he’ll be. Hyunjin and Minho tail him, their presence more than enough for his shoulders to unstiffen and his face to relax enough to stave away a headache. 

Each step, softened by lush rich carpeting, deep and red just like the color of Felix's vest, just like the color of the paint from the torn canvas, just like the film over his memories. It’s soft, unnaturally so beneath his sandals. Like walking through overripe grass. It sends shudders through his legs and he makes sure to definitely remind Minho of the stable boy visit. Going outside will help his sanity. 

This certainly isn’t. 

Minho and Hyunjin only step in front of him to open the large, blazoned doors with straight backs and pointed chins. Felix matches them, shaping his posture like the mannequin model Hyunjin uses to draw reference from in his hidden sketchbook beneath Felix's pillow. His hands position before him, not behind him, that was too much a submission, much too much like a servant. Or, like there was something to hide in his soft palms behind the small of his back. 

It’s easy to clear his face before his parents, adopting a look cool enough to be aloofness, but not quite so. Just enough to be attentively respectful, barely enough to disguise his contempt for the king and queen. Dismissive enough to portray his power, soft enough to show he knows that power does not compare to theirs. He puts his mask on layer by layer until he is the perfect prince they’ve always wanted him to be. An impossible mixture of power and weakness, enough to rule the kingdom, but never enough to rule them. 

These many nuances he had to pick up as he grew, from the moment he grew consciousness late at the age of ten, to the present as a young adult with years of experience. No one taught him these things but himself and somewhere along the way, Minho. And if he didn’t learn them right away, he was punished. 

“Son,” the king’s voice, deep and raspy, like rotting bark or molding bricks, reverberates through the room. “Welcome.” The king is an intimidating figure—partly because of his questionable ascension to the throne and partly because of his large figure. His skin has an odd complexion, almost grey, blue eyes near white surrounding pinpoint pupils. Chains of gold adorn his neck and limbs like canopies upon branches, a mound of it in the crown upon his black hair. It was a ridiculous amount and Felix often wonders how the king has not yet slouched under the pressure. 

“Father, your majesty,” Felix addresses, bending slightly at the waist, his servants following in suit, their heads inclining even further. “Thank you for having me.” 

The queen clicks her tongue, smile sickly sweet. “No need to thank us, dear. You’re our son after all. The precious Golden Prince.” It takes much self-control to keep his nose from scrunching. He hates that local name more than he does ‘Pretty Prince’. It makes his skin crawl and his muscles turn to stone. The comparison of him to something so materialistic, so priced, so shallow, never sat right with him. Yet in his parents’ eyes, he supposes he’s never been anything more than another piece of gold for them to secure. 

“Of course, Mother.” Robotically, he sits in his chair across from them, an appreciated great distance between them over the excessively long table. Minho and Hyunjin, nearly making themselves invisible to the other royals, stand at either side of him, backs to the wall. Their dinners will be served for when they’re back in their chambers linked to Felix's own, the rest of the staff assuming they won’t be in Felix's room. Which they will be. 

The queen is intimidating in her own way, looking like candy melted oddly upon a human’s skeleton. Much like the king, her skin was oddly hued, making her look constantly ill, yet somehow radiant. Her blonde hair fell like white lava to her thighs, flowing behind her like sour milk whenever she moved. Like the king, every logical place on her body that could be was adorned with gold. Their obsession with the metal made Felix all the more uncomfortable with his given nickname. 

Not many words are exchanged between son and parents, his father summoning for the food as soon as greetings were given. In standard procedure, chefs and other servants file out, placing too much food on the table than any of the royals could possibly consume. Though Feix knows personally what is ordered to be sent to the trash will be passed around the kitchens and handed out to the staff’s families outside the palace. It’s the only reason he allows his parents to put so many plates before him, knowing he’ll hardly finish a single one. 

There’s something off though, one of the servants immediately catching Felix's eye. One who’s slightly out of line, a tray wobbling precariously in their hand, inexperience written in the very form of his curved arm. Felix looks away quickly, keeping the servant in his peripherals, not wanting to draw attention to the poor person. It does little good though when there’s a yelp, quiet, but booming in the silence from the prince.

The king and queen’s head whips to them like sharks to blood. “You. Identify yourself.” 

Felix allows himself to look now, appraising the servant with furrowed eyebrows. It’s not anyone he recognizes, though he’d grown up with some of these people on palace grounds. Looking back at his friends, it seems the same would go for them. 

“Uh,” they blank, blinking rapidly, anxiety dawning over their face at a surprisingly slow rate. It’s off, Felix tilts his head slightly, how nervous yet calm someone can look. It’s also crystal clear this person has no experience with the royals, their mannerisms bordering unacceptable in their presence. “Jone? Yeah, uh, my name is Jone, your Majesties.” As if he’d nearly forgotten to do so, he scrambles to bow, his temple almost touching the floor. 

The tray has no trouble balancing then. 

“Are you new here?” the king sneers.

“Yes, sir.” 

“And you’re already being allowed to serve us ?” the queen exclaims sharply, forcefully instilling her position in order to demean the boy. Felix bristles but makes sure to watch Jone’s reactions carefully, feeling something odd about the boy. 

Another servant pipes up, voice unwavering merely so their nervousness won’t somehow further displease the royals. “Our usual server was...absent today. We didn’t realize and had to pick a replacement on the spot. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience our mistake caused.” 

“It was an honest mistake in selection, my queen,” Jone answers apologetically, bowing again and taking back the spotlight, “I intended no disrespect in my inexperience. I wish only to serve you to the utmost of my abilities. Whatever I must compensate for, I shall.” Despite having such a shaky and uncertain tone before, the words slip seamlessly, almost rehearsed, from the boy’s mouth. 

He’s still beyond nervous, that’s for sure, but he’s keeping it well contained. A little too well. 

Truly an odd servant. He must be from elsewhere. In some ways, he seemed just as bold as Hyunjin, expressing it carelessly in his clumsy yet confident manner. He was okay with being inferior, no fear in his anxiety, no threat in his ability. Felix won’t be surprised if he was kicked within the week. He looks back at his friends, a message in his expression. Help him after me. They nod subtly. 

“Respectful,” Felix ‘slips’ out, acting surprised when the attention is redirected towards him. As if it had been an accident. “Apologies, I sensed much potential in Jone. He’s new and he already knows how to apologize properly to the queen. People like him are rare and invaluable.” He swallows, his mouth dry, feeling a little sick at his own words. “Golden. If taught well, he could be somewhat useful.” It feels ridiculous, to act this way. 

The three pairs of eyes on him, the queen’s, the king’s, Jone’s, are all sharp and it’s a bit unexpected, his plan already floundering. He’s talking without any substance, pulling whatever falls on his tongue in the right order. He’s afraid his bluff will be quickly discovered and Jone will be punished more severely than he might have been and Felix the same. 

“It’s nothing,” he backtracks, already succeeding in his distraction. If he goes any further he may jeopardize the faulty and half-baked diversion. “I’m rather hungry though. Jone, fetch us an able servant. I want my food in my stomach, not my clothes.” 

Unless he’s imagining things, Jone’s mouth twitches into a smirk before he hurriedly bows and paces away, in search of a more ‘qualified’ servant to serve their food last minute. He leaves behind him an odd feeling, one that sinks through Felix's gut and cuts at the royals’ face like they’d bathed in wet bread. 

“What was that son?” the queen questions, shoulders hunching as she leans further over the table, her hands still primly laid in her lap. She’s searching for something that isn’t quite there, but to hell if Felix will make it seem otherwise. She can’t be thinking that he’d purposely aimed to stand up for the server, that would bring too much trouble upon them both. 

As nonchalant as he can manage, he shrugs smally. “He intrigued me,” he answers, not even lying. “I didn’t think punishing him would be worthwhile in the long run.” It’s not a good cover, suspicion in his parents’ narrowed eyes, and the only way he can keep it believable is by remaining steady and still, casual in his conviction. 

“If you believe so,” his father says after a tense moment, “He’ll be assigned with you to deal with. Have one of your stupid boys deal whip him into shape. They’re not bad themselves.” It’s the king’s version of a compliment, really, but Felix can already see the displeasure on Minho and Hyunjin's face at such a backhanded comment. Frankly, he hates it himself.

“If you wish so, Father.” 

Any threat passed, the queen’s trepidation passes into an annoyance, her clear voice small and grating as she complains about the inefficiency of her staff, the people around her careful and quivering. Felix ate his single plate as quickly as he could, for his sake, and for theirs. 

Chapter Text

Minho understands the base of why Felix defended the servant. The prince, despite his upbringing and honestly awful lineage, was perhaps one of the most affable of people Minho has ever met, inside and outside the castle. If he weren’t so reigned over by his parents, he’d change the world for the better, that Minho is sure of. His combination of nerves and sweets was endearing, his bark big enough to make up for the bite he never showed. He was fierce in a way different from Minho, unique to his life and being. 

He also knows why this server had initially caught Felix’s eye. The prince and his entourage are perhaps more trained than even the queen and king’s closest guards. They’ve prepared for a life in which they might one day escape and change this horrid kingdom back to what it was once rumored to be. Golden. And the true golden, not perfect and leaden. Plastic in its ability to melt, but peaceful and right. 

Their eyes were sharp enough to catch all the ways in which the server boy did not belong. It still baffles Minho how someone so inexperienced was put against the queen and king. Either he had been stupid enough to push for the position, or he must’ve wronged someone in the staff who knew just what would happen to him if he screwed up. He’d have to ask the kitchens honestly and scold them to a degree. They should know such a mistake could screw over each and every one of the staff, even the prince himself. 

Truly, the stupid servant had the luck of a white clover. Though to be fair, so did Minho, for serving such an unconventional prince with such an unconventional personality. 

He thinks this all through as he gets dressed, the prince and Hyunjin waving him off, getting ready for their own appointments of the day. Much like him, they hadn’t seemed too enthused by them, Hyunjin still on stable boy watch while Felix was tutored by some inaccurate history professor, paid in pennies to lie to Felix about what the kingdom once was, unaware Felix knew it was all false. 

And here Minho was, sent to the staff’s floor to practically babysit. He suddenly feels much empathy for Hyunjin’s situation. 

The staff’s floor was the most busy of them all, the loudest and the most relaxed. It was a level below the surface, hidden and considerably worse built than the rest of the palace. The stone was uneven and the cracks big enough for the bugs to lay their eggs and flee safely into the ground. It was clean though, lived in by people who were forced to do nothing else outside their bare free time. 

It’s been a long time since Minho resided within its walls, a regular inhabitant, a son among all the older workers who knew his story well. Yet another boy who seemed just right and worthy to work for the castle with not enough pay to sustain himself outside it. Only fate had moved him from this floor to the prince’s chambers, a happenstance meeting between the two that would lead into a bond Minho had never expected from anyone. Sometimes it still scared him, the bond. But there were worse things to fear in this castle. 

From the beginning, Minho was a reserved and polite boy, able to twist and bend himself to fit those around him, often too stupid or naive to notice when he spited them. They loved him ignorantly nonetheless, or at least the ‘perfect’ service he provided them. So even now he walked with a rod in his back and a pebble in his shoes, painfully formal even with the staff he would’ve once grown up with. 

Jone is said to be in a room he’s familiar with, near his old room on the floor, shared with many other bodies, cramped and stuffed full. However, as the day was beginning and everyone was hurrying to their positions in the floors above, Minho’s knock on the door rang hollow through a near empty space. 

The door opens with a startling swiftness, Minho flinching when he comes face to face without warning. Chidingly, he glares and steps back, pointedly putting a boundary between them. “Jone? From yesterday?” he asks as if Jone’s figure and face weren’t avidly burned into his brain the moment Felix had looked back at him and Hyunjin with those eyes. Help me help him. Sometimes Minho regrets befriending the golden prince. 

“Oh yeah, hi!” the server greets cheerily, leaning against the door frame. Minho meets his gaze and blinks slowly. Jone wasn’t just looking at him. Jone was assessing him, just as he was Jone. His eyes were smart, flecked with intelligence and just the right amount of empathy. There was a stark difference on the get go between Jone and Minho, but as suspected, Jone wasn’t nearly as stupid as he made himself out to be yesterday. 

Jone slips against the doorway, nearly falling headfirst into Minho’s chest, retreating beyond the door, sheepishly adjusting his posture. 

Nearly being the key word. 

“Hello,” Minho says, edging a sigh into his voice, “I’m the one the prince asked to train you. That is unless after yesterday, you want to quit the palace staff and find a less...lavish job.” It’s as much a warning as it is an exit, Minho staring intently. Once you accept a job in the palace, it takes too much to leave. 

It’s obvious Jone gets the message, his eyes narrowing just in the slightest. He matches Minho’s intensity, but somehow even more quietly than Minho himself manages. And he does it with a happy grin. His response is flippant, “Don’t worry, I’m not here to stay. Just a quick job.” 

Minho’s mouth thins irritatedly. He could be with Felix right now mocking some fool tutor. Not tutoring a fool. “Then why am I even training you?” 

Jone slinks out the room, shutting the door behind him with an exaggerated frown. “Aw, don’t be rude, I wanna get to know you and the other guys.” 

That sets Minho on defense swiftly, all his alerts going off. Jone doesn’t see Minho’s hand before it’s intertwined with his collar, pulling him to an abrupt halt. “Does ‘guys’ include the prince?” 

A flash of pure fear hits him strong and deep. He thinks of the blackout chaos the night of the old rulers’ assassination. He thinks of the nights Felix bursts awake, sodden with sweat and tears, shaking from something he can’t even remember. Screams. Loud and unending. “Are you a hitman or something?” Minho wasn’t a guard, but he wouldn’t mind taking a man down if they threatened Felix or Hyunjin. 

Jone looks honest to all taken aback, dumbstruck at the accusation. “No!” he exclaims, genuinely horrified. When Minho continues to stare he sobers, face darkening. He relaxes in Minho’s hold, expression bare. His tone is low and serious, “I would never hurt the prince.”

There’s a whole minute of silence, their gazes collding, steel against flint, a fire roiling in Minho’s gut. Jone’s irises burn in favor. 

Minho lets him go, dusting off his hands like he touched something dirty. There’s a new taint to Jone’s face when he looks at Minho, a clash of respect and offense. His mood has considerably dropped, and Minho doesn’t know whether to be relieved by it or not. “I’ll be watching you closely, foolish servant,” Minho warns anyway. 

Jone is less than pleased but he seems content nodding in agreement. “Whatever makes you feel better,” he murmurs, “Prick.” 

Before Minho can slap him for the insult, Jone is bounding off after some younger servant, wishing them a goodmorning. Imaginary steam billows from Minho’s ears. He certainly isn’t having a good morning thus far. Huffing, he pulls Jone by the ear away from the child and leads him up to the ground floor. He’s come to the conclusion that he’s the one dealing with a toddler now. One who knows more yet less than he lets on. Infuriating. 

Truly. Babysitting

Screw an assassin, Minho was going to kill Felix himself for getting him into this mess. 

+h+

Hyunjin wishes he could go back to a week before these boys showed up and declared himself too busy as one of the prince’s personal servants to watch over two new stable boys. Yet now here he was, hanging from the last thread of his patience as the two stare widely at him, acting as if the pinkies interlaced behind their backs wasn’t as obvious as the sky was blue. 

He rubs his temple, rolling his eyes to the clouds, thinking of his royal value bed he could be resting in instead. “You two are adorable,” he sighs, though not in any sort of admission. “But you’re well aware that romance between staff of the palace is strictly forbidden, aren’t you?” 

Shifting from foot to foot, they nod. The elder one, eyes more sweet and soft, one Hyunjin had wrongfully assumed was innocent, Seungmin, shrugs, “We knew, we didn’t think it’d affect us. We’ve grown up without anyone noticing our closeness.”

“To be fair, you two are subtle. Good on you.” Jeongin, the younger, smiles. “I only found out by chance, but not a very slim one. You two should keep that for the staff’s floor or possibly even more private. Some staff are more fear driven than others, and some just like to screw up another staff’s life. If you’re caught by the wrong person, you could be fired and in some cases, exiled.” 

Not so fortunately, he sees the apprehension build on their faces, eyes falling down to their linked hands. Guilt bubbles in Hyunjin’s stomach and he presses his hands to his nose, exhaling. Seungmin said they had grown up together. Romantic or not, he doesn’t want to break them apart in any capacity. He pictures someone plucking him and Minho from Felix, shuddering at the loneliness that lurks at the edge of his mind at the thought.

“You can be a little more open around me, I swear to not say anything. You don’t have to break it off or anything. I know many like you who keep a relationship on the staff floor. Just be careful is all I’m saying.” 

He turns, grabbing one of the horse brushes to calmly brush one of his favorite ponies for the next hour to ease any stress weighing him down. He wonders how Minho is doing on his first day of training that ditzy server. There’s a satisfaction in supposing Minho will suffer the same as he has been. With a small sneer of wariness, he adds, “Trading kisses in the open is definitely not subtle, by the way. Please don’t.” 

Two snorts ring behind his back but he chooses to ignore them, knowing he’s just as, if not more, immature than the two. “Got it, sir.” He makes a face they won’t see at the term. Makes him seem older than he is. But also a little proud of himself. Maybe he’s handling this better than he thought it was. Now when Minho and Felix visit, they won’t be able to give him as much crap. Not that he’d mind. 

He peeks back at the boys. They’re huddled over another pony, whispering frantically among each other, ease in their backs and shoulders, smirks on their faces. They’re comfortable around each other. Like Hyunjin and his friends. He doesn’t want to see that ruined for anyone. His face falls. He wants them to leave this castle before it is ruined. 

Sighing, he gets back to work. He can’t just tell them to leave. They’re here for a reason, one he probably can’t refute. He can’t leave. Minho can’t leave. Felix is practically shackled to the jeweled banks of the palace itself. He wishes they could all just leave. Either them, or the stupid king and queen. So he can find comfort like those boys had again. So all of them can.

+f+

It’s a bad habit, but one Felix has already long developed, tuning out any of his tutors, instead examining the way his band shines under the rising sun, or how smoothly his ink flows from his pen. At one point, Felix had quite enjoyed school. Around twelve years ago. Then he was learning new and useful things with each passing day, and during his resting time, he could pass those things on to Hyunjin and Minho. 

Now, all he learned was the same propaganda his parents spread to the people to brainwash them into believing that this kingdom had always been this way. They either believed it, or suffered. Felix had the privilege of not having to believe. It’s not a privilege he wants to share with his people. No, he wants his people to live where the present reality isn't truth. 

“Sir?” he speaks suddenly, lifting his eyes from his shimmering wrist. Having grown used to practically teaching a wall, the tutor near drops his chalk, paling. He licks his overly chapped lips and nods to Felix, prompting him to continue. “Who were the previous royal family? What were they like? You have to know, right.”

As if scared, the tutor’s eyes dart back and forth between the prince and the entrance. Felix understands, stiff himself as soon as the question leaves him. For once, it was something bold. He was being bold. A thrill sparks within him, an inappropriate excitement budding in his gut. 

Sighing, the tutor scratches at the back of his neck, white chalk trailing from his fingers to his chin. It’s indicative of his wandering personality, and Felix knows he can trust this being not to snitch to his parents. The tutor wasn’t convicted enough to not get the both of them in trouble if Felix’s curiosity were leaked. 

“Frankly,” the answers slowly, tone drawled and gradual, like he was thinking through each and every word before he said them, “I think the person who could answer that question best is you.” 

Minho warns Felix all the time of wrinkles when Felix scrunches his face in just that way to where his head begins to hurt, confusion carved deep into his face, cemented in each freckle as he tilted his head just a millimeter. “What do you mean?” 

The tutor’s lips part painfully, cringing at his own slip. “Oh, um. I’ve been tutoring royals for many, many years. Before the incident with the previous family, I was just about to begin tutoring the little prince. Ah...I’ve forgotten his name at this point. It’s been erased from every book and memory that’s accessible to any average human. I have no recollection of him really beyond what you can’t scrub from time itself, but I know you knew him.” 

Interest blazes within him, so intense and desperate it scalded his insides, his breath shallow as flames licked at his heart. His head begins to blare like a siren at the heat, red tinting the edge of his vision. “I did?” he gasps, leaning over his small desk, practically draping over it as he hangs off the edge of his seat. 

Pleased at finally getting attention from the student, the tutor smiles delightedly. “Indeed,” he hums, “Time is like the moon, each footstep leaves its mark and that mark will never truly fade. The lost prince is all but nonexistent at this point, but he’s left his indent in time that no one can never truly forget. And I remember you two taking those first steps together. You weren’t well acquainted, but if time had taken its natural course, I’m positive you would’ve been.” 

Felix’s mind flashes back to when he couldn’t resist the urge to peek beneath those curtains, small and alone, aching for something deep in his heart, someone to be a balm for that loneliness. And he’d been drawn to that portrait. He tries reaching further into his head, picking apart his memories until his vision goes hazy, a kaleidoscope of warm colors building a vignette around the world. Like a firework bursting right before him, it all comes to a halt in a bright flash, his back falling back to the seat, warmth trickling from his nose. 

Trying to both peek at the blood leaking from his nose and the tutor now gaping at him, he inhales unsteadily. Dead silence perpetrating the relatively small library, sunlight streaming over the red drops on his paper as they spread further and further over the cream grain, something ignites. 

Awed and a little frightened, the tutor tentatively offers him a handkerchief. Felix hums his thanks, pressing the silk cloth to his nose. “Perhaps, this is not something you should explore,” he advises Felix, frowning unsettled, “There are further sources erasing the lost prince. Unnatural ones. There’s a reason he’s forgotten, and maybe we should stick to that.”

Felix doesn’t quite believe the tutor, not responding and watching on in eerie quiet as the tutor packs up, stricken. He doesn’t think the tutor believes himself. This new boldness streaking through Felix’s veins, escaping his nose, is suddenly steeled beneath his ribs. 

+f+

“Here again, my prince?” 

He doesn’t startle this time, so concentrated on his own face, Minho’s voice is weak against his ears. It’s as if a stupid part of him is telling him if he stares hard enough, his eyes will burn holes into the new canvas, allowing him to see the old one in its former glory. His brows furrow, his mouth pinches, his nose scrunches. His mirroring face remains, smooth, perfect, flecked with gold. 

“Felix?” 

His name is enough to pull him from his trance, blinking the red away as he turns to his close friend, eyes blowing wide when he sees the server from yesterday a few feet away, hunched on himself with his arms crossed, eyes squinted at Felix in a way that makes his skin prickle. He feels like he’s being read somehow, in a language neither of them really know. 

“Minho, uh, Jone. Hello.” 

With an informal flare Jone bows, nearly curtsying. Minho’s eyes roll to the back of his head. Felix can already track the tension between them and makes note to ask about it later, though he’ll inevitably hear about it one way or another. If something irritates Minho, then it will be made obvious. Jone seems overall unbothered by the bricks set between them, entirely glad to keep his focus on Felix. 

“Hello, your highness. This is my second evening running into you right in this very spot.” 

Jone’s eyes flicker between the two friends, mouth curving imperceptibly in a way Felix can’t tell if is negative or positive. He saunters ahead Minho, sidling up to Felix and staring at the same spot as the prince had. “Are you vain, your highness?” he questions in sing-song.

It’s laughable, the question, anyone who knew Felix in the slightest knowing the prince had no care for his own looks despite his reputation among the kingdom, washed and dumbed down to make him seem somehow more vulnerable. It’s effective, he supposes, and entirely demeaning. He replies in kind, feeling like Jone already knew the answer anyway.

“Wouldn’t blame you if you were,” Jone shrugs, “I am from time to time. Not that I don’t believe you. If not vain, your highness, is it the art that captures your attention?” Minho is tensing, ready to pounce as Jone loops an arm through Felix’s, his voice gaining a depth Felix can’t traverse. 

“Not entirely,” Felix trails off, wondering how he can answer honestly to either of them without saying that there’s a desperate urge within him to rip the painting off the wall and piece together the one beneath it. He can’t really. So he redirects the attention. “What are you two doing here?”

Grinning Jone slips from Felix to Minho, laying a casual arm over Minho’s shoulder. Felix holds in his sounds of amusement as Minho jumps, baffled by the overly easygoing gesture from someone he barely knew. “Minho was showing me around the castle after giving me a lengthy lecture about basic etiquette.” 

Minho frowns, almost confused at Jone’s behavior. “One you clearly didn’t listen to.” He shrugs Jone off, staring at the ground peeved. 

Felix watches as Jone regards the other, lips thinning thoughtfully before fixing his posture, taming himself just subtly enough to make a seamless transition from whatever display he was putting on before. “I’ve listened to everything you’ve been saying, sir. I’m childish, not rude. I just thought the rules would be exempt when it comes to friends.” 

“We’re not friends?” Minho states, somehow uncertain. 

It doesn’t offend Jone in the slightest, the boy shifting his gaze back to Felix. “Well, objectively it is a good piece. Not my preferred taste, but hey, at least you’re in it. I bet you’d make any picture look cool, your highness. You’re a lot easier to look at than the majesties with all that—” For the first time Felix sees distaste upon Jone’s face “—gold.” 

It’s an odd trait Felix is instantly drawn to, a smile lighting his face. “Thank you, Jone, truly. That may be the best compliment I’ve ever received.”

Now Minho’s dumbfoundedness at Jone’s utterly lax behavior switches to a sarcastic joy, smirking at Felix knowingly. “And to think I’ve been using every name in the book to describe you as one would the sun, when all I had to do was comment on your lack of accessory.”

Waving his hand dismissively, Felix pouts. “Shush it, Minho. Everyone compares me to the sun, if you’re going to wow me, be unique about it.” 

Jone snorts as Minho scoffs, Felix hiding a smile behind his curled hand. “Spoiled prince. You should be grateful for all my attention and compliments. It’s an extreme honor coming from me.” 

“Ooh, if it is,” Jone butts in, though it’s clear he’s trying to be more reserved, polite, leaning only a bit into Minho’s space instead of popping his personal bubble entirely. “Then I’d love to hear a compliment for me.” 

“Yeah, Minho, shouldn’t you do the righteous thing and please your new trainee.” 

“You two are insufferable.” 

Spinning on the tips of his toes, Jone makes a noise of delight and triumph. “I’ll take it!” he declares with a dramatic amount of pride, “Oh what an honor it was, Lord Minho.” 

A scowl adorns Minho’s face but Felix can detect the humor and entertainment beyond his mask. “Do not refer to me as a Lord or our heads will be served for a real lord’s dinner tomorrow evening.” 

Jone nods, playfully serious. “Wouldn’t that be a treat, two pretty faces for supper.” 

Shutting his eyes long and hard, Minho sighs. “Look at the time, Jone go to the kitchens. You’ll practice serving the staff today. We can’t have you tripping on the queen’s feet again now can we.” 

“And here I thought we were growing closer, sir,” Jone tuts as he begins to walk away, peeking behind him as he rounds the corner. They watch him disappear beyond it, joining each other’s side. 

Minho doesn’t look away from the corner, thinking. “Is there any other reason you’re here?” he asks quietly, not an echo in the empty halls to be heard, the interaction just between them. 

Felix can’t lie to Minho. It felt wrong in his very core, making him sick. But he still doesn’t quite know how to explain it all. Not one bit. It was so complex and mystical, weaving around him in the air and invading his lungs and mind, leaving him dazed in all senses. It’s something he’s never felt before, somehow alive yet inanimate, breathing hollowly through him. It pulsates dully in his chest, right over his heart. A need he doesn’t know how to fulfil, leaving him an odd sort of starving. 

“Yes,” he whispers, turning and reaching towards the painting, disappointed when his fingers land once more on his own face, staring back at him frozen in time, as if he expected them to fall right through. They curl into a fist over his laced hands, his golden band shining twice over in the fading daylight. He glares at it, trying to activate a second vision that will allow him to see the lost prince. Only the indent in time flashes through his mind before he’s reeling back again, hissing. 

Before Minho can fuss over him, he rips out his already stained handkerchief and places it beneath his nose, crossing his other arm in the crook of his elbow, drained but not of his determination. Minho peers at him worriedly for an explanation. Felix shakes his head, taking his steps away from the painting. “Later,” is all he gives. Thankfully, Minho trusts him enough to make good on that, leaving Felix to his thoughts. 

+f+

“You seem tired, your highness,” Jone notes as he, Minho, and Felix are on their way to the riding grounds, geared in their proper outfits for the activity, Hyunjin waiting for them already there, probably lecturing the stable boys before they could meet them.

Internally, Felix groans, spotting the way Minho’s head instantly whips towards him, face tinged with suspicion. Felix should’ve used the powder beneath his eyes to cover the slight red that sat there. He’d thought it was unnoticable. It took more than one night of restless sleep to look haggard, logically. But nope, here Jone was, making any mark of sleep deprivation loud. 

“Not really,” he denies, avoiding direct eye contact, “What makes you say so?” 

He was. Tired that is. Not too much. He’s experienced severe sleep-deprivation before, and this was nothing of the sort. Just a few hours lost during the night to overflowing thoughts and a racing heart, feeling constantly like something was watching him through his widespread windows. Or watching him from a corner of memories he can’t access and wants to so badly it aches. Talking to the tutor was like a catalyst for this growth in his mind that grows so rapidly he can’t catch a breath, dizzy with every focus, a new bloodied handkerchief for every few hours, the amount increasing gradually. One sits heavy in his pocket, unseen by Minho. 

“Ah, sorry, that was farfetched,” Jone backtracks, allowing Felix a breath of relief.  “You just seemed more upbeat yesterday, but that was only for a brief period of time. And, we just woke up, technically.” At this point, Felix can’t tell if Jone is observing him or speculating his persona. 

“It’s alright? Uh, I don’t really know how energetic I am, but whatever you see in public will probably differ from how I actually am.” 

Jone sombers nodding, “Ah, yes, the life of a prince.” Felix snorts good-humoredly at that. 

“Yes, yes,” Minho pitches in, shutting them both up, “Felix, you and I both know Jone is exceptionally observational—”

“Ah, thanks, sir!” 

“—Obnoxiously so. I’ll be sure to make you turn in early tonight. I think it’s well time for a weekly sleepover.” He side eyes Felix and Felix shrinks. They never ‘reached’ that later that Felix promised the day before at the painting, the later in which he would explain his sudden shift in demeanor. Felix will push that back as far as he can, or at least until he knows how to tell Minho everything and make sense. 

“Ooh, a sleepover.” Jone drops between them two, draping his arms over their shoulders in such an open display of affection outside a closed door they both balk this time. After a moment of appraisal, neither of them for some reason deeming to pull away, he holds them close, a wide grin from ear to ear. “Can I come?” 

Minho cocks his head. “Don’t you have a sleepover practically every night? The staff floor is full of people for you to ‘sleepover’ with.” 

Biting his lip, smile morphing into something smaller and bittersweet, Jone hangs his head between them, shaking his head as if it were obvious. “Maybe, but it still feels...lonely? I know you better than most of them and those most of them my age avoid me in case I piss off the queen again. And!” Even fonder, his face grows as he darts his eyes from Minho’s to Felix’s face, remembrance they don’t understand sparking in them. “I miss my usual sleepovers. I miss those people.” 

Already anticipating Felix’s reaction, Minho mutters incomprehensibly beneath his breath. Just existing, Jone had managed to pull on Felix’s heartstrings, imperfect so strongly it allowed for others to overlook him easily. Him opening up had Felix’s fragile will melting. Felix wasn’t stupid trustful, but he was stupid soft. He peers at Minho with a begging jut to his lip and Minho just nods wearily. 

“Why not?” Felix offers, “You are assigned to me after all, and I always want to be closer to those assigned to me.” That’s something Minho can’t object, because if Felix’s mindset had been any different when they met, both their lives would be significantly duller. Miserable. However, Minho still looks doubtful, conflict in his stare as he looks at the boy between them. There’s something else he knows that Felix doesn’t. 

At least they’re even then. Maybe they both had something to share whenever ‘later’ came.

For how much he despises the inside of the palace, the memories bled over each stone that he can’t see into, the lingering presence of his parents, the presences he can’t escape, he’s not outside as often as was sensible for even the average person. He supposes there’s a comfort of familiarity within the walls, the outside feeling too open and exposing, despite his biggest dangers living a few halls away from his bedside. 

Or perhaps he’s just been shaped by seclusion, different than anyone else and not just in the name of his crown. His life was taken from him and warped before the shards were dropped in his hands to put together sloppily. He still doesn’t know half of who he is at times. 

He really does question himself though as he inhales the fresh air, birds chirping and the wind blowing around him, as enthralling as any perfect musician. He might be spending more time out here, he thinks, as for the sentient thing inside him seems too quiet, appeased or soothed to sleep. Why does he insist on locking himself in the confines of the castle? 

His hand rises to his nose reflexively, the answer coming to him easier than most. Because he’s spent his whole conscious existence, searching for what happened before that day with the painting. Searching for himself, searching for his friends, searching for what was once a peaceful parody of his kingdom. 

Wiping away nonexistent copper from his lips, Felix rolls up his sleeves to expose his arms to the gentle breeze and begins to run to the stables across the expansive field. Without question, Minho and Jone join them until they’re standing breathlessly before a bewildered Hyunjin, two people peeking out from behind him cautiously. 

“Burst of energy,” Felix pants out a quick explanation, tilting to get a better look at the most likely stable boys. Realizing how intrusive that might be, he takes a sheepish step back, allowing Jone to cling to him. This keeps them both from letting their curiosity make them rude. “Are these the loverboys?” 

Hyunjin’s expression is less than unimpressed as he moves to reveal said boys. One is taller than him, faces alike in their sweetness but of different brands. And even though they weren’t touching like Felix and Jone, their closeness was apparent. In the way they looked to each other before relaxing, the way their shoulders lean towards the other, even the backs of their hands brush all too intentionally instead of just staying in their pockets. 

From what Hyunjin has told them, they’ve toned their affections down. It’s clear however, to anyone with trained eyes attuned almost less to the world than they are to body language. They’re close. Not necessarily romantically, but a level some people never achieve before they’re bonded eternally to their graves. 

The taller one clears his throat and smiles, gaze darting between them all, tentatively cautious. “Your highness.” He bows courteously, long bangs falling over his eyes. He’s painfully polite, withheld in each action, eyes locked on the prince. Felix hopes he can rid of that inherent fear soon. He understands it though, unable to blame the boy. “I am Seungmin.”

The other’s grin is bright, contrasting the somewhat dull skies. Whereas Seungmin’s casual attire is clean and unwrinkled, well taken care of, his is ruffled and stained from the mud and grass, displaying a more carefree attitude than the former, at least visibly. “I’m Jeongin!” Seungmin gives him a look and he halfheartedly bows, adding, “Your highness.” 

It’ll be easier to get along with him, though Felix hopes Jeongin holds the same caution as Seungmin does when it comes to the rest of the palace. 

Hyunjin claps his hands together as soon as introductions are finished, a smile lighting his face. “Let’s ride!” he announces, gesturing to the rather large stables. The two boys immediately race inside, their voices hushed yet booming in the space.

Felix knows the place far better than either of them, the stables once a solid hiding spot for when he and Hyunjin were seldom allowed to play outside of their duties. Minho just as much, though the hard working servant allows the youngest to take him by the arm to his favorite horses, describing them as if Minho hadn’t grown up with them. Felix listens fondly as Minho just hums in response, not quite sure what else to do. 

“You nicknamed the horse after a fox from an incredibly distant kingdom?” Minho wonders incredulously as Seungmin joins them. 

“Ridiculous right?”

“They get along, that’s good,” Hyunjin notes, suddenly beside Felix. Felix nods, watching the three mingle. It’s odd to see Minho take to people so quickly, the usual tension he bears fading with each word from Seungmin’s and Jeongin’s mouth. “You’re just collecting more and more servants aren’t you, my prince?” 

Choking, Felix hits Hyunjin’s arm. “Why must you make it sound like that? You could have at least said friends.” 

A deep noise from the farthest corner of the stable interrupts whatever Hyunjin would have responded, the boy’s face contorting with immense surprise. At his reaction, Felix turns to the noise with him, brows raising. 

Jone sits on his feet in front of an open stall, hand stretched out comfortingly over a bright nose. A solemn bittersweet smile forms around soft mumbles as he pets it, only growing as the horse shifts forward, responding to him. Their neighs were low and mournful, filled with more sorrow than many would ever anticipate a horse could experience. 

“Hyunjin,” Felix breathes in awe, “She’s…” 

“Talking. I know.” 

Berry is old. Nearing her time. She’s the only horse who had lived through the incident, the only horse on the grounds to have lived in a time before Felix’s kingdom. She had been small when it happened, somehow escaping the erasure of everything else. Not unscathed, however. She was lethargic and dead quiet, barely reacting to anything, only moving when necessary, grieving for years upon years what Felix never even knew. It was a wonder she lived with such a broken neigh. 

Somehow, Jone regards her with familiarity, and so does she in suit. For the first time since Felix visited the stables, nervous and reclusive at the age of seven or eight, he sees her stand on her own accord, walking into Jone’s arms, nuzzling his hair and making a mess of it. It’s not the most wondrous thing the prince has ever seen, but he feels like it just might be, something deep in him reacting with a joy so blissfully warm it’s like cocoa pumping through his heart. 

“Are you gonna take her?” Felix asks, projecting his voice, not getting an inch closer in caution of ruining whatever is taking place before them. 

Berry’s new friend looks surprised, running his fingers delicately over her head. “You’d let me? Doesn’t she need rest? She looks worn,” he points out in succession even as he perks up happily, looking over at the saddles in preparation. 

“Trust me,” Minho intones, grabbing one and fearlessly setting it over Berry’s back, nodding to Jone without looking at him. “This old thing needs to get out of here some time in her life. Just don’t run her into a wall.” 

There’s a new excitement to Jone that seems more genuine than any other he’s shown, his grin brighter than ever as he nods fiercely, fondly easing Berry out of her stall and past the others, still talking to her unheard by their ears as if catching up. Something about it nags Felix but has no time to ponder it, everyone else in a hurry to pick their horse companions to catch up with Jone. He’s forced under the same urgency, seeking out his own favorite horse to get some air. 

It’s an odd feeling, riding out onto the grassy fields not alone. Usually at most Felix would circle the area with Minho and or Hyunjin riding beside him, their quiet words paired with the sound of the horses’ hooves a hollow melody to pair with the music of nature. Now, there’s three other people beside them, bringing out the lively sides of them that are suffocated and suppressed within the castle walls. Them and their horses are racing around, shouts of delight and amusement filling the air. 

There’s still something missing, Felix notes, missing beats between their chords of screams. But already his chest feels more full, not constricted and stuffy like cotton shoved in molded fabric, but almost just right . It’s utterly fantastic and he can’t get enough of it. 

He and his horse, Mudpie, gloriously named by a more aloof Hyunjin who almost wanted nothing to do with the little prince who no one knew spick or span about other than his adored face. Took a break to breathe, recycled laughs bubbling from Felix’s mouth while Mudpie kicked contentedly at the ground. He looks back at the servants, his friends, and watches satisfied as they weave and twine with each other seamlessly on horseback. 

Something catches his eye, opposite from where he’s already looking, and his heart beats hard for a single second, his shoulders rolling back as he chokes on air. Whipping his head to it, he exhales shakily, eyes widening. He already feels it welling in him boiling and roiling, sharpening his senses and dulling the common one that matters. Curiosity, sharp and iron against the roof of his mouth as he grabs Mudpie’s reins and pulls them, redirecting their course. 

Someone might be calling his name, but all he can hear now is the single steps of the horse ahead of him, their coat dull and faded, nearly blending with the forest that walls the castle. The person atop them young, achingly young, their hair curled over their nape, riding clothes outdated yet crisp. 

“Hello?” he calls out bewildered, “Who are you?” 

They pause, head righting, a clear indicator that they heard Felix. Felix makes a noise of extreme unsettlement, him and his horse backing up startled as they look back. Their face is blurred, smeared ink against the leafy backdrop. The world spins and tilts, the focus of it all that indistinguishable face. Felix’s head throbs as he tries to make out each of the features that twist and morph on the kid’s face as they stare through him. 

“—lix. Felix. Felix!” 

He gasps, chest heaving as he turns to the voice, surprised at seeing a face and then once more at the surprise itself. He squeezes his eyes shut twice, trying to clear the pain building behind them. “Huh?” 

“What are you doing?” Minho questions, his hand encircling Felix’s slack wrist. His entire posture is stiff, shoulders straight-lined and his jaw clenched. Concern deep and intense overtakes him as he looks Felix up and down, frown tightening as he zooms in on Felix’s face. 

Oh. Mindlessly, Felix reaches in his pocket and puts the cloth held there to his face, hoping not too much had leaked before Minho saw. “What do you mean? I was following them.” 

“Following who?” 

Felix is about to answer, an odd feeling striking him before he looks, afraid of the pain that might hit, where the person was. He’s both shocked yet not when he finds no one there, and no evidence of anyone ever being there right then. “You didn’t see them,” he states more than asks. Disappointment strikes him hard, deeper than he can reach with his own mind. 

“No, no I didn't, Felix. Who the hell is them?” 

Felix opens his mouth, closes it, word bank utterly empty, air his only language at the moment. There’s no way to explain the event, the visceral yearning it cut into him like an ax to wood, bleeding his mind and heart dry. The way it threw his soul into a butter churner and threw it out unrecognizable and indescribable. He’s been tipped and thrown into the earth so hard he’s managed to go to the other side and back without a single spot of evidence other than the red staining his fingertips. 

“Later,” he all but pleads, desperate for time. Desperate for Minho to understand he’s not trying to hide anything from him, he just can’t make it out enough to put into words for even himself. Desperate to not upset what’s already disturbed. 

Minho purses his lips, swallowing, his hand tightening around Felix’s. 

A shout rings through the clearing, ripping their attention from each other. A new franticness permeates the air, the others gathering jerkily to its source. Exchanging a quick worried glance, Minho and Felix join the fray, practically leaping off their horses and sprinting over. 

Something dark turns in Felix’s gut as he sees one of the many guards on post holding Jeongin and Seungmin in place on either side of him by their collars. Felix felt part of a school of fishes in the midst of a shark. He can neither step back nor forward, rooted to the ground, Minho’s hand on his shoulder to help keep it that way. 

Hyunjin is the one to step ahead of them, arms crossed behind his back, hiding his shaking fists, locked onto each other, knuckles white. Eyes lowered, shoulders hunched, lips thin. “Sir, is there an issue here?” It’s obvious already what the ‘issue’ was.

“These two,” the guard says, voice raspy and gritty, the liver full of spirits in rum kind. “Holdin’ hands as they rode. They look like a couple.” Minho’s hand tightens around Felix’s shoulder as the man steps closer to Hyunjin, an inch away from breaking a personal bubble. “Couples aren’t allowed on castle grounds except for the royals, servant. You know this, don’t you? Or are you hiding a sweet yourself?” 

Shaking his finger out to relax his voice, Hyunjin shakes his head. “Sir, I think you’ve misunderstood. These trainees are childhood friends. They’re close, but they aren’t a couple. It’s allowed for...children to be close is it not?” 

“You’re not fooling anyone, pretty boy. Just because the Golden Prince likes you doesn’t mean you and your friends can get away with everything. I’m reporting them to the head staff. Best keep them separated until then.” 

“Sir, really, there’s no need,” Hyunjin tries, crackling as the pressure on them all increases. 

“Save it! I’ve made up my mind. Keep them apart or I will.” He pushes the two boys away separately, nearly tumbling to the ground. Felix can’t take it anymore, fire burning beneath his skin, wrapping around him until everything stings and burns. 

With all his force, the prince shakes Minho off, joining Hyunjin. “Sir, you’re truly making a mistake,” he bites out, for once hoping his princely status gives him order, “I’d suggest you apologize and return to your post before I report you myself.” 

The man turns slowly, and the flames fueling Felix snuff, the air frighteningly cold around them all instead. The man absolutely didn’t care. Not at all. “Go ahead, Golden Prince. You’re just an attractive airhead who plays with his friends instead of being a proper prince.” And then he spits, the drops hitting Felix’s hand that’s held to cover his nose. 

Everyone goes still, out of shock and anger alike. The only one who moves is the man, walking away like nothing had happened. Like he hadn’t just greatly disrespected a prince. Like he hadn’t just committed a really sucky move for no reason. Prick. 

And really there, Seungmin and Jeongin with a foot between them because they’re scared to be close. Hyunjin watching them shaking because he adored them both so much and he was probably blaming himself for them not being more discreet. Who knows what will happen to them if reported. Typically, no one cared enough to report anyone. Felix with a solid dead weight pulling hard at his mind, spittle-flecked over his hand and face, boreing his skin like acid. Is when everything lands on its head. 

There’s a little chip in Felix’s mind, the last crucial one to his patience, that’s been threatening to break for weeks and months, and on this day where he’d truly felt happy, it finally broke off, a sound clink in his head as it fell through his body, rattling his rib cage and turning over his stomach. He’s upset.

He takes his bloodied handkerchief, not caring anymore for the crimson that may stain his face, and wipes the spit away, shuddering with pure disgust, and throws it to the ground, looking at the forest and no one else. 

“Hyunjin,” he addresses the empty air, “Bring Seungmin and Jeongin to my chambers tonight for our sleepover. For now, I think it’s time everyone prepare.” 

Chapter Text

Running on false cheer, Felix fixes his room up until not only is it supremely tidy, but there are accommodations for holding six people comfortably. The chairs surrounding the low table in the half center of the room are pushed back for space, a fire is already going, and he brought out some of his extra blankets from beneath his bed for anyone who might like them. He’s acting for just an hour or two, that everything is normal even when something within him has changed so strickenly so. 

“Is it later yet?” 

Yelping, he jumps a foot into the air, nearly dropping a plate of fruit he’d ordered from the kitchen. Dramatically holding his chest, he turns to the intruder. “Minho, must you always scare me?” 

“Felix.” 

The clock ticks away as Felix rolls his lip between his teeth. There’s still a lot of time between now and when the others are expected to arrive. And in his manic rush, he’d already prepared everything necessary and more. Felix still had no words for what Minho needed to hear, but he needed to find them. Now would be preferable. 

The tin platter makes a grating noise against the small table, accompanied by the soft sound of Felix sitting in one of the luxuriously cushioned chairs, his actions indicating his answer enough. From the fire’s shadow, does Felix see Minho sit across from him, the orange light waving over the sides of their faces. 

“I don’t even know where to begin,” Felix groans, rubbing his temple with both hands, “Not even, I just don’t know how to explain any of it. It’s all so...out of place.” 

Minho shrugs, “I don’t care if you tell me in broken syllables. I’m good at putting together the context. Just say something, Felix. You’ve been acting odd since yesterday. I know that’s not much of a time frame but usually, you’d be telling me the reason within the hour. It’s been a day and it’s making me anxious.” 

“I’m truly sorry for that,” Felix apologizes, cutting off the other with a hand before he could assure him that it was fine. “No, really, for both of us. I wanted to tell you everything so bad but again, it’s so odd it's unexplainable.” 

Minho allows him the time to put his thoughts together, the flames filling in their conversation with one of their own, alive and energetic, a question to their tone as if they were as curious as Minho was about the situation. Felix watches them speak, wondering if it’d help him. 

“I did something out of character yesterday,” Felix hums with the fire, finding a flow in one of the sparks that he can go along with. “I was bolder than usual. I asked the professor about the past family. And he told me some things I’d never heard, had never considered. He told me that not only did I once know the forgotten prince, but that the fact that we can still remember that he ever existed, shows that whatever my parents did to him, tried to erase him from this palace, this history, didn’t work.” 

“It flicked a switch in my mind. Since then, I’ve felt odd. That feeling of something being missing, it was amplified to a degree to where it was physically tangible. Because something is. Something is so terribly off with this castle and the people who rule it. It’s more than anything I can explain, I just feel it. I feel like I’ve been placed in a reality I don’t belong in, like we all are, or rather, the reality forced on us isn’t the one we’re supposed to be living.”

And he catches something, something he hasn’t picked out just right before now, frowning. “I have memories of him,” he realizes, voice an awed gasp, “I have memories of the forgotten prince. Where everyone else’s memories have been altered of the event, washed over and scrubbed clear, mine was merely covered by something else. But every time I try to recall them, my head spins, my nose bleeds, and I feel like I’ve eaten too much and then ate another feast on top of it.” 

“Then...when you saw me earlier today, chasing someone who wasn’t there, I think...I think I was chasing a memory of the forgotten prince. No. I know it. It was him. I couldn’t recognize him or make it out. But it was him. And I’m starting to think he still has a huge connection to whatever is happening in this stupid castle. And I want to get down to the bottom of it.” 

His lips almost feel sore from how much he's spoken, his heart wheedling at him for not giving it a break as he went on and on. Letting it rest with a large inhale, he finally lifts his eyes from the dying fire he’ll have to renew to Minho. 

The boy’s expression is wiped blank. Not in an aloof or negative way, just in the way that he doesn’t really know how to react whatsoever. It’s both a relief and a nerve-wracker. It isn’t a bad reaction, but only just yet. It could spawn into one at any second. Felix shifts in his seat uneasily, waiting for anything from his friend. Neither of them knew or know what to expect. 

Granting Minho the same courtesy of time as he had been, Felix crawls out of the chair, poking at the fire rivaling the cavern of his heart as his chest constricts around molten nerves. It roars to life, a hand pulling him away before he can be burnt. He looks up at Minho whose face now rests in a hard mold of determination. 

“What’s your plan for the meeting tonight?” 

“Uh, I was gonna talk about possibly overthrowing my parents? I’ve been sick of them and their crappy people and today...the guard messing with us was the final straw. Or maybe I was just throwing a fit in the moment, but with all this piling up...I want this to be a happy kingdom, Minho. Not a golden one. Not necessarily a perfect one. I just...I don’t want my parents to keep sucking everyone in and out here of all that matters to them.” 

And with them in the way, how will he ever rediscover his past? Their pasts.

For the first time since the stables that morning, Minho smiles in all his glory, shaking his head almost exasperatedly. “Well, then we better get to it huh, your highness. Tell the others all that you told me, and we can all begin to work for the kingdom everyone needs. That we need.” 

With Minho’s smile lighting his way, brighter and so much more stable than the firelight, Felix feels bold again. 

+

Seungmin and Jeongin slink into the room like they’re on a top-secret mission even though Hyunjin, who came in just before them had kicked the door open and plopped down on the bed like it was his own. Jone and Felix are already situated by the fire, Minho standing at the window, head heavy. In Felix’s eyes, he wasn’t hiding his emotions any better than the prince had. 

“Sit anywhere,” Felix ushers pointing around him at the many things, “Take anything you want, I don’t care.” 

Seungmin bows quickly, murmuring a small thank you. Jeongin just hums in affirmation, looking around, distant. Felix can see the effects of the day already taking their toll. It must be new for them, living under such a strict eye that could morph into a blade at any moment and cut them apart permanently. Felix hasn’t seen it happen personally, but Minho and Hyunjin say it’s a common and sad occurrence within the staff, thankful that Felix took any measures to keep them together. 

Their pinkies are still linked, a constant physical connection they seem to crave endlessly, no matter the circumstance. But their shoulders remain parted, their eyes never meeting the others’. A caution built on a fear they’ve never had to feel before makes them tense. Felix glances at Hyunjin, who watches too with half his head buried in a pillow, face stony and regretful. 

The prince’s resolve steels. 

“So can I ask now?” Jone leans forward, looking around, resting his imploring gaze upon Felix. Felix feels the need to retreat from it, Jone’s pupils boring into his face, not lost and maybe even hopeful in a sense. Minho had described it offhandedly like he knew too much and too little simultaneously. “Why’re we all here?” 

Felix opens his mouth, the youngest in the room cutting him off before the flippant excuse on his tongue can be free. Jeongin joins Hyunjin on the bed, sidling up to him for familiarity. “We know from how you acted on the field that this is more than just a kiddy sleepover.” 

Minho snorts, turning and nodding to Seungmin in greeting as the other joins him by the window, eyes lingering on his partner. “Up to you, your highness.” 

Having learned from before, Felix takes a long-winded breath and tells them everything. A little more clear and a little more concise than with Minho, but just exactly what he had needed. He watched their faces shift from skepticism to varying levels of shock, washing over their faces slowly like dye in a pool of oil. 

“And none of you need to help me,” he finishes with a great exhale, “But you’re the only ones I trust.” 

Seungmin raises a brow. “Even Jeongin and I?” 

It’s a valid question. “If Hyunjin does, I do...to a degree. Neither of you seem to have bad intentions.” 

Smirking, Minho bumps his shoulders against Seungmin’s. “Do you have bad intentions you need to make aware of before we commence in overthrowing the king and queen, puppy eyes?” Slightly fearful and overall surprised at Minho’s antics, Seungmin just shakes his head. 

“So where do we begin?” Jone rolls over onto his stomach, laying his chin in his propped hands, dark irises turning amber under the fire’s glow, almost making him look magic, embers weaving through his hair and kissing the tips of his fingers. There’s so much more to learn about him, Felix knows, and about the others. He wasn’t lying when he said he trusted them all, can eventually and certainly, but he needs to ensure it. 

Felix is honestly unsure. Waking up that morning, or at least, rising from his bed, Felix hadn’t expected to have escalated from an odd persistent intrigue to a full-blown scheme to dethrone his parents. None of this, from the knowledge of the forgotten prince, to the treason he was casually discussing among strangers and lifelong friends. Was anything he’d prepared for. Honestly, he doesn’t think he could’ve prepared for it. 

“We need more information,” Seungmin replies, smiling almost shyly when all eyes turn to him. “Like the prince pointed out a couple of times, there’s more going on here than anyone’s aware of. We could proceed without knowing what that is, but I think that would kill us all, frankly. It’s important, based on how much the king and queen have made sure to keep it on the down low. You know anything hidden from a prince is never good news for a kingdom.” 

“Sound logic,” Hyunjin remarks, “But if even Felix who has access to everything has nothing then where are we gonna get anything?” 

From beside him, Jeongin sits up, making a disagreeing noise. “In my opinion, some servants have more access to things than Felix does. Think about it. We take care of everything around here while the king and queen purposely shelter and keep the prince in the dark. No one ever pays attention to us unless they have something against us. We’re at an advantage even if we don’t have the authority.” 

A determination is beginning to spark in them all now, the sounds of their apprehensive shifting, fabric against fabric, skin against surface, gaze against gaze. Currently, it’s a pipe dream, the possibility of overthrowing Felix’s parents, but with each assurance it becomes more and more realistic, shaping into something perhaps achievable. 

“There’s a lot we need to anticipate,” Minho hums, tone quiet and serious, “Felix isn’t ready to be king, and this kingdom is not stable enough to last without a sat throne, but we can figure those out along the way. I have a gut feeling that this is something we need to do now, and that isn’t because they’ve offended me. Felix says there’s more, and there is. Seungmin is right, something kept from the prince is dangerous. If we let it fester any longer, then we risk destruction.” 

A new energy in his step, more piled on top of recycled pep in need of renewal, Jone hops to his feet, clapping his hands together. “Smart words from a smart guy. We’re kinda winging it so we can’t do much about the outcomes but right now, I say we split up.” 

“Split up?” 

Jone was waiting for the prompting, fingers already spreading around him to point to the various presences in the rooms, beginning with Minho and himself. “I say Minho and I go undercover with the staff. We’re already supposed to be around all servant quarters for my training, and we can do some investigating. The walls have ears, and it’s time for us to speak their language.” 

Even though he rolls his eyes, Minho sighs, “I agree. Those staff know more useless tidbits about the majesties than they probably do themselves. Any odd behavior could be a possible pointer to whatever is happening.” 

“Seungmin and I have to be separate,” Jeongin huffs, eye twitching irritation but his mood remaining bright, “So it won’t be questioned if Seungmin is sent instead to the library, right? Seungmin’s smart, academically and fantastically. If he can get his hands on some books that weren’t thrown to fires, than he can score information hidden in plain sight.” 

At Jeongin’s suggestion, Seungmin brightens, both with fondness and intrigue. “There’s a lot of truth in kingdoms’ legends and some even in history people forget to consistently erase.” 

“I’ve always been graceful,” Hyunjin inputs, sitting dramatically with a sly fluidity, “And underestimated. I’ll sneak around the queen and king. They know I’m always around so if they spot me, I can say I’m there for Felix, and if they don’t, I get a buttload of info. If Jeongin doesn’t mind me leaving him to the stables for a bit.” 

“A-ok, sir.” 

It’s positively appeasing, satisfying, delighting to have a plan piece together right before their very eyes. A unique feeling that can’t be replicated. However, Felix’s teeth are hooked into his lips, a nagging in the back of his brain. “What about me? What am I supposed to do?” He’s the prince for gold’s sake. He has to be able to do more than sit around and do nothing while those he cares about indirectly risk their lives for their daily jobs. He’s done enough of that already. His entire life, in fact. 

Minho senses this, keeping Felix pinned in place with his stare, shutting the prince up without really doing anything. “You have a job none of us can do. You have to pursue those weird occurrences. The...the ability . You’ve seen the forgotten prince, no matter how unclear—”

It’s odd, the way Jone’s face flashes with recognition, his easygoing grin fading away just the slightest, his brow curving. 

“—you’ve seen him. You have memories of him that none of us do. If you can safely reach those, experience them, than you can get more truth than any of us combined can attain. Don’t be going and undermining your position in this. You’re the golden prince, Felix, you’re our key component.” 

Swallowing beneath his best friend’s encouraging glare, Felix has no other choice but to nod, feeling Minho’s words resonate over his heart, squeezing it tightly and forcing a liquid belief straight to his mind. If Minho believes what he’s saying, than Felix can too. 

One day, he’ll learn why the boy calls him by a name he hates so much.

+

Since their incredibly heavy discussion, their positions in the room have entirely shifted. Somehow, Minho and Seungmin have landed on the bed, rapidly speaking together, bodies tense even though a snark amusement plays over their faces. Jone is positioned at the seat of the vanity, Hyunjin draped over him as they discuss the hairstyle choices they should don before bed. Felix sits before the fire, staring into the red depths with a blank stare and disappointingly, equally blank thoughts. 

With the others evenly paired, it’s no surprise when Jeongin settles beside the prince, peering below him to see if there was anything but the flames that had him so invested in the fireplace. There’s nothing, Felix lost completely in the empty caverns of his memories. “Are you trying to access memories of the forgotten prince right now?” 

Hunching sheepishly, Felix tears his attention from the nothingness, shrugging. “I guess. To no surprise, I’ve got nothing but an oncoming headache. No matter how hard I focus, nothing comes in my vision but black spots.” His sigh is pure discontent, mouth curling upsetly. 

Jeongin turns and drops, his back leaning against Felix’s side, throwing the other’s carefully crafted concentration to the burning lumber. “Maybe you’re not supposed to be focusing so much.” 

The frown parts and Felix stares down at the boy’s head in confusion. “Eh?” 

“Think about it, your highness. When you have a dream and you try to remember it after waking up. It starts out clear, y’know? So you reach out to grasp it, but like water, it ripples. It becomes more and more unclear in spite of what’s expected. So you keep splashing and splashing, but all you get is a ruined dream and frustration.” 

It’s a lot more words than probably needed, but at least, Felix understands perfectly what Jeongin is trying to say. Incredibly perfectly, actually. “Maybe you’re right,” he admits in a sort of awe, “When I saw the forgotten prince earlier, I hadn’t been thinking at all. I’d been entirely preoccupied before he just appeared .” 

Jeongin’s smile is small and pleased, self-satisfied to the max as he lifts his shoulders. Felix shares in his pride, snorting amusedly at the boy’s infectious glee. “I’m incredibly wise at that. Ask Seungmin. He may never admit it, but I’ve gotten him out of a lot of sticky situations with unconventional solutions.” 

“I believe you,” Felix hums, reflexively laying his hand over the boy’s hair and running through it to a steady rhythm, finding himself relaxing, his muscles rudely grumbling at him for being so tense for a better part of the day. “Are you...I don’t wanna be nosy, Minho and Hyunjin say I tend to be nosy, but...are you upset about having to be separated from Seungmin. I don’t quite, uh, know how functional couples—” 

“Oh, we’re not a couple!”

Stilling, Felix blinks. “I was under the impression, everyone was under the impression that you were?” 

“Yeah, a lot of people are. I can’t blame them exactly. Seungmin and I’s relationship...it’s really complicated. We’ve relied on each other forever, for different reasons, for any reason. We just grew up with our pinkies looped like roots of a tree that never separated before two trees had sprouted. It started simple, him wanting someone younger than him to take care of, and me wanting someone to rely on, and it’s grown to be so much more.” 

“It’s not anything that can really be defined by existing words. It’s not romance but I don’t know if it can be considered just friendship. I mean, we’ve kissed and stuff, but because we wanted to try it out, nothing more. But no, we’re not a couple, just incredibly affectionate...more than buddies?” 

Really, somehow, that makes more sense to Felix than the two courting each other. Maybe it’s just because the conviction in Jeongin’s voice when he talks about such uncertainty is so strong, or maybe it truly just slots into place just right, but it makes sense. Felix will probably have many questions about them as he learns more about them, but he’s content with what Jeongin has given him, uncharacteristically so. 

“As for your question, yeah. I don’t think it’ll affect us, it’ll take a lot more to ever even begin breaking us apart. It’s just new. All of this is new. We only were just picked off the poor streets of this sucky kingdom and we’ve been immediately been thrown into the gooey part of the cookie where all the mess truly begins.” 

Felix imagines if he, Minho, or Hyunjin were ever forcefully separated. He’d be upset, so incredibly so, but he knows that he’d never allow it to ruin them. He’d work his darndest to keep them connected, even if it was just by the pinkie tips like Seungmin and Jeongin lived. 

“Your band, Felix, do you ever take it off?” 

It’s a question that seemingly pops out of nowhere, but he realizes it sparkles like nothing else under the fire’s glaze and is probably incredibly distracting to anyone who isn’t used to its constant presence. He lifts it over Jeongin’s stomach, allowing the boy to play with it as they talk. “For hygiene, of course,” he laughs, “But no, not really any other time, to be honest. It’s something I’ve always had.” 

Jeongin’s fingers flit between the gold and Felix’s skin, the lift of the metal from where it always sits sending bumps up Felix’s arms. They travel around the inner circumference of the band, pausing oddly. “Your highness, there’s something engraved in it. What is it?” 

Inquisitive, Felix adjusts himself to where Jeongin’s head is laying against his collarbone, staring down as the boy removes the band and twirls it so the inside of it is illuminated crystal clear. And he’s right. Felix has never noticed, despite all the years he’s worn the damn thing, but there’s an English letter written inside. 

“C,” they chorus. 

“You think it’s connected to the forgotten prince?” 

Felix has never known the band’s origin. He has no recollection of ever gaining it. As far as he’s concerned, the band out of nowhere encircled his wrist. 

“...maybe, Jeongin.” 

“We’re gonna be a hell of a lot closer from here on out.” 

+

The fire is out when Felix wakes, pitching forward with a harsh breath. Solid warmth surrounds him, and it takes him a minute to remember that his friends had fallen asleep on his large bed, clinging to each other spread over the covers. If it weren’t for the odd feeling buzzing over Felix’s skin, he would coo over them and imprint the image in his head for forever. But something is off and he can taste it in the very air, carefully crawling over them all to softly land against the floor. 

It’s incredibly bright, the moon, illuminating Felix’s entire face as he stares up at it through his large windows. It’s not nearly as satisfying as the way sunlight sinks into each of his freckles and warms him from the core, making him feel safe even when it burns him and does nothing to protect him from all the dangers that befriend him. 

Moonlight glides and whispers across his skin like the softest of melodies. Paired with the anxiety settling heavy in the back of his throat, the atmosphere is nothing short of eerie. He looks down at his own hands, twisting them to see how the white glow follows. He likes the moon, but beneath it, the shadows grow longer. They can move and dance around him without a single bit of his knowledge. Make noises he can’t discern. Such as the soft thump of something light hitting the carpet. 

Felix looks back to see if he’d woken one of his friends, but he chokes instead on the rapidly thickening air as he watches the same figure from before, walking about the room as if it were normal. His eyes dart to his sides, noting the way his vision clouds and darkens, enhancing the image of the boy, the forgotten prince.

Wary, so very wary, Felix approaches them, steps blending into the sound of the shadows themselves. He reaches out, breath hitching as his fingers inch closer to the boy’s shoulders. Right before they make contact though, the forgotten prince abruptly moves away. 

Felix can now hear that the noise isn’t from the darkness any longer, taking shape in this boy’s lowered voice, just as audible as the boy’s face was visible. A vinyl scratched and warped. It was an incredibly displeasing sound against Felix’s ears but he bore it, trying to pick it apart into something discernable. 

Noting that the boy is going to lead him out of his room, Felix adjusts his nightclothes, lightening his gait to be as silent as possible. The door’s creak makes him wince, but the forgotten prince doesn’t react in the slightest, walking through the solid wall like it was nothing, further proving he was not really there as four-dimensional as Felix perceived him. 

The farther the boy got from Felix, the more his vision shrouded, his skull turning to cotton as his body and mind tried to keep pace with each other. The thing inside him pushes and pulls at them both to fit into whatever scene it was playing just for him. He already feels the headache he will wake up with, but that doesn’t matter as he watches the boy slip around a corner, forcing his thoughts to still for just a moment as Felix races after him. 

If he hadn’t lived in the castle his entire life, never leaving for longer than a night at most, he might’ve not recognized the area. Being as he was though, he knew every floor and door of the massive structure, faint recognition twice sparked burns in his chest as the prince pauses in front of a plain almost hidden away entrance. 

He turns to it and oddly enough, Felix feels the impression of a smile on the boy’s smeared face, the act booming through his core bright and off putting. But it’s not nearly as bewildering as the soft voice that plays, both right next to his ear and miles away, brushing against his face yet almost too weak to hear. 

“It’s no bother, truly. If I could, I’d let you in the portrait with us. Your face is pretty enough to paint over every surface and canvas. Don’t deny it. If it weren’t for the crown, people would confuse who out of the two of us was the crown prince.” 

Felix strains his hardest to pick out every rise and fall of the voice, trying to read the emotions and person behind it. But he’s unable to separate anything more than the words alone, the disconnect between him and whatever this all was rendering all his skills of perception practically useless.

There’s an obvious pause as whoever Felix can’t see responds to the forgotten prince, a feeling like pink and yellow tinging the air. It’s so assuring it knocks the air from Felix’s lungs, his hand shooting out to balance himself against the wall. It’s nothing he’s ever felt before, yet feels more familiar than anything else. 

Unable to see anything between the prince’s squashed-together sentences makes everything already more surreal and patchy than it already was. 

“Worry not, little chick, I promised your mother and like the good king-to-be I am I will make good on my word. No, no, I’m not doing it just because she asked, I truly want to be your friend. Once my duties are taken care of, we can hang out all we want! I promise on the crown. Wait, here, take this.” 

Abruptly, Felix’s wrist burns. He hisses, expecting the gold to be turning red from some disembodied fire. But there’s nothing. His band sits there innocently and unchanged, mocking him. 

“You keep this. You can give it back when we play. It’s, uh, insurance? Yeah. A promise. I’ll bend my time for you if I have to, I’ll always find you. I swear it...yeah, it is a bit much, I’ve been told I can go over the top. Don’t worry, please, you’re my number one priority and that’s no hassle whatsoever!” 

Felix’s yearning to see whoever the forgotten prince is talking to heightens, his focus on the empty space in the entrance the boy is facing. The feeling that there’s something here he is missing, something essential that he should already know , that he’s missing.

Even stranger, he feels the want to be the one addressed. The forgotten prince’s words are dramatic and too big for even the castle to fit, bold and brave, but oh so comforting. At this point, he can’t tell if that warm fuzziness the promises make are from himself, or whatever the illusion is projecting. It’s all blurred lines and invisible barriers. 

“I’ll see you later, keep it safe for me.” 

The forgotten prince pats something invisible before moving forward. Felix makes to follow but there’s a force that keeps him from going beyond the entrance’s line. Hitting the ground hard, he lets out a low noise of dull pain. There’s the feeling of eyes on him, and he flicks his open swiftly, more unsettled by the nothing that stares back than if there was actually someone standing over him. 

Just like that, the scene had burst, the bubble into the past popping with zero fanfare, diffusing through the air until nothing is left. 

Felix is tired. 

Not knowing what else to do, head heavy and drooping from his shoulders, Felix slowly walks back to his room, collapsing amongst the rest, white noise filling his entire body until he felt as present as the forgotten prince himself, static fading into the night’s shadows, a darkness warm and welcoming overtaking him.

Chapter Text

Deep sleeping has never been a problem for Minho. Hyunjin and Felix often mock his other sleeping habits, from the conversations he exchanges in his dreams that slip into the real world, but never had they struggled too hard to wake him. And when he was stressed, his normal sleep could even be described as light sleeping. Safe to say, he was lately stressed. 

He wakes once in the night, but something forces him back to sleep before he can even lift his head. When he's awoken again, the sky is a faded blue, the moon already hidden amongst the tree line, the sun just barely peeking through. Morning time. Minho can already taste the sweet crisp air on his tongue, but he doesn’t get the luxury. 

A body shifts from their pile of sleeping servants and a single prince. He blinks slowly, moving his eyes around to see just who was up so early. The dark head of hair, tinged blue, was enough for him to identify the person. Sighing at lost sleep or lost time to himself, Minho sits up along with the other. “What are you doing?” 

Jone trips on the carpeting, biting back a moan of pain as he holds his reddening nose. “Give me a warning next time,” he whines, standing up and pulling at his ruffled night clothes. 

“Wouldn’t a warning scare you just as much?” 

The boy actually considered it before deeming it rhetorical, looking through the folded clothes they left on one of Felix’s giant-backed chairs to find his own. He’s yet to answer Minho’s question, not helping Minho’s inherent distrust of him. Glaring at the back of Jone’s head, he tries again, “What are you doing?” 

Jone looks to him with wide questioning eyes that almost make Minho want to barf. How someone entirely and unintentionally does puppy eyes at any time is questionable to him. “Oh, um, I’m going to the staff floor.” He unbuttons his sleeping shirt and slips on the blouse of his uniform. 

That makes sense Minho supposes. It’s what he and Jone were assigned. So even though his limbs are heavy and Jeongin’s head on his legs is oddly comforting, Minho unfurls out of Hyunjin’s hold and tries to deftly escape the bed’s grips. He sees Felix’s face as he hits the floor, screwed unpleasantly, sweat drenching his longer hair. He wipes the strands from the prince’s face with his own frown, wondering if it was another nightmare he somehow hadn't noticed.

“Why so early? Shouldn’t we at least wait for the others to wake?” 

“Oh,” Jone exclaims, shaking his head, “I was planning to come back. This is just the time the kids usually wake on the staff floor while their parents sleep.” 

Now he’s lost Minho. Even though he’s already changing into the casual uniform they’re allowed, he’s still undetermined about what they’re even doing. Or what Jone’s doing and he’s going to be supervising. “The kids?” 

A note of bashfulness plays out on Jone’s face in a pink hue. He looks off to the side, nervous? When he notices Minho sitting in front of him, fully dressed, in a new pair of clothes as most of them were in Felix’s room anyways, he was going to have to tell Jone to change once they got to the staff floor. His expression morphed into uncertainty. “You don’t have to come. You can continue to sleep. I will be back.” 

Surprisingly, none of that sparks Minho’s many suspicions about Jone’s oddities. Only curiosities. He senses no bad intentions, but that only intrigues him further. “It’s no bother, I want to see what you’re doing. If that’s okay with you.” 

It’s like they’re at an impasse, both unsure of what the other is doing but knowing it’s probably not anything wrong. Like before when Minho first picked Jone up from his room down below, they just staredown, an odd confrontation of ends. 

Eventually, Jone just shrugs. “Okay. We’ve gotta be quick. They’ll be expecting me.”

Minho refuses himself to ask any more questions that would only prolong the awkward encounter, nodding and following Jone’s trail in complete silence. It’s off following Jone when Minho is the one who has lived here his entire life. He glances past each shortcut as they pass it, Jone taking the standard but lengthy route to the staff room. Minho was going to have to teach him more of the shortcuts, as well as the secret ones that would hide them in their duties if so needed. 

For now, he just follows, hands interlaced before him as his legs keep in time with Jone’s fast-moving ones. 

The air grows colder as they descend, the insulation lessening considerably as they make it to the staff floor, each crack in the wall and floor adding to the sum of constant chill, no matter the weather. It’s nothing Minho isn’t used to, and seemingly, nothing Jone can’t handle, not even shaking his arms to stave the sudden breeze. 

When they hit the final step of the hidden stairs, Minho expects complete silence. He’s completely thrown off when he’s immediately proven wrong, faint giggles spreading throughout the entire floor, along with some yawns and whines. It feels like his memory has been entirely altered; he looks around the space, servant kids gathered at the edge of his vision. 

They’d either had no parents outside the castle, being adopted by the servants within, or their parents had brought them in with them, having no other place to stay. Minho himself had been the former, but he can’t even remember the outside, the recollections of his past erased from history entirely, having lived in the castle since before the incident. And somehow, he doesn’t remember these mornings either. That could be the memory blank or the fact that he’d spent too much time trying to get away from the staff floor. 

“There are more kids on this floor than there should be,” Jone snorts unamused, “And the parents work too much to wake up with them. Not to mention the king and queen bastards pride themself on separating a child from their parents.” His entire demeanor sours, mouth curling down and sneering bitterly. As soon as the darkness invades him, it leaves, illuminating his face like the rainbow after a storm. \

“What do they do this entire time?” Minho asks wondrously, looking around at all the kids gathering, their small footsteps echoing around him and Jone like the beat of one’s favorite song. He’s genuinely intrigued, wishing he’d concerned himself about the staff earlier. He’d dedicated all his attention to Felix and Hyunjin, keeping them safe and well when there was all this to be taken note of. 

When he pulls his gaze from them all, he sees Jone looking right at him, lips pursed assessingly. “It’s not your fault if that’s what you're thinking. You were the same as them not too long ago. This kind of thing is something you couldn’t have helped. And in all honesty, it’s not the worst thing.” Jone’s smile is genuine and aweing. “These kids are smart, we were both like them. Too energetic or too witty for their own good. But that’s our best aspect if I’m to say so myself. I’m only here to make things a little more comforting than usual. For the kids, and for myself.” 

Minho’s still only gotten half the gist, puzzled about the rest. “And what is it that you’re here to do?” 

Making a noise of refreshment, like he’s just drunk an ice cold lemon water after a day of long work, Jone spreads his arms around him like wings, winking at Minho disgustingly so. “Be a kid,” he answers simply before bursting into an abrupt run, sliding on his knees in front of the kids, their noise pitching higher at Jone’s arrival. 

Minho is shocked when he puts his hand to his face and finds he’s smiling . Honest to gold, smiling at Jone’s utter ridiculousness. Fondness courses through him and it’s almost identical to when he’s with Hyunjin and Felix, but also not at all. A new sort of exasperation and admiration that’s unique to Jone. A nonexistent force pulls him along until he’s sitting beside the obnoxious boy, an armful of youth as he laughs like he hasn’t in a while, brightening along with the sky and the kids’ grins. 

He vows to not avoid the staff floor anymore. 

+

“Did you go somewhere in the night?” 

For a second, Felix is petrified, thinking the question is aimed at him. His midnight outing wasn’t something he really intended to hide, but also not something he expected having to explain after such a short period of rest, grogginess as well as the lingering feeling of severe unrest kneading his mind to dough. 

“Yeah, both of you are already dressed. Jone’s even bathed.” 

His shoulders fall back down, a small sigh escaping between his lips as he buttons up his vest. The inquiry isn’t for him. However, it is a valid one. He observes what the others are saying, finding his long loyal friend and newly acquired friend already readily dressed, Jone’s blued black hair dripping over his neck, making the collar of his blouse dark. He meets Minho’s eyes and raises an eyebrow. 

“We were getting ready for our duties,” Minho explains easily. Felix knows his tells though and can tell he’s partially lying or preparing a half lie in the way he licks his lips and looks away from them for a second too long. He’ll pick at that later. “Jone needed a new pair of clothes and his are on the staff floor.” 

Laughing proudly, Hyunjin twirls and opens the drawer of Felix’s dedicated to his outfits. “Glad I was smart enough to bring a pair of Seungmin’s and Jeongin’s clothes. We can go right where we need to right away.” 

“How clever,” muses Minho drily. 

“Speaking of, Seungmin, I have tutoring in the library later so I can walk you there and help you search for a bit,” Felix offers, beckoning for Minho to deal with his bedhead. His expression is meek and sheepish as he admits sullenly, “I don’t know if I’ll be much help though. I’ve been searching the library for years and haven’t felt a thing alluding to the past.” 

Seungmin is quick to reassure, “Ah, no worries, your highness. You’ve probably found so much you were just paying attention to all the wrong things. Your help would mean so much.” 

Speaking for Felix, Jeongin pipes up from where he’s ruffling through Felix’s cosmetics and fabrics, “Seungmin, stop being so polite, especially after sharing a bed with the man and planning treason with him. It’s painful to watch.” 

Both the boy and prince flush at Jeongin’s bluntness. Felix can feel Minho’s silent laughter through the fingers that tread lightly over his hair, taming and styling it to be perfectly princely. “He’s right, though, Seungmin, you don’t have to be so formal, no one else is, including me.” 

The addressed is still unsure though, shifting uncomfortably and shrugging, his cheery smile not quite curving just right. “Perhaps we can fix that in the library,” he suggests in a way that shows it won’t be nearly as easy as everyone is making it out to be. Still, it’s a warm enough welcome for Felix, who nods enthusiastically in response. 

Once his loathsome crown is settled upon his head, Felix opens the door much to Seungmin’s surprise, and indicates their exit. After receiving a hug that musses Seungmin’s hair from Jeongin, they’re off, awkwardly walking side by side to the castle’s main library, the one that wasn’t merely arranged pretty for show.

Their own brand of silence permeates the air as they try to find a balance in which they interact. If Felix takes too quick of a step, Seungmin hurried to match it. When he quickens, Felix is halfway through slowing down. It was their way of accommodating when they refused to talk, words plentiful in their minds and behind their teeth, but uncertainty and unsureness kept them barred. 

Both of them are failing in their noiseless communication, but neither is willing to break the tension, eyeing their path instead. 

Eventually, there’s no other choice but to speak. The doors to the library are considerably heavy, maybe even heavier than most in the castle to persuade on goers from proceeding on random, but Felix isn’t weak. They make no noise opening, the hinges well-oiled and kept in tip-top shape. 

“So…” the prince hesitantly leans forward, allowing himself to assess Seungmin’s face. Said boy stares around in poorly concealed awe, the only emotion Felix has seen him have any lack of control over. It doesn’t take any thought for him to decide not to comment, letting the servant bask in the honest to gold glory of the library. One that even takes Felix aback on some occasions. 

He wasn’t lying when he said the other library was more for display than the actual holding of pages stacked upon pages of endless, priceless knowledge. However, he will always find the true library the more stunning of the two. Always. 

In Felix’s mind, the library was right out of a storybook itself. Truly, it wasn’t very spectacular or eye-catching, leaf papers yellowed and sun damaged lying around in every surface, books unorganized and teeming over their shelves, the fabric of the seats faded and ripping. But that was all subjective. 

What Felix saw was totally different, and he wonders if Seungmin sees the same as him as his eyes slide delightedly over the large room. 

Felix sees the room he would run around for ages, stuffing himself between cases and under tables to hide from Minho, the legendary seeker of their games. He sees the books he’d pick up curiously only to find himself immersed in worlds he never would’ve imagined. He sees the dust swirling around in the hazy sunlight as the world is painted in a series of rich golds and yellows. He sees himself, curled up in one of the seats, finding not a hiding spot Minho won’t find, but that his parents won’t. 

“It’s magnificent,” Seungmin breathes, and it’s almost audible the way the tension between them splits into two. 

“Isn’t it? It’s my favorite place in the whole castle besides my own chambers. It’s maybe even more comfortable.” He wipes his fingers over a random misplaced cover, the pads coming away dirtied. “Rarely anyone comes here anymore. Few are educated enough to read, and fewer have the time to. It’s another of those places my parents tried to keep desolate for the sake of their never-ending reigns.”

Seungmin nods, mouth agape as he picks up the nearest book, skimming through the pages with a tenderness one would handle a newborn babe. “Terrible as it is, it’s a smart move. Like I’ve said, there’s important information here, so much so they couldn’t even bother trying to hide it all without hurting their castle.”

“Maybe they’re just not the brightest,” mutters Felix. Concluding that there was no way to avoid the dust in this environment, he rolls up his sleeves and resists the urge to wipe it all off on his tailored slacks. The laugh his remark startles out of Seungmin warms his chest considerably. 

“Wouldn’t put it past them,” Seungmin hums, the sound of his voice petering out as he distanced from Felix. Felix watches a tad entertained as Seungmin’s feet seemingly drift into the piles of literature without his entire intention. With one last yearning gaze at the lavish chair, Felix follows behind, catching onto the stray words Seungmin trails behind him. “Your parents, they’re careless. Makes them terrible rulers, and even worse whatever they truly are.” 

Felix echoes that, brows furrowing, “Truly are…” 

He nearly jumps out of his skin when Seungmin’s head pops up from around a large bookshelf’s corner, eyes wide and shining more openly than they’ve been since the boy has met Felix. “I don’t quite know what I’m looking for here. Is it okay if I ask and you lead?” 

Finally, Felix sees Seungmin place them at equal rungs, less prince and servant, and more...at least friendly acquaintances. It’s refreshing and the prince is all too eager to nod, even offering his arms as Seungmin’s bookbag. While Seungmin gathers his materials though, Felix’s mind runs busy.

After a good while of comfortable silence, Felix can’t help it. “Seungmin?” he calls, “What’s it like outside? How are…” It feels too arrogant to refer to the souls outside the castle as his people. He’s done nothing to help them when he’s perhaps the only one who ever could. In that way, he’s no better than his parents. It’s a pain that aches deep and visceral throughout his body. But that’s what he’s here to fix, no?

He never finishes his sentence, Seungmin hooking onto it enough. It’s regretful that the vivid mood he’d held since Felix introduced him to the library slowly drains until it’s but a puddle beneath Seungmin’s tiredly lowered lashes. “You’re holding a lot of books,” he murmurs, placing one more on top of the pile in Felix’s arms, the sound of the heavy bindings colliding together softened by his careful placement. “Let’s set them somewhere.” 

They find a small surface, cramped in the corner and practically falling apart from the legs up, and drop them there. A little worn from the awkward position he’d held walking to keep them steady in his arms, Felix plops onto the floor and rests against a shelf, the spines of thin and thick hardbacks digging into his own. 

Dragging his hands along the shelves above Felix’s head, Seungmin exhales.``It could be worse out there. In all honesty, it’s not too bad, just poor. Your parents neglected everything but the gold they could suck from us. We essentially formed systems to govern ourselves. If I remember correctly we were even able to form connections outside of the kingdom with traders who pitied us and our situation. We were often hungry, and often shelterless, but we were all mostly united. There were a few bad apples, but everyone else aimed to live their best life even with the castle as our parasite.” 

“There were constant festivals, none that drained our little expenses, but showed exactly what we didn’t need money for.” A fond smile softens his face. “Jeongin and I were actually quite known singers. We loved the festivals centered around music the most. Dancing, singing, all that. And they were common. It doesn’t cost money to do either of those.”

Gnawing his lip, Felix nods, picturing it in his head. It’s all too easy to imagine Jeongin moving about a crowd, impishly graceful and with a toothy grin painting his cheeks, singing along to match. It’s harder to see Seungmin so carefree, the castle having built its own wall around him. Still, he can. And it’s a sight he so wants to see. One day. 

“Why did you come here then?” 

Seungmin slows, shoulders dropping. Old hope roughed up and chipped at shines through as if in remembrance. “There’s this belief that if you work in the castle, you’ll be able to experience the luxury that the royals do, or at the very least, a small portion of it. It’s the best option other than trying to relocate to being homeless in another kingdom. When Jeongin and I got the chance to work together, we took it immediately. It was good at first, with Hyunjin, but now we’re really seeing how it is in the castle. Yes, we have beds to sleep on and food to eat, but at a price.” 

It’s self-oriented and insecure, but Felix can’t help it. It bothers him almost as much as whatever in the castle is taunting him, scratching at his skin and leaving it irritated. “And...what does everyone think about me?” 

“To be honest, not all that great, but not all that bad. Most people are just envious, believing you live the best life out of anyone in this kingdom, the golden prince spoiled by his greedy parents. Only the younger people bother badmouthing you. Some foolish seniors as well. I might’ve too at one point, on a bad day, but I’ve always been reasonable enough. I couldn’t blame you for being born under such...select people.” 

Honestly, that was better than what Felix had expected. More than he asked for and maybe more than he deserved. “Thanks, I suppose...no, thank you for thinking well of me, even when you had no reason to.” 

Sensing something in his tone, Seungmin turns to face him, rolling his lip in his mouth thoughtfully. “Do you think you deserve to be hated, your highness?”

The formality both seems well-placed and not, a separation between them two that may give them more space to talk comfortably. It shouldn’t work as well as it does. “I haven’t given them any reason not to, have I? It’s not that I necessarily think I've done too much bad, but I’ve sat back enough to constitute for all they’ve done.” 

Shrugging, Seungmin listlessly places another book on their already assembled pile. “While that is true, you can’t blame yourself for being a kid, my prince. You’re not the one ruling the kingdom. You have no say naturally, and I’m guessing your parents don’t give you any either.” 

“But as the crown prince, shouldn’t I be doing more, anything to help my people? I haven’t even left the grounds of this castle since I can remember.” 

“Did they let you? Even if they didn’t directly order otherwise, did they ever let you leave?” 

Felix doesn’t answer. 

“I was saying before, Felix, your parents are sloppy, but not completely incapable. They’ve purposely kept you from learning beyond what they want you to. But based on what we’re doing right now, they haven’t been very thorough. So maybe you haven’t been the best crown prince, but you’re doing more than anyone else has right now, going directly against them. I think…” 

Seungmin settles before him, flat on his feet and offering a hand. “You’re something special, Felix. And I’d think that would apply with the crown and without. So can we skip the angsting?” 

“Something special,” Felix echoes, mindlessly taking Seungmin’s hand and gesturing to the books. “Do we’ve got enough for now? There’s a table and stuff by the window up the stairs. It’s much lighter than over here.” 

Listening, Seungmin takes half the books and begins his ascent upstairs, Felix close behind with his share. True to his word, there’s a table placed in the upper center of the second floor, a few feet away from the large window. With so much light, each speck of dust everywhere, caked over the table and flying around the chairs at their presence. Still, it’s a mystical sight, like stumbling upon something magic itself. 

They both cough as they drop the books to the grimy surface. Sheepishly, Felix offers Seungmin one of his now many spare handkerchiefs to keep the dust attack to a minimum. He’s ready to join the boy in sitting when he spots something out of the corner of his eye over the floor railing. His throat feels tight and he’s already anticipating what’s to happen next. 

“Seungmin, I think I’m seeing something now, can you start this on your own?”

He’s spared a glance of concern and a nod before he’s off, already feeling his head tilt with extra weight. 

Leaden, his feet stumble down the stairs. Without the white-knuckled grip he has on the railing, he would’ve fallen for sure. As he gets farther from the sunny window, the library’s main source of light, it gets darker, not only naturally, but as the vision begins to overcome him. 

This time he doesn’t find the forgotten prince in the shadows. He hears him. 

“I like him, a lot, he has a warm heart.” 

It isn’t the first time Felix is hearing the forgotten prince’s voice, but it still sends chills down his spine. He’s listening directly into the past, and that’s exactly what it feels like. He’s out of place yet so is the voice. They’re on separate paths somehow looking through the same door. This time, the voice is clearer. It isn’t a whisper shared in secrecy, but aloud. 

Felix almost leaps to hide when he finally happens upon the vision. He’s not just seeing the prince this time, but...the queen. She’s sitting on the chair Felix was eyeing earlier, a pale yellow dress spread out transparently over the cushions. Her back is arched, elbows sitting on her thighs as she plays with the forgotten prince’s hair, curls that twist around her ringed fingers mesmerizingly. 

Her voice is so different than Felix’s own mother, silk and honey intertwined, flowing from lips accustomed to earnest smiles and kind words. Whereas Felix’s mother’s voice cracks and whips. He finds himself wanting to be in the forgotten prince’s place as she talks, luring him to sit beside them in awe, watching everything differently than he has before. With a yearning almost, as he takes in each thing he can, watching for anything useful to his treason. 

“But? You’re curious aren’t you?” she inquires, detangling a lock of auburn hair. 

The other prince is sitting on a stool before her, expression hidden behind the vision’s blur as usual, but a tentative hum spilling from behind it. Tension leaks from his shoulders as the queen continues to delicately sift through his hair. “Why him of all people? That you want me to be friends with.” A little panicked he quickly follows with. “Not that I’m objecting. I really do like him, a lot, again. He’s very...kind.” 

The queen laughs at her son’s nerves, patting his head playfully. “I think fate wanted you two to be friends. That’s why I introduced him to you.”

“Why’d you think that?” 

The mood sours, the queen’s jaw clenching before like a marionette cut, she flops over her son, wrapping her arms around him and stuffing her face in his neck. He lets out a yelp but it mustn’t be too out of the ordinary, as he doesn’t even comment, looking to the queen instead for reasoning. 

“You know our curse right?” 

A frown instantly mars Felix’s look of awe and he listens even closer than before. A curse?

The forgotten prince answers back casually. This was news to Felix, but clearly not to him. 

“Well, you can’t sense it yet, but that little boy has magic in him. And people with magic, no matter how hard the mages try, won’t ever be able to forget curses like us...And I hope it never comes to that but if it were, you can always be safe, because no matter what, he’ll remember you.” 

Over the course of her explanation, the forgotten prince, the cursed prince? Had gotten tenser, fingers that once rhythmically tapped along the seams of his pants in tune, went still. “But that doesn’t seem fair, Mother. He’s keeping my entire existence safe just knowing me, how am I ever supposed to repay that. How...I don’t want to only be his friend for that either.” 

Exhaling into a hum, her fingers dance along the prince’s shoulders, drawing out shivers from the boy and a muffled giggle. “Now, you’re smarter than that. Isn’t it obvious. You’re not being his friend just so he can keep your memory safe, you’re giving him your memory. And for us, that’s equivalent to giving someone our everything. Like I said, fate meant for you two to be friends. Perhaps you two can end it all together.” 

At that the younger prince sucks his teeth, bravely reaching back to pinch his mother’s nose. “Now, isn’t that presumptuous, Mother?” 

“The one being presumptuous is you for speaking to me in such a way, little bugger. I should tell father and get your instruments taken away.” 

Gasping, the prince rushes to face his mother in an apologetic bow. “My sincerest apologies, your Majesty. I meant no ill intent.” Even as his head touched the ground, Felix could feel the joy radiating from them two, from just being around each other and goofing about. Chuckles rang through the air as the queen picked up her son and hugged him dearly. 

Felix doesn’t know if he can bear to watch any longer, warmth dripping from his nose and from his heart alike, a faucet of yucky feelings he can’t contain. Spiteful, Felix crawls closer to the scene, both hopeful and envious when he reaches out to run his hand over the queen’s hands, wondering what they’d feel like so lovingly through his own hair. It’s no surprise that as soon as he makes contact, it all blends into the sunlight, blinding him until all that’s left is the large empty red chair. 

There’s a soft thump as his hand falls pitifully to the cushion. If he allows himself such delusion, he can pretend the warmth of the fabric is from the queen’s presence, gentle and good. Just like the sunlight itself. 

Numb, he takes out his handkerchief, wiping his tears, and then his blood, folding it neatly in his pocket as he slowly lifts himself into the chair. A wave of exhaustion washes over him, and with such a heavy heart, he doesn’t bother fighting, succumbing to sleep as soon as he feels warm all over.

Chapter Text

“You sure you can handle the whole stable by yourself?” 

Jeongin rolls his eyes, and Hyunjin doesn’t entirely blame him for the irritation. It was probably around the fiftieth time the older had asked him that exact question in a row. “It wasn’t hard with just Seungmin and I and we only spent a third of our time actually doing our job.” 

And that’s incredibly easy for Hyunjin to believe as he had spent so long assigned to the stables alone. Somewhere along the line, he knows the stables must’ve been busier and more filled with nobles and horses alike, but now the building and the surrounding area were practically dead and empty. The only visitors were Felix and Minho up until now. 

He’d been given the job because it was so easy and kept away from the king and the queen, Minho fearing he was a little too gutsy to be escorting Felix around them. 

“Alright, alright,” he gives, shoulder slumping. Sighing, he pats Jeongin’s hair affectionately before fixing his posture. An anchor in his pocket keeps him aware of his dangerous tasks ahead. A predicted version of the majesties’ schedule that he would be following along. A stowaway of their royal duties. 

Conveniently enough, the schedule hadn’t been hard to maintain. Minho was well in practice with figuring it out. Commonly he did it, sometimes for a consecutive week, to keep Felix away from the queen and king. Either of Felix’s request or Minho’s own concerns. Hyunjin was in the staff floor before his interference, but he’s heard Felix’s relationship with his parents outside of pristine dinners and crafted events were tumultuous. 

This was the first time, however, that Hyunjin would be tailing them. That’s probably not a first anyone will ever have. At least it’s a unique experience. Even if it makes his shoulders tight and head sweat. 

Wiping at his brow, Hyunjin straightens his formal blouse, more stiff and clean than he was used to. Somehow, the silky smooth material crafted straight from some goddess’s hands felt more uncomfortable and unfitting than any of the scratchy wool cardigans and untailored shirts. He shudders under the light weight, feeling naked. 

“Are you sure you can handle this?” Jeongin asks suddenly, throwing Hyunjin off his imaginary track. He doesn’t look concerned nor placid, inquisitive in a broad way, like Hyunjin just spilled hot tea on himself and Jeongin was wondering if it had burnt. Not if Hyunjin was about to jump into committing the most kind of direct treason there was. 

Scoffing it off, Hyunjin lightly punches the younger’s shoulder. “I’m the older one here. I'm supposed to be the only one asking those types of questions.” 

Miffed, Jeongin rolls his eyes and pushes Hyunjin out of the stable. “Overcompensation won’t change anything, sir. Just do your job and don’t get caught. You and Felix are our key components.” 

It’s odd but fitting to be paired with Felix, the prince , most importantly, Hyunjin’s best friend, in such a crucial way. Key components. Hyunjin didn’t feel as much a key component as he felt Felix always has been to the universe, but it made sense. He’d just have to live up to such a title, side by side with his first friend. 

“Suppose you’re right,” Hyunjin admits, keeping his voice from sounding as weak as the fluttering of his heart. He wasn’t scared. He gulps, nervously needlessly adjusting his clothes once more. “Don’t set the place on fire.” 

Jeongin’s stern stare almost makes it seem like Hyunjin’s the younger one. “Don’t get caught.” 

With a wavering smile, Hyunjin takes two fingers and salutes to the boy. “Aye aye.” 

+

Often Hyunjin wanders the halls of the castle alone. Not in the sense of loneliness, grey and gloomy, but merely by himself. Minho being Felix’s escort meant he was required at the prince’s side at all times. Seldom was Hyunjin jealous of the stuffy position. Anytime royal prose wasn’t required, he was right there between them. 

Now, there’s a weight in his steps. Metal in the soles of his newly polished shoes. He has a mission, bigger and riskier than anything he’s ever done before. His life was on the line, Felix’s autonomy was on the line, the whole kingdom was on the line if Felix’s suspicions were as big as he suspected. 

He doesn't feel alone even though no one stands beside him, the space so empty his breath seems to echo along the long walls. But he does feel small. So small in comparison to what he’s attempting to do, what he’s attempting to save, a phantom dying kingdom he’s not sure exists. It’s underwhelming in an overwhelming way, if that makes sense. 

Maybe though, he’s small enough to go unnoticed by the majesties like this. 

The paper where the schedule is printed in Minho’s rushed handwriting is crumpled and crinkled from how many times Hyunjin has un and refolded it only to stuff it carelessly to the bottom of his pocket. But at least each depression left behind in the poor white sheet is also indented into his mind. He has it memorized, like the steps of a dance or the smile lines of a photograph. 

While he was leading Jeongin down to the stables, the king was eating a hearty meal, his wife’s dress being assembled and prepped by the maids as they hand-fed her carefully enough to keep the blood red of her lips unsmeared. At least, that’s what Hyunjin imagines when Minho says the king eats in his room while the queen gets ready in an impossibly large dressing room. 

Now as he heads up the steps from the ground floor, the king and queen are having a resting time in the map room, waiting for an advisor from the kingdom’s village to report on news. Outlined in his head like the lines of his palm are the secret passages that will get him into the room without being noticed. There he can listen to everything the two wouldn’t say in front of anyone else but themselves. This time with an extra presence they will hopefully never be aware of. 

Running his hands along the wall it’s easy to find the snag of the hidden door. He pushes through it easily, only wincing at the way the stone wall scratches against itself. Disdain is visible on his face as he pushes past a variety of cobwebs and dust. He can deal with the mud and mess of the stables, but in the dark dreary tunnels never traveled, he feels perturbed. 

Telling himself where to go aloud, his words bouncing off the empty walls to keep him company, he eventually finds himself behind the thin passage door that would lead him into the map room if he were to push just right. Instead, he pushes as close as possible and presses his ear to the faux stone. 

Noise instantly filters through the material, fuzzy and muffled, but audible enough. His heart picks up as he registers the nasally fork against porcelain voices of Felix’s parents. Even though there is no way they should be able to hear him as well as he can them, he forces himself to go impossibly still, settling so he won’t move an inch to alert them. 

Their voices are fast-paced and back and forth, a tennis match of fevered complaints that he has to labor to pick apart. But he manages, hooking onto each sentence like a baited line no matter how seemingly unimportant or insignificant. 

He doesn’t know how much time starts to pass before it gets harder for him to pay attention to their useless chatter, his back creaking and his lids threatening to shut on him. The eternal feeling fades from millennia to seconds in a split tick as an unnatural silence settles outside the passage door. 

For a second, panic sears through him, imagining he’d somehow been caught. But he knows that’s nigh impossible, so he listens harder, wondering if the advisor had arrived without Hyunjin hearing the loud heavy doors open. But soon enough, the king and queen talk again, more harshly and secretive than before. 

Hyunjin is finally hooked. 

“He’s been acting odd lately,” the queen hums, the most thought behind her voice than Hyunjin has ever heard from the woman before. It’s as off-putting as it is eerie, sending chills down his spine but also kind of wanting to make him laugh no matter how inappropriate the situation. Either way, it meant something was happening. Something not too small. 

The king’s tone is honestly infuriating but it always is, Hyunjin expects nothing less. “He’s always acting odd. He’s a freak of nature, ain’t he? What makes now different?” 

“Can you think for once in your life you stupid twig?” the queen snaps exasperatedly. And as much as Hyunjin knew the two were as bitter as a rotten soup, he somehow hadn’t expected the same behavior they held for everyone else to apply to each other. He’d given their ‘love’ the benefit of the doubt he supposes. 

“Stop yapping, hag, and tell me what you’re trying to get out before the mouse gets here.” 

“...The boy. Don’t you think he’s been acting distant lately. Do you think it’s starting to awaken? I told you when we enacted the spell that it was unstable. What if it’s unraveling?” 

Spell? 

“There’s no way it should be unraveling. We gave him that stupid seal and we erased every bit of that cursed prince and his stupid parents in this kingdom.”

“It’s still unstable . If something even in the slightest prompts his magic, it will fight the spell naturally and then not only will he be a strong obstacle, but he’ll be able to remember the cursed prince.” 

Were they talking about—? 

Stupidly, Hyunjin tries to lean closer. Thankfully to all that is gold, Hyunjin doesn’t manage to accidentally open the door and reveal himself. But he does make an awful loud noise, hitting the ground with a thud that fills his nose with awful soot. The silence that follows is deafening and panic makes Hyunjin’s vision go blue. 

Before the king and queen can investigate the odd sound though, there’s the noise of the doors opening. Hyunjin can practically feel their demeanors change to appease whatever image the advisor has of them, their greetings sickly sweet as they slide over Hyunjin’s goosebumps. 

Their odd words unlike anything Hyunjin has ever heard around the kingdom before bouncing around his brain, he repositions more comfortably, listening only sparsely to the advisor suck up to them. 

He’s almost certain they were talking about Felix. Magic. Is that what Felix had? And was there some seal keeping him from remembering the forgotten prince in full capacity? Hyunjin feels like he knows what Felix feels now. That nagging intuition that there was more going on. He had such simple information but from it, he feels leagues of secrets he never would’ve stumbled on otherwise. 

As much as he knows it must mean he’s learned something useful, it’s a frankly terrible feeling. 

+

Like a cat, Felix lazes away under the sun beams, soaking in them until he feels warmth in his heart. Lately, he’s felt frosty from the head down, awash with realizations and worries colder than the ice of his mother’s wine bucket. He’d never describe his life as the most pleasant, luxurious maybe, but nothing to delight in, but the past few days feel like all his decent luck was wishing him farewell. Next thing he knows, his parents will want to form a palpable relationship with him. 

That shouldn’t be as chilling of a thought as it was. 

It takes a lot of willpower to roll off the unnaturally heated red chair to trudge up the library steps. If it were him alone, he’s certain he wouldn’t manage it, a weariness threatening to tumble him down the stairs and into a hazy darkness. But he can hear the crisp sound of flipping pages and low humming. It’s a rough transition from the cursed queen’s citrus-laced sweetness, but Seungmin’s tune sounds like warmth itself. It’s enough to keep Felix drawn forward. 

Seungmin looks up when he arrives, heavily leaning against the railing and squinting under the window’s assault of direct light. “Was it?” Is all he asks, placing his fingers against his page. There’s a smaller book atop it, ink freshly gleaming off the sheets. Notes. Seungmin had the idea to write notes and Felix had somehow not even thought of such an obvious thing. He wishes his head would stop feeling so heavy with these visions. 

Felix doesn’t answer, sitting atop a cushion just atop the window sill and recharging for a moment. “By any chance, have you come across any curses in the kingdom’s legends?” 

The rustling of paper comes to a halt, the chair creaking as Seungmin turns to observe the prince. “A few. Some of them are too unrealistic to be believable, some a bit more credible. Why?” He knows there’s a why, knows Felix knows something and that’s why he’d asked. Now it’s nothing he can ignore. 

Wary only a tad, Felix recounts the most useful parts of his vision. He leaves out all the details that have burned into his heart, searing with the intensity of its intimacy, the details that are honestly unnecessary. The color of the cursed prince’s hair, the way the sunlight shone through the queen’s delicate crown, the softness of their hug. All he tells is of the curse and the unnamed person who supposedly has the ability to fight said curse. 

Fingers tapping away thoughtfully over hard book covers, Seungmin nods. It’s a sight, the way Seungmin scans the books he has before them, the gears in his mind almost visible as he picks apart which have been rendered useless and which have peaked in priority. “From the way you make it sound, and we can trust your vision, then there is a curse that does exist. A pretty serious one that may be affecting the current situation.” 

“The question is if there’s any information on it in any of these.” Lazily, Felix indicates to the books covering every inch of the table. It seems like a treasure chest of information, yet so bare at the same time. There could be information on everything in the world, but it’d be absolutely useless to them if the king and queen had been successful in erasing the cursed prince. In erasing the curse itself.

His eyebrows furrow. “Seungmin, do you remember anything about the forgotten prince or even the forgotten queen and king?” 

Stilling, Seungmin thinks, hard, before slowly shaking his head back and forth. “To be honest, if it weren’t for you and the any others constantly pointing it out, I would’ve forgotten there was any previous royal family whatsoever.” 

And that’s far beyond normal. “No one can remember who the previous royal family is, and many have forgotten they existed entirely. Yet no one has questioned it because they all have such faulty memory. Entire lives and years have been erased, and it’s never been brought up.” 

Easily, Seungmin catches on, face hardening. “The queen brought up the curse as if it were dormant. There must be something to have enacted it. And that curse is the reason or part of the reason why we can’t remember anything.”

Exactly. 

With a new vigor awakened once more, Felix slides down from the window and sits beside Seungmin, holding out a hand.  A book is placed in his palm. They have a curse to find.

+ 

As if everything were ordinary, Minho trains Jone. The process is almost painfully slow, but neither of them really acknowledge it. That’s because both of their attention is directed outside their little bubble. They were working according to their mission. Frustratingly enough though, they haven’t heard much of anything useful. 

All they’ve yet to hear was gossip about the activities that took place on the staff floor. A tidbit of info Minho never wanted that made Jone giggle into his hand like a schoolboy. 

It was also becoming increasingly obvious that there was something off about Jone, no matter how dedicated he was to Felix’s goals. Yet every time Minho tried to observe just what, Jone looked at him with those same puppy eyes and Minho was caught off guard. It was the worst thing Jone had in common with Minho’s less-than-perfect prince. 

Their busy ears allow them to easily pick up the sounds of crying. In sync, they tense up and turn in the direction of the sound. There’s a teen, sitting in the back of the kitchen with their head in their knees, shoulders shaking. Exchanging similar glances, they inch closer but don’t interfere, watching as one of the older women goes to comfort them. Listening. 

“Hey, hey I told you not to cry, sprout.” 

Pulling away from Minho, Jone rests on the flat of his feet, looking up at the woman with a concern so palpable it could be comforting. “What’s wrong here?” 

Recognition flashes across the woman’s face but unlike many of the other staff who see the klutz as bad luck in the castle, she doesn’t immediately steer away for her own sake. She stays rubbing the girl’s back, indicating to nothing with expressive hands. Her face is lined in that kind way Minho sees on few people, a sign of trustworthiness. Minho hovers nearby, letting Jone take the wheel. 

“One of her friends has poofed.” She says it with such casualty even Minho is dumbfounded, not expecting such insensitivity from the woman who dropped all her duties to comfort the poor girl. But that only sharpens his stare. There’s more and they’re waiting for it. Realizing her poor explanation she sucks her teeth. “Ah, right, you’re new here. You wouldn’t know.” 

Neither Minho or Jone knew, and one wasn’t new, but he supposes he was in a way. He listens just as intently as the newcomer, as if he were one himself, not raised in this castle. 

“Every once in a while, a person goes missing from the staff. It’s a common occurrence and at first we thought it was random soldiers taking them drunken and leaving them before suspicions were raised. But the soldiers knew nothing of the disappearances. These people had just up and gone, with no recollection of where they had been. Hardly anyone worries anymore, ‘cause oddly enough, as soon as someone notices their absence, they appear disoriented in less than a day. It’s nothing we’re able to question, so we’ve just gotten used to it.” 

She looks at the girl crying in her arms, face falling. Her voice is quieter, almost inaudible above the girl’s sobs. But just enough for the two of them to hear. “It doesn’t stop the initial worry though. Especially as the disappearances keep growing higher in number. We fear one day when someone has actually been taken, and won’t be coming back.” 

Minho’s face is beginning to ache from the befuddlement that pulls at it. This was something he had never heard of, yet the woman makes it sound as likely to happen as stubbing your toe on a wall. Something so unexplainable, and they merely opted not to ever question it, in fear or ignorance or who knows. How something so big could go uninvestigated utterly baffles Minho. 

Though, with Jone peeking back at him, he knows that isn’t something that will be continuing any longer. Not only is it a grand issue that should be taken care of before one of the missing people goes missing but it could do with Felix’s mystery, the visions, the previous royal family. It might not help them take down the king and queen, but if it really was connected, it could explain how they came to reign in the first place. And the best place to cut a weed is at its roots. 

There’s a loud knock from the heavy doors, drawing their attention from the fearful girl. Two staff help open the door for whoever is waiting on the other side. Minho is shocked to see his newest acquaintance, friend? 

Jeongin stands in the doorway, almost dramatic lighting splayed over his body and making him stand out stark. But not nearly as notable as was the girl with dark skin and lost eyes who hung off his shoulder, her legs holding up about as steady as a stack of marbles. Suddenly, Jone is being shoved to the ground and Minho forced to step back as the once crying girl rushes up, a beaming grin on her face as she full bodily embraces the other. 

“See,” the woman voices from behind the disoriented boys, “As soon as you begin to take notice, they come stumbling back.” She heaves a large sigh as she stands, adjusting her apron and dusting off her gloves. “That’s how it’s been forever. And hopefully, the day won’t come where they’re gone forever without explanation.” 

Unfazed, she steps past them, helping Jone up and helping the pale girl hold the reappearing one upright. There’s a connection between the two and Minho knows for sure now he can’t judge the girl for crying her eyes melon red. Not when they look at each other like that. He meets Jeongin’s eyes over the pair and beckons him over, joining Jone on the ground. 

“Where’d you find her?” 

Twisting his lips, Jeongin shrugs. “I didn’t? I was just walking outside the stable and she came tripping over the field like a drunkard. Wasn’t sober enough to answer any of my questions so I took her here where I guess you’d be.” 

“Nothing,” Jone segues, “You got absolutely nothing out of her? She just... appeared ?” 

It’s hopeless the way Jeongin can’t even do anything but nod. Felix’s visions were steadily becoming the least of the oddities gone unnoticed in this castle. And that wasn’t assuring in the slightest. Minho stares at the girl, eyes burning with unrivaled intensity. 

Where had she gone? How did she get back? What was any of this? 

Never before had Minho had so many questions he couldn’t answer. Any second now he was going to lose his mind. Exhaling, he looks between the other two. “We’ll talk with the golden prince later. For now, Jeongin, Jone, want to steal some peach tarts while everyone’s distracted.” 

Delighted, Jeongin’s face lights up and Jone chokes on his surprise, his expression priceless. 

“What?” Minho huffs, slapping the boy over the head, “If you were looking beyond the prince last night, you would realize I’m perhaps even more laidback than Hyunjin!” 

Too excited for treats to indulge any bickering, Jeongin forces them to their feet. “I wouldn’t say laidback is the right word but c’mon. We need to smuggle extras for Seungmin and them too.” 

+

“You just... stole these from the kitchen when the rest of the staff weren’t looking,” Seungmin relays, unimpressed and almost unconvinced. But Minho had backed the story up so Felix is sure it’s just disapproval at this rate. 

Unbothered, Jeongin sinks next to him on Felix’s bed, avoiding body contact but biting the tart in Seungmin’s hand even as one rests in his own. “Mhm. Minho even suggested it. Jone almost got us caught but they were all too distracted to really care.” 

“Hey!” Jone calls from the window sill. Felix has to withhold a laugh when he sees him eating. He manages to have so little of the dessert in his mouth yet his cheeks have blown up considerably, largely resembling that of a quokka. “I did not! If anything it was your fault.” 

Jeongin doesn’t even grace the other with a reply, too busy stuffing an entire tart in his mouth at once. Seungmin seems used to the odd behavior, looking entirely done with the boy as he eats his own. 

“Hm, what made them so distracted?” Hyunjin asks, staring into his own eyes through the mirror. Odd for him to ask such a question since he’s seemed preoccupied from the moment he sat down at Felix’s vanity. Something heavy weighs on his mind, and it’s dense enough to film over Hyunjin’s entire expression, clouds in his eyes. 

Minho sits in one of the chairs, kicking weakly at Felix just to acknowledge the prince’s presence laying by the fire, watching it flicker along with each word they share. “We’ll get to that. It’s only day one but we managed to learn something fascinating.” 

“Same here,” Felix adds, looking at Hyunjin still. 

He expects it when Hyunjin joins, looking back and nodding to nothing. “Yeah, I picked up on a few things.” 

Jeongin frowns suspiciously. “It’s strange we’ve already seemed to find so much.” 

Jone clicks his tongue, holding onto the sill and leaning forward, hanging precariously. “Is it strange really? Or is it just that no one has ever bothered to search anything before?” At the lack of response, he looks around with raised brows, puzzled. “Well, then that’s why. You only notice things are missing when you bother to look for them.” 

Really, there’s no way to refute him. Especially as the truth becomes clear as day to them all as they finally open their eyes. 

“So...how do we do this?” 

Felix looks to Seungmin, sitting up. “Do you think all this is safe enough info to write down?” 

Catching on, Seungmin pulls out the small notebook he had from before, waving it before him. Jeongin seemingly recognizes the object and plainly asks for it in a low tone, looking through what the other had written while everyone looks on with curiosity. Even Hyunjin has left his trance to peer at the plain leather cover. 

“If we keep it well hidden,” Minho answers for the younger, moving to sit down in front of the pair on the bed. “And the queen and king stopped keeping an eye on Felix after...a while. That courtesy extends to us too. If we keep it on ourselves or in here, it’s safe.” 

Flourishing a cartridge pen from his pockets, Seungmin takes the notebook back, putting the nib to the page. “I’ve already written down what Felix and I have found. And if our theories are somewhat correct, writing everything down and keeping it from being destroyed, will keep our memories safe.”

“Smart,” Jone remarks, looking distantly up at the ceiling, mouth pursed. He merely turns, listless in his focus on Seungmin. Not as in the skies as Hyunjin, but elsewhere too. 

Jeongin sits up fully, and they all move to gather around where Seungmin sits. Reluctantly, Felix joins the movement, tearing himself away from the direct warmth of the fire, his heart already aching frostily at the loss. He settles behind Hyunjin to adjust, wrapping his arms around the other’s waist and soaking in his body heat. He thinks he grounds Hyunjin in return from whatever world was being built in his head. 

Felix can feel Hyunjin’s voice against his chest, softer and smoother than silk. “Why would we need to keep our memories safe?”

“It’s...it’s kind of complicated. Felix had a vision—” 

Minho’s head whips to the prince hiding behind the tallest there. “You had a vision? Are you alright?” 

The immediate answer that pops into his mind is no. It’s thought with such lack of hesitation that he has to grimace. Objectively...maybe he’s alright. Even if every hour his head pounds with a fervor and his nose leaks to show just how much everything is alright. Even if he can’t get rid of the chill from his skin, like a spirit had latched onto him and won’t even leave him in his sleep. Even if he’s been unable to think straight for minutes at a time, his mind either too empty or too full of the wretched castle he’s never left.

“Uh, just cold.” 

Each person in the room looks doubtful, but no one has the place to pry. None of them know what the visions are like, or their lasting effects on Felix. If Minho wants to keep going, he’ll take precious time for them. Felix knows he’ll try again later. But for now, he’ll let Felix’s lie of omission rest in wait for its grave.

Jone is the one to keep them on track, more intent than ever before, his wandering eyes laser focused now, almost desperate in the way they pierce Felix. His fingers are red against the window sill, knuckles white. The grey clouds make a frightful impression on his silhouette. He didn’t look like the Jone they briefly have known.

“What was the vision about?” he asks, words falling, stumbling out of his mouth. “The prince right?” 

Blankly, Felix nods, a little caught off guard by the sudden spotlight Jone has shone blinding bright on him. He’s not the only one who is surprised by Jone's sudden intensity. “Him and...and the former queen.” 

Fight leaves Jone in such an odd way even Jone himself looks confused by it all, running a tired hand through his hair. No one could look away from this side of Jone they’ve never seen before. And for a reason they couldn’t possibly place, seemingly out of the blue. His mouth is glued shut. There are things he’s holding back, things they don’t yet deserve to know, and it’s actively tormenting him. 

“There were few notable things from the vision,” Felix says slowly, once again having to pick apart the things he’d almost missed in the vision because he spent too much time admiring the way the queen’s arms rested so lovingly around her son. “The royal family...before mine they were-they were cursed.” 

Knowing Felix didn’t have big enough of a spool to keep going, Seungmin took it from there, describing their theory of how the curse worked. How they’d all been affected by it without even knowing. Because that’s just how they suspected it worked. Scrubbing their minds clean without their knowledge and no way to defend. 

What’s left in its wake is silence. As it slowly sinks in, and as it slowly makes sense. A portion of their lives, some bigger than others, entirely rewritten, and at the sake of the previous family’s demise. 

“I think you’ve asked,” Minho looks at Felix. “You’ve asked me before what that painting used to look like. Because I had seen it before you tried to. And I never once questioned why I could never answer. And then…” 

And then Felix was forced to forget what he had seen then too. Because it seems, he would’ve been the only one able to remember. 

“If we’ve all forgotten,” Jeongin puzzles, “How come Felix has memories and none of you do. Or, anyone here, frankly.” 

Hyunjin tenses, even where Felix’s head rests, and he knows he regretfully has to pull away, peering up at his friend questioningly. 

“Magic.” 

Felix blinks. Dots swam before his eyes, and gradually, as the others spoke, the dots were connected. 

“I can remember him because I have magic. The curse took longer to affect me, and it took...a lot to work. And now it’s not again.” 

“A lot to work?” 

Minho jumps in before Felix has to answer, face drawn. “What we found may be magic as well. At the surface, it doesn’t seem to have to do anything with the curse, but it probably does somehow.” 

“It has to,” Jone sighs, rocking back against the window and then stepping away from it. “If it’s becoming more frequent like they said right when the prince starts getting these visions, than they have to correlate, or at least connected by something the same.” 

Rolling his eyes, Hyunjin falls back onto the bed, near breaking the heavy tension that had been building since Felix’s vision was revealed. “Can you tell us what happened before obscurely discussing it?” 

Both Jone and Minho look dumbfoundedly sheepish, staring at Hyunjin with different expressions of bewilderment. Jeongin just snorts and taps Hyunjin’s attention to him. “Basically, within the staff, people have been going missing left and right. But as soon as anyone notices they’re gone, they appear right back on the castle grounds without ever knowing where they had gone. It’s been the same without fail ever since the first disappearance. No one knows where they go, or how they come back.”

Somehow that sounded more mystical and chilling than Felix’s own visions. People didn’t go missing and appear again like nothing happened without something happening. Even the assurance that they would be back as soon as you remembered them, had its own menacing factor. It felt like part of a horror novel’s plot. Especially to the people who have been taken, no memory of where they had been. 

“I believe it’s connected,” Felix agrees with Jone, “If something so big is going on here, they’ve got to be connected, or at least overlapping somehow. It’s too small of a kingdom for two crises to be going on in different portions.” 

“So we got a whole lot,” notes Seungmin, voice dull, “But nothing solid. If anything, we’re even more lost than we were with only Felix’s visions.” 

Sighing, Minho takes off his vest and socks and drops in the bed, pushing Seungmin to make room for himself, the other falling over a whining Jeongin. His muffled voice struggles to make past the pillow cover, a slurred, “We can see tomorrow. Let’s sleep now.” 

Time sensitivity is something they’ve yet to factor, but honestly, Felix wants nothing more than to sleep among the pile of his friends. He’s exhausted. After all that’s happened in the single day, to each and every one of them, Felix is swaying on his feet. He collapses with the rest, landing beside Hyunjin, who stares up wearily.

“Did you find anything?” he whispers, eyelids involuntarily dropping as Jone quickly races to snuff all the lights out before leaping over the legs of the others at top. It's a peaceful chaos Felix has only experienced in small doses with his two lifelong friends. It’s eternally comforting. 

Hyunjin turns his head to face Felix, their breaths practically mingling. Disrest settles over the servant’s face like an ugly stain. “Just...not very helpful. I figured you had magic. Before and after the king and queen subtly talked about it.” 

Even as his consciousness fades, Felix finds it in him to smile with sluggish lips. “They knew I had magic?” 

“Yeah,” Hyunjin says, sounding more discontent. “They knew…”

Chapter Text

He’s cold. He’s been cold for a long while, but this is different. It’s not the feeling of breeze in autumn, haunting and vaguely solemn. It’s biting and sharp, wrapping tighter and tighter around his wrists and ankles until his fingers shake purple and his knees knock together miserably. 

He doesn’t want to, but he forces his eyes to open, heaving a gasp with the effort it takes just to do that. There’s no difference. Darkness chews and swallows him, spitting him back up against rough stone that digs into his hands where the only warmth remains, wet and slick against his palms. 

Still, he looks frantically around, searching for a single source of light. There should be, logically. There had to be. 

Is this a vision?

HIs breath is ragged and his body immovable. He feels small, frail and vulnerable. Ice pierces his skin and he can hear nothing but his pounding heart and the drag of metal chains grating against uneven stone. 

No. This is a nightmare. 

He tries to move, but can’t. Not only is he too weak, but the chains are secured just right around his limbs, keeping him firmly in place, with only enough room to be sore. He gathers, he’s in a cell. It could be huge, but it feels so claustrophobic when he can barely even lift his head, the weight of injury keeping his neck cricked. 

A sob tears from his throat, fear blurring into a sorrow he can’t identify, welling vital and deep within him. He’s missing something. Something is missing him. Salt smearing along his cheeks, his voice echoing in deep cries in the cell, he uses all his effort to lean forward, dropping his face to his wrist, searching. 

There. 

The band is still there. At least he has something. 

Or does he?

A voice calls for him suddenly, five, ten voices, all at once. He can’t make out one or another, or if it’s all one person calling for him, their words fragmented and shattered along the walls that keep Felix contained. 

“Felix!” 

A name leaps to the tip of his tongue, one his mind knows not but his heart does well. He needs to say it. He knows he does. Somehow, he knows this name will free him. His lips part and his heart stills, time freezing as he tries to speak. 

Before he can there’s a large resounding crack and pain shoots from his spine to his skull. He screams at the sudden agony, choking on tears as he falls forward, his name being called over and over, desperate and just as afraid as him. 

“Felix! Felix! Help me!” 

Help...were they both trapped? 

Scarily, everything falls dead quiet, Felix’s own rasping filling the empty space the yelling leaves behind. He waits for it, aches for it. He needs it. They both need it. 

Hushed, and right by his ear, the voice returns, finally toned down to a single strand of words that sends prickles over his already bumped skin. “Felix, don’t forget me.” 

+

Distantly, he wonders if he still looks like the photogenic model the kingdom makes him out to be as he straggles ragged and torn apart through his room. Sweat soaks through his clothes and the standing strands of his hair. His eyes are peeled wide open almost terrifyingly, as he rips through his drawers for a single pair of socks. 

Tripping on himself, he pulls them on and throws his window open, carelessly throwing his legs over the sill and letting himself fall. Even though they feel like jelly and brittle drumsticks, he makes a good landing not four feet below his window, on an empty terrace, no one has access to, merely for a castle’s grand decor. 

Wiping his eyes, hearing his own sniffle, he feels pathetic. He reaches out on muscle memory, grabbing onto twined rope, tied into a ladder that has somehow lasted him years without repair. With no hesitation, he pulls himself on it and up and over another ledge. 

The area had to have once been a garden, before access was restricted for one reason or another. It was overgrown with flowers and vines, pretty weeds and prickly ones alike. Secured in the middle, under the wide view of the stars, was an old ratty mattress, the blankets atop it just as old, but thanks to Felix, subtly cleaned monthly. 

Maybe he’d never made much an effort to step foot outside the castle, but he’d always risk a leg and an arm to come up here, atop it. He’s been making the small trek for as long as he can remember. The rope had always been there, and just like this night, after a particularly bad nightmare, he’d desperately flung out his window, instinct guiding him to this very spot beneath the open sky. 

And without fail, every time he fell back against the worn sheets and fabric, instant comfort bloomed uncontrollably from his gut throughout. A relieved sigh slips past his lips. It was getting colder in the kingdom. The skies were grey all through summer to winter, never changing. But there was a shift you couldn’t really feel but taste in the air. In summer it smelt like the dew of grass and leaves whenever he got closer to the sky. He’s never been to one, but he imagines it smells like lakes or rivers as well. 

In winter, the taste is sharper, with a haze of smoke as fires are prepped in each and every building. The taste of fresh snowflakes hitting his tongue and the feeling of cold enveloping you in its kind embrace, refreshing one second, bitter the next. To Felix it was both just another season to live through, and a story in itself. Much like Felix’s memories, each line melted away at his fingertips. 

It wasn’t snowing yet, but Felix could taste it coming. 

It was nice to ponder the chill of winter rather than think of the ice of his dreams. Even thinking of its occurrence has him tensing, curling into his blankets with a deep set frown. He can’t fall asleep up here, but he doesn’t think that’s much a worry. He’s still too stricken to do anything but lay, staring at each star until it's embedded in his eyelid. 

For once he doesn’t feel it coming on, almost completely fallen into a fitful peace. 

He near jumps out of his skin when from beside him a voice hums. Almost falling out of the mattress entangled with his blankets, he turns over, biting his lip hard to keep in his yelp of shock when he sees the forgotten prince, resting beside him, hair splayed over flat surface, face as indiscernible as always. It’s a softer blur today, fading into the plants that disconcertingly curl through his midriff, a clear sign that this was merely an illusion. A stray flower bud rests upon where his mouth might. 

The prince makes a slight noise, shifting and moving as if reacting to Felix’s shuffling. Self-conscious, Felix sits, having too much oddities with facing the strange depiction of the cursed prince, right beside him bedside no less. He drapes the blankets over his shoulders and finds it a hard battle looking between the stars and prince’s weed grown figure. 

The prince wins, though not without fight. 

Felix can’t see who else is here, but his hair rises over his arms as the prince stills and turns ever so slightly towards him. Someone is lying in Felix’s spot, but unlike the queen, Felix can’t see them. And though it’s entirely off putting, Felix also can’t find it in himself to move from the spot. He’s as rooted to the prince as those vines.

What useful information could possibly be derived from this spot in particular, and how was the prince here? Felix thinks of how the rope ladder was here before he can think of, and wonders, suspects, that the cursed prince might have been the very one who placed it. 

“What are the chains over your face for?” 

Felix bodily flinches, hissing at the odd sensation. He can’t hear this voice, rather, it’s playing in his head, like words he’s reading in a book. He can’t pin a tone to it whatsoever, but he knows it’s being spoken and the prince is receiving it. It’s also a descriptor he hadn’t expected, chains along the face. As hard as he tries to sum up the image of the painting in his head, he has nothing, but he places it over the blank space with jeweled chains, fitting for a prince. 

The prince’s hands raise delicately to his own face, disappearing in the murky mist, but probably touching said accessories. “Oh, these,” he says lightheartedly, searching for an explanation within his tone. It’s clear he’s willing to entertain whoever’s speaking whims in a heartbeat. “They’re made of gold. Have you noticed that all the jewelry me and my mother wear is made of gold?” 

That odd voice goes again, ringing in Felix’s head like a phantom echo of his own. “Yeah, I have. Why’s that?” 

The prince thinks carefully again, and his hand goes out like he’s lightly pushing someone back. He turns over onto his side and spreads out his arm dramatically before dropping it back down to the mattress. “Did you know that magic lies within the royal family?” 

A soft gasp, right at the back of Felix’s head and brushing against the lobe of Felix’s ear. Wondrous and young, as light as the stars themselves, untainted by the darkness that dwells beneath where they lay. Maybe that’s why the prince is so earnestly eager. They’re protecting this gasp. 

“Magic exists?”

“All over,” the prince snorts, and almost unnoticeable is a note of melancholy, playing loftily behind the curtain of his warm youthful voice. Once Felix might have not detected it, but now he knows that tune all too well, his head already beginning to hurt from the effort of producing whatever scene this was. But at least he knows the use behind it now. More. Magic. 

“Where science ends magic begins, and where magic ends science begins. They’re the same really. Though, a tutor may say something different. It’s not exactly common knowledge but each royal who sits upon the throne, born into the family or not, has magic. No one knows why, but no matter how much you search, there will never be an explanation for the things that magic does, much less where it comes from itself.” 

The way he tells it, like a mystical fantastical story. Felix can feel whoever it is, eating up each word, leaning, almost toppling over to hear it as close as possible. Felix himself can smile and pretend that’s all it is. Curses and darkness be damned in the sake of whatever the forgotten prince weaved it to be. What it’s always made out to be. Magic . 

“But, it has a source for us. Unlike innately magical creatures, pixies, nymphs, elves, and more, we don’t have magic within us. We get them from gold. Like a dragon’s hoard.” 

“Maybe that’s where it stems from,” the other offers enthusiastically, “Like the dragon protecting the princess in the tower, or...maybe it’s irony. Like to keep the royals from being greedy?” 

The prince laughs, and it’s bright. It almost tastes like summer again just at the sound alone. Felix wonders if he had grown up with it like he was supposed to, if it would sound the same, even when the prince was his age, worn and torn under the castle’s claws. 

“Actually, that may be part of the reason,” the cursed prince indulges, “It makes sense. Gold...it’s not just valued for trade. It’s strong and heavy, and symbolizes so much more in a kingdom than it ever has need to. It’s...it’s a heavy burden. Only a good royal, who’s strong enough in just the right ways, can bear its weight.” 

There’s a comfortable silence before the prince continues, playing with the other’s ideas and melding them with his own like the precious metal itself. “So like dragons, the royals have to be able to protect their gold, their kingdom. But they can’t be greedy like one. They’ve gotta be strong enough to hold the gold. And if they’re not, they don’t get the gift of magic.” 

The other presence is slowly fading, dozing into the night. And even after such a recent nightmare, where usually he’d stay awake for days after to avoid even seeing on the back of his eyelids, Felix is lured into the same sleep. “What about you?” it asks the prince, “Do you think you’re too greedy? You ate both our meals this morning and more. Is that greed or...gluttony?” 

An offended noise follows and the prince pinches something, someone, and Felix distantly hears a delighted shriek. The blip of energy falls as quick as it rises, and Felix is melting beneath his blankets, blinking away dreariness. 

“The only treasure I’ll ever die for is a smile,” the prince answers in a scoff, serious and not. It panics the other though, sending both them and Felix into a briefly alert state. 

“You can’t! I’ll never smile again, you jerk.” 

“Hey, hey! Don’t be like that. I was only joking. You have nothing to worry about yet, little chick. I’m only saying I don’t have greed. Not materialistically. And my magic hasn’t awoken yet, so who knows if I’ll ever have to worry about it.” His voice ends in a soft melody, drifting and swirling through the air, mingling with some distant chimney’s smoke. An assurance that seems too open ended, one Felix knows is hollow and useless. 

Perhaps the prince’s magic had never awoken, and he never had the chance to die for a smile. But magic had taken him one way or another.

Knowing if he stayed any longer, he’d fall dead on his feet, Felix hovers his hand over the prince’s face, hesitantly passing through it to end the vision. The cursed prince fades into the blankets and leaves, leaving behind absolutely nothing but sentences that sear into Felix’s mind with a thousand-pound imprint. 

So that’s where this magic comes from, he pores over as he forces himself to his feet, carefully dropping the blanket over where the prince had lied, as if it would keep him warm in Felix’s memory. Gold. No wonder his parents wore too much. 

There’s no way they were strong enough too though. 

They weren’t kind dragons who protected princesses like the cursed prince. They were the kinds that took. 

Yet somehow, they’d won a game before anyone else could remember their move. 

He was used to taking the way back to his bedroom, but usually, he was so much more aware and on his toes than he was now. It made the entire process groggy and slurred. There may be a scrape or two on his palm when he gets down, but mostly he goes unscathed, lifting himself into his open window and landing on his plush carpeting with a soft thud. 

However, when he raises his tired head, he rears back. Minho waits directly before him, while the others stare at him from the bed or at least try poorly to fake sleeping. Only Jone looks to be the only one not woken. 

Guiltily, Felix makes eye contact with his oldest friend, not sure what expression he’s supposed to be making. He feels he should summon a weak smile, but he doesn’t possess the energy. Minho tilts his head and regards the prince, eyes hard but everything else soft. Felix can’t help but fall forward, falling into Minho’s sturdy chest.

“Nightmare?” Minho utters quietly, for no one else to hear. 

He’ll tell about the vision later, nodding. 

“What are you going to tell them?” 

Truly, Felix can’t even feel shame towards it. There are bigger things now to worry about. “If they ask, tell them.” 

He can hear Minho’s heart quicken for just a moment, gulping as he guides the prince to bed. He makes sure there is no fanfare as they all fall back into an uncomfortable sleep, each a different ghoul hanging over their heads that they can’t see. 

Magic. 

Felix rather hates it. 

+

Getting ready the next day is awkward. There are many questions as to where Felix had gone in the night, panicking them all when he woke in a loud hustle and then leaping from his window, Minho having to calm them all by explaining vaguely that there was a place leading from the window. Felix is far away, purple beneath his eyes and a tremble in his fingers. 

It gives them all a scare when there’s a loud knock on the door. As distant as he is, Felix snaps alert within the split second. Hyunjin and Minho usher the others into deft hiding places as the prince makes his way to the door, stumbling only slightly. Wearily, he opens the grand door just a smidge, eyes widening. 

“Mother?” 

Her maids open the doors fully, Minho swallowing from his place as he sees her eyes scan swiftly over the room, hoping not a stray hair was showing. He feels that she knows. That she knows that they’re all there, secretly plotting against her in some way or another. But that may be paranoia. Either way, she deigns to ignore any existence but her son’s. 

Honestly, Minho would prefer the former. 

“My Golden Prince,” she drawls, lifting her hand and stroking his chin in a way that might be seen as loving to the naked eye, but was anything else. Felix flinches and Minho feels sick. “Good morning.”

There’s a pause before the conversation continues, one where Felix can gather himself in his mask all in the span of a clock ticking. Beyond it, Minho can still see his exhausted weariness, but the veneer is strong. 

“Morning, mother. What do I owe this visit?” 

Clicking her tongue she taps a heavy ringed finger against his cheek, watching as Felix forces himself to stay steady beneath her stare. “No need to be so stiff, dear. I just wanted to have a walk with you around the gardens. It’s been so long since we had some mother-son time.” 

The air gets stuffy, thick enough with tension to push Minho to the ground. 

Felix tries to save it, half-turning with the words flinging from his mouth in disguised panic. “Oh, I’ll finish getting ready and then fetch Minho—”

“Not necessary.” You can hear every piece of stupid gold and metal collide with each other in ear-shattering cymbals as she shakes her head. “I wanted it to just be the two of us. No servants or any other extra presences. Is that alright with you?” 

It’s a solid no, what weighs at the back of everyone's mind in that room. Even the queen herself has to know that Felix wants anything but, the tip of his tongue already against his teeth. However, it’s also known, that he has no choice but to agree. 

“Of course, Mother,” he rasps dully, clearing his throat with pursed lips and clenched fists hidden well behind his back. “I would love to,” he forces, smile too sharp at the edges to be earnest, “See you then, your Majesty.”

The door shuts with a hollow clang and Felix stands still, face stony. It was clear he’d already had a hell of a night, and it didn’t look like the day was gonna be any better. And Minho can’t even be by his side. Lately, he hasn’t been at all. 

Damn it. 

Minho slips from his spot and grabs Felix’s shoulder reassuringly. “Felix—“

He’s shaken off all too quick. “I have no choice,” the prince sighs, rubbing his eyes as the others come back out into the open. “Trust me, I’d rather jump from a tower…just continue as usual.”

Minho’s lips are pursed tight and for all the world he wishes he has more power than he does in that moment. “Alright.” But he’ll do what he can. “Sit, I’ll get you ready.”

He may be nothing but a lowly servant somehow miraculously employed by the Golden Prince himself, but his people abilities were his saving grace. And his favorite client was the prince himself. 

With each hair stroke and pop of collar, each careful prick of the hairpin and golden earrings, Minho employs every comforting touch he can. Slowly, never fully, he watches Felix unwind, swallowing each time the door opens as one of their friends leave. For when the door opens the other way, the queen will be on the other side. 

This time, he doesn’t put on the crown. Rather he gives it to Felix to put on himself. He does it right as deceptive delicate knocks ring through the room, signaling her arrival once more. 

Felix stands stiffly beside her, eyes lowered to the floor. Minho looks her in the eye and somehow sees nothing behind icy irises. “What time should I have his night routine prepared, your Majesty?” he asks, breath bated. 

Dismissively, showing just how little she cared for Minho’s existence, an insult but one Minho can be thankful for in these cases. “Same time as usual. I do not wish to keep him longer than dinner at the most.” 

Synchronized, Minho and Felix exhale lengthily. It was barely anything, but an assurance nonetheless. She was saying even if mindlessly, that she was going to let Felix back to his room. 

She reaches around the door and slams it shut, leaving a lasting image of her eerie smile and Felix’s sullen expression. Worn through, Minho falls back onto the bed and rubs his head. He’s ready to sit there for as long as it takes him to mentally recuperate from the stress of dealing with such a turbulent prince. 

“What was all that about?” 

His eyes shoot open and he comes face to face with Jeongin, wide dark eyes shining over him. Minho thankfully doesn’t shoot up and give them both headaches to last the already terrible day. Gently, he pushes the other away and sets a hand over his heart as it calms. Carefully, he responds, “What do you mean? And why are you still here? I at least expected Jone to be behind.” 

Shrugging, Jeongin flops beside him and their knees touch, staring at socked feet. “Jone left first actually. He said to find him when you get the prince ready.” 

Prick. He knows Minho can find him easily in the staff room. Doesn’t mean he wants too. 

“And...there was just a lot of tension. Around just Felix going on a walk with his mom. And then when he had the nightmare last night that woke us all up...I know he couldn’t have had the dream royal life everyone imagines, but is there more? He’s been entirely eager to overthrow his parents it just...I guess it doesn’t make too much sense. Or it does, but I don’t know why.” 

Minho bundles Jeongin’s words into a little basket and tries to sift through them manageably. Really, it seems Jeongin was trying to condense what would otherwise be a large question into one that is more polite and easy. It didn’t quite transfer the best and Minho would prefer he be direct, raising a brow. 

Intuitively, Jeongin caught on, sucking his lip in and shifting consciously. “They did something to him, didn’t they? The king and queen.” 

It was entirely what Minho had expected, but that didn’t serve to soften the blow. And though he had prompted Jeongin to ask the question, he hadn’t been able to prepare himself for it. Never, did he think he’d be able to tell anyone what vile things he’s witnessed from the monarchs. He’d thought he and Felix would live in die with the deeds curled cruelly around them alone. 

If they ask, tell them.

Feeling abruptly winded, kicked of his breath, he stands and adjusts his shirt, merely to keep his hands busy. “You don’t need to be at your duties anytime soon, correct?” 

Following his movements with an assessing pensive gaze, Jeongin shakes his head. “No, as long as the horses are groomed and fed before the sun sets. And...I don’t really have a mission with as little traffic as there is around the stables...Why?” 

Already fluffing out Felix’s lush comforter, Minho looks around at the disarray that the room has never experienced before. It was slight, but notable, pillows scattered, curtains uneven, and furniture slightly moved from their original positions. Jeongin moves from the bed to unconsciously help. 

“Let’s clean, shall we?” 

It’s the fakest Minho’s smile has ever been, and Jeongin looks almost to regret ever saying anything. 

+

His eyes wander over the tall walls, curving and curling over his head. The hallways of the castle alone are so grand it feels like any sound Minho and his golden prince make will carry all the way to the king and queen’s room a wing away. He tries to hold back Felix by the tips of his sleeves, but the bouncing brunet keeps slipping from his grasp, and he’s too cautious to yell after him, biting his tongue in frustration and panic. 

As he watches Felix get closer and closer to the drawn curtains, tension simmers beneath his skin. Fear roots him to the spot while burning him from the inside out, leaving his limbs hardened rock. The prince’s small hands reach out, grasping at the tassels of the curtains. 

Maybe the noise won’t carry. And if it does, at least it would be better than the golden prince messing with the curtains again. 

Minho never wants to see the faces behind them. No matter how much curiosity plagues him, no matter how much he knows there’s no good reason for the king and queen to be hiding them, Minho never wants to see the faces. He’s seen Felix get threatened and frightened, warned aggressively and passively that he’d be punished if he ever saw them. 

And for that reason, Minho never wants to. He never wants anything that will ever get the golden prince hurt. 

Both him and the voice that plays in his head at the rare moments he doubts himself, and also the moments like these, when Felix is too carefree, too bold, too free in such a damning castle. A voice laced in watered fire, urgent, pleading, trusting, so much all at once, but stable. 

Protect him, please. Protect. Him. 

“Felix!” he whisper shouts, trying not to choke on his words as they stumble out of his mouth, heavy in weight despite their low volume, tugging him forward. Their desperation seems to snap the young prince from his fascination, just briefly enough. 

He seems confused, even exasperated at Minho’s insistence on not opening those damn curtains when Felix is so set on doing just that. “What?” he says back, his voice such a normal pitch, it’s too loud, making the servant wince. Slowly, as if not to alert the prince, Minho steps closer until he’s one again able to grab his wrist. 

“You know you’re not allowed to look behind the curtains,” Minho hisses. 

Felix’s brows furrow, and it baffles Minho how genuinely bewildered the prince is at Minho’s franticness. “When did you begin to care for the rules, Minho?” 

A noise of irritation slips between Minho’s lips, a steam like whistle. He really didn’t particularly care for the rules. Never has. He’s helped Felix many a times sneaking into the kitchens, evading his tutors, so much that would have their pastry desserts snatched for months. But this. This was more. He knew it deep down, in a dark roiling pit in his gut. When he sees Felix near the curtains, the voice is so loud, if it weren’t for the steady tone, it would be screaming. 

Protect him, Protect him . Protect him. 

It mingles with his own more and more as time goes on. 

His inability to answer has the prince acting within seconds. He rips his wrists from Minho, gold scraping hollowly against Minho’d trimmed nails. Knowing Minho will stop him if he pauses once more, he rips the curtains open instantly, the noise loud and tearing through the long halls. 

Minho’s heart drops hard and swift to the bottom of his feet. His mind goes completely blank and his ears ring incessantly. For some reason or another, he’s on the floor, watching through a grainy lens as the prince’s face goes slack, tears slipping down his cheeks as his fingers caress delicately over the painting Minho can’t see. 

What he can see is ink, dark and shining dripping over the bronze frame, puddling around Felix’s feet and attempting to reach Minho, to crawl over his legs and drown him. In his entire life, on an abandoned floor, orphaned and starving, Minho has never been more afraid. 

Felix, don’t forget me. 

“Prince…” 

“Felix!” 

Their heads snap to the shout, watching in growing horror as the looming figure of the king himself thunders through toward him. Minho feels sick, sick to his stomach, sick throughout his entire being as that bubbling bad feeling reaches its boiling point, tipping, tipping, and overflowing. 

“Father?” Felix speaks, vulnerable and fragile. Two guards appear from behind the king and grab Felix roughly by the arms, pulling him back so harshly he lets out a cry of pain and shock, eyes blown wide. Minho’s mouth is coated with blood with the effort it takes to be silent, eyes stinging. If he makes a single noise, a simple servant intervening royal interaction, he could damn them both. 

The king holds out an expectant hand to one of the guards, dead silent. A sword is placed easily into his waiting palm, and the air stands still. The blade makes a grating noise against the stone as the king slowly drags it over the wall, lifting it, and bringing it to Felix’s chin. 

Everyone is shocked beyond belief. The king, holding a blade against his own son. 

Minho wonders hazily, if this is the last moment he has to live. All he knows is it can’t be Felix’s. Bringing no attention to himself, on shaking knees equivalent to the jello he and Felix had played with to midnight just the day before, he stands. He’s already drained from the effort. 

“What did I tell you?” the king questions, voice deep like oil-slicked waters. It sends shudders through them all, Felix and Minho especially. Felix can’t even answer, to afraid to move any part of his mouth or neck, eyeing the blade a millimeter from piercing his skin. “I told you, to never open those curtains. Did I not?” 

“You-You did, Father.” Tears run down salt tracks that Felix had already formed when he first saw the painting overcome with a sentimental emotion Minho had no present capability or recognizing, now streaming with terror. His neck his cricked so he won’t be stabbed as he’s forced to speak. 

“I told you to never look at the ruined painting beneath. Did I not?” 

“You did, Father.” 

“And what did you do, you spoiled brat?” 

“I...I looked at the painting,” he hiccups in response. 

The king angles the sword so he can get closer to the prince’s face, sneering. Distantly, Minho realizes, even in the dead of night, the moon reigning the sky bright and clear, the king is accessorized to the pore with gold. 

“Did you recognize the boy in that painting, brat?” 

There’s a new tension slivering through the air, slick and coiling as Felix’s eyes somehow go wider, lips parting soundlessly. The blade threatens to go further and Felix swallows, rasping. “Yes, Father. I did.” There’s so much depth to his words that Minho can’t even begin to traverse, a map to a galaxy Minho can’t recognize much less read written in each crack of his voice. Minho’s missing something, but he doesn’t know what. 

The king’s face is so blank, it’s terrifying. He spins, carelessly ripping his blade through the air, Minho crying out as he reaches out to grab for Felix. But it’s drowned out as Felix begins to shriek. When Minho sees not a scratch on his skin, he slowly turns to the king. The man has torn violently through the painting, and as Minho watches dazed, tilting on his last bit of consciousness as Felix continues to scream and scream, the king slashes through the painting over and over. 

Don't….forget...me.

Minho’s mind is utterly blank, a slate wiped clean with steel wool.

Breathing raggedly, chest heaving and shoulders dropping up and down emphatically. “Take him to the dungeons. His little toy can follow you.” At the single command, harsh fingers dig into his shoulder, pushing him forward and down. He can’t react to any of it, entirely numb, even to the sobs that wrack and rip through Felix’s every breath, brimming with grief and a sorrow so large Minho can’t begin to see the edges. 

Protect...him. 

Neither Minho nor Felix can remember the following weeks. But they haunt them every waking moment. Felix can still feel chains wrapped around his wrists and ankles, making him trip even on an open field, leaving him gasping for air as terror takes oxygen’s place in his lungs. Minho can still hear Felix’s piercing aching cries of agony far beyond physical when there’s no other noise to drown out the ghosts. 

Protect him. Don’t forget. 

They both failed their biggest promises then. And they don’t even know who they doomed in doing so. But it hangs over their heads no matter how deep they dig. 

+

He’s going deeper and deeper, shivering slightly as the air gets colder and colder, stiff and stuffy with a chilly bite. He’s glad he stuck with wearing merely socks that day. Any of his fancy shmancy palace shoes would have clicked just as loudly as the king’s sturdy boots against the stone steps as they go down, down. 

The queen had ruined Minho’s predicted schedule, but fortunately, in prospects of the mission, Hyunjin found no joy in it, he had been able to find the king and follow him early on. Really, he found no joy in any of this. He was still simmering with frustration from having to let Felix go off on a ‘lovely’ garden walk with his even ‘lovelier’ mother. 

He remembers a long, long time ago, having a sweet image of the seemingly gentle queen. She took him in, and he trusted her. He’s always trusted too easy, and for all besides Minho and Felix, it’s proven to have pierced him through the heart with a poisoned blade. He hates the woman for letting Felix stay in those dungeons, for adding to his pain while in iron bounds. 

He hates the man more, for putting Felix there with his own sword. 

And here they are, going to the dungeons for whatever reason. Hyunjin as never seen them used, didn’t think they regularly were. The king and queen didn’t pay enough attention to their kingdom outside the castle to deal with criminals. He’s only known two people to be put behind these bars. And that didn’t ease him in any way. 

There’s a shift in the air and Hyunjin goes deadly still, hearing the slightest of rustles that don’t match the steady infuriating beat of the heavy king’s steps. He fears once again, questioning if he should just give up this mission and ask for a different task, that he’s been heard once more. Something light and purposeful brushes the back of his neck and it takes all of his will not to shriek, tensing so hard he’ll hurt the next morning. 

“Sorry,” a voice whispers, somehow so quiet it blends with the drafts of the underground route, but just enough for Hyunjin hears. There’s little light to illuminate the presence standing right against Hyunjin's back, but he can recognize them almost immediately after finding them. 

Letting the king get ahead to eliminate any risk of being heard, Hyunjin allows a few beats of pure quiet before spinning on his heel, acting like it wouldn’t take the slightest push to send him tumbling down the steep spiraling stairs. “What are you doing here?” It takes a lot of control not to escalate the whisper to a breath of a shout. 

The whites of Jone’s eyes glow in the dark, wide. “Uh…” His tongue darts out nervously and curls in as he chews on his lip. His gaze darts skittishly away from Hyunjin's own, and the servant knows the darkness is keeping a lot of essential expression on Jone’s face hidden, hiding a secret of one shape or another. 

“Minho hasn’t left the chambers yet and I got tired of waiting,” Jone slips into rambling, building his words one on top of the other. Not a lie, but not a truth, stacked from faulty stone. Honestly, Hyunjin has no interest or time to tear it down, scoffing and interrupting whatever stream of omissions Jone is ready to sprout. He points to Jone’s feet. 

Jone’s shoes were already gone. Hyunjin's eyes narrow. But it’s one mystery at a time and he’s fare more invested in Felix’s than this odd newcomer’s. “Just keep your mouth shut,” he orders through his teeth, pulling Jone down by the collar, only somewhat hoping for their cover’s sake the other won’t fumble and fall. 

After seemingly endless steps, they finally reach the bottom, the darkness giving way to a dim grey glow that covered the entire dungeons, a small slitted window in each cell. The pause as their feet straighten over flat ground, staring at the cell directly across the entrance. 

Even through socks, the rough ground feels unbearably icy, piercing through Hyunjin's feet and slicing all the way up to his neck, becoming a vice depriving him of all air. He can’t look away, picturing the little Felix, even sweeter than warmer than the one the queen had introduced to him, weighed to the ground, screaming and crying to be freed. 

Swallowing bile, his stare slowly drifts to the next cell, imagining a more open Minho, shaking and covering his ears but still keeping his back to the wall nearest to Felix, enduring every whimper and hit that barraged him, staying just close enough so Felix can hear him, trying to talk over his sobs. Never once pausing his constant assurance for the prince. 

The images collide and crash in Hyunjin's head, a cacophony so unbearable, Hyunjin has to grit his teeth to keep it from escaping through his mouth in a loud scream that would reach the village. With much effort, he looks back at Jone, to look at anything else but harsh stone and rusty metal. 

Jone is looking at the cells too, and in the light, Hyunjin can finally see the depth of darkness that churns in brown irises. It’s enough to rival the fury that resonates from Hyunjin's rib cage to the tips of clenched fingers. 

This wasn’t happenstance. Jone had reason to follow Hyunjin beyond Minho’s occupancy. 

Will the other just tell his secrets to the group already? Merely so Hyunjin doesn’t have to stuff his mind with not only the king’s and queen’s mysteries but the mysteries of his own friends’ friend. It’s all exhausting. 

Wrapping his hand around Jone’s wrist, he forcibly moves both of them away from the two cells, sticking close to the wall, his gaze trained straight ahead, stopping just at the corner where the king rounded. Pushing Jone around him, he peers around it, tucking his swaying hair behind his ear so it won’t slip out and betray them both. 

When Jone’s own fingers wrap around the hair and tighten it with an elastic, he has to purse his lips tight to keep his reaction within. Whether it’s a negative or positive one is something he can’t quite tell. He just lets it happen for the sake of ease. 

If the king is capable of one thing, it’s perfect internal monologue, much to Hyunjin's displeasure. He makes not a single hum, standing far to still at the end of the dungeons and staring at the wall, as if there should be something there. It’s frankly unsettling. 

All he can feel and hear is Jone’s breath against the back of his neck. Any longer just standing there and he’ll go mad. 

They both go tense as the king steps back, reaching out for nothing. Hyunjin's breath catches in his throat as something shines midair. An odd feeling washes over him, a serenity unlike anything he’s ever felt before. It wasn’t content. It wasn’t satisfactory. It was serenity in the fact that there was nothing. It felt like void. Somehow at the same time, it felt like chaos bundled together so tight it smoothed over into tangible white noise. 

Hyunjin's entire body prickles, pins and needles pecking at every muscle and bone beneath his flesh. Jone’s wrist goes slack in his hand, the touch feeling like muted white fire as their sensations simultaneously become over and underwhelmed. 

Unperturbed, the king closes his fist around the odd shapeless colorless mass hanging from nothing. Gravity falls upon Jone and Hyunjin strangely, as if they were floating before and suddenly being shoved to the ground. It makes Hyunjin grimace but he can’t help when his knees buckle and Jone has to catch him unsteadily before the both of them hit the ground. 

If the servant can credit him one thing, it’s that he manages to be stealthy in everything he does. It’s almost trained. 

The king’s voice is just below the normal volume, but after so long without noise, after whatever the hell that thing was, it sounds like a thousand trees falling around them at once, cracking and thundering all together, scraping their ear drums painfully. 

“Shit.” 

They see only a flash of white eyes before Jone pulls them into a nook once reserved for a torch, covering Hyunjin's mouth. He lets gravity take them, sliding slowly down to the ground. It’s pure luck the king doesn’t look down when he passes by, a deep frown carved into his face, bleeding with ire. 

His footsteps fade upwards and Hyunjin lets his head fall back against Jone’s chest, no longer caring about his aversion to the newcomer. He’s utterly drained once more without having really done anything. His drawn out sigh surrounds them both, ending with Jone’s involuntary snort. 

“Guess we’re staying here,” Jone mutters, still hushed. 

“Lucky you don’t make the worst pillow.” 

“...Your hair tickles.”

Hyunjin processes it, thinks it over, truly considers whether Jone meant it as an insult or not, decides whether he’ll be offended anyway. With a slight smile, he takes his nails and pinches just the barest of Jone’s skin. 

Jone’s startled shriek is music to Hyunjin's ears.

Chapter Text

Just like the fields where they take their horses,  Felix never went out to the gardens. In fact, going to the gardens, no matter how much Hyunjin loved them, was something Felix did even less. There was no real reason behind it, he just naturally avoided the gardens. Or maybe there was, watching his mother smile down at the trimmed hedges and perked roses, following her like a sun. With all the gold, she practically shone like one. 

Felix wonders how he was the only one in his family to retain the Golden title, when his parents wore enough of the stuff to feed the kingdom for a year. He tries hard to keep his lips from curling in disdain. Looking at his mother won’t help. The flowers are beautiful, and he won’t let the queen ruin that. And they’re incredibly soft against his palm, softer than creamy book pages and velvet cushions. 

There must be a feeling equivalent to the way that flowers feel, caressing his fingertips more gently than even a breeze. He doesn’t even realize he’s squatted to be face to face with the flower, in awe of the pretty thing. It blurs from yellows and reds like a sunset, and oddly enough, Felix isn’t repulsed by the color in this form. 

He imagines that feeling would be a joy swathed in contentment, like laying in bed at the end of the day, not afraid to give way to sleep, not dreading waking up, calm and warm. 

“Heavens.” Her word falls like a cymbal, clashing and clattering against the paved path, ruining Felix’s brief moment of wonderment. Thankfully, he hadn’t crushed the flower, carefully retreating his hands to his knees. “It seems like we’ve been walking forever now.” 

They might have, honestly. Felix couldn’t tell even if a sword was to his neck. It had felt like an eternity of torment, walking so slow beside his mother his legs began to cramp. Listening to every swish of her hoop skirt, every clank of her accessories colliding, every off-pitch hum that belied her candy-floss voice. It was the simplest things about her that made him tense. She’d never been openly cruel, it was all subtle and underbelly. The more at peace she was, the more Felix wanted to jump from his skin. 

Feeling her eyes burning into his back he stands, straightening his slacks and returning her gaze, making his eyes wide and inquisitive. “Have we?” he asks, as if she hasn’t already deducted what his response was going to be and what she was going to do with it. 

Nodding primly, she gestures to an ornate stone bench, positioned on either side of a streaming fountain. It’s well taken care of, stray leaves floating atop the reflected sky like they were flying. Felix certainly didn’t mind it. It was a lovely distraction from his mother’s voice. They sit. 

If there’s one reprieve the queen grants him, it’s that she never touches him. He knows she did at one point, before the blank weeks, but he suspects greatly why she stopped. Neither of them knew what state he’d be sent in if she were to lay a finger on him. There’s a foot between them even as they sit on the same bench, a solemn hollow space nothing but dirt could fill. 

“How have you been lately?”

It’s such a casual normal question he has to repeat it in his head to register it. It was more and less than anything he expected from her. Which also alerts him to be careful. There was a reason she was asking this, and it wasn’t to be courteous.

“Pleasant as usual,” he replies tersely, threading his fingers anxiously together. There’s nothing more he could say. To keep going would be his downfall. Jump a mile and fall in a pit of spikes. 

That off-pitch hum again, eliciting a flinch from him and disrupting the pleasant outside noises almost to the point where he’s convinced the birds have entirely stopped chirping and the water stopped flowing. “How have your studies been going? Is your tutor competent?” 

Fear is an ever-constant presence when he’s around his parents, but now it pings against his spine and skull like alarm bells. His eyes shoot up and straight ahead, spotting from his peripherals her intensely icy stare. Any other fidget but slowly swallowing would draw her eyes like a bloodthirsty hawk. “They’ve been going well. And so has he. He’s a fine man. I’ve been learning.” 

Not anything she wanted him to learn, but so much he was learning. 

He wants to ask why, so badly. But that would only lead him to trouble so he hopes she twists her words into some explanation for such simple questions. Nothing was ever simple for her. Seungmin had said she and her husband were careless, and Felix doesn’t doubt it. He won’t forget that she is sharp though. Not entirely in pure intellect, but her eye picks up what she wants it to. Her nails hook into any prey she wants. 

But she’s careless. She leaves scraps. 

Instead of continuously wallowing, Felix will begin to pick those up after her, sharpening his own vision with her own leftovers. “He’s been here a long time, hasn’t he?” 

She’s startled, for Felix to ask her a question. Her lashes flutter erratically and her lips part and thin in the same span. Her brows have furrowed just enough to create a notch in her forehead, but no lines. “He has,” she gives, tone measured in teaspoons and millimeters. “His hair has been grey longer than yours has brown...Do you think he’s...too old to teach?” 

Maybe Felix has bit off more than he can chew, shaking his head as slowly as he can for his spike of panic. “I was just wondering.” How can he explain this without getting the old man in trouble? Nothing comes to mind and his tongue sits in his mouth terribly empty. He’s taken too much time. 

“Has he been acting strange, Felix? Saying anything odd?” 

Knives lace lollipops and barbed clubs are served in ice cream cones. That’s how Felix would describe her tone. Deadly sweet, but not in any good way whatsoever. 

“No, of course not, mother.” His voice wobbles. Wavers. 

She smiles, her sclera almost black in her crown’s overbearing shadow. It’s a smile you wear when you get something you want, that you’ve snuck from the cookie jar without being caught. Yet he gets the feeling neither of them have been satisfied here. “My feet are quite sore. It was lovely spending time with you, my golden son, but it’s time I take a bath and rest, hm? Do return to your guard pup safely.” 

Her feet move perfectly against the ground, not a limp in her gait. 

As soon as he can’t hear her necklaces clash, the tension drains from his body leaving him limp and winded. Helplessly, the scene of the cursed queen plays in his head, painted in soft warm colors like that sunset flower, just as utterly gorgeous in ways that could never be attained through aesthetics alone. Kindness, delicacy, love. All woven in the seams of her yellow skirt and the fingers she threads through her son’s hair. 

His mother can’t even touch him. The last time she did, she hurt him immeasurably. 

Petty envy courses through him and he wants it to stop as soon as it starts, it’s ridiculous. Neither the cursed queen nor the boy she loved existed, they were ripped from the world one way or another. It was nothing Felix should be jealous of. Yet…

“Careful!” 

His mind is wiped clean, head jerking up. Speak of the devil and he shall appear. 

“You’ll fall in if you move so carelessly. My maid is willing to deal with it all but let’s save her a puddle to mop up,” the cursed prince laughs, the scolding quickly abandoned in favor of amusement. “And stop trying that. If there’s still thorns on that rose you’ll tear my scalp.” 

Newfound energy has Felix shooting from the bench to where he can easily see the cursed prince on the fountain ledge on the other side of the clearing. It only takes a few quick strides to stand before him, creating yet another off-put image to save in Felix’s mind forever. 

The sun shines directly through the boy’s frame, not even distorting the water’s color in the slightest. When Felix leans forward to peer at the reflection, all he sees himself upon the water’s surface, when he can vividly see the boy before him, only mildly transparent. 

In his hand is a rose, a perfect scarlet rose, not even bent. He holds it so tenderly, perfectly avoiding crushing the petals even in the slightest. Even when thorns prick against the ins of his fingers, he doesn’t react harshly, holding it before him to slowly pick them off. 

Felix knows there’s someone here again, right next to the prince. He stares at empty space, and knows someone is sitting right there. He just has to wait til they’ll talk right in the back of his head to confirm. But he knows. And he can’t stop staring. A nagging feeling has been at him lately. That he knows the people the prince has been talking to. That they’ve all been one person. That person being—

“Here, my prince, it’s almost the color of my hair,” the cursed prince snorts, slotting the flower behind an invisible ear, the prop fading as soon as his fingers stray from it, adjusting it fondly. “Maybe if we go to the fields we can find wildflowers and make crowns from them. Minho taught me how to a bit back. I’d ask him to take us but he’s still super new and busy with his duties.” 

Felix blinks. Minho. It’s the first time anyone he knows presently has been brought up. It’s a collision of past and present he wasn’t expecting. It’s somehow both a comfort and not. 

“Why do you call me that?” And there’s the phantom voice, curious and twinkling. 

The prince gathers the thorns in his palms, making sure not to scratch himself with them, nose scrunching. “Call you what?” 

There’s an exasperated click of a tongue, the prince yelping as his head is dipped by something. The other nearly whines, “Prince! You keep calling me prince when you’re the prince. Why?” The prince wobbles precariously, trying not to fall over into the fountain. The other is pushing him. 

Tired of staring at his own lonely silhouette in the water, Felix sits on the stone, not caring for his pants or knees. Here on the ground, the illusion of the cursed prince seems even more real, even though his swinging legs make not a single shadow. It’s warm down here, the sun-soaked in everything around him. 

The cursed price has to think, sucking in his bottom lip and craftily flicking the thorns directly into the bushes. “I dunno. Just feels right. When I think of you, I think of a prince, just like me. And you’re like...you’re like gold itself. And you know what I said on the roof, royals need gold. So you...you’d make the perfect Golden Prince.” 

A blink. Two blinks. Slowly, Felix raises his head, lips parted as the name strings along the wind, wrapping prettily around his neck, decorated with the same thorns the cursed prince had just discarded. He has no doubt now, who the person is that the prince is talking to in each of these scenes. But the confirmation brings nothing but even more questions. 

“You’re too cheesy, all the time. How am I gold, your highness?” the invisible presence drawls teasingly. 

Red taints the cursed prince’s blurred cheeks and he pouts uselessly to his side, the expression a hazy swipe over indistinct features. “I am not...And you just are, hm? You’re...you have a warm heart, one I want to protect forever. I don’t have my magic yet, but it feels like you’d be more a pure source than gold itself ever would be.” 

The blanket of heavy silence that befalls them is dense. Felix can’t quite tell the thread that seams it, but it’s serious. The cursed prince sits anxiously, hunched over the stone staring right down at where Felix sits, but he can’t see the brunet, and the brunet can’t see his eyes. They both can wonder if he had said too much, too quickly. 

Suddenly, enough to scare Felix, the prince perks up and tilts to the side, peering up at something that blocks the light from his face. He sticks his finger up and a startled grunt rings through the air, breaking the quiet. “Plus,” the prince snickers, “You’ve got gold dots all over your face.” 

He lets out a yelp as his shoulders are pinned to the fountain ledge surface, his legs flailing in the air for a frightening few seconds, nearly toppling in. The other voice resounds meekly and defensively. “Shush, my freckles are ugly don’t point them out.” They groan, letting the prince go but he stays laid where he is, staring up with a growing frown. “I’d hoped you didn’t notice them. I’m going to have to ask mother for tinted cream now.” 

The prince shoots his hands out, grabbing onto something, arms? And forces them down beside his head. “Now where’d you get that idea? Your freckles are beautiful.” 

Spluttering. “What?” 

“Your freckles are anything but ugly, my prince. They’re really pretty, in fact. My mother loves them and I know she and your mother wouldn’t dare let you cover them with cream. Who told you they weren’t?” 

A nervous shift in the air that Felix can feel in his core, feeling his own fingers tap apprehensively along his knees. “...No one in particular, it’s just...that’s how it is. They’re not nice-looking.” 

Sitting up and spinning around in a moment flat, the prince cups something midair. Utter exasperation and irritation spills from him out into the scene, coloring the sunlit air a brilliant mucky amber. “Did you know in summer, I have freckles too. Lift my chains and look for them.” There’s a lapse of noise as Felix presumes they do just that before the prince asks gently. “Do you think they’re ugly, little chick?” 

Oddly enough, Felix wants to burst out into laughter at the questioning. The cursed prince has absolutely cornered them, knowing he won’t receive any different answer than the one he wants. He, Minho, and Hyunjin do it to each other all the time. And just like them, the prince absolutely knew it would work in his favor. 

Felix wouldn’t possibly call any of his friends ugly seriously. 

“No,” they mutter reluctantly, gritted, “They’re not.” 

Pleased, the prince retreats his form, and the smile Felix can’t see lights the air brighter than any star, honest to god giggles escaping unrelentlessly from his mouth. “I was right, prince. Golden prince. Pretty prince. My pr—” He’s cut off unexpectedly, shrieking loudly as he’s shoved right into the water. 

At the splash, Felix scrambles to his feet, leading himself straight into disorientation as he hears the water being disturbed, yet flows perfectly placid under his vision. He focuses on the prince, now sopping wet, flickering in and out of Felix’s view as the battling forces of sunlight and rippling water fights his nonexistent image. A stark reminder that this was nothing but memory. 

It’s disheartening how much Felix needs that reminder more and more with each vision. 

Laughter dances and flows along the wind. It’s almost a shame Felix is the only one to hear it. It’s an unforgettable sound. Even when there’s more solely in the back of his head, his own snorts playing like a broken record in his mind. He feels like he stands out amongst it, solemn and stony facing the fountain, gold twirling around him in forms he never knew of before. 

“If I’m the Golden Prince,” they shout over the cursed prince’s guffawing and complaining, “Than what shall I call you?” 

Sighing, Felix steps forward and sticks his hand in the water, the prince fading into his reflection. Somehow, no, no somehow. He already knows the answer to that question. And he feels a bit indignant that he’s unintentionally replaced it with something so bleak. 

“Crimson Prince, Warrior Prince,” he responds to nobody, empty air, melancholy without the previous cheerful clamor and false summer. It was to match the rose the prince had placed behind his ear, picked caringly of its thorns, and preserved lovingly by Felix for days afterwards. The Warrior rose.  

Biting through his lip, tasting the blood from his nose but not finding it in him to care, he turns. With purpose, he makes his way around the bench and outstretches his hand. As crimson as the one that the cursed prince gifted him, the warrior rose rises fiercely from the ground, gorgeous even in the overcast daylight. 

Sleeves rolled to his elbows, Felix plucks it, watching his fingers move as they work to remove the thorns. The crimson prince had done it infinitely better, and without drawing a bead of red. Still, Felix smiles at the thornless rose, bittersweet as he places it behind his ear, slumping when he has to realize no one sits beside him. 

Had the tutor lied? Certainly, Felix had been close to the prince. Or was it all another illusion for him to look past?

Wiping his nose, he didn’t want to care. But he will be coming to the garden much more often from here on out.

+

“Why do you think he wasn’t on the staff floor? Isn’t that where he’s supposed to at least wait for you?” Jeongin questions for Minho, a bit irked on the older’s behalf. 

Frankly, Minho has absolutely no idea. And he relays this much. It’s quite common information now that Jone was a mystery, bundled tight and secure beneath an earnest smile and shallow depthed eyes. His efforts with them were genuine, and only for that reason is Minho willing to let the other keep his secrets where they rest. 

Sitting awkwardly on the uneven stairs leading from the staff room, Jeongin abandons his short-lasting annoyance in favor of the unsureness they both share. “So, what will you do? Find him?”

Minho clicks his tongue solidly against the roof of his mouth. “I don’t want to, honestly. If he’s not here he’s doing something else I can’t take part in. Without him or Felix to attend, I’m…I guess I’m free for the day.” The words taste odd because never before has he gotten to try them. 

A prince’s right hand never was off duty. Yet here he was. Loitering with a stable boy who cares naught for his own job. Each passing day since Jone appeared has been stranger and stranger. Tomorrow, they’ll be out on the streets and partaking in a rambunctious festival. 

“How about you?” he attempts, peering at the boy from the corner of his eyes, noting their utter difference in apparel. Minho is in his usual uptight formal attire, while Jeongin is in a sleeveless tank with flowing beige slacks, a beret keeping his hair from his head. 

Did he not know it was approaching winter?

It becomes painstakingly clear that they’re at an impasse when Jeongin shrugs just the same, eyeing the ground. 

The mixture of having just dumped the most traumatic points of his and the prince’s life mixed with an utter lack of activity makes for an incredibly uncomfortable situation. It’s not something Minho is used to, and he’s getting shifty, ready to just ask Jeongin to spar like knights before words spring to his tongue unbidden. 

“I think I had a cat. Before I was forced to employ here. That’s the only reason I have to know how they act and look, because I’ve never seen one on castle grounds. They’re too ‘dirty’ to be near the Golden Prince.”

Taken aback by the random remark but understanding the purpose, Jeongin nods slowly. “There's a lot of strays around the village. Seungmin especially liked taking care of puppies he found…but…” Uncertainty tainting his tone, he trails off, causing Minho to look him straight on. 

Jeongin stands, dust and dirt scattering around him at the sudden movement. He holds out his hand for Minho to grab, having no possible idea that Minho hasn’t held a hand since Hyunjin forced him to about three years ago. Linking arms was much more polite and formal. 

It’s all the more reason for Minho to take it, observing the way Jeongin’s slender fingers somehow dwarf his own, just warm enough to not feel weird. His palms are just as calloused as Minho’s but not nearly in the same ways. Minho’s hands were shaped around a hilt, Jeongin’s had to be something else. 

It’s a bit off-putting having someone not only younger than him and of less authority but who's been around the castle less than two weeks, lead him, but he doesn’t voice anything. Just lets Jeongin pull him wherever his mind is set. 

The air gets draftier and draftier, even more so than the staff floor itself, as he finds himself being tugged to the fields where this had all begun. By the time Jeongin drops his hold and pushes open the doors, Minho is curious enough to keep up with his quick pace without question. 

They don’t ever touch the grass, traversing the stony paths underneath pillared roofs. When Minho peeks out, he sees just the tiniest droplets of rain hit the ground. It supposes the surplus of clouds hadn’t been for show. No doubt by tomorrow or the day after, it’ll be pouring. 

When they arrive at the stables, he’s a bit confused. There was much more build-up than accompanying Jeongin for his daily chores. But then the younger gestures to the side of the stables, slinking off behind the building. 

Raising a brow, Minho follows suit. Standing in the shaded small area between the stables and the castle hedges, Minho was about to finally ask what he was being dragged into. Before any word can leave his lips, he hears a small mewl that wholly freezes him. 

Prompting him to get down on his hands and knees, Jeongin crawls to an odd space between the bunches of leaves. Noiseless, he points to it, and Minho peers where his finger directs. 

There, a young kitten rests, staring at them distrustfully. Information Minho doesn’t know the source of sprouts from his brain. The kitten isn’t unbearably young, or else there would be much wonder as to how she was still living. Maybe cut off from her mother too early, but not so much to where she can’t eat solid food. 

“I found her and her litter and mom when Seungmin first had to leave since I had the extra time. She was the runt I think and got left behind when the mother moved to a better spot from the rain. She won’t leave this spot but I’ve been doing my best to keep her warm and fed.” 

And it would sure seem that, she was curled up protectively over a small folded blanket, piles of leftover food arranged away from her next to a small cup of water. Not perfect, but Jeongin did well. 

Hesitantly, Minho sticks his hand into the small space and lets the kitten sniff him. They both watch with bated breaths as she uncurls and butts into Minho’s wrist, pupils ballooning. Minho briefly takes his gaze away from her to meet Jeongin’s, irises sparkling with a fervor he hasn’t felt in a long while. “Let’s take her back to the room.” 

Unsurely Jeongin frowns, looking between the servant and kitten, unconsciously already ushering the kitten from the space, her familiarity with him making her all the more eager to stumble on oversized paws from dirt to stone. “Felix’s room?” 

Honestly, saying the room belonged to Felix alone at this point seemed wrong. Even Jeongin seems to recognize this as he caves by the second without even a response. It had never just been Felix’s room, and Minho doubts Felix would disagree. Whether it was Minho or Hyunjin and now Seungmin, Jeongin, and Jone, Felix had never taken to being in that room alone. 

So he wouldn’t mind if the oldest and youngest of their missions brought along another member for them to adore. And with false reluctance, Jeongin agrees, gathering the kitten into his arms with shifting eyes, acting like he neither agreed nor disagreed to Minho’s spontaneous decisions. Unbothered, Minho takes the blanket and nothing else, already categorizing in his head what he’ll order Jone to bring from the kitchens for ditching him. 

As they begin their trip back to the chambers, Minho leans down slightly beside Jeongin, peering into the kitten’s wide golden eyes, admiring just all the different flecks of orange and green among them. She was utterly adorable, reaching up Jeongin’s shoulder, piercing his shirt but nothing more, and staring openly judgemental at Minho. 

All it took was a single day off to make Minho’s heart nearly as light as it had been before the incident. Not like it mattered much when the kitten had stolen it from him before she could even utter a single mew. 

There was definitely no way Felix could dislike this development. He took in strays all the time. This one just happened to be an actual one. 

+

Felix is ready to drop onto the bed and tune out the world for the better part of an hour, just to catch up on the sleep he’d been missing. What he had not expected whatsoever was to open his door and come eye to eye with his two sheepish friends with their entire hearts on their sleeves playing with a bumbling tabby cat. 

All he can do at the moment is blink to see if this was a vision of his that had somehow translated askew. It wasn’t. In his turbulent time away from his chambers, his best friend and newly acquired one had smuggled a small cat into the spick span castle. He was a hundred percent caught off guard, but not so much surprised, merely sighing as the door closes behind him, causing the little thing to leap a foot in the air. 

“You’ve brought a kitten into my room,” he comments blandly, tilting his head, already transfixed by the creature flitting about the two boys on the floor, playing with the fabrics of their shirts like mice in a field. Admittedly, he’s never actually seen a cat so up close before. It wasn’t unusual for royals to have their beloved animal companions, but his parents had sneered upon it when suggested in the slightest. Pets track dirt. The thing he was most acquainted with were the birds that sung outside his window every sunrise. 

Jeongin opens his mouth but Minho intercepts him, blurting calmly, “Technically, Jeongin did.” Offended, Jeongin gapes and carefully guards the cat while he slaps the elder over the shoulder. 

Sighing with a fond smile slighting his lips, he just drops on the bed like he had planned to, mumbling into the blankets, “All I care is if you’ve got a place for it to go to the bathroom that isn’t my carpet.” 

Their responding snickers are their own type of cheers he supposes 

He’s ready to fade away from the world and enjoy some sort of rest, praying and hoping to all that was good that his visions would just leave him for once. So he can think of anything other than the crimson prince and his demise. Of his own self and his role in it all, the golden prince. 

Claws, tiny pinpricks of stinging that don’t last, dig into his back and he hisses, twisting his head back. Jeongin is setting up the kitten’s sleeping and eating places on the other side of the room, but Minho stands evilly above Felix, hands slowly retreating from the kitten that had ‘mysteriously’ dropped on Felix. 

Apparently, he must be comfortable because she kneads his skin for a few moments before spinning and falling asleep in the same place upon his spine. Minho sets on the edge of the bed beside them, rubbing her head sweetly even though his smile was anything but, aimed at the prince. 

Glaring weakly, Felix moves his arms so as to not wake the cat, placing them beneath his head and accepting he won’t be getting the heavenly sleep he craves. “Yes, Minho?” he slurs, not knowing whether Minho was bothering him for a reason or just ‘cause. 

Moving his fingers from one cat head to another human one, Minho taps the shell of Felix’s ear. “You’ve got something in your hair, my prince.” 

Cursing under his breath, Felix looks out the corner of his eyes where he just barely see the blood-red petals of the rose peeking from beyond his strands of hair. Somehow along his way back to his room, he had forgotten the flower. Or rather, like the visions, he’d imagined it faded away along with all the other bright things he’d seen that day, a blot of richness amongst the grey backdrop that didn’t belong. 

Minho doesn’t make him remove it or do so himself, instead gently pushing it more securely against Felix’s head, moving one of his pearly pins around to keep it there. “You’d think with how close it is to winter, there wouldn’t be such a nice one in bloom,” he ponders softly, his voice as velvety as the tabby’s kitten fur. 

Felix realizes he doesn’t have to respond, that Minho is filling the drowsy space between them with his own words so Felix can relax without having to force his mind to shut down. Lethargically, Felix shuts his mouth and simply listens, peering at his best friend from lowered lashes, feeling and hearing the kitten purr against his neck. 

Hoisting his legs onto the bed and crossing them so he’s fully facing his audience, Minho sits his chin in his palm. “Maybe we should spruce up this place with a few now pet-friendly plants. Not like this room needs any more life,” he chuckles, glancing back at Jeongin who was meticulously stacking thin cushions for the kitten to rest on, knowing full well that she would probably rather be taking up one of their pillows. 

“I don’t remember where I learnt,” Minho tells, looking up at the ceiling with a thoughtful purse to his lips, as if it would help him recall, “But I can feel it whenever I pick up a flower. How to turn it into a crown more glorious than any in this castle. I used to be a flower crown master, at one point. I think the curse took that from me.” His smile is nostalgic, and entirely fond, not a note of bitterness to taint it. Even though he was reminiscing something that had been taken from him. Fiercely does Felix admire him.

It grants him the urge to speak, pushing past his grogginess with a determination. “I know.” 

Lowering his eyes, Minho cocks his head. “You know?” 

Listlessly, Felix drifts his vision to the window, where raindrops began to gather, not quite strong enough to make a sound that would surely lure him into unconsciousness. Clearing his mind, he can almost see the young Minho he met and the crimson prince resting upon the field, that laughter Felix has just heard and can’t help but cling to, and the one that has cured him for years staining the air with serenity. Flowers in their hands, weaved into crowns so much lighter and pure than gold. 

“You taught the prince how to make them. He was going to teach me.” 

Minho’s mouth parts in soundless surprise, eyes following Felix’s. They’re dim without the scene only Felix can see. Shutting his mouth, he thinks. “There’s a lot in your visions that you see, that is more than information your magic is giving you.” It’s not a question. “...Is it him speaking to you directly?” 

Felix shakes his head, closing his eyes and losing the image he treasured for as long as he could before it faded into the endless depths of his fragile mind. “He’s talking to my past self. I can’t see my past self but I can see him interact with me. It’s odd...He only mentioned you today. Said he would ask you to take us to the fields and teach us how to make crowns from the wildflowers.” 

“...Did I ever?” 

Felix chews his lip, tracking a drop of water until it falls from the window, blowing to nothing but mist in the wind, beyond anything his eye could see. “I don’t know,” he says. It’s a lost hope. They both know deep down, it had never happened. 

There’s a sniff and Felix wakes up twice in a split second, whipping his head to look at Minho. Wondrously, he observes the tears that slide down Minho’s face, Minho who looks even more shocked than Felix at the water tracks forming over his cheeks. 

“I didn’t know I had even known him,” he remarks, casually wiping them away, the confusion left starkly behind. He can’t even say otherwise at this point. Some part of him still remembers the prince well. That gives Felix hope. Enough to prop up, the kitten rolling down slightly with a quiet complaint before jumping to Minho to rest in his lap instead. 

“I didn’t know I knew him as well as I did,” Felix agrees, reaching out to boop her nose, finding it irresistible, “The tutor told me we would’ve been close, not that we ever were. But I suppose even a memory as strong as his must’ve been affected by the curse. Put more distance between me and the prince.” 

There’s a strong pause, a hesitance so heavy it’s visible on Minho’s shoulders before he asks, “What happened to him?” There’s a question even deeper, hidden inside the already intense words. One Felix hasn’t dared acknowledge for his ever fading sanity. A question that left unasked, gave him his only barrier between reality and magic. 

Is he actually dead? 

He doesn’t answer, steeling his teeth together, not out of spite, but for his sake purely. He doesn’t really have an answer, and doesn’t know if he really ever wants an answer. These visions weren’t fro the crimson prince as much as Felix is growing more and more of an attachment to the phantom boy without a face. He was indulging them for his kingdom and friends. He can’t pin any of his hope on something so futile, flimsy. 

The door opening startles him more than it should, Minho swiping his eyes ferociously as the person steps in. 

Seungmin stares. “Is that a cat?”

Chapter Text

Much to all their delight, Felix sleeps through the night, the tabby curled over his neck. And when they wake, no queen knocks on their door. Yet after their past week thus far, they ready for the day with a deep set wariness. 

They’re ready to go back to their very brief but original schedule, Seungmin and Felix library duty, Jone and Minho staff duty, Hyunjin informant duty, and Jeongin regular duty. Oddly enough, Hyunjin feels a bit down at the fact that Jone won’t be accompanying him this time around. Despite their natural tensions, having him around had been somewhat of a sturdy assurance. 

A great secret keeper such as Jone could help Hyunjin stay hidden. Hyunjin looks at said person, frowning judgingly as he sees the boy playing with the kitten on all fours, making faces that make it a wonder the kitten hadn’t run away afraid yet. He definitely doesn’t match the malicious image Hyunjin keeps conjuring his mind from thin air and nothing more when he’s feeling paranoid. 

“Does she even have a name?” he questions just as Jone catches him staring, seamlessly adjusting a cap over his head and pulling up his socks as if he hadn’t been conspiratorially observing the other intensely. 

Jeongin jumps up excitedly, looking to Minho quickly before opening his mouth to answer. Seungmin who is putting on his shoes just right beside him purposefully throws his arm up and covers Jeongin’s mouth, his own curling into a not so subtle smirk. “Her name is King.” Jeongin slumps, glaring at his partner for taking the opportunity to introduce her name. 

This causes the prince to shift his eyes from his reflection in the mirror, bruised a concerning purple but shining with intrigue.  Minho snorts from above him, unable to make much reaction with hair pins held between his teeth. “King,” Felix repeats inquisitively, “Why King?” 

Seemingly unaware of the answer, Seungmin finally drops his arm and prompts Jeongin with an almost placating nod. Jeongin shoves his face away, ignoring it with a restrained grin. “Because the real king sucks. Minho and I agreed she’d be a much better king.” 

It’s not the most mature of names, especially for a pet technically of royal decree. It has no message behind it but a big tell off to a king who doesn’t even know the cat exists. It’s not deceptively poetic or large enough to create its own presence with syllables alone. But Hyunjin supposes that’s what makes it so incredibly charming to the prince, whose lips had seemed stuck in a frown since yesterday morning, curve from ear to ear, trying to stay still so Minho doesn’t accidentally stab him with an earring. 

That alone makes Hyunjin love the name times a hundred. And King herself of course. She was adorable. Spiteful and teasing, Hyunjin abandons his current tasks to drop to the floor, clicking his tongue to get King’s attention away from Jone. Full of youth and a neverending curiosity she turns instantly at the sound, permanently distracted. Jone whines long and loud as she makes her way to Hyunjin's hands, sitting atop them with twitching ears. 

“Thank you,” he whispers to the little creature for making his prince seem just a little lighter for the first time in days. He takes her ear shattering meow as a hearty enough welcome, cooing at her with just as much vigor. They both share the quality of jumping a mile high when a loud thump resounds through the room. 

In sync, Jone and Minho jump to their feet at once, approaching the door cautiously. Minho grabs a candle holder as Jone slowly creaks the door open. What none of them are expecting is a woman looking just a few years older than them to stumble through the crack like she had no other support, looking drunken out of her mind but her pale brown face not reddened in the slightest and not a drop of alcohol to be smelt. 

Hyunjin recognizes the description. 

They all exchange glances, landing on Minho questioningly. Whether he was the oldest or not, he was the one they could all unanimously and wholly trust with their all, no questions asked. Minho barely acknowledges them one bit, frowning sympathetically at the poor woman standing on the last of her legs. 

“Jone and I can stay behind and look after her a bit before bringing her back to the staff room. Everyone else should go about as normal.” 

Carefully depositing the kitten on the floor, Hyunjin projects his voice and raises his hand, “I’ll stay behind too.” 

Minho raises a brow but bears no qualms, nodding in acknowledgement before resting the woman in one of Felix’s chairs. Awkwardly, every one else in the room studiously averts their eyes. 

With the sudden development, it doesn’t take long for everyone to make their departures, Seungmin practically dragging the prince from his stool as soon as Minho finishes his hair. As soon as the woman had been set down, Jeongin had practically vanished away, granting himself a luxury the split groups didn’t have. 

With the others gone, and the three boys accompanied by an utter lack of noise and an unconscious woman, the atmosphere had not softened. It’s not subtle at all, Jone’s scuffling to the door, fingers anxiously dancing against each other. 

Tongue practically flying from his mouth he blurts, “I’ll get us and King some food. I’ll be right back!” With a false grin, he disappears. It only perturbs the two left because they knew full well he could fake a smile to fool a psychic if he wanted to. 

Here, Hyunjin realizes something. Gasping dramatically enough to make Minho jump and then glare at himself for being startled. “We haven’t spent any time together for like ever.”

“It’s been four or five days at most,” Minho drily points out. 

“The last time it had been that long was when I wasn’t assigned to Felix!” 

And truly, it was. While in the castle, there was no choice, though Hyunjin thinks they still would, of having Felix as their centerpiece. Not for display, skies no. While Hyunjin was the most sensitive, and Minho the most criticized, Felix was the one anyone would pay enough attention to to try and hurt. It was never verbal or written, but as soon as they had bonded, Hyunjin and Minho made the pact to protect their prince, like they were knights instead of servants in waiting. 

They were their own duo though. And that was clear to anyone who bothered to look beyond the prince or his golden facade. 

Whenever Felix was busy, and they couldn’t attend whatever he was, they were together. Always. It didn’t take much of that to eternally tie them, despite the battling strengths of both their personalities. It hadn’t been rough falling into place with Minho. It didn’t appear so on the surface, but Minho was perhaps the most caring and trustworthy amongst them. 

It’s sometimes an ego boost that Felix had somehow picked them both, deeming Hyunjin as worthy as the kind Minho.

“Does it not bother you at all?” he whines, draping his arms over Minho’s back, using the few inches he had on the older to cover him whole, his head pushing against the back of Minho’s. It’s clear the question isn’t serious, no matter how sorrowful the tone. If it was something that truly concerned Sam, it would be much more obvious, in much more subtle ways. 

It’ll take a lot more than a damn rebellion to strain their relationship. Hyunjin would hope. 

“Not really,” Minho huffs, pushing back on Hyunjin and forcing the boy to unwind from him. “In fact, I think I’m quite enjoying the time away from such an obnoxious presence.” 

Grinning, Hyunjin is ready to throw himself into one of their endless bickering fits. He was kidding about his supposed solace in Minho’s absence, but he did truly miss his time with Minho. He’s been going so long with the other’s company, the already surreal days since Jone’s appearance seem even more unreal without Minho by his side. It’s merely something he’s not entirely used to. 

It seems like now won’t be the time either. 

It takes the slightest shift of fabric rustling for their attentions to divert and their moods drop somberly. In sync, their heads whip to the woman who slowly wakes, dazed and disoriented, frowning at them in pure puzzlement. “Where am I?” 

They exchange a glance. What are they supposed to do now?” 

+

Without Seungmin attached to him at the hip, an everlasting reliable presence Jeongin didn’t only grow up with, but grew around, like moss over a plushy a child never remembered to pick up, he felt off balance. Like a fox without their tail, a bird without their wing, a moose without their horns. Maybe it only felt so miserable because he was contained in such an unfamiliar place with so many rules he didn’t dare try to step out from where he was positioned. 

Sometimes even when the day was bleakest and even the skies echoed his bored gloom, Jeongin would attempt to walk in a perfectly straight line, somehow expecting to fail like a drunkard without Seungmin at his side. 

It was utterly pathetic but he notes each time with a tally to the stable walls that he can walk straight. Every day without fail. 

With the kitten safely kept up in the prince’s room, Jeongin had no company but the horses he took care of. He’d watched skeptically when Hyunjin had cared for them, sighing and cooing at them like babbling children. From the beginning, it’d seem Jeongin wasn’t going to be making such a bond with the animals. They were content to sit in their stalls and stare at him contemptful, as if blaming him for their caretaker’s absence. 

There was one exception. 

Jeongin wasn’t particularly a severely altruistic person, but he wasn’t heartless. He had the basics of compassion down just a little bit more than others, and that was about it. He felt he couldn’t quite compare himself to Felix’s frightening self lending or Minho’s steady reliability that sometimes rivaled Seungmin’s personal presence or even Jone’s constant friendly pestering. But he was his own giving person. He just hadn’t been close to enough people to share that with. Or animals.

There was a pity that struck him deep though whenever he faced Berry, matte eyes gazing at with him a melancholy so deep, it appeared dull. She ate once a day, nothing more and only moved to let Jeongin clean the stall. It was a wonder she still persisted, but there must be something keeping her heart just barely together. Or else the break would have killed her long ago. 

Jeongin stares at her now, flat on his feet and hunched over his knees. “Do you miss something too?” Her head shifts and her nostrils flare just slightly. Jeongin smiles but it feels more like an awkward grimace. He looks to her trough to see it completely full. Today must be a bad day for them both. 

Sighing, he puts his hands to his knees and pushes himself standing. “Maybe it’s not good to have treats on an empty stomach...but it’s better than an empty stomach entirely.”

He’s probably doing it more so for himself when he dons a well cared for coat Felix had given him and begins a trip to the kitchens for sugar cubes. He can’t feel too guilty for it though, and he feels Berry wouldn’t put him to fault anyways. The edges of his mouth pinching down, he notes in his head that he’s starting to sound like Sam, appraising her personality when she barely even interacts with him, much less speaks to him as a human. 

Hands in pockets warmer than he’s ever had the luxury of feeling before, he cleans his muddy boot against the grass before stepping into the large palace, instantly feeling dwarfed by the terrifyingly long hallways and grand lighting. 

The fields themself were unsettling, an uncovered vast space open to the Seungmin for all the clouds to stare down on. Despite the warmth and unmatched shelter, the castle feels even worse. He could hide anywhere he wanted, but he felt like nothing truly covered him in here but his own demeanor. 

It was an odd line of thought, and even stranger, a valid one. 

There’s too much unfilled space between the fields and the kitchens, so Jeongin scurries as casually as possible to his location, neither wanting to trip over his own feet or possibly encounter a royal. Honestly, he’d rather do over ten times a humiliation than come face to face with a king and queen he can do nothing but detest. 

He’s looking behind him, even as he opens and closes the kitchens door. Relieved at the sudden clash and clatter of bustling noise, Jeongin relaxes, turning and running straight into another body. They somehow collide worse than a knife and cutting board and fall to their backs in unison. 

Staring dazed up at the suddenly low ceilings, dirtied with ages of steam and mysterious sauce spills, he feels momentarily lost. He hasn’t taken such a fall in a long while. He’s used to being caught beforehand, or immediately picked up after. Sometimes he misses his poor ratty village. 

A part of him expects Seungmin to still be running towards him, hurriedly but calmly checking him. 

The entirety of him doesn’t expect Jone standing above him, having silently and efficiently stood up without a matter of seconds from falling. Easily, he accepts the other’s hand and allows himself to be pulled to his feet, dusting off Felix’s jacket with a slight frown. 

Hiding a significant sigh packed with all the days’ dread he apologizes sincerely. “I was in a bit of a rush to get out the halls,” he explains vaguely, dropping his jacket over his arm The warmth of the many ovens and stoves instantly reaching him. 

When he looks up Jone’s face is wholly understanding, nodding. His eyes shoot past Jeongin’s shoulder to the door with a disgruntled curl of lips. It seems the open and lavish layout of the castle off put him just as much. That dismisses some of Jeongin’s many theories about why he was so secretive. 

He had a list, some strikes through others rapidly growing as Jeongin’s mind falls deeper and deeper into a pit hole. The one he was currently crossing out has to do with Jone being a secret prince who’d run from his own kingdom to see how this kingdom’s prince was doing. 

Princes and their servants are the only ones who know how to hide in a palace. 

“Why’re you coming up here anyways? Another straggler to deliver back to the staff?” Jone peers around, raising a confused brow when he spots no one new and dazed. 

There’s no way Jeongin can tell him the absolute length of his incredibly mediocre problems. So without fanfare he shrugs and says simply, “Was getting sugar cubes for Berry. She hasn’t eaten. What about you?”

At the mention of the senior horse Jone’s attention catches, brightening and hooking onto Jeongin. It’s an odd fascination for someone so complex, a single depressed horse, but Jeongin remembers Jone being able to coax her out of her stall despite not knowing her more than an hour, a feat Hyunjin who knew her of several years hadn’t managed. 

“I was gonna get food for Minho, Sam, and King but then the elders hooked me into doing chores. Considering Minho hasn’t gotten me I don’t think they’re having too much trouble without me.”

The wording almost seems odd, and Jone does have a hint of sadness in his tone, but not an ounce of envy or self deprecation sits upon his shoulders. Still, Jeongin feels obligated, just like with that downtrodden horse, to reach out at least a pinky finger. 

Sucking his lip in and letting it slide out, Jeongin points back at the door with his thumb. “Berry likes you a lot. Maybe you can help me feed her to get away. Then you can get back to them.”

Seungmin is bright when he’s happy and excited, like a lantern, glowing through a film of colored paper, soft and blurred into the night. Jone is the bulb without any barrier. Blinding and unrestrained even when everything but his excitement is well hidden. Jeongin’s honestly a bit overwhelmed. 

Jeongin barely has the time to take another step, Jone zooming through the kitchen and opening the door with a sack of sugar cubes before Jeongin can even catch his breath. The trip back is easier with Jone’s arm wrapped cordially around his shoulders. Jeongin feels safe. 

He’s glad he has inopportune whims when it grants him these moments. 

It’s raining again, just like when Jeongin had walked Minho out to the stables. It felt like he was in the same day and situation, just a different person. The other one on the staff mission. In the oddest way, they’re similar. In the way they’re pillars of support you can always count on, and the way they fight their battles behind closed doors and lowered lashes. 

It’s silent until they reach the stables, Jeongin taking the sack away from Jone as the other begins to enthusiastically greet each and ever horse who take to him much more than they’ve ever to Jeongin. The only door that’s opened though is Berry’s, the two sitting before her. In awe, Jeongin observes her head lift completely off the floor to fit under Jone’s palms. 

Puzzled, Jeongin iterates just how confused he is at Berry’s energy when it comes to Jone. When Jone offers, she eagerly licks up the sugar treats, neighing and huffing happily at Jone’s attention. She even indulges Jeongin a bit, which he’s incredibly appreciative of. She’s a kind horse, that’s for sure. 

“Are you a fairy princess, Jone?” he jokes, sitting back to let Jone have Berry to himself, “Berry doesn’t lift her head for anyone but you and maybe sometimes Hyunjin if she’s feeling pitiful.” 

Stilling, stuttering in just the slightest, like he’s suddenly wading through water, Jone swallows. “To be honest, I don’t entirely know. There’s no reason she should be attached to me...But I think we have something in common. Someone we miss.” 

Jeongin’s head is ducked but he jolts at the statement, hugging Felix’s jacket tightly to his chest. Missing someone. He’s missing someone he still sleeps next to each night, but can’t stand beside him anymore to fill the day with chatter or to entertain his own. If he’s suffering so much without his missing limb and they still see each other for the better half of a day, he can’t imagine being any further. And from the looks Berry and Jone share, the people they’re missing, are farther than can be reached. 

He can’t help his intrigue. “Who do you miss, Jone?” 

Instantly, Jone looks ready to cover it up with some subtle tricks so Jeongin won’t ever ask the question again, but then he looks back at the younger peering off to the side, empty fingers dancing over the ground beside him. Seungmin would’ve sat there with him, probably bothering the crap out of him, but he wouldn’t have minded when they’re shoulders touched and everything didn’t feel so out of place. 

Seungmin was the one thing familiar to him, in such a place where not even the prince himself fits in. He’s not in his worst state whatsoever and he’s perfectly capable of handling himself...This feels like the thousandth time this hour he’s gone over this alone. 

He’s a kid thrown into a world he doesn’t know believing he’d have one constant. One constant that’s beginning to flicker. 

“Are you…” Jone begins to ask but sees the way Jeongin’s shoulders stiffen, peeking up at Jone through his bangs like a scared animal. Jeongin wasn’t at a point where he needed to talk to anyone. And he and Seungmin weren’t at a point where he had something to even talk about. He was just overthinking everything with the time that spills from his hands. 

Time is vicious. 

Cooing at Berry, Jone kicks aside the sugar cube sack. She falls asleep with her head in his lap and he rests his own back against the wall. He’s somehow already half invested himself into a conversation that hasn’t yet started. Stroking her neck his pupils dilate, filling with a distance. 

“It’s more than just a someone that I miss, I guess,” Jone begins, voice quiet enough to pull Jeongin in and listen. “I think we’re pretty similar actually. We both came here form somewhere vastly different and put under rules we’e never had to worry about before. Spoken or not…” He licks his lip slowly, thinking. 

He has to find a way to say what he’s missing without saying it directly. 

“I came here with a goal,” eventually he continues, “A goal someone else gave me...Someone I can’t fail. But all I want to do is…” His face falls, bit by bit, like tides washing over a sodden sandcastle. He never lets it fully sadden, but it reaches a point of blue Jeongin hasn’t seen on him before. A true glum, child-like in its innocence, but scarred nonetheless. The next words tumble from his mouth almost carelessly. So reckless it’s uncharacteristic, or rather, it’s the most characteristic thing Jeongin has ever been able to see from him. 

“I just want to go back home. I have something really important to do, for someone really important to me. Yet I can’t feel like I won’t be able to accomplish what I’m supposed to do, and that when I fail, and when I go back home, that someone will be gone. So...I want to go home before I fail, so that I won’t lose them.” 

During his spiel, Jone forced his hand to the side of his legs, clutching with pale knuckles onto his trousers. They wrinkle and crumple beneath his desperate grip, showing more than his sheened, masked face could. A muscle beneath his jaw ticks and it seems he’s realized just how much fear he’s exposed, but that he only regrets that he let himself get to that point, not that Jeongin was there to see it. 

Jeongin can’t help the small giggle that falls from his lips, landing facetiously to the hay covered ground. Jone whips his head up, confused. It’s the most at a loss he’s been, other than whenever Felix brings up his visions. He pleads Jeongin silently with shiny eyes to explain before the laughter starts to hurt. 

“Sorry, sorry.” Jeongin waves his hands assuringly, trying to convey that he didn’t at all find Jone’s struggle humorous, that he wasn’t trying to be flippant. He bites his tongue and forces his smile to curve away. With a laugh stained sigh, he flicks at Jone’s fingers, before they can dig into his leg and create marks. 

“I really didn’t find it funny,” he’s quick to elaborate, expression solemn and bittersweet. “I just...I really don’t think our situations are similar. In fact, I feel quite bad. For you and for everyone else we know. And all for different reasons.” 

Jone furrows his brows, nothing but inquisitive, awaiting Jeongin’s explanation on the edge of his seat. 

Staring back at the empty space beside him, Jeongin taps at a presence that isn’t there. “We’re all missing something from the past. But I don’t think you do. You’re the only one of us missing something from the present. Something you can see clear as day, while we’re all in the dark about what plagues us most.”

Mouth parting in a soundless o, Jone relaxes into the wood structure. Eyes shut like he’s looking at something Jeongin can’t see, he nods. “You’re right, I’m pretty sure. Honestly, I think it’s a bit unfair. I got to live with something you’re all missing. Someone that none of you can have, that I think would...love you all more than anything.” 

There’s a lot more Jone is saying than Jeongin has the information to comprehend. So he merely doesn’t try to, letting Jone get out what he needs to, convey what he feels he needs to, without question. But he does say, helpless to the thorn in his wondering brain. 

“It sounds like you’re implying like you didn’t lose your memories with the rest of us.” 

It’s almost joking, but the responding stare he gets in return, is anything but. Cryptically, Jone replies, “It’s easy to miss a past you never knew.” 

There’s a lapse in sound, the sound of Berry’s breathing filling the space between them in an odd harmony. Somehow, in her rest, she sounds almost content. It’s not something Jeongin recognizes with her, but it fits well. Back creaking just slightly, Jeongin stands and stretches, offering a hand to Jone for an official end to their conversation. 

He’s leading Jone out the stable when he suggests, “Wanna walk in a straight line?” Such a request is entirely random and odd, and absolutely anyone but Jone would question it. But it’s Jone, so he doesn’t, taking up the challenge before Jeongin can even finish his sentence. 

They stand parallel to each other, Jeongin’s hands to his side, Jone’s spread out like a bird’s. To Jeongin’s slow and soft counting, they begin to walk, just form one end of the stable to another. And just like every other day, Jeongin makes it without a single hurdle, staring down at two aligned feet critically. 

When he turns, he sees Jone, out of line, dips in his forehead from the bewildered furrows between his brows. Eventually, he gives up, crossing his arms indignantly and pouting away from Jeongin. “It must be the rain,” he mumbles. 

Jeongin has an entirely different theory. Jisung, is missing his tail, his wings, his antlers. Something essential to him, that could only throw him off balance now when he was nothing but deft. 

He won’t continue to pester Jone, but he won’t stand back. He’s not completely selfish. “Maybe it’s time to get back to Minho and Sam.” He moves beside Jone, linking their arms like Minho did to Felix and Sam.

When there eyes meet, something is exchanged, and Jeongin gets the feeling that Jone knows he’s done something, but not what. But he trusts him enough not to care. He tilts his head, just enough for a single strand of hair to fall in his face. Jone blows it out of his face easy, smiling brightly. “You’re a different kind of listener, Jeongin. Thank you.” 

It’s an indirect compliment morphed into a direct one. And it’s the best Jeongin has ever received. 

+

Hyunjin thinks of the day before, surrounded by damp darkness, the king reaching out for something that wasn’t there before. He remembers the colliding forces of harmony and discord mixing and repulsing all at once, two poles of the same magnet trying to stick together, shotting everything else around them dangerously and fatally. He’d felt like his entire body had been dipped and acid at the speed of light, unharmed, but grazed. 

She describes it differently, but he recognises it all the same. 

“All I remember is static,” she answers, a bit wary of the two mysterious staff that stare down at her. She knows them. Anyone around the castle long enough knew of them. They were the prince’s right hand men. And he supposes that they must be intimidating to her, in some way. But she’s willing to answer their questions, thank their gold. 

“One moment, I was walking to my room, and then I was opened my eyes to your door. Before that, it was like the sound of white noise, but you could feel it, under and over your skin. It was like I had burned my whole body over the stove, but without any pain. And then I felt heavy, like my clothes were wet or I was drugged. There was only a before and after, and I have no idea how I got here or what happened to me.” 

At this point, Hyunjin is mouthing along to a script written by the world. They all were. 

Minho is ready to keep pushing, digging in just right places to not make her uneasy, but get the information he needs. Before he can, Hyunjin pushes him back, not with any strength, but enough to tell him to cease. He has what he needs. “Do you need any help getting to your room?” 

Minho eyes him, straightening and helping her up from her chair. “I’ll escort her,” he states, “Do you have something to do?” 

Just like that, Minho has read him effortlessly. It doesn’t feel phenomenal or abnormal whatsoever. Hyunjin is used to it, and incredibly thankful for it. He’s already pulling his hair back, an elastic in his mouth, muffled through it. “You got it. Thank you so much for talking with us. Take care, both of you.” 

As Minho leaves, he cuffs the hems of his pants so they won’t swish and sway with his moments. He slips out of Felix’s room without having to worry about Felix returning to an empty space. Seungmin will be with him. 

It might not be in the best tastes, and he has no credibility to it, but he’s needs to go back. 

He doesn’t have to be so careful, he’s not tailing the king today. But he is going somewhere no one normally does. And that draws unwanted attention. Attention that could ruin them. So he’s not excessively stealthy, not enough to be invisible or suspicious, but enough to blend in. He puts a cap he grabbed last minute from Felix’s unused coat rack over his head, hiding the blond and shadowing his face. 

No one spares him a second glance when he goes below. Below the throne floor, below the public floor, even below the staff room. He finds the oldest most worn doorway, hidden amongst everything else, and he goes down. 

It’s scarier, going down there. Yesterday, he had been focused entirely on the king, and he had Jone to accompany him whether he asked for it or not. He wasn’t alone. There was a pressing silence that he had to keep that drowned out everything else. 

Now it all seemed too loud in comparison to his noiseless steps down the steep slick steps. Each drop of water from some mysterious crack in the wall. Each weird creak from above. Each scurry of insects and swish of bat wings in the distance. They all ring like explosions in such an absence of noise. 

He reaches the bottom again, hitting the flat floor just as uncertainly as he had the day before. He eyes the cells across from him in ritual distaste, taking much restraint not to kick the bars with all the hatred in his body and ultimately breaking a foot. Spitting at them instead, he turns down the hall, ignoring each phantom scream that haunts him. 

Once, it might’ve been a ghost he feared. All he wanted was a memory that wasn’t even his to leave his mind and ear drums. 

All those thoughts, infuriating and heart pounding, drain away as he reaches the end of the hall, and finds, he isn’t alone. He goes shock still as he sees another, sucking in his breath too quick he then also has to swallow a cough. Blood rushes through his ears and he boldly steps closer. 

Fingers, calloused and strong flit over the ground’s red blemishes, trembling with something beyond the body. Those dyed nails and silver rings put Hyunjin at an ease. Not one of peace, but lack of fear at the very least. He can’t feel secure around someone who keeps so much. Not for the sake of his trust in which he’s already spent too much. 

A part of it betrays him though and he can tell with disappointment in his self-control, that this person already has enough of an impact on him to make him feel safe even in such a decrepit place. 

“Jone?” 

The startled reaction his violent in a restrained manner, Jone’s entire body wracking with a a thrown off shudder. It dies steadily, Jone sitting still for a long drawn out minute, as if bracing himself. Slowly, he peeks back at Hyunjin with only a single eye, face pale, even for the limited washed out light they were granted. “Hyunjin.” His voice wavers. 

His fingers curl into a fist over the crimson splattered stone. 

How was Hyunjin supposed to even approach this? “Uh…” Unusually, Hyunjin feels inappropriate asking Jone what he’s doing without explaining himself first. It was abnormal for the situation, and Hyunjin himself. “I came here to check out the thing.” 

Jone’s relieved he’s not being asked, at least for the time being. “The thing?” 

Helplessly gesturing to the space above the other’s head, Hyunjin iterates unsurely, “The thing. From yesterday. We didn’t really talk about it after I guess. I was seeing if it would just...I don’t know, come to life.” 

Grimacing and shivering, Jone looks above him wearily, waddling away from the spot. “Why?” 

He feels obligated to settle beside Jone, holding his knees high up from the ground, vowing to throw away his socks as soon as he gets a clear view of the floor. It sends a storm roiling through his gut. How Jone managed to stare at it for so long, much less touch it, bewilders him. Yet he can’t look away. He was in no way present when this blood was spilled, yet it somehow still feels personal, resonating angrily through him. 

Jone taps his socked feet, tearing him from it finally. He’s already gathered his composure of soft stone, compact sand in low tides, malleable but strong. Like gold. “Why?” he repeats, clearly trying to get Hyunjin out of whatever trance the sigh caused him. Or maybe, he himself too is trying to get away from the gore before them. 

They still won’t move. 

Shaking his head and clearing his throat, training his gaze weakly on Jone’s eyes. Somehow, it feels exactly the same as looking at the crimson spill. Like holding an artifact of a grave’s inhabitant. Timeless, brittle, nostalgic. Disks spinning so fast their content is a blur. Scratches within the grooves of Jone’s record irises, a retelling of a broken past. 

Muttering beneath his breath, Jone forcefully grabs Hyunjin's hand, shoving them both together down where the stain is clearest. Hyunjin's shriek thins and quietens before it leaves his throat, thankfully lest they alert the entire staff of there whereabouts. It comes out more a pixie squeal, almost too breathy to even be a sound. The shift of Jone’s fingers along his is only mildly apologetic. 

“This blood is important,” he explains without question, “The blood spilt here, is what has caused whatever we felt yesterday to spark. It had to be spilled in such a strong enough act, or from someone strong enough, to open something so…” There’s no one word to describe it.

Hyunjin was barely curious before about it. In fact, he’d never really wanted to know more about it than its existence. It was one of the very few things he was content with letting sit unanswered. From the moment he saw it, it upset him viscerally. Or maybe, that was just the effect of whatever had formed above it. One he won’t be forgetting for a long, long while. But Jone has poked a sleeping animal. “How?” escapes him. 

Slow and gentle enough to raise Hyunjin's arm into thousands of bumps and prickles, Jone lets loose his hand, taking his index finger and sliding it up from Hyunjin's knuckles just to the innermost of his elbow. He applies just a bit of pressure, showing olive beneath thin skin. His mouth is too dry to run as he watches, limbs struggling not to buckle. 

“Everyone has iron in their blood. It’s essential for us to function. Some people, they have gold running through their veins. And under just the right circumstances, the gold shines.” Face frozen over, Jone pulls away, standing and lifting Hyunjin up by the collar. He doesn’t give Hyunjin the chance to process, to recuperate. “Now why are you here?” 

He makes it sound like he’s explained to Hyunjin why he was there. He certainly hadn’t. If anything, he’d done the opposite. 

After his chilling performance though, Hyunjin doesn’t have the energy to point that out, pulling his cap further over his head, hoping to hide the lack of color in his cheeks. “To check on the thing. To be honest, I didn’t know what I was gonna do if it activated it or not, I just wanted to see it again without the king’s presence.” 

“Why would you want to do that?” Jone shudders, his fingers dancing away from Hyunjin as he recollects the feelings from the day before. 

It’s probably about an appropriate time to tell Jone about the woman and what she had felt. And he does, turning to Jone with a serious expression, tinged slightly with fear and apprehension. “She said before she came back to, she felt static. The same type of static that we experienced yesterday. Or...it’s as close as it can get. And it can’t-it just can’t be a coincidence. The magic we saw yesterday…” 

“Seems to be the same magic affecting the missing staff,” finishes Jone, sucking in his bottom lip and crossing his arms. Hyunjin has to do the same, rubbing up and down his biceps to chase away the chill of fright. Does that mean they could’ve gone missing just as well? Or did it work differently? Or did it work that way at all?

In both their heads, a board of instances is created, each event pinned on with a bright red tack. They’ve got so many pieces, but so little connections. You can’t make any comprehensive picture, if not even a piece of it is recognizable. They have no choice but to piece something together. Anything that will give them a lead. Right now, they’re looking at three different sources, not knowing what they are. 

“Does Minho know yet?” 

Shaking his head, Hyunjin already begins his way back to Felix’s room, looking back once at the blood stains that have left a brand behind his eyelids. He could draw the shapes of each mark in his sleep. “As soon as she was ready to go back to the staff floor, I was on my way here. It was an impulse I felt I could follow.” 

Jone’s steps falter as his eyes drift soberly over the barred windows, their only source of light. What Hyunjin spots on his face, is something he’s never seen before upon the boy. It was paralyzing. Fear and sadness, Hyunjin could understand those, even behind Jone’s well-constructed mask and slighted acts. The uncertainty he saw now though, it wasn’t an act. And when someone who always seemed sure, was not, then anything could happen. 

There was a reason Jone had come here, and whatever was going down, had been loud enough to throw him off course. 

“I think,” Jone says slowly, voice bouncing off the walls and hitting back at them with a ferocity, “This is bigger than we could’ve ever thought.” 

Chapter Text

Reluctantly, Felix slips from his chair, already feeling the weighing effects of a vision pulling at his limbs. Hands splayed shakily over the table surface, he glances at his companion, Seungmin, who had looked up as soon as the chair scraped against the floor. No words were exchanged. All he does is nod and gets back to his reading, fully immersed in his task but with a slight bit of attention constantly granted to Felix. 

The feeling isn’t entirely great, being able to recognize the vision before it even has a chance to shape itself. There’s the great benefit that Felix can no longer be thrown off guard enough to completely disorient him, allowing him a greater resilience to each vision and a greater focus on each and every one. Objectively, it is entirely a pro. 

Subjectively, it fills Felix with dread. 

His body may be getting better and better at dealing with the strength of his magic, but just like the chase of past to present, his mind was lagging behind. In too many ways to describe in a single bullet point. He needed a few pages of listing to even try to gather it all comprehensively. 

Tapping his neck lightly to keep his focus held, he descends the stairs of the library to the bottom floor where he hears muffled noises blend and blur jarringly, coming into clarity at a rate too rapid and too gradual to sound pleasant in any aspect. There’s a new voice. One that roots Felix’s feet to the ground and has him frozen to the core. 

That voice...it sounds familiar. None of the voices but his own have set off any recognition with him. But this woman’s voice, it launched with alarming accuracy straight into his heart and opened a crack he didn’t know existed, but not wide enough to leak anything useful. Lost in its tone and inflection, he barely registers what’s being said at first, finally thinking he had finally got used to everything his visions were throwing at him. Clearly, that had been a mistake, and one he doesn’t think he’ll even be able to make again. 

Biting his lip abruptly and tearing skin, instantly brings him to reality, or at least, to whatever this was. He’s back at the chair, a lump turning over in his throat uneasily. The prince lays sprawled over it, his legs over one arm, his head propped against another. There’s a light, halfhearted tension about him, swinging his legs and tapping his fingers agitatedly. But he’s nowhere near inconsolable and he listens intently to the woman’s words, letting them settle over him like a warm blanket, and relaxing under them.

She’s not the queen this time. Her fabrics are so much less grand, graceful in their own humble simplicity, plain and uncolored, but of good quality. She was either of low-class royalty, or high-class staff. Based on her position, it had to be the latter. 

She sits cross-legged beneath the prince’s head, her own leaned against the spiraling curve of the arm, brown hair in a loose falling apart bun that tickles the crimson prince’s ear. But he pays no mind. Her flats are thrown about the area, bare feet resting against the carpet with utmost casualty and comfort. 

If the golden prince had been adoringly fascinated with the loving queen he’d viewed, he was utterly transfixed by the unremarkable woman seated before him now. He can’t help but get closer and closer, until he’s just a breath away from her knees knocking against his forearms. He peers at her face, mouth parted in an awe he can’t compare to any other. 

Her face is blurred, not nearly as severely as the crimson prince’s, but it’s undefined. All Felix can really make out, is that it's littered with freckles, just as dark and prominent as his own, even in the first whispers of winter. 

Whereas the queen had sounded like silken honey and molten marshmallow, she sounded like warm beaches and comfort oatmeal sprinkled with brown sugar. There were cracks and dips in her voice that starkly contrasted the smooth richness of the queen’s, making her disturbingly realistic. Felix...Felix loved every bit of it, and just wanted to bask in it for the rest of his days. No matter what happened, he wanted to hear that voice. 

It was terrifying. 

So he focuses on what the voice is saying, knowing from the get-go that that was what mattered anyway, but helplessly falling into his own distraction. He looks away from her, instead regarding the prince’s faceless form, feeling himself grounded within the second. He’s much more casual than Felix has seen him, wearing nothing but a simple cotton shirt and soft slacks that brush over his ankles and blend into his socks. 

“This kingdom is a peaceful kingdom,” she tells almost poetically, each syllable floating to the next before landing roughly. Just bumpy enough to be perfectly imperfect. Like a bumbling bee from flower to flower. “Not ‘cause the kings and queens all agree, and the villagers reside in harmony.” 

“But because they all fear being a branch of the rotten family tree.” 

Felix frowns, eyes finally drawn to the book she holds in her hand. Pages weathered and thin, a small children’s book rests between sun-spotted fingers, wrinkled and aged past her time. He finds himself nestling carefully beside her, making deadly sure not to ever touch her, but watching each flip of the page vigilantly. 

“For as long as the kingdom’s people remember, their royals have always been in danger. 

Their memory is never safe and never clear, it only takes a moment for their entirety to disappear.

It bears no prize to lead with such a curse, but the family perseveres. 

This kingdom is a peaceful kingdom, their royals forever blurred.

Until in minds they’ve left their mark in golden ink.” 

It’s odd. Wholly and completely so. Dark in the subtlest of ways. A warning and a solemn tale each child must know if they are to live under their royals’ rule. If they are to live in a kingdom cursed. Never knowing when it all might crumble beneath their sticky fingers. 

A harsh silence follows the book closing and dropping unceremoniously into her lap. Sighing deep and unsatisfied, the prince turns his neck so his forehead is practically resting against her hair. She leans back, pushing it so it’s just that, a whimsical smile playing over her lips. Her personality is younger than she, even when everything else is older. 

“Why’d you read that?” the prince asks, more terse than Felix ever expected from him. 

She reaches back and ruffles his hair, eliciting a whine and grumble. “Thought if I read it like those mothers do to their children, than you’d be able to view it as nothing more than a children’s tale like they all can.” 

Ticks of quiet breathing. The prince is tense again, turning flat on his back, legs swinging and fingers tapping away again at an anxiety-inducing rhythm. “It’s hard to view it like that when you’re the royal the story is about.” 

Her lips purse and she exhales, setting the book aside, kicking it away like it’d offended her. It lands just perfectly wedged between the ground and the nearest bookshelf to gather dust. She shifts onto her knees and faces him, running her hand through his hair like the queen had, but rougher, picking through tangles and knots, both in the hair, and the boy’s mind. “You shouldn’t be worrying about it so young, my prince. Especially since it’s been generations and the curse has never been enacted. Just be wary of mages, and you’re safe.” 

“...”

She shakes her head exasperatedly, and Felix senses her humor dampen. “Little chick told me you’ve been getting distant lately. Talking more and more about magic and the future, than you are even talking to him.” 

That effectively stills the crimson prince and he gets even stiffer, this time with different worries plaguing him. “Does he think I’m trying to distance myself from him?” 

“Are you?” 

Suddenly, the prince sits straight up, running trembling fingers through his hair. For the first time, the crimson prince allows the stress Felix has seen hidden behind gentle smiles and boisterous laughter, to shine through, spilling from widening cracks. It’s like darkness has been injected into the air. It’s the first time, the crimson prince, breaks the illusion. 

“I don’t mean to,” he rasps, voice thin and wavering, “He wasn’t supposed to notice. I just….there’s been reports, Auntie. About mages on our borders, tapping at our walls. I’m so...What if they do it? What if they do what all the others haven’t been able to, and enact the curse. What if I…” Shallow gasps push and pull at his heaving chest like a cruel see saw 

There are splintered edges to Felix’s vision. The crimson prince’s panic is dense and forceful, pushing onto Felix unexpectedly and strongly. For a moment, he himself forgets to breathe along with the crimson prince, placing a quivering hand over a racing heart. 

It doesn’t last as long as it feels, for the woman is swift to wrap the boy in her arms, hushing him with only the slightest shake in her low cooing. She pats his head in steady melody, stroking his tear-streaked cheeks like they were the finest glass. “I’m sorry, little prince. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. I know what’s happening. I know best...I was just thinking of my son.” 

She’s honest, even when it might be misplaced. 

Her following chuckle is so fragile. “I guess we both were. He’s quite an important thing isn’t he?” 

Through choked sobs and heaving breaths, the crimson prince manages a strained giggle, nodding feebly against her shoulder where his tears make her sleeves dark with wetness. He finds it in him to reciprocate the affections, no hesitance as his arms snake clingingly around her torso. 

“You can say it, you know?” she prompts after he’s able to breathe without choking on his own tongue, “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with saying how you feel. I’d be more concerned if you didn’t. I don’t know who you’re trying to be tough and strong for, certainly the little chick would only ever help you.” 

He huffs, “I don’t want to worry him. Ever. He’s...he’s not like me yet. I don’t want him to ever be like me. I’m going to—” 

She squeezes him so tight his sentence cuts off into a wheeze. “Don’t ever,” she snaps gently, “There is everything to admire about you, my prince. I’m so glad that of all people, he chose to be your friend. It couldn’t be more perfect...And you don’t have to tell him now, but you will have to eventually. Especially if things get more dangerous. You’ll only hurt him more if he never knows.” 

Him. They’re talking about him. How? It hurts his brain. What he doesn’t know. How this woman is related to him. What the prince hid from him. None of it makes sense and there’s no context to help. 

“And I definitely have nothing against you, my prince. I’m not little either, like the both of you. You can tell me anything. I promise.” 

Was this possibly the same woman he had just walked with yesterday through the gardens. It couldn’t be. There was no way. Had she somehow betrayed the queen and prince so severely, her entire being altered. It didn’t fit. 

The crimson prince goes limp, fingers digging into the loose fabric of her top, trembling harsher than a leaf in the winter gusts. “I’m so scared, Auntie,” he confesses brokenly, revolving back into the earlier mess he was, “I’m so scared I’m going to disappear and leave him and my people behind. I’m so scared Mum and Dad will disappear before I do and I have to live with it. I’m so scared.” 

Chip by agonizing chip, Felix’s perspective falls apart. He’d viewed the prince as a safe place, and that hasn’t changed, but in his eyes, and undoubtedly in his younger’s eyes, this person had been so strong and so mature, a pillar crafted by the most intelligent architect. A pillar that would never fall. 

But to the older Felix, it was all too clear, that the crimson prince was even stronger than he originally thought. But still, a little boy. A terrified little boy. 

Never before has a vision shattered so violently, ripping to pieces before Felix’s very own eyes. Viciously, his magic distorts and warps, shaping the vision of the woman and crimson prince beyond recognition, shrieking and screeching with each glitch. The magic wasn’t choosing for the vision to fall, it was just so intense, so raw, it tore through the magic’s screen painfully. 

It lasts, lingers, tearing over his skin over and over again long after the vision has died. He doesn’t even realize he’s looking at empty chair until a few long blinks dissipates his dizziness and panging. His heart tumbles and trips over itself, struggling to go back to normal. 

“Felix! Felix, are you okay?” 

Dazed, he turns his head up to see Seungmin, though it takes him five seconds too long to recognize the boy. Squeezing his eyes shut to keep his brain from rattling, he nods. It doesn’t work and he feels another throb course through his head. 

The thud of Seungmin’s knees hitting the floor is so loud. Louder than even the blood rushing through Felix’s ears and the sobs that won’t stop replaying in the back of his mind over and over again like a nightmare in real life. Before the other can fuss over him, he pushes him away with frail arms, pointing in a direction he can’t forget. 

Hissing through his teeth, feeling blood slick over his lips and drip onto his chin. His words taste like dirty iron mined with blistered palms. “There’s a book,” he wheezes, “Under that shelf. Grab it. It’s what we’ve been looking for.” 

Lashes fluttering, he blearily peeks at Seungmin maneuvering his fingers beneath the small space, bit by bit pulling the thin book out. Skeptical, he twists the thing around in his hands with the same care one would subject to an infant. “This is what we need?” 

“Yes,” forces Felix, slowly leaning back until his head softly hits the ground, “And I think you’re going to need to carry me out of here.” 

+

Everything is strained, the air wrung tautly, circled tightly around each of their necks, a heavy burden upon their shoulders. None of them have spoken a word since they all entered the room. Too much congested their minds, almost more than they could bear. It was all stacking and combining, making a mix of a mess they couldn’t even see past. It was overwhelming, frightening, harrowing. 

Minho had been the first in the room after escorting the woman halfway to her location, the staff floor, before she’d regained her senses enough to safely travel the complicated maze of hall and stairways. It’d been empty when he returned, and he’d been left to sit on his usual chair situated beneath the window, having nothing to do but watch the sun lower and the moon rise as his foot tapped helplessly against the wall. 

Hyunjin and Jone had been the first to join him. Together just like the day before. Something about it nagged Minho just in the slightest. Someone who kept all the secrets in the world from him, paired with someone who told him everything and a thimble. He trusted them both, but the most unreasonable part of him wondered if there was something the two had seen that they weren’t telling. 

Jeongin came with the food Jone was supposed to bring, graciously and immediately attending to King who had been empathetically bumping Minho’s shin for the better part of a minute before deciding he was a lost cause and hunting away at the fringes of their expensive curtains. 

His mind had cleared of all else though, worries and petulant feelings, persistent fears and obnoxious tattles, when Seungmin came through the door, hunched and panting, Felix draped limply over his back, the bottom half of his face stained red. The world around him itself faded away as he rushed up and took the prince, ordering someone to draw a bath and get him a cloth, strictly guarding so no one would see him undressed. 

The terror he’d felt seeing his best friend like that still buzzed unceasingly beneath his skin, an undying infestation. Even after Felix had woken, freshly washed and clothed by Minho like they were ten all over again, fresh scars drawn into young skin and mind. Except now it was that many years later. 

Time was repeating itself in the worse ways. 

It couldn’t bring Minho back his and Felix’s forgotten prince, but it could put them through their first worst memories twice over. Minho was more and more convinced that the course of time was nothing but cruel, and there was no escape. 

All six souls in the room seem set on refusing sound, King the only straggler unaware of anything enough to play carelessly in Seungmin’s lap. How lucky was she. Minho knew he wasn’t going to be the one to break the tension noiseless anticipation. All his efforts were focused on holding Felix’s hand so tight he guarantees they’ll never be separated again. 

He doesn’t think of Felix’s loose grip, tired and infirm. 

Surprisingly, the most discreet of them all, Jone is the first to step forward, determination fiery in his eyes just like when Minho first went face to face with him. Faraway, he wonders if his eyes still have the same flint to match as they did then. A lot didn’t hurt him, but the few that did, took him down with an unnerving ease. If Felix’s security was at risk, then so was Minho’s sanity. 

Protect him. 

“That stupid notebook is absolutely worthless if we don’t use it,” Jone inputs, and they’re simple simple words for the seething inflection he employs. It’s not directed at any of them, if anything it’s internal. But it’s there nonetheless and it has them all shifting. They’ve not been working nearly as efficiently as they could. And that’s what Jone is saying. Their teamwork, as seamless as it may be, was staggering. 

It was the most foolish mistake they could be making, but they were inexperienced enough to make it without even noticing. Information withheld rests in each of their palms, essential to their goal, and because they merely put off putting it out, they were endangering their entire plot. 

Minho resists bitting through the skin of his lip. He’s the oldest, he should be the one responsible for keeping them in line. He’s the most reliable, the most trustworthy, he’s perfected himself to be, naturally and otherwise. It’s not like him to be so one-track-minded.

He was learning too much at once to keep concentrated and it was ailing him at the most crucial moment. 

“I’ve got nothing,” offers Jeongin tentatively, solely helping to build much-needed momentum. Though Minho hopes distantly, that he doesn’t feel like he’s doing nothing. Jeongin has been the only light these days. Everything else is dimmed. They desperately need him. 

Like day one, Hyunjin clenches and unclenches his hands, announcing gravely, “Magic.” 

Felix winces against his pillow, eyes casting down. 

Jone looks to Hyunjin encouragingly, a shared spark between them that must have been uniquely prompted. At this point, Minho honestly does not want to know just what that was. Ignorance is bliss, and he’ll take all that he can afford until he’s spent his last dime. 

“I haven’t been able to consistently tail the queen and king like I’m supposed to,” the blond tilts his head, glancing off to the side meekly. It doesn’t seem he’s ashamed of the fact, just a bit embarrassed. Whatever he’s been able to glean from his meager work has been enough to feed. “But when Jone and I got together, we managed to make a connection.” 

A new attention is directed at Minho and he’s forced to look away from studiously examining Felix’s shifts and changes in expression. Jone is looking right at him, acknowledging him pointedly. “Both staff members we’ve encountered we think are connected to something me and Hyunjin experienced in the dungeons yesterday.” 

That’s enough to grasp all their listless minds into a single point. Even King has picked up on the subtle escalation in the air, rolling out of Seungmin’s lap and curling up on the pillows Jeongin had set up for her. Said boy has leaned forward so much so he will soon need to catch himself on the heels of his hand, face incredulous. 

“Dungeons?” Felix gasps, voice hoarse, “You went to the dungeons?” His grip is no rougher around Minho’s hand, but his nails dig enough to sting right into the length of Minho’s thumb. Minho can’t do anything but reciprocate, mouth and mind gone dry. 

Never, in all his years, has Minho even skirted the edges of even the dungeon’s entrance. He can’t go near it without a fear and panic bright hot and painful sliding down his spine like molten lava, eating his nerves away one by one. Every time his foot rings a certain way against the stone only the dungeon is built from, agonized whimpers echo back into his ears like phantoms haunting him. 

Knowing Hyunjin and Jone had gone down there willingly, once with the king, once without, made Minho vaguely nauseous. Felix looks as much, brows furrowed indicative of a headache, teeth stuck firmly into his bottom lip like an anchor. While Minho must hear his screams, Felix must feel them rise like bile in the back of his throat, sickening to the core of his being. 

Hyunjin has the grace to look earnestly contrite, but he moves along in such a manner that he’s trying to smooth over their experience enough to detach the situation from it. Because as much as they all wish to, they can’t spend time they never attempted before to recover from something so severe. They were too late and now it was coming back to bite them directly. 

This was bigger than them and their scars, and no sugarcoating was necessary. 

“We had gone down there,” Hyunjin begins to tell, hands moving about him languidly, as if trying to relay each movement compressed he had made during his tale. “Jone and I following the king. He went all to the ends of the dungeons where the hall opened up into a large space with the most lighting. No bars but shackles attached in a neat line along the walls.” 

Felix goes pale and Minho has to ground them both, taking his other hand and putting it over their already connected ones, pushing down hard enough to feel bone and tendon. The slight sore throbbing was better than the alternative. 

“And he just stood there, talking to himself for what seemed like forever. Right when we thought he was just gonna do nothing but turn back around, he reached out and grasped something.” 

“Some sort of magic we presume,” Jone adds even though there’s absolutely no argument in him that says anything otherwise. He might know even better than Hyunjin that that was exactly what it was in spite of the boy having to jump up and counter. 

“No presuming,” Hyunjin scoffs, “There’s no other explanation for what we saw, what we felt. For Felix’s visions and the staffs’ disappearances. That woman, Minho, the one that we asked questions this morning. What she had described, was exactly how Jone and I had felt when that thing came to life.” 

Minho can think past the dungeons. It’s clear they’re stumbling upon something. No, they’ve been tripping and falling over it forever, they’re just finally taking the damn time to look beneath their feet. 

“Magic,” Jeongin parrots from the ground, unconsciously leaning into Seungmin as he thinks, noticeable to all but them two. “Magic has been connecting everything so far, hasn’t it. Everything we’re going through right now, has to be an effect of the curse’s magic.” 

“I think so,” Felix joins, somber. It takes the three words to divert all focus on him as silent and weak as they were. “Today, me and Seungmin found what may be the only physical evidence of the curse. And before that, in each of my visions, I’ve been learning about the royal magic. They’ve all been pointing to the crimson prince and the magic. The curse. It all boils down to a single point. We already know it. We just don’t know if we’re able to, and how, we’re supposed to handle it. Or even, what it’s actively doing to us.” 

And that’s another thing in this puzzle of catastrophics. They’re slowly gathering all the pieces, but they have no idea the picture that will be formed when they’re all put together, or how if it’s even something they have the capability of solving. 

But they have a long ways to go before that’s decided. And those long ways are what they need to be rapidly traveling now. 

Protect him. 

“I have the distinct feeling,” Minho says suddenly, loudly, just enough volume to cover the bout of anxiety that wells within his gut like a reviving geyser. “That we have a time limit.” 

A drop of vivid scarlet stains Felix’s pristine cream comforter, the only of the color in the room. 

“We need to hurry the hell up.” 

+

The rate at which Seungmin writes in his notebook has Jeongin’s heart pace picking up along with each harsh scratch of nib against paper. The ink shines slick and eerie under puny moon rays and a tad candlelight. 

Every single thing that has been shared and theorized in the past hours before everyone but the youngest two succumbed to sleep, Seungmin was writing, racing  with his fingers and pen like a chariot and horse, all at once in his tiny notebook that once never had enough info to be filled with anything but their names and days. 

It’s an old notebook and Jeongin slightly fears it might come apart under Seungmin’s fierce work. 

He can do nothing but watch, not sure whether slowing down Seungmin will help them in the long run, or merely help Seungmin in the short run. There’s so much though, so much that needs to be kept safe from the curse. As far as they know, that notebook is as good as their one piece of security. At any moment, their minds could be erased and they’d be all the unknowing. 

Seungmin’s once insignificant notebook that cost a pretty penny that they wrote sparse lyrics in when they were bored and practicing their letters. Now it was a nightmarish safehold for their findings. 

The weird thing Hyunjin and Jone had witnessed, every single one of Felix’s visions, each staff person who went missing and reappeared as soon as they could even be named lost. Every memory they were missing, lost in the tide of the curse. The curse in which their only physical evidence of is a storybook that their prince refuses to look at, leaving to everyone else to examine it. 

This kingdom is a peaceful kingdom, their royals forever blurred.

Until in minds they’ve left their mark in golden ink. 

Jeongin rereads the line, illustrated with a shining royal family, a long-ago generation that has been long erased from this kingdom’s available history. The ink of their smiles runs muddy, pooling under their flowing robes unsightly. 

What is it supposed to mean? 

“Of course, their only leftover evidence of the curse,” Seungmin mutters, startling Jeongin who was still expecting the other to be writing away fast enough to burn the paper. “Is an amateur poem written for children.” 

Distaste is what Seungmin views the book with. Under such a stare he isn’t used to, he’s quick to set aside the book. It’s rare for Seungmin to baselessly or irrationally dislike something. Jeongin supposes though if he thinks about it, he just hates the origin of the book, and the way it had to be discovered. Entirely understandable, even for Seungmin. 

The desk they’re sitting at, Felix’s small but meticulously crafted birch surface, is tucked away in the corner of the room, away from it all. From Jeongin’s knowledge, it was rarely ever used, there for the seldom times, they didn’t want to sprawl over the bed, sit around the fireplace, or perch at the vanity. In fact, when he had pulled himself atop the top beside where Seungmin set his ink, dust had flown. 

Not everyone needed a separate flat surface to work, he guesses. 

Seungmin continues to stare at Jeongin’s hands splayed against his thighs, lips pursed and pensive. Finally, his pen has gone still and fallen tiredly to the drying pages. Thoughts flit at the speed of light beneath his head of dark hair. Jeongin can see every one of them like shooting stars through Seungmin’s velvety irises. He makes a wish on each one he sees, each in goodwill to the boy he loves more than love itself could ever describe. 

Wordlessly, Seungmin shifts the chair, the sound nonexistent against the soft carpet and well-tended wooden legs. He takes Jeongin’s wrist in his hold and lifts it, replacing it with his head, resting only semi-unconventionally in Jeongin’s lap. He moves Jeongin’s touch to his own hair until Jeongin gets the hint and begins running his slender fingers through the silky strands. At one point, Jeongin would’ve whined and grumbled at him for being a pest. 

Now he could feel the starvation for moments like these that once were so common ache through his bones like an illness. 

Quiet to not disturb their friends, and to not ruin the calmness that surrounds them, he whispers, “Did you get it all down, Min?” The little flame of their candle moves with each syllable he utters, like it’s asking the same question in kind, sharing in Jeongin’s concern. 

Sighing lengthily, Seungmin nods minutely, knuckles cracking from where they’re bent over the notebook. Jeongin snorts, grabbing them and massaging them with his other hand before simply holding them, making the two of them intertwined like they hadn’t been allowed openly in so long. Pinkies linked, and when Jeongin leans down awkwardly, not caring for the slight cry from his back, head to head. 

They don’t talk for a short while, Jeongin watching the wax slowly melt away from his position, curled over Seungmin’s head needily, as Minho did to the kitten sometimes, but vastly different for obvious reasons. The only words they have now are centered around the discord of their new present, royal secrets and magic knotted so tightly together they’re suffocating everyone they touch. And that’s exactly what they’re trying to avoid.

Softly, Seungmin begins to hum a tune common around the village, sung to every newborn babe as a lullaby and at the high of every festival for the fire in their veins to die down, their skin warm against each other as they danced slow and sweet. Jeongin has only ever danced that dance with his older siblings and Seungmin himself. It was Seungmin’s favorite part of each festival. 

If he was just a tad more lenient with himself, there would be tears leaking from his eyes, no doubt about it. He wants like a fool to go back to those times, even though they were impoverished and built from the scraps of their kingdom he was now vying to save. 

He barely notices when the gentle melody stops, noises of his past playing gently like a catchy song in the forefront of his mind. Seungmin’s voice breaks through it unhurtled, the greatest weapon against Jeongin’s defenses. “Is that it?” he asks, voice rough from unuse, “Do you miss our village?” 

Frowning puzzled, Jeongin puts his head back up, Seungmin moving so he’s between Jeongin’s swinging legs, head rested over his cross arms balanced against them. “What do you mean?” 

A note of misplaced amusement plays over Seungmin’s guise. “You’ve been bothered lately. Is it because you want to go back to our village? Because you’re...homesick?” 

Usually, Seungmin is on point with his assumptions when it comes to Jeongin. Instead of letting it unsettle him as it has been, that disconnect between them that was only just formed, Jeongin smiles good-naturedly and pinches Seungmin’s cheeks, shaking his head. “Nah, I miss it and all, of course. It’s much better than this stuffy, insane castle, but it’s not really bothering me.” 

Seungmin’s eyes sharpen, both at Jeongin’s teasing action and light statement. They flick and dart over Jeongin’s expression, creating a map from the valleys and mounds of his face, looking for the x that marks the treasure of Jeongin’s emotions. Such as is Seungmin’s specialty. Professional Jeongin cartographer. 

“Well, something is. A lot. What is it?” 

Realization dawns over him quick and clear and his reaction to keep smiling so adoringly is beginning to hurt his cheeks. “I certainly miss something,” he hints, a little too fond and soft for the situation. He can’t help it. He’s been getting the time he’s been wanting for days and it’s making him turn to mush like never before. 

Blinking with furrowing brows, Seungmin ponders. Of course the most logical and reasonable of them would be blinded when it comes to having to view himself, or rather, hyper-focused tunnel vision on all the things he’d criticize about himself, rather than what everyone else sees. 

Huffing exasperatedly, Jeongin grabs Seungmin’s chin with one of his hands, forcefully pressing his lips to the other’s forehead. He doesn’t kiss as delicately and affectionately as he feels, teasing and taunting with each peck over Seungmin’s cheeks and nose. It’s what the stupid older boy deserves. And it’s what’s normal for them. 

“This is what I miss,” he breathes into the top of Seungmin’s hair, “I miss being able to do this any and all times we want to. I miss being at your side and holding your pinky like we’re making some eternal promise. I just...I miss you, by my side.” 

There’s an audible gape, Seungmin’s lips parting in quiet recognition. His palms slide over Jeongin’s gradually and firmly, grasping them with just as much subtle fervor as Jeongin had confessed. “You’re serious.” His voice raises like a question, but there is none there. There’s no denial of what Jeongin has laid bare. Especially to Seungmin. 

Unexpectedly the other rises, pulling Jeongin down to the floor with them. Their fall is soundless, only the flame of their candle dying at the speed at which they fall to the carpet. But their hands are crossed over the back of each other’s head, sparing them any discomfort or harm. Jeongin just stares at Seungmin who lays unperturbed beside him, holding him tightly like it’s the mission he’s been assigned. 

A lot of things Seungmin says almost sound rehearsed, written and reviewed beforehand, monotone or just perfectly pitched to express what he wants. To some, it may seem aloof or anxious, uncanny just a tad. However, Jeongin admired it, adored it. He knew how much work Seungmin put into anything he said, like each sentence strung from his lips were lyrics to the song of Seungmin’s mind. And if you listened just right, you could hear every melodic meaning he hid amongst his careful enunciation. 

To hear a tune crafted just for him, was never not magical. He’s utterly speechless as Seungmin begins to talk, the building rain outside the perfect beat to his earnest affirmations. 

“I miss you too,” he starts, the best hook to any tale, “I miss you a lot. I quite like the prince and he’s swell company. But nothing’s the same without you there. It’s perfectly manageable, but every once in a while, I’ll drift off when I’ve reread the same paragraph too many times to comprehend what it’s even saying. I’ll look for you. And it feels like I’ve gotten a new papercut each time I realize, you’re not there. You’re alone in some dirty stable tending horses and not making me smile.” 

He pauses, assessing Jeongin’s reaction and writing the newest script in his mind according to whatever he finds in it. “I don’t know if that’s all that’s bothering you too, or if you feel like you’re not contributing enough, but you’re doing so much for all of us, Jeongin. So much.”

“It’s been a whirlwind of a week and each time I return to this room it feels like I’ve roughed a storm that claws and tears away at me. I know the others feel the same too. But when I see you laughing and smiling, when you’re able to tease us like nothing is wrong when so much is, when you play with King while everyone can only sit overtaken by their thoughts. You light up our whole day. Maybe I can’t speak for them so much, I haven’t known them long, but I know for me, you’re the greatest source of cheer and positivity that I desperately need.” 

“Perhaps, you’ve always been that to me, and I was only able to recognize it when I’ve been put through withdrawals.” 

How in the world is he supposed to respond to all of that? He’s overwhelmed in the best kind of way, heart thumping against his ribs almost painfully. Unlike Seungmin, it takes him too long to form the lyrics of his thoughts, so all he can do is bury his face in the other’s neck, letting himself be embraced wholeheartedly and doing the same in return. 

“Withdrawals, Seungmin? You’re too dramatic.” 

Thankfully, and a bit expectedly, Seungmin takes it just how Jeongin aimed for him too. He chuckles, the sound reverberating through Jeongin’s warming cheeks and pulsing chest. “Haven’t you got them too, dork?”

Chapter Text

Oddly enough, despite breaking down and passing out with a miniature pool of blood the day before, Felix doesn’t feel under the weather, not a bit. Other than the usual displaced floating feeling in his chest that has persisted since his first vision, he feels like normal. He repeats this many times to Minho who hasn’t left him alone since he woke up cushioned and holding his hand on the bed the day before. 

He gets it, a hundred percent. He’d woken up the same before a long time ago, but he had hurt a lot more then, and he had not a single prize to brandish from it. 

This time, he has a revelation, polished and shined to horrifyingly clear presentation. A harsh reality settling in that was inevitable. That the crimson prince who’d told him sweet tales and saved his naivety for a brighter smile, wasn’t a fairytale. He was real. Or, he had been real. And he’d been someone Felix deeply cared for, and there was no doubt that that sentiment was mutual. 

And quite possibly, in his last days, he’d been breaking down bit by bit, like the vision encapsulated, alone. Scared. Terrified. 

While Felix feels renewed facing something he wasn’t able to feel before, the sinking dread and horror in his gut get no lighter. With each step he takes, he can feel the crimson prince’s stride matching. He gets more and more real, so much more tangible. Like dusting away at an artifact, with each brush stroke, a hole in Felix’s heart is revealed. 

It’s not really a sorrowful feeling, just an old grief and mourning renewed, throbbing subtly in the back of Felix’s mind every waking moment. 

When he looks up into his vanity, first appraising the dark shadows beneath his eyes, growing darker and darker by the night, he meets Seungmin’s searching gaze through the mirror. They break eye contact fast, awkwardly noiseless in the bustling environment. 

Out of the blue, Seungmin speaks aloud, “I think Jeongin and I should switch today. I’ve been cabin fever in the library and I think a break for my eyes will help us more.”

It’s crap, what he’s spewing. Technically, he’s already accomplished his mission. He and the prince have scoured and pored over nearly every book in the library without rest. And they’ve found all that they’ve needed, or so Felix’s magic indicates. 

There are also the known facts that one, Seungmin could camp in a library for days on end, and two, today is when Felix meets with his tutor again. The first time since his last lessons set off a chain of events that no one will be able to return from. 

Hyunjin has already left the room, trying to get an early start so he doesn’t miss yet another precious day gleaning information from their biggest question marks. The king and queen, Felix’s lovely parents. The freckled woman from the day before flashes in his mind and he represses a griMinho. Or so he believes. 

So only Jone and Minho react with raised eyebrows before continuing their morning routine, which was short. It was clear they habitually left the room before everyone woke and got back just in time to prep their appearances for more formal settings. It was commonplace at this point for no person in their group to question the other for their hidden actions. If it was important, it would be made known, sooner or later. 

It hasn’t screwed them over too bad just yet. 

Placing his crown upon his head, hating its descent with every fiber of his being, Felix turns in his cushioned stool. “If that's what you two are fine with. I don’t mind either-or. You’ll just have to sit through a couple hours of lessons or so.”

Stroking King’s head skeptically, Jeongin eyes his partner. Something passes through them, a sequel in a series Felix hasn’t had the chance to read. “I don’t mind, I suppose.”

The prince hums affirmatively, standing and giving a parting par to their group pet. King bumps into his hand appreciatively at the gesture, bounding away from Jeongin easily as the other gets to his feet. 

They wave farewell to Seungmin and whose face is awfully blank. As if his ploy couldn’t be any more obvious. He was tending to the younger, somehow in his own way. It’s clear in the slight pout that pulls at Jeongin’s mouth. 

It makes Felix smile in spite of his roiling emotions. 

“You haven’t been around the castle much have you?” he asks Jeongin conversationally. He’s a lot more comfortable with the boy than he was initially with Seungmin. From their first interaction, Jeongin exuded a comfort that was impossible to achieve, that could only be natural. 

Maybe that’s why they were such a suitable fit. They soothed in the opposite ways, yet so alike. It was great for whoever encountered them, but it was absolutely perfect for each other. 

By the way Jeongin looks apprehensively around the halls, inching closer to Felix’s side, the answer is clear. “I’ve only ever been to the kitchen and staff floor. Nowhere else inside the castle.”

Accommodating to the bone, Felix pulls Jeongin in close, linking their arms. “I’d say you’re lucky frankly. If you need a guide eventually, Hyunjin would be the best. He’s had enough time on his hands to explore every regular and secret passage.” The only place he never frequented until recently, was the dungeons. 

Jeongin just shrugs, side-eyeing the prince with a bit of disdain. “Maybe after we finish. I don’t want to ever run into the king and queen.” He shuts his mouth firmly as if keeping himself from saying more, anger pronounced in his jaw whereas Felix has only ever seen him mildly irritated. 

It clicks, and he internally sighs. Minho told him. He’s thankful, that despite knowing, Jeongin has never pestered him about it. He wonders who else knows. If Jeongin has passed it to Seungmin and the sneaky bit he is, Jone managed to learn on his own. 

Shame isn’t present at all. He’s just slightly sad that his past has to be a damper somewhere in his friends’ minds. He won’t ever be ashamed of what his parents did to him. That was their terrible deed to burden, not his, and definitely not Minho’s. 

He just wishes it didn’t have to affect him so greatly so long into his life. 

“Understandable, I don’t think anyone does here. Lucky for you, they have never once attended one of my tutoring sessions. Unless they’ve spontaneously decided to, you can freely roam the library.”

Thinking, Jeongin nods slowly. “It’s the library Seungmin hasn’t visited right?”

A nod. 

Shyly, Jeongin squeezes the crook of his elbow just barely around Felix’s. “Am I allowed to check out books?” 

Instantly, the prince gets it and tamps down on a sudden bout of laughter. No matter how far apart they are, no matter how long, they always manage to orbit each other. Always thinking of the other and finding a way to string them into their present, whether they even mean to or not. Felix has to think if he and his two friends are the same way. It wouldn’t be too farfetched. 

Pushing open the doors, Felix gestures around at the honestly small library, made to look far grander than it was. “As many as you’d like.” He puts on a smile for Jeongin, who admires the place with awe. It’s not fake, not one bit, not when Jeongin has such a twinkle in his eyes, but it’s dampened with disappointment. 

He will never like this library as much as the other. Their doors are so similar if you’re not looking for the particular dent or scratch that the older library’s does. When he steps in, he expects the same fantastical atmosphere, aged and wizened along with each dog-eared book and wobbly shelf. Receiving instead pristine books washed over with the queen and king’s influence sitting upon perfectly straight and sturdy cases grants him a disdain.

He points to a setup in the center of the right. A wooden desk pushed against a wall underneath a window facing a wheelable chalkboard. His expression falters as he does, the person waiting for him, isn’t one he recognizes. It isn’t the tutor who’s been with him for years, the one he trusts just a little bit more than the others his parents appoint. The one who was a little worn for wear, only knowledge he can’t share keeping him going beyond his bounds. It’s a stranger. 

Intuitive to a fault, Jeongin unlaces their arms, looking up at Felix worriedly. “Prince, is something wrong?” 

If the slinking slimy feeling that slithers over and under his ribs indicates anything, yes. Something is very wrong here. Or just wrong enough to make Felix feel a boulder growing in his gut. But not only is that something he doesn’t want to put on Jeongin, but something he doesn’t even know how to translate. 

Knowing ultimately, Jeongin won’t believe him, Felix shakes his head, righting his posture and masking his expression. “Go look around for books. I don’t think you’ll wanna sit through such a boring lesson. This tutor sucks too.” 

Lips pursing, Jeongin moves to object but before Felix can even preemptively cut him off, he huffs through his nose, nostrils flaring. He knows he won’t get anywhere. “Don’t be letting me let you do something stupid, my prince,” he says calmly beneath his breath before whisking away, putting his mind on something else before he can over-worry for the prince. 

Inhaling deeply, Felix takes slow purposeful steps to this new appearance. He regards the other with wide calculating eyes until they notice him, twisting around to face him with an irritatingly monotonous face. “Good afternoon, your highness.” 

No good afternoon, you can’t be casual. Not when Felix is ready to leap from his skin with anxiety and silent coursing panic. “Where is Sin? The old man who was my tutor before? Is he out?” 

Annoyance flickers dully behind bespectacled pupils. It riles Felix up further than he could ever imagine, his fingers picking frantically at each other behind his stiff spine. “I’m afraid so. A misfortune but he was reported dead just yesterday morning. Passed in his sleep with no explanation. With his old age it was expected—” they shrug, shrug , “My majesties already had me on standby. I’ll be leading your sessions from here on out.” 

Yesterday morning. Not twenty-four hours after his mother had questioned Felix about the man. Dead. No explanation. Not a single ailment or stress, primed to live long past any other of his time. 

In this castle, there were no coincidences. Everything, was a plot built and crafted by the king and queen so much so they paid no attention to the people they were supposed to care for. The castle was their chessboard and each event was their move. 

Checkmate. But not for the king.

“Because I was alerted so suddenly,” they continue on, completely oblivious to Felix’s internal turmoil, “I have no curriculum ready suited to you. So, you’ll be resuming your studies by your next session when I’ll have something prepared. It was a pleasure meeting you, your highness.” 

Faintly, Felix registers them bowing and making his exit, not bothering to stick around for a response as it’s clear he won’t be getting one. The door closes and the weak vibration it sends throughout the room is enough to topple Felix onto his knees. He’s shaking, a small tremor spreading throughout his entire body. 

His vision goes red, dripping with the color and seeping onto his chin. An urge tells him to look up, straight ahead. He wishes to everything, that he hadn’t. 

He sees himself. Small and lost, eyes wide, peering straight through him with wild terror. It’s a kick to the chest and he’s frozen, rooted helplessly to the staining carpet beneath his palms, his heart beating so uncontrollably he feels it thrum to the tips of his fingers. This vision, it was wrong, his magic was pounding frantically inside him, writhing and squirming sickeningly to escape whatever darkness has taken ahold of it. 

He shouldn’t be able to see himself. 

Something cold passes through him, like being splashed with water, and he gasps volatilely, bending further to the ground. The crimson prince. The one these visions are supposed to center. But here he is, running in second, right through Felix. And with him, Felix can feel every striking emotion that rampages violently inside the crimson prince. 

Not a bit of it shows on the crimson prince’s face. A smile so gentle lays innocently over his mouth. There’s screaming. Loud, loud screaming echoing from the halls too prominent to be ignored. But still, he sits calmly from across the younger Felix, assurance radiating from each movement he makes, hands coming up to wipe at the tears that mar his face. It’s surreal. 

“Felix, are you alright?” 

The other him stares incredulously, barking a hysterical laugh. “Alright? What’s happening? Where’s Mama? Why are the villages on fire? Why is-the castle is being invaded!”

Drily, the prince returns a chuckle. There it is. The waver in his voice, a shake in his fingers that he only lets show once they’re away from the younger’s skin. “Is it now,” he replies sarcastically, struggling oh so desperately to keep the facade of ignorance, “I wasn’t aware.” 

A particular shriek rages far away and is cut off abruptly. Felix feels sick. Around him, chaos persists. But here and his vision sits, a bubble of simple disrest, just barely grazed by the outside havoc. As soon as he ponders this, an unsettling silence drains the noise of mayhem. 

The crimson prince’s blurred face pales several shades. Ever so tentatively, the crimson prince turns his head and though Felix can’t make out a crevice of his facial features, he feels jarringly like he’s being looked upon directly. His shoulders are shaken by the younger Felix. 

“What, what? What’s happening now?” the brunet questions frantically, breathing audibly labored with utter fright. It’s enough to instantly snap the crimson prince from his trance, turning and leaning so their foreheads touch, keeping the younger from being able to twist and peer out into the hall. 

“Felix,” he says, dropping his sweet and soft inflection, deadly serious and sober. “You need to listen to me okay.” 

It’s no tone they’ve ever heard from him, and its effect is instantaneous. They both go still, even the fear and disorientation freeze in place to listen because the crimson prince said they need to. Everything pauses for him, and he glows amongst scarlet. The warrior prince is shining, gold bits floating around him. It was like when he laughed, except under such different circumstances. 

Magic. He’s always been magic. 

“You need to stay here and hide. No matter what. Do not leave. I need to go find my parents.” 

Slow and steady, the younger Felix begins to shake his head, utterly in denial. Unsubtly, his hands shoot out and grab the crimson prince’s holding them so tight his arm trembles with the force. “No, you can’t leave me. You have to stay. We have to both be safe.” 

The crimson prince stutters, stammers. He wants to stay. He wants to so badly it hurts just as much as everything else that cuts through him. He hisses through his teeth, not at the younger, not at anything in particular, just a noise showing how much he can’t express, how much he can’t do. A rebellion to the world so small for putting him through all this. 

“Do you have the golden bracelet I gave you?” he asks suddenly. 

“I’d never lose it.” 

“Remember the promise I made you.” 

The younger Felix begins to realize and his expression is so wrought with distress and despair Felix has to look away for just a moment. “I couldn’t ever forget it—” Liar. Stupid, little, liar, “—You’ll always find me. As long as I have it on, you’ll come back. But no, not now. You can’t use that now, there’s no way.” 

He’s sobbing, and all the crimson prince can do is drop his head to his shuddering shoulder, hiding his heartbreak like he did everything else, all to assure the young him in whatever way he can. ‘Til the end, he refused to show an ounce of his torment. Foolish prince. His younger self should’ve slapped the sense into him. He still wishes he could. 

“Trust me, little chick. Please stay. I can’t do anything more. I have to go now. I…” He breaks younger Felix’s grip like it was nothing, embracing him fiercely. “I’ll always be by your side. Stay safe. Minho...I already helped Minho hide too. You’ll have him.” 

“Stop,” the younger shouts, “Stop making it sound like you won’t come back! Don’t contradict yourself, idiot.” 

Sadly, the crimson prince chuckles, amused even in a time like this by Felix. “All I ask of you...can you...Felix, don’t forget me.” The selfish prick doesn’t give the younger boy the courtesy to respond, pushing him to the wall and sprinting, far far out of his line of vision. Forever. 

The younger him sits for a single moment, shocked. Shaken. Sobbing. The sight is pathetic, heart-wrenching, and pathetic. They both realize this. They do share the same mind after all. Chest heaving and color building in his face, he slams his fists into the floor and screams into the void of hush. 

With eyes blown out of his head, Felix watches blood slowly leak from the other’s nose, mirroring him to the dime. 

He pushes himself off the wall and despite all the crimson prince’s pleas, runs in the same direction, and as he goes, the visions forcefully shatters. Felix, the present one, the future one, is left curled against the ground, an arm held over his turning stomach and another staunching the flow of his nose. 

“Felix?” 

He jumps, expectant for too long that the person calling his name is the crimson prince he just watched throw away his life. It’s Jeongin, getting down on the floor to peer up at Felix's bloodied face. Worry splashes over his in vivid technicolor and not a soul could blame him. 

“I need to go,” he breathes, rampantly building up to an urgency Jeongin has no capability of understanding. “I need to go, now.”

He has to follow them. Even with great reluctance, his magic tugs in toward the door, where they ran and beyond. Something important, the final piece in this puzzle, the breaking point. It’s where they’ve ran, the last part to this horrific series. 

Jeongin grabs him carefully by the shoulders, keeping him down when he tries to burst up. “What do you mean, Felix? Where do you need to go? Was it another vision? Where’s your cloth?”

So many questions. Felix gets it. He remembers distinctly each question the younger him had asked. Not a single one has been answered, he notices. Of course, they hadn't. Unfortunately, he’s going to be subjecting Jeongin to the same fate. 

He’s not even sure he could speak beyond what he has if he wanted. He’s not functioning completely. There’s something more than his magic, something against him. And as he gets closer and closer to the finale, it wrecks him more and more. 

He’s too preoccupied to find just what that was. He’ll push forward. 

He tries to get away, shaking free but Jeongin knows just as well as before, Felix is in no good place. He’s right. More than ever Felix should probably rest, in the care of his friend. 

“I need to go,” he repeats, almost begging. 

But probably doesn’t account for this. 

Jeongin can't move. Gaping and confused, he tries to do something, anything. Felix sees his fingers shine golden as he moves away from them, bolting up on wobbly legs, praying he won’t trip and rob himself of precious time. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, not really conscious of it. 

And he runs. 

+

Shoes pound against the floor, paired with heavy breathing and worried muttering. Hinges whine and squeal beneath the force of the door slamming open. 

“Jeongin!”

Slumped and worn, Jeongin raises a hand from where he lays immobile before it falls limp once more. Seungmin rushes over to him faster than Jeongin thinks should be possible. Or maybe everything just seems slower, seeing as he’s been paralyzed for who knows how long. 

He still doesn’t quite know how he got here. 

There’d been a thud while he was perusing the fiction section of the library, wondering exactly what of the books would Seungmin enjoy the most. He’d almost shaken it off, a split second from dismissing it and continuing. Then he thought better of it. 

Not that it made a difference in the end. 

He’d walked out and Felix was there, crumpled and curled in on himself, tremors rocking his body. Concern overtook him and he’d approached Felix carefully, wondering if this was how Seungmin found him the day before. “Felix?” 

There’s no recognition in the prince’s eyes when he snaps around to look towards the call. And then he just repeated, on an endless loop, that he needed to go. When Jeongin questioned him, he got nothing. Something was clearly wrong. Wherever Felix wanted to go, it couldn’t be worth the condition he was in. He tried to keep him there, until he calmed down. 

But then he couldn’t move. There was a force, absolute in strength, keeping him still. Shimmering and pricking over his skin, barring any movement. Magic. Felix’s magic to be specific. There was no other possible reason. 

He’d been utterly helpless to watch Felix run out the library, worse for wear. The magic drained him, no longer holding him in place like a pair of marionette strings, but dropping him to the floor, too weary to shift a single inch. His mind wasn’t tired though. Not one bit. And it ran faster than Felix had. In a loop, all around the world and back. 

He was driving up the walls with an endless amount of worries. And he couldn’t do a single thing about it. Wherever Felix was now, whatever he was doing, he was in trouble, and Jeongin couldn’t help him. He hasn’t felt more incompetent than he did now. But it couldn’t even bother him because Felix was somewhere, most likely in danger. 

“Jeongin?” 

Jeongin can only shift his eyes. “Seungmin.” 

He can’t lie, when Seungmin effortlessly bundles him into his arms, accommodating so he’s comfortable even when half his limbs are completely numb. His head flops against Seungmin’s chest and the other’s heartbeat is better than any soothing tune. He can’t feel any better with the situation, but at least he’s no longer a vulnerable sitting duck on the floor. He has Seungmin. 

“What are you doing here?” he slurs, wishing his mouth would at least move better so he doesn’t sound like he’s just missed sleep for a week. He’s perfectly conscious, it’s misleading. “How’d ya know to come?” 

Seungmin sucks his lips in and shrugs as best he can with Jeongin in his arms. “To be honest, I don’t know. I just had a bad feeling, and I knew to come here.” 

He remembers what he asked Felix before they arrived. “But you’ve never even been here, Min?” 

There are no answers. 

A bit agitated, Seungmin rallies, “Is there a reason I found you on the ground? Unable to move.” 

Taking a deep enough breath to keep him running, Jeongin explains what happened to Seungmin in as few words as he can manage, his tongue tripping on itself countless times, but Seungmin didn’t poke at it one bit, patiently listening, frown growing with each word. 

“Why would he do that?” he says as soon as it’s told. “That's completely unlike him. I can’t…”

“I know,” Jeongin sighs, “Whatever he saw in his vision, it must’ve been bad. We need to make sure he’s okay, Seungmin.” 

His friend is conflicted, looking between Jeongin and the door. “I want to...but I can’t leave you behind. You need to be taken care of too.” And here pops up a problem Jeongin hadn’t expected to ever come up. For Seungmin to have to pick between him and someone else. But he won’t ever let that become a thing. Baring his teeth he taps Seungmin’s chest. 

“Adjust me against your back,” he orders, “And get to the kitchens. From there, we can get Minho. He’ll be the best one for this.” His lids can barely stay open, but he gives Seungmin as fierce a staredown as he can. Neither he nor Felix will be abandoned. 

“Don’t choke me out.” 

Chapter Text

As he runs, he gains his full consciousness bit by bit. Still, he doesn’t waver. Even when he begins to see which path he’s taking, head pounding because he’s avoided this path with his entire being for so long. The dungeons. That’s where he’s going. 

It makes sick sense that this is where the warrior prince would disappear. 

No matter how labored breathing, how cramped his legs are, he doesn’t stop once. At such a relentless pace, in no time, he’s bounding the steps of the dungeons. At this point, he’s been going so long, he can’t even hesitate or think himself into a pit before he’s already in the dungeons. 

He’s glad his mind is already full. Or the simple sight of the rusted bars would have him on the floor. But the bars blur and meld together before him, and can only grimace. A vision. It’s coming on quicker and more zealous than ever. He turns and the light changes, the halls twisting and curving oddly. 

He’s here. 

Pulling at his pristine cuffs with shaking fingers, he puts one foot in front of another. The view gets distorted as he makes way, but he’s so focused ahead, it doesn’t bother him. Muffled sounds of struggle pronounce, he can hear the shouts, the pleas, the threats. 

For a moment, he’s blinded. Something floats in the center of the space, spiraling with something so raw and crude Felix can’t keep his eyes on it. It dies down, just enough for him to see. The scene he’s met with, is nothing short of horrific. 

Facing him, is the back of the prince’s head, the boy on his knees, as still as a leaf in a storm. And sprawled further out, is the queen, faint in an unknown man’s arms. The king. Felix as to bend down just a little, squatting to see who the other two figures are beneath the suspended material. 

His heart stops. 

The current king and queen of this kingdom stand in rough robes decorated with sticks and leaves. In all honesty, they look almost unrecognizable without gold bedazzling them to their cuticles. They don’t look human...or rather, they look like humans misshapen unnaturally. 

Blue skin, sharp nails, too thick cheekbones, hair a color only product could achieve. Eyes, irises opalescent, sclera ebony. It was like the veins showing through were veins shoved beneath their wrists and necks. 

Felix looks down at his hands, peachy with a warm undertone. Veins normal. Far from blue and branched. 

He settles on his knees, uncaring for the stone digging into his knees uncomfortably. He doesn’t fight it this time. He lets the vision overtake him completely without any resistance. There’s no possibility of interacting, of being taken by this vision. There’s no joy here. He’s seeing this because he must. 

If he had a choice though, for the person sitting before him, he still would do it all the same. 

“Why even bother?”

That’s a voice he recognizes all too well, ringing and piercing straight through his spine. That’s his mother’s...the queen’s...whoever the hell it was who paraded around in those roles, that was who spoke. The false sweetness was abandoned though, and Felix finally hears it bare. In all its condescending and cold glory. Just how he always knew it would be without her glamour. 

“You’re already fading, aren’t you?” she snorts cruelly, leaning to flick at the king. He winces, but her finger goes right through him. Like he himself was a vision. But he wasn’t He was real here. But not for much longer. “Why not just give up. You have no chance. The curse is already in motion. Doyle and I have magicked the entire castle. Any trace of you that ever existed, gone. The kingdom has been ransacked. Any precious souvenirs your people bear with your name or face. Destroyed. In a matter of no time, your entire existence will be forgotten, and everyone will think we’ve been the rightful rulers all along.” 

Broken down to its bits and pieces, Felix sees the entirety of the curse. The extents of its coverage, the depths of its cruelty, the severity of its punishment. But something was off. If that had all been true, there would have been no way he was here, learning about the curse, learning just what it prevented from being learned. 

He pays attention closer, even when it seems almost unbearable to look at the king and queen almost fading to nothing. All the work they’ve put into their peaceful kingdom, all the work they’ve put into keeping their staff happy and their son...Felix won’t look at him. It’ll break him to actually see it in reality. To see his crowned warrior prince, turn to nothing. Not even a memory. Pure. Nothing. 

But the crimson prince’s voice is as strong as ever. “Why are you doing this?” Broken. Utterly broken. Cracked, splintered, shattered. His voice was fragments of the one Felix had grown to know. All the laughter and sweetness, the warmth and gentleness, had been chipped to dust. 

She whips around to him, amusement morphing into a sneer. “This is how it’s supposed to be, stupid prince. My ancestors crafted this curse for us to perform. We’re meant to rule this kingdom, to have the power of the royal line. And you—” She steps closer, reaching out and swirling her finger tauntingly in the air “—Are to be forgotten by everyone. Insignificant beyond what can even be perceived.” 

Her hurled insults even twist Felix’s heart, he can’t imagine the state of the prince’s. The one he still refuses to look at, eyes steadfast ahead even when it causes significant distress to be staring at the woman he knows as a parent. Though to be more frank, he’s deeply considering if this is how she spoke to him, when he was locked in this very space, shackled to the wall. 

Grinning madly from ear to ear, satisfied in the way that disgusts everyone else, she reaches forward, ready to boop the boy’s nose, to go through it, adding salt to the wound. Her eyes widen when her finger lands. Felix finally looks down. The crimson prince is more solid than he’s ever seemed. While his parents fade fast, he’s still there, whole and existing. 

She draws away repulsed. “Why aren’t you fading? Are you illegitimate?” She stands and kicks him, whirling around as he yelps, holding his harmed shoulder. She towers over the parents, snarling. “Did you plan this? Did you do this to mock me?” 

But even they are surprised, shaking their heads frantically. It seems not for the woman, but for their son. The queen wakes just a bit to reach out for him even though she can’t move, and even if she could, she’d pass right through him. “I swear, you’re our son. I...I don’t know why he’s not fading.” 

Hope lies brightly beneath her shocked tone. It has Felix perking. There’s a twist here. 

Frustrated, the woman stomps her foot, exhaling. “Why won’t you disappear you stupid bug?” The king and queen begin pleading desperately as she once more approaches their son, grabbing his chin roughly, nails digging into his cheeks. From his place, Felix can’t even see the blur of his face. 

“Maybe this will speed it up,” she hums threateningly. She leans in close, whispering too quiet for Felix too hear, eyes an eerie milk white, gleaming dimly and ominously. When she utters her last syllable, smacking her lips together, it’s dead silent for a single second. 

And then he’s screaming. 

Felix scrabbles to his feet, shoving the heels of his palms to his ears, trying to block out the earsplitting cries, both for his hearing, and for the instant pain it brings him. But it doesn’t do much to help. He watches, appalled and nauseated as the warrior prince cries and shrieks in agony. It’s downright chilling when the prince begins to claw at his face. 

All can Felix see of the damage, is the mass of blood that slicks down the prince’s arms, down his neck, from his face into a giant puddle that pools and soaks the knees of his trousers. It’s...it’s so much. So much red, so much blood. And the prince won’t stop screaming. His parents muffled shouting, growing quieter and quieter in spite of their stress. 

Sorrowful beyond grief, Felix realizes, this is the last image they have of each other. They will watch their son writhe and bleed before being erased from existence. The prince watches them fade through a curtain of blood, blurred with immense torture. Neither parties, got to say their goodbyes. An end without closure. An end of absolute excruciating torment.

And then they’re gone, and Felix can feel the moment they disappear from everything forever on. Including his past mind. The woman with her honey voice and fingers that weaved love like others did thread. Her favorite color pale yellow like that of old book pages and well-churned butter. Her laugh worthy of its own instrument that she’d use to soothe her son, and his best friend, Felix himself. To sleep. It’s all that can even come to him, even now fully aware she had existed. 

He bites his lip hard. For the people in this vision won’t be able to hear his miserable sobs, but the people outside would. The sting is nothing in comparison to the battalion of woe that attacks his heart and mind all at once and he can’t even defend or guard himself because he’s too busy tracking ever action in this stupid vision. 

At the very absolute least, the crimson prince has stopped. And not because he was gone. He was choking on his breaths, spitting out blood and pink saliva onto the floor. Felix peers slightly around a loud clink penetrates his hand shields. Atop his blood, shining with a terrible beauty, stained brown, was gold jewelry, the chain Felix remembers distinctly, at the very top. The most defiled. 

“What’d you do?” he hacks out, voice rough. 

She stares down at him with pure distaste, as if he truly was the bug she called him. “It’s a simple hex. If you come into contact with gold, it will eat through your skin like acid. Not that it matters, you’ll be gone soon enough.” 

Felix takes that in, the full prospects of it. Gold, the royals’ source of power, accessorizing their every limb and appendage like they were born with it attached. The warrior prince had gold from his wrists to his ears to his neck, he had chains crisscrossed over the whole of his face . And it had all eaten away at him at once. The screaming from before suddenly seems awfully quiet in comparison to the boundless leagues of hurt that must have wrought. 

“What, will you kill me?”

Rolling her eyes she clucks her tongue. “I won’t have to. We studied well. There are no documents of you being a bastard. Either they planned this well, or you’re of their lineage. And any of their lineage, will fade.” He detects just the slightest hint of alarm in her frosty indifference. 

Growing agitated, she spins to her accomplice, hissing, “Doyle, did you not erase evidence of his existence through the castle?” 

“I did. Thoroughly.” 

Her mouth opens and Felix suspects Doyle to be verbally assaulted a ton over, but clear taps against the floor, frantic steps, ring through the dungeons. Every single one of them, including Felix, turn to see who it is. Cursing, he recognizes his own figure step through into the light, taking everything in with a rapidly draining face. A name spills from his lips soft and horrified. 

One he can’t hear. The warrior prince’s. 

He makes to look between them, anticipating the crushing feeling of the warrior prince’s reliable pillar crumbling to the ground. The image of someone you looked up to, someone you were sure was invincible somehow some way, utterly tarnished. But instead, he gets an even harsher slap to the face. 

The warrior prince’s face...it’s no longer blurred. Felix can see every part of it, in perfect clarity, from the bump of his nose, to the curve of his eyes, to the dimples brandished with blood. And most of all, he can see the undistilled dread that pulls at it all in heartbreaking severity. 

“Felix,” he breathes, like a prayer and a curse all in one, “You shouldn’t be here.” 

Not of his own accord, Felix’s body begins to move, and with no small amount of queasiness, he realizes his conscience has been merged with his past self’s. He’s seeing everything through his younger eyes, or, he’s seeing it again, remembering it in the worst lucidity possible. 

His fingers rise over his face, running over the parts where the warrior prince’s have been torn, unrecognizable beyond the gore. He doesn’t see the woman slowly move forward, transfixed by the damage of his most cared for person. 

“What a pretty thing,” he hears distantly, more focused on the resulting terror this elicits from the warrior prince. 

Everything slows. The warrior prince’s expression can’t show clearly, too mucked by ichor and tear, but it turns stony. With each click of the woman’s heels, he reaches out, grasping the pile of gold, jaw clenching and neck tensing with pain kept firm inside. Colors, no, gold of every shade you can think of begin to form in spots around him. His skin glows, dampened red. 

Felix hand stretches out, shouting and yelling. He pitches himself forward, throwing his arms around the prince. And they close around nothing. The warrior prince, the crimson prince bathed in his own lifeblood, is gone. A bleakness so sudden and intense he shudders and spasms beneath its crushing weight overtakes him. 

He’s gone. It echoes through both their minds, past and present. He’s gone. Choking on sobs, present Felix tries to detach himself from the vision, get away from it somehow, doing anything to stop being so close to it. To have to feel and experience each separate pound of grief twice over. 

His eyes catch on the gold band over his wrist. He twists it impulsively, watching the rich color catch and spark in the light. 

Oh. 

That’s why he hadn’t disappeared with his parents. The last remembrance of his existence hadn’t been destroyed. Even though it had only his initial, and definitely no form of his picture. It shouldn’t have stopped the curse, it wasn’t enough, a mere scratch in metal. But he’d accomplished it. Somehow the crimson prince had prevented his own disappearance, by gifting a part of him to Felix. 

Foolish prince. 

Is he actually dead? 

Maybe there had been substance to Minho’s question. One that changes everything. 

“Now who are you?” 

Shakily, Felix looks up. He knows now, without a doubt, this woman wasn’t his mother. His exhale quivers as her nail goes up and down the side of his face. 

“You’re gorgeous. You’d make a perfect prince...my Golden Prince.” 

And then everything goes dark.

When Felix opens his eyes, he’s staring up at the uneven stone ceiling, scattered with light. It’s cool and hard beneath his head, but most of all, it’s clean. Nothing seeps through his clothes or hair even though it overwhelmingly feels like something should be. His senses are confused. There’s only one thing he’s sure of, his world turned on its head and spun to eternity. 

He’s furious.

+

It’s off-putting, how casual the king and queen meander the halls. So much so, Hyunjin puts in twice the effort into sneaking behind them, despite being another servant dotting this castle, a mere pest who cleans and feeds in the majesties’ eyes. But a foreboding follows him just as close as he follows them, latched to him at the ankles like leeches. 

As much as he can feel it, only growing more prominent as the sun begins its ascent to the tip of the sky, he doesn’t expect it to come to fruition the way it does. 

Something pricks his hearing, disrupting it in the oddest way, his mind pulled to the sound before he can even glance its way. Defined footsteps, slow and fast at the same time. They’re taken with no hurry, but all the purpose in the world. 

Instant puzzlement floods him. Felix, blank-eyed and not bothering to clean the mess of blood on his face, stomping with more anger than Hyunjin thought he could possess. To say the sight was disturbing was an understatement. 

It gets no better as Hyunjin recognizes where Felix is heading, darting his eyes anxiously between the queen and king just a hundred feet in front of him, a hundred and fifty away from Felix. There was nothing obscuring them of their son, and nothing preventing them from experiencing whatever said boy plans to do. 

Exposed and unguarded, the family portrait sits upon the wall, shadowing its prince. 

With no contemplation, Hyunjin abandons post, darting to his friend. “Felix.” He keeps his voice soft. Usually, that’s all it takes. To grab Felix’s attention, to keep it. It sends a deep spike through his heart when Felix doesn’t even look his way, ripping the curtains down aggressively. The pair lands on the floor in a massive heap, more than all of Felix’s bedding combined could create. 

Hopping over it, Hyunjin grabs the prince’s arm, tugging it lightly. “Felix,” he parrots, tone harsher, “What are you doing? You have to stop, your parents are close.” 

Something in that works, though not in the way Hyunjin had hoped. He has Felix’s focus now, but he’s not sure that it’s being put to good use. Felix looks pissed . It honestly scares Hyunjin a bit despite the other being shorter and less trained than he. It’s more than appearance though. Something wretched lurks in the shadows of Felix’s pupils, swallowing brown irises. Paired with the blood, Felix showed a side everyone had yet to see. 

It didn’t fit with the atmosphere. It was the wrong time for it to be present now. Not so riskily. 

Is this the same terror, amplified, as Minho had felt when they were little kids, sneaking about the castle when the windows were dark and the torches snuffed. It had to be different, no question. A decade later, under broad daylight, everything lit, everything but the golden prince himself. 

Eyebrows drawn close, like it took a monumental effort for Felix to see Hyunjin and speak to him. “They’re not. Not one bit.” 

“Eh?” 

Physically and figuratively, he’s shaken off, with an unexpected roughness that has him sitting atop a pile of curtain, thrown for an absolute loop. And he can’t...he can’t stand. He pushes hard, but his hands slip and fall further into the sinkhole of prim seamed fabric. Even when he falls completely to the ground, coughing with the dust that flies from the age old drapes. He can’t get up. 

Dire sinks its hooks into him slow and sure. 

He cranes his head up, gasping, “Felix, what the hell?” Swallowing his tongue, he gazes mystified and bewildered where Felix’s hand rests, upon his own painted face. Seconds tick by, each one more painful than the last, each pronounced with a drop of blood.

As abrupt and swift as a firework into the night, Felix digs his nails into the brush strokes of his crown, and tears into the canvas. The sound is just as sharp, just as ear shattering. Hyunjin can’t look back, but he knows, practically seeing in physical waves, the noise travels through the halls, violently strident. 

Time stills, Felix’s eyes piercing blanking into whatever he’s revealed. Whatever he sees, off puts him, one way or another, and the hold on Hyunjin was lifted. He wastes no time. He jumps up and pushes Felix onto the ground, taking his place before the painting, heart palpitating. 

It’s silent now. 

Their gazes meet, fearful and dumbfounded each. A chill settles over Hyunjin's skin, beneath his clothes, reaching to the pit of his chest. Shaking his head over and over, small movements of horror, Felix’s constricting pupils stray past Sam, unfocused and dull where they rest. Words leak from his mouth unspoken, shaping his lips like a tormenting mold. All Hyunjin can make out from the misshapen mess is…

No. No. NO.

Leaden on his feet, sluggish despite the blaring alarms ringing inside his entire being, he manages a turn. All in one fatal hit, Hyunjin realizes why Felix loathes gold as much as he does. It looks less like accessory on the queen, and more like armor, sharp and predatory, polished just perfectly to make even her sickly appearance, shine. 

He knows deep down she wears it all, despite the caving dents they probably hollowed into the bones that jut out from her chest and face, for a purpose. But he can’t help but feel like it’s all a mockery, and if he’s finally able to draw up her personality right, a stark contrast to when he first met her in person awed and grateful, it’s both. A threat and a tease all at once. 

I’m the queen. My life is more significant than you. Your life, is in my talons. 

He’d hated the king more, knowing on the surface, he’d been the one to toss Felix and Minho into their cells. Now, he can’t help but switch that perspective. There was no doubt in his mind that whatever had been done to Felix, to any of them, to Sam, when they were but helpless children, not yet grown enough to fight back, she’d calculated. 

He desperately hopes that now, they were grown enough to fight back. 

+

Minho wasn’t just shocked. His entire being felt inverse, turned inside out against his violation. It feels like someone took the globe he walks on, and decided to flick it for just a bit more acceleration. It shows, his feet unsteady where they have never been before, his hands unsure where they’ve always been poised. 

What Jeongin tells him, a straight-lipped bloodied prince had employed magic against him. Felix. Had employed magic against him. Jeongin, one of the three that catalyzed this entire ring of hell that had befallen them. It’s an out of body experience.

“You can walk now, mostly right?” Minho asks, voice so flat it’s a worse tell of the instability of his core than if it had cracked and wavered. His teeth are gritted right through his cheek, iron blooming over his tongue. He hopes it doesn’t show through his jaw and lips when he turns back to face the boys who suddenly intercepted he and Jone while in the kitchens. 

Jeongin lifts his foot experimentally, twisting it and waving it with only a slight wobble in his other. That and his nod are indicative enough. Still, Seungmin stands close, as deceptively unphased as Minho, his fingers quivering from where they hold ever so tightly around Jeongin’s. Seeing Jeongin however he had, had shaken him. Bad. 

Minho understands well. 

Jone is the most put together of them all, though that’s not to say he’s any more calm. He paces back and forth between the two parties, a vein popping from his neck and his lip firm between his teeth. As soon as Jeongin can stand he stops, arms crossed oddly over his chest, like he was protecting himself from something when he seemed the least vulnerable. It was another dizzying contradiction of this world to pile onto another. Minho can’t handle it, keeping his stare straight ahead. 

The flint in it is certainly dead now. 

They begin walking before even bothering to talk again. If all but Jeongin were not in constant motion at the moment, they might walk themselves through a wall with their restlessness. “I have a very bad feeling,” Jone says as they start into the halls, quiet but his words carry well to their ears. It’s a bit fruitless. They all have very bad feelings. 

It’s a bit different with Jone though. No matter how many things that have hurtled at them, Jone has remained steadfast, thrown off, but sure of something deep in his mind that kept him looking forward optimistically or at the very least, looking forward at all. He’d speak of no bad feeling unless it struck him with no mercy. 

“If things go downhill, can I trust you all to listen to whatever I say.” He peeks back, eyes flashing dangerously and fearfully, like a cornered feral. “Everything from this point out will be to keep you safe, and I’m only saying that so you won’t doubt me.” 

Honestly, Minho wants to say no, defy whatever tangible will Jone has over them, but he can’t. It’s not just he won’t. Physically, it feels he can’t deny, nodding involuntarily. It’s shocking to see Seungmin and Jeongin do the same, with just as much ease in spite of the great uncertainty staining their faces. 

Exhaling with puffed cheeks, Jone tilts his head back, squeezing his eyes for just a second. “You better not have made a mistake in choosing me, you stupid princeling.” To them, he says one last thing, and against all odds, it proves effective. “Stay calm. No matter what the king and queen throw at us right now. Stay calm. At least until the lights go out.” 

Minho is glad, so glad, he said it right when he did. Had he been a few seconds later, he would’ve been belated in containing the utter panic that spirals haywire within Minho when they come face to face with their worst enemies. 

And Hyunjin and Felix standing between them, invisible chains bonding them to the king and queen, keeping them in check, trapped in place. Seeing Felix like that, has Minho completely at a loss, keeping firmly still, the slightest twitch enough of an outlet to lead to his impending madness. 

“Oh, perfect,” the king mutters, sardonic, “I think you all will be the perfect witnesses.”

The only one any of them believe in enough to speak is Jone. And he does so, the only tell of his anxiety in the spazzing of his fingers behind his back, jumping over one another in a frantic rhythm. “Can you elaborate, Your Majesty?” 

“We’re going to be holding a small trial for your friend here, Sam, for conspiratorial treason.” 

All noise drains away into nothingness, void and hollow. It seems that’s all Minho can hear. Behind him, Seungmin and Jeongin helplessly look to Jone, who meets the king’s stare dead on, jaw clenched. He told them to stay calm, and against all odds raised from hell, they manage to. 

It’s less out of fear for themselves now, but for Hyunjin's fate. They make one wrong move and his life may not be any longer. 

Spots dance before Minho’s vision. He’s made his whole life about protecting Felix, relying on Hyunjin with the same ferocity. Yet it wasn’t Minho who stood in the shadows of execution. Minho who the king and queen hated because he kept their son above silt waters. It wasn’t Felix in danger despite it being his life's brand. 

It was Sam, who danced and drew with more vigor that Minho sometimes didn’t even think he could possibly possess. Hyunjin who slipped and snuck from danger like it was his career, never once getting in trouble. It’s how they found him, in the menacing queen’s lap, because he’d been so perfect in his performance, he’d even fooled the queen. She’d been ready to use him like another pawn in keeping her son how she wanted. 

The queen’s favorite wasn’t a good title, especially among them, but it had ensured him safety. Up until now. 

Or maybe, this had been in the works the entire time. She’d always plan to use her favorite against Felix. It was entirely too expected. Yet Minho had never imagined it. Really, he couldn’t imagine Hyunjin's life ever snuffing. He imagines the boy draping over his back just yesterday, content and comfortable because after so long, they couldn’t be anything but when around each other. 

Minho should’ve held him tighter. 

Stay calm. Wait until the lights go out. He can trust Jone. He has no other choice. 

Knowing how much a game this was to her, and how aware they all were of the fact, the queen basks in her cruelty, practically shivering from the satisfaction it granted her. Tapping long sharp fingernails against gold plated earrings, the noise deafening amidst their silence, she giggles, covering her mouth like it was a slip. Even the mice scurrying luckily behind walls knew it was fully intentional. 

Anger is a good rival for grief, and Minho has rarely felt so much so strong. Still, he remains calm. Masks were his specialty, and he’d passed it on best he could to his two friends. Based on their utter lack of reaction, he can bittersweetly suppose he did well. Though he far prefers a reality in which that never had to be a skill of necessity, and Felix and Hyunjin could be as bare hearted as their personalities told. 

The thought seemed a dream. 

“Treason hasn’t been committed in so long,” the queen drawls. Minho has to grit his teeth to the point where he fears he may chip them. But it was either that or risk their entire groups’ demise like his heart screamed for him to do. He can’t imagine any of the others are internally faring any better, in spite of the persistent aloofness they don. 

“It’s such a peaceful kingdom, and we truly give so much to rule it so. “

That was laughable, downright hilarious. 

“Treason is unthinkable here...but the only punishment for an act so severe, directly against your majesties themselves, is punishable by death,” she sighs as if it saddens her, tears her molded heart to two and drops it to the hell of her stiletto heels to be stabbed relentlessly with her selfish steps. “And who am I….to go against the traditions of our previous kings and queens?” 

Her eyes float to the top of her lids, eyelashes fluttering like ash over them. “Though to be honest, I may consider going against them. Or not. But those queens and kings—” she peeks at Felix and Minho can see the prince see it and ignore it, shoulders rising to the tips of his reddening ears. “—Princesses, and princes . They were all incompetent...Insignificant.” 

It’s like watching a horror play go down a mere few feet from him. But he’s apart of. Far too invested in the story and characters, being one himself. Felix’s eyes snap wide open, his entire body going stiffer than bark in winter. Something, anger so volatile it’s physical, covers Felix in entirety, dripping over him and rolling from his skin to blend in with the scarlet floor. 

The impossible becomes possible right there, and never in the ways Minho expected, never in the ways he wanted. 

Felix spins on his heels and glares up into her face, not an ounce of restraint in the loathing of his stance or expression. It’s pure abhorrence, built, crafted, and polished from the scraps of life Felix has been thrown like meat to a hound. “You have no right to ever call them that again.” 

Minho forgets, so used to it, how deep Felix’s voice is, tumbling from his mouth like the smoothed rocks of a ferocious stream, strong and dark. Now, it’s so low it falls heavy onto the queen’s toes, truly surprising her, and coating the air with a prominent hatred that spreads and stretches, malleable, unbreakable. 

“They were better people, better rulers, better magic-users. You, you’re the true nothing.” 

Shock. 

It permeates thickly through the atmosphere and chooses the queen as its worst victim, smiling just as sickeningly as she had as it twists and morphs her features beyond what was human disgust. It’s deeply disturbing, but a hell of a lot satisfying on so many levels. 

It’s quick to shatter though. “Doyle,” she mutters, tone so empty it’s terrifying, “Dungeons.” 

Felix isn’t quick enough to react, helpless as the king abandons Hyunjin to grab his own son by the collar, hoisting him into the air so roughly he scrabbles at his neck and chokes. As his face colors, with too many things to pick apart, the torches sway and flicker, a ritualistic dance of their own like they’re celebrating. 

They go out. And then Felix screams. 

It almost doesn’t sound like his scream, pushing out so many hurts and griefs into one single agonized noise. A gust of wind, no, something , pushes past them with no mercy, pushing them all on their toes. 

Minho, feeling so weak, eyes welling, hands slapping to his ears because he has to be there for Felix but no, no not again. Not again, please not again. He falls, completely topples to his back. Seungmin can’t catch him, holding Jeongin. Both Jeongin and Hyunjin seem too weak, too lost, to try. But it’s not like Minho is even aware of all that. 

He’s writhing on the ground in tune to his golden prince’s screams and he’s so, so small, reversed and shoved into a body too cramped for his conscience, claustrophobia clawing through his throat and lungs. 

“Minho!” 

Feeling sick and faint, Minho looks hazily up at the voice, panting for any air. Dark eyes, as deep as the midnight ocean, but so deceptively shallow Minho sees himself dizzily wading through them under stalactites and stars melded fatally together. He hopes distantly for them to pierce his heart, for Jone to put him out of this constant misery that never leaves him. 

Like Jone would ever. 

The other slaps his chest, hard enough Minho can hear it over the screaming. Allowing not a second of failed recuperation, Jone pulls him up forcefully to his feet, pulling Minho’s hands from his ears and holding them so tight they’ll both end up with bruises. “Minho,” he urges, calm belying the chaos raging contained around them. “We need to go now. You trust me, right?” 

Yes, but—

“Felix,” he gasps, like water was overtaking his body and closing around his head, “Felix! I need to...The dungeons.” He tries to run past Jone, but the other easily catches him and holds him into place where he goes limp against his will. He slaps pitifully at Jone’s arm, but Jone is already pacing into a steady run, getting farther and farther from the prince and his earth shattering screech. 

“No!” he sobs, lightheaded on how much effort it takes to parse the words leaving his mouth when he can hardly see beyond his panic. “I need...I need to be with Felix! I have to be there! I have to protect him! Please, please, please. Let me be there. I don’t care how much they hurt me I have to make sure he’s okay!” 

It looks like it pains him, but Jone covers his mouth, uncaring for the slobber and snot that dribble over the backs of his fingers. “He’ll be okay. I promise. He’s going to make it out of here just like the rest of us. But if you go with him, it’ll be impossible to get him back. Can you run with me, so we can keep him safe?...Please, Minho.” 

It’s a spell. It has to be. There’s no other way for the cries festering straight from the roots of his heart to die out so suddenly, a temporary clarity roughly struggling for its place in his head. “On your life?” 

There’s a wince to be seen there but he’s too clouded to see it. Jone just nods and Minho goes pliant, exhausted of all fight. He knows it’s an off putting himself. He didn’t look like himself, much less feel like himself. He just wants to see Felix again, away from the queen and king. He’ll die for it. 

But that’s not who he is. 

“What do I do?” he rasps. 

Lips pursed in concentration, Jone pushes him onto Seungmin, grabbing Jeongin in exchange, who’s no longer limping. “Seungmin, you know the edge of the forest where we were riding our horses. I know you do, Sam.” 

Ah, so they all had to run from Felix. Even Sam. Minho can’t even look at him, ashamed for breaking down so intensely when they were all just trying their best to escape and allow for a rescue of Felix. Felix, who was just as important to the queen’s favorite, a sick irony. 

Seungmin nods, blinking rapidly. He’s not nearly as shaken as Minho, but he’s extremely out of balance, and scared. 

“Go beyond there. Stop when you can’t be seen by anyone in the field. I’ll see you there.” 

“Where are you going?” 

“King,” supplies Jeongin, voice cracking. No one acknowledges it. “And the notebook. Things we need.” 

It’s so painfully strained, but Jone ruffles Jeongin’s hair, teeth bared proudly. 

Minho thinks that’s a good sight to see as his last before passing out, falling into the stable hold of Seungmin’s arms. Seungmin is taller than him, he remembers. Like Sam. Felix is shorter. Minho needs to be carried so badly, his legs breaking down without any prevention, but he knows the thing that would help him most, would be carrying the prince instead. 

He trusts Jone to let that happen before Minho’s life is altered beyond repair.

Chapter Text

He feels like he’s been hit in the head with a brick. Frankly, he prefers if he had been. Then his mind might be a little less full, congested with thoughts he can’t even think to dispel, so much it clogs his expression into a startling blankness. 

The stick in his hand that he’s repeatedly stabbed into the dirt has expended its value of entertainment. Clicking his tongue quiet enough to blend in with the swaying of leaves and chattering of birds and other animals hidden in their brushes and earthen homes. He flicks his wrist and watches the stick sail into the air, landing with a small splash into the calm creek that sluggishly pulls onward. 

If he weren’t so occupied, he’d be spending every second he could examining the area around him. This was his first time out of the kingdom, and as far as his memory reached, his first time ever leaving the castle grounds. Ever. The event should've been momentous in every sense. 

Literally. The clean air prickling his dry lips, the absolute harmony of sounds that harasses his ears either used to complete dead silence or heavy bustling, rough bark beneath his palms which have only ever been roughed against the hilt of a crude sword, the array of tones his eyes have never experienced. It was so much prettier than the harshly rich hues that bled over the castle’s walls and floors like an assault. 

Mind over matter is a powerful concept. And right now, all that Minho can feel and hear and touch or taste, is numbed to nothing. White noise and baseless static. Fatigue wears down on all his edges, making him bleary and blurred. Worry smudges his every straight line and telling curve, any picture put before him abstracted. 

He needs rest, but he hasn’t gotten a blink of sleep since he woke up after passing out in the castle, coming to in Hyunjin's arms because Seungmin slightly worried he’d be attacked if it were him in the situation after all that had happened. 

He wasn’t entirely wrong. Minho would’ve been just as fine in his arms as Hyunjin's. But knowing at least one of his lifelong friends wasn’t rotting in a dungeon was a papercut of relief. It granted him enough sanity to collect his senses just enough to crush them. 

He shouldn’t have thrown that stupid stick. 

Kicking over the severe hole he had punctured into the ground with his antsy violent tendencies, he peers over at the other two. He expects to see Seungmin with his hand on Hyunjin's shoulder, pulling him close as he appeases the shock and fright from what had happened. He doesn’t expect to find Seungmin approaching him, plopping down beside him on the damp log and wincing as it soaks through his pants. 

Concluding swiftly that there was no use in fussing over it, Seungmin relaxes with only the slightest discomfort in the downturn of his lips. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so quiet,” he comments meaningfully, seeking eyes acid to Minhos’s detached front. 

“Well, you haven’t known me long.” 

Seungmin snorts in spite of the bite edged into Minho’s voice. “I don’t think time really applies logically to any of our situation. I don’t really know as much as I could about you. That can change. But after all that…” He trails off. It’s not like he has to continue. He may not know Minho well, but he has seen him at his most vulnerable. He's seeing him now. That’s not something you can erase. 

Closing his fingers tight enough to make crescents burn into his palms, he pointedly turns his head away from his company. He hopes Seungmin will just leave and continue to comfort Sam. And at that, he feels another spike of shame. Hyunjin was the one whose life had been endangered. He was the one who had been beside Felix in the king and queen’s clutches. Minho should be with him too, he’s known him longer, he knew what would ease Sam. 

Even with this, he remains rooted to the log. As in denial as he wants to be about his floundering feelings, he knows full well he’s in no state to be comforting. Not when he was in just as much need of...Aggressively he runs his hand through his hair, letting it fall back over his eyes. He just needs them back together. All six of them. 

“Now don’t do that,” Seungmin huffs, flicking Minho’s shoulder, “Come sit with me and Sam.” 

Affronted just a bit, Minho gives him a stern but feeble glare. “Do what?” 

He doesn’t get an answer for a solid half-minute. Seungmin contemplating how he should answer. It was clear he knew exactly what he was saying, but he was probably trying to deliver it in a way that wouldn't further tip the already toppling Minho. He holds his two hands out, and slowly brings them together. 

“Close yourself off. You’re not even trying to act like you’re fine, Minho, you just want to look tougher than what you’ve been through. Who will that help though? Yourself? Sam?...Felix?” 

Minho’s teeth grind against each other, his shoulders rising and falling once with finality. Grumpily, he side-eyes Seungmin. “Low blow.” 

The other shrugs. “I’m just being honest. We’re going to be getting Felix back soon.” He says it with such conviction and certainty Minho feels a twirling part of him still and settle. “And something tells me he’s gonna need you most when he comes back.” 

All at once several blocks fall into place and Minho feels significantly lighter. He trusts Jone to bring Felix back, more than he probably should. So he just needs to wait for them to come. He needs to recover, or it’ll only be worse for both Felix and him.

“You’re too reasonable,” he scoffs, like it’s an insult. It’s anything but. In fact, it’s something he incredibly admires. Minho is logical, but easily swayed by emotions, giving into them without ever showing it. Seungmin, Seungmin doesn’t unless it has to do with Jeongin. And maybe them now. 

Seungmin sees that, smirking subtly as he stands, glad to get off the wet surface. “Well, c’mon, Hyunjin has been more concerned about you angsting over here than his recent witnessing of traumatic events.”

Rolling his eyes with a dramatic sigh, Minho gets to his feet too, walking over to where Hyunjin is indiscreetly eyeing him with the worried look of an overbearing mother. He glances over the treeline at the looming castle towers, heart squeezing. 

Felix will be alright. He has to be.

+

It’s hell, being in the dungeons. He suspects with much distrust in the woman he once knew as his mother, that she placed him against this exact wall on purpose. Just feet away from where the prince had vanished, and his parents erased. Every time he looks ahead, he sees the scene play out before him, all over again. 

It takes all of him not to break down in one way or another, shaking and trembling, audible in the quake and clack of the chains attached to his wrists and ankles. He’s tried using his magic, because he knows now he can, but whatever had overcome him before, had gone void. Even with the golden crown remaining on his head. 

He wonders why they didn’t take it. Further, he wonders how it gave him magic at all. All signs point to him not being a royal. 

But there are too many questions, and no way of answering them. All of them seem so tiny anyways when he’s here, locked up in the place he’d been locked up before, where his life had fallen apart twice over. He desperately wishes this won’t be a third and fatally final time. 

Most of all, he wants-needs to know if his friends were okay. The last he had seen of them, Hyunjin had been being escorted to his inevitable execution, and Minho had been on the verge of a panic attack watching. Not to mention Jeongin had been injured, by Felix nonetheless. Magic had overflowed him, keeping the king and queen distracted, knocking out the lights, just enough to give them a chance of escape. 

But the imposter king and queen were cruel and swift. He doesn’t know how bloodlusted they were, but he knew they were merciless. They’d burnt whole villages down, probably killed just as many, and Felix knows well what lengths they would go to uselessly torture someone already on the brink of decease. Who knows what they’d do to his friends if they got ahold of them. 

He shudders impossibly more, his breathing labored. 

A minute more in this damned place, and the last of his sanity might crumble to nothing. 

But he’s not granted even the luxury of that. Heels resound through the winding halls, ricocheting off each wall, piercing him straight through the gut. Brief flashes of memories he’d lost pound within his head. He was familiar with this. 

His knees curl to his chest and he stuffs his face in them, tears sliding over his dirtied and ripped pants. They land on the floor accompanying the warrior prince’s tears of the long ago past. 

Don’t forget me . 

Strangely enough, he feels the crimson prince’s presence beside him, encircling him as the real one would’ve. It’s comforting against all odds. It hurts as much as it heals. It’s also frustrating. This is the only place he can feel him, when all he wants do do is leave. 

He has no choice in the matter, and it’s gut-wrenchingly clear when the clicks come to a stop,  Right in front of him.

“Now tell me, My Golden Prince. When did you learn about the curse?”  

+

Jeongin still feels like he’s been run over with a boulder and just happened to rapidly recover. He’s sore in the randomest of places of his body, like his left elbow and right collarbone. Oddly, that perhaps made it more uncomfortable. He’d never realized before how nice it was to have those go without pain. It was bothersome, but not nearly enough to impede him. He moves quicker than he ever has, quicker than any dance he and Seungmin paced to, any race he partook in, he was faster than ever. 

He’s quite shaken, and it’s a great shock he doesn’t trip over himself or run straight into Jone’s back as they sprint to Felix’s room. They can’t leave the information they’ve gathered behind. And they for sure can’t leave the innocent kitten to fend for itself whenever the king and queen unavoidably ransack Felix’s room for evidence of his betrayal. 

Everything is fresh in his mind, and understandable considering the peak of it had only been a few minutes ago, less if he was optimistic about their time. Felix trapping him with the magic that still lingers like growing pains whispering through his skeleton. Seungmin somehow finding him on the floor without any way of knowing how to. Running into Hyunjin and Felix trapped right into the king and queen’s bloodied claws. Then Minho, it didn’t shock neither he nor Seungmin as much as it could’ve, Minho losing it so severely. 

Each person had their limits, no matter how strong they were, and Minho had reached his when Felix was roughly taken to the dungeons. 

It was a lesson forced upon Seungmin and Jeongin when they were kids. Limits were stretched and pushed at every moment in the dingy villages. They watched each person they cared for and admired reach theirs at different points. That’s also why Jeongin knows Minho will rebound. And quick most likely. 

But that depends on whether or not Felix makes it out of this. Jeongin thinks that may reshape all their limits. 

Breaths leaving them in heavy pants and bouts when they reach Felix’s door. Jone wastes no time wrenching it open and rushing in, grabbing a bag, not caring the mess he leaves behind. He stuffs the notebook and storybook in it among some other essentials they may need, or anything that might comfort Felix when they break him out. Jeongin hasn’t heard a bit of that plan, but he’s sure it’s in formation. It has to be. 

Jeongin quickly makes a crude carrier out of one of Felix’s thick coats, picking up the curious and worried King and depositing her in it. She mewls loudly at him but stops when he boops her nose, the small action alleviating just the slightest of stress from his mind. 

“I wish one of them had been able to come with me,” Jone huffs helplessly, joining Jeongin in the doorway for the single breather they’re going to get until they reach the forest. “I don’t know what they need.” 

“If it’s not too dangerous,” Jeongin suggests, “When we get Felix, we can come back up here.” 

Instantly, Jone shakes his head, a bit of doubt that irks Jeongin tainting his exhausted frown. “None of us will be coming back into this castle if the king and queen are still here if I can do anything to help it.” 

Jeongin is about to mention Felix again, but something insistent is keeping Jone from approaching that topic just yet. Reasoning in his head that they can’t do anything yet until they’ve recuperated just a bit, and until they know how to evade or take on the queen, they can’t discuss it too lengthily. Even as he realizes it, he dreads. 

They’re so unprepared. So wholly overpowered, it seems hopeless. 

He won’t let himself corner himself into those thoughts. Being despondent won’t help them here. Even as it tugs at his heart painfully. 

“You got what we need?” 

“Yeah, let’s go.” 

Looking back at his last safe haven, where he’d found someone more than Seungmin to lean on, he takes his first step into whatever this new life he’s been thrown him, and he makes it a running one. 

+

The day slowly fades into the night, the stars staring down at them with a glum shine. It feels like at least a week has passed since Felix tore that painting, but it hasn’t been more than an hour. It certainly feels like it’s been that long to Sam. But he knows distinctly that just last night he had fallen asleep cuddling against Jeongin. Jeongin who isn’t yet back from the castle. 

He stares anxiously up at the castle from where they sit. They hadn’t gone too far. Jone had just told them to go past the trees, where no guards would find them. So it makes it all the more worrying that he and Jeongin hadn’t returned. It hadn’t taken them more than half an hour to get this far, even lugging an unconscious Minho along. 

Surprisingly, Seungmin is the least worried of them all. There’s the extra unknown weighing heavy on each of them, about Felix, but they’d think Seungmin would be two times what they were. Jeongin was his one place of total comfort, and he was somewhere they couldn’t see. 

Said person feels his burning stare and looks up from where he’s sitting on the dirt, a dry leave crushed between his fingers. He raises an eyebrow in question. 

Hyunjin blurts, “How are you so calm? Shouldn’t you be the most concerned of us all? Your life partner or soulmate or whatever still isn’t here.” 

He’s sent a scornful glance from Minho like he’s being told to tamp down, but he ignores it. It’s not like Seungmin reacts negatively. In fact, he seems a bit perplexed, lips thinned out and eyes faraway. 

“If he were in any trouble,” he finally murmurs, “I’d know. That’s how I knew to find him in the castle before.” 

How are they supposed to respond? With more questions they already know Seungmin doesn’t have the answers to? They let the sound of the cicadas and birds chirping fill the tense air, somehow leaving so much rigid space to drown in. 

Leaves rustle. With more than wind. 

Seungmin and Minho get to their feet, Hyunjin bracing against the boulder he’s sat at. Hope blooms bright within them but it’s restrained by a healthy does of wariness, now ingrained deep in their cores. 

It feels like the first real breath he’s taken, a large relieved sigh, as Jone stumbles through the brushes, holding his knees with an air of exhaustion, his legs trembling. Minho rushes forward and practically catches him, prompting Seungmin to do the same much more gently when Jeongin comes stepping through, holding a meowing bundle tight to his chest. 

Dramatically holding a hand over his heart, Hyunjin breathes, “Another second and I might’ve gone into cardiac arrest.” 

From where Minho drops him to the floor, Jone smiles appreciatively, before falling back completely against a pile of leaves, shutting his eyes and letting his chest slow. Jeongin rolls his eyes, barely peeking out from over Seungmin’s shoulder as Minho delicately extracts King from the carrier. “You’re too theatrical.” 

“I’m not theatrical enough, little fox.” 

Petting King softly in his arms, making sure she doesn’t escape but letting her get used to the new surroundings, Minho looks at Jone trepidatively. “No Felix?” he asks, voice giving into a higher pitch unnatural for him. 

It goes dead silent. 

Opening his eyes and staring hard at the sky, Jone suddenly stands, wiping plants from his clothes. “Not yet. We should move before it’s pitch black. The guards might go farther out too at our escape and we have to make sure they won’t intercept us.” 

It’s a wonder the back of his top catches fire with the intensity of Minho’s stare. Seungmin lets Jeongin on his back and they set off, Jone taking the lead. “Where are we going to go?” the youngest reasonably questions, shifting with discreet nervousness. 

It takes a moment for Jone to respond. Hyunjin wonders if it’s the recent events that have made him jerkier and more potent with his deflections, or if there’s something else holding his tongue tighter than before, snapping at his leaping feet like piranhas. 

“Don’t worry,” is all he gives cryptically, and by Minho’s souring expression, Hyunjin has to ponder how many times he’s been told that in the past hour alone. “We’ll be safer there. Safer than anywhere in the village, safer than anywhere in the castle, and perhaps one of the safest places in the forest. No one will find us there.” 

Pushing a branch out of the way and pausing, Jone looks purposefully back at Minho, apologetic. He knows just how much he’s withholding, about their destination and about the estimated time it will take them to get their friend back. “There, we’ll definitely figure out how to get Felix back. And…” 

He groans, biting his lip and dropping the branch, facing them. They’ve come to an abrupt stop, each of their feet sore, even those who haven’t been hit with Felix’s magic. They’ve been walking so long, from the castle, and now for wherever they’re going. And to them, it feels like they’re going to keep walking and walking, strolling circles around an endless globe of unanswered questions and worries. They don’t know where they’ll end up, they don’t know where Felix is, that’s only two crucial pieces of information they’re sorely missing. 

“It’s clear I’ve been hiding things,” Jone starts with, and Hyunjin forgets about the pain in his heels and the throbbing of his chest. All his absent and wandering attention come rushing back in a single slap to Hyunjin's face. It’s one thing for them all to know it, never verbally acknowledging it but nonverbally by letting it sit and never pestering for more when Jone leaves all his answers open-ended. It’s another for the man himself to point it out. An entirely different thing. 

“And I know you’re probably so tired of me just asking for your trust without giving you anything in return,” he continues, dropping his head with a shame that seems more of courtesy than anything. His sincerity though, rings true. He doesn’t regret his secrets, but he’s guilty to keep it all from them of all people.

 “And I’m so thankful for you for still believing in me. I haven’t given any reason to. This is the last time I’ll ask for you guys to trust me. And then...then it’s completely up to you.” 

In spite of his hour’s behavior, Minho is the first to step forward, laying a solid hand on Jone’s shoulder. “You’ve given us many reasons to trust you. It hasn’t backfired on us yet, right? Just don’t lead us to our deaths, prick.” 

It’s just enough to lighten Jone, in fact, more than any of them expected. A new light sparks in his eyes, one he doesn’t bother to hide, that they’ve never seen before. “Oh, it’s the opposite of death. Don’t be fooled by appearances.” 

With a new gusto, they’re escorted through a path not worn, but clearly trailed by Jone himself. Every now and then he taps a certain tree, brows furrowed as he examines the pattern of the bark and the arrangement of the branches before moving on. 

Gradually, he comes to a stop, right before a clearing. He’s oddly stiff. But...he seems more relaxed than they’ve ever seen them. Excitement buzzes beneath his skin so much so it exudes into his aura, spreading around them like harmless fuzz-covered bees. 

On instinct, Jeongin slowly descends to the floor, Seungmin wrapping a protective arm around his waist as they all take a single step forward. Except for Jone. Jone takes a leap, and then bounds into the clearing, shouting wordlessly, his sounds of exuberance as bright and bountiful as the singing of the birds. 

They peek through the curtain of the forest, varying shocks painting their faces when they spot a tent, and swiftly leaving it, a figure, shorter than any of them. They wait at the shelter’s entrance, holding their arms out, and like the eureka moment in a thousand-piece puzzle set, Jone fits right in them, looking rather small despite his inch or so of extra height. 

It’s enough of a reassurance for them to step over the invisible boundary, the moon clearer here than any part of the forest they’ve traversed thus far. Hyunjin can’t help but stare at it longer than the scene before him, feeling like it was too intimate of a moment for him to view. It seems duller than usual, even as it illuminates everything around them. 

Jone’s happy sobs are the best thing they’ve heard all day, blended with laughter like a pretty ombre. It lasts a little while, but no one objects to it. Clearly, this is something Jone has been needing, and even if it hadn’t been, it was making him gleeful enough for the lot of them. 

As it dies down, he finally calls them over, taking Hyunjin's idle gaze from the glum sky. He’s clinging to the other person, practically wrapped around them like the tail of a cat. The width of his smile is enough to rival the expanse of a snow-covered plain doused in sunlight. It’s blinding. No one looks away. 

“Everyone, this…” He’s breathless, like he can’t quite believe he’s able to do this. Honestly, it’s probably not something he ever thought he’d be able to. And he’d have been right before Felix’s visions. “This is my best friend in the entire world, Changbin!” 

The other's, Changbin's, smirk is a severe understatement of the relief and cheer that plays over his eyes, more expressive than any single feature Hyunjin has seen on anyone. They darken visibly, matching the stony and aloof demeanor he seems to naturally hold, shadowed by messy uncut bangs and skepticism. 

“I’m Changbin,” he iterates with a nod, gaze lazily gliding over each of them, taking them in and assessing them with a precision. Hyunjin knows instantly, just then, where Jone gets his casual yet soul-searching gaze. He feels read like a book when Changbin's gaze lands on him, swallowing as he refuses to move an inch. 

“I’m Hyunjin.” From there they introduce themselves in a chain. 

“This is what you’ve been missing, huh?” Jeongin questions with a grin, alluding to something just between him and Jone that Jone gets and acknowledges merrily. But it seems like there’s more, his smile aimed at Kenji expectantly. 

“I know he’s shy and all, but where’s the lone wolf gone?” 

Their focuses peak with intrigue. It doesn’t die, only inflates a bit morbidly when Changbin's entire expression falls fast, a tumbling chain thrown airborne, taking his joy with it. His shoulders rise, Jone’s arms going up with them. It becomes clear in that moment why Jone cryptically warned them of Changbin. He looked downright terrifying upset. 

Desperately holding onto his solace, Jone upkeeps a quivering smile, eyes narrowing. “Changbin, where is he?” His voice is grave, poorly painted over with a light glaze. Like an aged pastry, it comes out stale. 

Setting his jaw, Changbin gently pushes Jone away, crossing his arms and practically glaring at the ragtag group. “He’s off saving the Golden Prince.” 

Jone gapes and Hyunjin isn’t much different, confused and awed. 

Minho doesn’t give himself the reprieve of puzzlement, approaching Changbin with care but urgency. “What do you mean? He’s gone to save Prince Felix?” 

“How could he have known?” Seungmin gawks. 

Even Jone was lost, anxiously gnawing at his lip. 

Changbin waves his hand placidly, frown strained. “Your little chick performed some sort of magic, right? About an hour or so before sunfall?” He doesn’t seem satisfied with their nods even though it fits with reality. “It wasn’t very strong magic, but it was loud. Basically, he set off some sort of magical distress alert, just for our pri-for our friend. I tried to reason with him to be more reasonable or prepare somewhat, but when I turned away, he bounded off.” 

Jone’s fingers are harshly twined with his hair, tugging it at the scalp. It’s the most vulnerable he’s ever been, and Hyunjin recognizes that that’s because Changbin is here. Someone he feels definitely that he can be that kind of exposed with. “He’s going to get himself killed,” he gasps horrified, stumbling back to Changbin and dropping his head to the other’s shoulder, just letting it sit there as he shakes. 

“You’re saying someone unqualified and unprepared has gone off to try to save our prince?” Minho almost shrieks, just as stressed but for the other half of the equation Jone is. “He’s going to screw up and put Felix in even more danger? How stup—”

Hyunjin is too bewildered to step in and calm Minho, torn between all sorts of warring emotions from bafflement to fright. He’s capable of nothing but watching, lips parted and eyes wide as Minho loses all the tact that was normally invincible in the face of Felix’s endangerment. 

“Don’t.” Jone’s quiet voice rings louder than it is, fatally serious and more than enough to cut of Minho before he begin, throwing the older for a wild loop, looking like he’d been smacked. 

“We’re not worried for your prince,” Changbin seethes, and Minho looks regretful at the tone, but it’s washed away indignantly. His mouth opens to continue to counter, but Changbin once more interrupts, a solid wall in his disposition. “Your prince isn’t in nearly as much danger as our friend. He’s perfectly qualified enough to save the boy. But at a hefty cost.” 

“We have to go after him,” Jone says panicked and without any reason or rhyme, mind wiped blank. 

In bad taste, Minho scoffs and rolls his eyes, spreading his arms out wide, ready to oppose even when it looks like Changbin and Jone alike are ready to gag him. It isn’t Changbin though, that stops him this time. 

Something heavy hits the dirt behind them.  

+

She leaves. 

She’d just stood there for what seemed like an hour spun thrice, rambling on about pointless things, lulling him into an anxious state of security, before whipping her head back to him and demanding for more answers. Some of them, not even he had. 

Not once did she touch him, maybe because she knew that would render him useless, or maybe she was just going to slowly build up to it, torturing Felix further and further with each passing second, wringing every ounce of her and his capacity, in harshly contrasting ways. 

Still, she acts like she’s going to, leaning down as she goes on and on about nothing and everything at once, tongue flicking over her sharper than normal canines, each syllable being crafted into daggers no blacksmith could replicate. 

She gets in his face, and he blanches, the tips of his fingers going numb even as his heart desperately pumps blood feverishly through his burning veins. Her nails come close to brushing his chin, and he remembers the spell she had put on the crimson prince, pushing himself deep enough into the wall for the stone to collide with his spine. 

He has to wonder, if he had ever loved this woman as a mother, or if deep down he’s always known not to, even before the first time he was thrown in the dungeons. 

One thing is for sure, he certainly doesn’t now, pure relief flooding him as she finally insults him beneath her breath and leaves. 

This was only a test-run, they both know that. A tutorial, a practice simulation. The next time she visited, she would either get the answers she wanted from him, or she would force them out of his head like a lion picking through a gazelle for decent meat. Until there’s nothing left for him to function with, returning to square one all over again, a blank slate somehow even more empty than before. 

Exhausted, he rests as much as he can against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut to rid of the scalding tears quicker.

He can’t help but think, know, this was an easily preventable outcome. And the one he’s found himself in, was entirely his fault. If he’d taken just a single second to backtrack, he would be just heading back to his room now, ready for another night of convening with his best friends, feeling safe just because he was with them, and they were with him. They could protect each other, and they trusted each other enough to let it fall just that way. 

But he hadn’t, he’d moved like a madman, pushing every obstacle out of his way, even his own friends, using magic he’d never even knew he possessed, and shouldn’t technically, until that week. He’d let anger and grief take its hold over him, steering him to the worst. And it had done so with ease. 

His head, it had been so empty, filled to the brim with a fury so hot it began to purple, red merging into blue. And then he tore that damn painting only feet away from his...from the fakes. That second he could’ve used to keep all this from happening, had been spent staring appalled at the torn shreds of what was once the crimson prince’s face. 

What was he to expect even? Every trace of the prince had been erased but the initials in Felix’s band, the physical reminder of the promises neither of them had any capability of keeping. It had probably been painted over with sticky tar even before it was slashed through with the king’s sword. 

Anger could never be reasoned with if not counteracted, and like every other fool, he’d fallen victim to it. Horridly. Now it’s drained him dry, trapped him here, and he’s exhausted. So exhausted his lids slip shut and his body cries for any semblance of rest. But fright rivals the fatigue strongly, zapping him each time darkness overtakes him, pulling up images of his friends.

“Stupid,” he mutters into the empty air, dropping his head miserably to his shoulder. “You’re so stupid.” 

He doesn’t expect a response. 

“I hope you’re, uh, not talking about me.” 

He whips his head up, looking around frantically, enough to make his neck hurt. He squints when he sees something, a ripple, a shift, a warp in the material of reality right in the rays of moonlight that spatter softly over rough stone. 

It seems to flicker, shuddering oddly before him, like blocks of space were being unstacked and restacked, a person stepping out from where they’ve been disrupted. A person . They’re adjusting long gloves that go up to their biceps, flexing their fingers. They’re wearing an elaborate fabric mask, lined on one side with fabric roses pressed with gold leaf, growing larger until one brilliant one sits prettily at his temple. 

He gets the feeling they’re smiling behind it. And even though he can’t even see it, it seems forced. He has no idea what to make of any of it. He’s too bleary, mind too hazed and attention to detail dulled. 

“Though, you’d probably be right. This—” They laugh airily at themself as they run a hand through their hair, darkened to silhouetted curls. The moon creates an eerie halo around them, as if them simply appearing wasn’t unsettling enough. “—This is so stupid.” 

Felix just stares, gaping. “Why the hell are you here?” 

The other is taken aback, freezing. Felix responds in kind, stiffening and pushing himself into the wall. But all the mysterious person says is, “I wasn’t expecting your voice to be so deep...or so harsh. But the latter is understandable...Oh! I’m here to save you, I guess.” 

Frowning cynically, Felix slurs, “You guess?” 

“There’s a lot of unknowns here,” they hum, slowly getting closer, stopping each time Felix experimentally backs up. “I didn’t really come prepared,” they sigh, coming to a complete halt after the tenth time. 

“How am I supposed to trust you?” 

A misplaced snort. “I’d be glad if you didn’t. Distrust, is valued in places like this. Just as much as trust itself. Which I haven’t done anything to deserve...not to contradict myself but please, can you trust me just enough to get you out of here.” 

Huffing, Felix crosses his arms, the chains scraping against each other deafeningly. “What if you’re just here to kill me?” 

The other finally allows themself to get close, squatting before the prince and tilting their head. Not a single alarm comes to life in Felix’s mind, wholly unguarded to the stranger. Drowsiness must be having its way with his years of carefully constructed defenses. 

“The worst death sentence would be leaving you here.” 

And doesn’t Felix know that well and thoroughly. Giving in, giving up, however, it feels in the moment, he just drops his arms to his sides and gazes at the person pleadingly. “Please, don’t prove me wrong.” 

He thought he was one to never trust so easy. Maybe it was the severity of the situation, or the utter lack of clarity he has, but right now, he goes against that. He just wants out of here. It’s common knowledge at this point that anywhere outside the castle was safer than within. 

And if he had to fight this idiot to get back to his friends either way, then he would.

“I’ll try my hardest, my prince.” They shuffle closer, palms hesitantly hovering over his limp form. “I have two questions. One, are you capable of walking, and if not, how much gold is on your person?”

“A looter?” 

They’re quick to deny, waving their hands hurriedly. “No, no...it’s a magic thing.” 

Oh, the other must have magic too. That would explain things somewhat. Considering gold’s magical value, it would make sense for it to have an effect on whatever source they get their magic from. “I can’t stand, I don’t think. Um, I don’t know, really. I wouldn’t be surprised if the king and queen had coated it over my skin...my crown, my bracelet, my earrings, my bracelet, my anklet, and I think there’s even some actual gold thread in my clothes.” 

A tension coils through the stranger’s body, grim and visceral. “Okay,” he breathes, as if preparing himself. He touches each chain locked around Felix, and they unravel as easily as string, silently falling to the floor, freeing Felix. Gingerly, with much patience for Felix’s cues of permission, the person slips an arm under his legs, and loops to other behind his torso. In one swoop, they’ve hefted Felix into the air as if he were as light as a loaf of bread.

Felix feels more comfortable than he should, slotted in an outsider’s arms. Though he had been at the point of admitting a cactus would feel more luxurious than that cell wall. It sounds quite the opposite though from his savior. 

A slow reluctant hiss flees from between his teeth as he adjusts the prince in his hold. Blearily concerned, Felix narrows his eyes up at their mask which hides and muffles whatever pain they seem to be experiencing. “Are you—”

Suddenly he feels weightless, so much so it’s like he’s pushing against gravity, his stomach and heart lagging behind like he’s being dropped from the towers. He flails in spite of being grounded, grasping at the stranger’s top and pulls himself close as the world around him unravels. 

He blinks once inside the dungeons, and blinks them again outside. They’re in the fields, where Felix had his first vision. The shift had taken a lot out of them. He’s struggling once more to keep his eyes open, weaker than he had been somehow. It pales in comparison to the struggling breaths of the person holding him, he can feel each unsteady heave of their chest. 

Warmth trickles down his neck and arm and face. He can’t remember using any magic though. It sets him on edge, but not enough to keep him awake. Before he can attempt once more to ask if something was the matter, he passes out, plunging into a bed of red roses and ichor.

Chapter Text

Minho’s heart is in his throat, depriving him of air but it wasn’t like he was going to care. Someone was kneeling before them, and in their arms, was Felix . He’s already ready to run forward, arms swinging, but he’s held back. Glaring puzzled, he looks back at who. Jone, who isn’t even regarding him, clinging to his arm as he stares with watered eyes at the two on the floor. 

“Wha—”

Changbin comes rushing by the both of them, getting to the arrivals’ level and spitting, “You motherfucker, what in the hell were you thinking? He’s...He’s got gold all over him, you prick! Are you even gonna let go of him?” His voice moves fast, faster than the current of a river and the racing of a horse, shooting from his mouth as if fueled by gunpowder. 

Minho had thought the person half-dead, faint from the moment they landed. But with a bone-deep weariness they raise their head, voice a rasp that barely makes it through their mask. “Take his crown. Break it. Burn it. Just make sure it’s gone. Then I’ll take him inside.” 

Jone still won’t let him move forward but he tries to anyways, making a step before just projecting his voice. “And why would he do that? And who are you to be taking the prince in your dingy tents? He needs to be cared for properly.” 

Hyunjin clicks his tongue, smiling nervously, “Your royal valet is showing, Minho.” 

Masked eyes bore into his soul, tired beyond what he could even imagine. Jone tugs his arm once and Minho feels his ego leave him at Jone’s stern, and slightly hurt expression. “Those dingy tents are our home, and your haven currently. I know you’re extremely worried, but it is not the time to take it out on him especially.” 

Changbin certainly has something to say about it and Minho can’t blame him. Minho bites down on his tongue, withholding a shout as Changbin carefully pries the crown Felix has worn since he was small, and snaps it over his knee. Oddly, he felt some satisfaction in it, wishing Felix had been awake to see it. They both always hated that crown, but were forced to be protective of it.

“This idiot just saved your idiot,” Changbin scoffs, hanging the two broken pieces over his fingers and swinging them about. It seems he’s not done with the accessory. “The least you can do is show him some appreciation.” 

The one being spoken about like he wasn’t there turns to Changbin, making a small noise. “Changbin that isn’t nec—” He’s silenced with a hearty frown, sighing lengthily and then regretting it with a hacked-out cough. Shoulders lowering, like his body was shutting down bit by bit and he was barely keeping his head afloat, he directs his words to Minho. “I’m sorry, I’m the only one who can give the prince the proper treatment.” 

“Magic exhaustion,” Jone elaborates quietly into Minho’s ear. Minho makes great note in his mind to apologize to the poor boy. And everyone else, frankly. He’s been a pain in the neck to deal with as of late, and he’s not going to hold back on admitting it. And if he did, Felix would kick him out of it soon enough once he wakes. 

“They’re both suffering it, but he’s the only one equipped to fix it to where Felix will wake up before the month ends.” There’s a resignation in his voice and Minho has to wonder how often the third of Jone’s trio does things like this. 

It’s Seungmin who breaks their odd built-up rally, throwing his hands up exasperatedly. “Can we stop chit-chatting? He’s bleeding? One of them is, and quite a bit. I think it’s best we just compromise to whatever lengths we must, and get them treated one way or another.”

Changbin nods, smirking appreciatively at Seungmin, though it’s understandably strained. “Someone with sense, Minho, grab your dumbass. I’ll grab ours. I’ll show you where to go.” 

Delicate, Minho ever so gently picks up his prince, and sees with both worry and relief that only some of the red staining his skin was his own. Felix’s savior wasn’t so lucky, a mess of gore, covered in odd-shaped sores from his neck to his collarbone. Somehow, Minho suspects that’s no symptom of magic exhaustion. 

Changbin wraps the other’s arm around his shoulders and easily lifts him up even with all the weight supposedly on him. It’s not hard to tell that the arms beneath his loose black sleeves weren’t weak. Exchanging heated whispers, though it was more like he was scolding the masked person, he leads Minho to a place behind the original tent he left. 

The ‘dingy tents’ weren’t that whatsoever. It wasn’t the grand palace Minho was used to, or even the chilly staffs room he was familiar with, but it was secure. Wood, fabric, and other materials tugged together to create a single cohesive shelter that was probably just perfect for the three that inhabited it. 

How it would hold up under eight was something to be testified.

“Set him there,” Changbin orders, pointing to a padded cot furthest away from the outside. Minho complies, setting Felix down, emotions pricking at the frown that forms on the prince’s face, a low groan emitting from his stained lips. “Jewelry. Take it off him.”

“Not the band,” the masked one inputs weakly. 

“Not the band. Can you stand for a bit while I get you a chair?” Changbin gets the nod of affirmation he needs and leaves the other behind to sway on his feet as he shuffles through a large chest just outside the structure, pulling out an egg-shaped chair. With Minho’s eyes warily set on him, he snaps off the legs. Unashamed, he shrugs. “We can add them back later.” 

Minho moves over as Changbin turns the now broken chair into a stable place for his friend to sit in. He does as he’s told as quickly as he can, trying to identify every bit of jewelry on Felix’s person. There was more than he even expected, realizing just how much Felix had on a day as he was forced to take it off. Significantly less than his parents, but still sticking to the royal standard it seemed. He holds it all in his hands as he finishes, staring down at the heavy heap. 

Changbin sees he’s finished and stares intensely at the pile. His gaze holds a wariness he didn’t even exhibit when faced with four sudden newcomers. “Go put those somewhere far away, but where we’ll still find them.” 

An odd request, but after all the fight Minho had put up uselessly earlier, he doesn’t question it again, merely chewing the inside of his cheek with unspoken confusion. He goes to the edge of the clearing and kicks open a small patch of earth, dumping the gold in it, and then burying over it with a thin layer of dirt, enough to still see the shine, but easy to mistake it for possible trash. 

When he returns, Changbin has fluidly got his set up to work with him. Minho stands awkwardly, spectating. He’s handed a damp cloth and he gets the gist, cleaning off Felix’s face tenderly. Felix’s savior is set in the egg-shaped chair, the legs having been moved to the back of it so it stands directly to the floor without falling over as it should. It would seem amongst other things, that Changbin was handy. 

Peeling off the masked person’s clothes bit by bit, with a harsh grimace, he says absently, “Go to whatever he’s calling himself. He’ll take it from there while I care for...Cee, let’s call him Cee.” 

Minho raises an eyebrow. The detachment these characters have from names is conspicuous. “Cee, like the letter, c?” 

Snorting, Changbin sets a water-filled bowl on the edge of Felix’s cot. The liquid is already pinkening, and he’s barely dabbed Cee’s skin. “Yeah. Exactly that. If you want his real name, that’s up to him to give.” 

“Is Changbin yours? Or Jone’s his?”

Changbin bites his lips suddenly, a small noise escaping him. It’s suspiciously humored, a repressed laugh for sure. “I have no reason for a code name. Jone...Jone is interesting I’ll give you that.” 

So Jone isn’t his friend’s real name. Wonderful, really. He rubs his temples with a sigh. He’s going to leave when he stops himself, turning briefly. Thinking Minho was already gone and about, Changbin’s guard had dropped, a wary downturn to his lips as he murmurs soothingly to Cee. 

“Thank you,” Minho blurts, “For all this. I’m sorry for being such a prick. I...I hope Cee gets better soon.” 

Lips thinning, Changbin looks up at him with warm eyes. “I get it, I guess. You’ll make up for it. And thanks. He’ll be better. He...He has to be. And he’ll make sure the Golden Prince is too, so don’t worry too much.” 

They share one last mutual nod before Minho officially makes his exit, pushing aside the curtain that acts as their entrance. His friends have gathered around a protected fire, kept safe from the rain and safe for the surrounding grass and people. 

“So, Jone?” he announces himself, plopping down next to said being. “What’s your real name and why’d you choose something as lame as Jone ?” 

+

“Your real name is Jisung?” Minho exclaims, leaning the way opposite Jone-Jisung as if to distance himself from the name itself. 

Jisung sullenly side-eyes him, probably still lingeringly hurt from Minho’s earlier actions paired with this new offense. Jeongin can’t blame him, but he also can’t blame Minho for the exaggerated reaction. Neither Jone nor Jisung were particularly impressive names. The simplicity didn’t suit Jisung, but Jeongin also thought it fit him like a glove.

“So you took your J,” Seungmin adds with a wry brow, “And added a one to it? That was your creative process?” 

Jisung pouts, hunching over from where he’s sitting. “I hadn’t exactly come up with a name before being asked for it on the spot. I didn’t have time to be particularly out of the box.” 

Minho’s eyes narrow and he leans back, resting his palms against the dirt, mouth tightening at the sensation. It wasn’t pristine cut grass or plush carpet like he was used to, Jeongin surmises. He, on the other hand, has only felt as comfortable as he does now when he was in Felix’s bed. He can actually hear his surroundings, no phantom whisper follows him like a virus, no invisible stares pierce him with the ferocity of a thousand poisonous arrows. His legs are crossed in familiar dirt and dry leaves that reach up and around his feet like a welcoming embrace. 

And when he leans slightly to his right, his shoulder hits another. And when he flicks his eyes to the side, Seungmin is right there, either deep in thought with pursed lips and furrowed brows, processing the whole wild situation they’ve happened upon. Or staring right back, the thousand-mile-wide stare of his, bigger than the sky from the view of this clearing, wholly focused on him. 

Never before has he taken enough time to appreciate that, but now he cherishes it with everything he has. While Minho opens his mouth, a clear question leaping from his tongue for them all to witness, Jeongin slides his hand out of his lap, and puts it between him and Seungmin. With only the slightest sound of a leaf breaking, their pinkies interlace. 

It fits as perfectly as always, and Jeongin feels sharp pebbles clear from his lungs, taking the clearest breath he’s been able to since their positions in the castle were accepted. 

“Speaking of, you were clearly at the castle for a reason. You had an ulterior motive there.” 

Jisung chews his lip with an exaggerated bite. “Was it really that obvious?”

From where he lays, hand limp over his stomach as he tiredly fights to stay awake so he doesn’t find himself out of the loop, Hyunjin snorts. King jumps at the intrusion atop his chest, upsetly leaping away to rest instead at Jisung’s feet. He pets her like he’s her one last resort of security. Jeongin wouldn’t gamble it, but he’ll let Jisung have that thought until King proves him wrong. 

“Incredibly,” the long-haired valet murmurs, bitterness tinging his amused undertone, “We all know you had the most secrets of us all. We’re just kind enough to not pry.” 

Seungmin shrugs, the fabric of his shirt catching onto Jeongin’s. The slight disruption prompts them to move even closer, as if to prevent it from happening again. They all know, them two and the rest around their fire which Jeongin is no longer gleaning his warmth from, that that’s not it. “Or we just didn’t care. We trusted you enough to prioritize, you know, overthrowing the corrupt monarchy.” 

Jeongin joins in with his own input, nodding. “I was only really curious after the one conversation. You seemed really determined to stick in the castle, and afraid of failing in it somehow.” 

“Well, as much as we’d love to share that all with you,” a voice intercepts before Jisung can think of an answer. They startle and look over to where Changbin noiselessly steps to the outer ring of their lopsided circle of sorts. He looks at Jisung for a quick moment, a whole discussion flashing between their equally dark eyes. Jisung deflates, retreating into himself, face carefully numbing. “It’s not entirely our place. One of us had to go to the castle, and Jisung just happened to be the best fit.” 

Even delayed and lagging, like he was just a few seconds behind them all, Jisung glares weakly, shifting upwards and taking advantage of his inch against Changbin. King resignedly travels to Minho where she’ll probably stay until they cater their sleeping arrangements. “Only because you possess no social skills.” He walks over to the other, arms crossing over his chest, abruptly switching attitudes. Silently, he pleads for something. 

Watching upon with sharp focus, Jeongin picks up on that same grief displayed when he had gone about missing something, something Jeongin could relate to. He looks briefly to the shelter and understands instantly. Whoever it was who had brought Felix, judging from Jisung’s reaction to his initial absence, and his out-of-character soberness when he had reappeared, was an essential part of Jisung’s life that he deemed worthy. 

“Don’t make too much noise,” Changbin finally sighs, and though his words are directed at Jisung, it’s a blanket warning for them all if the bite to his voice has anything to say. “Him passing out might be the only sleep he gets for days.” 

There is absolutely no refusal from Jisung, solemnly agreeing before silently slipping into the shelter, an urgency to his pace. Jeongin zooms in to where his figure last stood outside, watching the sway of the plain curtain in the wind and Jisung’s force. He’s incredibly compelled to follow, horrendously curious about Felix’s savior and one of Jisung’s vital puzzle pieces. He’s not dumb enough to think he has any place doing so, giving Changbin back his attention with a tad reluctance. 

“I’m guessing I won’t be allowed in,” Minho supposes sullenly, depositing his frown-stained face in the palm of his hand. His other fingers twitch in place over the ankles of his crossed legs. It’s clear where his focus is. Inside that tent incapacitated and only accompanied by a masked mystery man. 

Having the grace to give an impression of pity, Changbin tugs his lips down. “Only me and Jisung. At least until Cee wakes up to put his mask back on. Then it’s up to him. He’s the one fixing your prince.” 

Downcast, Minho mutters pettily, “Nothing to fix.” 

Changbin looks too sympathetic to roll his eyes as he might originally be compelled to do. Awkwardly he hooks his thumbs through his belt loops, not knowing how to proceed. He catches Jeongin’s eye, brows furrowed beneath his curtain of bangs. Jeongin lifts his shoulder and gestures to the floor beside them. 

Melodramatic sigh ensued, Hyunjin sits up, lazily squinting at the newcomer just as he sits, or perhaps the opposite. Technically, they were the newcomers. “Is there anything you can tell us?” he questions, fatigue pulling at his voice like a weighted blanket. “At least where the hell we’re sleeping?” Pointedly, his gaze rolls up to the very dark sky, even the moon hiding behind a thick veil of silver clouds. 

Sheepishly, Changbin rubs the back of his neck, joining in the synchronized bout of stargazing. “Oh, yeah, you guys are probably exhausted.” 

“To say the least,” Seungmin cuts in, yawning on cue. Jeongin makes a small clicking noise beneath his breath and adjusts himself, Seungmin’s weight on him leading to his head naturally falling against Jeongin’s shoulder. His lids flutter tiredly at the sensation. 

Drumming his digits over his thigh, Changbin looks at their makeshift mini village of shelters. “Honestly, if it weren’t for it being winter, I’d tell you to sleep out here. But it’ll probably start pouring in a bit...Jisung and I will be staying with Felix and Cee, taking shifts watching them, The three of you can take the tent up front, and Minho, we can put up something in the main tent between us and you just in case. But don’t look past it, we have a river nearby and it’s great for taking bodies.”

Hyunjin glosses over the thinly disguised threat, calling for King with a noise. “So most of the secrets here, have to do with the masked guy. Cee?” 

“Why do you think he wears a mask?” Jeongin purses his lips. 

Changbin’s sitting is short-lived, as he effortlessly pulls himself without even the sound of tickled grass. He wipes his black pants and crosses his arms just as Jisung peers through the curtain, eyes puffy and cheeks stained, but expression casual. He picks up on the topic within the millisecond, sucking his teeth silently. 

Minho follows behind and Jeongin groans internally as he nearly lifts Seungmin off the ground, the other half-asleep in the crook of his neck. The only place where he feels comfortable. The only place where Jeongin feels comfortable. At least until they were more used to Jisung’s hideaway. Maybe it will take them as quickly as Felix’s bedroom had. 

Until Felix wakes though Jeongin doubts that same sense of ease and radiant bliss will spread to this area as well. Especially not with the three enigmatic folks they’ve managed to tangle themselves with for safety. 

“Cee’s secrets are kept for a reason,” Changbin tells, turning and joining Jisung in the doorway, staring over the boy’s shoulder with solemness. “If they were to get out, in any way, beyond what we can trust, then he will die.” His voice breaks at the end and his head ducks, Jisung pushing him inside as if to keep it all hidden from them. Jeongin gets the impression that Changbin is a lot less tough than he appears. 

Jisung flashes them a strained smile, a hint genuine, smeared wearily. “So please, put up with all our crap. At least until we can find a safer place for you guys to stay or take down the king and queen.” 

Minho walks up, letting Jisung drop the curtain for Cee’s privacy as much as his eyes seem drawn to examine Felix. With a raised brow, he flicks Jisung’s head, eliciting a sharp and shocked gasp. Hyunjin stands then too, taking King with him with an amused air. 

Once again, Minho reminds the younger, “We trust you. As long as we all end up fine, keep your friend’s secrets. I don’t quite like him yet, but I don’t want him dead.” 

Grateful, Jisung nods, taking Hyunjin, somehow the most awake out of them, to gather bedding for them all. Jeongin just clings Seungmin back, swaying together in the chill-bitten wind. Unconsciously, he hums their village’s song, and though it’s awkward with Seungmin’s height, he puts his chin over the other’s head. As intertwined as they are, Jeongin worries they’ll be separated too soon, all of them. 

+

“Doyle,” she says, voice a whipping icicle, flaying their surroundings with frost, no mercy to be spared. “I taste something here.” She spins on her blade-thin heels, the sound they make, grating and scratching against the stone, is nauseating. 

“Magic. Either my Golden Prince has learned more than he’s let on...or there’s another mage assisting him. Doyle. Call for the royal advisor. I need a week free. I have to see if there’s gold in this presence.” 

+

He cracks his eyes open, instantly feeling every bit of pain he can wash over him in gradual increments. He exhales shakily, taking a moment to adjust to being conscious. He’s well acquainted with the fact that being conscious, hurts . 

Bit by bit, he forces himself to move, his bones and joints popping together like a broken doll. It’s been ages since he’s expelled so much magic. Drained himself til it felt like the very blood had been sucked from his veins. 

More than being incredibly sore, there’s the issue of the sores sprawling from his cheek to the left of his chest. He stares at the ones he can see, tenderly hovering his touch over the ones he can’t, the undeniably worse ones. Where the crown had directly laid.

Burning, searing, seeping through his skin like the gold was molten. 

A hitch in his breath, whipping his head, undoubtedly irritating his wounds but breathless anticipation makes him numb. 

It was worth it. 

He leans forward clumsily, accidentally knocking over his mask Changbin or Jisung must’ve removed from his face and set on his knee. He gazes at it sitting sadly upon the floor, eaten through with his curse. He’ll have to patch it up in his time treating the golden prince. Ironically enough. 

He can’t give it much care, not any at all, with the boy lying before him. It makes his arms ache, but he can’t drop them, the prince appearing so delicate it felt like if he touched him, either he would light afire, or the prince would shatter to pieces. So he hovers, feeling the prince’s warmth radiate relievingly through the tips of his fingers which are always, so cold. It shows just how alive he is. 

He trails his phantom touch all the way to the wrist, where a gold band rests. And that’s how he knows this is all real. Keres probably thought it was another random piece of jewelry gifted to the prince by the former queen. He smiles wryly. The looped piece of gold had been his saving talisman. He thanks Keres for her haughtiness, this once, and only this once. 

He doesn’t want to know what scars she’s given the prince. 

Heart wavering, he lets himself look at the prince’s features. He has to pull his hands away, they’re trembling too much, too vigorously, to be held safely. The prince looks almost the same as he had when he last saw him. His face then had been warped with terror, now it was merely pinched in disrest. Freckles pulled along with the lips into a firm frown. Brown hair, once a dirtied hay blond, splayed to his shoulders over the silk pillow covering they’d snagged from a nagging old woman Jisung had once come across during a village run. 

It was no doubt the same boy, grown and scarred, but him nonetheless. Sucking the air around him, he falls back into the sit, noting its slight wobble. Smirking somewhat, he notes to thank Changbin for the little craft that keeps him supported but on the ground. He melts into the chair, giving himself the brief resting period before he begins his work. 

“You’re an idiot, you know?” 

It’s like warmth injected into his ears and shot straight to his chest. Even though his eyes are squeezed shut, the only display of his agony, a toothy grin the most lively thing about him spreads from ear to ear. With the sudden energy, he pushes himself up and turns around, heat prickling his eyes. 

“You’re okay,” he breathes, rushing forward with outstretched arms. Unlike the prince, he has no qualms about letting his thinned fingers travel and journey over Jisung’s face like braille. He taught himself how to read that, early on, when he feared the scar tissue to reach his eyes. Jisung’s face, is a much more familiar language. 

Tears stain the pads of his thumbs but he doesn’t pay them mind, peering into Jisung’s irises like they were the most priceless of gems. In his perspective, they were more. Shaking hands encircle his neck and he doesn’t give an ounce of fight when Jisung pulls him into a soul-crushing embrace. He returns it with as much ferocity, holding the sobbing mess as he holds back on being one himself. 

“Chan,” Jisung forms from broken cries, fragments of syllables pieced together all for Chan’s sake. So he knows fully, that Jisung remembers him. That there was someone’s mind where his name hasn’t been erased and turned to ash. He holds on tighter.

When they’ve finally calmed down, they hold each other by the arms, like kids in a courtyard, but they can’t fully separate. They’ve already been too long. Jisung only breaks the connection enough to hit Chan feebly against the forearms. He’s much careful to avoid Chan’s injuries but still get his point across. “What were you thinking going after Felix yourself? Using your magic ? You’re lucky you made it out alive, or I would’ve dug your body from your undisclosed grave and killed you twice!” 

Meekly, Chan bows his head. “Sorry, Jisung, I’m so sorry. I really wouldn’t have done it. If it were anyone...it was him Jisung. I felt him after so long, in distress. I think my magic acted before I did. I had to save him.” 

Jisung pinches his skin, scowling. “And what if I’d still been in that castle, idiot? What if Keres had been standing there waiting for you, claws unsheathed? What if your magic failed and you endangered both yourself and Felix? You know Changbin is the most reasonable of us all. When he tells you not to go. Don’t go.”

Despite being the elder, and raised in nobility, Chan feels properly scolded. “I know, I know. Changbin knows best.” He wants to promise he won’t do it again, but he knows it’s one he’d easily break, and he doesn’t want to lie to Jisung, give him some hope in the future that he couldn’t afford. 

Exhausted of his anger, Jisung pulls him back in, blubbering high-pitched, “I missed you so much, Min. So, so, so much. I’m never leaving you guys that long again, you hear? I….” Thought you’d disappear . “I love you. And at least I did my mission perfectly.” 

There’s no argument there. He did. Perfectly to a fault. 

As if remembering Chan’s conditioning, Jisung gasps, steering Chan back to his oval-arched chair, pushing him onto the cushion. He glances at Felix, jaw clenching. “See, I coulda lost both my high-class boys at once. Who would I do chores for?” 

Chan rolls his eyes, hissing good-naturedly, “Shut up. If anything, Changbin and Minho are the most orderly.” 

Jisung pulls a face, sitting beside his chair and before Felix’s cot cross-legged. “I forgot you knew him. He’s probably worse now than he was as a kid too.” 

Nodding, Chan adds, “And there’s the fact he almost tore my head off when I said I was going to be treating the prince. ’Dingy tents’, you would’ve thought he was the prince in this situation.” Seeing Minho too, had been an experience. He’d been so different than he had been as a kid, but Chan’s sure he’ll see the boy he once knew once Felix is awake. 

Chan thinks the valet has kept his promise well. 

“When are you gonna start treating him?” Jisung asks after their moment of thought. The worry in his voice is apparent, shining through sickly bright. Chan hates to keep worrying and worrying him. It’s a trend he can’t ever end it seems. 

“Was gonna do it as soon as I woke up,” he admits, avoiding Jisung’s quick glare, “But then you came in. I’d much rather talk to you than use my magic again. Plus, I have to wait til either you or Changbin is nearby. Speaking of…” 

Jisung finishes, “Just switched watch, I was gonna sleep but since you’re not…” Chan frowns, turning. Before he can even voice a complaint Jisung stares back pointedly. “I’ll probably fall asleep anyways, don’t worry. You, won’t. Let me enjoy my time with you before you work yourself to the afterlife.”

Biting his lip, Chan nods, taking it as a cue to begin. Inhaling deeply, he raises his arms again, shaking from the bicep forward. He shuts his eyes, lashes fluttering hesitantly over his damp cheeks, caressing scars. And even though he’s already done too much bringing Felix back, he has to continue to keep Felix okay. And for any of them, he would pull from his last reserve of life force, to keep them alright. 

Jisung inches closer, resting his head on Chan’s thigh, adjusting a chained pouch around his neck, keeping it as far yet as close as possible to Chan. Chan can feel, scattered thornily beneath his skin like a hornet of wasps or unpruned roses, the gold’s essence reaches for him, so they meet halfway, estranged and hesitant, but cooperative. A sorely received gift. 

It hurts. But he puts his hands over Felix’s arms, holds as delicately as possible, and begins to untangle the tired knots of Felix’s weary magic with his ruined own.

Chapter Text

The next day felt like the continuation of a dream. Minho woke up for the first time in all that he could recollect, not in the prince’s wing. Not even his dreams consisted of anything so abnormally...normal. Blinking wildly, fending off panic as he swiftly gathers his senses. He knows where he is, he’s just not used to it. Not at all. 

He’d been gifted a cot, he thinks it's Cee’s based on the way there were only three set up before he deposited Felix on one. He hopes he’s not depriving either Jisung or Changbin of a bed, but he also knows they could sleep on a pile of leaves and be content. It might be better that he, the spoiled servant, be given a more sturdy sleeping place than them. 

Not that it doesn’t make him prickle with indignance. He’s not petulant, but change is much harder for him to adapt to than either Felix or Hyunjin. Routine suited him best, and there was none of that here. 

He looks around, eyes sticking to the curtains between him and Felix like taffy. They’re faded and worn, a color that wasn’t even discernable anymore. They serve their opaque purpose, and he can’t see Felix, or rather more importantly, he can’t see the other magic user. The life of Felix’s savior is more important than Minho’s desire to see his prince. 

It’s dim where he is, blocked out from the sources of light, but the sun persists, fighting against the heavy fabrics not covered by wood or metal. 

Sound makes it through much clearer. Nothing makes it from the prince’s side, but based on the fact he hasn’t been frantically awakened, he can guess the prince is still healthy, or at least as healthy as he can be. But outside he can hear Hyunjin's voice, leaping out at him most prominently, the most familiar. Then Seungmin’s and Jeongin’s, and very subtly among the mix, Changbin’s. No Jone. 

He was hoping to apologize to his friend soon. 

He stretches, already feeling the effects of lost luxury in the ache of his legs and back. He hadn’t changed out of his clothes so all he does is discard the pile of blankets he was graciously gifted, and stands, forcing himself through the wall which wasn’t quite an entrance, but wasn’t solid. It’s how he came through. 

Immediately, he shields his eyes from the sun which has never felt so blinding. It was unfiltered, even grey and cloudy, the definition of a rainy forecast, but bright. No palace windows or bunches of trees blocking it out. It shone straight down, mercilessly flamboyant. It didn’t match his dreary mood. 

Stepping through dewy grass with air clearer than he’s ever breathed, the possibility of this being a dream comes back to him. 

Changbin notices him first, silently gazing upon him as he appears from the cluster of shelter. He blinks curiously, observing Minho as he approaches. He was betting a fifty-fifty chance that Minho wasn’t going to listen to him and visit Felix anyways. He’s pleasantly surprised. 

It wasn’t like he threatened Minho’s life if he endangered Cee’s or anything. 

Jeongin and Hyunjin are vying for King’s attention, the little kitten playing with a dead insect that was dizzyingly larger than the heel of Minho’s foot. It was without saying that she was ignoring them both in favor of picking apart the thing for protein. Good for her honestly. 

He sits beside Seungmin who wordlessly hands him a handful of dry nuts and berries. Thinking back to lavish feasts with knee-high piles of toasted bread and bowls the size of his head brimming with steaming rice, he comes to terms that this was breakfast. 

“So what’s on today’s agenda?” he asks hopefully, popping a walnut in his mouth. He prays there’s some sort of agenda, even if it was him running laps around the clearing, to keep him from going mad without the loss of his routine years in the making. 

He’s spared a glance from Seungmin before he returns his attention to the other two, leaving it to Changbin to explain. The other huffs a small exhale,  sitting up from where he was hunched over, watching everything like one might a play. Picking apart each of their details until he knows for certain they aren’t threats to him and his group. Based on the way he stares through Minho, he knows the former servant...former is odd to think of. The former servant is doing the same in return. 

“Once Ji wakes up, we’re hoping you guys could tell us about what was happening back at the castle before you ran off. Part of the reason he was there was to see just that, but clearly, we’ve gotten more than we bargained for.” His hand flies over his temple and Minho instantly feels bad for the boy. He’s yet to see Changbin’s true colors, but it’s a healthy presumption that he holds to most logic of the three mystery boys. And with the other two, that trait might be fatal to his sanity. 

Minho grins in spite of the boy, shrugging, “If it makes you feel better, about none of it was Jisung’s fault. He was quite the chameleon if that’s what you were going for.” 

That cracks a smile out of the other, hands interlacing over his mouth as if to hide it. “Exactly what we were going for. Though I’m quite sad he didn’t get to cause you more trouble. He’s quick to humble pricks.” 

“Speaking from experience?” 

Changbin snorts, shaking his head, “Unlike you, the Golden Prince’s close servant tormented in the lap of luxury, I was raised with valor and selflessness. It was kind of in my code not to be a prick. But you’re not the only people we’ve interacted with in our self-inflicted exile. Humans are not individual creatures.” 

“You seem wise beyond your years,” Minho remarks, cocking his head, “But not only from your own knowledge.” 

There’s a small lapse of silence, meowing and chirping filling it. Changbin’s smile dies into something smaller than it was, somehow more earnest. A sad earnestness that was clouded with remembrance of joy. “My mother was the wisest woman to live, I like to think. I know she wasn’t, but she spoke like she was. Made everything from her sword to horse dung a flowery prose.” 

It withers at Minho’s heart. For two reasons. One, he aches for Changbin, and anyone like Changbin. Grief, is something he can resonate with, a faint mimicry of it that rings sometimes in the hollow depths of his heart. But it’s a mimicry just for that second reason. Because he, and many others who lost their families, have no recollection of them. So wondrously he utters, “You remember her?” 

Lips parting slowly, like he’d forgotten this was something uncommon, Changbin gives a slow nod. “Jisung, Cee, and I. We all remember our lives beforehand. The curse couldn’t settle in our minds before we knew to overcome it.” 

It’s almost unfathomable. It took him and his friends, excluding Jisung apparently, strength to even know of the curse, much less break free from it. And Changbin, has lived free from it. He knew what the before looked like, and how disastrous the after truly was. To wrap his mind around the curse’s existence hurt his head, yet the people who set this camp up, had watched it unfold in its true catastrophe. 

He decides, it’ll be more fair to question that when Felix can hear the answers. While the curse has affected the entire kingdom, it seems to have rooted in the prince in a different way Minho can’t yet comprehend. So he pursues the next route his mind is wandering, wondering with a slight upturn of lips, if it’s therapeutic for Changbin. 

“Your mother, what was she like?” 

In slow vagueness, Changbin blinks in long beats. Then the skin beneath his eyes pudge, the whisper of a true smile, the one that counted more than the teeth could show, graces his features. Mystery boy number two, is nowhere near as sharp as his senses. He’s quite soft in fact. 

“She was one of the kingdom’s best knights. An ambassador almost. She was the queen’s personal bodyguard before having my sister in some distant kingdom, retiring her position and becoming a trainer to aspiring knights instead. Needless to say, I was her favorite student. Her life was rich with her travels and her insight. Every night she’d make it home before I fell asleep, she’d tell me a different story from a different day she’d lived. Not one was lackluster. And in each day, she helped someone new.” 

Changbin leans over his knees, touching the tips of his shoes and going past them to fondle a dying dandelion, optimistic but unprepared for the winter season. “She was my idol. I wanted to help people as much as she had. I wanted to live as much as she had. I didn’t want to see all the world with my own eyes, I wanted to see the world through all the eyes of the people I’ve saved.” 

Minho’s eyes are wide. Truthfully, he hadn’t expected so much. “Are you still so aspirational, sir Changbin?” 

Biting his lip through a smirk, Changbin shrugs in refusal. But he doesn’t look too sad about it. “One day maybe, I’ll be able to continue to pursue that dream. But I’ve narrowed my sights since I’ve met Cee and Jisung. The way they both see the world...it’s so much more than I can fathom. And I want to understand them, make sure they live long enough for me to do so, before I be so bold.” 

“Perhaps they’re your world, sir Changbin,” Minho suggests, admiration in his teasing lilt. 

The other doesn’t deny it, and in the fond lines of his expression, Minho doesn’t think he can. All he says is, “You’re not gonna drop that, are you?” 

Minho sits back, twisting his wrist with a dramatic flair. “I bet Felix would appoint you in an instant, Sir. You’d be the finest knight any pair of eyes would have the blessing of laying upon.” 

“You’re insufferable, valet.” 

“Valet isn’t an official title, you do realize?” 

“You make it seem like it is.”

It wasn’t the secrets Minho knows reveals the royalty’s structure to its foundation, the ones they’re all going to learn in due time. The ones that will unravel their lives as they know it, or rather, commit the final snip of an already frayed rope. 

But he now has a pretty good concept of the structure that built Changbin. The three mystery boys would have to go down by one. 

+

Time passed by weirdly after leaving the castle. After so long, Hyunjin didn’t know a life beyond it. Some cynical illucid part of him suspects that he never made it out, and this was the queen’s way of slowly raising his spirits, so when they shattered, they’d leave more fragments for her to feed upon. It wouldn’t be entirely out of the realm of reality. 

The grounding anchor is the fact that Felix is still unconscious only a tens of feet away from where Hyunjin sits. If Hyunjin were living a dream life, Felix would be right next to him, and Minho wouldn’t look so tense. 

Said friend had been kicked from Seungmin’s side and replaced by Jeongin, who’d managed to win King’s favor, much to Hyunjin's disappointment. He was now between Hyunjin and Changbin, a stressed sort of boredom hardening his features. His eyes keep flicking to Jisung who’s practically in Changbin’s lap, furiously glancing between them and the tent. Worry carves deep marks in his expression. 

Hyunjin hopes it isn’t for Felix’s sake, as selfish as that is. 

Fiddling with the hem of his wool sleeves, he hasn’t been able to change, wondering when he will be able to again, he speaks up. “What ultimately lead us to flee the castle was my...Technically I was arrested. For treason.” 

That sparks an intrigue in Changbin, raising a questioning brow. “So you offended Keres, I’m guessing.” 

He’s about to answer when he registers the full nuances of Changbin’s question, turning to the boy with a burst of shock. “The queen?” The queen’s name was practically unknown to most of the kingdom. They saw her in peeks and flashes, a traveling frost that never strayed from the palace halls. She was the Queen, Her Majesty, their royal. Seldom did they ever get a title beyond that. It was like she wanted her presence to linger, a ghost powerful enough to scare them. But she didn’t grant them the power of even her name.  If Hyunjin hadn't spent extensive time with her at one point, he'd never have known it. And even then, she never gave it to him directly. Why would she have?

It seems to irritate Changbin, not Hyunjin's confusion, but the overall relation of the queen and the name he spoke. “She’s no queen,” he states, concise and undeterrable, “Especially not mine. Her real name, it’s Keres. A name associated with misery and a fitting one at that.” 

Keres. Knowing the name of the woman who had deceitfully bounced him upon her knee as a boy gave her an extra face that further detached that character from the truth of who she was. Hyunjin nods, giving the other a grateful look even if Changbin doesn’t know why. 

“Actually,” Seungmin intones, “I don’t know why you were arrested either. None of us but Felix do. What happened back there?” 

Hyunjin chews on his lip, uncertain. He could recite it second by second, the event engrained into his mind from the moment he spotted Felix to the regretful look he received as they were both taken. But it felt intrusive, not his right, to tell of something so...Felix had been in a certain state when it all happened. He’d been lost in himself, separated from his being in a way. He’d been exposed by something within him, forcing his mind to leave post. 

He reasons in his head like this is someone different than Felix he’s talking about, when he knows they weren’t separate entities whatsoever. 

“Felix ripped the royal portrait,” he starts with, noticing well the still of Minho’s chest and the widening of Changbin’s stare. “I don’t know for what reason. He was...out of it. And when I tried to warn him that his parents were nearby, he didn’t listen. It was...loud. He didn’t hold back. And it was audible. When they reached us, I took the blame. And then they took me. But he was the one that ended up in the dungeons.” 

Seungmin fills in some spaces, completing the tale from that point. “We ran into them on the way to Hyunjin's trial of execution or whatever they planned to do to him. Felix activated his magic and everything went dark. I’m guessing that’s right about when he sent the signal to your magic friend. Jisung took us and kept Minho from going after them, directing us to the edge of the forest. And then, to here.” 

“That’s only how we left though,” Jeongin continues without a pause between the two’s sentences, a seamless stitch, “So much happened beforehand that lead to that point. There is a lot going on behind the closed doors of the castle. More than I could’ve ever imagined.” 

Minho breathes a stream of air from between clenched teeth, discontent. “Things that had been going on under even my nose that I knew nothing about.” 

“So you’re not as omniscient as you seem, valet?”

“Shut up, knight,”

It’s fun watching someone banter with Minho as unrelenting as Hyunjin. Hyunjin has been too weighted and burdened with boundless doubts and worries to resume that role of his. It was disheartening for all but now, when he saw that he didn’t have to be that. Right now, as Minho side eyes him, irises lighting, he knows he plays a more important role to Minho than being a firecracker. 

They both do. 

Hyunjin leans minutely toward Minho. Their warmth radiate to each other. Speaking of…”Changbin, please tell me there’s somewhere we can stay that isn’t with the prince and mystery man.” A drop of cool water lands on his nose, sliding down the side of his nose and landing on his worn pants. 

“Damn it. Who knows how to build a tent?” 

A few moments later, Hyunjin and Minho stand under their connected arms, a jacket draped over them. Their legs are practically entangled, desperate to remain covered. Their clothes are probably sturdier than the mystery boys’ combined, but they avoid the water like mythical witches. 

“I feel a bit useless,” mumbles Hyunjin, watching Seungmin, Jeongin, and Changbin quickly assemble a large tent that they had packed away in their storage unit of sorts. He had no idea tents didn’t just...pop into existence after placing a square of cloth on the ground. And yet he hadn’t quite truly believed in magic until recently. 

To believe in convenience but not magic must make him nothing but a fool. 

Minho is less guilty, more pretty. He sneers at the mud slowly seeping towards them as an invasion of washed-up bugs and dung. “You’d think if they had such a large tent, they’d at least have a single umbrella on hand.” 

Water splashes towards them and they shriek, dropping the fabric over their head and clinging to each other. Shivering, they peer through the swinging arm sleeves, finding a mischievous smile as their opponent. Seungmin ducks to see them beneath the jacket, grinning cheekily. “Tent’s ready, valets.” 

Groaning, Hyunjin and Minho take collective steps towards their new haven within a haven, images of discarding and burning their shoes to ash after this, if they ever manage to leave the tent. “Please don’t tell me that’s catching on,” he pleads, already knowing it falls on deaf ears, “I’m not even that prissy. That’s all Minho. I just don’t want wet socks.” 

Shrugging where he stands, Changbin poorly hides a smirk at their expense. “Then don’t wear any.” 

This, Hyunjin looks upon in horror. “Please don’t ever let me near your feet.” 

Jeongin pushes them into the tent, huffing judgmentally. “The only person who deserves to be complaining right now, is King.” He says this, refusing to acknowledge Jisung exiting the main tent, King tucked securely dry in his arms. He too, ignores Hyunjin's and Minho’s squawking, cooing at King like she’d fought Keres and Doyle herself. 

Minho is conflicted, before reaching out for the kitten sympathetically. “Do you know how bad water feels for a kitten’s whiskers, Hyunie?” 

Hyunjin gives up, throwing his hands in the air and crawling into the corner of the tent where he can already feel the most of their collected heat gather. At Minho’s request, they all remove their shoes before entering. Changbin is wearing socks...They’re not wet. 

“I can’t say if it started with Seungmin and I, or Jone,” Jeongin relays as soon as they’re settled, the rain quickly becoming a soothing backdrop to their recounts. Like this, they can almost imagine what they’re telling are nothing but horror stories for dark nights. 

“It was a combination,” Minho inputs, “Each different thing had its own outcome that all blended together to be what it was. Felix had his first vision, or his first magic experience after his tutor told him he was supposed to teach the prince. This happened—”

“A night after I arrived,” Jisung continues, “Though I don’t know how it would have anything to do with me.” 

Seungmin shakes his head. “I think you were a turning point for Felix. You inspired him to push for that information.”

Hyunjin shifts, resonating with that. “You’re a lot braver than any one of us were in the castle. We were raised to never go against the king and queen. We thought our little acts of rebellion like me keeping a sketchbook or Felix training to fight, were enough to subvert that. We spent our whole lives protecting each other, we never thought to do anything more. You changed that. You went against what people expected, and what they wanted.” 

Jisung blinks, head low with a gaping mouth. Hyunjin worries for a second that he’d gone too far. Out of them all, he thinks he and Jisung were the most distant with each other even when they snuck down to the dungeons and Jisung scared the ever-living daylights out of him. Suddenly, he’s being tackled to the ground, said boy sniveling into his chest. “You really think so? You think I’m cool ?” 

“I never said that,” he grumbles. 

Exasperatedly endeared, Changbin rolls his eyes. “Jisung, leave the poor guy alone. No one thinks you’re ‘cool’.” 

Offended, and still clinging to Hyunjin, he thinks he’s going to lose blood circulation in a minute, Jisung gasps. “Jeongin, Jeongin is that true?” 

Smart as he is, Jeongin doesn’t say a word, ignoring the small sidetrack entirely and continuing with their report. “And after that, I’m guessing, was when Seungmin and I got found out. Felix got a little scary right there.”

“Found out,” Changbin echoes, looking between Seungmin and Jeongin with bright cheeks, “You’re—” 

“It’s complicated,” Seungmin cuts off, not bothering to further himself from Jeongin for any more clarification. “But they assumed we were together. And for some reason, it’s against the law for two of the castle’s staff to be involved.” 

Subdued, Jeongin looks down at his and Seungmin’s linked fingers, an angry tilt to his lips. “We were to be separated. Felix and Hyunjin stood up for us, but it was fruitless. Then the person who was gonna report us, spit in Felix’s face. I guess it was enough to make him...upset.” 

With a snort, Minho twirls his finger. “Upset? That night he started planning treason.” 

A little lost, or just overall dumbfounded, Changbin puzzles, “How did you jump from being outed to treason?” 

“Felix has gone through a lot more than his friends being outed in that castle,” Hyunjin says for his friend, already sensing the stoniness morphing its way into Minho’s demeanor. It flashes in Changbin’s own gaze too, a secondhand defensiveness Hyunjin doesn’t know the origin of. “That with his newfound magic, must’ve have been the last straw.”

“And good thing it was.” Jisung’s face grows serious as he leans forward, grasping his knees. “There was a lot going on in that castle. It all came to a single point when it was supposed to, and if Felix hadn’t done that then, he would’ve been behind.” 

When Jisung goes serious, it’s doubtless that Changbin will follow behind with an amplified intensity. If his stare were on Hyunjin, he feels as if it’d burn holes into his head. Jisung is completely immune, in fact, it fit right into his own emanation. “How much?” 

“Other than the curse,” Minho drawls, “People from the staff were mysteriously disappearing and returning within the same day. No collection whatsoever of where they had been. Apparently, it’s been happening for years, and recently, more people have been going missing by the week.” 

Hyunjin thinks this is where he comes in, tamping down a shiver that blends with the pouring rain drops battering against their tent which thankfully still holds. “And there’s this weird source of magic, in the dungeons. The king activated it once while I and Jisung were tailing him. The feeling it brought on, matched what the victims had felt when they suddenly reappeared.”

“The source was right over where...” Jisung purposefully baits, letting Changbin fill in the gaps for himself, eyes narrowing. Meanwhile, the others had no idea what to do with the context. All Hyunjin knew of was the bloodstain, starkly imprinted into his mind, each drop and splash. 

He turns to Minho and gestures for the jacket. With no fuss, Minho gives it to him and he places it over his shoulders, the insulation a welcome feeling even if it does nothing to stave off his fearful shudders. 

“And then Felix broke down,” Seungmin follows up with, eyes far away. Hyunjin pities him. He can’t imagine the state in which Seungmin had found the boy that day from what he’s been described. Truthfully, he never wants to. He’s already seen too much of it. “His magic started going haywire during his visions. He passed out right after finding the one physical evidence of the curse.” 

Changbin sits up straight and swift. “There’s physical evidence? What is it?” 

Jeongin sighs, indicating to where their backpack sits in the other, smaller tent. “It’s nothing but a poem in a children’s book. It’s pretty obvious what it means. Everything but the last line which clues on how to break it.” 

Jisung must’ve withheld his true feelings on that matter when they first read it aloud, as he buzzes with anticipation now, peering desperately up at Changbin who’s gone brittle like bark. “Break...On how to break it?” Slowly, he directs his gaze to meet Jisung’s, and something hopeful blooms between them, almost foreign to their beings. More excitable than Hyunjin has seen or expected, Changbin pitches forward, switching to sitting on his knees and hands. “Do you have it memorized?” 

Bored and scornful of the poem, Seungmin affirms. He only seems willing to do so with such ease because of the childish wonder on Changbin’s face, bright and distressed. There’s no pitch or feeling in his tone, downright apathetic as he recites once more. 

“This kingdom is a peaceful kingdom.

Not ‘cause the kings and queens all agree, and the villagers reside in harmony.

But because they all fear being a branch of the rotten family tree.

For as long as the kingdom’s people remember, their royals have always been in danger.

Their memory is never safe and never clear, it only takes a moment for their entirety to disappear.

It bears no prize to lead with such a curse, but the family perseveres.

This kingdom is a peaceful kingdom, their royals forever blurred.

Until in minds, they’ve left their mark in golden ink.”

Absent, Changbin repeats the last line soft and low, too many times for them to count in a single breath. Forlorn and frustrated at once, he runs a hand agitatedly through his hair. “But what the hell does that mean?” 

“And we don’t even know if that’s the true way to break the curse, or it’s just a way to make the kids feel better ‘cause there’s a solution the adults must understand that they don’t,” Minho offers unhelpfully. 

Before Changbin and Jisung can work themselves into an episode none of them think they want to experience in any circumstance, Seungmin denies. “No. Everything Felix’s magic showed him must have been for a purpose. To let him know about the forgotten prince he’s connected to, and that stuck out violently enough for him to react like that.” 

“You think his magic is that sentient?” 

“Gold magic is gifted by something,” Changbin ponders, “It only works when it wants to. That’s why it makes royals such odd magic users.” 

Jeongin tilts his head. “You seem to know a lot about the castle. And its magic. You too, Jisung.” 

That lights a bulb in Minho and he frowns, slowing his pets to King’s chin. “Yeah...Changbin told me you guys knew of the curse. Moreso, you aren’t affected by it. I won’t ask how you guys knew of it until Felix is awake but...why didn’t you tell us then?” 

“Interference,” Jeongin and Jisung say in unexpected unison. 

“At first,” Jisung starts with, heaving a great breath like it was all so big, when at first it had been so small. “It had nothing to do with why I was there. There was no point, and I didn’t know if I could trust him yet. Now, it seems sickening, but then I had to assume he was in cahoots with Keres and Doyle.” 

They all pull a face at that. 

“But then, as his magic began to reveal itself more and more, I couldn’t prevent it anyway. I could potentially be disrupting its natural course and making the bigger situation, worse than it was and is.” 

“From experience,” adds Jeongin, “Interrupting what it had going with Felix, came with consequences. I was paralyzed completely when I tried.” 

That makes Jeongin’s appearance when Hyunjin had been escorted to his execution, make a lot more sense. Thinking about it, he had almost been in the same position. “Ah, me too.” His must have not been as severe as Jeongin’s case, but he can still feel the lingering lead in his limbs, weighing him down when he’s most relaxed, sending him into immediate panic. 

He shifts where he’s sitting, uncrossing and recrossing his legs to make sure they can move, and without a numbing ache. 

In the silence he accidentally leaves behind, they grow pensive. Unable to handle it, or giving into his previous urges, Jisung jumps to his feet, clapping his hands together with a strained smile. “It’s been awfully quiet. I’m gonna go check up on Cee.” 

Sighing, Changbin follows suit, expression screwed tight. No doubt he was thinking about the last line of the children’s poem, endlessly poring over how it could break. For what reason he was so set on it. 

“Wait.” Seungmin calls, stumbling to his feet and reaching his hands in his pocket. He withdraws his small notebook, forcefully pushing it into Changbin’s swinging hand. Sympathy carefully paints the lines of his eyes. “Here’s everything we’ve got in detail from theories and onwards. Read it.”

Grateful, Changbin wraps his fingers with a tight but delicate grip like it was sacred text. He nods once with grand appreciation before hurrying after Jisung, his head down towards the leather cover. 

Jeongin purses his lips, pulling Seungmin down beside him. He doesn’t get the chance to say what he wants, Seungmin intertwines their hands and shaking his head. “I’ll bet they have another notebook to give me. A bigger one.”

Hyunjin looks at the tent entrance, dancing in the gusts of biting wind. They have a lot to give to each other now. Safety and knowledge on both hands that neither have been able to grasp before. 

Maybe they’ll have a sketchbook too.

Chapter Text

Minho waits outside the curtain door, a hood secure over his head. Each drop that makes it past and hits his face, is a slow acclimation to his new home. 

It takes much-taught restraint to not lean his head back just enough to push against the fabric wall, listening with his whole might to whatever he may hear behind it. As if he’d somehow catch Felix’s voice floating amidst the hushed whispering of Changbin and Jisung and occasionally, Cee. 

Regret-tinged, he holds the memory of Cee’s voice well. The moment it was introduced wasn’t one he could easily forget. Smooth with rough edges not the most powerful of pressures could soften. Accented with a familiar lilt Minho has only ever heard in Felix’s royal words. 

Enigmatic like every other aspect of the masked savior. 

He wishes it weren’t raining only so he could’ve brought King with him to fill the overbearing lack of noise, or interrupt the relentless tune of it, rain beating down on every resounding surface it could, an empty echoing to remind him of his repent. 

Misery, he complains about not. The muddy water seeping at an agonizing pace over his shoes and through his pristine socks. The chill of winter resides snug over his uncovered face, biting his cheeks ruddy and chattering his teeth. He takes it as the universe’s punishment. He doesn’t count any of the other things. Those were just unfair. 

This small inconvenience, a bit of a weather hassle, he thinks he deserves. 

There’s a lapse in the murmuring backdrop behind him and he grows alert, subtly glancing beside him where the door is. He startles much when a figure bursts through it, zeroing in on him swift. 

Jisung licks his lips confused. He doesn’t react to the pelting water whatsoever, rivers streaming through his hair over his face in peaceful rivulets as if they were welcoming him with a full-body embrace rather than soaking him bone deep. “Minho?”

“Hey.” Belatedly, the former valet begins to realize just how little he prepared for this. 

Running hands with the slightest tremble to them through his hair, Jisung stares upon him expectantly and puzzled. He hasn’t spent a second not shaken up, not worrying, since they’ve gotten here. 

Unlike majority of them, he seemed more carefree in the castle. Maybe there it was just easier to forget whatever plagued him here. 

He supposes neither of them had the luxury of running away from their stressors when it lies within the ones they love most. With that, Minho still has nothing planned to say, but he plays it by the ear. Someone like Jisung may like that more anyways. 

He doesn’t rehearse his emotions like Seungmin does, isn't able to translate them effortlessly exactly the way he wants to from a script to the present. So he does what he normally doesn’t, ever poised ever meticulous, and lets his mouth run. 

“I’m sorry. For treating you the way I have been. I’ve spent my whole life dedicating myself to Felix’s safety and protection. For a long, long time, he’s been my priority. My purpose. It’s…a royal thing I think. But he’s not the only one I care for. He hasn’t been for a long while. You are someone I care for. So I can’t treat him as anything more than you when you both are incredibly important to me. So I’m sorry, for lashing out at you, insulting your home when you brought us here to keep us safe, and being rude to someone you love. I can only hope you forgive me.”

With a hesitant breath, he finishes it off with a steep bow, considering going all the way and sinking his knees and palms into the shifting grass to show just how apologetic he was. 

At a touch to his face, cupping his cheeks, paired with a sniffle, he’s made to raise his head. For the second time that day, Jisung is openly crying, salt joining the rain that decorates his face, irises glimmering like opening reflection pools just as the pitiful sun hits them. 

Minho didn’t think rain could suit anyone. It suited Jisung just fine, washing away the clumsily crafted layers of cheap coverage he’d donned in the castle walls. 

His brows pinched together, eyes wide and shining, enough to show the true depths of emotion they could show, too many at once to perceive. His lips quiver and his chin wobbles. 

It’s the only warning Minho gets as he’s barraged with a vicious hug. He’s never described one as violent before until now but there’s no tamper to the aggression in which Jisung wraps his arms around him, squeezing until his lungs and heart feel like they’re going to burst. 

He complains not, hugging back fiercely and feeling his own eyes prickle. 

“I’d like to say it’s all fine and I know I’m just as important as Felix, but I can’t,” Jone murmurs into his neck, and guilt roils tamed within his guts. “So thank you. I accept your apology and forgive you. And, you’re someone important to me too.” 

Being the prince’s right-hand man, left Minho unknowing of how just little recognition he got. The assurance, felt good. 

+

He feels like even the marrow of his bones has been sucked dry. Every bit of energy he possesses has been leaked into the golden prince’s, their two magics eating away at each other within the prince until his was fed. Chan can tell from the starvation in his own, that the treatment was complete. 

For the first time in the three days he’s been stationed in here, he removes his hands from Felix’s simmering skin, falling back into his seat with a long, exhausted exhale. There’s a tired tremble that runs from the tips of his fingers to the set of his shoulders. He feels weak. It’s not something he’s unfamiliar with. 

His legs wobble and shake as he stands, having to bend over the cot and hold onto the edges for any support. He could stay in that chair, sleep until Felix has woken him. An idealistic hope that Felix will know him even with his insignificance awaits this. But the process will go smoother if he immediately rests, and by tomorrow, even with the exhaustion, he’ll be able to function. 

Any plan he was beginning to plan burns in the fire that ignites in his chest when he hears the hitch of a breath. Eyes wide and a bit fearful, he looks down, buckling to his knees as warm brown gazes groggily upon his face. As soft and trepidative as a prayer, he breathes, “Felix?” 

Amongst the bleariness and fatigue, there’s a spark, the barest hint, of recognition. Chan’s lungs feel fill to their capacity, heart pounding unsteadily against his ribcage like a drum. He can’t close his eyes, watching everything with minute detail, awed by it all just as much as Felix seemed captivated with his face. 

Never in his wildest dreams, had he seen himself here. 

It still had been a dream nonetheless and a trail of water makes home on his cheeks, prickling over his scars and dropping between them. Over even the loud pounding of rain against metal and wood, all Chan can hear is the slow breaths the prince takes as his hand rises to touch the tear. 

“Prince…” 

It takes all his years of self-training and natural will to bottle every feeling within him, that keeps him from bursting apart at the seams right there, crumbling every defensive structure in his body for the first time since he’s built them. 

Smooth fingers rest tenderly against his jaw, trailing up wondrously. Chan isn’t sure how long it’s been since he’s taken his last breath. Sleeves shift and he sees freckles, golden dots and trails traversing the entire length of Felix’s arm. 

Involuntarily, he reaches up himself, brushing his hand over Phoeb’s. It’s smaller than his, and no doubt warmer, mellow with care with few calluses from pencils and swords alike. Boldly, he places his palm down, instantly regretting it. 

Hissing, he jumps back, holding his wrist as it throbs cruelly. He looks down at it, watching with distant disgust as blood trails from a curved line burnt through the heel of his hand, down his arm. Absently, he makes sure it doesn’t hit the floor. 

Slowly, he tilts his head back up, observing Felix’s reaction. There’s terror in the distant depths of Felix’s half-away expression. And Chan is back in that night, and it’s been so long, but he’s back. And all he sees and feels like an arrow to his gut, is terror. It resounds and bounds within him and chilly claws scrap over the expanse of his spine. 

It’s a stark reminder of why he’d never sought out the golden prince in the first place. 

He was nothing to him, nothing more than a danger. 

+

They’re settling. Minho hadn’t expected to. Not so quickly. Not so easily. Adjusting the new thick sleeves flowing down his elbows and tightening around his wrists, a stark black with rust accents, gifted to him by Changbin after his and Hyunjin's first lovely experience with the winter weather. Both of them have a lined hood they only put down really when they’re sleeping. 

He thinks he’s comfortable here. 

They’ve built a temporary but sturdy routine in the three days they’ve been here. And though every night Minho falls asleep fitfully, the great fear that at any moment, Keres and Doyle will burst through the trees and taken them all back, either thrown in the dungeons, or killed. But he wakes up, and Changbin is there, two sticks in hand, ready to test his combat skills. 

Jisung is cooking something over the fire with Seungmin’s help and Jeongin and Hyunjin tend to King before gathering whatever Changbin has told them for the day. They’re accustomed to the mud now, running through it as it sloshes over their fancy pants, and they don’t worry about it. 

It’s almost nice. Nothing Minho has ever imagined. 

But there’s a blaring piece of the puzzle missing. 

“Minho.” 

He whips his head around unbending his knees and facing Jisung. The other’s face is flung open, a light apprehension dampening whatever may be negative. His chest rises shallowly, breaths quickened. “Felix,” he pants, hands reaching up and down like he can’t contain the words he’s saying well enough, shaking as they tumble from his mouth. “Felix, he’s awake.” 

Minho is a bit surprised that the tent doesn’t tumble to the ground with the intensity in which the group tears into it. He can’t even think about the distinct absence of the only other magic user when he spots Felix, dazedly sitting up with lost eyes, a hand raised listlessly before his face. He turns out the loud noise of their forced entrance, mouth parting. 

“You’re okay.” 

+

There’s only a single break in his dreams soaked with red roses and sprinkled with poppy petals, drowning him over and over. His lungs never empty, his screams bubbling to his lips and dying out before a sound can be made. 

It’s him, in the dungeons, that day, replaying it, each time the dungeon and scene tuning more surrealistic each time until he’s in a sick fiction of his traumatizing reality. 

He’s able to speak once. He’s in a place he doesn’t recognize, everything foggy. And the wildest thing happens then perhaps. The crimson prince stands over him, and Felix could touch him, unlike any of his visions, he can feel the prince beneath the pads of his fingers. Like he was real. 

It’s just another nightmare though. It ends with blood just like all the rest. 

He wakes gradually, blinking up at whatever ceiling he was under as it becomes clear. At first, he thinks the swirling colors above him are his adjusting vision. Turns out, there’s not a single solid color. Of neither the roof nor the wall. A kaleidoscope of different cloths and patterns. 

It’s oddly comforting. 

There’s an itch in his hand and he sits up to look at it, wondering if there’s a stray ant traveling over his knuckles. There’s nothing there though, just his golden band shining at him like it was teasing him. It feels warmer than usual and he wonders if that’s because it’s so frightfully cold around him. 

He’s not though. The chill that had settled between the rungs of his ribcage, slowly curling like a vice over the surface of his heart. It’s gone. He still shivers, jumping when a cacophony of thuds pierce his curtain of confusion. 

His friends. They’re all there. And from what he can see, unharmed. His voice tears from his throat, rough and hoarse, unused. “You’re okay.” His lips curl into a smile almost against his will at the utter relief and joy that bombard him, and the expression tastes odd over his teeth, foreign. There’s a weariness that blurs him, tugging him down like drying paint. It’s nothing like he’s ever felt, only sampled when his visions rapidly grew. 

This went from head to toe. Not like he could care when Minho is one second at the door, the other beside him, arms swiftly encircling his torso. And then four other pairs of arms join him, and he’s surrounded in the collective embrace of those he cares for more than anything else in the whole world. 

He’s so happy he’s even surpassed joyful tears, the emotion pinging through him bright and clear, filling him with a drunken buzz. 

Hyunjin and Jone are sobbing little fits, tears soaking his blanket and shirt. He laughs with their cries and earns pathetic whines in return. Jeongin and Minho cling to him so tightly he’s half convinced they’ve managed to merge with his body so they never have to let go. Seungmin keeps his eyes wide open with a small smile that lights him all up like nothing else, taking in Felix like an art exhibit. Committing him awake and well to memory. 

His heart drops to his stomach when the ‘door’ his friends had come through flutters open, revealing another. Someone he doesn’t know with a serious aura and sober face, narrowed eyes examining him assessingly. 

Felix embraces Minho tight, a quiver to his chin. “Who are you?” he demands. Was the person who saved him another of the queen’s tricks, putting him with his friends only to take them away again, a cruel pound of salt poured over the wound. Speaking of. “Where’s the masked man? The one who saved me?” 

That seems to startle the stranger, a note of delight playing over his pupils. Felix glares at him with the little might he has, defensively finding a way to bring everyone closer to him. As if he could protect them. 

Jone speaks up, disentangling himself from the prince and slinging himself over the stranger familiarly. Their face falls with false irritation. They don’t fight Jone off though, sighing. “This!” Jone exclaims, “Is Changbin! I’ve known him forever.” 

And doesn’t that just ignite a series of endless questions like dominoes Felix doesn’t think will be answerable without taking up a whole day. So awkwardly, he loosens his grip on Minho and waves unsurely. “Oh, uh, I’m Felix. It’s...nice to meet you.” 

Changbin, smiles, and it has to be one of the prettiest Felix has ever seen. Genuine in a way no person’s could afford to be in the castle. It’s not demure like Seungmin’s, a soft brush stroke of pure joy, or boldly bright like Jone’s and Jeongin’s. Felix feels honored to see it. Especially, since it’s clearly from someone not from the castle. 

“Where am I?”

“My home,” Jone answers vaguely, “This is where I actually live. And, uh, also, my actual name is Jisung. There’s a lot that has happened while you were...away. I bet you have a lot of questions.” 

Felix levels him with an unimpressed glance. Jisung…”Thousands. But, the one person. Is he here?” 

Minho snorts, pulling away reluctantly, his hands remaining over Felix’s lap, a thread of connection he won’t break. “Passed out. You’ve been asleep three days, the entire time, he was treating you. Magic exhaustion, you used more magic than you ever have before and it drained you to lifelessness.”

“Three days!”

Seungmin sees his mouth open, predicting the endless stream of questioning already picking up momentum over Felix’s tongue, and stops it with a hand to his shoulder. “How about,” he starts slowly, “We’ll tell you everything that’s happened. And then you ask questions.” 

Too bewildered to do anything else, Felix shuts his mouth with a click, and nods. 

+

As well as he’s been extensively traumatized by the events he remembers to only be a few hours ago, but have nearly been a week ago, physically, he’s only faded. He apologizes profusely to Jeongin and Hyunjin when they said that’s how they felt when he paralyzed them, physically draining their energy until they couldn’t move. It came with its equivalent price clearly. So even though they feel like solid iron weights, he works to quickly get back on his feet. 

The clothes he’d been stripped to in the dungeons were far too thin and delicate for the rainy forest they were now staying in. He’s given clothes that belong to someone else in the camp. He suspects they’re his savior’s because only Jisung is about the same size as him, and Jisung had cleared up with flighty hands that they weren’t his. 

The black hood and trousers he’s given do much, much more against the cold than his thin sweat-soaked blouse and stiff slacks. It’s a refreshing feeling, being able to feel warmth again without constantly soaking in the sun like a cat. It’s especially useful, he can’t imagine how it would feel if that magical chill had persisted as the winter settled over the trees and grass. 

Winter felt nice, despite his craving for the bare summer heat his kingdom received. 

It was evidence just how much they are moving into a new time of their life. That much was obvious. No matter if they returned to the castle or not, their lives would never be the same. It’s undeniable. Even more so when Felix observes the exponential differences that have occurred for the short but long time he’d been asleep. 

Minho, he’d befriended someone new by himself, without Hyunjin and Felix’s prompting. Hyunjin moves more freely, gracefully, like there’s nothing he’s holding back. He’s always held back in the castle, afraid of calling too much attention despite attention being set in his bones. Free to be himself. 

Seungmin and Jeongin kept their pinkies linked as much as they could, but even when they didn’t, they were constantly checking over their shoulders. Seungmin smiles more, his shoulders lay lower, posture loose. Jeongin gets as loud as Jisung when he wants, and as quiet as Seungmin when he wants, content to be whatever his mood brings him. 

Felix is still afraid. Constantly. Fear is engrained in the forefront of his mind and it’s the first thing he sees and feels when it comes to anything. Again, to him, it’s only been a couple hours since the worst of his life, was repeated. 

He still sees it, printed at the back of his eyelids like a curse itself, blood. And then nothing. 

But he knows his change is coming. In fact, been going through a metamorphosis since his first vision. It’s only a matter of time before it’s obvious, as displayed, as his friends’. Soon, he’ll be able to see it blatantly even within himself. Either way, he knows he’s ready for it. Maybe unprepared for whatever is to come, but he’s accepted anything that might happen to him from here on out. 

The unknown really. With his past in place finally, and his present tumultuous, he’s able to look ahead. It’s a scary, new feeling. He’s unsure if he should like it. 

+

They’re lazing around then the main tent’s entrance moves, opens. They’re all gathered in a circle over a tarp to avoid getting positively soaked, so it’s immediately known who’s exiting. Changbin and Jisung sit up quick, rushing to their feet while the others gradually shift their attention, uncertain. 

Felix’s captivation is almost desperate, his undying curiosity smeared over his features sloppily and in great abundance

Jeongin supposes it’s granted. He’d want to know the person who saved him from such a dire situation. Though with Seungmin’s new random connection to him that they have yet to explore, he doesn’t think a savior would be nearly as mysterious for him. 

The poor prince is to be disappointed. Mystery man Cee, comes out with a new mask. This one isn’t nearly as elaborate as his other, a cheap face covering Jeongin swears he recognizes as a leftover from one of his village’s many festivals. It’s a solid red, not a velvet-rich color like the other, but bright and solid, going from his hairline, to rounding out over his mouth. It seemed less like a mask in its sense, and more like a chunk of imagery removed from their minds. 

It makes him an utter riddle to work through. If Jeongin cared more for solving it, he imagines he’d be just as despondent as Felix is, petting King with a prominent pout. King seems only to stay to comfort the prince, looking unsatisfied with the job overall. 

Jeongin would lure the kitten away but he’s just the slightest afraid of his hands being magicked. 

Cee must catch sight of Felix too, a discreet stumble to his already worn-out gait. He walks oddly though, never mind the exhaustion and surprise. Oddly enough to Jeongin at least, not unfamiliar. He walks like Minho and on occasion, Sam, a graceful aloofness bred into his very legs. But there’s also a hint of the wild alertness Jisung and Changbin can’t help but exhibit, hands in his pockets but tensed, ready for attack at any moment. 

There sits an awkward silence as he reaches them, stopping just at the border of the tarp. Neither parties have any idea what to say. 

Abruptly, Cee withdraws a hand from one of his pockets, pulling up Seungmin’s notebook. Jeongin follows the object more eagerly than Seungmin. It must catch Cee’s eye because he leans forward and tosses it into Jeongin’s lap, a slight curve in his lips, the only indicator to his emotions. “I’ve caught up on all that’s happened,” he announces. There’s a lag to his voice, like the end of his words are racing sluggishly to catch up to the start of them, logged with age-old trepidation and tired caution. “And...sorry. I read the rest. It’s...it’s all really good.” 

There’s a tint to Seungmin’s cheeks, a rare sight, and he gapes. “You...Weren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” 

Cee’s thumb flits over the edge of his pocket skittish. “Sleep doesn’t come easy to me. No matter how worn. If I intruded, please tell me.” His teeth latches into his bottom lip but quickly stops, as if he had to realize there was nothing covering his mouth to hide the uncertainty. 

Listlessly, at the back of his mind, Seungmin at the front, Jeongin notes that Cee has faced everyone but Felix. 

“No,” Seungmin denies, scooting closer to Jeongin to caress the cover, seeming more worn than it ever has despite just being used to its full extent “I gave it to Changbin for you all to read so you can get everything we did...As for the lyrics, thank you.” 

Jeongin’s chest swells with pride. Seungmin is someone who has trouble expressing emotions, too precise with showing what he wants and only what he wants. He must have not expected for the mystery trio to read their other things, but he was smart enough to know it was a possibility. And he’d been open to it if he’d given the notebook to them without reign. He nods to the masked, tamping down his grin for Seungmin’s chagrin. “Thank you. We’re no professionals.” 

Oddly enough, that makes the stranger’s smile bloom, small and restrained but glaringly clear. Jeongin thinks Felix is going to fall over from how much he’s trying to read it, poor King whining at the threat of being crushed. “I think you two make fine lyricists, and even better singers. I...I have a couple extra notebooks by my cot if you need any pages...or inspiration.” 

They get the hint, startled at the insinuation but welcoming it excitedly. This person wrote too, and most likely sang. Jeongin wonders if he was familiar with their festivals, if he’s ever been to one, blending into the shadows like it was his namesake, listening to the tunes of their voices chime. Or if he’s spent his entirety here, aching to do just that. 

There’s so much to figure out about Cee, more so than Changbin and Jisung. They let some of themselves show, unguarded in ways Minho and Hyunjin can’t even achieve. Cee, he was entirely walled in, and his mask just made that a visible point. For whatever reason, he didn’t want to be seen. 

Looking at his prince, Jeongin thinks he may respect that a lot more than Felix. It’s odd, Jeongin doesn’t remember him being so prying with either him or Seungmin. In fact, he’d been all too accommodating to Seungmin’s vicious sense of privacy veiled in formality. Either something had changed between then and now, or Cee was different. 

It might be a volatile combination of both, and Jeongin only sees an outcome of disaster. 

Slipping the notebook into Seungmin’s hand, Jeongin gets the feeling the other gets the same feeling.

“I think...It’s up to all of you,” Cee says slowly. He has an opinion, one he won’t share. So he leaves room for theirs. “Whether we find you a permanent place to stay away from Keres and Doyle. Or we take them down.” 

Jaw clenching, Felix glares slightly at Cee. “We’re taking them down. No question about it. They’ve destroyed our kingdom until all it consists of is them, and abandoned our people. If they are not defeated, then they will find more like us to torment. And they will continue. So we must.” 

It’s the first time Cee’s shaded gaze rests on Felix, adam’s apple bobbing. His voice shakes. Disquieted by Felix somehow, his voice has a dull edge to it. Another defense. “Alright. I’ll give my all to assist you. Whoever else would like to help is welcome to as well.” 

Despite the option being what they’ve advocated for in their brief time of Jeongin knowing them, Changbin and Jisung appear discontent, eyes glued unhappily to the soggy grass. Stiffly, they make it known they’re with Cee. 

“And I’m sticking with Felix.” Minho was a given. 

Hyunjin is a bit more unsure, fingers tapping rhythmically and anxiously against the eye searing tarp, crinkling it further than it was. However, there’s a conviction hard and steady flamed across his face. “I won’t ever truly be free if they’re not gone. Nor will anyone else. I’m all in for taking them down.” 

There’s a shaky exhale from Minho, dropping his head with relief to Hyunjin's shoulder. They wouldn’t be separated. Jeongin knows the anxiety, stare ditting with Seungmin’s, fingers interlocked with no key to be found. Their decisions were separate, they, however, never wished to be. 

Jeongin can see Seungmin wavering. His lack of grudges gives him less of a searing need to take down the fake king and queen. He and Jeongin were insignificant servants. Their names and faces were freer than Hyunjin's, and their scars weren’t as deep as the rest. They could run, and they could end up safe. Entirely. 

Jeongin too, didn’t have the same motive, or, a lot less than his friend’s, slightly more than Seungmin’s. Really, he had no idea what he wanted. He’s purposefully left his sight ahead nonfunctioning. Now, he has to make a decision, and turn if back on. From the corner of his vision, he sees, and feels, all the eyes on him and Seungmin, varying in hope and fright. 

And then Jeongin identifies the most important thing. They’re meant to be together. This group of theirs. It might not be a forever thing, but right now, they were a team, a community, a forming family. Jeongin hasn’t known what that is in his disjointed village who took care of each other halfheartedly, themselves more a priority than anyone else. Jeongin wants that to change. Both for the family he’s left behind, and the one he’s managed to find. 

He’s not one for attachments, but here, is one he can’t lose. 

And logically, it was risky, but if they succeeded, there were more pros than being a self-exiled runaway. 

He doesn’t wait for Seungmin to decide, speaking up with a solid tone. “I’m in.” 

It takes a moment, long enough for sweat to roll down Jeongin’s spine even in the chilly forest. His heart stutters and his breath fluctuates. But it’s for naught. Seungmin sighs and nods. “Guess we’re all doing this.” 

Chapter Text

It’s blatantly obvious, Cee has been avoiding him since he woke. From the moment he introduced himself to Felix’s friends, to now, he’s been distant with only one person. The prince himself. Never before has Felix been so dissatisfied with someone ignoring his existence. Frankly, he’d longed for it back at the castle, a life without probing eyes and being a highlight topic of people’s conversations he didn’t know. 

It was bigger than that now, he reasons. He wasn’t being ‘ignored’. Cee was entirely aware of his presence, acknowledging it by being as far from it as he possibly could manage within their tight group, now a team dedicated to a grand coup. 

Planning began tomorrow, but preparations have already begun to filter into their routine. The mystery trio have taken to foraging their storage in their spare time, tossing out a variety of weapons. They all have to wonder the places they’ve scavenged, for how many times, to have obtained so much useful junk. 

Cee gave Jeongin a notebook, and Seungmin two. Both one for their writing, Felix wants to read what Cee has written, what emotions he’s displayed across rounded ink stabbed into faded paper, and the third, for their tactics. It’s left in the center of the main tent, a feared object only for what it spells to come. Felix has avoided it as avidly as Cee has him.

Both aversions had timers, and Felix was determined to make Cee’s run short. 

Honestly, he didn’t know why he was so desperate to just speak to the masked enigma. It’s gone far enough to even surpass Cee being the one to save him from that dungeon, though that plays a healthy part. There’s just a compulsion, homed deep in his chest, that’s almost stronger than the magic that created his visions. 

He suspects they’re made from the same flecks of gold. Just a tiny bit. 

But as the moon rises high, and the clearing goes dim, it seems he’ll have to continue his mission while they all pursue theirs. 

Crossing his arms glumly, he turns to Jisung, feeding the last scraps of their rabbit to King. She’s already grown so much since she was brought into Felix’s room. It’s unsettling. “Do I sleep where I was treated?” 

Gifting the final piece to King and wiping his fingers over his pants, Jisung shrugs. “You could. Normally, that’s Cee’s cot. But I think he’s going to replace Minho in the new isolation section of the tent. His privacy....” Felix rolls his eyes in response, well aware. “You could go in the new tent we set up with Sam, Jeongin, and Seungmin. Or Minho is gonna take the older tent if you wanna join him.” 

“So no one is gonna take Cee’s cot.” 

Sheepish, Jisung stands. “I might. Or no one. It doesn’t really have any good associations right now. I think it might actually...be, like, stained.” Felix winces, seeing red for too long of a second, reaching to his nose reflexively as if it might just start up again. 

Ah. Clearing his throat and shuffling away, Felix says, “I’ll just join Minho. Uh, good night.” 

“Night!” 

The older tent he supposes is the smaller one at the very front of their setup, threads springing free from their seams and the fabric beyond discolored, damp with the recent rain. Felix crawls in carefully, and sure enough, Minho sits in the corner, setting up a system of sheets that will keep him efficiently warm. He notices Felix immediately, face falling into ease. 

“Missed me, princeling?” 

Felix stares pointedly crossing his legs in the available space. “From what I’ve heard, you were missing me greatly .” 

Flustered, Minho grumbles under his breath, tossing a bundle of blankets directly at Felix’s face. Puffing lint from his mouth, Felix sloppily throws it over and under himself, the goosebumps fading away from his skin. They fall into a comfortable quiet, the first in a while. 

It shifts gradually, Minho peeking at him unsubtly. He’s got questions, and Felix knows he’ll ask them, preparing himself. It’s a vague recreation of when he’d told Minho about his first vision, but with so much contrast it gave him a pang of empty nostalgia. If there was anything he missed from then, it was the assurance that he, Sam, and Minho, would never be torn apart. Now, they have no assurance of anything. 

“What happened?” Minho asks, eyes wide and seeking as they crisscross Felix’s expression, forming an uncolored picture in his head to fill. “What made you...Why after so long did you gain the courage to finally try and look back at that painting, even ripping yours in the process?” There was a lot more to the question, layers deep with the same wording and origin. Why? 

Why paralyze Jeongin? Why ignore Sam? Why endanger them all? Why.

Idly, Felix picks at the unraveling stitch of his socks, the only thing on his being but that golden band he’s kept on his person from the castle. They were the only thing he’d been wearing that night that hadn’t been soaked scarlet. “I had a vision. The final vision.” 

Minho’s brows pinch inquisitively but he keeps his mouth shut, letting Felix continue at his pace, not daring to interrupt whatever flow he may pick up. Just like before. And again, Felix is ever so grateful, and wholly nervous. 

“It was the day the curse was enacted.” 

There’s no mistaking the muffled sharp exhale Minho hides behind trained fingers. He blinks rapidly, processing it behind the curtain of his lashes. He can’t. Because the curse keeps him from doing so, and he has no shield of magic like Felix. He’s purely off put, trying to wrap his mind around something invisible to him. But there’s a kernel of sight within him, that remembers, and distantly reminisces the event, displaying itself in the tremble of Minho’s shoulders. 

“Before Jeongin tried talking to me, I’d had a violently vivid vision of the crimson prince pleading me to stay safe and where I was. I couldn’t see it beyond the vision, but I could hear it. Utter chaos and havoc around us. Before this, I had never been able to see or really hear myself in a vision. But I did now. And I was terrified. The castle was being ransacked, and the villages burnt to the ground.” 

Minho’s eyes go hazy and Felix imagines his mind trying to break past a fog, recollecting the event that should have been so distinct in his memories. 

“He tried to snap me out of it, but I was in a sort of trance. I had to follow where the prince had run off to in the vision before it broke off. So I did, and I hardly remember even seeing Jeongin then, but it’s clear I did. I was too focused on following the path my magic had given me. And...that lead to the dungeons.” His voice has begun to crack as he gets closer and closer. He doesn’t stop though. He can already see it in his head, but he’ll be seeing it for the rest of his life so it’s no difference bringing it up now than then. 

“That’s where I saw Keres and Doyle, they’re not my parents, Minho. They’ve never been if that wasn’t clear. I had a mother who I saw once in my visions. She was rough around the edges and the queen’s lady-in-waiting, practically an advisor. I don’t know what happened to her. But...I saw the queen disappear. In the king’s arms. Together, they faded away as the curse took its effect. The prince, however, didn’t.” 

Confusion. They both know it as it bounces between them now. 

“Keres got mad, and she hexed him. In the queen and king’s last moments…they witnessed their son in excruciating pain. See, if you didn’t know already, royals get their magic from their gold. That’s why we’re always adorned with so much I suppose. The prince...He’d had it crossed over his face and draped over every limb from the neck down. She...She made him repulsed to gold. It burnt through his skin like acid. He had to tear it from his skin or risk it setting him apart to the bone. It was...horrifying.” 

Shudders wrack his whole body as he hears the scream as crisp and clear as the crickets chirping outside their tent. 

“By then, I’d somehow merged with my past self. And we were watching it all, having stupidly run after our...after running after him. They noticed me and...I saw his face. It was terribly marred, but I saw his features for the first time in any vision. I knew what he looked like. Me being there scared him possibly more than disappearing. She began to move in on both of us. And at the same time, with the same thoughts, we moved to protect each other.” 

“I threw myself at him, trying to grab or shield him or I don’t know. And he, he performed some of his own magic. He disappeared and I landed where he had been. Keres...she took me then, to be her pretty golden prince. I’d been a servant boy the son of the queen’s closest friend, and managed to befriend the crown prince himself. But I forgot all that, and became her pretty son. The curse took me. But, it didn’t take him. I’m positive.” 

He holds up his wrist, showing off the band that shines even in the dark. He flicks it off and points to the initials that Minho probably can’t see, but he can feel. “I don’t know what he did. Where he went. What happened to him. But I do know, he used his initial on this band he’d given to me for safekeeping. And he went against the curse.” 

Lowering his hand, he sighs, drained. “After, I was so angry. It overtook me, a mixture of my volatile magic and my fury. I needed to see his face, somehow, to see what Keres and Doyle had done to it. So I ripped my painting to see it. And it was ripped, but I recognized him. It was what I wanted, but then they showed up, and here we are.”

Something knowing lurks in the depths of Minho’s irises as he goes slack. He rushes forward and pulls Felix to his chest, rubbing his back in soothing circles, leaving Felix unknowing of the suspicious expression he wears. He continues, Felix crying into his new top, sobbing until his lungs struggle. 

In his sorrow, he doesn’t have the realization Minho does. 

+

They start combat training. They’d been doing a bit of it before Felix woke and before they officiated their plans forward. Nothing serious. Changbin and Minho let off steam while the others watched. Now, it was serious. A hundred percent. 

Hyunjin. Hyunjin was excited. 

A little bit like Felix, when he’d been found bumbling out of a secret passageway, Keres had seen him as a perfect little doll to manipulate. She’d like to call him pretty and precious, like a gem, most likely born from some lower-class nobles. No peasant could achieve such natural charm. 

She mustn’t have met very many people if she thinks that’s the truth. 

She’d lied to him, over and over again. Not just about her affection for him, as a plaything rather than...a son. But about Minho and Felix, her prince and his puppy guard. She told them little tidbits and pieces, trying to turn him against them before they could even come to face to face, so that when he did, he’d listen to whatever she told him to do with them. As if he hadn’t already lost all his memories, she made the first portion of his life, a giant hoax. A living, breathing, scheme. 

When he met them, and slowly got closer to them, turning from her as he realized her tricks and cruelties, she made sure he was cast as another of her failures. Just as Felix had been, just as Minho had been. The highest ranking servants within, and the biggest mistakes known throughout, the castle. 

Hyunjin liked to dance, waltz and flow along with whatever melody he hears, whether that be the pluck of a harp, or the whisper of the wind. Minho had told him offhandedly one day after they deemed each other worthy enough to trust, that he would be good at sword fighting with his footwork already a thing of wonders. 

He’d gone to apply for self-defense training, every servant, especially those without set duties, were allowed to receive them. Every servant, except him it would be apparent. The queen had made him out to be a vapid airhead who’d probably accidentally slice off someone’s hand with his grand stupidity. He wasn’t allowed near a sword, nor much else. He’d been trapped within the dumbed-down image she’d created for him as a consequence to not becoming it. 

So when Changbin announces they all need to learn some training before even attempting facing a single guard much less royal ones and evil mages. He’d been overcome with exuberance. Finally, he was being freed, the wiring of his cage permanently snipped. 

Changbin stands center standpoint, all attention on him, Hyunjin's especially. The boy has his hands in his lap and mouth glued shut so his ears can take in all they can. He feels like he’s little again, even though he can’t remember being little a single bit. This has to be what it feels like. It’s the opposite of Felix’s restless inattention laid with irritation. 

They’re all well aware he’s been trying to speak with Cee since yesterday morning with no results to show. Hyunjin feels for him, though currently, he couldn’t care less for the prince’s pouting when Changbin’s presenting him with a sword. And he’s allowed to touch it, splay his hands over the hilt as he would his pencils, twirling it in a dance. 

He feels free. 

“Save the dancing for later,” Changbin chuckles in good humor, carefully putting his hand against the flat of the blade and pushing it towards the ground. “It’s teaching time. You seem like you have some basics down.” 

Hyunjin flushes, standing straight. “Actually, only Minho and Felix have been taught the basics. I wasn’t able to. I just liked dancing a lot. I read a couple books on sword fighting when I was...bored.” 

Changbin notices the underlying agitation in his tone, cocking his head and redirecting his attention to the rest. “You’ve got experience right, valet?” 

Minho jumps to his feet, feeling out the swords until he finds one that he likes most, tossing it in the air with a twirl and catching it. “So we’ve got to split them up among us.” 

“I’ll be taking Felix.” 

Slumping, Hyunjin faces the source, seeing Felix practically whip himself into a tornado to do the same. Felix gapes at Cee, jaw an inch from hitting the mud. Though Cee stands right behind him, he doesn’t spare the prince a single glance, arms crossed rigidly. Honestly, Hyunjin is slightly perturbed at the fact that most of them hadn’t sensed him approaching one bit. 

His lips are downturned, threaded with a thin strand of patience, his spool running sparse. “I’ll be able to help him use his magic without overexerting himself. Jisung and Jeongin can be taught by Minho, and Hyunjin and Seungmin by Changbin. That alright with everyone?” 

“Do you think you’re in any state to be doing that, sire?” Changbin mutters sarcastically, sticking his blade into the ground and pushing on the hilt casually. Something tense and harsh passes between them, a stony staredown with Cee as the victim. 

Jaw clenched, Cee looks down. “Does anyone else have experience with magic enough to teach him?” 

Even not knowing why it’s relevant, it’s a unanimous no. The only magic users there were Felix and the possible mage. Changbin huffs, pettily looking away from Cee and keeping it that way. Cee’s shoulders drop and his chin quivers in the slightest but his resolve doesn’t falter. Jisung walks up to him and whispers into his ear, hooking his chin over the other’s shoulder assuringly. 

It’s visibly appreciated but Cee gently pushes him off. “Felix, we’ll go further than the rest to the river. Minho, you put the gold beneath the dirt, right?” 

Minho wears an odd expression, one Hyunjin can’t decipher, before it clears and he faces Cee, nodding with eyes too still to be normal. “It’ll shine, it’s not too deep so don’t...dig.” His pupils wander strangely over Cee’s covered face, landing away with a swallow. 

Before Hyunjin can possibly question it, Changbin is pulling his focus back to him, Seungmin joining them, a longer, thinner sword gracelessly hanging from his fingers. His utter lack of knowledge is pitifully apparent. Hyunjin knows Changbin will need every opportune moment he can get to train them even slightly enough to go against royal guards. So he shuts his mouth and clears his head, giving it all to Changbin to teach. 

“Whatcha got to teach us, sir Changbin?” 

+

Felix watches, crawling out of his skin but remaining viciously still, as Cee scans the ground. He’s nearly afraid that if he moves wrong then Cee will scare like a wild animal, fleeing and leaving Felix alone and teacherless. So he just watches, eyes wide as they follow each of Cee’s movements, trying to read the invisible ink of the masked’s body language. 

Cee stills, kicking at the ground. “Here,” he says monotone. Not a hint of emotion leaks from his voice. So much so Felix has to know the indifference is a pretense. Not that it gives him anything more than he doesn’t already know. “Your gold. You’ll need it to practice. We’ll do less and less as time goes by so you can maximize your use of magic overall, but as much as you came with is good for now.” 

Frowning, Felix peers down at the mud, scratching at his neck. From Cee’s lack of motion, it must be up to the prince to unearth the mound of jewelry. “Um, why is buried again?” As he sifts through the pile, he notices something else. “And where’s my-the crown?” 

“Changbin broke it as soon as we arrived. I told him to. I don’t know if you realized, but it was a seal against your magic. Inhibited it. Your magic must have worked a lot to get through it as much as it did. But that must have taken a toll on your body. Do...can you feel the difference?” There’s a slight bump in his voice, a worry almost indiscernible that peeks through despite Cee’s best efforts. 

It makes sense. Cee must have some sort of concern with him if he went through so much danger to save him from the very dungeons of Keres. Felix has the striking hope that hurts a little, that Cee isn’t merely doing it because he’s the ‘Golden Prince’. “Oh,” he pipes, “That, that makes sense. When my magic started showing, I was always cold, and it was always boiling uncomfortably under my skin, and whenever I had a vision, my nose would bleed. Now...I’m warm.” 

Cee’s mouth opens and closes and Felix has practice imagining expressions of facial features he has yet to see. He can envision the furrow of a brow and an uncertain dart of eyes to the left. “The visions, how did those feel? Without the nosebleed.” That stain of doubt, shaped differently before, makes a reappearance. As negative as that should be, it invigorates Felix. 

The question does not. He has to think a little, rubbing off the mud from a golden charm with the pad of his thumb before adorning the chain over his neck. It’s so cold, it makes him shiver on contact. There’s no way to encapsulate all the webs of feeling slung and stuck over his visions. There was far too much. It’d take him hours to go over every bit. The wonder, the awe, the yearning. The terrifying bewilderment, confusion, and the melancholy, sharp as a dagger. 

In the end, after each one, all he had felt was hollow. Scraped raw of the things he felt and should’ve felt. Sad in the bleakest way. Piercing an earring through his ear, he answers quietly. “Terrible, it felt terrible.” 

He looks back up to try and see if Cee will give away anything at the response, but the other has turned away, back and shoulders stiff. “Oh,” is all he says, and it’s far too small of a thing. Felix gets nothing from it but the sinking feeling that he’s managed to say the wrong thing. 

A bad taste harshly scraped against his tongue, Felix licks his dry lips and stands, wincing at the familiar jostle of each accessory colliding against each other before swaying back and forth. The sound they make sounds different though against the thick wool of his hood than they do the silken bones of his royal vests, and that brings him a mass of comfort. 

When Cee faces him again, it feels as if he’s somehow donned another mask. It makes Felix’s own face fall but he tries not to show his disappointment so pathetically blatant. The feeling has its depth, but all it serves is to make him appear like a desperate puppy begging to be walked. 

“You can’t get too close,” the other makes known quickly, “Your gold might disrupt my magic. It’s...that’s why it had to be removed when treating you.” 

Felix nods, accepting the explanation with a slight blip. He raises his forearm, resting his elbow in his hand as he shakes his sleeve down to brandish the golden band. “Why didn’t you take this off then?”

There’s a long moment where Cee just stares at it, to the point where Felix begins to feel the urge to squirm. “Seemed important...If you think it’s better off, you can. It’s not necessary.” 

Relieved but determined not to show it, Felix swiftly pulls his sleeve back over it. At this point, with his final vision, he’s hesitant to ever take it off until he might one day reunite with the crimson prince. He hasn’t taken it off before and he doesn’t know if something will happen if he does now. So he merely doesn’t. 

“So, what’re we doing with my magic first, boss?” 

The name seems to settle over Cee foreignly, his mouth pursing but not too unpleasantly. Still a reaction large enough for Felix to take note of when all his reactions around the prince were seldom. 

Cee thinks, chewing on his lip with deep consideration. “It’s tricky,” he hums and Felix latches on the loss of aloofness, a seamless transition for Cee’s cold persona as he truly puts his focus into teaching Felix, still rough, but softer. “Royal magic is more something we-you work with than control. It’s there for you to serve your duty as best as you can and keep order within the bounds of the balance natural magic needs to thrive. So there really isn’t much you can do without prompting, but there are things that will help you better harness the magic within you so it isn’t hurting you in its course.” 

Felix clinks his nail against a piece of gold, easier to not be repulsed by it when he’s not surrounded by it like a cage. “Is that how it works with all mage magic? Where do you get yours from?” 

Stilling, Cee comes up blank. “Um...it’s hard to say. It’s very weak, really.” 

Skeptical, Felix raises a brow. “Weak enough to teleport you and I together out of castle walls after teleporting in by yourself?” 

Cee smiles faintly with a puff of air, a curve crafted of meek exasperation. And this is the first time he’s able to see it, as well as a veneer of the person who’d saved him, gentle and accommodating to a fault. 

What changed that attitude? And only with Felix?

Waving his fingers nonplussed, Cee makes his voice silent as if to keep Felix from hearing the answer as well as asking again. “It was the most magic I’ve used in forever. The only reason I’m walking around is that I know how to deal with magic exhaustion.” 

That elicits a great frown from Felix and he wants to rush forward and examine the other, as if he could see the same lead in his bones that had plagued Felix when he first woke. He probably could, if Cee didn’t disguise it just right. It’s heavily implied that Cee is well acquainted with magic exhaustion. 

“And you’re going to be teaching me magic? Shouldn’t you rest more? Why are you even walking around at all? It’s not like you had someone to treat you.” 

Cee cocks his head condescendingly, clicking his tongue. “Are you going to treat me, my golden prince?” 

For a second split to eternity, Felix flounders. For what he doesn’t know. The slick molasses-soaked tone paired with that name has his mind filling with cotton and fluff. His heart takes a furious beat before the other seemingly takes mercy on his pour malfunctioning soul. Shouldn’t he be appalled? Not...not whatever this gleeful puzzlement was. 

Scoffing, Cee gestures for Felix to follow him. “You’re starting to sound like Jisung and Changbin,” he complains, “They’ve been on my case since before I began to treat you. But it’s not like I had any other choice.” 

“Didn’t you?” Felix accuses, voice distant. He’s trying to walk as soundlessly as Cee who casually strolls over the land without a sound, a ghost gliding beside Felix. Just as his concentration strays he steps on a wet stick, the break slow and loud enough to startle a bird. “It’s not like I had any reason to wake up within the month.” 

He doesn’t get a reply. 

Annoyed, Felix tacks on, “Jisung and Changbin are right.” 

“Not really,” Cee is swift to deny, “You’re invaluable to this operation, my prince. If we wanted to proceed, both mentally and physically, then you had to be awake. And I had the ability to speed that up, so why not?” 

He’s not entirely wrong. Felix doesn’t know how to argue, clipping back with a baffled, “How are you even awake right now?” 

“As I said, I know how to deal with this.” There are stones in his words, pelting himself more so than Felix. It’s a clear termination of the topic. But Felix is finally getting the walking agitation to talk and he’s not going to give that up before all he’s getting are lessons and lectures. 

“Why do you call me that? Especially after knowing I’m not even royal by blood?” 

“...My prince?” 

“Yeah.” 

Cee’s steps slow by a fragment. “It just feels right, my prince. It fits you.” 

The answer is so incomplete it leaves Felix vacant. “My prince,” he parrots, tasting the words, letting them soak through his throat and down to his chest. Cee freezes abruptly, and his next step makes a noise. 

It feels right too, saying it. My prince. The words are familiar and Felix knows why. 

His mind has spiraled down an entirely new pit and he scurries to be beside Cee, not even bothering to look him in the face, just wanting to hear everything he has to say with as much clarity as possible. “The Crimson Prince, or uh, the cursed one. Who...disappeared? Changbin said you guys aren’t affected by the curse. Do you perhaps...remember him?” 

Ever so slowly, Cee answers with a delay to his voice. “You could say.” 

A moth to flame, too used to the others, Felix lunges close to Cee, expression pleading. Violently, Cee flinches away and they both go still like wax figures. Felix blinks, taken aback by the volatile reaction. Apologetically he ducks his head and moves back away, quickly asking his question to dissipate the tension reaching its sudden peak. 

“What do you remember of him? Like, did you know of him or did you know him like Minho, or maybe you passed by him? Or even...what was your life like before the curse, Cee?” 

Silence suffocates them, deprives them of any carefree air Felix had wrangled and killed within the same minute. 

“He was a coward,” Cee says finally, voice harsh, too harsh. It was the most emotion he’s portrayed unveiled, and it was not the one Felix would like. He doesn’t elaborate, doesn’t answer anything else, sneer stern and too big. It doesn’t fit on his face, clunky like a misplaced brick in a wall of marble. “We’re here.” 

The river was as near to the clearing as Felix had supposed it to be. He remembers pondering about bodies of water, just the last eventful week. And how he had never been to one, and how he didn’t think he'd ever be able to. But every circumstance has changed since then, and here he stands now, river mist coating his cheeks like dew on a leaf. 

The frigid air solidifies in his lungs, awe shaping it to each shallow breath, expelling in swirls from his lips. 

There…there was so much water. Felix has never held any particular love for the element, more inclined to the flames of a fire or the tastes of the wind than the rain that consistently fell around him. But it was impossible to not be amazed by the power and dance of a river. 

Breathy, “How far can I go without falling in?”

Lingering agitation taints Cee’s voice but it’s also gruff with a resignation Felix is too occupied to explore. “Uh, it’s higher than usual but to the edge won’t knock you over.”

Felix feels more privileged, just sinking his palms into the mud bordering the water, than he ever did adorned in metal spun embroidery and precious laces upon ruffles. It seeps through the knees of his pants and dampens the hem of his sleeves. Specks of dirt join the freckles scattered over the backs of his hands. And with it: life. 

The castle is so stuffy, every door and window just bars looking out onto the real world. The inside was a luxurious cell, a poor simulation of life written out by Keres’ blood-soaked claw. 

Here, he isn’t weighed down by dozens of masks and chains, he isn’t a pretty prince carved from tragic alloy. He isn’t a servant boy following a blinding smile. He’s not his past, not his future. He’s just, Felix. Felix and the river with his magic soaring bright and happy within his heart. 

Chest rising and falling with enthusiasm, Felix crawls forward, not knowing how far will tip him into the viceful depths of crystal liquid. He moves just enough to see his reflection. It’s scattered and fragmented over bumpy currents, driven even more wild by the recent downfalls. He’s reminded of the fountain where his face had been smooth with only the slightest ripple. The picture of the pretty prince he was supposed to be staring back at him. 

Now, there’s dirt streaking his cheeks, split with a giddy grin, freckles dusted over the surface of the river like beds of hidden gold. And the image isn’t even clear enough for him to meet his own eyes. The distorted figure of his face is dreamlike in the jarring sense. He thinks he likes it more than any mirror. 

It takes him a bit, after reaching out to skim his fingers over the moving colors splayed over clear water, to realize he isn’t the only one being reflected. Tentatively lowered beside him with knees bent and feet flat, Cee flits his gaze over each rise and fall of the river’s unruly stream. 

The barraging crashing and rolling of the water drown out any noise of Felix’s long exhale as he takes the rare moment to see Cee without the other seeing him. He doesn’t bother looking at the mirrored version, too curious about the real Cee in all its depth. The veil he appreciates over himself, is only another barrier blocking Cee. 

It makes a difference. 

Cee isn’t attuning his expression to trick and bait Felix like throwing a bone to a wolf. And Felix is so close, he can see the barest of shadow the mask leaves in the space between Cee’s skin and the fabric. He thinks he spots the smallest disruptions just as the mask reaches Cee’s ear. 

He wishes he could at least see Cee’s eyes, the color of them in all their vastness because there’s no way someone like Cee could have a shallow gaze. No one really could, but people like Cee least of all did. He wants to know if they’re small and piercing like Changbin’s, or open and wide to take everything like Jisung’s. With the few smiles he’s seen from the masked, he wants to know if he has any of them safely kept in crow's feet, faint and fair like Felix’s own. 

His mouth certainly gives him away, just barely, but enough to grant Felix room for fitting. It twists and quivers now, as if fighting the currents, battling between a pessimistic frown and a slight grin of delight. He has dimples, faded like they’ve been resting too long, but prominent. Felix would like to see them more. He thinks that if they’re in a place where those dimples can show, than they have hope. 

Briefly, he glimpses back at the river, at their mirrored mirages over the rainbow mist. There’s an impulse bright and beaming through his ribcage. Abruptly, he sticks his hand straight through the surface, ice shooting through his tendons in sharp stabs of discomfort. 

It splashes, ruining the moving image of Cee’s face whipping towards him, as well as his own pondering expression. 

It’s real. 

Cee doesn’t freak out, though the color is drained from his face. “Are…” he trails off, sucking his teeth. After a moment of contemplation, he reaches for his arm, ripping off a single fingerless glove Felix had yet to notice off his hand, shaking his sleeve out before even a sliver of his arm can be revealed. He pulls Felix’s hand out of the water without a word and dries it off with the hem of said sleeve before balling up the glove and depositing it into his chilling palm. “May I ask what that was for?” 

“May I ask why you care?” Felix shoots back, not defensive, but deeming it not fair for Cee to carelessly throw around questions as if a hundred thousand didn’t shroud his entire existence. 

The corner of Cee’s mouth curls up wryly. “If I didn’t care for you, why would I have saved and treated you in the first place?” 

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Felix points out sternly, the rush of the river slowing to a bubbling brook in his veins, though it had faltered as soon as his focus redirected from the water, to whatever Cee could be named. He pulls on his glove over his right hand, the cold remaining over his golden band, but containing it. “Why do you care?” 

The empty stare of the mask rests on him, and he gets the impression that Cee is bewildered. “Who couldn’t care for you, my prince?” Felix doesn’t know if the wording is intentional, but it has a boulder ramming through his gut. “Don’t worry,” Cee sighs, and his mouth is flat again, the dimple gone, “I don’t think I care nearly enough.”

Maybe Felix regrets asking. 

Flexing his fingers and making sure the fabric clings to them nice and tight. “So, where do we begin, mystery man?” 

Cee’s mouth contorts oddly at the nickname, a little more positively than the rest, but rests it as quick as it moves. “I want you to feel your magic...I told you how your magic works earlier, right? It’s living within you. You..you have to become its friend.” 

Raising his brows, Felix echoes drily, “Become its friend?” 

Oh, that’s interesting. Cee’s flush is visible just below his mask, where it inevitably curves over his cheeks. Sheepishness looks natural on Cee, and that must’ve been something Cee was when he saved Felix from those awful stone walls. Further, and further proof presented itself that Cee was hiding from Felix, specifically Felix, pulling layers and layers of dirt over himself like a self-burial, so Felix doesn’t see him. 

Clearly, he’s trying to not leave an impression, all the while leaving the biggest of anyone Felix has met in such a short span of time. 

“Unless you’re using your magic to offset the natural magic, then your magic will easily take liking to you,” explains Cee hesitantly, “It seems like your magic has been trying to communicate with you for a long while now, but the seal made it disjointed and weak, so it came across how it wasn’t supposed to. With Changbin breaking the seal, you should be able to...communicate. Correctly. You know?” 

He’s entranced by the large shifts Cee can make within a millisecond. Felix is suffering several cases of mental whiplash and they couldn’t have been interacting for longer than half an hour. Cee had just been standoffish and cool to the touch. Now, he was so...soft. Mushed right into his teaching like a mallow, making absolutely sure Felix understood what he was saying without being forceful. 

Which one was real?

Based on Cee having turned to him and crossed his legs, hands twined in his lap, Felix guesses this is where the lesson will be. That’s enjoyable. He turns from the water and shifts back, inhaling. It’s been a while since he’s had to learn. With a grimace, he reminisces his past tutor. 

His fault. 

“Now that’s not how you do it.”

Felix blinks his eyes open and startles. Cee is a short inch from his face, almost pouting. “Where’d that come from?” he murmurs, “You can't communicate right if you’re troubled. What’s wrong?” Urgent and insistent, an imitation of that night. 

He feels the utter compulsion to answer. In entirety, piece for piece, all to this stranger. It’s nagging him, the familiarity. It’s maddening. He’s just escaped the castle where every nook and cranny was a hidden memory he didn’t have. But he has those now. And he still felt like he was missing something big. 

He stutters, rationality tripping the words from fleeing his mouth. “Was just thinking about my studies tutor. She killed him before the day I left…I accidentally put him in danger. And now he’s dead.”

Cee went silent, not pulling away. He reached out his hand, hovering it over Felix’s head, waiting for permission. When he gets it, all he does is pat Felix’s hair. It’s baffling, and somehow extremely comforting. 

“It wasn’t your fault,” Cee assures matter-of-factly, “It was Keres’s and Doyle’s fault. But I know that doesn’t help the feeling.” Like he knows the feeling. 

“What does?”

Cee pats his head once more, a bit awkwardly visually but not really in feeling. He leans back, biting skin from his lip. “Tell me when you know. For now, clear your head. If your magic is strong it’ll take less effort to talk with it, but you’ll know best how much that is.”

Felix has never known how to clear his head. Even his visions required absolute distraction. Maybe that was it. He trains his eyes on Cee’s mask, as if with enough concentration he could see right through it. Like his stupid portrait. All he sees is the cheap red and all he hears and tastes is the fresh crisp river gale. 

Something stirs in his chest, a bubbling sensation sprinting over his lungs and ribs in the oddest way. He feels like he’s being tickled from the inside out, breath seizing. Quiet, as if to not disturb it, “Do I close my eyes?”

Cee grins and it’s small but breathtaking. “If it helps.”

No, he doesn’t think he will. 

Suddenly, he realizes as he distantly recognizes the thing, that his magic really has been trying to reach him this entire time. But that buzzing barrier between them is gone and the undeterred voice of his magic is mystifying. 

It flows through him and welcomes him with inaudible cheer and unfelt embrace. It really is its own sentient being, aiding him as an extra conscience residing in his body. In any other sense, it would be invading. For him, it’s totally natural. 

It shouldn't be, he wasn’t born with it. He wasn’t a real prince. 

There’s a prick in his side and he thinks he’s just been scolded, huffing a giggle breathlessly for all the air was trapped in his bursting, fluttering lungs. Just as he grew used to it, it faded into a solemness, almost apologetically. 

He wishes this hadn’t been sealed away for so long, but that was just another thing to add to a long list of all Keres had deprived him of. Now, he has no time to become friends with it, really. It’s because it is a necessity. 

For his family and for his kingdom. 

Warmth spreads from his heart, through to the tips of his fingers and ears and toes. He blinks long and slow, exhaling shakily. “It won’t hurt me anymore,” he says surely. 

Cee’s fingers drum apprehensively against his knees, back straightening with a firm smile, more solid than any expression he’s held. “Good.” Regretfully, his hand flies to cover his mouth, once more hiding. 

But the dimple was there so Felix is content. 

“What else do you have to teach me, tutor Cee?”

Chapter Text

Minho furrows a brow, watching as a rose blooms and furls within Felix’s open palm. The boy’s face is brighter than it’s ever been, a new sparkling light in his eyes. Or really, Minho thinks it’s all over. Since his access to magic has been opened, it’s like his entire being glows. His skin looks less like the organ it is and merely a human-shaped cloth spotted with transparent gold fitted over solid sun rays. 

But that’s not his concern. “How did you find a perfectly healthy rose in the beginning torrents of winter?” He gets a vague deja vu. 

As if he hadn’t thought it before, Felix frowns, shrugging absently. “Cee gave it to me to practice. I think my magic likes it.”

Alright then. 

Minho tamps down his suspicions about Cee for now. He doesn’t plan on ever sharing them with Felix lest they’re confirmed. He can’t do that to the prince. So he just nods, glad Felix is so fixated on the rose so he can’t notice Minho’s blatant fidgeting. 

It’s cool what he can do and he’s sure he’ll hear plenty about it when Jisung and Hyunjin discover Felix’s new trick. Speaking of, last he’d seen, Jisung was still outside, throwing the bones of their dinner Minho had cooked that night into the wilderness. 

Felix doesn’t even speak when he leaves, the tent rustling closed behind him and scanning the clearing. Sure enough, Jisung rests in the center, curled over his knees, craning his neck to the sky. 

Wordlessly, Minho settles beside him. It’s too cloudy to see the stars. His lips purse. 

“The kids at the castle,” Jisung pipes up. He was never one for small talk Minho supposes. Jumping right into it was probably best. For the both of them. “Do you think they’re alright?” 

“They’re capable,” Minho answers, he would know best, “They probably miss you. But they’ve lasted this long on their own, they could go a few more yards.” 

Pointing his feet inward and staring at the grass, Jisung slumps. “They shouldn’t have to.” 

Minho smiles grimly. “No, they shouldn’t. Is that all that’s bothering you?” 

“Who says anything is bothering me?” 

Out of the castle, everything about Jisung is loud and obvious, each emotion carefully and purposefully painted across his back like a sign. It was no longer his job to remain under cover, so a cover he chose not to don. Minho admires it. A lot. Even out of the castle he still feels the need to bind himself to pillars of stability that don’t exist. Everyone knows it. They’re all just watching him hopelessly cling to those crumbled structures, until they’re nothing but dust. Jone, sits in the dust contently, accepting that there was no steadiness in this cursed world, and it was up to him to adapt. 

“Maybe it’s ‘cause you’re out here,” Minho deigns to say, much less words much less nuances, “And not clung to Changbin or Cee like they’re going to disappear the moment you look away. Like you don’t want to bother them .” 

Something he’s said makes Jisung go quiet, unnaturally so. The only proof of his presence is the swirls of his breath whirling in the air as he tries to keep his chest even. The grass struggling to remain upright beneath him, laying flat and springing up with each of his shifts like they had conscience. 

“You didn’t even mean to but you hit it right on the dot, valet.” 

Minho contemplates, quickly backtracking and poring each of his separate words to see where he had accidentally answered himself. Realization dawns on him quick and ruthless, and he parts his mouth in a small ah. Sympathy for the other builds as he gathers the senses. There’s more to the story that he doesn’t have, stems in his hands with roots he can’t see. “You’re afraid they’ll leave? Changbin and Cee.” 

Jisung kicks his feet against the dirt, exhaling. “Not necessarily...I know they’d never leave me. And I’d never leave them. But—” He peers at Minho through his peripherals, irises practically glowing in the minimal moonlight shining off dew. They’re darker than the sky, brighter than the moon. “—It’s not something we decide, is it.” 

It’s no question, despite the last bit. A statement, Minho has only recently begun to truly see the mass of. Before, he’d been so focused on each step forward, the present, so that while Felix looked back and Hyunjinlooked ahead, he could keep them safe. There was never the concept of leaving in his mind. Even when Felix had been taken, Minho had been right there beside him. 

But with Felix’s visions, he was forced to glance up. And now the fear that had once been so small in spite of circumstances, was consuming. The cursed prince had been taken from him and Felix alike, still missing from Minho’s memories, but maybe not his reality. And then Felix had been taken, and Minho hadn’t been with him. He’d never been so scared. 

This seems to haunt Jisung, a ghost slung tight around him, squeezing and squeezing. 

“And it’s not just them anymore,” Jisung laments, pushing his fingers through his bangs and letting them fall in a curtain over his face. His leg bounces up and down, pulled by a string of momentum Minho feels he can almost see, puppeted by lady fear herself. Gentler than the breeze, Jisung continues, “Do you know fully why I went to the staff room to play with the kids?” 

Minho knows it’s not complete, but he gives his answer anyways. “You wanted to make sure they weren’t alone, even in such a crowd.” 

Jisung’s teeth flashes white, lips briefly tugging up. “It wasn’t just for the kids though...it was for me too...You know how we three are resistant to the curse?” 

Humming in affirmation, Minho nods. Know was a weak word to describe the fascination in which each of the castle’s group holds the knowledge. 

Jisung takes a deep breath, coarse and uneven like the dirt he digs his nails into. “My memories from before I found them are hazy. Not only because it’s been so long...there was so much smoke. I didn’t come from the castle like they did. I had been fleeing the fire, desperately. I made it. I was the only one who did.” 

He draws shapes like building blocks of his tale into the mud, and Minho feels an immense guilt. He had watched those fires from a safe place in the castle, high up in silver silled windows as the sky turned shades of grey no storm could achieve. He swallows it down, listening with each ounce of his attention, not a single spared from Jisung’s words. 

“I lived in one of the poorest parts of our kingdoms. Just in the kingdom’s blindspots. The arson was the first time we’d ever been noticed by it.  And the last. We received absolutely nothing from the kingdom, and had no means to from any other kingdom. We scavenged and hunted like we were settlers in the forests instead of legal habitants of the kingdom. No contact with the other villages, we remained within ourselves. We were a tight-knit community that couldn’t simply be broken.” 

“Each adult was a parent of mine, and each little one my sibling, those my age all friends. We had a small, small world. And I’d been absolutely okay with it. I loved it, honestly. Our community was all I needed and wanted it. I may have been the only one satisfied, but I was nonetheless. Something about such a solid community, a branched support system that circled in on itself, neverending, was a dream.” 

Humorless, he laughs, picking up a stick and running it sloppily over his scribbles. “We didn’t know when the fire was going to come. Didn’t even when ash rained on our meals. We expected like always, we’d remain in our own little world, and no one else would invade. But we were wrong. And the cost of that, cannot be named. I don’t know how I made it out, that’s the one thing I can’t remember and it’s my own curse, not the kingdom’s. One second there was screaming and blazing and everything was dying around me, and then the next I was stumbling upon two boys, one in perfect condition like a polished weapon from the armory itself and the other...the other who lost more than even I.” 

Most lost their families with the curse, but somehow it seems more impactful in Jisung’s case. They hadn’t lost absolutely everything, he figures. He’d remained in that castle, shelter, companions, a purpose. Who could’ve lost even more than that?

Cee flashes in his mind vengeful and sad. A name they all know to be faux. 

His suspicions garner. 

“Even with them, I’ve always felt something missing. We each did I guess, even though we cared for each other so much. And Changbin and Cee may still be missing it, but...I think I’ve found it.” 

Minho’s brows rise and he gazes upon Jisung patiently inquisitive. 

“Us. This group. It’s what I’ve always dreamed of. It’s not the small world I used to live in, I know now that the world is far too big to ever be so contained. But...it’s a family. A family with each our own worlds melded together perfectly. It’s still in the process, we still don’t know so much about each other, but I know, it’s what I’ve been waiting for my whole life.” 

Sorrow tinges such happy words. Minho sees it, fright dripping over a happy picture, staining and warping it beyond recognition. 

“And there’s the greatest possibility,” Jisung rasps, his chest rising and falling in an unsteady staccato. There’s no air sticking to him, every anxiety pushing out in a force that deprives him of oxygen, deprives him of peace. “That now more than ever. When we’ve finally found each other. That we’re going to disappear .” 

In complete disarray, Jisung crumbles in on himself, holding himself tight by the seams of his pants. His shoulders wrack with low sobs and shivers not quite from the cold. It’s like everything he has been holding back even in the slightest, from his stresses in the castle, to his guilt of secrets, to Cee being hurt, to this , releases itself in one great big heave. 

He’s helpless to the impulse of wrapping his arms around the trembling boy, holding him tight like it will keep them both from flying to pieces in the harrowing wind. And there’s this odd feeling, like he’s imitating a person he’s never met, when he makes a promise, an oath too big and too much for him to ever even expect to keep. 

“Don’t worry,” he ushers, though it’s not really genuine. There’s no way any of them can not worry when their lives are tipping over the edge of an unfinished novel, precariously, fatally, undecided. “I swear, no matter what, Jisung, that we’ll stick together. No matter what happens, we’ll remain a family, and I will fight for that for you and all of us.” 

“Don’t do that, Minho,” Jisung pleads even though there’s a spark of nonsensical hope lying active beneath his sheen of tears. “I don’t need any more of those. Don’t make promises you can’t keep.” 

And Minho feels like he knows for sure now. 

He stuffs Jisung’s face into his shirt, stifling his sobs with his shushing. “Twice the promises, Jisung, and the more likely there is that one has to remain unbroken.” 

+

Felix wakes disoriented. He’s a bit colder than normal, and he solves that issue quickly enough, reaching out to Minho with his eyes before his hands and being grateful for the decision. Wrapped around each other in an inseparable bundle is Minho and Jisung. With pinched eyebrows and a bead of sweat forming over them, he forms light from the tips of his fingers, illuminating two pairs of red, puffy eyes, shut and peaceful. For now. 

Not questioning it, he lets them rest, sitting up around rustling blankets and rubbing blurry eyes. He sits there for a short moment, long enough to gather that there was a break in rainfall, that his head felt heavy, and his magic was wide awake. At first, he thinks he woke it up by performing his little trick. But after trying to rest his head back on a lumpy pillow, he realizes it’s pulling, tugging at his lungs beneath his rib cage until his breath is more uneven than the surface beneath him. 

He gets deja vu to his visions, but this is only a mere fraction of what he’d felt then. Now, his magic wasn’t hurdling and bounding over obstacles that had them both faint and smeared like water thrown on a finished canvas. It’s clear, bright, and gently insistent, more a request than an urgent begging, grating his insides with an ax and barbed wire. 

There’s no reason for him not to. 

Pulling on his boots and donning his cloak over his thick nightshirt, he carefully exits the tent, peeking back to make sure he hadn’t woken his friends, one new one old. They barely even stir, a severe deep sleeper and one slightly less melding together to form logs of rest. All he can hope is that they’re able to get up in an emergency. 

Not more than ten feet into his little trek, he spectacularly trips over something moving and small. He lands on his back with a bitten-back oomph and stares dazedly up at the foggy sky. A familiar presence hops onto his chest and he groans, getting to his feet and picking it up. 

“What are you doing out here, kitten?” he whispers, taking her to the tent where Jeongin is. He’s sure she’ll stay safe and secure with the younger rather than risk anything following Felix wherever he’s going. Mewling loud enough to have him flinch, she struts into the tent and settles wherever. 

There’s a hint of amusement as his magic urges him to continue, light and alleviating. Bit by bit as he crosses the dirt line into the trees, everything grows darker, his recognition blooming. He has the odd disposition of wanting to look at his magic, fumbling and looking down at his feet because it’s within him. He knows this path. 

He expects the river at the end of it with small glee and apprehension. He doesn’t expect the figure already sitting there, a painting of forlorn serenity, silhouette haloed by the moon upon the water, sat straight like he wasn’t sure he could sit any other way. 

A name rests dormant on Felix’s tongue but he forgoes it, the presence of his magic going silent and unnoticeable as he steps onto the rocks of the shore, his focus entirely shifted. He stands there uncertainly forever, the fabric of his hood pushing against his cheeks and hair with the vapor-pushed air. 

Finally, Cee turns back to him, face hidden in his own hood, but the imprint of a mask is absent. Light bounces off the curve of his cupid’s bow and once again that’s all Felix can see of his features. Trepidative yet welcoming. “Are you going to sit?”

Jerkily, Felix does, the sound of rocks colliding under his soles, ear-splitting in the wonderful quiet. With a small grimace, he relaxes where he is, the tumbling of disturbed pebbles and stones trickling to a slow stop. Its absence is unmissed, overtaken by the chatter of the river, calmer at night, but frenzied nonetheless. 

“What are you doing out here so late?” Cee asks, voice blending with the wind like it was a stray breeze itself, picked apart from the crowd. 

Precise as to not make any more disquiet than he already has, Felix plucks a smooth stone from beside his feet. It’s still wet and he can see veins of something more in it as he rus his thumb over the surface. “I don’t really know,” he admits, a bit tired of himself when his voice bounces and ricochets like gunpowder into the night, not nearly as diluted as Cee’s. “It could be because Minho took Jisung into our tent. They took up all the blankets.” And my magic brought me to you . 

How in the world was he supposed to explain that though? Cee would understand the most, but Felix thinks it’ll only confuse him more if so. 

Worry present in his tone like a throwaway spirit, Cee asks, “Are you cold?” 

Really, with the restless currents of the river and its birthed mist like the opposite of rainfall, he should be. But he was warmer than he was even in the tent. It’s an odd but not abnormal predicament for himself, so he doesn’t question it, dropping his hood and shaking his head. “What are you doing up so late?” he returns in favor. 

Sometimes Felix fears when he turns his gaze Cee will have disappeared. Even when he does see the other, stiffly positioned like a wooden doll, it feels like he already has. It’s the air about him, like it's pulling him into it, sucking his presence and scattering it about the surrounding flora. It always seems like the rest of him is elsewhere, only a piece of him lingering to speak with Felix. 

Like a vision. 

Impulsively, Felix flicks a small pebble, watching with a satisfaction as it bounces off Cee’s arm, the boy staring down at it without a word. Felix feels heat in his ears and beneath his nape, pulling his hands into his lap so he doesn’t repeat the same sort of action more than the already unnecessary once. Swallowing his awkwardness, he waits. 

Cee pulls his shoulders into a halfhearted shrug. “I don’t really ever sleep. I’ve never really needed to, oddly enough. It’s easier to just not, than try and fail after so many times. So I just take permanent watch  and come here.” 

“How will you sense danger all the way over here?” Over all the noise, through all the distracting forage, the endless amounts of bits and pieces of the world that barrage every single sensory in an all out war no matter what you do. 

“My magic is weak, but it’s tuned. I sensed your arrival. Though it’s easier with your magic. However, if anyone tries to attack, I’ll be able to sense them before they can even see through to our clearing. I guess that’s what happens when you’ve been in a single place for so long.

Felix gets the unsettling impression, that Cee has never left. 

Offput, he shifts his position, laying his legs flat over the land until the heels of his boots are hit by the barest of waves. “Oh.” 

And now he asks to himself, why did his magic bring him here? It’s clear now that his destination wasn’t the river. It was Cee himself, though now it would seem the masked is as much as of landmark here as any other rooted tree or unmoving boulder. 

A strong gust rushes over his ears, an odd lapse of noise that blocks out all else. His hair flies about his face and he has to push it back so it doesn’t blind or choke him. Cee on the other hand whips his hands up lightning quick and grips onto his hood, keeping it securely in place as he lowers his head. 

With one last unanswered question to his magic which has now decided to abandon him, he sighs to build up courage. “Why don’t you ever show your face...No, why don’t you show anything...I know if you trust us with Changbin and Jisung’s true identities and secrets, than you really do trust us. So why?” 

Expectedly, tension washes over Cee in painful increments like stacking bricks precariously high, fearing with bated breath when they’ll fall, but not bothering to shorten. Felix supposes he’s doing just that, creating a risky situation in which he has no options but to either watch it waver, or fall to his feet without being able to express any upset because he was the one who had let it fall. 

“It’s not so simple,” Cee answers surprisingly quick. Felix thinks it’s been rotating around his head for longer than the prince could even question it. There’s a guard over the hooded’s voice, weak and sloppily structured, but pointedly donned. It makes Felix want to throw a handful of gravel into the river and watch it helplessly bounce back into his face. Frustration always likes to build obnoxiously in his lungs and it’s no different now. 

He hesitates and Felix listens to the beat of hitched breath intently. “My existence is hidden, and it’s best to keep it that way. For myself, and for others.” 

“Even Changbin and Jisung.” 

It’s a low blow, and it’s obvious he’s hit a sore spot, Cee’s exhale uncharacteristically unsteady, stuttered, and faulty. “Even them. If it had been my choice, I would have never met them...Even objectively. I’ve never been good for them.” 

It’s not really his place, but anger sparks between Felix’s ribs unwarranted. He still has that stone from before in his hands, and he grips it tight, dirt imprinting into the crevices of his palm. “Then why not leave?” he blurts, regretting its meanness instantly and sinking his teeth into his lip. 

A pathetic mimicry of a laugh falls from Cee’s mouth and Felix sees the bricks, falling, falling along with that sad chuckle, tumbling to the ground around him. The destructive spark of fury winks out, taunting him in its exit. “You don’t think I’ve tried? They’d only look for me. Unless there was proof I was a hundred percent gone, they would look. And I don’t want to make them do that. I don’t want to put them through any more than what I already have.” 

Felix feels even worse. Love and affections runs through Cee’s tone stronger than the river, gales, and rain combined. There was more. More he had to know before he could jump to anger. The three cherish each other more than they do themselves, Cee is no exception. So for him to even say the things he did, there must be a reason bigger than all their hearts combined. 

But there’s an anomaly. 

“Then why…” Felix asks slowly, not wanting to once again overstep, but feeling maybe only this once, that it’s his place to. “Why did you leave to save me?” Nagging and persistent, the thought clings to his mind unrelenting. Phrased, worded, shaped different, it was there, and has been there since he woke up. 

He just wants to know so badly who the person is beneath the mask and why he chose to risk his everything to save Felix. 

Cee’s head lifts and for a heart-racing moment, Felix’s convinced he’s going to look at him fully, revealing his face, his expression, his identity. Either Felix is wishing on delirium, or Cee backtracks, fingers retreating into his hood and running over invisible features. 

He was a coward . 

“Because you’re my-the prince. You’re the Golden Prince.” He speaks almost slurred, like there’s lead embedded in the tip of his tongue. Forced, but earnest. Genuine. 

Felix can’t speak, staring blankly at the water-soaked tips of his boots, sodden and sad. He’s not really seeing it, everything blurring before his eyes. He hopes with dignity he’s not crying. Just in case, wobbly and trying hard to hide his grief, he stands, almost sliding straight into the water. He’s caught by the hood, he didn’t hear a single noise, but Cee is upright, holding him securely from falling by the patch of cloth. 

He’s alone in his reflection, Cee firmly behind him, not moving an inch. His tears hit the water like weights. “Please tell me that isn’t true,” he implores, nails digging into the skin of his palms, a welcome sting. Please tell me you, who saved me from my nightmares, is not just another who sees me as precious for my title. That sees me as much an object as Keres and Doyle. 

It doesn’t make sense. 

Even if it was true, it wouldn’t make Cee bad it just...it didn’t sit right within Felix, the pieces of a lie welded with a truth jagged and sharp, tearing him in all the wrong places within. He is so tired of being left out of his own life, unknowing of anything until it leaps ahead of him and kicks dirt in his eyes. For once, there’s something he seeks, that will help him know something, and he’s met with a brick wall. 

Honestly, there’s no reason for him to be this upset. But that feeling, that curdling yearning feeling constantly pleading him to figure out who this person was because it was important. It shrieks more than ever now, so close yet so far. “Why can’t you just tell me?” 

Once more, that hollow laugh Felix begins to loathe, flees Cee like a wounded animal, sounding almost as heart-wrenching. “You’re a little nosy, don’t you think, little chick. We’ve known each other for a short time.” 

Berated, Felix slumps, but just as the words fully register he narrows his eyes and spins around, startling Cee but not enough to have the hood fall. He isn’t even smiling, despite the weak, forced humor in his voice. “Didn’t I just tell you, if you know who I am, it’ll only hurt us both?” 

Felix has no real response, indignance rising righteously in his veins. But there’s a single noise out of place, a rustle of the bushes pushed against the wind. Cee goes stiff, dropping Felix’s hood and exhaling. His shoulders tense, but he doesn’t indicate any danger, rolling them out. “I think it’s time for you to go back to sleep,” he intones. 

And he takes off before Felix can argue, disappearing beyond leaves and bark, just like Felix had fearfully anticipated. 

+

He knows it’s coming. He’s known since last night when he’d been facing Felix, trying so hard though it hurt so much, to just give a single final shove that will make Felix realize he’s nothing worth knowing. He might’ve suspected it even a bit before then. Either way doesn’t really matter when it’s already happening. Shuddering breath aside, he pushes out of his ‘room’ in the large tent. He can already feel Seungmin’s presence approaching, steady without waver and blinking bright with intrigue. 

Just as he exits, Seungmin enters, eyes seeking and finding him immediately. It wasn’t like there was much to place, and Chan hadn’t tried, bracing himself for something just like this. For Seungmin’s sake, he acts clueless, even though he’s already bared something essentially, his hair uncovered brushing against exposed scars as he tilts his head curiously. He doesn’t even know the expression Seungmin could possibly be seeing, uncertainty grounded with numbing sobriety. 

Seungmin brings up a tin cup, and Chan is faced with how nervous he really is, he hadn’t noticed the two of them steaming from Seungmin’s hands. Calmly, a nice balance to Chan’s raging anxiety, he offers one of them to Chan. “Tea?” 

Gratefully, Chan takes it and gulps down a swig, the heat giving his hands warmth they never have. It eases the tremor in his fingers just a tad. He gestures to cushions on the floor where they sit, between them a large piece of knowledge like a transparent wall. 

“How’d you figure out?” he murmurs, staring down at the tea leaves that swirl in metal. 

Seungmin sips once and purposefully, setting the cup down with the prominence of a cymbal crash. “If I hadn’t before, you’re only confirming it. How did you know I figured?” 

“I didn’t. I guessed. But there’s no denying it now, huh?” 

Brows pinching and mouth pursing, Seungmin peers up at him with wide eyes. Chan can sense the lifeblood within him, the gold bits that run through all that have ever lived within the nearby kingdom, but he can’t see emotions. And Seungmin is an expert at hiding them, confounding Chan’s, incomplete in youth, but trained skills of intuition. 

“So you really are?” he breathes, a bit of awe and unsureness sprinkled over his tone. 

Chan parts his lips in an awkward grin. “In the flesh and blood.” Though even that is doubtful. “What lead you to it?” 

A bit shocked at the discovery despite having already made and confirmed it, Seungmin blinks. “It seems almost obvious after you know it, but it was a lot of small things, I think. You saving Felix in the first place, having an unidentified source of magic, the secret past...But really yesterday, I went through your notebooks. It’s all vague and there are never any names, but it’s clear to someone who knows who’s being addressed. The final point was when King woke me up and I followed Felix....You knew I was there right?” 

Nodding, Chan drummed his fingers along the surface of the tin, a bit of heat having traveled to his cheeks. He’d been aware of the entries in his notebooks of course, they were always present in the back of his mind like the notebook had been stored there itself. He’d just chosen to forget them in the moment he gave all his papers upon binded papers to Jeongin and Seungmin, so they could feel a bit of what they felt in their village, surrounded by music and plaited words. There was little of that here. 

“I was distracted, otherwise I would’ve sensed you from the beginning...how much did you hear?” he confesses ashamed. He shouldn’t have been. If it were anyone but Seungmin, the situation could’ve escalated beyond measure. It makes his stomach roil just thinking of it.

Seungmin looks equally meek for openly discussing his eavesdropping, but he doesn’t shy away from his truth. “By the time I was able to get there without making too much noise, you were at the tail end of your conversation. I…” He ducks his head, paling. “I’m sorry for hearing all that. It was too personal.” 

Frankly, it had been. Far surpassing Chan’s level of comforts, or safeties, with Felix. He’d been so close, at every point high or low, in that conversation, to revealing himself. It was tough. He’d been caught off guard in his hazy night pastime where he feels his existence blur and bleed into his surroundings, not quite solid. His version of rest. It was a miracle he hadn’t said more than he did, with his words at least. 

His chest clenches as he recalls each moment in vivid detail. He forces himself to swallow a mouthful of tea, instead of breaking down. He can’t say anything, mouth dry despite the simmering liquid, lips stuck together as if by clay. 

“I’m sorry for discovering your secret without letting you tell it to me,” Seungmin apologizes, genuine in every syllable, but there’s something holding it back. “But I don’t think you ever would have. We don’t know each other very well, and that’s probably why you’re not already freaking out about me knowing, but how could it possibly hurt so much to know the truth?... You know keeping it the way you are from Felix is hurting him too.” 

Chan bursts out in a shuddering breath, setting down his tea before it tips from his trembling hands. “You can’t already tell, Seungmin?” 

He can, it shows on his face. But it doesn’t nearly have the same affect that it does on Chan. And the calm isn’t a veneer either. “The curse, you’re still affected by it, despite still being here today,” Seungmin elaborates, “One day, you’ll most likely disappear without a trace, whether that’s by time finding and taking you, or Keres.” 

If he knows, then why doesn't he understand? “I’m not worth what my curse will put them through, whether that ends up with Keres hurting them, or getting close enough to me to be upset when I inevitably disappear. It’s worse for Felix. I can’t do that to him twice. I’m not cruel.” 

Seungmin sighs and the sound startles Chan, fed up and berating. “No, you’re just stupid, highness. You keep contradicting yourself, you know? Make yourself seem so unimportant yet significant enough to hide to such lengths. And you’ve already let in too many people to leave without a mark. Besides, if it’s the curse taking you, they won’t remember, only you will.” 

“And Felix.” 

Seungmin seems remarkably close to rolling his eyes. His utter lack of unrest distresses Chan to an extent. “Everyone leaves this world one day, Chan. You might just do it a little differently. But you’re making it more complex than it has to be. You’ll hurt him more only if you leave him in the dark once more. And if you don’t open up to us a bit-” There’s a flash of hurt and sadness over his smooth face “-Then it’ll be all our losses. We just won’t know until it’s too late.” 

“And,” he says with an air of finality, “There’s the chance that the curse will be broken, highness. And the mistakes you make now, won’t be erased. Tell him, at least for his sake. I don’t know you as I do them, but I wanna. So don’t hurt him like this, and don’t make me watch, hm?” 

Chan can’t answer, and though it perturbs him, Seungmin accepts it, pouring the last of his tea into Chan’s cup and patting his shoulder comfortingly before moving towards the exit. To leave Chan alone with these revelations, bundled up in a tight knot he needs to take the time to untangle. 

Feeling the puckered skin of his face, Cee doesn’t know what he’ll do. He feels more solid than he has in years, and he’d forgotten how heavy the weight of existing had felt. 

+

“Where’s Cee?” Changbin asks, surveying the area with a small frown. 

From where he sits beside Jeongin, a bit more clingy than usual, his legs practically wrapped around the others, Seungmin pipes up. “He’s sleeping. Was gonna give him some tea but walked in on him napping instead.” 

Jisung and Changbin look on with surprise, but Jisung is quicker to react, grinning wobbly. “Alright. We’ll have to let him sleep then.” 

Squawking, Felix leans forward, bothering the position in which he’d been resting next to Sam. “Well then what am I supposed to do? I know just as much as Minho so it’s not like he can teach me anything. Cee…” his voice trips and stumbles and a cold sets in his eyes, “None of you can help with my magic.” 

Hyunjin has to wonder if this is just another of Cee’s ploys to diligently remain a mile away from Felix within a foot. It takes no genius to know Felix is incredibly frustrated, increasingly agitated by Cee’s questionable antics. It seems to have amplified in the night though, Felix glaring at the dirt hard enough for it to catch aflame. 

The weird unhostile animosity between the two is enough to unsettle the entire bunch, Hyunjin included. 

A bit torn on the situation, Changbin clears his throat and apologetically shrugs. “If you don’t think working with us will help you, can sit and observe. It’s up to you,” he offers not unkindly. “Or you can find a weapon in the storage and practice on your own.” 

Not entirely content with either option, Felix just stands and makes his way to the shed contraption, arms crossed and head down. Hyunjinwants to go after him, but he knows too little to properly comfort him. And he’s slightly afraid he’ll just be pushed away again, bringing his knees to his chest and watching his best friend go off despondently. 

As he and Seungmin go up to Changbin, Hyunjin observes Minho, who has also been acting off lately, but not so obviously, laying it in his spine so no one sees it but those who knows his back well. He and Jisung orbit around each other strangely today, their hands straying to each other’s shoulder in a new reflex, smiles weighted aimed at each other. Jeongin seems to notice it too, brow raised when he meets Hyunjin's gaze, conveying his examination but the lack of knowledge behind it. 

Hyunjin runs his hand through his hair, exhaling heartily. If there was a single thing he missed back in the castle aside from Felix’s luxurious mattress and silky sheets, was being able to understand. Clearly not what was in the castle, but he could understand his friends, read them like the back of his eyelids. He knew if there as something bothering them and just what that was. Since the introduction of Jone, Jisung, that ability has weakened considerably. Or rather, they’ve all set up walls around themselves to protect them in this world they don’t recognize. 

He can’t even tell if he’s doing the same himself, so he just focuses on the metal in his hands, and swings. 

And when he’s done, he’s too tired to care. Pleasantly exhausted from his bones onwards. He collapses onto his back with labored breathing and stares up at the overcast sky with the hint of a smile. He turns his head and sees Minho pull Seungmin from him and Changbin, expression solemn. He turns his head again and Changbin is sitting beside him, barely sweating. 

Setting his sword beside him and resting back on his hands he comments, “You’re really good at this, Hyunjin. You coulda been a knight yourselves if it weren’t for that stupid castle. Maybe if it weren’t for any curse we’d be on either side of Felix ourselves, clad in armor.” 

The image is shockingly clear in his mind. It brings with it a nostalgia for something he was never allowed to have. A mourning for something he lost from the moment he was born. He laughs though, because the difference in height between him and Changbin while wearing clunky pieces of armor is a bit too humorous. “We probably would’ve never met if it weren’t for this. Or maybe, we would’ve under much kinder circumstances. It’s a running theory that I was a son of two lesser known nobles. Or at least that’s what Keres says...and Minho would definitely not let us have the place of Felix’s right hand men.”

Changbin considers this, giving, “True. Maybe he’d tolerate me at least. Not you, for sure.” 

Weakly, he reaches out and slaps Changbin with a drawn out gasp. “No need to be rude,” he grumbles, falling right back into his position on the grass, not caring for the dirty water that prickles beneath his back or dirties the tips of his hair. He’s always loved things like that, in the stables, a bit of freedom Keres couldn’t take away from him. She couldn’t do much beyond scold him if he returned to her mussed up beyond recognition. It was his one freedom. Always. 

Heavily excluding rain though. Rain got in his eyes and manages its way beyond his clothes and soaks every fiber on his being. He’s not the biggest rain fan. Though he’s thankful for the mess it leaves behind. 

“Do you miss them?” 

Confused, Hyunjin turns his head, frowning, “Who?” 

“Your parents.” 

Hyunjin doesn’t even have to think. At one point, maybe, and at another, he missed the concept of having parents. Now the thought makes him feel blocked in and controlled. After seeing a ‘mother’ like Keres he doesn’t think he’ll ever seek another one again. “No. I don’t. That’s probably for the better. I know Minho doesn’t either.” They were both people who had lost their parents by the curse, but had no recollection. Jeongin and Seungmin still knew their parents, alive in a bustling village somewhere with the thoughts planted in their heads that their sons were safe and sound within the castle walls, pampered to their hearts content. 

If anything, Jeongin and Seungmin had just dedicated their time to pampering each other, and Jeongin and Minho’s little kitten child. Frankly, Hyunjin could make no remark on that. He thought it was downright adorable. He will never voice it lest Minho find a way to scar his face without him even knowing. 

Changbin hums, changing his question. “How about, do you miss anything from the castle?” 

It’s a great coincidence that he asks this just as it plagues Sam, the things he misses from that horrid place. And though it feels a bit ridiculous to say aloud, he knows exactly what melancholy it wreaks him, and he thinks Changbin will ultimately understand. So though Minho is somewhere hidden in a tent with that pensive look staining his face, and Felix is before them absently swinging a sword, mind elsewhere, Hyunjin sighs, “I miss Felix and Minho.” 

He underestimated how much Changbin would comprehend, expression not quite falling, but leveling down to a quiet understanding tainted with old sorrow. “Yeah, I miss Jisung and Cee.” He didn’t just get it, he got it . He and Hyunjin were more or less in the same position. Not quite haunted by the same griefs and worries that pulled at their cherished friends’ ankles in ribboned, knotted chains. A bit glad if anything, but sad to watch their friends struggle so much with their mouths glued shut. 

Neither had been happy with their previous life, but they’d been content in the people they shared it with. While it was obvious they hadn’t lost their friends, their lives still intertwined to the roots of their cores, it felt like they had in a way. Just enough for it to ache like a lost tooth. A phantom pain almost. 

Abruptly, Jeongin sits between them, only complaining some when Changbin immediately throws his arms around the younger and burrows close. A sort of affection received by what would be an older brother. “Whatcha guys doing?” 

“Nothing,” they recite in unison, Hyunjin inching closer until his head lies in Jeongin’s lap. “What about you?” he parrots, looking up at Jeongin. 

Discontent, Jeongin squirms, looking at the array of tents. “Nothing. Seungmin and Minho are talking somewhere. They took King with them. Bastards.” His disapproving tone rings hollow, a confusion filling its place unhappily. 

He must know the feeling all too well. 

Hyunjin glances in the same direction, eyes squinting. “We need to get all those suckers to stop being such losers.” 

Changbin and Jeongin both know what he’s saying as soon as he says it. None of them know how to do just what they want to though, never having to pry before to get the openness they wanted. Jisung notices their little formation and bounds over, smiling. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “What’s up?” 

“You’re a loser.” 

+

They don’t even sit down, King weaving in and out of their legs with forceful mews of attention-seeking rage. They’re too occupied with the thoughts they bear on their wrists than petting her and Minho can’t imagine how severely that displeases her. So for her sake, truly her sake, not because he’s been holding onto it for so long when he finally lets it out it carelessly flies from his mouth and about smacks Seungmin over the cheek. 

“Cee’s the Crimson Prince, isn’t he?” 

Glum, Minho wishes he’d give an appropriate and reasonable response at least once in their lives, Seungmin pouts. “Could we have at least sat down? I gave Cee enough time to sip some tea before assaulting him with the deep, dark secret of our kingdom.” 

Minho blinks, flabbergasted. “You mean you’ve gone to him and confirmed it? Why isn’t this common news? Posted on a notice board for the eight of us to see like a little village!” He’s broaching whining territory but he can’t help it. He hates keeping things from Felix, and he’s been agonizing over this bit in particular because if shared with said prince, would either make his day, or make his life miserable.

And Seungmin has a special talent for reacting so little it pulls out all the reaction from the person addressing him. 

Or maybe there was something comforting about him naturally that made Minho feel like he can talk uninhibited. 

Promptly, Seungmin plops down, gifting King his attention. “Minho can you calm down before you overwhelm the both of us? I only was just confronted with the information myself recently.” And it shows, in the smallest increments of Seungmin’s figures, how true that was. The delay between his nails and King’s chin, the frantic darting of his eyes like he was trying to see the whole truth just be looking in plain sight, the smallest crack of uncertainty at the end of his plea. 

Following swiftly in suit, Minho drops to the ground, running his hand through his hair, attempting to calm his approach. “So it’s true?” The question hangs heavy and useless in the air, tugging them by the ears until their foreheads were nearly touching, Minho’s eyes on Seungmin’s, Seungmin’s to the ground, dark with thought. Maybe Minho is being merciless, continuously asking a question in which the answer has already been revealed. 

But he won’t trust it until it comes from Seungmin’s mouth. And he’ll only tell Felix when he’s seen it with his own eyes. It’s his duty to keep Felix safe, in the castle or out, as the prince or as the runaway. As a friend, it was his duty. Being a valet never had anything to do with it. 

Seungmin breathes, slowing his stroking to King’s fur. “It’s true,” he affirms, “Cee is the former prince. I don’t know his name still, or anything else about him, just who he is. And that the curse still holds him to his deathbed.” 

Nervously, Minho sucks his teeth and rocks back, giving them both much-needed space to respire. “Which one?” 

Helplessly, Seungmin eyes him, fed up. “Which one?” he echoes in high pitched weary. 

“The reason I believed Cee to be the former prince so strongly was because of what Felix had told me. The day he went berserk and fated us all to this exile, he had a final vision, the event of the curse being enacted. I won’t get into too much detail. Not only is it wearing but it’s not my place, but in his final moments ‘existing’ the prince was hexed to be repulsed by gold. Any of the metal that touches him, whether through fabric or otherwise, burns through him like acid.” 

Catching on with wide eyes, Seungmin nods. “And when he appeared with Felix that night, he’d had unexplained open wounds all over. Where Felix’s jewelry had touched.” 

“When I helped Changbin put them in the tent, he made me remove all of Felix’s gold and hide it far away, but not where it couldn’t be seen,” continues Minho, “So with all his behavior plus this too close to be coincidence, I reached a conclusion. But I had no idea what to do with it.” 

“Ask him, like I did?” Seungmin suggests. He’s replied with a side-eye. 

Gradually, Minho deflates, face pinching. “I can’t tell him,” he resolves, “All this, and I can’t even tell him.” Sighing, Seungmin nods, patting his shoulder. It had to be Cee who told him. As much as he would try ot argue, only Cee deserved that right, and Felix deserved the right to hear it from him. So Minho would only be carrying a burden heavier than before, once a theory unsolved, now a secret that outweighed them all. 

Minho falls back against the bundle of blankets they arrange when they wake up, huffing. “Maybe I should have just waited. Or gone to Felix myself.” 

“Wow,” Seungmin intones, “Who would’ve thought?” 

They sit like that for a while, King’s purring and constant moving rustling the quiet of the tent. Minho begins to feel Seungmin’s stare laying thick upon him, tensing but waiting for whatever Seungmin was readying. Preparing. 

“You know,” Seungmin starts, apprehensive, “Felix wasn’t the only one the Crimson Prince was close with before the curse.” 

Minho’s mouth and throat dries, words crawling up them pathetically and dying before they could make it, parched and starved. “Oh,” he rasps, like he doesn’t know where this is going. Like he hasn’t been avoiding pondering it since the thought crossed his mind. It was so much easier to handle a situation, if it was for Felix’s sake. 

Exasperated, Seungmin kicks out a leg to hit Minho with it. “Playing dumb doesn’t suit you, valet...Is there a reason you wouldn’t want to reconnect with him?” 

He thinks of it all. All that he can recall at the least. Which frankly, is a meager helping of faint memories, barely anything to grasp with his fingers alone. Frowning, he remembers how he had welcomed Cee in the beginning, a second impression if you will. He’d been rude and inconsiderate. He can’t imagine how that feels after having gone through so much, someone who doesn’t even remember you insulting you in the sake of another who couldn’t remember you. 

It would seem though that Cee held none of that against him. But…

Realization spreads through him like poison climbing the ivy of his veins to his heart. 

Protect him. 

He sits up suddenly, startling King and prompting curiosity in Seungmin. In one big breath, his stubbornness leaves him, limp like a puppet cut of its strings. “Haven’t I failed him, Seungmin? As a friend, as a valet.” 

Seungmin considers it, lips tugging to the side pensively. “If you think of it like that, wouldn’t that mean everyone who once knew Cee had failed him. Including Felix. Plus, he thinks it’s the other way around. He thinks he’s failed, and is still failing you all. So please, if he won’t come to you, go to him. He’s willing to let the curse take him, he’s already accepted his passing, and it’s only making him fade.” 

Minho swallows, comprehending the true severity of it. “Yeah,” he concedes, “You’re right.” He turns to the other, brows furrowed. “Why do you care for him so much, Seungmin?” It’s not like he knew Cee beforehand, and his guards against new people, paired with Cee’s impenetrable defenses, there’s no way they’ve gotten too close. Yet. 

Seungmin shrugs. “I don’t much. But I have this feeling. And I trust my feelings...Plus, if he goes, it’s not him or I who will be hurt.” 

It’ll be Felix. Changbin, Jisung...Minho. And Seungmin certainly cares for them. 

Shifting close, Minho slings his arms over Seungmin’s shoulder, pulling him in close. “You’re pretty great, you know that, Seungmin. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.” He can practically feel the heat emanating from Seungmin’s face. This is far from what he probably expected. “Tomorrow,” he announces resolutely, “I’ll go to him tomorrow.” 

Not that it’ll count for anything. 

+

Heat stifles him as he tries to burrow himself further into his blanket to avoid discomfort. It’s not a lot, couldn’t be in the weather, but it was just enough to make the stack of blankets too much. And it has Felix, an already light sleeper, averting sleep. Any attempt is hopelessly broken when his throat itches, and from it, a cough is drawn. 

He has to breathe through his mouth, and only then does he realize that the air does not taste like how it should in winter. It tastes wrong. 

Pulling his hood to his nose, blocking out the awful smell, he blinks back heat, bile rising to his throat. Fear-stricken panic hits him hard and swift, pushing aside the already minimal air vying in his lungs. Jerky and stiff, like an injured feral, Felix tears his way out through the tent entrance, stumbling out into the clearing. 

He’s so tired of not knowing his reality, having to differentiate between his past and present, his dreams and nightmares. He doesn’t know what to label it now. And he’s terrified to label it wrong. 

Red blankets the Earth, just like after he’d been saved. He looks down at his skin and it’s blanketed in syrupy crimson, shining through over like soaked gauze. He looks up, and the sun is the same sickly scarlet, vividly, violently, off-color. His dreams and nightmares collide. Smoke, that’s what’s morphing the sun, that’s what’s suffocating him at the pace of a sadistic snail. 

Fire. 

Horrified, he slowly turns to where the grey and red thickens. Beside the castle, over the village, he can almost see the flames, licking and reaching for the stars where they’re most potent. He knows where he recognizes this scene, why he thought this might have been a vision. 

The village had been on fire the day his life burnt to hell with it. 

He hears crying, it’s not loud, it’s almost muffled, and he can’t tell if that’s the source’s fault, or his own, blood rushing through his ears louder than any waterfall, than any ocean. It’s there though, prominent and resounding in his mind like the echoes of an empty cavern. He’s almost unable to tear his eyes away from the fire, fearing the moment turns away, he catches too. 

But the pairing of the fire and crying is too much for his worn senses, too sensitive the second time around, and he trips back, spinning to see who it is, vaguely recognizing in his conscience that the crying is significant. It’s from someone he knows. Someone he cares for. 

Jisung. 

Huddled to the ground with Minho’s and Changbin’s arms latched around him in the sturdiest armor, Jisung screams and sobs into his hands, eyes unseeing as the fire fills them a bright amber like melting copper. He pleads and begs for his life as though it’s being taken right then and there, warped to ash even as it stands solid around him. 

Jeongin and Seungmin stare wordlessly, shock slathering their features in ashen colors and slacked lines. Their families are over there. There where the fire is. Their families are in danger, their community, their home, all they’ve ever known ‘til now, is lit orange in technicolor. 

He doesn’t realize the scene before him has changed until there’s insistent hands on his arms, climbing to his elbows until he’s able to recognize them. He looks down at Changbin, too gone to say anything.. Changbin says in a low voice, but it’s louder than anything else at the moment, somehow, “Felix, Felix please don’t freak out too much. I’m sorry, I know this is just as bad for you as it is for the rest of us, but can you please find Cee?” 

Cee. His pupils dilate and latch onto Changbin. “Cee?” This request sounds familiar. He’s heard it once, by a voice that didn’t actually speak, but was much more insistent. Like before, it broke through a haze of panic and cleared his head, space enough for just the single thing. Finding him. 

Changbin nods but finds it useless, Felix already pulling away from him, all too willing to avoid what was happening before him, distracting himself with the new pull in his legs. He didn’t need to find Cee. He already knew where he was. How he would find him, was a different worry he didn’t explore lest he lose his mind before he could make it anywhere. 

He still has the bottom of his face covered, black coating his throat and he was trying to keep it from completely overtaking his lungs. It didn’t help that the fire was s far, yet just close enough to keep them in its caress of torment. The forest, at least this side, hadn’t been touched yet, or no amount of panic could keep them swift enough to escape. The possibility settles in Felix’s gut like a rock. 

And he doesn’t have to smell a single leaf or blade of grass wither. So small, yet so big for him. 

He makes it to the river, louder than any of the times before. He hadn’t been watching his steps to fit Cee’s like he’s been, wondering if he walked the same silent path, he’d be able to see a bit into Cee’s mazework of a mind. He’s too occupied with the barred cells of his own. 

He sees him, braking so hard he almost falls face-first into the rocks. 

The mask, it dangles a lifeline between Cee’s fingers, inches from the water. Without it secure to his face, Cee...Cee looks real. So startlingly real Felix feels like he can’t recognize the person before him, knowing too much about the stranger clad in back standing over the water. He doesn’t blend. He starkly contrasts the trees, the dirt, the rocks, the river. He’s a solid being finally, no speck of a dream, no chance of a vision. 

Being solid makes him look so much more worn than he had before. Felix aches for him. As well as he aches for himself. 

That hair, waves of red messily arranged in a terrible halo in the fire’s essence. Felix knows it, has felt it beneath his palms like silken sheets, has watched primmed and prepped by slender deft fingers into something tame. In the back of his mind, he recalls always liking it undone, admiring the curls like rays of the sun, petals of a poppy, soft and even then, a bit frightening. 

Felix has never known the symbolism of red in one’s hair, but the color was so similar to blood, sometimes he’d seen it and thought the worse, before the other raised his head and smiled bright and pearly. 

It still scares him now, especially with flames meters away. 

The red would spread in the water. And with the way Cee sways in the wind, solid but light as a leaf after all this time, it looks like that’s where he would land. Blinking out of his trance, pushing it all aside for a single second which is all he thinks he can even manage, he sprints forward. 

Holding Cee by the midriff, they avoid both falling to a chilly fate. Even now, Cee is cold somehow. Whereas Felix had expected radiating warmth from the other’s body, he felt nothing. Like Cee had passed his time. 

On shaking, wobbling legs, he forces himself to disconnect, stepping back and swallowing as much air as he can take in, much-needed air. It was clearer by the water. Easier to breathe. He needs so much of it, all his lungs can hold. Because he knows it’ll all abandon him mercilessly when Cee turns. 

And he’s right. 

He shouldn’t, but he sees past the newest bits of Cee’s aged face, so much different than what he knew, but he sees past it. He can see for a moment’s grace, the mirage of the boy, the prince, the friend, he once knew. 

His lips part, aching to say the name he cannot hold in his mind longer than one can hold water in their fingers. It’s damning, because of all things he can do in that moment, he desperately yearned to utter the name that takes a portion of his heart. An empty noise escapes instead, more a choked gasp than anything coherent. 

In this he’s forgotten the fire, temporarily, or it’d just been shoved down by the fact that the prince, the Crimson Prince, his prince was standing here before him after days and days of taunting him beyond touch’s reach. But it rages still, and the ghosts it leaves behind instantly haunt Cee’s blank stare, like he’s taken it upon himself to escort them to the afterlife. But not without self-consequence. 

And his voice, somehow even though his last mask hadn’t covered his mouth, was so much more audible. And Felix doesn’t know how he missed the royal accent before, Minho couldn’t have, but it was there, rounding out Cee’s syllables of horror and lilting them to the side. 

“They know,” he says, a bit hoarse, fear old and cultivated layered to his tongue. 

Felix licks his lips, mustering his own voice. “Know what, Cee?” 

Slowly, so slowly it’s surreal, Cee falls to his knees, pupils blurred into his irises. They’re dark just like the rest of theirs, a brown-streaked like the cracks of bark. Felix can’t see crow’s feet, but he can see bruises, stamped on either side of Cee’s nose, against skin almost translucent. He had said he didn’t need sleep, and maybe for how little he had been before, that was true, but his body hadn’t caught up with his mind. 

And what Felix has avoided examining, nauseous every time he does. Not because they look gross, the scars oddly suit Cee, but their origin slashes through Cee’s face like a quill to canvas, prominent and paler some places, vivacious in others. Crossed over his face like a crest. More like it, encircles Cee’s neck, disappearing beyond fabric, but Felix knows they continue, all the way to the pads of Cee’s fingers from where’d they held the gold as it slipped free. 

There’s fresh wounds, and Felix’s stomach flips on itself as he recognizes their prints and shapes. His jewelry. From the night he’d been saved, he’d hurt Cee. No wonder Cee had loathed to touch him. 

How was the one allergic to gold supposed to mingle with the one made of it?

He barely realizes his fingers involuntarily hovering over the forming scars upon aged ones, puckered and unsightly. It ripples or shudders as Cee takes a heaving breath, “Know I’m alive. They know I’m alive.” 

Felix blinks, gaping, as he registers just how extreme the circumstances of that fire, and how they’ll only grow by the passing ember. He shakes, but he moves his hand, reaching it up and resting it upon Cee’s head, like the other had done for him when first beginning to understand his magic. He’s searching with aggressive fervor that translates feebly to his touch, for a semblance of that same comfort. 

Cee stills, lashes flutter, each beat clearing his gaze until it rests upon Felix with recognition. And then with tears. Before Felix can think another thought, he’s held tight in an embrace, a part of the puzzle of Cee’s being. And he fits perfectly, feeling for the first time in a long, long while, whole. 

This is what a true reunion feels like then. Felix hadn’t even let himself dream it before, knowing he’d only catch himself in hopes crafted of deprecating brambles and thorns, trapping and torturing him endlessly with the unreachable image of the boy who he’d lost too soon, too violently. 

It’s not closure, he won’t get closure until they’re both in their graves, side by side with their years overlapping in the headstones below their matching titles. But he’s content. And though everything rages with uncontrollable chaos and agony around them, for just a second, everything feels okay. The definition of okay so satisfying it surpasses sadness and happiness balanced. 

He’s crying, silently so, but it wracks his entire body. The tremors are almost untraceable, because even though he’s shivering too, Cee holds him steady enough for them to collapse into rocks right then and there, joining the bed of pebbles and boulders, immovable. 

“I’m sorry,” Cee sobs into his shoulder, “I”m so sorry.” 

Maybe he’s too dumbfounded, too awed, too lost in Cee’s existing , but he can’t find for the life of him, any reason for Cee to be sorry. 

Don’t forget me . 

He says sorry back.

Chapter Text

“Do you really think it was a good idea to send Felix's after Cee?” Minho questions, shifting to further accommodate Jisung in his arms. The other is shivering and shuddering, skin hot, almost feverish. But he’s cognizant now, clinging tightly to the fabric of Minho’s top. It wrinkles and looks like it will be torn beneath his harsh grip. 

Changbin nods, certain. “None of us knows where Cee is. Only Felix will be able to find him. And I’ll think it’ll be a good comfort for them both now.” 

Setting his jaw, Minho’s eyes linger over Jisung’s hair, pushing it away from his forehead and behind his ear. Casually he responds, “This fire won’t be good for either of them. Just as much as Jisung for Cee, I imagine.” 

Alert, Changbin’s gaze darts to him with the precision and speed of a throwing knife. “What do you imagine?” he treads murky waters. 

Avidly keeping away from eye contact, Minho runs his fingers soothingly over Jisung’s shoulder, ignoring how equally suspicious he was. “I mean, the fire is what helped erase Cee the first time.” 

A crack of silence, as poignant as one of thunder. “How’d you figure out?” Jisung asks softly, not needing much effort for his voice ran raw after screaming and pleading nothing for what felt like an eternity. It couldn’t have been more than an hour. It felt longer.

Sighing, Minho finally looks up to watch Changbin’s observing expression, neither positively or negatively reacting to the knowledge. “Your princeling isn’t as good at secret keeping as you two are, huh?” 

“Never had practice like us,” Jisung replies sadly, eyes drooping. Minho hooks his head over the other's, hoping he’ll just give in to the sleep like he would instead of fighting it. He needs it now. 

Changbin runs a hand over his face, exhaling. “Not like it’ll make any difference now. If the villages are burning for the same reason they were then, then he’ll come out with it. He won’t leave Seungmin and Jeongin in the dark about why their home is aflame without taking all the blame for it.” Sarcasm leaks thick and fatigued from his tone. Changbin doesn’t have any property in the villages, but it appears he’ll still have to do damage control. 

Minho suspects in some roundabout way, he’ll be doing his own too. 

Felix's hadn’t been as volatile as Jisung when he woke and noticed. But he’d been affected. Deeply. Minho wishes he had the shoulder width of Changbin. Would make it easier to hold the two at once and comfort them. However, he doesn’t think his already meager consolation skills would extend to that length. 

Vacant eyes haunt his waking mind, and he hopes to all he knows that Changbin was right about finding Cee, that it’ll help the two princes alike. 

Gosh, Felix isn’t the only prince he’s latched to now. “How did we manage to find the stupidest princes in all the lands,” Minho mutters, feeling Jisung snort under his chin as he dozes off, “And make them our family.” 

“Guess it’s just our luck,” Jisung murmurs, fading by the second but trying his hardest to follow his friends’ conversation. 

“Technically, you found them both first,” Changbin points out, “So you get the blame.” 

Minho curses. “Damn it, you’re right.” 

Introducing himself with a laugh, eyes still serious, Hyunjin waltzes over, swinging a staff in his lands like it’s an extension of himself. “You can start the prince hate club later, they’re almost here.” 

Changbin immediately stands, smile dropping quicker than an anvil, Minho having to hold himself back because of the body he holds. “How do you know?” His eyes scan the trees, but no one finds any shadows with them, familiar or otherwise. 

Shrugging, Hyunjin urges Minho to move, carefully relocating Jisung into his own arms. Thanks to his heavy sleep, he doesn’t make a sound as he’s draped over Hyunjin's lap, chest rising and falling steadily. “Seungmin and Changbin say they can feel it,” he supplies, tender voiced, “And I think they’ve got something for that. Though I think this time they’re partly screwing with me. There are noises in the trees.”

“We better not have more princes on our hands,” Minho grumbles, shaking out his hands and legs, getting the feeling back in them. Changbin by his side, or rather, ten steps ahead of him, for short legs he moves fast, Minho goes to the line of the trees where Felix's had vanished. 

Sure enough, lethargic rustling telltales their arrival. Minho and Changbin are ready to throw themselves at their friends with enthusiasm, but they both go rigid when they’re able to make out the figures. 

Felix breaks through the forage, stumbling beneath the weight of another, face glowing grimly, brighter and darker than Minho has seen. He spots Minho and beams, grinning ear to ear through the veneer of exhaustion, completely true. 

Cee, hanging off his neck like a koala, tired to the limp of his of his feet, looks up wearily, unsubtly leaning in towards Felix. Minho regards him unmasked joltingly. His face, is bare. Or, that’s an incorrect appraisal. Cee’s face is scarred in crisscross curves and marred with forever sickness, but it was exposed, revealed. A vivid flash of memory floods his mind’s eye, a younger, unscarred Cee, pleading with him on his knees and tears in his eyes. 

“Protect him,” he breathes, too quiet for anyone but himself to hear. 

The roles seemed reversed now, Felix supporting Cee with a smile painting his cheeks. The image was eerily familiar, and Minho thinks he might’ve seen in it, in a picture or through a window sometime during his life. Cee holding up a sniveling Felix up, smiling assuredly as Felix tried not to cradle his skinned shins. 

They were more grown now, more tattered, but no matter what, a rose always bloomed for the sun. 

At Felix’s encouraging stare, Cee lifts his head and a side of his lips tugs towards his ear, giving a halfhearted wave to pair with his crooked smirk. It was a sight for sore eyes. Minho deflates, blowing his hair from his damp temples. “Are you two alright?” he asks at the same time Changbin blurts. 

“Is it…” 

Minho frowns, side-eyeing Changbin. Curdling curiosity grows when Cee’s curved mouth wavers, tiring. Even Felix’s face falls imperceptibly, the lines around his eyes fading though his smile sticks, a facade. It’s more ominous than it has any right to be. His hand curls protectively around where he’s holding Cee up, and his eyes flick about. 

Minho will need to talk to him. About how he’s reconciling this prince, with the one in his visions, and overall. Later. 

“How’s Jisung?” Cee asks, finally letting his critical demeanor take over. It’s different now than when it was subjected to Felix's and them all those times just a night ago. It feels broader, less like it’s against them, and more like it’s extended to them. Dedicated to them. 

He hadn’t been there to see Jisung’s breakdown, probably wherever he was right when the fires began to break out if Minho’s assumption of his sleep deprivation is correct. But he likely knew better than Minho did about Jisung’s fear of the disasters. They met where the fear had originated after all. 

“Sleeping,” Minho answers, untensing in place. “And before, he’d just calmed down. Was talking and everything. He’s…he’ll be fine,” he assures, “He’s tough.”

Chuckling drily, Cee separates himself from Felix. Felix looks all too unappreciative of the action, following Cee’s gait by the step, making sure their shoulders are touching. After being deprived of Cee’s contact for so long, Minho can imagine he’s much reluctant to let it go for even the briefest moments. 

“And the others?”

Cee’s stare sharpens with concern, but it’s warm. Minho doesn’t know how someone is capable of that. “Seungmin and Changbin especially? I know…” He squeezes his eyes shut, rueful and Minho can already see the misplaced guilt Changbin had foretold shine through undeniably. “I know their home is probably one of many being attacked.” There’s an unspoken taking of blame in his words that he’ll probably speak when faced with the two. 

A sigh bubbles strongly in Minho, but the situation is just sensitive enough to keep from expressing it. 

Changbin shares the same qualms, teeth against his lips. “They’re worried, but not to Jisung’s level. Seungmin says if anything were to happen, he’d know.” And it’s not anything they question. They have faith in Seungmin’s scary intuition. As an odd look passes over each their faces, it dawns on them gradually that maybe they should. Just a little bit. 

Other things are of priority now. 

Cee glances back at Felix, doubtful. His fingers tremble at his sides. He tilts his head so much of his curled bangs can fall over his face as possible. His scars only show more prominent when he does that. Hopefully, he isn’t going for the opposite effect. 

It must’ve taken courage, bred from exhaustion and panic, to reveal himself to Minho. He doesn’t really want to know what it had taken to tell Felix. If he’d had a choice even. Minho was probably the second most nerve-wracking to tell. He’d been the only other to know Cee beforehand. 

He doesn’t know out of the two of them who’s more disappointed that he can’t remember a spick of it. 

Now it was just a matter of impression, duality. How would the others think of their newest companion also being the former prince of their ruined kingdom? If Minho really was cynical, cynical to idiocy, then he would be able to blame Cee for all of what has happened to him. And that’s probably what Cee recognizes above all else. 

Minho holds no trepidation whatsoever. He knows their friends won’t do anything like that. And if they were to he’d smack them straight over the head with a slab of rusty metal from the main tent’s roof. It makes him sick to think like that. 

Cee had been too young to experience any of what he did, much less be put to fault for it. His life was cruel enough. 

Felix is ready with reassurance, smile softening as he pats Cee’s head, eyes crescents but radiating human sunshine. He mouths something, the words practically audible. You’ve got this. 

The former prince looks like he doesn’t know how to handle it, but does for Felix’s sake, flustered. Minho is shoulder bumped and he’s ready to hiss at Changbin when he gets a glimpse of the knight-to-be’s smug smirk. “It’s like they’re children again,” he teases beneath his breath, voicing the thoughts Minho had, a bit more devilishly. 

He plays into it though, finding the same route in his mind. “I should ask,” he murmurs menacingly, “If little Felix's once had a puppy crush on little Crimson Prince.” And he really should if Felix’s shining eyes on Cee have any say on the matter. Changbin’s snicker affirms the sentiment. 

The moment passes and they’re leading the two princes to where the others, the peasants, Minho will be sure to taunt them of that later, are gathered. Seungmin’s already aware of them before they approach, pursing back a smile as he nudges Changbin. He’s pointedly spotted Cee but he lets them handle that unveil. 

Nonchalant, Changbin plops beside Hyunjin. Pleased, Minho examines Jisung in his lap, hair being adoringly played with by the older. Still fast asleep. Said former valet startles, nearly socking Changbin in the face with the hilt of his newly acquired weapon. He hasn’t dropped the thing since he was granted the right to hold it as his, the freedom to be carrying it all. Minho’s chest swells with pride and gratitude for him. 

Changbin sees them, jaw dropping. In spite of the surprise blatant on his face, his voice is soft when he says, “Oh, Cee. Your mask.” It’s gone. At his delicate tone, Hyunjin turns his head, teeth shutting with a click, wide-eyed and shocked. 

Self-conscious, Cee shifts beneath the weight of every gaze on him. He raises his hand and then falters, touching his cheeks in an incomplete gesture, pulling a strand of hair with it to cover a portion of his eye. Insecurity and guilt of one’s trauma splayed so directly on one’s face is too harsh of a reminder that didn’t have any good reason for existing. That mask had been a self-inflicted cell, a tight box for all of him, but at the very least, it had served in hiding the things he especially didn’t want to see in himself. 

It makes those who already knew, a startling majority at this point when Minho does a count in his head, somber. 

Exhaling, Cee steps forward, shaking his hair away from his face and dropping his arms to his side. No one moves, watching him with every ounce of focus. “I know you already know, Seungmin, but Hyunjin, Changbin, you deserve to know. I’m the former prince of this kingdom, the Cursed Prince Chan. The one before Felix's. The one you may be accustomed to in Felix’s visions. And I am the reason your villages are burning.” 

Minho honestly doesn’t think he’s ever seen Felix hit anyone harder. 

+

“I think I’m bruising,” Chan remarks absentmindedly, languidly drawing circles into the neat bruise left by the golden prince on his hirm. 

“Don’t say stupid things,” Felix mumbles, staring avidly down at his knees. But he can feel a heat of embarrassment in his cheeks. He hadn’t really meant to hit Chan that hard, or really, hit him at all. It’s probably deserved, but definitely a reckless impulse he can only feel blase about if he blames it on his magic. 

Chan. He finally has Cee’s real name and it takes a lot of social discipline to not repeat it in every sentence he speaks. Chan, Chan, Chan. The last bit of the Crimson Prince which was once erased, is now revived, and Felix is determined to keep it that way. The name he’d once called like a prayer, the name he ached for on empty nights just on the tip of his tongue, and the name he now holds with his life because without doing so, it’ll cease to exist. In entirety. 

He has to peek at Chan to make sure he’s still real, he’s still there. The curse hadn’t taken him, and it’s not taking him. Not a dream, not a vision, and most definitely not a nightmare. Felix still isn’t quite sure how to process it, his head is only half-wrapped around the concept, but his heart has taken to it completely. 

He has the remind himself, the young stupid part of him that hasn’t grown up since the curse was enacted, that had jumped and played in his visions, trampling the present him like a rug of grass. That this isn’t the little Crimson Prince he used to know and cherish. This was someone different, someone older, someone wounded. Over and over. 

It’s easy when Chan looks up, and for a split second, all Felix sees are scars, distinct and angry. He’s not glad for them, not one bit, but they differentiate the two princes he holds in his mind with a vice grip. They’re sobering, proof of the day Chan’s life split from his. Proof of what he’s been through. And Felix desperately yearns to keep any of it from happening again, constantly finding his fingers drawn to the marks as if to shield them. 

It makes a different part of him bloom, overshadowing his rationality, and the naive youthfulness. He wonders if it was similar to anything Chan had felt in those visions, fierce to keep him from harm, fiercer than anyone should be. To a grave fault. But Felix hadn’t been pleased with that, in the end. That was an understatement.

Chan is hesitant, sucking in a breath as he lowers his sleeves, covering lines of scars and Felix’s pitiful bruise. It makes Felix feel better and worse all at once. That bruise was far from the worst that Chan has felt. “It’s getting late. Minho and Jisung took your guys’ tent. Are you gonna join them?” 

He’s still guarded, Felix finds. But differently, and for less severe than he was before. His shields this time were crafted from a caution unlike the defensive fear previously. Felix knows who he is now, he doesn’t have to hide everything to make sure he doesn’t. Now it’s Chan, who has to read Felix for whatever multitude of reasons run through his head at rapid pace. He’s not afraid of Felix, but afraid of something else. 

He suspects, that Chan, is still afraid of letting him too close. Close enough to where it’ll hurt just as much as it did before. Afraid of the unknown bounds between them that hadn’t existed then. At least on Chan’s side. 

Tapping his fingers along the rim of his boots, Felix hums. “I don’t think. They take up all the blankets.” 

Chan nods, eyes darting to the side. “Jisung’s cot will be empty then. You can take it if you don’t wanna share the other tents...You’ll have the blankets to yourself and it’s more comfortable than the ground.” 

With narrowed eyes, Felix regards the Crimson Prince. “I know you stay in that tent too. Do you not plan on sleeping?” Last night, seeming a decade ago after so much development in a few hours, was stark in Felix’s mind. Awkward and frustrating, the silence of the night violently teeming with secrets and anxieties. But he’d learned that Chan doesn’t sleep. And without the mask, it shows beneath his eyes clearer than even the scars to Felix's. 

Flinching beneath his gaze, Chan rests in a hunched form, pressing his lips tight. Caught. “I hadn’t,” he admits timidly, playing with a faded strap of his old sandal. He leaves it in the air for Felix to respond, however, open. It’s refreshing. And Felix is a hundred percent ready in this case to take advantage of it.

He stretches with a forced yawn and scoots closer to Chan, watching slowly as the former prince uncurls from himself to observe Felix curiously. “Well, you better. You need to be well-rested if we’re going to plan anything, my prince.” 

Off guard, Chan blinks, gaping. He shuts his mouth and looks at the tent, already resigned. “Okay. My cot is near Jisung’s. You can have either. I’ll...I’ll try to sleep. If it doesn’t work out, don’t blame me.” He finishes with a crooked smile, wary but earnest. Felix appreciates it for all its worth and more. 

He’s about to stand when Chan suddenly catches his wrist, firm. Felix stills, turning in inquiry, puzzled. He’s a bit perturbed by Chan’s open gaze completely on him, unused to it. “Chan?”

“I wanted to apologize,” he rushes to say, looking down as if also put off by the extended eye contact, faltering. “For...for a lot of things. There’s too much, really. Originally, I was just gonna say sorry for being so cold and rude to you and leaving you in the dark after taking you from the dungeons. And for leaving you in the dark...before.” 

It goes unspoken, what before is. 

Rolling his lip between his teeth, Felix thinks. “Thank you,” he breathes, “I appreciate that more than you think.” He thinks of all those visions, the pain of never knowing anything because he’d been shielded by Chan the entire time. It might’ve benefited him then, but it only hurt more in the future. “You weren’t in the right keeping it all from me, but you weren’t in the wrong. It’s all your secrets to keep. I was just too involved for it to be held, you know? It backlashed. Horribly.”

Chan’s face displays only an ounce of turmoil, only the smallest portion of what he’s probably putting himself through internally. Upon seeing it, Felix scoffs and with his other hand, carefully untangles Chan’s fingers from his arm, lacing them with his own. “Stop it. You were a kid. All the bad stuff that happened to both of us, was because of Keres, not your poor decisions. You couldn’t have stopped what was to happen, and either way, if you had left, I would’ve hurt from it one day. My life at the castle before the curse, was happy, and that was because of you.” 

Visibly, it eases Chan somewhat and he relaxes, shoulders finally lowering. He doesn’t let go of Felix’s hand. Together, they enter the tent. Changbin eyes them from his sleeping place suspiciously as he unlaces his boots. Chan flicks him a look and explains, “Jisung is sleeping with Minho tonight. Felix is taking his cot.” 

With little fanfare and no questions, Changbin helps Felix prepare the bed and sits in his own, blinking out as soon as the lantern’s flame is snuffed. It feels odd, not sleeping with either Minho or Hyunjin, but he can hear the combinations of Changbin and Chan’s breaths, and it’s equally as calming. And when he turns his head just slightly, to where his harm hangs limply over the edge, knocking against Chan’s, it’s even more so. 

It’s the quickest he falls asleep in a while. 

And the second worse he’s woken since that morning. 

He jumps awake, his magic slapping over him harsh and warning. He knows immediately now, due to the nature of when he woke up last night, and how he found Chan by the river, that this has to do with the Crimson Prince. He doesn’t know how or why yet, but their magic seems tuned to each other, always finding the other. From Chan being able to sense him and save him before, to instances like these, much smaller and more sensitive since his magic hasn’t been so weakened. Perhaps it comes with their complicated shared title, crown prince of a stolen kingdom, one by blood, one by gold. 

His ears pick up labored breathing, scattered and unsteady. It’s barely noticeable, a bump in the breeze. Changbin doesn’t wake. Only Felix. He looks over with a quiver in his lip. 

Chan fell asleep oddly straight, rigid and unnatural like he wasn’t really used to it. Now, he was bunched up around his blankets, holding onto them with white knuckles and trembling arms. Not a spot of color hued his face, a sickly shade of grey-specked purple around the edges of eyes and lips. Sweat dribbled from his forehead, mingling with the tears squeezed forcibly from fluttering lashes. 

Nightmare. 

It was almost unsettling, how quiet Chan was when his body language screamed volumes. If it weren’t for the magic, Felix wouldn’t have woken up. Chan would have sat like this, and woke up like this, until his whole body shook like the leaves of the trees. With how fragile he looked in the bare moonlight, the curse’s vile touch kissing him at every edge, Felix has the jarring fear that he might’ve just gone . 

With the thought, Felix spares no time pondering, falling the short distance from his cot to the ground and rolling over onto his knees, instantly grasping for Chan’s hands. With his other hand, he pushes Chan’s dampened bangs from his face and insistently began to whisper, “Chan. Chan.” 

Chan only grows more distressed, brows furrowing and lips thinning until they were colorless. His breathing is slowing instead of shallowing, but it’s further alarming, because it’s becoming extinct, sucked into his lungs, and not coming out. Harrowed, Felix shakes harder, raising his voice until it crackles and breaks, a piece of glass thrown carelessly to stone. “Chan!” 

It comes to a standstill. Changbin stirs, doesn’t wake. Felix chokes on his tongue, desperate, adrenaline pumping through his unprepared heart. Chan’s eyes open. 

Felix releases a lengthy exhale, brimming with relief. He sags over Chan’s bedside, slumped like his tendons had been snipped. Tentative fingertips brush his head. “Felix?” It’s hoarse and raw, lacking enough oxygen but getting there. 

Peering through his lashes, Felix murmurs, “Are you alright?” 

Chan blinks, mouth shaping. “Me?” 

Unimpressed, Felix stares hard enough to make Chan squirm. He gives in, tiredly dropping his head back to his pillow with a sigh. “I haven’t had a nightmare in a while, haven’t slept long enough too...It wasn’t like I didn’t sleep because of the nightmares, but I guess that was one plus side of being unable to sleep...It’s been so long. I’d forgotten what it felt like.” 

Unbearable. It feels unbearable.

“What was it about?” 

Chan tenses, teeth sinking into his bottom lip and all Felix can feel is grateful for the fact that it blooms red. “The curse, it was about the curse.” And that left so much room for though. The night it was enacted, his parents disappearing, Keres’ part to play in it, its havoc on the kingdom, its still looming precarious presence hanging over Chan as certain and deadly as a knife on string. Felix didn’t pry. 

But he rises, raising his arm with a question in his teary eyes. There’s a moment, in which Felix is sure Chan will refuse. It would make every sense why. Touch isn’t the most appealing when every touch Chan has felt as hexed him, one way or another. But he doesn’t. He practically falls into Felix’s embrace, inhaling swiftly as Felix’s arms wrap around his own flat against his side, careful to avoid the band. 

It’s the second time, in real time, from now to the castle grounds, that Felix has ever seen Chan cry. And this is the first time, that Chan doesn’t shy from it, sniffling pitifully as his fingers find way to Felix’s nape, ghosting the tips of long hair and finding grip among them. 

When they were young, Chan did this for Felix all the time. When he was upset, scorned, scolded, left out, anything that saddened a ten-year-old child excluded from the rest. He wishes to have Changbin and Seungmin with him then, to fill the cries between them, but he doesn’t, just softly repeating Chan’s name and soothingly rubbing circles into his back. 

With their past, that method might be more efficient. A grounding reminder that Chan was real and remembered. 

Swallowing a hiccup Felix nervously asks, “Do you…do you want to share a cot?” Truthfully, he doesn’t want to separate. He wants to continue holding Chan forever and ever. Or until the curse has ceased to be. It’s unrealistic, so all he can ask for is a night. Right?

He gets a nod and clunkily, they fumble into Felix’s cot. Chan’s doesn’t hold a bit of warmth. It’s frighteningly worrying but it’s just another sign of Chan’s ailment. Like Felix needs anymore, holding the older in his arms. And despite being broader, just a bit shorter, it feels like there’s nothing there. Felix has to squeeze extra tight and hook his chin over Chan’s shoulder. Only then is he assured. Just barely. 

No matter. Being in Chan’s arms again and vice versa, a decade later, feels heavenly. How will he ever be able to let go?

Their breathing calms together and safe and secure in Chan’s rare embrace, Felix’s okay. Enough to sleep once more. He doesn’t wake the second time. 

+

It’s a sort of hell, pulling himself from Felix’s koala clinging. Not just because Felix’s fingers have left darkened imprints into his skin that slowly fade the farther he gets from the other. He might bruise again. But it shows beyond his scars that he exists enough to be marred. Blemished. Not a freckle has grown back on his face since he ‘disappeared’. He misses them. 

They’re prettier on Felix anyways. 

He’s shivering. This is also odd, as he hasn’t felt warm enough in years to decrease to a chill enough to make him shiver. An aching effect of Keres’ magic. One Felix effortlessly counteracted, warm from the heart out. He couldn’t be anything but with who he is. 

And that’s another reason he wishes he didn’t have to pull away. Not just Felix’s warmth, but Felix overall. Never, did he think there would be a day when he could behold the Golden Prince in person, much less hold him. He didn’t let himself entertain the possibility, it’d hurt too much. But the possibility, had become an impossible reality. Honestly, Chan is convinced on the smallest occasion, that he’s already disappeared and this is his perfect reality. 

But everything is far from perfect. The reason he’d had to sleep with Felix in the first place highlighted that. 

The nightmare cloys and scuttles over the back of his mind, sending claws down his spine. There’s no chance of him sleeping for the rest of the night, though the amount of sleep he got in the first place is considerable. 

So here he is, pulling from Felix, carefully avoiding the golden band on his wrist, draping the blanket back over the other before crawling away. He rustles beneath his cot until he finds what he’s looking for. A storybook, small and roughed from years of inattention and years of use before then. He runs his fingers over the cover, trying to piece in his mind when the last time he’d seen it because it had been right before the curse enacted. How Felix and Seungmin managed to find it, how it managed to escape Keres’ wrath, was a wonder to him. 

Ah, it’d been read to him by Felix’s mother, days after mages had begun to pop up around the kingdom, threatening. A grimace tugs at his mouth and he opens the book before he can think himself into further disrest. The pages are debilitated but legible, their words jumping out and imprinting themselves into his mind to never be forgotten again. A poem written so simply and childishly about his family’s demise. 

He reaches the last line, tracing over it gingerly, like that would coax it into revealing its true meaning. Until in minds, they’ve left their mark in golden ink. 

Pressing his lips thin, he shuts the book, tossing it onto the surface of his abandoned cot. For a while, he just sits. Thinking more than he’s allowed himself before about solutions rather than problems. Now that he has a chance, a possibility, a hope , he’s not going to let it go to waste. Not one bit. 

He won’t ever be able to bring his family back. They’re forever lost to the merciless waves of endless time. He’s accepted this. He’d torture himself if he didn’t. He’ll miss them terribly for the rest of his existence, their parting anything but kind. But he’s got a family now. In fact, he’s always had one within Jisung and Changbin. But he’d been stupid and despondent. Now, he had more to lose than ever before. 

And he wasn’t going to sit back and let them be taken from him a second time. 

Decided, he quietly faces Felix, expression of grim determination. Even though the other won’t hear, he promises, big and bold just like he’d been when Felix knew him, “I’ll bend my time for you if I have to, I’ll always find you.”

And so he moves.

Chapter Text

“Changbin!

He’s shaken only once, only called for once, but he wakes immediately, floundering for a split second before steadying alert. He whips his head to his side where Felix is staring up at him with pleading, wide eyes, chin wobbling and lashes firmly fighting dew drops of tears. Even with the obvious cracks of his demeanor, his shoulders are still and his back is straight, a fury igniting an odd calm. 

Changbin looks around finding what’s missing, and what’s causing Felix’s distress, in an instant. He tries hard not to crack beneath Felix’s unwavering gaze, disrest leaking over his ribs. “You don’t know where he is?” 

With an exhale of relief at being acknowledged, Felix shakes his head. “I’ve even checked the river and came back. I don’t know any place else where he’d be, nor do I really know any other place in this forest.” But you do, right? 

A sick pressure weighs Changbin’s stomach as he can’t answer. He hisses out a stream of air, cursing out his friend with all the fire in his bones. “Wake the big tent up, I’ll wake Minho and Jisung. If he doesn’t come back. We’ll search for him.” 

He won’t entertain any other idea of Chan’s disappearance other than that he will be back. Not even for Felix. He leaves the tent with flames licking at his heels, not bothering to look back at the prince before he’s on his way to wake up Jisung. And in turn, Minho. Jisung knows the forest best, second to Chan. If they need to go out into the trees, he’ll be the key to finding him. He might even know where the other is. 

Despite being so close in such small numbers, their trio had a variety of different relationships. Or rather, dynamics, he supposes. Each lined with undying trust. And depending on the situation, they might know more about one than the other. It wasn’t bad, didn’t show any distrust or bad blood, it simply was. A tidbit of information they happened to forget to share to both, or purposely withheld for good reason. 

Jisung doesn’t know the ways in which Changbin and Chan protect him from everything more so than themselves. Neither does Chan. And Changbin bets there are things they keep from him to shield him. Once, rightfully that might’ve upset him, now he doesn’t even bother caring. The moment they fully accepted being a part of Chan’s life, they accepted the fortress of secrets that came with. Upon everything else. 

Chan was worth it, as much as he didn’t believe so, and Jisung and Changbin were diligent in reminding him. 

Changbin rips the tent entrance open, shouting Jisung’s name. Minho woke quick, jolting awake defensively with a hand over a stick that found its way into the tent before recognizing Changbin. At Changbin’s look, he doesn’t ask, merely helps wake Jisung from his loglike slumber as usual. The boy is groggy and sluggish until his vision is cleared enough to realize Changbin’s expression. 

He’s still a bit slurred but the prompted urgency moves him forward. “What’s wrong?” 

Changbin grits his teeth and through it tells, “Chan. He’s missing.” 

A thing about Jisung is that he’s only bleary when he chooses to be. When his guard is down and he feels comfortable enough to slowly acclimate to the world like an alien of sorts. It’s what’s natural, but it doesn’t mean he can’t be quick about it. When the situation calls for it, he can wake in a flash, rushing up faster than even Changbin can manage on occasion. And he did that now, throwing his blankets of and nearly knocking Changbin out at the speed in which he exits the tent. “Elaborate.” 

Changbin makes quick eye contact with Minho, nodding his head out to indicate he comes too. Minho is already halfway ready so it proves fruitless but he responds with a weak thumbs up, a humorous contrast to the dead serious lines carving his face. He bounces to catch up with Jisung’s quickening pace. 

“He slept in the cot next to Felix last night.” Jisung hums, knowing this or assuming it. “I don’t know what happened after, you know I fall asleep quick. But I woke up and Felix was telling me he was gone. And that he’d already searched the clearing and the river Chan frequents. All in all, we have no idea where the hell he is and Felix’s magic isn’t able to tell him.” 

Jisung’s face falls in a solid movement, frown a presence of its own. It’s a known fact that Felix and Chan’s magic orbit as much as Seungmin and Jeongin’s beings do. It finds Felix for Chan, but with Chan’s subdued magic, buried beneath layers of Keres’ cruelties and pain and Felix’s inexperience, his bouts of seeking ar spontaneous. They have assumed though, that in an event like this, Felix and his magic would be bound to find him. 

At this point, they’ve met up with the others, Minho not far behind. Felix is interrogating a confused Seungmin, eyes narrowed a bit scarily, as Hyunjin tries to get him to calm down. “Is he alright?” he asks too quick to almost be heard, his accent jumbling his words incomprehensible. “Can you feel if he’s alright?” 

Seungmin swallows, brows furrowing slightly. “I can’t feel anything from him.” 

Jeongin shakes his head following. “I can’t either. But I don’t know if that’s how this whole intuition thing works.” 

“It has nothing to do with either Jeongin or Seungmin,” Hyunjin points out, dropping an observation into the basket for them to rifle through when they approach that theory. “Maybe it’s their blind spot.” 

That makes Seungmin pale and inch closer to Jeongin, their pinkies latching. “A blind spot…” he echoes hollowly. Jeongin glances at him from the side, sucking his teeth silently. Changbin feels bad for the realization, the fear that may shake the only certainty that they’ve managed to build since fleeing their former lives. 

Minho comes up and flicks Seungmin’s nose, though his own expression is troubled. “A blind spot that doesn’t affect you two directly, doofus. Hyunjin's saying if it doesn’t directly impact you, then you won’t be able to feel it out. You’re not connected enough to Chan to get a read off him.” 

Felix looks ready to tear his hair from his scalp, hands nervously resting on the sides of his neck as if feeling for phantom arms in a hug. “Okay,” he breathes, trying to calm himself, “So that means Chan hasn’t necessarily disappeared.” 

Jisung freezes, turning to Felix, forced lightheartedness in a feeble smile. “He can’t just disappear .” But what follows is a gut-wrenching silence that makes even Seungmin fidget with Jeongin’s fingers. Jisung looks to him, a call for help in his eyes, an aid of assurance. Changbin has to look away. 

Truthfully, none of them know if he could or not. 

“I could actually.” 

If he could it would be by Changbin’s own hand that’s for sure. He spins around at Felix’s loud gasp, not even bothering to wrap his hand around his hilt, knowing the voice better than the sound of a breeze. 

Standing there innocuously, positively soaked , is the man of the hour, the Crimson Prince himself. Damn lucky Jisung is clinging onto Changbin’s arm tight enough to cut of circulation, or else he’d have a second bruise to pair with Felix’s from the day before. He’s going to keep earning them with all the stupid things he’s done lately. 

Beneath the shock of frustration and panic, Changbin is grateful frankly. Before, Chan had been too withdrawn, too afraid, too tormented, too everything negative you can think of, to really be himself. And himself, was a bit of a dumbass. It’s been a long while, since Changbin has had a glimpse of the selfless idiot of his best friend who’s smile wa as soft and soothing as moonlight. 

“Huh?” Hyunjin utters, the only one not deprived of words, or rather, noise. 

Casually, Chan wrings his shirt, an utterly useless act as it continuously drips to the ground beneath him. He’s covered in water from head to toe, curls uncoiled over his head, boots missing. He’s blinking away drops from his lashes but they continue to travel from his bangs until he has to spit it out. His black clothes shimmer in the sunlight, almost sheer where they’re thin. 

And he’s shivering, joints spasming beneath endless cold. It’s the birth of winter, and he’s soaked. Changbin finds himself currently caring more about Chan collapsing than disappearing, worry whipping into him as he rushes forward, eyes wide. 

Chan used to get sick easy. All the time. Day after day, week after week, for months on end. And every time they had thought it would die down, it’d come right back. Changbin remembers it all distinctly, unable to forget no matter how hard he tried. Several times had Chan come close to dying out just laying in his cot, incapable of moving, speaking, not even coughing, eyes unseeing. 

It’s been years since, but the fear hasn’t faded. 

“Jisung!” he calls, “Blankets! Nothing too much, he has to heat up slowly. Seungmin, do you have any of that tea left?” A presence appears right beside him and he’s ready to yell at them to do something else because he’s about entered his few states of irrationality when he sees who it is. Felix, panicked, but steady. 

He looks to Changbin, gulping. “Tent?” Changbin nods. 

Chan lets out a nervous laugh, backing away with hands raised. “I’m fine guys, don’t worry too much. I’ll, uh, take the blanket. But I can walk.” He receives two death glares in response and Felix forces the former prince’s arm around his neck, using all his strength to practically lift the other to the desired tent. 

Changbin makes him leave and tells Chan to strip, Jeongin helpfully throwing in spare clothes just as Changbin enters the tent. It’s disconcerting and a bit uncomfortable even given their closeness, but Changbin intensely watches Chan undress and dress, trembling the whole time. As soon as he’s finished Jisung and Felix are filtering through with supplies, closely followed by the others. 

Contrite, Chan takes a slow sip of his tea as they sit around him. His shivering has grown less violent, but subsists. Only when Felix forgoes his huffy grudge and sits next to him, does it slow to a stop. 

“So can you explain to us,” Minho starts slowly, eerily calm with a deadly undertone that is far more intimidating than the frantic anger he’d introduced himself to them with. “Why you go missing, leave Felix in a panic, and show up sopping wet while dramatically saying you can disappear.” 

To emphasize the point, Felix gives a nasty side-eye and Chan winces. 

He sets down his cup, frowning as his hands are still too unsteady to keep it upright and stable. Felix takes it from him roughly and sets it down before him. He earns a meek smile and looks away. The interaction makes them all feel uncomfortable awkward and intrusive. 

“The reason I’m wet is ‘cause I crossed the river.” 

Jisung screeches, “You crossed the river on a winter night! Do you have a death wish?” 

It’s a valid question. Chan hurriedly shakes his head. “I woke up last night—” No one misses the way Felix’s face contorts like wax, melting into a lingering terror. It’s a whisper of how he’d looked when he woke Changbin up, illy so. “And I started doing what we’ve been putting off for a while now. I began the plan on how to take down Keres.” 

Taken aback, there’s the chorus of sharp breaths and surprised noises. “How does crossing a river have to do with that?” Jeongin challenges, puzzled. It cues Chan to launch into a spiel of the plan he’d concocted on a nightmarish thrill the night before, with spaces for them to fill, but an overall layout of the rungs they’ll climb to finally take out Keres and Doyle.

He finishes slightly out of breath but uncaring of it, eyes wide and sparkling with...hope. “I’d crossed the river, to see if there was space to do so. And only when I found it did I come back.” He heaves a large inhale. “I truly apologize, for any inconvenience I caused.” 

There’s a tick of silence, and it begins to rain in the time, the pitter patter giving them an easing backdrop to such a tense atmosphere. “It could work,” Minho says after a short while, “It’s just the right amount of time and subtlety and consideration, to work.” And after having nothing for so long, it’s a holy grail that they regard with absolute awe. 

“As soon as we all rest,” Changbin announces with Minho’s spoken approval, “We begin.” 

Before they can disperse Jisung slams his hands on the ground and leans towards Chan. His nose is scrunched oddly and Changbin can tell it’s his way of trying not to break down in pathetic tears right then and there. “You said you could disappear. What do you mean?” His voice cracks and Chan looks at him with so much pity Changbin has to look away. 

Demurely, Hyunjin raises his hand. “I think I know the answer to that.” Chan nods permissively and Hyunjin just stares at him for a moment, head tilted. Changbin realizes out of all of them, Hyunjin and Chan have interacted the least. His feelings on Chan must be muddy, and it’s probably easier for him to continue because of it. “Jisung and I were the ones who went in the dungeons to look at that weird magic. Felix has also told me about the basics of magic while practicing.”

“When we were down there, Jisung said some powerful magic was performed...Chan, before the curse, were you pretty powerful?” 

With an air of stale grief for the subject, Chan nods. 

“Right, you were able to subvert the curse just long enough to pass over it. But because of that, it’s remained active, like a parasite searching for food. And it’s latched to natural magic and put it out of balance. It’s why you’re still affected by it, and it’s so easy to break through once acknowledged. It’s not too powerful itself, simple but effective. But it’s upset the order of natural magic. And natural magic is the most universally powerful thing of all. It’s what fuels the science that keeps us going. And it’s been trying to fix itself.” 

“That’s what it was doing with the staff. It was taking people as close as it could, looking for Chan. If it finds him, it’ll take him. That is, if we don’t break the curse.” 

Chan sighs, rubbing the pad of his thumb over a scar adorning his collarbone. “So it can either go three ways. Whatever puts balance back in order. And that’s the curse taking me, though that’s the least likely since it has a very weak hold on me now and most of my problems come from Keres’ hex. Natural magic taking me, which would erase me existence forever just as much as the curse but might leave behind what else the curse would take. Or…” 

Felix finishes, grim. “We break the curse, and you’ll finally be able to live.” 

Chan stils, pupils dilating as they rest upon Felix. He blinks once before clicking his mouth shut and straightening. “Yes, but none of that’s our priority. We need to take Keres and Doyle down first and foremost. They’re a much more sooner threat, and a lot more proactive. And they put all of you in danger. Without them, we’ll all be able to live the lives we never were able to. My curse...it’ll come after. Alright?” 

Changbin especially, desperately wishes they were in any position to argue. 

+

“Didn’t think I’d be able to catch you away from our dear princeling.” 

Felix jumps, the tea in his hands nearly spilling to the grass. It’s odd hearing another be called by the same name as him, yet the Felix of his visions, thinks it sounds so much more fitting. Odder, is Minho’s suggesting tone, taunting at something more . Felix hopes his ears aren’t red. 

“I’m getting him more tea,” he mumbles indignantly. 

Minho snorts gracelessly, dropping to a squat beside Felix, scouring his face as Felix tracks his gaze firmly upon the wave of the tea as it sways in his hands. “And how much did it take to convince you to do even that?”

The prince refuses to answer, biting through his bottom lip. When it becomes clear he’s not going to, Minho sits fully, crossing his legs before the fire. It’s a very enduring fire. It’s little shelter does the bare minimum of protecting it from the rain, but it persists. Felix’s grateful for it. 

“So...I’ve been meaning to ask.” That’s never good. “How are you faring? Knowing who Cee really is.” 

Felix shrugs, swirling the tea. “Hasn’t it shown? Wouldn’t you be able to see how I’m faring?” 

Another chuckle. “Trust me, a lot is showing. But that doesn’t show exactly how you feel. Other than clinging.” 

He’s earned a welling glare. But Felix sees what he’s trying to say. He’s just stalling. With a longsuffering sigh, he settles to the ground too, staring into the flames. It resembles just vaguely the luxurious fireplace of his room, in which he’d always stared into for introspection. Somehow it remains just as calming, in spite of the smoky skies and raining ash in their morning meals. No fire was sinister though, it ate what it was given and what it was given was its own. Fire doesn’t agree with life, but it so happens to always birth it in the end. It was only ever malicious if it was started by a human’s hand in the name of destruction. 

This one had been started by Jisung so he can cook their food and warm their tea. 

Jisung wasn’t malicious. 

“I don’t know to be honest,” he confesses, “Everything becomes unclear when Chan’s the matter. My feelings especially. When I was younger everything had been sure with him. I knew where I stood and how I felt. That isn’t the deal anymore. It’s an odd mixture of those watered-down feelings, because, obviously. Not only have we gone through so much apart, but I’d been blindfolded then, immeasurably naive. There’s so much I know now that I somehow didn’t know then, and we’re both so different...but there’s one thing that hasn’t changed. I care for him, a lot. More so than is even reasonable probably.” 

And it takes no genius to say that last bit, is mutual. 

Minho ponders his words, chewing his cheek like they were food for him to digest before fully comprehending. He doesn’t respond quite yet, branching with the simple question, “How did you feel about him before?” 

Just the question sparks heat throughout his entire body, a blanket of comfort and happiness that can never be made again for the joyful innocent seams that had sewn it had run out throughout the whole universe. His time with the prince before, was a thing of brightness that no darkness could taint. 

Felix had been a lonely little servant outcasted for his dreamy mannerisms and close relation to the queen. Chan had been a prince with no possibility of royal friends because no royal wanted to risk a chance at his kingdom’s fate as if it were somehow contagious, his closest companion his mother’s lady-in-waiting. It was inevitable they’d meet. But not even their mothers knew of the outcome, the unadulterated boisterous purity of their friendship. Untouched by outside worries. 

Felix supposes that’s why it had as short a lifespan as it did. Nothing good in the world lasts without trying times. And what they had was no exception, no matter how invincible. 

The tea in his hand is chilling, and he places it back next to the fire where’ll it steam once more. “It’s hard to say. I admired him beyond measure, cared for him as much as my own mother, loved him unconditionally. Those feel given, but it was a toy box of emotions my ten-year-old self had no access to. All I knew for sure, and can still remember now, is that when I was with him, I was content. No matter how bad the day, no matter if we’d bickered, I felt okay with him. Warm. Safe. Like nothing beyond our bubble could destroy us, only ourselves. And I guess in a way, we were right.”

It’s a bundle of knotted emotions he’s already accustomed to, but even Minho looks overwhelmed by the conviction, brows raised as his feet tape to the ground in a thoughtful beat. “That’s a lot to feel for a ten year old,” he comments finally, eyes raising to Felix’s. 

Rolling his eyes, Felix rocks to his feet, picking up the tea without the thought of how hot the cup might be. It doesn't burn him, so it’s fine. “And it’s only a fraction of what I feel now,” he mutters. He turns and stares down at Minho, a bit pleading. “Can you understand?” 

It’s an explanation of sorts, for the abnormalities and discrepancies of his ever shifting mood since Chan has reentered his life. Without his memories of how he’d came to be, of essential parts to who he was, he’d been lacking something. And even Minho should notice now, that he was more than he once was. Not a product of Keres’ stifling treatment that had him half living. He’s what his true mother raised, and the boy Minho had initially met, even if they’d both forgotten the moment. 

He wasn’t the kingdom’s Golden Prince anymore. He was the one Chan had named him for. 

Chan wasn’t the event, but he was a large part of it. He’d been the key to Felix’s past. But the magic and occasions tied to him, loom over them all now. Felix supposes he plays an equal part in that sticky mess. Two princes, doomed by the same mage. 

It’s only somewhat a shame the others got tied in. Felix doesn’t have any clue what he would do without them. 

And Minho, though not as close to Chan, actions not as consequential, stuck in this by loyal diligence, sees it. Escaping the castle had changed them all, freed them all, but that went a little a ways more for Felix. It’s a bit scary, and Felix fears neither he nor Minho will recognize the Golden Prince by the end of this, though that's an impossible possibility. 

Wordless, Minho reaches up a hand, and Felix pulls him up. He gives a genuine smile, only a bit lost. “Yeah, it makes some sense...Thank you. To be honest, I was afraid you were blinding yourself with him. But, I think you’re less dumb than that.” 

“Gee, thanks.” 

He smiles back. 

+

Minho has to find him. He doesn’t quite know why, but he knows he has to find the Golden Prince. He waits about the halls for days near the royal wing, pacing and thinking. Pondering the reason he’s doing this, never coming up with a complete explanation. He just has to, and he’s never had a feeling like it, so he simply follows it. Even if he doesn’t know what the prince is like, even though there’s not a single line of history on him, not his name nor his birthday not even the acknowledgement of his existence at all. 

It’s curious. And Minho has always been easily intrigued. 

So why not wait for whatever his mind is leading to? Even if he has his doubts, and he’s usually reserved and cautious, it’s different enough to pull him in without much struggle. 

And then he comes bumbling through the halls, brown hair mussed and eyes puffy. He looks troubled, a sense of unease trailing him like a lost animal. His clothes don’t fit him, and the crown on his head is a bit too big. But wonder lays bright as a star within his irises. “Who are you?” 

“I’m here to protect you, your highness.” 

If there’s one thing ever good wrought from that curse, it was their meeting. Or just Chan. Most likely, just Chan. No curse would be thanked. 

+

Jeongin is off-put, and the slightest bit uncomfortable. Though after a bit of consideration, he thinks that’s more Changbin’s unnerving unblinking gaze upon him like he’d transformed into the Fountain of Youth before his eyes. Less so the fact that Chan, recently revealed as Felix’s dubbed Crimson Prince, has flat out passed out with his cheek to Jeongin’s shoulder. 

Truthfully, Jeongin doesn’t quite know his impression of Chan. There’s so much shrouding the other that before the mask was off, it was near impossible to get a read on even his direct outward personality. Even now, unmasked and past unveiled, Chan is an enigma to Jeongin. To be fair, every one of the mystery trio had been before he’d really gotten to know them, breaking down their walls brick by bleeding brick. 

Based on his closeness with Jisung now, and his growing relationship with Changbin, he’s certain, that knowing Chan won’t hurt. Not nearly as much as the former prince makes it out to be at the very least. So he lets Chan sit, shifting so he’s comfortable, and so Chan doesn’t break his neck in an odd angle. 

He’s quite fearful Changbin hasn’t blinked though. 

When Jeongin opens his mouth to finally ask, Changbin interrupts him, thankfully shutting his eyes and showing Jeongin he hasn’t somehow frozen, “He doesn’t sleep. Ever. At least not long enough for anyone to sleep.” 

And isn’t that confusing. How does one go on with sleeping so little? Maybe Jeongin will stay here even longer than he had planned, looking down at Chan with assessment. An enigma for sure. Even in his sleep, his expression is too unblemished to be real. Jeongin adjusts the blanket over them and Chan exhales, burrowing closer. 

“Oh, that’s absolutely adorable.” 

Jeongin is glad it’s Felix that steps through because any other member of their party would batter him endlessly with the ‘cute’ image. Felix just stares with sparkling adoration, enraptured by Chan’s sleeping face rather than Jeongin’s placement beneath it. It’s more than just fondness, Felix looks just as grateful as Changbin, bittersweet in the lines of his crinkled eyes. “How’d you get him to sleep?” 

Jeongin is a little thrown out of loop with the whole Chan doesn’t sleep thing, unable to do anything but shrug one-shouldered. In his mind, this wasn’t quite as wondrous and making it so was strange. He wants it left alone. Let Chan sleep without fuss. Fortunately, his friends aren’t total pests. 

A tad sullen, Felix stares down at the tea in his hands, expression doing something complicated before he sets it off to the side for Chan to enjoy later. Making sure it doesn’t fall he lamely remarks, “Changbin, you kinda panicked outside.”

Petulant, Changbin eyes Felix from his peripherals. “You weren’t any better,” he counters pettily. Jeongin can see tension drawing up his neck in dizzying swirls, tightening around the edges of his lips, bringing them down minutely. 

Cup in place, Felix spares no intensity, turning to look Changbin on in the face. “I’ve never seen you react like that to anything before.” And now that he thinks about it, guiltily sliding his curiosity onto Changbin, Jeongin hasn’t either. Even when Chan first arrived back, Changbin had been more agitated than frenzied as he’d been earlier. 

Changbin notices his unwavering attention and exhales, gesturing to Chan dramatically, a slight tremor in the flick of his wrist. “Taking care of a prince is always arduous isn’t it?” The hand traves from the air to his face, running down it. “And caring for one as...kicked over by the world as he is, it comes with its downsides.” 

He hurries to add, “Not that I think he’s a burden or anything. I wouldn’t trade him for anything else in the world.” He grows intimidatingly serious and Jeongin is glad that his focus has trained on the floor rather than him and Chan. He might have wilted under it. “It’s just everything besides that comes with caring for him, is never easy.” 

“When we first met, he’d been injured greatly, as Felix might know. Bleeding everywhere and barely breathing past the pain. I’d just separated from my mom, and I felt like I was doing right by her if I helped him. But I couldn’t do it, not until Jisung found us and helped. But it didn’t end there. For the first few years we knew him, really honestly not too long ago. He was constantly sick.” 

“See, Hyunjin pointed out earlier that Chan’s magic was overbearingly strong. And that’s how he managed to survive. For every day of his life, he’d breathed and fed off gold because it was so incredibly natural for him. It ran through his blood stronger than generations of his family before him. If he’d been allowed to grow, he might’ve been able to break the curse by pure force.” 

Dawning realization melds with horror upon Felix’s face. His, “Oh.” is numbingly frightening. Jeongin feels the strong urge to wrap Chan tighter in the blanket, and so he does, unsettled as he realizes his body warmth is the only one present. 

“His own body was fighting against him. Keres’ hex and his weakened state. He didn’t recover, for a long, long time. Constantly ill at the slightest breeze. For a while, Jisung and I were just waiting for the day one cough would stop his heart.” He takes a shuddering breath, nails clenching into his pants, the wrinkle the least of the damage he could be doing with the grief raging in him. 

He gathers himself, clearing his throat loudly. “One day, he ran away. He thought we’d be better without him. Couldn’t get very far. Just past that very same river, sobbing and shaking. We thought we’d finally lost him for sure. Even Jisung would say when his village was burning down, that he’s never been so scared.” A hard flint sparks his pupils, lighting them in black flames. “And he knows now, he’s never losing us.”

Felix follows with rapt attention, slowly trailing to wisps as he purses the story. It finishes with them all looking at Chan, and Jeongin can at least see why they’re always regarding him with such tentative wonder. Though he doesn’t share the attitude. 

He wonders how it would feel to constantly be treated like you’re going to disappear while struggling with your entire existence not to. It’s understandable, but he knows Seungmin feels the same as him, and he hopes they can be somewhat of a reprieve to Chan. Maybe that’s why Chan had managed to sleep on him when he’s infamously insomniac. Jeongin wouldn’t chain him asleep to do it, even for his sake. 

But he knows Felix and Changbin must be the way they are, sadly. Or Chan will ground himself to nothing. And that’s the unfortunate reality. Sighing, he drops his head to Chan’s. The other’s hair is surprisingly soft against the fine bone of his cheek. “Well, he’s not sick now.” 

He receives two twin looks of befuddlement. 

“Leave,” he ushers with gentle scorn, “Let us sleep. Go bother other people.”

Their worry, palpable and tangible, is suffocating. It’s clear he and Chan are different people, because Jeongin wouldn’t be able to fare with it. It dims when they leave, and Jeongin finds it in himself to be comfortable with Chan.

Chapter Text

The skies are grey and dull, the sun standing out vividly in its unnatural ruby-red glory. Smoke travels like a mass of spirits through the land, only the smallest of prices to pay for their burning villages. By now, they’ve grown used to it, three days in and it‘s only getting worse. But that’s why Seungmin and Jeongin are here. Traversing a long route through the forest that will lead them away from the castle, but towards their village. 

His heart beats fast, but he’s assured. He’d feel if anything had happened to either his or Jeongin’s family. It’s not a situation within their blind spot, it can’t be. If something were to happen to them, it’d surely affect either and both of them. So he doesn’t give into the natural toil of anxiety that collapses and rises in waves aside his lungs. 

He takes a quick break, stuttering his step, to simply appraise Jeongin, to see if he’s just as withstanding. There’s an aggressive furrow between his brows and his lips are drawn tight, cheeks red from the running and walking. But when he looks into Seungmin’s eyes, his own are calm, still and steady. He offers a breathless smile and Seungmin returns it as best he can before continuing their path. 

“Are we getting closer?” Jeongin asks, winded. They weren’t quite used to having to test their stamina at such risky circumstances. They give no complaint, but it’s a test. One they have to ace. There’s no other option. Life or death. 

Seungmin glances above the trees, swallowing ashy air. “Very.” 

It’s a miracle the forest hasn’t been touched yet by the flames that eat their oxygen. Like a barrier stands between the treeline and the burning buildings before them. After all that’s happened to them, Seungmin wouldn’t doubt for a second that it was purely by the force of magic. Magic they’re going to leave the protection of. 

He pulls up his mask after a single cough, Jeongin following suit. Seungmin won’t lie, he has no reason to, the wall of flames and screams they face, it’s bone-chilling. It’s searingly hot, the air pushing down on him like a living force, muggy and just an increment away from unbearable. Yet he shivers, backing up until he’s side by side with Jeongin. 

Chan trusts they can do it, and the chain around their necks ensures his protection even hundreds of yards away. Seungmin trusts they can do it. And if he’s able to feel Jeongin’s presence within him, playful and warm around his heart, then he knows there will be no way they don’t make it out together. So he squeezes Jeongin’s hand. “You ready?” 

Jeongin squeezes back, “Born ready.” 

And they’re off. 

He knows in some archaic book full of fancies and uglies, there’s a caricature description of hell. That everything is on fire, including the sorry sinful souls that found themselves mercilessly dropped to the realm. It never stops burning, even though there’s no oxygen, no physical possibility, it never stops. All you hear are the crackles of fatal flames, and the screams of those who have already taken their card of death, and can’t do it again. 

He’s not burning here, and the buildings around him crumble and fall, and the people within them, they die. 

He’s no angel of hope, no savior, though he wonders if that’s how Chan had appeared to Felix, in a single laughable thought. But he is here for a solid helping purpose. It’s tainted with selfishness, not that that matters really when lives are at stake, but it’s what brings him here at all. He’d been uncertain at first, but Jeongin had convinced him, and that hadn’t taken much effort on the other’s part. Seungmin would douse each flame with his hands for Jeongin, but that was common knowledge, and Seungmin wasn’t foolish. 

Now that he’s already entered the bordering village, he’s set in stone. He thinks of Jisung’s story, and moves faster, carefully examining ever unscorched inch of the place, avoiding embers and sparks with dexterity. It’s like he’s dancing at a festival with Jeongin, but with stakes, high ones. He’d always liked the slow dances better too, and thi didn’t qualify. The rhythm of the flames had a beat, but it was fast and dangerous. 

Seungmin keeps moving. 

And then he hears a sniffle, out of place with the roaring chorus, and his path diverts. He gets to his knees and shoves piles of debris away, knowing they’ll be fuel in too short of a span. A little girl stares back at him with watery eyes, cheeks dry because it can’t not be in this heat. Her braids are tangled to an odd piece of cut out picket behind her, and Seungmin suspects no one made it out of her house to help her. 

He doesn’t let his feelings choke him, asking her permission, and then taking a dagger Changbin had let him choose, and sorrily cutting thick hair from the metal. It probably burns, her back arched as far from it as possible, brown skin pettled with sweat, dirtied with ash. He works quick. “Can I hold you?” She nods. He picks her up, and gives no crap about stamina, running with her in his arms to where it’s safe. 

There are others there, and Seungmin is finding it harder to swallow the lump in his throat. They’re old enough to have gotten to the place themselves unlike the little girl, following a route Jeongin had no doubt given them. And he’s so proud in that moment, so thankful like a rush of gratitude built over years is hitting him at once. He puts her down, and she runs to the nearest person she recognizes, and older girl who shares her features. And he can’t wait to move onto his village, and find his older sister like her. 

He didn’t realize he’d missed her until that moment, oddly enough. 

They go until the village is gone, the flames having eaten what they could, snuffing unnaturally. Magic. Confirmation was something they didn’t need, but it was given then as they watched suddenly as soon as everything had been scorched through, the fire die. Observing all the destruction around him, houses crumpled, furniture decimated, all color dulled, he’s angry. 

He wasn’t used to anger, but it ran naturally through him, coursing like lava through molten veins, heating beneath his skin hotter than his surroundings. It was one thing, for Keres to go after Chan, to tear down every soul who ever once accompanied him. It was another, to tear down every other who didn’t even know he lived, in his name. 

He wasn’t blaming Chan. Not in the slightest. His fury was a hundred percent dedicated to the woman and man who smile as they rip away everything from everyone in this kingdom, all so it could belong to them. It’s clear though, with the rubble uneven beneath his feet, just how stupid and cruel they were. 

What was even the point of gaining everything, if you’d already destroyed it all. But he knew, they didn’t care for it. They wouldn’t ever, up in their pristine towers, decked in gold of all shapes in sizes, swimming in their fake power, undeterred. 

Finding Jeongin across it all, the same simmering helplessness painted over his face and sculpted into his clenched fists and drawn shoulders, he wishes Chan and Felix tear the mages down with all their might. When the time comes. He beckons for Jeongin and they run. 

“Follow us,” they say, “We have somewhere safe for you to go.” 

+

On behalf of the parents, and the overall attempt at subtlety, they take the children first. It’s easier that way. While clumsier and louder in general, they were nimbler with a lot less numbers. Kids were often let into the castle, but that does not make raising them luxurious. Keres and Doyle would miss them less. Never did they lower themselves to the staff floor. 

Hyunjin and Changbin were assigned the castle turf, Hyunjin's mind a map of each secret shortcut and hidden passageway that cut through royal halls. Changbin needed a glimpse of it, for later, the only to have never truly explored the grounds. He was able to take out guards without even them knowing they were down. Poise of silence was their specialty and they worked it to their benefits, leaving not even a hair of their trace behind.

Changbin’s scary aura was enough to keep a majority of the group silent from where he stalks the back, arms crossed, a sharp sword hanging loosely from his fingers. Who didn’t fall under his spell was shushed and pleaded by Hyunjin who lead, squeezing them through each wall and floor  with little difficulty. 

Being back within palace borders was nothing short of nerve wracking. Before every exit, he’d freeze, expecting black sclera on the other side, ready to apprehend and behead him. There was little chance, as he and Minho had brought their heads together to compile paths least traveled by the king and queen, but not zero. 

He hopes his fear doesn’t show. The little ones following him were stressed enough. There was bare information to share with them. Their parents were to hand them over to someone they didn’t know and one they knew in ditsy light. But they knew who Hyunjin's place, the prince’s right-hand man. And why some were reluctant, it took before their first shifts to give their children to safety, with promises that they were to slowly disappear themselves. 

They didn’t know the length of their kingdom’s torment. They just knew their parents were always tense, always burdened, always tired and worked to the bone. They knew the king and queen were the bad guys of their bedtime stories, and the older ones, they probably knew it all already, but have never experienced it, their lives bound to the length of their rickety floor. 

Hyunjin thinks they can feel it though. That going with him and Changbin will give them something more than they’ve ever been allowed. Security. As they reach the last of the doorways, Hyunjin turns, hands noiselessly clapping together. 

“You guys have never left the castle, huh?” The amount of confirmation he gets lowers his shoulders and pulls at his already weak smile. “Well, we’re gonna now, okay? Don’t worry, we have somewhere safe for you to go.” 

It is faintly reminiscent of how he’d escaped the first time around, sneaking through an uncovered expanse of ripe green grass, rustling through the line of the forest like one would cross over a portal. And as soon as Changbin makes it behind bark, Hyunjin exhales, holding his chest. Changbin clasps his arm assuringly, looking at the kids with stars in his eyes. 

“You look emotional,” Hyunjin utters softly.

Changbin swallows, tearing his gaze away. “I think I’m doing my mom right. We’re saving these kids right now, Hyunjin. I...it’s, it’s just great.” 

+

He stands amidst it all, still and watchful like a spectre. People filter in around him from all sides, Jeongin and Seungmin bringing families upon families, Hyunjin and Changbin corralling an entire population of kids and teens who looked around at the forest scenery like they were amongst the clouds. Looking at them, clung to each other tight but wonder chasing the fear from their faces like a hare, Jisung gets it. 

They’re all safe, they’re all escaping. Person by person, family by family. For once in their lives, they’ve left the clutches of the faux queen and king, and they’ve never shone brighter, the forest ground a sodden sky, each who fled, a star without the curtain of smog of the mages. It’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

He hears a shout and he whips alert, heart dropping. 

“Where’s my family? I can’t find them!” a little boy cries, sobbing surrounded by grins. Jisung reaches for him, gut-churning and feelings too poignant and swelled to properly identify. But a girl is faster, hair chopped uneven but life in her gauzed steps. She takes him by the arm and pulls the boy to her family, and he’s dim, but hope lives. 

For an eternity, he watches unbreathing, something lodged in his throat. Heat prickles down his cheeks, salt dripping over parted lips. He sees himself, hopeless and wandering, two boys pulling him in by the arms, and giving him more than a second chance. 

“Jisung...Jisung!” 

He turns, murmuring in question. Minho examines his face with growing worry, pouting. “Are you alright?” he asks low and serious, glancing around at the abundance of people. More than either were used to. Then there are four others, clinging to tailored lapels, finding what he’d once lost. 

Toothy grin more luminescent than the moon, Jisung hastily wipse at his tears, scraping them from his face and smile with the heels of his hands but they wouldn’t stop. Minho’s own hover over him, uncertain and concerned. Jisung gives up, clasping Minho’s fingers with his own, pulling them back into the centermost throng of the crowd. Someone’s singing. “Better than ever,” he confesses wholeheartedly as water springs from his eyes. “Don’t we got supplies to gather, valet?” 

Minho doesn’t bother to roll his eyes, beaming back as he understands. He pulls Jisung in by the waist, smiling earnestly and appreciatively. “Dance break?” He raises their hands and Jisung hears it again. A song. And the source, Seungmin and Jeongin. He throws his head back and laughs into the night. 

It’s no exaggeration to say up until now, this is the happiest night of his life. 

+

He’s traceable. Both of them are really. It’s how they knew he lived after all this time, and if they didn’t act quick, it would be how they ended that. It’s how they’ve wired his life, the force that saves him, would one day be the one that kills him, a blade of two edges, one always lying in his bleeding palm. 

It’s critical. But right now, it’s a game of tag. 

Breathless, he sprints through the trees, his magic well and alive within him, brushing each trunk he passes, each branch he pushes by, and each leaf he has to knock from his hair. It’s never been so lively, too young and then too trapped. And with it, so was he. It feels like he’s glowing, warmth gracing his cheeks for the first time since he first fell deathly ill. And though he’s panting, struggling for an even inhale, he’s laughing, boisterous chuckles wailing through the air, echoed back by one far deeper. 

“My prince! You can’t run forever.” 

It’s the undeniable truth, and it’s no joke, but he still shouts back, already faltering. “Who says?” 

He’s caught from behind, arms wrapping around his midriff as they both go tumbling into some poor lying bush, giggling a storm like raucous schoolboys. They give up on battling, collapsing on their backs with the skin of their arms faintly touching. 

For minutes, that’s all they do, staring up at what they can see of the stars through the smoke. It downs Chan’s mood slightly, his chest stuttering with one crooked breath, an unadulterated reminder of the situation nearby. He coughs, face falling, pulling his hand from Felix’s to hold his mouth shut, horrified. 

There’s rustling and he turns his head, Felix rolling onto his stomach, mere inches from Chan, plucking a wilted bloom from the ground. The blend of winter and tainted skies tolls its damage on the poor bit of life, petals yellowed and whitened where red dies. Gingerly, Felix adjusts it to sit between his two outstretched palms, staring down at it with concentration, teeth piercing the skin of his bottom lip. 

He can’t tamp his awe when the flower blooms, it’s rightful hue returning with each rise of a petal, like a wounded soldier raising their head from the field. It glimmers with Felix’s magic as its center unfurls, revealing the beauty hidden by wounds. Felix pets a thumb over the silken shapes, whispering amazed, “A rose?” 

Chan’s chest clenches, with something negative, he can’t tell, eyes traveling from the revived flower to Felix’s thoughtful expression, nose scrunched and lips tugged to one side, making one eye smaller than the other. Abruptly, the stem is placed between his lips, eyes blowing hysterically wide. 

He looks to Felix questioningly, forcing his hand away from his face. He can’t breathe again when Felix smiles down on him, adoration and taunt on full display. The sight is captivating. Elbows digging into dirt, Felix points to the flower lazily. “In one of my visions, a flower happened to be growing right where your mouth was. It was interesting.” 

Carefully, Chan moves the rose and places it behind his ear instead, hoping it will satisfy the other. “What was this vision about? Was I cool in it?” 

Felix snorts, crossing his arms and resting his cheek upon it. They’re face to face, mere centimeters apart, their noses brushing. He can feel Felix’s low voice caress his cheeks before finding its way to his ears, obstinately distracted. “You were telling me about magic, ironically enough...You told me, your only true treasure was my smile. Does that still stand?” 

And heavens…”I was such a sap then,” he scoffs. 

“You really were, princeling.” 

They’re laughing again, much quieter, chuckles rolling along gentle breeze. Chan closes eyes and they stay like that, a great exhale leaving him, draining him. He feels like sleeping, and the urge is foreign, off putting. 

“Are you tired? You’ve been using a lot of magic…” 

Absently, Chan hums, lids weighted by the lashes against his cheeks. He’s only able to open them when Felix rolls onto Chan’s stomach, winding him and forcing his eyes open gloomily. The glum fades quick as he meets a fond gaze, softly smudged with sleepiness and something else. He’s not grinning, but his close-lipped smile that fits so naturally upon his face, is just as entrancing. 

Sighing, he nudges Felix away, entirely reluctant. “Come on, the others have already gathered. We can’t nap here.” Rubbing groggily away at his eyes, Felix nods, leaning against Chan even as they stand and walk. 

He didn’t answer Felix’s question, but he’s shown time and time again. 

No gold was comparable. 

Chan’s magic always thrives best when it’s for Felix’s sake. 

+

Their timeline is becoming more apparent. When Chan sleeps, he sleeps deeper each day, and wakes more violently each night. Even though he’s yet to be found, it’s like time is catching up to him and digging its claws into his neck, wringing it slowly. It’s the accumulation of built up years of resistance, Keres’ regrowing influence, and using his magic more than he’s ever attempted before. It’s chipping at him ever so gradually, and it was hard to watch. 

In spite of it all, he was more lively than Jisung or Changbin say they’ve seen. Felix recognizes it entirely, but he’s had the privilege of seeing the boy before the curse, and he’ll hold that close to his heart. He won’t let it be tainted by the callous vibrance of purple circles or peeling scars. 

The main tent’s entrance rustles and he looks away from where Chan is playfully sparring Sam, woefully outmatched but taking his loss with grace. Jisung comes out with a closed hand, looking over to the scene with that smile of his where his lips go small and his cheeks big. He spots Felix and waves, bouncily bounding over and sitting beside him. 

“Watching them?” he starts conversationally, glancing over from his peripherals, “Watching him ?” 

Felix purses his lips and tries not to let the bite of displeasure display in full glory. His affirming hum is strained. But he avoids the slithering darkness that causes it all, conforming to the forced nonchalance Jisung slips into like natural armor. “Did Changbin teach him too...either of you?” 

Clicking his tongue against the roof od his mouth, Jisung shrugs unsurely. “Eh, not really. Only enough to where we could defend ourselves if needed or take someone down before they could notice us. Nothing really offensive or complicated. He’s only started that with you all now...so we’re prepared for anything.” 

It goes unspoken, the extremity of their goals. The necessity of such risky ambition. 

Biting back a sigh, Felix adjusts his position so he can solely focus on Chan, resting his hands behind him to support his leaning weight. As if feeling the attention, Chan stumbles, looking over just as Hyunjin's stick goes to his throat. Felix winces and offers a sympathetic pout. He won’t let it show. The worry. Chan deals with it enough. But it’s hard not to when he’s already lost him once, and the severity in which his chest heaves and eyes droop just from a quick match…

“You’re scared for him, aren’t you?” Jisung says, quieting his voice for discreet sake. 

Uncomfortable, Felix curves his back outward and drops restless hands into his lap, tracking Chan, but not really seeing anything, red dots swimming in his vision. “Aren’t we all?” he responds avoidantly.

Knowing him well at this point, Jisung only allows the vacant reply to elicit an exasperated huff. “And we’re all worried for you as well...What a happy family, all fearing for each other.” He trails off, bitter. 

Felix turns to him now, brows pinching pitifully. He lets shaky fingers lay on Jisung’s thigh. “Every family faces struggle, Jisung. We’ll get through it.” 

Jisung scoffs, pushing him away but with no grudge. “Don’t comfort me, princeling. I know this. It’s just exhausting y’know. Any day we could all break, and it seems it’s more like a when than an if that will happen.” Disrest plagues the softness of his face, and it’s clear the apprehension is eating at him. Optimism was his forte, and to see it alluding him was jarring, but expected. 

Thinned lips, Felix understands. “And we care too much for each other to see any single one of us reach that point.” Floundering for words and worn he repeats again, “We’ll get through it.” Because that’s all he can say at this point. They’ll get through it, it’s just the question of how they’ll appear on the other side that he doesn’t dare broach. 

“Hey, guys. Whatcha talking about?” 

Jisung brightens in an instant, perking up with a toothy grin. “Talking about how much you suck at this,” he teases easily, shrieking happily when Chan scowls and ruffles his already messy hair. Felix relaxes, tension oozing from his form as he allows himself to think, it’s okay, Chan is here right now . And that’s what presently matters. 

Frowning playfully, Chan looks to Felix for support. Biting his bottom lip, Felix shrugs. “You’re definitely no Changbin. Or Minho. Or Sam.” 

Jisung chimes in, “Translation, you’re no good.” 

Sullen, Chan drapes over the both of their laps, exhaling heavily. “Don’t kick a man when he’s down,” he complains. He rolls over onto his back, and though complaints sprint from his lips, they’re pulled into a smile like no other, bright and blinding. Felix finds he has to look away, lest he lose vision of anything else. 

He tastes pinks and yellows as he bites down on his tongue. 

After darting his eyes over them skeptically, Jisung parts his mouth in a oh, throwing up his hand. “I forgot. The reason I’ve been inside all day.” He opens up his fingers as Chan sits up, his back resting against the side of Felix’s bent legs, showing off the object splayed over his palms. “I finished.” 

A necklace, simple but delicately crafted, with all the care and love in the world. Wrapped in iron wire, sits a carved chunk of rose gold. It was slightly different, but matching all the rest. See, each one of them was given this same kind of jewelry, whether in earrings or bracelets, anything inconspicuous. The rose gold was intentional. 

It was so Chan could feel them always, their unique traces. His incredible perception tuned sharper than the best of Changbin’s blades. “Rose gold is not pure gold, but an alloy with it,” Chan had explained when finetuning the details of their unfolding plan, “Not only does it give off a different signal than pure gold, it’s easier on my senses. My range is broad, and I’ll be able to feel you always unless you leave it.” 

It’s unsaid, but Felix getting a necklace was useless, as Chan could trace his magic blind and deaf, but it was the sentiment of it. And if for some reason his magic was blocked off again. A healthy precaution. Cautions aside, Felix still wanted it. He wanted to match his friends, to have their bond hanging from their bones, stronger than any golden chain around his ankles. Like a child with charms of friendship. Jisung would have made him an addition nonetheless. 

Felix takes it with reverence, handling it with utmost care, strung over his fingers like leaves of a canopy. He keeps it from Chan’s skin, but helps the other admire it with just as much awe. “It’s beautiful, Jisung,” he compliments breathy, spinning it in the light, still hazy but less so than a week ago. He likes the blush tint much better than the harsh shine of pure gold. It looks like Chan’s hair under unfiltered sunlight. 

Flustered, Jisung rubs his neck and looks to the sky with an entirely proud flush. “Ah, it’s nothing.” He’s reserved in his words but nothing about his demeanor is timid, clearly appreciative of his own work. Good, it was deserved. 

Chan shifts abruptly and the chain is being lifted form Felix’s hand. He yelps, scrabbling to grab it before even the diluted gold can touch Chan’s now always ungloved hands. Chan pulls away though, chuckling. “Eh, don’t worry. I’m not stupid, my prince.” Jisung and Felix take that statement with a grain of salt. 

Eyeing him warily, Felix raises a brow. “What are you doing with it?” 

“Easy, turn around.” 

Felix thinks he hears Jisung faintly utter beneath his breath a, “Good heavens.” Before suddenly upping and leaving. Neither of the former princes acknowledge his exit, locked on each others gazes of varying intensity. 

“You’re putting it on me?” 

Eagerly, Chan nods, wearing the innocent wondrous smile of someone young and unhurt. Felix wishes the visage was real, trying not to let his own waver and fall too much. “But—” 

Rolling his eyes, Chan directs his finger an inch from the stone, further exasperated when Felix’s flinch and hitch of breath is loudly audible. “It’s going on you, my prince. Not me. I’m sure I won’t mix the two up.” 

Recognizing it’s either he rips the thing from Chan and risk hurting the other, or letting him do as he pleases, he sighs, turning and pulling up his hair. The former honestly becomes more appealing when ginger fingers pull down his hood, brushing his nape and sending odd sparks down the length of his spine. He becomes stiff, causing Chan to pause and retreat, a brief reprieve of mercy. Brief. 

Felix can hear the necklace unclasp, the only warning he get before Chan gently, ever so gently, circles the necklace about Felix’s neck. His breath warms Felix’s reddening skin as he moves just a tad closer. And Felix can see the expression in his mind’s eye, brows furrowed, lips jutted in unadulterated concentration, and nose scrunched. It doesn’t help his malfunctioning lungs, taking in too little air. Before he can blink, it’s clasped and his hood is pushed back up, Chan urging him to turn back around. 

Trying not to cough on the rush of oxygen he gets as soon as Chan is away, he pulls the rose gold from his chest to rest on his cloak, complying. He’s going to need to invest in an eyepatch if he has to keep staring at Chan’s face doing that . Fondness and affection unbridled upon his features like a crystallized honey glaze. “It’s perfect.” 

Felix holds it between his thumb and forefinger, murmuring, “Yeah. Jisung did good.” 

Chan snorts, leaning forward and pinching Chan’s nose, though he’s careful not to hit the accessory. “Your pretty face helps.” 

Against his better judgement, Felix tucks it back to his bare chest. 

He craves Chan as close as possible. 

+

It’s clear Jeongin and Chan hold different sorts of soft spots for each other. It was an odd relationship based entirely on the basis of normalcy, which in their case, was the abnormal. And it was unsustainable, at least, the already shaky foundation of it. In a time where their world is constantly ripping at the seams, there is nothing not torn. Least of all what they have. 

Seungmin watches with crossed arms and a tense set to his jaw. His teeth hurts, and that’s happened before, but never to such a degree. He has to use trembling fingers to ungrit them, and it leaves an ache around his face. They’re really no better. 

Chan and Jeongin both have been trying their damndest, to act like they alone lived in a reality where one’s home wasn’t burning and the other’s home hadn’t been his in a long time. But it won’t work here, not when Jeongin finally has to face the brunt of his fears. And it probably won’t work when someday, Chan will be forced to do the same.

It’s different though, the way they interact before Seungmin and Jeongin leave to their daily tasks, special to their dynamic. Each one of the others have given Jeongin a hug that he usually refuses, sending him a pitiful glance before hastily moving onto their own missions. Because while Jeongin and Chan have been coping together in their own odd fantasies, the others have not seen Jeongin’s grief. And they don’t see Chan’s grief the way Jeongin does. 

It makes Seungmin like the former prince all the more, as if he hadn’t already been falling into the friendly trap that seems inherent in this kingdom’s line of highnesses. They’re too likable for Seungmin’s cautionary good. 

Clearing his mind and fiddling with the necklace he wears for Chan’s sake, he tilts his head and continues to observe, neither him nor the party in question minding his watchful gaze. 

Their foreheads are practically touching, hands wrapped around each other’s shoulders, in this strange duo huddle. Chan’s face is solemn and compassionate, mouth moving at rapid fire, building up armor for Jeongin’s mind. Every once in a while, the youngest nods and his chest stutters. And at one point, Chan exhales and smiles, saying one last thing that has Jeongin ducking his head, neck red. They hug, and Seungmin gets ready. 

Jeongin hurries to his side, tucking his hair over his cherry-tipped ears, other hand checking for the knives in his belt. Seungmin looks to Chan, the other already staring back. “You too!” he calls, just as Felix decides it’s finally okay to approach him too, looking between them hesitantly, “Take care, Seungmin! Don’t follow my footsteps.” 

It elicits a unison eye roll. They all know exactly what that path entails, and if followed to the grain, Seungmin would end up in considerable harm. Jeongin glares at Chan for the comment, pulling Seungmin to their route by a forceful hand. 

“What’d he say to you?” Seungmin asks with nothing but curiosity, one last glimpse thrown over his shoulder, one that feels invasive when he sees Felix’s thumb swiping over Chan’s cheek, as if he were trying to physically wipe the worry that wrinkles it. He doesn’t think it’ll work, but the way in which Chan regards Felix, he also thinks it won’t matter. 

Shrugging, Jeongin ducks beneath a branch. “Nothing much. Just...almost overbearingly encouraging and assuring. I felt like if anything he said wasn’t true, it’d lead to the world fearing his disappointment.” 

And Seungmin gets that. Chan has a way with words, despite being vague and blurry at the edges himself, it’s like he makes up for it by the boldness of the things he speaks. Always too bold and too heavy, but he holds it from his fading fingers like it was nothing. And so for the moments in which you see his smile, you’re convinced it’s all real. The cowardice of his former facade is so lackluster in comparison, it’s dulling. 

Felix has always admired courageous things like that, and it makes all the more sense that he’d been pulled in by Chan from the get go, lured by pretty promises and smiles, admiring them like statues of epochal. 

However, in this moment, Seungmin could care less about any of that. “Did it help?” He hopes it does, selfishly. Because he’s never felt so ungrounded, and if Jeongin is spiralling, he’ll trip and lose his wits. He doesn’t know what he’ll do without them. They work for him as sufficient as Changbin’s swords. 

The other considers it, leaves crunching beneath their feet in agonizing wait. “For now, until it’s all over, I think it will, actually.” He turns back, momentarily taking Seungmin by both hands and leading them backwards. He smiles, and the obnoxious racing of Seungmin’s heart steadily slows. “Besides, we’ve gone over this. If something had happened, we’d probably have felt it by now...So I won’t let myself stress.”

Just like that, Seungmin feels anchored again. 

So they continue in silence, too many words and none that fit the pockets around them toiling. This is the farthest trip they’ll be taking thus far, so Seungmin falls onto the explanation that this is a good conservation of energy. Even thought the parasite of doubt trying to wiggle into his mind takes up far more than talking ever would. Staving it off requires a monumental effort, and Seungmin has been tired of it since even before he woke up. 

But it’s not like he can really banish it to nonexistence. It was reasonable, called for, the things he was feeling. While he and Jeongin have been bounced around a lot recently, thrown over and over into another realm of unknowns, there was this certainty that kept them bound to serenity. That they were together was one, a major one. If they’d been separated somehow, then sanity would not have been in the picture. But they weren’t. And that left even more room to panic over the other. 

They left to the castle thinking it was a grand opportunity. They knew there was a chance of them never coming back, but they were determined to come up with ways once they were accommodated, to send the full of their pay outside. To their families. They’d settled with the fact that they might never see them again. They weren’t as close to their siblings and parents as they were to each other, but it was a natural ache Seungmin supposes. An easy one they had subsided. 

But there was a difference in leaving your family, expecting them to live as they would every day in spite of their absences. It wouldn’t have been hard. They weren’t resolute workers or big providers. And trekking to their old village without the knowledge if the ones they’d been raised with, were gone. That while Jeongin and Seungmin had managed to escape the fate of the villages’ fires, their families had not the privilege. The prospect was stomach churning. 

The feeling of trekking through debris they’d already cleared, already evacuated, already seen the corpses of, wasn’t helping. At this point, at least Seungmin and Jeongin had gotten used to the acrid smell of smoke and its ensued rot. It felt morbid, or at least misplaced, to feel thankful for that. For any leading aspect that had come from this wearing task. But if Seungmin had to face the fresh wave of the horrid aroma every day, he might’ve already gone over the edge. 

They take a quick break between the border of the outer villages and the inner villages. There’s a sparse scattering of trees, though they were blackened and flaked now, and ash spread over the ground like dirt. From Seungmin’s readings, he thinks this mean that even more will grow back than had been there originally. He likes that thought. 

If he’s positive, taking a page from Jisung’s or Chan’s or Felix’s book, any of theirs, then he can image that everything will grow back even stronger and more vibrant than it had before after they snuff al the fires including the one that fueled Keres’ life. Including Chan, as he’d been compared to a rose several times in fabric-cloaked conversations. 

He looks at Jeongin, and though their relationship hadn’t even been singed, Seungmin knows it’ll be more vivid in the future. 

They have to be more cautious when entering the inner ring of villages. These are the ones closest to the castle. Whereas the others they’ve visited had been empty of all life but near dead ones, here guards got more and more dense as you got closer to the palace walls. It makes sense. They’d hit the outer villages first and hopped away to where they’d be safest. 

Seungmin doesn’t know if they’re as trapped as he, or they’re more of Keres’ to hate. 

Because they had been so close to the castle was the only reason they had gotten their job opportunity in the first place. Had they been in the outer ring, they would have likely been dead yesterday, having never left the small confines of their community. Seungmin winces at the thought, seeing Jisung flash in his mind’s eye. 

It’s excruciating even though their shins burn and their lungs are heavy, to move so slow. They can’t make loud noises or call too much attention to themselves. They have no clue what would become of them if they were to be caught. There were endless possibilities, and only a third of them good. 

And then they’re there, standing upon an invisible line with bated breath and linked pinkies. Their village. It doesn’t feel right to call it their home anymore, with so many different reasons as to why, but at one point, it had been. But it was where they had been born. Where they had been raised. Where they’d gotten the opportunity to work along a stable boy who changed their lives irreparably. 

“Ready?” he whispers, soft enough to be the smoke that’s always pressing against their skin, begging them to leave or urging them to move forward. 

“Born ready.” 

And they split. With each empty, crumbling building Seungmin finds, tearing through with more voracity than he’s ever exhibited before. But with a heart sunken to his knees, he finds nothing. No matter how hard he’d searched, he found nothing. His entire village had been emptied. There was no sign of life, no sign of the life he’d known, no sign of family. 

Standing numb over a pile of burnt wood and fabric, he stares blankly over what had been his home. His gaze lingers over the cleanest of the area, a clearing. It had been where he and Jeongin had danced, had sung, had felt like everything was going to be okay every night of their lives before they slept to wake in a reality where that couldn’t exist. 

He doesn’t cry, but his throat is sore, and no matter how much he swallows, his mouth feels like it’s going to burst. 

Turning, he comes face to face with Jeongin, the other’s stricken with a blank horror, eyes wide and unseeing. Seungmin doesn’t hesitate to pull him in, burying Jeongin’s head into his chest and his chin into Jeongin’s hair. They’re both shaking. Neither of them leak a single tear, but they tremble like they are one, streaking down a wobbling cheek to be flicked away by a single breeze. 

And then he hears another voice, and they both go still, clinging to each other by the lifelines. 

“Jeongin? Seungmin? Is that you?” 

With great effort, Seungmin spins his legs, Jeongin peering over his shoulder, holding one with each hand to keep him steady and standing. Together they gape, and Seungmin finally feels a drop of water hit his the sleeve of his top, but he ignores it with ease, gathering his words in an organized net. But a great portion of them falls between the holes, and all he’s left with is, “You’re alive.” 

And his sister beams back, ragged and soot stained, but her smile is untouched, calm, tantamount to his own. “You are too.” 

It was their longest journey, but it was the fastest they had gotten back to the river, finding their secret contraption that allows them to cross without getting soaked. A natural defense barrier in case any guard or ally of Keres somehow finds them. The only reason Seungmin nor Jeongin had found a single trace of the people of their village is because they had been smartly hiding away so no guards found them and terrorized them. 

Seungmin’s sister had sent herself out when she recognized them, and now they were here. Hyunjin and Changbin had already arrived, conversating and being forced to help other village people set up an impromptu celebration. It was routine now, as if this was a village itself, more full than any other, to dance and sing each night whether that was as fast paced as a buzzing bow, or slow and soothing like the blooming of an orchid. 

It was fun to watch not only his friends get accustomed to it, pulled in by children or elders to dance, forcing them to have fun beyond the veneer of cloying stress that blanketed their auras. It was the same for every staff, awkward and jerky, but getting used to the steady rhythm of unrestricted festivity. 

This time, Jeongin dances with his younger brother, and though Seungmin is dancing with his mother, he can’t look away from the other’s exuberant grin, rivaling the sun in its cheer and intensity. Even when his mother teases him for it, poking his cheeks and pinching his wrists, he doesn’t flush. Because every other minute, Jeongin is looking back, smile widening as he sees Seungmin’s. 

“Excuse me,” someone interrupts them, “Do you know a Felix?”

Chapter Text

Felix’s life has become a domino of impossibilities. The thing about a life like that, packed to the brim with nothing expectable, is it leaves him shaken every single time. When he returns to the clearing with Felix, already teeming with joy and music, he’d never suspect what Seungmin was to call him aside for. 

He likes coming back so late, him and Chan. It allows them to sneak into the throe of singing colors without fanfare. It spreads over his skin like a blanket of security and warmth, naturally easing joy into his bones, replacing any exhaustion or worry he’s undoubtedly feeling at the time. And when he looks over, Chan is splashed in hues of cheer, the corners of his own mouth involuntarily curling around the words that dance in the air. It’s a sight unlike anything else, and Felix feels kicked to the gut and so incredibly grateful that he’s able to see it every night. 

But he’s not granted that tonight, arms hugging each other and his eyes wide, disbelief staining his every thought and feature. “My…” He has to inhale and exhale, blinking rapidly to test if anything will become clearer, or change entirely with the next second. He has to convince himself yet again, that this isn’t a dream. But there’s no red, and Chan isn’t next to him. “My mother? She’s here?” 

Seungmin nods uncertainly, tilting his head. “Or so she claims to be. It feels…” 

“Too crazy to be a lie, yeah,” Felix finishes breathlessly. And after the previous weeks, finding out about a curse, escaping the king and queen, finding Chan , this honestly doesn’t sound outside of the realm of possibility. It shocks him beyond belief, but it’s no longer something he can deem unreal. 

And if he doesn’t chance this like he has been everything for the first time in his life, he may be losing something twice over. 

Letting out a deep stuttering breath that trips over his chattering teeth and quivering lip like a living clutz, he squeezes his eyes shut and nods, forcing himself to accept it, or at least not freak out over it for the moment. “Okay, can you...can you take me to her? Please?” 

Seungmin does without question, and as Felix gets nearer, he knows she’s telling the truth. Because standing before him with a face too steady to be truly calm, and elegantly laced fingers, was the woman he’d seen in his visions, hugging Chan when he’d broken down. His mother. The queen’s lady-in-waiting. 

She appears different now. Shorter, but Felix thinks that might just be because he last saw her when he was sprouting up to four feet and now he was well past five and trembling on his knees. She was pudgier, cheeks fuller and arms wider, and further lined. Her eyes had crow’s feet just like him, and deep indents curved on either side of her face. And he felt happy seeing them. Even after all the tragedy she must’ve faced, forced to run from Keres, her best friend, her beloved prince, and her son . She still smiled enough for it to wear into her cheeks. 

They stood in silence for a long while, not quite tense, not quite relaxed, merely full . Full of so much. All of it bled with the uncertainty of distance. Because though they were now feet from each other, they’d spent years miles away. And the entire way, Felix hadn’t even held her in his memory, though he must’ve plagued hers. 

Really, he didn’t know how to feel. He has more memories of Chan than his own mother. Keres had gone through and manually erased them herself, supplanting them with her own person. But he knows, just from the way his heart opens at the sight of her, his throat clogging and his eyes prickling, that he loves this woman. And he’d never truly loved Keres. 

So he doesn’t think about it right now. He has plenty of time with Chan as they spread and practice his magic, to pore ever it all and pick it apart into something comprehensible. He’s done it once, he’s more than capable of doing it again. He just rushes forward, and helps himself to a mother’s embrace, one he’d been deprive of his whole life. 

Her feelings must have been clear to her. She’s had years of pondering them, aching over them, living her life with them haunting her. She knew of him. She knew he was alive, and with a crown placed upon his head. She couldn’t have done anything about it. Every one of her most happiest dreams must have ended just like this, him in her arms, a mother and son who actually loved each other finally reunited. Like him, she’d found a chance and she’d taken it, as it may have been the only opportunity for something like this to ever happen. 

And as she sobs into his shoulder, he’s taller now, holding his face with worked hands, calloused far beyond either his or Minho’s, scarred with small kitchen knives and thorns. She runs the rough canvas of palms over his smooth face, the contrast a merge between their two worlds that should’ve been one and the same. 

Hugging her, he doesn’t get his memories back like with Chan, slowly through increments like he was remembering things naturally to bring up in conversation like old friends who’d spent their life together. Sorrowfully, he doesn’t think he might ever. The curse was weaker and more beaten than Keres’ direct magic. But he can feel the hollow space they left behind, immediately pushing aside the false images of a loving Keres, and filling the vacancy with warmth and love and everything he had felt then, even if he doesn’t know why. 

“Felix,” she cries, “My little chick. You’re here. You’re away from that evil woman. You’re here, you’re here and I’m here.” She steps back, clinging to his arms, looking him up and down with crude, raw, awe. She can’t believe he’s really standing there in front of her, and he understands that, merely smiling a wobbling curve of lips and letting her. 

He nods, struggling to keep himself together. “I’m here, Mama. We’re here together.” And that sets off another bout of fits, all the while she has her arms wrapped around his neck in a vice like grip, hands running over every inch of his back and arms, like she was trying to unearth the boy she had last seen and raised. And though Felix doesn’t think she’ll find him, she’s satisfied, running tough fingers through his tangled hair. 

Just like his vision, she wasn’t as gentle as the queen, a certain roughness to each of her actions that can’t be erased, a sharpened bluntness she’d acquired in her years of a fierce, dying court. But she didn’t hurt, untangling the strands of his brunet locks with ease and experience. “It’s long,” she hums absentmindedly. 

Felix gulps, nodding. “...Mama, how’d you make it out? When I remembered you existed, I had assumed you dead.” 

That makes her face pinch unpleasantly, souring most likely for his own sake than her own. “I don’t really know, to be honest. I think I was supposed to die there. I had stayed behind to find you, and something happened, it was a blur, but I was injured. Someone helped me out. A woman.  She went back in, and never came back out. But I was alive. And I was banished to the farthermost villages. Keres had no idea I was your mother, merely the queen’s closest confidante, and so she had me removed. But the guards liked me too much. They’re probably gone now…” 

Grief, plain and aged, crafted meticulously and caged over a long, long, period of time. It settles over her face like bitter wine. She’s beared this burden for the whole of her life, knowing two realities, and living between them. It’s the same as Changbin, Jisung, and Chan, but they had always stood outside it peering in. 

He’s suddenly selfishly glad his friends are still affected by the curse for the most part. He doesn’t want anymore of them to have to hold such heavy sadness. Their lives before were so short, but it held its weight in gold. People like the mystery trio, knew this best. 

As if hearing a vague whisper of his mind, her eyes suddenly widen and she looks around, lips deeply pursed. “I...I don’t know if this is alright to ask you after all that’s happened...But I have to ask…” She exhales and ducks her head, avoiding contact. “Did Chan make it?” 

Abruptly, he’s hit with the facetious urge to just laugh. He bites it back but smiles, probably conveying more joy than he should. Because this question of all questions, he’ll always answer happily. 

+

He realizes his existence has become but a never-ending cycle that won’t break until this curse does, but he’s getting tired of it. Especially currently. Since last night, he’d been unable to find Chan. He’d stayed there until morning since they were on one of their break cycles, catching up with his mother from midnight to dawn. He also had sisters . He’d gotten little sleep but he felt more energized than ever. 

Maybe the lack of rest played a small part in his moodiness, but he knew overall when Chan avoided him, that he got incredibly huffy and fast. He stomps into the main tent where Changbin is polishing some of his weapons as Hyunjin lounges in Jisung’s cot, trying to glean some tips from the older. Based on the sheepish tilt to their welcoming grimaces, they already know what’s coming. 

“Where is he?”

Changbin sighs, setting aside a long elaborately designed hilt that had to have been stolen from the castle itself. Hyunjin eyes it suspiciously and Felix briefly suspects that that may be the exact case. If word gets to Chan on that he’ll have their necks. If he ever damn returns. “Frankly, I don’t know. I would’ve said the river, but now that’s occupied.” 

Hands on his hips, Felix exhales. “So he is avoiding me?” 

Same sucks his teeth, stretching into sitting position languidly. “It wasn’t explicitly stated when he...stormed out of the camp last night—” 

“Last night!” shrieks Felix, hands swiftly raising to run over his face. 

“When he stormed out of the camp last night,” Hyunjin repeated, emphasizing his words and dragging them out to indicate he had more to say, “But he like, indirectly let us all know. So yeah, we’re pretty sure he’s just avoiding you.” 

Suffice to say, this unsettled and troubled Felix immensely. While Hyunjin clarified that Chan was more than likely safe as if he were to go into trouble, he wouldn’t have notified anyone,  Felix couldn’t possible think of anything that would elicit Chan to storm out . 

“By storm out…” 

“He took nothing but him and the clothes on his back and a staff and sped walked into the forest like a turtle on pixie dust,” Changbin helps out, handing Hyunjin a stone which the other regards with wonder. Unsteadily he puts it to the blade of a knife. “He was trying to be unsubtly subtle. I don’t really know. I think he said something to Jeongin though.” 

So he was trying to give Felix a heart attack, that was it. “Do any of you have an idea why?” 

He was met with a silence, Hyunjin and Changbin exchanging glances before Changbin slides his eyes up to him discreetly. “Seungmin said your mother found you last night?” 

Frowning, Felix nods. “Yeah, why?” 

Changbin puffs out his cheeks before letting the air out, steadying Hyunjin's wrist before he begins to sharpen the knife. “Just go talk to Jeongin. He’ll most likely know what Chan’s planning to do out there. Or Jisung might know where he is.” 

Felix had the nagging feeling that he was missing something. Something big and important, so much so, Changbin couldn’t even tell him it directly. It was something he had to come to the realization himself for it to really process. He tries just a little longer, burning his stare into the crown of Changbin’s head. Even with Hyunjin's sympathetic glances his way, he gets nothing. 

Glum, he moves onto the next tent where Seungmin and Minho sit, indulging King as she’d been neglected attention since they’ve been actively working against Keres. Even more so recently, as Minho had been transferred to scope out the castle, working out who was willfully working for Keres and who might be a potential threat when they finally throw their eventual coup. 

If they’re lucky, Chan had said, then Minho would find a written account of all the mages’ defenses. Magic users, mostly and especially weaker ones, commonly write down their magic to amplify it. So a written account would tell them all they need to know about Keres and Doyle's magic while also meaning they they were weaker than Felix and Chan. 

It was neither of the people Felix had been directed to and at a single look, Minho and Seungmin are surveying him with harsh indifference. 

“We don’t know,” Minho chimes. 

“Ask Jeongin,” Seungmin intones. 

Glaring and pecking King on the head, Felix exits. 

He finds Jisung and Jeongin without struggle. And they seem to be waiting for him, seeking him out with their eyes before he even spots them, huddled outside Jisung and Minho’s tent with knocking knees. Felix has no idea the interaction they were having before he arrived, but he knows now that Chan’s leave had probably prepared for his approach. 

“He doesn’t want to worry you,” Jeongin says immediately as Felix sits, neutral but sympathetic, “He just needed some space. Or well, just some air and alone time. He’s coming to terms.” 

Felix’s eyes narrow, worry resurfacing. “With what.” 

Jisung clicks his tongue, tapping a finger against his thigh methodically. “You saw your mom in one of your visions right? That’s how you got the storybook that let us know about the curse?” 

Jeongin doesn’t wait for him to confirm, already knowing the answer. “Well, Chan was in that vision too right? And it showed that he was really close to your mom. Just as close as he was with his own mom. Like an aunt almost because of how much time they spent together.” 

And Felix was starting to get it, his burning resolve cooling and lessening by the passing second. “Oh,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair and thinning his lips, “Why is he such an idiot?” 

Jeongin snorts as Jisung answers semi-serious, “I’ve been wondering that my whole life.” 

Slowly getting to his feet and rubbing the grass away from his pants along with the fleck of irritation he’d been feeling. “So where is he? You two seem like you know.” 

His heart drops when Jisung replies, bright and chirpy, “Oh we don’t.” Earning an unheld back slap from Jeongin. 

“Don’t make it sound like that!” he hisses, softening when he turns to Felix, shrugging. “He said call out to his magic and then he’ll be traceable to you. Honestly, I’m surprised it’s not working already.” 

Felix puts a hand to his chest, calling for his magic, surprised at the speed in which it responds, already bouncing around his ribs in a bumbling excitable manner. It knows exactly where Chan is. He takes a slow step back, and then another, giving the two an awkward wave and a shouted thanks, easing into a sprint where the dumbass prince is. 

+

“I didn’t think there were big hills nearby,” Felix pants, pushing aside a single branch before finally seeing him, already looking back. It’s a relief to see he isn’t withdrawn, as guarded as he was the last times Felix had to seek him out like this. His face is open, displaying a wary vulnerability, and it makes Felix’s heart hurt. 

“It’s hard to see past the constant clouds and trees,” Chan hums conversationally, knowing there’s no real substance to either of their words, it’s just filler for what’s to come next. Chan lowers his head and looks down on the treetops as Felix sits beside him, feet swinging from the low cliff’s edge. “Sorry.” 

Felix sighs. The air is crisper up here, crisper than even down there with the trees and the fading remnants of rain from before the fires. He feels like if it weren’t fro the smoke and fog, he’d be able to spot their camp and the escapees camp from up here, so high in the air. Its as wondrous as it is frightening. 

“I’m sorry too...I was upset with you. I hadn’t even considered your feelings.” 

Chan knocks him by the shoulder, shaking his head minutely. “It’s not your job to take care of my feelings, but thank you...neither of us expected this to happen so it’s not like there’s any real...blame to be passed around.” 

“Just a quick blip.” 

It’s refreshing, laying everything out like that in the open for them both to see. Nothing hidden. But, there’s a dread to the fact that Felix will now have to dig, and Chan will have to crack. 

“So...Mama. She’s here.” 

He can feel Chan stiffen. “She is. How do you feel about it?” 

Shrugging, Felix drops his head against Chan’s shoulder, forcing down a barrier and allowing them more comfort. Chan doesn’t resist, leaning into the touch just as much. “I’m happy to have her back. But that’s about it...a bit guilty. I can’t remember her other than what I’d seen in a single vision of you. And it wasn’t a good one…But we caught up...I have two sisters, did you know that. They’re adopted I guess. Would you like to meet them?” 

“Of course.” He doesn’t acknowledge the fact that that will take him meeting Felix’s mother first. They’re getting to that. 

“How about you, my prince? How do you feel about it? I know it’s a bit unexpected and shocking, but why’d you run?” 

Chan doesn’t answer, leaving them in a cell of silence for a long couple of minutes. Felix is ready to ask another question, or repeat the first, when Chan exhales, dropping back to the grass behind him and throwing Felix off balance. 

“I was really close to your mom, little chick. I knew her before you, and she took care of me too in the three years before your birth. She was almost like a second mother to me. She and my mother were as close as Jeongin and Seungmin, without the questionable tension. They were the only people in the castle, they knew they could trust.” And somehow, Felix had picked up on that from the single vision he had of the woman. “She was hardworking and reliable. She was just...I loved her a lot.” 

He rubs his head, eyes shut. “This whole time...I thought she’d been dead. And that it had been partially my fault.” Felix whips his head behind him, looking down on the forlorn former prince with a deep set frown. “But she’s not dead. And I’m not dead...And it was one thing for you to discover that. It’s another for her. You had expectations for me that were easy to subvert. She...she has none and that’s scarier somehow.” 

“I feel like I’ve already failed her, in letting her ‘die’, and leaving you behind in that terrible castle. Just overall, I think I’ve only grown worse than the cowardice boy she believed disappeared back there...That it’d be better if she never has to learn about who I am now. Especially not if I’m going to…” 

Felix throws himself back and rolls onto Chan’s stomach, glaring angrily. Chan blinks surprise and yelps in surprise when Felix fiercely grabs both of his cheeks and pinches them between short fingers. Lips puckered in an uncontrollable pout as his skin blooms vivid red beneath Felix’s pinching. He stares up at Felix with considerable intrigue, deprecation the only thing Felix sees. 

“Stop,” he demands. 

Confused, Chan just lays back and blinks. “Huh?” 

Felix pinches harder and Chan hisses. Felix is careful to avoid his scars so he doesn’t have to let go. “Stop talking about yourself like that. How the hell are you to blame for anything? Is her staying behind in that castle your fault? Is the curse your fault? You better not be saying that you wish you hadn’t even escaped...If you’d stayed with me, Chan, you would’ve died.”

There’s a tense lapse as Felix waits and waits, squeezing harder by the second. Chan bats his hands away, holding them by the wrists to keep them from returning to his severely inflamed cheeks. Felix can’t find it in himself to mind. “No, I don’t wish that, Felix,” he says finally, words fatigued, “I wish I could’ve stayed with you and helped you...but we both know that was impossible.” 

“So how are you to blame?” 

Opening his mouth uselessly, it almost seems like Chan will attempt to answer. And honestly, he probably has many ways to. He’s probably thought over it every day he’s spent since he fled. He most likely has a thousand ways to reply. At Felix’s desperate and weak glare, it all dissipates to cinders, flying away to the zephyr. 

Satisfied, Felix, drops his head and arms, letting Chan readjust them to comfort, just like the time in the forest. “You’re not,” he murmurs, “...Do you think you’ll be ready to meet her? She...she does want to see you.” 

He can feel Chan’s breath hitch. “She does?” 

Felix smiles. 

+

It felt odd, maybe just because Felix’s reunion had been tainted with much more apprehension, but Felix was more excited for Chan to remeet his mother than he had been himself. It was extremely different, frankly, their two situations. 

Chan wasn’t her son, but she’d been his caretaker aside his mother, following close behind for the role. And from the vision, it seemed she was the only person Chan had confided his fears to before they had come true. And all of what they shared, Chan remembers too. It’s not a fresh start for them. They’re going to be building atop something broken and torn, trekking through rubble just to see what was left of it. 

Chan wasn’t particularly touchy. He was far more than say Seungmin, or Jeongin. But he wasn’t constantly starved for it like the other four of their group, constantly hanging from someone’s arms or draped over someone’s torso just naturally. He was a fan of small, assuring touches that sprang forward either when they were needed, or when he was particularly open. 

Now though, he was clinging to Felix’s arm like it was the thread his life hung on. It served to remind Felix that Chan was slightly shorter than him And how cold he was. Felix had to put on an extra layer before taking them over the river, the chill emanating from beneath Chan’s cloak and latching where Chan did. 

He hasn’t spoken since they ate and made their plans to meet up with Felix’s mother. Felix doesn’t know entirely what to think of it, but he does understand Chan’s radiating anxiety. While he knows himself there’s no real good reason behind it, it’s wholly comprehensible. He’d been nervous, just a fraction of it, when he’d met his mother again. And like he’s made clear, Chan has a list much longer than Felix’s to be hesitant. 

Most everyone is asleep when they get there but a few staff workers who have a non-stop routine engrained in their ways. They wave to them casually as they make their way to where Felix’s mother rests with the sisters he’s yet to meet. However, they’re still in their tent when they arrive, and Felix’s mother isn’t. 

She’s preparing food over a fire he’s made herself, cooking an entire rabbit herself that she’ll no doubt share with as many as she can. When she hears Felix approach she wipes her hand on a torn rag and turns with a smile, clapping her hands together. 

The sound is louder in the silence that overtakes when she spots Chan. 

Chan has been tense this entire time, but he further turns rigid, fidgeting with Felix’s sleeves. Felix knows the effort it takes not to try to automatically hide his face behind his hair or simply walk away, acting as if he was just dropping Felix off to his mother rather than coming for himself. He holds Chan’s arm tighter, keeping him in place, and offering a reassuring pressure that Chan drinks up gratefully. 

Her arms drop to her sides and she takes tentative steps forward, broaching Chan like he was an injured animal. Reflexive, he leans back and swallows, flicking his eyes to Felix like he was asking if Felix would rather him run or stay. Felix furrows his brows and just squeezes tighter. You’ve come this far. 

There was another thing. Chan was cautious of touch that he hadn’t grown used to over an extended period of time. Only when he was truly accustomed did he let others touch him like Jisung and Sam. Only when he was extremely comfortable did he reach out himself for a brief caress. It made sense. One touch had caused him everlasting agony, one that still reigns today. 

Felix adjusts his wrist that he can’t ever touch Chan with, the golden band weaved with the former prince’s own oath, presently deadly to him. 

But he let Felix’s mother touch him. Even when Felix’s own spine went rigid and his protective instincts flared, Chan let his face lower, and allowed the pads of her thumbs to line the trails of his scars, with only a small wince. 

“Oh, you beautiful boy,” she breathes, smiling with pure joy, “You’ve grown so big. You’re so strong.” 

Chan’s lip trembles, but he doesn’t cry, simply letting Felix go to let the woman hold him, squeezing his eyes shut and basking in a care he hasn’t felt in a long, long while. 

+

There was something that had changed, further different, about Chan after Felix introduced him to his mom. Or, Hyunjin's learned, reintroduced. It was most noticeable when it came to Felix, as always. In that aspect, it was almost amusing, watching the way they fumble and fal over each other, waving it off because oh at least they got to see each other’s smiles. 

Seungmin and Minho said it was sickening when it was pointed out one morning. Jisung then proceeded to tease Seungmin for a consecutive half hour about Jeongin’s smile and how Seungmin had absolutely no room to talk. Seungmin hasn’t spoken to him since then, even when Jisung’s draped over his shoulders like an obnoxious cape. 

Changbin had been in his tent then, with Felix actually, as Chan reassessed their plan to see where they were at in a silent bubble by himself. Now, he was sitting beside Hyunjin again, resting in two rickety chairs Jeongin and Seungmin had brought back miraculously the only thing not melted by the fires. He’s looking up at the sky pensively. 

It’s still smoky, the sun still an unsettling orange that looked ill. 

“It hasn’t rained.” 

Changbin hums, giving him his attention. “The fires are making it hotter than it should. There’s gonna be storm upon storm when it finally dies down.” 

Hyunjin never thought he’d look forward to something like that so much. It feels though, that by the time the smoke clears up, that by the time it’s cold enough again to storm with such fury, it’ll all be over. They’ll be safe. The pouring rainfall will wash away all the horrors that have stained their lives. 

He wants to dance in it when it happens. He’ll like it this time around. 

Speaking of. “They’re not,” he gasps. 

Changbin sighs, rubbing his eyes, avidly trying to avoid what Hyunjin has seen. It’s clear he already knows what it is. “Please don’t remind me.” 

Same squawks, harshly nudging Changbin’s arm and forcing him to witness the scene before them in full glory. In the middle of the clearing, amidst vivid green grass and smog tainted wind, like jilted weeds upon a meadow, are Felix and Chan. Attempting to dance. Felix’s arm is encircled around Chan’s waist, Chan’s around his neck, their hands laced beside their heads. 

They should look awkward and unbearable, a clutz, and one who’s graceful as a swan but his mind goes empty around said clutz. They keep tripping over each other’s feet, and their knees keep knocking. They try to look down to fix it, but then their heads bump and they rear back. It’s a dance of fools, if Hyunjin has ever seen one. 

But they’re smiling so broadly, even Hyunjin can feel a pain in his cheeks. It’s practically blinding, the vibrance of their gleeful bliss, seldom and overwhelming. It emanates from them in rays like a star. Hyunjin isn’t close enough to see their eyes meet, but he can feel it, fondness and a soothing content that’s more impossible than magic. Their expressions soften and when they look at each other, it’s like nothing has ever happened to them. 

Two storms, volatile yet gentle, crashing against each other and finding solace. Hyunjin thinks that’s what they are. A wild fire snuffed to fighting embers, the ash of his fading life blooming to roses and poppies redder than the blood that stained his face. A sun, warm and bright, feeding every joy that comes in contact with, raising flowers from his smiles. 

Hyunjin feels like Minho has entered his soul and moved his mouth when he blurts, “They’re disgusting.” 

Changbin can’t bite back his responding snort, biting his lip unable to look away despite his agreement. “Felix’s mom invited Chan to the festival. She’s already booked a dance. Felix offered to teach him. I thought he’d be good.” 

Huffing with an exasperated smirk, “He’s taken dozens of ballroom lessons. He’s as good as I or Minho. But I think Chan is infecting him with his stupidity and clumsiness. I fear Felix’s mom’s life if Chan goes to her like this.” 

“I think even I’m better than that,” Changbin remarks, flinching as the two princes knock heads again, and then narrowing his eyes when all they do is laugh about it with their pupils blown wide and on each other in vivid focus. 

Hyunjin thinks and stands, gesturing for Changbin to stay sitting. He crawls into the tent where the rest of them are sitting. Seungmin looks to him immediately for aid as Jisung is repeatedly poking his shoulder trying to get him to speak. Hyunjin ignores them both, grinning. 

“Guys,” he says, calling their attention, “You know how after all this, we’re gonna be like royal heroes or whatnot, right?” Only Jisung really reacts to that with explicit excitement, dropping his hand from Seungmin’s side. “So there’s an important skill we all need to know. Ballroom dancing!” 

He gets them all gathered outside without the princes’ awareness and points them out to the group. They all react with the same varying disgust as he and Changbin, very blatantly faked and poorly hiding how refreshing the sight was. “They suck,” he says easily, “It’s hurting my heart. Changbin, take Felix, I’ll take Chan. Minho, I saw you the other day so I already know you and Jisung know how to dance.” 

Jisung blinks and Minho tilts his head cooly. 

“And we already know how to dance,” Seungmin shrugs, raising his hand that has intertwined with Jeongin’s without them even seeing. It wasn’t unexpected though. 

Jeongin hesitated before turning to Changbin. “Do you have any instruments?”

Chapter Text

Felix is warm. He doesn’t feel like the searing overbearing heat of a fire, but whenever Chan is close, he feels like he’s melting nonetheless. It’s an interesting feeling. He’s always felt like a wisp that could blend with the mist on any particular gale. But with Felix, he feels like iced wax, a layer of skin touched and cursed by all, dripping to the ground beneath them. 

All he can sense is Felix’s hand on his own, on his waist, golden band secured away from him. The only piece but the rose chunk that he won’t take off, for Chan despite the conflicting risks. But even that all flattens to a hum in the back of his mind where the weak signal of his magic stays alert. When Felix laughs, so does he, and it’s all he hears alongside the beat of his heart, steady and happy. 

So he doesn’t hear the music until there’s a tap on his shoulder. Synched, he and Felix still, foreheads touching as they tilt their heads to the intruder. It’s Sam, smirking at them with judgement. That’s when it registers to him, the strum of an old, rusted guitar, imperfect but clear, along with the chime of a mallet. It’s a bit unnerving, as each sound is distorted from the damaged instruments, but it sounds perfect, just as music should. 

Felix studies Hyunjin's face and his own strains with a clear oh no . 

“You guys suck.” It’s true, especially for Chan who had a single lesson on how to waltz to beat before his life was wrecked. However, it seems like the statement is geared towards Felix, and Chan looks upon that in confusion. Said prince has his lips pressed firmly together, semi-glaring at Sam. 

Hyunjin's taunting smile grows, eyes thinning beneath the buildup of cheek. He redirects his gaze to Chan, predatory and stalking. “Your highness, care to share a dance with a noble son? I’m no prince but I can sweep you off your feet. Or at least—” his eyes dart to Felix who’s increasingly irritated, fingers digging into Chan’s hip “—I’ll keep my mind clear.” 

He thinks he’s missing something. He blinks and looks around. Seungmin and Jeongin are playing the instruments, exuberant at having an instrument beneath their fingers, incapable of keeping themselves from humming tunes to their own melody. Jisung and Minho are dancing, much better than he and Felix, yet Changbin stands by and corrects their footwork with playful eagerness. 

He’d missed all of it just a moment ago. For him, it was like time had frozen, and only now with Hyunjin's influence, was it resuming, even though it’s been playing around him the whole duration. 

“Yeah,” he finds himself replying, “Um, why not? If Felix doesn’t mind.” He looks to the prince, the younger’s expression torn between affection and annoyance. There’s vehemence deliberately aimed at Sam, with an underlying tension Chan can’t read. 

With great dissatisfaction, he pulls away from Chan. “I don’t think we’re making any progress anyway,” he comments airily, “My mother deserves the best. Hyunjin might be a better teacher.” 

Chan aches without his near presence, shivering at the loss of warmth, but nods resolute. “Right, I can’t be stepping on her toes.” A try at nonchalance. Subtly, he pulls his sleeve further down his wrists and hopes the goosebumps aren’t visible. 

He feels thrown for a loop. He’s usually sure, at the very least, what he’s feeling, even if that’s deep in a pits of something cloying and dark. Right now, he just feels lightheaded, mind stuffed with cotton and cheeks painted with the chill of winter. 

There’s a cough in his throat but he shoves that all the way down. 

Hyunjin extends his arm and slowly, Chan takes his arm. Abruptly, Hyunjin has him in position. He’s much taller than either Felix or he, and Chan has to look up to conversate with him. At least it keeps him from looking down, but somehow, he already feels like he’s dancing smoother, or dancing at all compared to the bumbling around he was accomplishing earlier. 

“We haven’t talked much, princeling,” Hyunjin comments, minutely adjusting Chan with each step, passively guiding him to the steps of a waltz, marking the routine into his brain without really doing anything. 

Chan thinks about it, steadily obtaining back his wits. “We haven’t, huh?” 

Hyunjin raises an eyebrow. “Not like we get much time too when you’re always clinging to Felix.” He waits a purposeful second before adding, “And Jeongin. “ His tone is pointed. It leads Chan to suspect what this conversation is going to be centered around. “Not that I hold any grudge. We should talk more though. You seem interesting.” 

Chan snorts mildly. “I think I’ve gone through enough to build some character. But I get it. You seem interesting too. And Felix talks highly of you...we might’ve met once beforehand if you really are a noble’s son.” 

And that’s something that hasn’t been considered before. Hyunjin shrugs, catching Chan before he can trip on a rock and elegantly spinning them around. Hyunjin's eyes widen and he shakes his head with a tsk. “Ah, Felix’s staring.” 

It takes self-restraint not to turn his head. “Oh? Are he and Changbin doing any better?” 

“Tons better than you two,” Hyunjin replies easy, “But Felix’s head is still in the clouds.” 

Their conversation is wispy, and it feels like if they let it go for even a second, it’s going to die off into nothing. It’s unstable and it seems like Hyunjin has things he wants to talk about, but either too much to pick from within a single dance, or is overall uncertain. Chan commends him, he has no grip of his words, but his demeanor and voice really none of that. 

Though substance is lacking. 

“Why’d you ask me to dance?” 

Hyunjin's eyes bounce to him, and his mouth curves gratefully. “Well, I really did want to teach you how to do this. Felix is as good a dancer as I am, but you two looked like you were wrestling upright rather than waltzing. It was either painfully watch you, or painfully rip you two apart.” 

“And the latter was more beneficial.” 

Nodding, Hyunjin starts to move faster, and splitting his focus, Chan follows. “Do you know why it was so hard though?” He doesn’t get a reply, Chan frowning up at him questioningly. “You two looked so happy together. Like you might actually trip and kill each other, but I’ve never seen either of you happier. It’s kinda cool to see on you, but Felix...it’s one of the greatest things to ever see.” 

“He was so subdued in the castle. We all were. We thought we were brave, just not being happy, that being upset together, was a form of rebellion. And honestly it sort of was. But it wasn’t enough. Because who wants to live that type of life? Certainly not Felix. He always looked lost, always staring into space and getting nothing from it but vague shapes and colors. He would ask me for the supplies Minho snuck in for me to draw them sometimes, but I think the curse made it impossible.” 

“Memories?” Chan guesses. 

“Pretty sure. But now, he’s certain. He knows what he is, where he’s been, and where he wants to go. He’s...happy. It’s not stable, but it’s there. And I’ve never seen anything prettier. I wanna draw it, or paint it…” 

“You can,” Chan says suddenly, eager for the idea. Both for his sake, and Hyunjin's. “We have things. None of us have ever really been illustrators, but Jisung always likes to grab whatever he can when we went for runs. I’ll help you find them, after.” 

Hyunjin's eyes sparkle and his hand tightens around Chan’s excitedly. “Really? I’d love that!”

His smile is infectious, and so is his chuckle. Without realizing it, he and Chan have settled into a pretty decent pace, talking and dancing at the same time without screwing up too bad. Chan’s a little proud of himself. 

“How about you,” he asks a bit more seriously, “Do you feel happy?” 

It’s refreshing, how Hyunjin doesn’t cut around the bush, biting his lip but it doesn’t hide his grin. “Oh, no doubt. It’s so much better out here than it ever was with them in that damn castle. I’ve never been freer. I love it.” 

And tentatively, that connection forms. “Good,” Chan hums, “I’m glad. I think I am too.” 

Hyunjin beams. He gets closer suddenly and Chan tamps a yelp. “Tell me then, princeling. How do you feel about my best friend?” 

There’s an undeniable implication here. One with rivulets and curves, spindling around a rod of thorns. Rose thorns. Chan feels like his blood is already on them, thick and simmering, but there’s blood certainly rushing to his cheeks for whatever reason he can’t identify. Reflexively, he ducks his head, fleeing Hyunjin's knowing, imploring gaze. He wants to run from it. It makes him squirm, feel small in comparison to something so big, something he can’t even make out it in broad daylight. 

It’s something that scares him. 

“Excuse me,” a voice cuts in, lined with leatherhard clay and impatience. Chan peeks from beneath his lashes, teeth dug into his bottom lip. Felix stands beside them, arms crossed and face questionably neutral for his tone. “I thought I was his partner for the day.” 

Boisterously, Hyunjin laughs, dropping his chin to Chan’s head as his fingers loosen where they are. It’s temporary, but it’s an admission that he’s letting go of the topic. “I wasn’t aware this was an actual ball, your highness. I would’ve prepared better,” Hyunjin teases. Gently, Chan pushes him away, avoiding his eyes, they know too much, and show it in agonizing clarity. 

Can he stay oblivious to this force any longer? 

“You’re the one who arranged it,” Felix huffs, sidling up to Chan and easily interlacing their hands and replacing Hyunjin's presence against his hip. Chan feels his focus stem from the touch, singling in on Felix. Maybe with his very brief and new experience, he’ll actually be able to dance with the prince. According to Sam, he’d been the one that made them sloppy in the first place. 

“Did you even teach Changbin enough not to step on my toes?” Hyunjin asks, stretching. 

Felix deigns not to answer, beginning to move his feet. Chan tries not to look down on them, knowing it’ll ruin his concentration and make him bump heads with Felix again. But it’s hard, a block in his throat and chest, as he looks Felix straight on. Eyes meeting and seeking. He feels simultaneously exposed and sheltered. Scoffing, Hyunjin disappears from his peripherals. 

“I think I’m better now,” Chan blurts, finding that previously, conversating had kept him from overthinking and tripping. He doesn’t know if that’s possible with Felix, as with Hyunjin his mind had been able to clear and his heart had been steady whereas now, they were both running marathons through his body. He was warm again, at least, and he welcomed it wholeheartedly. 

Felix raises an eyebrow, surveying him coolly. Chan tenses self-consciously. “I think you are. Ready to waltz with my mother?” 

Chan swallows and Felix relaxes at last, eyes squinting with the force of his smile and laugh. Chan desperately keeps mind of his steps, if he lets it stray one bit, then he’s going to stare at Felix’s easy expression forever and fall into his untimely demise. 

+

“Do you like him?” 

Felix turns with a confused frown, “Huh?” 

Jeongin blinks with a fed up press to his lips. “Chan. You have feelings for him don’t you?” 

For a second, all Felix does is stare, caught off guard and gawking. Then rapidly, millimeter by millimeter along his skin, a fierce blush rises from his neck, to his cheeks, to the tips of his ears. He puts his hands to them, trying unsuccessfully to disguise it in any way possible. Fearfully, he glances over to where Chan is sitting next to Sam, showing him all the art supplies Jisung has managed to pick up over the years. 

Good, neither of them are paying attention to the pair beyond the fire. 

With a small sigh, Felix runs his fingers down his face. “Is it obvious?” 

Jeongin looks surprised. Probably more at the fact that Felix has acknowledged anything at all than the fact that he was openly admitting to something. Felix wasn’t exactly a closed book with his friends. He’d given Minho the giveaway to open up about his biggest trauma at the time with as little as a nod and a wave. But it was more the fact that he took extensive time to parse through his feelings before ever saying anything more than later . 

He always wanted to identify or at least get an idea of what was running through his head before he placed it out into the open. Jeongin may be familiar with that, as Seungmin is almost the same way, though he’s less forthcoming and every bit about him is somewhat restrained. Not that he doesn’t trust any of them, it’s just how he personally prefers it. And this is how Felix prefers it. 

Regarding him assessingly, Jeongin nods emphatically. “Entirely. Last I heard though, you didn’t even know the expanse of your primary most feelings for him.” 

Felix has to wonder if all them besides him and Chan had some sort of secret meeting discussing the semantics of their affections. A bit sourly, he realizes that’s probably the whole reason for the dance just the night before. Hyunjin was playing them into his slender paint-stained fingers. 

Jeongin was not any more innocent as he’d cornered Felix with the prince’s own consent. 

“I still don’t know the expanse of my full feelings,” Felix replies a bit haughtily, nose upturned, but quickly lowers it, “Does anyone? I try hard to put everything into words, it makes everything easier to see that way. But you simply can’t with everything. I couldn’t even do it with my feelings towards you...But I can recognize this.” He exhales and leans against Jeongin’s side, watching Chan from a distance. 

Felix sees them in this position, and remembers when Jeongin had placed his head in his lap hours after they’d met, as he’d been straining his every cell to see Chan in that royal fireplace, and Jeongin had told him that he would lose the image if he tried to hard to see it. Now he’s staring through the fire, and Chan is there in the flesh, and he doesn’t try hard to comprehend the rush that overtakes his heart. 

Often now, Felix found himself falling onto Jeongin’s method, and he can understand how Jeongin is always so calm, much like his counterpart, but still unrestricted with who he was. 

Chan was doodling on the corners of Hyunjin's paper as Hyunjin drew something precise and elaborate in the center, content with letting Chan use whatever he wasn’t to draw surprisingly on point caricatures of animals and sometimes, one of the group. From here he can see Chan use all his concentration for a shaped rendition of Minho, angry lines coming off the face. His lips were puckered, as they always were when he was focused. And Felix knows when he sees that and all he can think is I want to touch it, feel the softness, the roughness , that he’s a fool who’s been caught. Even further beyond all that invades his mind and urges are can I please hold you forever. Hold me forever. Just be there, please. I...

“When I was trying to put it into words,” Felix murmurs, barely louder than the crackle of flames, but Jeongin doesn’t have to strain to hear him, their proximity close, “I had a hard time figuring out what was happening. But I remembered your advice, and I just sat back, and let it wash over me, and I knew, because how could I not, that he’s someone special. Not more special than any of you. But he’s special . To me.” 

There’s a thoughtful silence that follows, Jeongin examining the two as well, but Felix knows, he’s not going to be able to muster even a fraction of what Felix feels. And since Felix can’t put it into words, he won’t even be able to try and replicate it. But that was fine, it was Felix’s feelings and they were meant for Felix to feel. Jeongin was just curious, but from the start he knew he was reading a hopelessly foreign language. 

“You’re lucky I asked before Jisung,” Jeongin gives, settling further into Felix’s touch, “He’d probably be asking something about smooches.” 

Groaning, Felix hides his burning face in Jeongin’s shoulder. “As soon as you confirm it with him that’s all he’s going to be doing. Kill me off now and spare me the humiliation of romance.” Jeongin’s figure shakes with laughter, and though it nearly dislodges Felix, it fills him with immense satisfaction. As it slows, he waits for the inevitable. 

“Are you going to do anything about it?” 

Now here’s where Felix has hit a stump every time he’s entertained his feelings. In a much different reality, he would’ve already begun to court Chan, spoiled him rotten with endearments and fondness because it came so naturally to him. He would brush an unscarred face with loving fingers and shy lips at every chance. Run his hands through red hair and over warm palms. 

But here, Chan was scarred, and there was too much hanging from the both of their spines for any sort of petty exchanges of pink flushes and meek smiles. 

Before he can answer, Jeongin adds, quietly and compassionately, like he’s thought about it himself extensively. “I say do it. Confess to him, Felix. You don’t know how much time you have left with him, if any at all.” 

And then there’s that. 

He peeks over Jeongin’s sleeve, and it’s like the fire has completely disappeared even though it still sparks warmly between. Because Chan still looks so cold, a grey film of permanent ash over pale skin and beneath absent irises. 

If any at all. 

He squeezes tight to Jeongin’s fingers, keeping the tremble from his own. “I know,” he whispers, “But it’s nicer to stay in place. If I don’t confess, maybe we won’t enter the next stage. A stage where he’s even more dead than he was before.” 

Ruefully, Jeongin gets it. If Felix keeps them as they are, somehow by some natural magic, he’ll be keeping Chan forever preserved. A dance of orbit around each other they’ll forever remain, the sun and moon chasing each other in an endless cycle. Neither breaking, neither fading, forever together and bound. Unbroken. Alive. 

Chan pauses his scrawling to cover his mouth, coughing once. Twice. Hyunjin stops his work, staring down at the paper with quivering lips. Three times. It took only the three to leave him winded, face paler than before. He sends Hyunjin a quick look of assurance, but it’s unhelpful. He already only looks a memory of himself, forgotten a thousand times and barely hanging onto existence. 

It’s not just appearance. It’s reality. Chan’s morbid storybook, was not a tale for children. It was the truth. 

Saying something neither can hear, Hyunjin pastes on a waxy smile, arranging his pencils in a bundle and setting aside his paper, setting his hand on Chan’s back, a deep nervousness grained in his demeanor. 

“Nothing but breaking the curse will keep us from that stage, my prince.”

And oh, isn’t Felix aware. 

+

“Minho, have you ever confessed to somebody?” Felix asks idly, twirling a stick between his fingers, pushing it into the air with his magic every few seconds and seeing how long it holds. Without even a hint of fatigue, he can do it for hours at a time, but he’s playing, so he lets it fall again, and repeats the absent process. 

Felix had asked Jisung for his place back in the shared tent with Minho just for tonight, and Jisung had easily obliged, especially when he heard about Chan’s cough. Staying with Changbin and Chan might ease some of the anxiety that strings the pearls of his wavering smile. Even though it’s obvious he’s steadfastly going to keep the information from Changbin for as long as possible. 

Minho hadn’t asked questions, but he was clearly awaiting them, knowing there were ulterior motives to Felix asking for his old resting spot. Now, he stares at Felix utterly unimpressed and judging. “When would I have gotten the time to, your highness? In forming feelings for anyone, much less pursuing them.” 

Scorned, Felix pouts and drops his stick back into his palm with an extra burst of air. “I don’t know, what about Jisung.” 

Completely unfazed, Minho rolls his eyes, mocking Felix when he softly parrots, “What about Jisung.” He’s impenetrable. But Felix already knew this. He’s been losing his ability to poke at Minho in this forest. Like he had any in the first place. 

Serene, Minho picks up a rock and with decent aim, knocks the stick from the air. “So you’re finally going to muster some guts to fess up about your feelings towards prince number one?” His tone is even and blank, but his smile is giddily teasing. Felix resists the urge to draw the stick towards him and aim it bullseye right on Minho’s nose. 

Groaning, he turns on his stomach and fiddles with the blanket fold. “I’m an adult at this point, you guys are acting like this is a courtyard crush,” he tsks, knowing his cheekbones are highlighted pink nonetheless. 

Minho shrugs, glee undeterred. “Let us have our joys, princeling. Giving you fuss about your suitor is a great one...So you’re confessing? I knew you were getting bolder, Felix, but I wasn’t expecting this.” 

Settling his chin in the palm of his hand, Felix blows the air from his cheeks. “I was gonna avoid it. Felt like I was shifting something too soon. But Jeongin helped me realize...I don’t really have the time to wait...I lost Chan once before without even letting him know how much I cherished him, and I’m not going to let him go again without him at least knowing that I...cherish him more.” 

Clicking his tongue, Minho leans back. “You should stop talking to him, you’re starting to sound as reasonable as the bonded twins. It’s frightening.” His word is light, but his expression is somber, showing that he’s heard what Felix has said, and he’s heard well. 

He feels he’s got his point across enough, and it’s safe to veer slightly off route. “Are you scared too, Minho? Of losing him again.” 

Felix thinks Minho’s face has been crafted and kneaded by the paws of an attentive cat, sharpened by claws and mischief. But other times, the dough is replaced with solid stone, rigid and hard. Like now, as Minho pierces the floor with a burning stare. “I just don’t want to lose him before getting to know him again,” Minho answers finally, dismissively, aggressively smoothing out his blanket. 

Felix leaves it at that. Minho is good with words, he gets his point across in simple sentences with limited syllables and effective impact. So the weight of his reply is enough on its own, and if he wanted to have said more, then he would have. He rolls onto his back, nearer to Minho and tapping him out of the stiff daze. 

“Do you think anyone in this group has any experience with courting?” he wonders alternatively. 

Minho deadeyes him. 

Despairingly, Felix exhales, squeezing his eyes shut and throwing out his arms in a wide arc. It’s not like he really has to do anything grand. He knows, with no insecurity or doubt, that whatever way he confesses to Chan, Chan will either reject or accept it with a heart wrenching earnesty and kindness. But he just feels like he has to do something proper. Maybe it has to do with being raised in a castle, the lingering routine of a royal prince inlaid in his marrow. 

Maybe it’s just him putting it off, still trying to keep that useless conservation even though he’s already accepted that that’s an unachievable dream.

“What about your mother,” Minho suggests, “She has to be familiar with courting.” 

Wide-eyed, Felix wildly flails to grasp Minho’s leg. Serious he remarks, “I always knew you were the smartest of us all.”

+

“None?” 

His mother laughs, cruelly if he must say, at her own son and blood. “When do you think I had anytime to court, little chick. Your father and I were a short little romance, hardly worth royal tastes. The only people I’ve even seen properly court were Chan’s parents.” 

He whines long and drawn out, collapsing over his knees dramatically. He thinks Hyunjin letting out all his theatrics recently as greatly affected him. “Even worse, how will I compare to a prince who somehow courted a queen.” 

Patting his head fondly, his mother shakes her head. “Oh, shut it. Stop worrying about courting. Courting means nothing in the forest, son. Just roll around in the mud with him and then ask him to be your betrothed and come coronation, two kings will sit on that throne.” 

And Felix can’t help but fluster at the prospect, unbidden glee rising in him as the image flashes along the back of his eyelids, staining them. Becoming another picture of a building dream that deftly escapes his grasp at every sharp turn. He doesn’t let it sit long, blinking it away reluctantly, but necessarily. He can’t be focusing on dreams when his present is ruthlessly threatening to suffocate him. 

“Don’t look so far ahead, Mama,” he warns lightly, “We don’t even know what will become of us by the dawn of morrow.” 

Sadly, she ruffles his hair, fingers traveling to trace the bones of his cheek, delicate and loving. Sympathetic. “Don’t think like that, little chick. If we don't give ourself a destination to trek towards, then we’ll be doing all of this aimless.” 

He’ll listen, only because he feels lost enough.

+

Seungmin appraises the two sulkingly, trying to dodge them one last time, before deeming it pointless. Exhaling greatly, he rubs his forehead and groans, “Why does it have to be me? In fact, why does it have to be anyone at all. It’s up to Chan to figure out his own feelings. I’m not his diary.”

He’s only convinced of that slightly, as they all know how clueless the former prince can be when it comes to matters of his personal self. This was probably at the very back of his mind, both because he was utterly oblivious, and because he was subconsciously inclined to focus on everything else but. It’s no doubt he’s bumbling unguided around it. 

But that doesn’t mean he thinks he should be doing what Minho and Hyunjin are pleading of him with shiny eyes and stretched smiles. Which they continue to as if he’d never even said anything, fingers curled deceptively innocuous beneath their chins. Why does he even try? 

“I get what you’re trying to do and all,” he tries once more, “But I don’t think it will help nearly as significantly as you’re convinced it will. If anything, it might make things even more complicated than it will ever have to be.” 

Hyunjin drops a bit of his act, scowling childishly. “We need to know he’s aware before Felix confesses. He needs to think it over before hand so we don’t have to deal with even further awkward dancing around each other as he delves into his feelings for Felix and Felix wallows in the high possibility of rejection . And you have a great way of making everyone come to their senses.” 

This would be the last of priorities, especially considering the precarious situation they’re constantly navigating, but he has the empathy enough to understand that this was bigger than what it seemed objectively. And he cared for his friends far too much, knowing just how much hurt they could lead themselves to without a single bit of guidance. 

Allowing his natural pessimism leak, he questions, “Possibility. We don’t even know if he’ll accept the confession. We all know he’s got all the hots for our prince but that doesn’t mean he’ll ever do anything about them if he thinks somehow in some way they’ll hurt Felix.” 

That makes Minho uneasy, knowing most of all just how deprecating Chan could be in that event, seeing as he’d walked Felix through it the first time it happened when they’d all met, all those weeks ago. Hyunjin has less tact, and splays out his hands despairingly, “Don’t think like that, Seungmin. They’re certain to be together. They’re already trying their best to be without any feelings involved.” 

A fool, he taps Seungmin’s shoulder reassuringly and friendly. ”Plus, it’s not like you’re doing much,” he drawls, “If anything, being self-aware will lead him to making better decisions.” 

Seungmin exchanges helpless glances with Minho. 

“What are you all talking about?” 

Hyunjin squawks, nearly toppling over as Changbin appears noiselessly behind Jeongin. Minho purses his lips and looks between Hyunjin and Seungmin, unsure. If there’s anyone as protective when it comes to Felix as him, it’s Changbin when it comes to Chan. He’s probably the only one who’d sway Minho in his conviction here. And Seungmin latches onto that like a leech. 

He turns, nonchalant so forced it’s noticeable. “They want me to ask about Chan’s feelings towards Felix so he can realize them before Felix confesses to him.” He’s not quite sure how Changbin will react, as he’s still uncertain himself how hew views the issue. 

It’s not like they’re doing anything wrong. Seungmin just feels like forcing Chan to come about his feelings without him having the chance to do so himself isn’t the best course of action in any way. It’s intrusive and jarring. But it’s not like they can spare hurt feelings and sensitivities when lives are on the line and evil is threatening to reign. 

Changbin doesn’t display any sort of reaction, blinking slowly before regarding Jeongin. “You don’t want to.” Seungmin shakes his head and for a short while, they watch as Changbin thinks, portraying nothing of his internal thoughts in a nerve wracking manner. “Then I will.” 

Now that was unexpected and they stare at him with visible surprise. Seungmin’s is tainted with a bit more bitterness at being disagreed with and when Changbin spots it he smiles wryly. “I don’t quite like it either. And I’m not going to be doing it for Felix like those two. It’s just...we’re in a very sticky situation and I know Chan best, if Felix springs his feelings on him and he’s unprepared, we might get another river incident.” 

Bone-tired, he sighs. “Chan likes to keep an image of peace, even when it’s unreachable. And that image, lacks himself. He views the world from his eyes, and has been erased to a point where he forgets that people see him too. He’s used to being a ghost. So when people form attachments, he runs to maintain the world he thinks is right...He may be the only one whose memories will always be intact, but the curse has affected his own perception in a much deeper way. No matter how much he impacts us, he doesn’t view himself as anything but a phantom, and phantoms only hurt.” 

And it is quite obvious, with the way Chan flits between them, waiting for them to smile, before moving on somewhere he won’t be seen. And it’s a realization that had already been settling in, as much as they all hated it. For Sam, it was a new view, and it shows on his face in gaping pity as he too sees how Chan had lifted him up, and left him hanging midair as soon as he was appeased. 

“I don’t think he’ll accept Felix’s feelings,” Seungmin admits in following. He receives gazes of shock from Sam, disrest from Changbin, and indigance from Minho. “And that’s why I don’t want to induce anything. It took the kingdom burning for him to even reveal his identity. It’ll take the curse breaking for him to get his head out of the clouds. But...Jeongin’s gotten Felix set on confessing for good reason of his own. So I guess, it’ll be good for Changbin to talk to him. Me, I won’t play any role in it. Not ‘til the curse is broken.” 

When the curse is broken. When the mages are defeated. Seungmin has never felt so much pressure, and he can bear it, he can bear it remarkably well. But he’s special in that capacity, for not many can. And he hates having to watch the people he’s let himself open up to, fall apart around him beneath it. It’s the most unbearable thing he’s ever endured. 

He doesn’t want to see either of them hurt, but at this point, with the way the cards have been dealt, and the way those two princes shuffle them, its bound, inevitable. One too open, too prominent. One too closed, too worn. Perfect matches when put in balance, but terrible adversaries when torn apart. 

It’s true, and everyone knows it, and he’s said so himself to Chan’s very own face, that even if he’s going to disappear, his last days would be happiest with Felix in his arms, making him warm even as he goes dead cold. But to think like that requires the thought that they won’t be able to defeat the mages, that they won’t be able to break the curse, that Chan dying is the only possibility. And he’s tired of thinking like that. Being so realistic, will not hold him back here.

“That’s me being hopeful. I want them together. But at this rate, Chan won’t let it happen until he knows he’ll finally be able to keep it.” There’s a twinge, and his lips turn down. “Either way,” he states, “I have a bad feeling about it.”

Whether he’d said all that or not, the last sentence puts fear in the pools of their irises.

Chapter Text

A bad taste lays thick in his mouth. Seungmin’s words follow him as he searches for Chan. He stands by what he’s said. He’d rather Chan do whatever he has to to prepare himself, even if it further strains them, than be caught off guard and run, risking his life even further. It was something they couldn’t take. Changbin couldn’t take. Like Jisung would say, they’re a family. They can handle a bit of tension amongst themselves, they can’t handle losing a life. 

Sighing lengthily, Changbin runs his hands through his hair and takes a pause, covering his eyes and letting himself breathe. 

The past month has been the happiest he’s been, the happiest Jisung’s been, the happiest Chan’s been. And he knows from verbal affirmation and blatant proof, that that goes for the others as well. But it isn’t pure. Their happiness is a feeble thing, its integrity weakened day in and out with the weight and relentless strength of Keres and Doyle’s threat. 

So while they’ve never felt more joy, they’ve never been more at danger. Each smile is paired with weary eyes and fearful rims of purple. They’re all fatigued. Like Seungmin hinted, they’ll only be able to continue as if life is normal, after one or the other is defeated, the mages, or the curse. And Changbin can’t wait for that day, to watch all that’s ruined every inhabitant of their kingdoms’ life to decimate . 

It’s approaching, but at a mind-numbing pace. 

“You alright there?” 

Changbin’s hands drop from his face, eyes widening slightly. If there was one presence he’d always been able to detect, even before he’d been trained to, it was Chan. But he hadn’t as of late. He’d like to think he’s just lost some sleep lately. Not anything else.

“Just tired,” he answers truthfully, facing his friend and trying his best to subtly examine him. It goes without saying, that Chan is getting worse. Everyone knows, but no one has yet to point it out. Because what will pointing it out do to help? They’re hopeless. “You?” 

Chan smiles that dimpled smile of his and Changbin feels the urge to scream. “About the same. What are you doing here?” He surveys the area pointedly and curiously. It’s a random patch of forest between their camp and Chan’s new resting place that replaced the river. It’s pure luck he’d intercepted Chan here. 

Feigning nonchalance, Changbin crosses his arms and shrugs. “Was looking for you. It’s been a while since we’ve talked.” 

Brightening, Chan nods, gesturing for them to hurry to his spot. Changbin settles closely to him as they sit, arms touching and knees bumping. He can’t tell which is colder, Chan’s hands, or the surrounding winter air. He scoots closer, hoping he can share even a bit of his body heat. He knows it’s pointless, but it’s what his brain tells him is logical. 

“How’s the castle been?” Chan wonders conversationally, playing with the hem of Changbin’s sleeve. 

Changbin hums, relaxing into his best friend's touch, letting his eyes slip shut and the tension to release from his shoulders in spite of the topic he wishes to broach. For just a second, an agonizing moment of serenity, Changbin imagines that nothing is holding them down. They’re just two friends meeting after a week of duties and simple tiring tasks. Not a former prince and the son of a dead knight trying to avenge their kingdom and parents just so they have the hope of living. 

It’s a lot, and it instantly bombards his fantasy. 

“Pretty good. We’ve managed to get everyone out but volunteers to make it less sketchy. Hyunjin and I have started to raid the armory and other storages for supplies while Minho observes patrol patterns. At this point, we’re just doing extra.” We’re close. We can take them down soon.

There’s a lapse of silence and Chan swallows. “I think Seungmin and Jeongin have reached the same point.” We are. So close. “We just have to refine from here on out.” I’m still unsure . 

“How long will that take?” Changbin challenges, just a bit confrontational, keeping his tone gentle but vorpal. He doesn’t get a response, and he doesn’t expect one, feeling the way Chan’s fidgeting picks up in intensity, almost audible. Sighing, he opens an eye and directs it at Chan. If they’re going to get nowhere with this, he supposes he has nothing better to do. 

“How are you and Felix doing?” 

It’s meant to be misleading, a smooth transition Changbin can easily transition from. It makes his chest clench when Chan’s demeanor entirely shifts, loosening and softening to be a more open, fond version of himself. His grin grows earnestly and his lids shutter, partially hiding the utter care swimming in the amber of his irises. 

It’s all so obvious it’s painful, especially with Seungmin’s most likely accurate prediction. It makes him even more bitter about it all. He wishes more than anything even though it doesn’t involve him, for Chan and Felix to be bonded as they should. If not by a royal band than the honest sentiments they mutually share. 

Stilling his harsh frequent movements, Chan replies soft, “We’re doing good. At this rate, I don’t think they’re even bothering to track us, but if they do, they won’t be able to catch a whiff of the vestiges of our magic. And it might confuse them when we eventually invade as well.” 

Taking his words warily, Changbin inhales and shakes his head. “Emotionally, Carm. How do you...You act differently around him than you do us. Did you know that?” 

As expected, Chan stiffens, all actions freezing at the tips of his chilly fingertips, even the cloud of his breath upon cool air ceasing. Changbin opens his other eye, abandoning the small act of comfort as Chan licks bitten lips, purple instead of red. “How so?” 

Oh, he already knows. He knows well, but he refuses to acknowledge. Intentionally or subconsciously, he denies. This was all Changbin had prepared for, and he wonders if Seungmin would’ve been as expecting as he was, even knowing Chan for only a short while. 

Snorting, Changbin straightens, flicking his pinky against Chan’s leg and keeping his now open gaze constantly on Chan’s face even as the other avoids any eye contact. “How so,” he parrots, “You’re just so bright around him, it’s blinding seeing you together. It’s like you bloom when he’s nearby, following him like flower petals towards the sun. It’s not like you change, you just...you become you in an entirety you’ve never before. And maybe it’s not always around him but since he’s arrived, you’ve just seemed more real .” 

He watches the whole duration of his spiel as Chan’s face grows tighter and tighter, paling impossibly fruther. It hurts to see the fear bland and bleak against the pallor of his expression, especially in regard to something that makes him so undeniably happy. But there’s a helpless spark of adoration that stills shine through, unable to be snuffed, that Changbin lets guide him like a wisp. 

Breathing shakily, grasping onto Chan’s hands securely, he asks low and delicate, “You love him don’t you?” And he can clarify, and Chan could easily give him fluff about how he loves them all, but it’s too grand, too unmaneuverable, for him to work around. That feeling. It’s encompassing, swallowing him whole until its tangible to even an outsider such as Changbin or any of them. His bond with Felix, written in silence, in smiles, in their very magic. It’s nothing anyone could possibly ignore. 

Just so he can compare the two reactions, he wishes he could see through Jeongin’s eyes when Felix confessed. He can’t decide if it’d lessen the biting sting, or pronounce it. Because from Jeongin’s recount, Felix had been bashful and avoidant, knowing the feelings were complicating but not regretting them. He’d accepted them with ease and with grace. 

Chan did not. 

He looked ill. And not just as he usually did, but his lips were parted and colorless and his eyes were distant. Changbin tries to steady his heart, squeezing Chan’s hand until his own began to ache. With a shuddering exhale, Chan slumps with the other over his face, curls splayed like blood over his shaking fingers. 

“I can’t, Changbin, but I do. So much.” And with Seungmin’s words ringing clearly through Changbin’s head like the crack of a whip, Chan adds mournfully and hoarse, “But I can’t do anything about it. I’m done being scared of being by his side. Of contradicting myself by distancing him to keep him from hurting when I leave—” When , why was it always when with him “—But I can’t go this far, knowing I’m only going to lose him. This...this is me being selfish. But I can’t...I can’t…” 

His voice completely shatters and Changbin quickly curls around the other as he sobs. And with no small amount of rue and grief, he gets it. 

+

“Can you stop him, or hold him off?” Chan asks suddenly after approaching Minho out of the blue. He doesn’t bother to hide the redness of his face that he can’t naturally produce in his weak condition. Nor the puffy rims of his eyes and the quiver of his lips. Crying. He’s been crying.

Minho slowly unfurls from where he’d been laying on the grass, resting beside the food he was slowly cooking. Bewildered and thrown off by Chan’s blatant state, torn between asking or ignoring. Mildly he just blurts, “Who? What?” 

Rubbing his eye, Chan settles beside Minho, abruptly dropping his head on Minho’s lap and shutting his eyes exhaustedly. “Felix,” he murmurs with a sad air, “Keep him from confessing, please.” 

Minho who’d begun to run his hands through the former prince’s thin locks, stutters and freezes. Did Changbin reveal more than he was supposed to? “How’d you figure?” 

Limply, Chan shrugs. “All of you have been acting off lately and then Changbin came and asked how I felt about him. He was trying to prepare me, right? But...I can’t. I can’t accept right now, Minho. And if he confesses, I want him to confess when I can accept. But not now.” 

Processing this, Minho drops his hands to his sides and lays his palms against the grass as if to brace himself. “Why?” He forces himself to not be biased, to not display any sort of defensiveness he feels for Felix and his feelings. He tries not to jump to the conclusion that this is just Chan playing his usual janus-faced role of not wanting to hurt anyone by keeping his distance from them. “Why can’t you?” he questions with a bit of waver. 

In his lap, the other shifts to look up at him with lidded eyes, fatigued and pained. Minho wants to look away, biting his lip to keep him, it hurts seeing the life slowly fade from Chan’s eyes. Chan snorts, grabbing Minho’s hand and pulling it from the ground onto his chest. Minho is sitting but he feels like he’s losing balance and tripping. His heel of the hand rests forcibly against Chan’s heart. It’s slow. 

“You can feel it,” Chan mutters, loosening his grip and allowing Minho move if he wants. He doesn’t, keeping it their against his best wishes. “I’m not going to be here much longer. Even if...I’m trying to stay for as long as possible, don’t get me wrong, Minho. I have to. I want to. But I’m not meant to be here, and I’m going to disappear soon.” 

A boulder of a lump builds in Minho’s throat and he clenches his fingers in the fabric of Chan’s shirt, chin wobbling. “You need to stop talking like that, princeling. You’re not gonna leave us. You get that. We’ll tear you from the gates of the afterlife if we have to.” 

For a long moment that has the tears burning in Minho’s eyes, Chan just stares blankly up at him, lips pursed. With struggle and spuddle, Chan sits up, frowning as his hand goes to his mouth. It passes and he looks directly to Minho, frighteningly serious. “Minho, can I tell you something? Something you can’t tell anyone but Seungmin. He can’t tell Jeongin, you can’t tell Felix. No one but you and Seungmin can know about this.” 

“Why Seungmin and me specifically?” Minho asks suspiciously, brows furrowing. 

Chan smiles a bit at that, crooked and weak. “I know you’ll go to any length to protect Felix. And you’ve done it before, and you’ll do it again. I’ll trust you to keep this secret to keep him well. And Seungmin will know what’s the best course of action always to keep everyone safe. He’ll know when it’s okay for people to know about this...when hope will be lost.” 

And it hits Minho just how serious Chan is, how heavy his words are, and they chain to his ankles and wrists and he feels himself bending under it all. He swallows it down, the grit tearing at his throat, and nods. “I swear it. If you think it’s necessary, I’ll keep it.” 

After, Chan falls asleep resting against him as he digests it all. Tears run frantically down his face but he ignores them, holding himself tight. He shakes and shudders, and he can’t imagine the guilt Chan feels granting him this burden, but he can imagine the guilt he’ll feel keeping it from everyone else. Squeezing his eyes shut hard enough to see galaxies, he hastily wipes at his face and turns to the prince, shaking him. 

“C’mon, let’s get you inside or something.” 

Chan doesn’t wake. Biting his tongue, Minho keeps the panic inside, harsh and blinding bright. He continues to try and wake the other. But it’s to no avail. Blood dribbles from the corner of Chan’s mouth and all he can do is wordlessly shout, resisting shaking Chan ‘til both of them broke. 

Footsteps break over the wilting grass and the group surrounds him, worried. He shields Chan’s face in his folded arms, even more so when he spots Felix, fingers digging into his arms with unbridled concern. It’s so hard, the words cracking from his mouth like unfoiling barbed wire, “He won’t wake up.” 

He sits there numb as Chan is hurriedly removed from his arms by a frenzied Changbin, the noise escalating and accumulating into static in his ears. He can’t look at any of them, and he wonders if this is how Chan had always felt, keeping himself hidden for the sake of security. But he knows no matter how much guilt he bears, that he can’t share it. It’d only make everything worse. 

Someone settles before him, gently grabbing him by the arms and gazing at him unblinking even though he must look like the grim reaper had waved hello to him. “Minho?” 

He doesn’t give himself any more time to ponder, to agonize. Reality is reality, and he knows what he has to do. What he’s been told to do. “Seungmin. I have something to tell you, and you can’t tell anyone else.” Maybe it’s the look of utter dread washed over his face, or the tears still fresh over his quivering lips, but Seungmin fixates on him instantly, beyond concerned. 

It’s the first time Minho sees Seungmin cry too. Granted, it’s much less than he did. 

+

He watches in a sort of haze, as everyone crowds around Chan and gets him to a cot. As Changbin orders everyone around with panic so visceral there’s no other option but for it to spread setting fire to everyone’s heels. As Jisung breaks down while in fast pace movement, Hyunjin sidling up beside him to hold him together as they garner blankets. Seungmin and Minho haven’t returned, and Jeongin sorely wishes for Seungmin’s presence to make this feel less like a nightmare. 

Amidst it, he sees Felix, just opposite, sitting wax still beside the cot. Jeongin thinks they’re in the same realm, but Felix is unaware, stiffly wiping the blood from Chan’s face with the pad of his thumb, continuing even when it’s disappeared. Frozen amongst the silent chaos. Noise raging in their heads. 

Jeongin had been judgemental, when Felix and Changbin coddled Chan after the river. But now he understands why. If this could have been avoided, he would’ve swaddled Chan like a baby. But he also knows that wouldn’t have helped anyone. Because even with the coddling, Chan was still here, and not waking. 

He wouldn’t stir. 

If it weren’t for the fluttering of his pulse Changbin checked every other five seconds, it wouldn’t be hard to mistake him for a corpse. There was no foul stench of one, but Jeongin still tastes bile. Still feels sick to his stomach even though it doesn’t show a speck outwards. 

And it hits Jeongin with a ton of bricks and stones. His and Chan’s thing had been normalcy. And that had been well declared from the river onwards. But there was no normalcy that could be kept here. It’d been paused when Jeongin had gone looking for his family, but now it had been absolutely dashed, torn to shreds with each shallow breath that wheedles past Chan’s blue lips. 

Chan was dying, and Jeongin was finally being faced with it in cruel clarity. 

And he comes to an unsurprising yet jolting conclusion. 

They need to speed the hell up. 

But they’re missing one last bit of crucial information. Information Minho has been scouring for for days. And that’s on Keres and Doyle’s offense. What is in their arsenal, what are their plans, what are they doing to go against them while they’re slowly cutting the legs beneath them. They have absolutely everything else. But they can’t fight something without knowing how they’ll fight back. 

His mind sharpens and he wishes he’d paid attention more to their planning. None of them were any prominent strategists, but they were experienced and intelligent enough to work through it. And he was intelligent, but experience was something he a peasant village boy, didn’t have. Jeongin decides now, he’s going to gain some. 

Slowly, he approaches Felix and Chan, dropping to his knees at their side. Tender, he grabs Felix’s wrist and pulls it away from Chan’s face before the prince drives himself mad in mindless repetition. He doesn’t know what to say when Felix blinks, looking doused in cold water before seeing Jeongin, groggy like he’d just slept the day away. 

If Jeongin can barely handle this, he can’t imagine how Felix is dealing. 

As tough as he is, determined and strong, as soon as he bears his wits, Felix faces him, shaking off the shock and horror, though he’s unable to move, fingers tightly twined with Chan’s. They’re going to be fused like that until Chan wakes, no doubt. “You doing okay?” he asks, congested. 

“Don’t ask me when you look like that,” Jeongin snorts wryly, putting his hand reassuringly on Felix’s knee. “I don’t even wanna ask how you’re doing.” 

At that, Felix’s lips crack into a dry smile, waned but appreciative of Jeongin’s effort. “A little worse for wear.” Helpless, his eyes draw back to Chan, dulling. “...Why did none of us point out how he was gonna get worse, Jeongin?” 

Jeongin sighs, wincing as his own gaze inevitably draws to the former prince. Pale, blue-lipped, sickly. Lifeless. Morbidly, neither can look away. Probably for different reasons. Jeongin can’t look away, having to endlessly remind himself that this body was living. Felix has never been able to look away, regardless of appearance. 

“Because there’s no real way to make him better,” Jeongin answers truthfully, “And we don’t discuss things hopelessly.” 

Listless and absent, Felix blankly states with all his focus on the incapacitated Chan, “We could break the curse.” 

“Or we defeat Keres and Doyle.” 

Felix’s face sours, hand tightening around Chan’s, blooming in irritated red. “I hate how our lives revolve around them. I can’t wait for them to fall.” And it’s the most contempt Jeongin has ever heard from the dubbed sunshine. But he’s not surprised or unsettled. He feels it all the same, for Chan, for himself, his family, and this second one. 

And piece by piece, he pushes aside his lack of experience and lets his intelligence tinker together a hobble of a plan. Chan’s plan was effective and safe, but slow. And Jeongin can’t handle another week of this. 

He pushes himself closer to Felix, wrapping the other in a hug that wasn’t expected from either party. “I can trust you to handle this. You’re plenty strong. I know you won’t give up on Carm, but I still feel like assuring you...You aren’t the only one who worries for him, princeling. We all do. We’re all gonna make sure he’s fine, and that we’re fine. Got it?” 

Pleasantly thrown off guard, Felix wraps his free arm around Jeongin. “Of course. We got you too. I know you don’t like being babied, but we’re here for you too.” 

They sit there for a while. 

Chan still doesn’t stir.

+

Seungmin is fully aware when Jeongin leaves. In fact, as Jeongin clumsily exits the tent, King’s meows force him awake, and he quickly latches onto the other’s wrist. He doesn’t say anything, just stares through bleary, crusted lashes up at Jeongin, imploring. 

There’s a heavy blanket of silence. Eventually, all Jeongin does is vaguely reply with, “I’m going. I’ll stay safe.” And they’ve never been a pair for secrets. Both because they’ve never had reason to keep any from each other, but also because everything they went through, they went through together. Their thoughts and actions and days were merged, but it hasn’t been like that for a long while. Their hold on each other, has loosened, it’s less strict, and neither have much complaints about it. 

They’re still bonded by the pinkies. 

So Seungmin does’t pry, especially as his own secrets stalk mercilessly beyond the veil of his sleep-addled mind. All he does, is pull Jeongin briefly down, and wrap him in his arms, just for a few minutes, before pecking the crown of his head and pushing him away. No bad feeling pangs in his chest, so he smiles softly and says, “Be careful. It’s already enough having one out of commission.” 

Grim, Jeongin nods. But he gives Seungmin his own assuring grin, and lets the pads of his fingers linger over Seungmin’s. “Do you know where Hyunjin keeps a map of the castle?” A map. Hyunjin and Minho have been crafting several, using it for plans and guard routes and to teach them exits and hiding places. They could spare a single one, especially if Jeongin has a plan for it. And Seungmin just knows he has a good one. 

“Storage.” 

A hum. “Sleep well, Seungmin. We’ll see each other soon.” 

And Seungmin has no doubt about that. It still feels hollow sitting here now without him, hands emptily splayed upon his lap. “Jeongin left last night. I have no idea where he went.” And it’s not a lie. He has no idea where Jeongin is, and what he’s doing. But he has unconditional faith in the boy, and his heart tells him they’re safe. 

Hyunjin gawks at him and Minho gazes upon him uncertainly. Jisung questions from where he sits at the main tent’s entrance, ear to the fabric in case absolutely anything happens. He was kicked out after a bit by Changbin and vice versa will happen soon. No one tries to remove Felix. Hyunjin says he still wakes up sore from the effects of Felix’s paralyzing magic. 

“He just up and left?” Jisung’s voice climbs a few octaves as he goes on, pulling away from the cloth. There’s bags cementing under his eyes and a permanent rim of red from breaking into tears every so often. Seungmin feels a bit bad about having to break this news now, aware that no one else had the same partially omniscient bond to Jeongin as he did. 

“He’ll be safe,” Seungmin quickly assures, but wonders how empty it’ll sound to Jisung, who’s heard a thousand pretty words over weeks that have culminated to this outcome, Chan passed out behind him on a cot, unresponsive with blood dripping from his nose and mouth that Felix wordlessly cleans like a ghost. 

He moves from his spot, trying not to make it too obvious that he’s continuing just to comfort Jisung. He awkwardly puts his hand over Jisung’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m sure there’s a reason. And I can feel if he’s in trouble or not, and if he is, I’ll be able to find him. I trust him.” 

Jisung bites his lips uncertainly but doesn’t hesitate to agree, “I trust him too....I just wish he hadn’t gone alone, or at least told someone what he was planning. This was a little sudden.” 

Pulling away, Seungmin shrugs. “We’ll go after him. I’m sure he means for us to. Otherwise he’d tell us when he’d be back to keep him in place. We just have to…” 

“Wait for Chan to wake up.” 

It’s like they wait, like they’re words will be some cue. King howls feet away, fighting for their attention. It’s loud. 

But he doesn’t wake. 

+

Jeongin has calculated roughly the amount of time it will take the others to catch up to him. Even if Chan were to have woken the moment he left, it would take at least a day and a half to reach the castle. He didn’t abandon his necklace, so if Felix tried, he could track him. But that was Chan’s specialty, and neither will move from that tent until the latter wakes. 

It took him and Seungmin half a day to reach the border of the villages closest to the castle, and that was sprinting and panting and running wearing themselves exhausted. The group couldn’t travel like that, they were too large in number to simply evade the guards, and Chan would find a way to string along, slowing them down even further. However, they wouldn’t be heading towards the front of the castle. They would take the same way they entered the forest, and that cuts their time in half. 

He was taking the same way now, already at the edge of the field where Jeongin had tended for days while his friends unfurled the mystery of the cursed, crimson prince. The sun has barely risen, and smoke makes the day even darker. Where he’d ridden a galloping horse happily and giddly besides Seungmin, now seemed so despondent. 

It was his turn to put in his work. Alone. 

Gulping, he crouches and stalks through the field, ducking behind a pillar as soon as he gets to one. He’s here to get the final piece of their plan, and he’s hellbent to get it before the rest of them arrive, so that when they do, it will finally end. 

Quiet as can be, he pulls the rolled up map he’d pocketed at the camp, stored safely in the excess space of his sleeve. He presses it to the ground and finds where he is, using a stone to mark it, and the passageways he’s going to be taking. 

In a vivid blue paint, lines show where the queen and king most commonly loiter. And rather than avoiding them, Jeongin will follow them through the passageways where there’s no chance of him being seen. And then when he knows their away, he’ll break into their room. A place not even Felix has ever seen. He shudders, folding the map and sticking it between two loose bricks. He wants anything but to see where those mages sleep. 

He has the map memorized by now, and he’s well on his way. There’s only one entrance from the outside into the patchwork of tunnels and concaves that make up the castle’s intricate safety system for royals specifically. To think it’d be used against them. That’s what happens when you wrongfully take a kingdom for yourself, he thinks, slipping into a cellar door he had to rip through vines and stubborn brush to open, you don’t know nearly enough about it. What lurks in the shadows you’ve created, will come to bite you. 

Jeongin used to not consider himself one of those within the shadow, placed just adjacent to it, unable to see its inhabitants. His life was a tireless drag and labor because of the mages, but other than the poverty and memory loss, they hadn’t touched him enough. They saw him, and wrote him off as harmless. Because he had been. They didn’t care enough to know his name or location, but he was where they could watch him, place him under their thumb without even looking. 

And then Jisung had appeared, and with him, they’d all been exposed to the darkest parts of this crumbling kingdom. And now, he wasn’t just aware of those who lived under them, Jisung, Changbin, Chan, who lived in the very pits of Keres and Doyle’s careless waste, waiting to claw their way out. But as he pushes past cobwebs and nudges aside mice and cats, he’s there too. 

And just like all the rest in the dark, he’s going to take the queen and king down. 

It grows smaller, the dark, especially when Felix is among it, lighting it without meaning to, but Chan sits at the center, and he’s been snuffed to all hell. His presence erased to the point where he is less than even the shadow. As long as he sits there, even with Felix’s hand upon his, the shadows will cloy. 

But if they win, or if he dies, it’ll all go with him. In one term, it’s exuberating, in another, it’s terrifying. 

The slap of his palms to his cheeks ring hollowly through the dusty, lightless halls. He can’t keep thinking of Chan’s casket. He’s here to keep the latter a far, far future. And he can’t do that if his mind his stuck hopelessly with the rest in that camp, surrounding a heart ready to stop. 

He pushes ahead and his hand is met with a solid surface that shifts. A sliver of light falls upon his face and he exhales shakily. 

He’s in. 

From the shadows, he emerges. 

Chapter Text

He’s stiff, and sore from it. He hasn’t moved in hours. He knows it’s been hours. He lost count of how many after manually counting up to the fourth. Minho and Hyunjin come in to feed him and make him drink water. He’s not the one comatose in a rickety, red-stained cot, but he feels just as immobile. In extension, he’s treated like it. If it were in any other situation, he would’ve felt patronized and condescended. But he’s grateful now. It’s unhealthy, but he simply cannot pull away. 

He feels like Jeongin and Seungmin, but his hand and Chan’s are laced and cased in solid stone. And his palms are molten with heat while Chan’s is as cold as the stone itself. It only makes him squeeze harder, as if finally it’ll transfer and warmth will emanate from Chan’s palms like it once did. 

In all the visions, Chan had been warm, even when Felix shouldn’t have been able to feel it. It just goes to show how much the mages have taken from him, and how close he is to the brink of afterlife. 

He hasn’t cried since Minho first shouted for them. He should, there’s a grief simmering icily in the depths of his chest, begging to be relieved, filling his lungs in retribution. And it’s not that he pushes it down or ignores it, he just can’t...he can’t reach it from where he’s at. All on the surface, Chan’s hand in his, the rough cotton cot scratching where his sleeve has slipped, the torn rug digging imprints into his knees through his smooth pants. He watches it all from afar, seated at the foot of Chan’s cot, only aware of what he can physically sense. 

There. A breath. Another. Felix is a bit appeased when Changbin and Jisung leave the tent on Hyunjin's meddling. That way he doesn’t confuse the cadence of breaths, and thinks for a high moment that Chan has woken, realizing the truth and tumbling to the ground, crying in his head but completely still on the outside. 

On cue, the tent’s entrance rustles and Felix doesn’t turn, but he knows, his magic taking pity on him and identifying Sam. He stiffens when his magic accidentally brushes against the trace of rose gold, reminding him all too much of Chan alive and well. 

“The others are asleep,” Hyunjin announces, sitting beside him with a much appreciated breadth. It doesn’t confuse his senses that way. “I don’t know if you heard, but Jeongin’s gone somewhere.” 

A strike of worry has him turning his head. He’s unable to further the frown on his face, already so poignant it’s practically been molded onto his lips. “Jeongin?” 

Hyunjin nods. “Don’t worry though. Seungmin said he was planning something and that as of now, he’s a hundred percent secure. And if he gets into any trouble, Seungmin will be able to get to his side as quickly as possible...It’s hard not to be concerned but Seungmin tells us every hour he can feel Jeongin’s safety, and we trust him.” 

That makes sense. “Do you have any idea what he’s doing?” 

“None. I’m a bit jealous. Seungmin is so set in his convictions he doesn’t question a thing. That can’t just be because of their bond as the bond doesn’t tell him Jeongin’s intent on leaving, he’s just so sure, he doesn’t care...I wish I can be that certain about anything.” 

That too, makes sense. From the corner of his eye, Felix glimpses Chan, a spot of blood spreading to the bow of his lip. He sighs and leans to clean it. He would like to be half as calm and assured as Seungmin. He just feels suspended, completely lost and wandering amidst stale air. He wants to know the ground and rock that Seungmin is rooted to, and how much content it must bring him. He wishes the universe would give him Seungmin’s gift of focal fate, so he knows how this end. If Chan will end. 

It would be nice for anyone. Felix’s brows twitch. He drops the cloth to the ground and stares at nothing for a solid minute before facing Hyunjin again. His friend has his arms crossed and spine slumped, sucking his bottom as his gaze runs up and down Chan’s cot. 

“Do you think this is strange?” he finds himself asking, and it’s so odd, to hear his voice from the end of the room, and to feel it simultaneously, the depersonalization laughing in his face and making him shudder. His visions had done this to him too, both figuratively and literally. But this feels so much worse somehow. “Am I being too...hysterical?” 

He feels too conscious as Hyunjin finally lets himself see Felix, instead of avoiding him, listening to a disembodied voice as if Felix really was somewhere else. He tilts his head and wonders just how he looks from Hyunjin's perspective, how badly ruffled and exhausted he seems and is. He swallows with a dry mouth and licks chapped lips. 

“Probably,” Hyunjin admits honestly, “But no one...no one really thinks that way. We’ve been through a lot. And Chan...he’s been the key to your everything. Your past, your present, and he’s going to unlock your future. It’s the same with us all honestly, but on a much smaller scale. For us, Chan has become more than a person, for us he’s the forgotten prince who catalyzes freedom as well as a close friend. For you...He’s kind your everything.” 

Kinda your everything…”But that’s unhealthy,” he insists feebly, to no one. There was no accusation in Hyunjin's voice, but it’s been dawning upon him as long as he’s been at Chan’s side, “I can’t be reliant on someone so much. It was bad enough with Minho…” 

Oddly, Hyunjin snorts. “I used to be the most irrational of our trio,” he murmurs fondly before addressing Felix firmly, “What you’re doing right now, is certainly unhealthy. But...it’s alright, somewhat. You’ve been upbeat for a long while Felix, when many others would’ve already jaded. And you were even more so when you reunited with Chan, despite being constantly stressed about everything else. You’ve just hit a breaking point, and it’s all kinda coming together in a big depression.” 

“I don’t think you’ve ever been reliant on Minho, and maybe you were a bit on Chan from your childhood, but I don’t think it’s strange. He’s from a time where things were different, where you were unscarred. You’re allowed to let yourself sink low, Felix. You’re allowed to be so upset over someone you’ve loved and lost and just met again and loved even more. So yeah, maybe you’re being a bit much, but it’s not like it’s unnatural. Please, you’re speaking to the lord of dramatics, I would know best.” 

He ends it draping his arm around Felix’s shoulder and knocking their heads together, long hair getting in Felix’s mouth. And Felix doesn’t flinch. He blows the hair out of his mouth and, it cracks his carved granite facade, he smiles. “Yeah, okay.” 

Hyunjin pulls back, hand to his heart. “I give you a whole speech and that’s all you have to give me. Yeah, okay. Why’d I even try?” But he’s clearly grinning to, ear to ear ecstatic at seeing Felix coming back to himself. He sombers quickly, quicker than ever, and sighs, moving his fingers to hold the wrist that is latched tightly to Chan’s touch. 

“And if it’s worse...if he passes, we won’t judge at all. We’re all here for you, no matter how irrational. It’s understandable. I don't even want to think how Seungmin or Jeongin would react in your situation...You get it.” 

Felix’s chin wobbles. If he passes . And he crumples, holding his face as he drops his head to Chan’s side. “I don’t want him to, Sam. He can’t leave. He can’t.” 

“Oh, Felix.” Hyunjin tears his hand from Chan’s and forces the ball he’s curled himself into into his arms, holding on tightly. He doesn’t say it’s alright, or that it will be. He doesn’t say much of anything, just mutters Felix’s name between small hushes. 

It’s like Jeongin had said, Felix thinks. They don’t discuss things hopelessly. 

And because of that like that, hopeless moments like these, are even more visceral. There’s something odd that Felix feels now that he’s aware again, and it brushes against his skin chillingly. 

+

Hyunjin went to tell Felix that they were asleep. They didn’t really talk of it, but they let him without a word. A pathetic but worthy try at getting Felix to close his eyes and rest. No one thought it was going to work, but why not. So they were awake, every single one of them. And there was no way they were going to sleep that night. 

Not Seungmin without Jeongin. Not Minho, knocked off his routine and spinning wildly without Felix or Chan before his eyes. Not Changbin with his best friend sick like all those years ago and closer than ever to leaving him. Not Jisung with his best friend as well a single cough from his grave, the family he’d just gained collapsing around him. 

And that was even further consolidated as Felix’s sobs began to echo loud and heart shattering from the tent. It’s a bit of a relief to hear, to know Felix has finally broken from his frightening trance, but there’s absolutely no comfort in hearing it. 

Jisung scoots closer to Minho, who’s begun to tremble, wordlessly bringing them into a needed embrace. Seungmin and Changbin watch upon it with sorrowful longing, and when Seungmin sees Changbin do the same, he positions himself on the other side of Minho, leaning his head on the other’s shoulder and in turn Jisung’s arm. His arm snakes between Minho’s and he fastens a harsh grip. It doesn’t take long for Changbin to sidle up to Jisung and cling to his torso. 

It’s hard to say anything. There’s so much, and hangs over their head like a churning anvil, ready at any moment to drop and crush them to smithereens. It sits upon their tongue like a weighted, dull blade. Opening their mouths might just cut the anvil down or slice through their cheeks. 

It’s good that Minho usually isn’t fazed by stakes like those. “We’re not okay, are we?” he asks into the night, words as crisp as the air beating around them. For a moment, his words just shock them. Then they break into snickers of deprecation. 

“That’s what happens when two mages are power hungry and greedily rob your kingdom,” Jisung notes, wiping a tear from his eye. It’s probably both from the laughter and distress. “And when your best friend hasn’t woken up in a day and might never again…” 

“Imagine,” Changbin dryly remarks, “Who’d find themselves in that situation?” Jisung gives him a withering glare. 

“What happened to the optimism, Jisung?” Seungmin questions a bit jokingly, “We’ll make it out of this fine. I mean, haven’t we gone through this before. Difference is, we were children and Minho and I can’t remember it.” 

“If we made it out before and are still here today,” Minho tacks on, “Then we can do it again. We’re much more capable now.” They’re nice words, glazed in reassurance and comfort, but there’s more to the dough than that. It’s said solemnly, and that makes it more real. Minho says it with a serious tone. He’s not being playful or optimistic. He’s saying it with determination. Less, we’ll make it guys! Everything will be okay! And more, it’s going to take a lot, but we’re going to work through this. With blood, sweat, and tears. We will. 

Changbin looks up, and he still sees the anvil, still feels the blade slipping down his throat. And it’s scary and painful, but there’s stone over his skin and a shield over his head. None of them are invincible, or particularly powerful. It’s proven over and over again with each spin of Earth on its axis. Each tragedy with each dawn. But they’re real determined. And real scared. And really caring about each other. 

In the end, they’ll make sure the universe has no choice but to give them their happy endings. Scathed, but happy. 

+

Jeongin sneaks into the kitchens. It’s about as empty as the tunnels, the chefs and other helpers taken by Hyunjin and Changbin days before to their large camp across the river. It’s eerie, each step he takes a hollow echo. Both times he’s been in here, it’d been full. Lethargic mostly since the only people properly served in the kingdom were the queen and king. But full and warm, the steam of delicious aroma wafting through the air. 

All he can smell now is stale bread left woefully abandoned by whoever baked the loaf before leaving. It only amplifies the empty feeling left behind with it. 

He walks around, fingers dragging along the metal and wooden surfaces as he sours for food and reminisces. He’d stolen peach tarts with Minho and Jone here. He’d gotten sugar for Berry here. He wonders how she’s doing. It’s been weeks since either he or Hyunjin was here to tend her. He hopes she’s okay, or she was content before she passed at the very least. Maybe somehow she knew Chan was always alive, and was waiting for the moment he’d be rediscovered. 

Jeongin will look for her. And he’ll miss her. 

He finds a stash of food sloppily thrown together on a single surface. He picks a random apple from the bunch and bites into it, chewing it calculatively. A little overripe, but not unbearable. He scarfs the thing down in record time, holding the core by the stem and looking around for a waste bin. 

As he steps towards one there’s the clang of the heavy door being opened and he barely thinks before he dashes into a pantry cabinet and holds it shut. The voices he hears make his blood run cold. 

“Did they all die in the fires? Where have all the staff gone?” Jeongin has to seriously ponder how this cruel airhead had dominated their lives and ripped them to shreds. 

Doyle isn’t any better, heavy footsteps following the click of her heels forebodingly. “Fools must have thought they could save their families if they left.” 

She scoffs, and she’s fearfully close, no doubt by that pile of food. They must have been the ones to assemble it in the first place. “Well, it was all for nothing. I can still feel that pest’s magic. Everywhere. The fires did nothing to eliminate him...When I get my hands on him I will wring his neck for ruining our plans.” 

It was a bit humorous, how well Chan predicted the wretch. 

“If you wanted to get ahold of him so badly,” Doyle says back, restrained petulance teeming at the edges of his tone, “Then you probably shouldn’t have expelled that much gold dust into the air...Do you know how many of my favorite necklaces you ruined to do that spell.” 

Jeongin’s breath hitches. 

“Oh, stop it,” she huffs, “You’ll get enough gold to replace them in no time. Plus, it won’t kill him. It’ll just severely weaken him. Keep him from moving long enough for us to track him. And then I’ll get my hands on him. And I’ll finish the job. I was merciful the first time, I tried to make it painless.” There’s a loud sharp noise and Jeongin winces, trying to not let the grating squeal irk him into squirming in the small space. 

Her voice is more airy when she speaks nest, as if she’s shaken off the irritation even though it sticks to the edge of her nasal words. “I won’t this time,” she chirps, deceptively saccharine, “I can’t risk him taking our throne.” 

Doyle just hums, probably thankful she didn’t exclude him from the statement. There’s a suffocating silence as they eat, and then they leave as if it were another casual conversation. As soon as the heavy door clangs shut and the obnoxious footsteps fade, Jeongin falls from his hiding place, landing on the hard ground with terror. 

Shakily, he stands, exhaling and inhaling and gulps, taking in the air he’d been afraid to properly breathe while hidden. He startles when he sees in one of the few metal surfaces, a gleaming steak knife, sharp and polishes. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together, and although he’s accustomed to the cold, he shivers. 

He slides back down to the floor, hands bracing his face as he picks through what he’s heard. Gold dust. Still long enough to be tracked. His mind flashes back to Chan, vulnerable and broken on the cot, Felix no better beside him. Changbin and Jisung feet away trying to keep each other from slipping to darker times. Hyunjin and Minho helplessly watching their friends crumble.

Seungmin, sleepy and groggy, be careful . Jeongin hadn’t the foresight to say it back. He’d assumed that where they were, with all the preparations they’ve done, that he’d be the one leaping into danger, leaving them behind in the only place of safety. But no. With Chan out of commission, they were in more danger than they realized. And maybe they could escape if Keres truly did find them, but Chan...he’d have no chance. 

He can see it all in technicolor, just like when they escaped the castle, running with panicked pants of shallow breath. Felix desperately trying to stay behind and defend Chan, to take him with him. Minho knowing it’s useless and having to pick between risking Felix’s life and helping him, or doom Chan’s by forcing Felix to run with him. Either way, as soon as they were all gone, and it was only Chan left. There would be no other hope. For any of them. 

He wishes he could be with them now, to scream at them to move, to get the refugees to hide in plain sight, to lose Keres. But he wasn’t. And that was better. Because if he hadn’t gone at all, then he’d just be another clogged gear in that nightmare. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, searing warmth trickling down his face and over his fingers. The image of that knife in the table, placed directly over Chan’s heart, haunts him, trailing over ever loop of his brain. Please , he begs silently, Whatever the hell bonds me and Seungmin. Get them to safety. All of them. Please.

And with no other choice but to continue, he slips behind the kitchen’s freezer and back into the passageways. He’ll trust his friends. This, this is all up to him. Thinking of the map he’d wedged away, he moves onward, up to the room where the evil sleeps. 

+

Seungmin jerks awake, disoriented and with a crick in his back. Groggily, he views the cat padding his chest, frantically chirping directly into his face. He picks her up sluggishly and sets her aside as he sits up, trying to locate the panic that had woken him. He looks around. 

Everything around him is serene. Surreally so. He realizes that last night he’d fallen asleep at Minho’s side, said boy’s head nestled against Jisung’s chest, only inches away from where Changbin’s rests. Hyunjin must’ve fallen asleep in the tent with Felix. 

It was dark, the moon hidden beneath the veil of smoke, the sun nowhere near rising. Well into the night. Not a noise to be heard but the rustle of leaves and the sway of branches. So why is he awake? King meows beside him, urgently bumping his elbow with her head. Frown deep, he pets her head. 

“What’s up with you?” he yawns, just as a piercing feeling hits his gut with a punch. He hears Jeongin’s voice ring through his head and he doubles over, gasping. Gold. Gold in the air. Keres after you. Get them to safety. All of them. As it dwindles he sits over his knees, breathless. 

His first urge is to get up and bolt . But after a bit of digestion, it’s easy to see Jeongin isn’t in trouble. It’s him who’s in trouble. Him and the group. He peeks over his shoulder at the three curled around each other, gleaning all the warmth and comfort they could in their trying times. He looks at King next and squints. 

He read up all he could on magic after learning about the Crimson Prince. There was barely anything but a book or two in the libraries, the rest mournfully either burnt or stored somewhere no one like him could find. But Chan had had some he saved in storage that he brought out to teach Felix. Along with that, Seungmin had listened attentively to any lessons they had near him. He didn’t have any idea that he exhibited any magic, but if he were to need any help from it, he wouldn’t be clueless. As well as if there were any common magic linked to his and Jeongin’s bond. 

Animals, they were much closer to nature, majority born within the dwells and fingers of spindled branches and hearts of Earth herself. They weren’t all pixie friends and goblin helpers, but they weren’t blind to magic. They could see it and feel it much better than even a mage. Cats were infamous acquaintances of magic, a bridge between the animal world and the human one. They were intuitive and it showed in the glow of their eyes and the accuracy of their judgement. 

“You’re trying to tell me something, aren’t you?” Seungmin accuses. King stares back unimpressed, opening her mouth for another bellow. She’s much bigger than when they first took her in, he notes as he gets on his hands and knees, ready to follow her. She’s unsurprisingly thin, but healthy, and her tabby coat shimmers in the bare starlight they recieve. Auburn eyes burn through him knowingly, and he has to wonder where the time and knowledge has left him 

Simply, she leads him to the storage. He pauses in confusion and frustration, wondering how he’s supposed to find anything s6pecific any here that will help him. All he’s gathered, is that by staying in one location, Keres will get to them. And how’s he supposed to remedy that by anything other than moving...Not that they could move Chan in his state. He runs an agitated hand through his hair, wishing Jeongin was at least by his side to keep him grounded.

Oh, and there’s gold in the air. Seungmin doesn’t know how that’s possible but when it’s the very thing that runs through Chan’s and Felix’s blood, anything is up for reason. That’s probably what’s debilitating Chan, and accelerating his already prominent sickness. That would explain it, unfortunately enough. That’s a lot less easy to solve than relocating. 

While he’s busy in his head, King jumps into the chaotic supply of things the mystery trio have gathered over the years, and nimbly navigates within. There’s only the slightest crash as she emerges, a chain swinging between her teeth, the attached charm catching the light and Seungmin’s attention. 

Puzzled, he leans down and retrieves it from her patient mouth, putting it up to the sky and examining it. It was a necklace undoubtedly, but it felt like more, muted in a way that made it heavy, unexplainably putting Seungmin off balance, feeling like he was going to fall any second with it raised. It had a small ruby where the odd feeling originated, prickling upon his hand like poison. Reaching her limits, King bumps his shin, shouting at him. 

Brows furrowed and suspicions raised, he brings the charm to his chest where the chunk of rose gold lays. He yelps as the metal begins to jarringly dig into his skin, almost burning as the ruby got closer. And that’s all he needed to know, practically tripping over himself and then King to get to the main tent, bursting in gracelessly and with no small amount of racket. 

Felix instantly blinks alert, bracing for the worst before his sharp eyes find Seungmin. There was a cold intimidation about him for a moment that Seungmin was glad he didn’t have to feel aimed at him, hurriedly thrusting the accessory in the prince’s face with a slight blubbering fit. 

Dumbfounded and thrown off by Seungmin’s worrying mix of panic and excitement, Felix quickly takes the necklace and peers down at it curiously. “What’s it?” 

Indicating to his own neck, Seungmin answers. “Chan, put it on Chan. No time to explain.” 

The mention of Chan has Felix moving quicker than light, the chain encircled around Chan’s neck in seconds. When it’s on Felix turns to Seungmin with burning question, Hyunjin pitifully left to flop to the ground where he somehow doesn’t stir. “What did I just do?” he demands. With relief, Seungmin recognizes he’s much more present than he has been over the past two days. 

Exhaling, Seungmin sits down like he’d run a marathon, King trotting into the tent just as he does and curling her tail around his thighs. Mustering as much gratitude as he can into a single touch, he strokes her chin appreciatively. “The necklace,” he elaborates, “It repels gold.” 

Disgruntled, Felix’s hand hovers over the jewelry, worried. “It what? Why would you put that on him? That’ll cancel out his magic and make us invisible to him as well as him invisible to me.” He wasn’t accusatory, knowing Seungmin better than to ever try to hurt them, especially knowing Felix’s level of threat to him. 

Sobering, Seungmin rubs his temple. The shift in mood is tangible and Felix leans away from Chan to give Seungmin his full focus. “I woke up a few minutes ago, which if you haven’t noticed, it’s midnight. I woke up with a sense of panic, but couldn’t figure it out. Until I heard Jeongin’s voice. At first, I thought he was in danger. But he wasn’t. We were in danger.” 

Felix pales considerably, swallowing any frenzy of questions that mob his mouth, letting Seungmin continue without any interruption. 

“Keres...she cast a spell of some sort. She expelled gold dust into the air. So fine she didn’t need much to disperse it to where we would be in the forest.” 

Blinking dumbly, Felix echoes with horror. There’s no missing the way he blindly reaches for Chan’s hand and squeezes with all his strength. “Gold dust..in the air?” 

Seungmin nods slowly. “Just enough to make sure she’d take Chan out. Not to kill him or alert him, but enough to do…” Gulping he gestures to Chan, heat behind his eyes. “This. Jeongin wasn’t able to get much through. I’m guessing he’s continuing his own little mission now that the message is across, but I was able to piece together that she was trying to root him into a single place. His plan to scatter your guys’ magic to confuse her had been working, and since burning the villages down didn’t erase his existence, she was gonna try to still him and track him. And...I don’t think she had any good intentions from there.” 

That went without saying. 

“I guess King is more in on everything than we knew,” Seungmin skips over, “She lead me to the storage and got that necklace out. I bet there’s a story about it but I put it up to the gold Chan uses to track us, and it repulsed. Almost violently...It’s probably a temporary solution, but hopeful it will get him out of this state.” 

As soon as he says it, Felix doesn’t take his eyes off the former prince. Seungmin knows immediately he’s lost him, the other’s vorpal stare ripping over Chan with a terrifying obstinance. Searching for any sign, for any moment, to show Chan was better. Seungmin could tell him it most likely was going to take some time, but Felix already knew that. That wouldn’t stop it. 

So tired after the brief fiasco, Seungmin leans against Felix as he had with Minho, carefully pulling Hyunjin's head into his lap for cushion, and shuts his eyes. “Please rest, Felix,” he murmurs, “We’re gonna need to get moving as soon as he wakes...I think I know why Jeongin left.” 

“Why?” Felix hums, reluctantly pulling from Chan. 

“He’s ending this. Our next stop, the castle.” 

+

Jeongin takes a slight risk and sleeps in the open for the night. He never visited it before, but from the way Seungmin and Felix describes it, he imagined it to be a place of comfort. And it was. The old library. And it is. The moon filtered through the large paned windows, dull with the dying fires’ glaze, but vibrant from the vantage point alone. Somehow, unlike the kitchens, it hadn’t been creepy being so empty. 

Whereas the kitchen had seemed lifeless, sucked of it’s ambiance, the library seemed to provide for itself in personality with clutter alone. While there’s an off putting tension with that very liveliness, like he wasn’t alone when he knew well that he was, it’s supremely preferable to any other part of the castle. 

He explores for a bit as the darkness descends, decorating his fingertips with crinkled words upon paper and dust. He goes upstairs to the large table where he can vividly see Seungmin sitting, flipping restlessly through piles of books faster than a chariot could race. Felix lazing upon the wide window sill behind him, soaking in golden rays. He pushes the stray chair in where Seungmin sits, watching the mirage dissipate. 

He’s never been to literarily inclined, but the abundance of books has his hands itching to run down a worn leather bound spine. No wonder this place had been like heaven to Seungmin, who treasured parchment paragraphs like one would invaluable currency. Being there reminds Jeongin immensely of the other, and though that is currently tainted with worry, it brings a smile to his face. 

He’d curled up in the red chair Felix always longs for when his back aches a little bit too much after aching from a long night’s rest upon bumpy dirt and uneven grass. And it was as homey as the prince had made it out to be, and weighed down by the stress of his friends’ fate and his own, he still managed to wrangle sleep with little to no struggle. 

The library holds its own type of magic in the morning time. As much as he wishes to stay and venture around the stacks of books stories high, he suspects it’s time he really has to get going. If all is going well like he’s optimistically presuming, the other are on their way to the castle, and he has to be ready for them. 

So, dreadfully, up he goes. 

Conveniently enough, the old library leads straight to the new library, the one he actually has been to. It’s significantly more tainted with bad memories, and when Jeongin peers through the cracks between the shelves, he instantly spots the area at the center where he’d been sprawled numbly with Felix’s volatile magic. And when his gaze drifts, he finds with a catch in his breath that the queen and king are sitting in chairs just feet away, radiating with rage. 

“We caught him,” she sneers and fear splits his being momentarily, “But he was already gone. We tore through his entire pathetic camp. But there was nothing to be seen of him. He’d already up and left. Somehow, he’d managed to leave and confuse me once again even with the gold in the air.” 

“Dear—” 

With a violent burst of fury, she stands and slashes her hand through the air, an invisible force slicing through the objects before her, shelves falling with deafening crashes, ripped books scattering across the floor, papers fluttering around her in scenic misery. 

A smile on his face, Jeongin slinks back into the passages, satisfied with what he’s seen. 

+

Breathless, with hands on his knees, Hyunjin announces, “I’ve alerted the villagers and staff. They’re going to be laying low for the next few days. Seungmin, your sister and that whole squad are going to be giving them tips on how to hide from guards as well as some of the staff. They should be safe while we’re gone.” 

Huffing a sigh of relief, Jisung stretches out his back. “That’s good. We’ve gotten all the supplies ready for our trip.” 

Changbin swings several blades around his arm like a vorpal show performance, letting them drop to the ground and directing Hyunjin on how to store them. “We’ve packed everything important. Anything they could use against us, or we could use against them, is either hidden around the clearing, or on our persons.” 

Minho twirls and bows from where he stands. “And we’re all appropriately dressed.” The display brings wry smiles to each their faces. 

Felix can’t keep his hands still, but he’s soothed by each his friends’ efforts. Keres is most likely already sending some sort of troop against them, but they’ve put in all the work to assure that by the time they arrive, they’ll be gone, only the bare bones of their camp left behind in their vestige. Felix sort of wants to her face when she realizes her cruel plan hasn’t worked. Not that Chan has yet to open his eyes since the necklace was placed. 

“So it’s sounding like we’re all good,” he breathes out, his nerves apparent but fading. In response, he gets several enthusiastic nods, and double glances of worry his way that he artfully ignores. He runs a twitchy hand through his hair, it’s grown longer, he’ll have to ask Hyunjin to braid it before they enter the castle. 

There’s a conspicuous rustle, and a following hoarse rasp. “I feel like I’ve been trampled by a couple hundred horses.” 

Though the entirety of Felix sparks alight, his heart bursting and magic flaring, he stays sat for a single second to try and maintain even a portion of composure. It’s definitely a waste of time. Every fiber of his being still feels aflame when he bursts up from the ground and delicately pulls Chan into a firm hug. He wishes he could fling himself at the former prince and cling to him like the lifeline he is, but he’s far too fragile for that right now. 

One day. 

So he holds him like something precious, something cherished and crafted of porcelain. And it’s the absolute truth, his fingers brushing over the ridges of Chan’s spine with extreme care, his chin placed tenderly atop Chan’s head, red curls dull but soft against his cheeks. He shuts his eyes tight and basks in the feeling of Chan’s soft magic enveloping him, a welcome chill like powdery snow. It contrasts the hot tears gathering unbidden at the corners of his trembling smile. 

“Ah, Felix,” Chan murmurs, using all his strength to latch onto Felix’s torso. It’s cathartic. 

He shifts his head, burying his nose in the crook of Chan’s neck, listening to his pulse from there like a lullaby. “I thought this was it,” he cracks, “I thought I’d lose you again.” And even though Chan is in his arms, pressed against him solid and real, he’s still dead cold. A walking corpse, waiting for the strings of his fate to just snap. It makes Felix quake and crumble, weak. 

Chan still hods him, but his body goes tense and he pulls Felix impossibly closer. “People are coming.” 

Seungmin comes forward, nimbly placing a bag over Felix’s shoulder while still allowing their embrace. “How much are you aware of? How much do we need to catch you up on?” 

Chan thinks for a painful short while that drags on. “A lot. What happened to me? Where did my mother’s necklace come from? Why is the camp barren? Why is Jeongin in the castle alone? And...a couple more.” 

Changbin and Hyunjin share a grimace, the last sword placed away. “We can tell you while we flee,” Minho offers, straightening and shaking out his legs, preparing for their long walk. “Maybe a good couple yards away from here. Felix you already scattered some magic around to confuse Keres, right?” 

With no small amount of reluctance, Felix pulls away, keeping his arm linked with Chan’s, nodding. 

“Then let’s get going,” Jisung pipes up from where he’s already breaching the clearing’s border. “Chan, put your necklace back on. Please.” Felix notices then that the necklace is in Chan’s hand rather than around his neck, throat clogging urgently. 

“Don’t worry,” Chan sighs, already lacing it over his collarbone. “I’m guessing that’s why I was out. I couldn’t feel it before but now that I feel for it...there’s a lot of gold in the air. Keres?” He begins to walk, stringing a willing Felix along behind him. He doesn’t get any reply until they’re safely a couple hundred feet away from the camp. 

It would be optimal for Seungmin to explain since he was the one who got all the information, but he’s saving his stamina, possessing significantly less than any of the rest of them. In his stead, Jisung explains with hesitant cheer teeming beneath his voice. If they weren’t on such a strict time limit, Felix bets Jisung would’ve torn Chan from him and coddled him to hell for a good few hours. So he expresses his relief through his perked steps and casual high octave. 

“None of us knew what was happening for a good day or so. You were passed out and unresponsive and we had no idea why, or how to get you to wait. We all kinda thought your body was just giving out on you.” He pauses for a moment, face briefly blank and tormented, chest shuddering, before he continues. 

“Jeongin disappeared the first night. We still kinda don’t know what he’s doing, but he’s doing something up there. He’s fine though, Seungmin can feel it. But last night, or this morning, I guess. Jeongin alerted Seungmin through their bond. Keres had put gold dust into the air, distributing it well and fine enough to go unnoticed to incapacitate you effortlessly so she could get your magic traces to stop scattering and capture you.”

“King, our lovely baby and highest esteemed resident—” The cat proudly mews from Minho’s shoulders, eyes shining “—took Seungmin to storage and took out that necklace I haven’t seen in years. Seungmin figured out geniusly quick what it did, and knowing Keres’ plan, immediately put it on you. And those people you sensed, were definitely after us. So we’re escaping.” 

A bit pale, Chan nods, and Felix tightens his grip on his hand, eliciting a look of gratitude that he takes in and treasures warmly against his heart. When Chan is as close as they can be while walking, Felix questions, “Why does the necklace dispel gold if it was your mother’s? And why are you only wearing it now?” 

Chan thinks about it. “For these exact situations, I suppose. It’s been passed down our family since the mages threatened to take our throne. It wasn’t in preparation for a hex like mine, but it was for the exact reason I didn’t want to put it on until now, when it’s absolutely necessary. It dulls all my magical senses to nothing. It…” He pauses swallowing, looking around. 

“It feels like I’ve lost my sight or hearing, a sixth sense. I’m so used to my magic scoping the area around me and things like that. It was made to hide our magic, if we ever needed to go into hiding. A really odd last resort no one ever expected to be put to use. But it helps me now, I guess. She won’t be able to track me, and it keeps the gold she’s put in the air from, well, killing me. I don’t like it, but it’s not like I have a choice.” 

Now that he realizes it, as close as he is to Chan, he can’t feel him. His magic doesn’t respond to his own, and the emptiness is floundering and hollow. It feels like he’s lost a wall he’s been leaning on for support. He doesn’t trip without it, but that’s largely because Chan is there pushing against him, two opposing forces keeping each other standing. 

How is he supposed to handle losing him.

He shakes the thought away as soon as it appears. A reality without Chan, is a reality he will not entertain. 

Chapter Text

Jeongin checks the floor, how empty it is, breathing in deeply. The eeriness returns, now with a sharp edge of distinct fear. He’s already confirmed that the queen and king are away from their room, but that doesn’t make the den any less scary. He knows how to get out immediately at the click of a doorknob, he has to assure himself over and over again as he comes out from behind the massive wardrobe, he has the ways to keep himself safe. 

It’s much brighter than he’d anticipated. Though it was a bit childish to assume that the room was dark and dreary with bats hanging from the corners and a green fire to be light in the fireplace. But it’s what he had imagined, and probably for good reason. The mages had once been the evil villains of a child fairytale. They were much, much worse though, and that grounds him. 

It’s bright, windows spanning over the entirety of a wall, illuminating the room in startling clarity. The light is unsettling, blinding yet dull because of the smoke. It gives the already creepy ambiance of the empty castle, an even further apocalyptic feel. In the upper corner, he can spot the red sun, and it doesn’t help make him feel like he’s in the same reality he’d been in the forest. 

The furniture isn’t much different from Felix’s in craftsmanship and ritz. Only somehow, they’ve managed to strive for the most opulence they could achieve it seems, everything grand and looming. It was like spinning in a ballroom, the floors pale tile veined with gold, the chandelier shimmering like shards of ice, the vanity dressed in yellow jewelry. Even the bed looked to be a sculpture not fit to be slept in, carved from the finest of silver. 

 It was spacious, so spacious Jeongin’s heart began to sink. He had to search through all of this while the mages were absent to find what he was looking for. He’s hoping that it’s as decorated and bold as everything else in the room. Crossing from the wardrobe to the nearest cluttered surface felt as expansive and exposing as walking the field had. He shivers and pulls his shoulders close to his ear, quickening his pace unnecessarily. 

It’s almost easy to forget who the room belongs to in its vastness for a moment, as he flits through random objects from loose fabrics to dog-eared books. But when he happens across a jar full of the wings of butterflies, he has to pull away, a cloying thick feeling burying deep into his gut. Normal people have random samples of patterns and well-loved literature in their room. But they do not have jars of fauna. 

It was common knowledge even to those who did not know magic existed in this world, that mages get their magic unnaturally, from magical sources. And dark mages, do not care how precious those sources are, plucking horns from unicorns, and ripping off the scales of a  butterfly like it was nothing. Nauseous, he pushes the jar back into its place haphazardly, moving on cautiously. 

And he repeats the process. And repeats. And repeats. The sun rises and rises, and hopelessness begins to fester as he glances around and sees just how much more he has to go through. Leaning with his hands braced against a granite table, he curses beneath his breath. 

+

He stares up at the towers, daunting and dark, tall silhouettes in the distance that shortens with each solemn step. He shudders, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to rid of the imprint of them upon his lids. He turns to the only other awake. Felix, somehow bright as a star in the canopied night, magic involuntarily coveting him in a mystical glow. It was probably him doing his best to watch Chan in the night. 

The prince’s fingers trail endlessly over the lines of Chan’s scars, even through the fabric it seems he’s memorized where each indent is, gracefully tracing over it, causing Chan to shiver and curl in his lap even further, interrupting Felix’s soothing process. Felix doesn’t mind at all, thinly smiling before repeating it. Changbin feels like he’s intruding, observing as he is. He might’ve been, if this weren’t the delicacy in which Felix and Chan always treat each other with, from the soft whispers of moonlight, to broad daylight with all eyes on them. 

They don’t even notice what they do, but everyone else around them does. Seungmin and Mnho for some reason, never look back when they notice it, finding it unbearable to watch such moments, a heavy burden flexing over their shoulders and tightening the corners of their eyes. Hyunjin and Changbin for some reason, whenever they spot it, can’t look away, from the dancing, to this precious occurrence. 

He thinks it has to do with their overlapping wants. Changbin likes to see the worlds his loved ones walk among, the one they see, the colors that douse their perception and alter it. Chan’s is ironically, golden. But that’s no one’s fault but Felix’s, as large and overwhelming as the sun, present everywhere Chan looks, his golden freckles as vast as the stars in the Seungmin, his hair streaked gold like an endless river, his magic golden and blanketing and the only thin that keeps Chan warm. More powerful than even the sun. 

Hyunjin on the other hand, wishes to capture everything in pictures rather than Changbin’s preference of moving dynamic poetry. He sees the way Felix’s smile widens in the presence of Chan, the way his shoulders open, baring his heart for the world to take, knowing and trusting them all to protect it from the darkness it’s already faced. He’s sleeping now, or else he’d be right beside Changbin, head upon his shoulder, as their views merge, and create the greatest art imaginable. 

One day, Changbin will see the world from Hyunjin's perspective just as he does Chan and Jisung, and he’s excitedly apprehensive for the brushstrokes that will wash over him as he sees every charcoal line that draws up the dance each person performs through their separate lives. He can’t wait. 

He’s been staring so long, Felix was bound to notice, raising his head and meeting Changbin’s eyes, tired fondness prominent in his own. His hand stops over Chan’s wrist, enclosing it and resting their, feeling a pulse that he needs to be calm nowadays. Changbin relies on him to relay that assurance, looking to Felix whenever he himself needs to know if Chan is still dancing. It’s a bit relieving, and selfish, that filter that now protects him from the worst of his concern about the world he loves best, dying. 

He’s glad for Felix, because before him, Chan’s world had been so very dark. And Changbin hadn’t been able to escape it. 

“You’re deep in thought,” Felix comments. 

He huffs a laugh, rolling his shoulders and setting himself in miniscule movement, removing himself from the roots that ravel around his mind whenever he travels from his mind to his friends’. “Hard not to when alone at night.” 

A slight grimace, Felix offers an expression akin to apology. “I’m not the best company am I?” 

“‘S not what I was implying,” Changbin denies, “I wasn’t saying it was a bad thing whatsoever...I’d say you’re pretty good company. Even if you’re spending all night ogling my best friend.” 

Felix tints pink just a bit, blinking down at Chan almost against his will. He exhales shaky, brushing sweat-soaked hair from said boy’s face. “I wish that’s all I was doing. He does have a pretty face, scars and all. The sickliness...takes away from it.” Less so he thinks it diminishes Chan’s appeal to him, but he resents what the ashen pallor tells. “Has he ever looked better?” 

Changbin answers truthfully, “This is the best he’s ever been.” And it says a lot, to be happiest on the precipice of death. The things he’s gained, only for it to all be taken away. His bittersweet smile drains, only the sourness left behind in his frown. “He knows, about your confession.” 

Felix pauses, blinking indecipherably. “Was he told?” 

“He figured when I asked him his feelings of you. I guess he knows you that well, or he guessed too close to home and it was only confirmed. Probably both. If it makes you feel better, he learned of it only before the gold took over.” 

He’s regarded blandly. “How would that make me feel better?...He hasn’t brought it up yet...He plans to reject me, doesn’t he?” Changbin doesn’t need to nod, his stillness answer enough. Felix sighs, the pad of his thumb roughly brushing over Chan’s nose like a painless punishment. “Idiot.” But he elaborates no further, and Changbin is left to ponder what he thinks of that, if he’s presumed the reason as to why, or if he’s disregarding it altogether. Or maybe he’s bundling it all up to deal with after they’ve dealt with the mages. 

Changbin sort of hopes so, because by then, there will be no rejection whatsoever. 

“Do you think it’s reciprocated?” He has to ask, curiosity nagging him, the silence of the night leaving him no defense against it. 

The silence is audible, tangible and weighted, settling over Felix like a cloak of intrigue. The prince’s bottom lip rolls between his teeth as he thinks and thinks. Changbin doesn’t push him an inch, letting the time they have tick by patiently. 

“It’s obvious isn’t it, that it is?” Felix finally gives, mouth straight, “And if it weren’t, I honestly don't think I’d care. I know he’d never do anything to harm me, and that includes letting petty unrequited romance get in the way of something we only just re-earned. Still, maybe it’s hopeful delusion, but with the way he cares for me, I think I’m something different than a friend. There’s more.” 

He exhales so loud it almost disturbs the peace of the area, Changbin startling pathetically. “I’m quite tired of discussing it,” admits the prince, “I could give a crap less about whether he cares about me at all. I just want him to live, Changbin. That’s all that matters now. Even if by some oddity, I’m only allowed to view him from afar, I just want him alive and real...I don’t want to see what I become if I lose him a second time.” 

Changbin empathizes, rubbing his eyes. “I don’t want to see what I become if I lose him a first time…” He looks up, the moon directly above him, like it’s watching him, or threatening to drop over them. “Our watch,” he hums, “It’s over. Time to switch.” 

The look he gets is incredulous and full of tired ridicule. Changbin interprets it well, knowing no matter what shifts they’ve set, Felix will only sleep fully when Chan is in the clear. He might accidentally slip into a doze unwillingly with the exhaustion and stress that drape from his shoulders in a train, but not without fight. So Changbin doesn’t bother with it, gently shaking Jisung and Hyunjin awake for their shift. 

He lays next to Felix and Chan while the others shake off their rest, chattering hushed amongst themselves to wake them fully. He reaches out a bit blindly as his lids crash shut, grabbing for Felix’s hand. It’s easy to feel alone no matter how accompanied you are when the person you hold most dear is slipping away, like you’re losing all you love in a single person. He’s well accustomed to the special type of loneliness. 

He’s ever eternally grateful for Felix for not only taking up his dragging mantle of caring for Chan unconditionally, but for waiving the mantle nearly entirely, making the reason it was so tiring to fill that role practically cease. The least he can do for the person who’s made his prince happier, in turn granting him and Jisung liberty to the same joy, is assure him to no end, that he wasn’t alone. 

Even if Chan eventually passes before his time, Felix will never be alone. And Changbin knows for sure now, that neither will he. 

+

When he happens upon it, he almost skims over it, a finger’s breadth away from dooming him in his friends with no return. It makes a guilty anxiety churn later on, but at the moment, all he can recognize is the nervous beat of apprehension strong and fearful through his heart. 

Since the butterfly wings, morbidly beautiful in all their hues, he’s been more careful in his searching, touching everything with measured trepidation. It’s how he almost misses it. So far, he’s seen parts of creatures he’s never wanted to see apart from them. It wasn’t the same as meat for supper, because he starts seeing stranger things, like wings that shimmer more delicate and iridescent than river mist, and silver locks of hair that almost fade from his sight at a certain angle. He’s never seen a magical being in his life, and he fears this may be his first sighting. 

He feels sick, going through it all, his loathing for the mages building and building by the second. He discovers another jar, placed atop a glass desk you can peer into. None of them have labels, but this one has teeth, sharper and larger than any he’s ever seen with his own eyes, or in the informational texts Seungmin got his hands on from a distant village’s school. He’s ready to move past it and get the sight out of his mind as soon as possible. But as he places it back where he was, his reflection doesn’t stare back through the glass. 

For a moment, he just gazes upon the anomaly, waiting for it to fix itself. But it doesn’t change, he doesn’t see himself as he should in the surface. And he runs his hands over the area, feeling for any crevice hidden. And he finds it, nails digging into an invisible crack, and pulling up. It lifts, and reveals a nook where a book safely nests. A relieved grin splits his face, and he pulls it out, tenderly setting aside the glass. It’s simple, leatherbound as Seungmin’s, but much larger, bigger and heavier than his head. 

He flops to the ground, and opens the cover, straining his eyes to read the curled and swooped writing. Cursive English. He never learned to write it, and didn’t bother to learn to read it. But he can pick out words here and there and as he does, his chest expands, making room for the hope that spans largely over his heart and beyond. Quickly, he finds a book similar to the one in another of the many stacks in the room, and places it in the nook, setting the glass back in its place. 

He prays they won’t check for it before the others arrive. But it won’t be like they’ll be able to find it anyways, clutched tightly in his arms as he slips behind their wardrobe and directs himself through the most secretive passage there is. 

It’s heavy, the book, but it feels lighter than a feather as he descends, a beacon of pure light in his arms. A physical chance at defeating what should’ve never become. Here is sprawled the mages’ beginnings, and here, Jeongin will write their ends. 

+

They’re at the edge of the forest, the familiar field splayed out like a canvas before their very eyes, vacant and vast. And right beyond it, the side of the castle they’d escaped. And here they were, running right back in, in hopes they’ll have no reason to leave again. 

He squeezes Chan’s chilled hand and shifts closer, the realization that this is where he first remembered Chan hitting him with roiling surreality. He lifts his shoulder, catching Chan’s attention, pointing to a spot nearby. “There,” he whispers, soft and awed, “That’s where I had my first vision. You were riding Berry.” 

Chan gazes upon the space with the same disbelief. Felix has a sense of splitting, looking upon the forks of the paths he’s taken. He thinks back to the day he mustered that burst of courage, and how it led him to this point. In another reality, where he bit his tongue and stayed silent, he’d still be in his room, Seungmin and Jeongin separate, Jisung gone after his mission to check on him was succeeded, and there’s no telling the condition Chan would be in. It’s crazy, how far he’s come, and all because of a single question. 

Who were the previous royal family? What were they like? You have to know, right.

The tutor hadn’t known. But Felix had all too well. And his magic was finally given the release it’d been fighting for for years. In a, at the time, painful manifestation that was kin to dangling his life before him and zipping away as he reached for it, forcing him on bleeding knees and palms. He looks down at his curled fingers, stone cased around Chan’s. 

He’d caught it, and now his life spools through his veins in golden thread. And his world stands beside him. It was all worth it. And whatever follows, will be worth it too. For him. For Chan. For all of them. 

“What’s the plan?” he asks, breaking the tense quiet that veils them. It falls away in increments, brick by brick. Seungmin looks away first, and Felix supposes, all that matters to him is in that castle, but he doesn’t need to be looking at the castle to appraise it. Hyunjin second, contempt curled in his lingering snear, his distaste for his once prison apparent to the blind. The others continue for longer, sharing the same bitter yearning and hope in their starry irises with pursed lips. 

“Guessing we’re splitting in teams of two as usual,” Hyunjin suggests, “With an outlier?” 

Seungmin shakes his head, face lightening, “No, Jeongin’s on his way.” 

Hyunjin regards him skeptically, hand on his hip, eyes darting between Seungmin and the castle’s field doors. “I resent your bond sometimes. Makes you creepy. How quick will he be then? And the other pairs.” 

There’s a crash and they all jump, Felix pressing against Chan’s side, hand raised towards the person tumbling before. It takes an instant to recognize him. Ruffled and soot-stained, Jeongin dazedly peers up at them, spotting Chan with a parted mouth. He wasn’t nearly as physical as Felix was, so all he does is smile toothily, radiating relief. “Hey, Carm.” 

“Hey, Jeongin.” 

Simple greetings, brimming, overflowing, with solace and care. Felix wishes he could watch it longer. But far too much in the way of that, and Jeongin gets to his feet, brushing off his pants with a single hand, the other securely wrapped around a large spartan book. 

“Now that you’re back,” Mnho intones, “Do you mind telling us why you left?” 

And Jeongin displays that very book like one would a newborn child, pride simmering along the sharp curves of his face. The thing looks aged and worn, as valuable as the pebble stuck in the soles of Felix’s boots. But there’s clearly something important about it, if not by Jeongin’s treatment of it, than the repressed magic that flows around it like vapor. 

Chan’s eyes narrow, then widen, almost comical, as he comes to a realization none of them have reached yet. “No,” he mutters, “You didn’t.” 

Jeongin is elated Chan understands, rushing forward and placing the book in Chan’s hand like a treasure. And Chan handles it with the same painstakingness, regretfully unclasping his hand from Felix’s and running it over the cover, opening it with a gasp. 

Jisung peeks over his shoulder, brows furrowed. “What is it?” Seungmin squishes between him and Chan, gawking. Felix thinks and thinks about what the both of them would know that the others don’t. 

“Magic,” he breathes, “Jeongin, you found their book of magic?” He too, sidles up to the former prince, desperately trying to read the words. He could read cursive english easily, it was like like the royal mother tongue. But written. It was a bit odd, to read from the first page though, as when this old book was begun, Keres must have been a very different person. Hesitantly, he pushes all the pages over until they’re on the last. 

The words are harsh and vorpal, in their essence and their shape, torn into the page with blue ink like it was ichor taken from her very palm instead of dyed. Much different than the uncertain soft curves of the beginning cursive. So different it felt wrong. And it felt even worse, reading the meticulous details put into dispeling gold in the air, intended to debilitate the very person holding the book. 

Before everyone can finish reading, Chan begins to frantically flip through the sheets, startling them. There’s purpose in his flitting fingers and no one intervene, curious and a bit worried. Finally, he stops and with a swallow, Felix reads what’s on there. 

He shuts the book, taking it away momentarily. Chan’s eyes are hazy and vacant, lips pressed pale. “Looking at that was useless,” Seungmin comments, pulling away unsettled, “Why?” 

“I don’t know,” Chan replies, “You can see emotions in her writing. I wanted to see what was going through her head when she casted that. To see if there was any remorse.” He doesn’t continue, he doesn’t need to. There wasn't any. The words to the hex that was killing Chan by the second without even the curse’s aid, were pure fury. 

He shakes his head and settles his shoulders, looking up at them, the daze gone and replaced with absolute clarity. Did he feel any guilt for the contempt he held for Keres? Was that why he felt it worthy to look at the hex he knew the details of all too well? Felix stares intensely at the one he loves, puzzled. 

“Maybe there was a chance,” Chan speaks, torpid and stumbled, “That we could have spared her. But she’s held an obsessive grudge on me for defying her and the curse. And I don’t doubt that she does the same for Felix…” 

In a striking moment, Felix sees a third reality, an unreachable one that graces his dreams in pretty little hops, taunting and teasing. Before him stands the crown prince, heir to the throne, future king. Well attuned to his people, compassionate, sympathetic, and all too generous. Each person under his kingdom’s name a thread wrapped tight around his fingers, turning them purple. In every reality, does Chan push Felix away so he doesn’t see the truth of severity until it grips them both in its merciless claws. 

Felix doesn’t want to imagine the cold shoulder he’d receive in gilded halls, wondering if it was the servant uniform or the nature of his being that made him undeserving of the prince’s heart he had no choice but to fall for. But something would happen. He and Chan would hurt, it seems to be written in the neutral galaxies of their universe, and Chan would give him his all. He would stop straining himself for the greater good, as long as the good he was closest to was content. 

But that’s where Felix hits a wall. That’s where he sits right now, Chan’s core resting within Felix’s own chest, undoubtedly his but locked by a key threateningly held to Chan’s throat. No clue what is in store for them. If the misery will gave way into something worth it, something okay. 

When Chan meets his eyes, Felix knows they’re not seeing the same things, himself floating and wandering between any world where he can hold Chan close, and be assured that it’s not temporary. Chan grounded with cold talons to the dirt of this world, like he was already beneath it. Drinking in ever last drop of the place that never did him any good, looking for salvation before an endless, fitful, rest. 

Denial and acceptance. Neither is appealing in a case as bleak as this. 

“No,” Felix utters hollow, “No doubt. Never was.”

Chan’s face pinches oddly and Jeongin pushes past the two, splitting the disconnect gaping brittle and sharp between them like a snapped bone. “We’ll start planning,” he says over his shoulder, “You guys have a good idea of their magic now, right?” 

Seungmin tilts his head, finishing what Jeongin might not want to, the only one blunt enough to deliver it with a slice unafraid to jar Felix. “Who and how is taking down Keres?” It’s unspoken that they will have to split, somehow in some way. They cannot have the two magic users undistributed. 

Wordlessly, Chan ducks his head and wanders feet away, his silhouette blending into the forestry. Felix exhales shakily and joins him. 

Denial and acceptance. How do those fare when butting heads? 

Chan looks out onto the castle, expression unreadable. “If we were in another reality,” he starts and Felix’s breath hitches, focus hooked more hopelessly than a pirate’s on a bait of jewels. “We’d be betrothed. Or near it. I’d be in my mother’s room right now, asking her the best way to get your attention, willingly oblivious to the fact that I already had it. I would damn all repercussions of marrying a servant boy without hesitation. Anything to be with you. I told you once, that your smile is the only treasure I would die for, and that will never change.”

Felix has no idea where this is going, chest churning with anxiety. “And I said if that was so, I’d never smile again.” He’s trying to process Chan’s words. He knew from last night, that Chan was aware of his feelings. And he’d known deep down, that they were returned, but none of that explained this. 

His rebuttal brings a chuckle and smile to Chan’s lips, and though Felix feels it’s entirely inappropriate for the dread he feels, he still wholly appreciates it. Grim and rueful, Chan turns to him, getting close. Cherishing, he cups Felix’s face, resting their foreheads against one another. 

“Please don’t,” he pleads softly, a rustle of a leaf, a dying breeze, a fading song, “I’ll take down Keres. I’ll take from her an equivalent of what she took from me. I’m sorry, to take that opportunity away from you, but I fear what she will take from you, is not something I can make up for. So please, don’t say that.” 

Denial and acceptance. 

Felix is deadly scared, the lump in his throat is unforgiving, swallowed and landing against his heart like hail. He can’t breathe. Terror courses through his veins and pumps through his head at a rapid pace that makes him sick and dizzy, vertigo overtakes him despite his feet firmly still against the unmoving soil. 

But Chan is calm. So calm it’s almost infuriating. But Felix cannot fault him for something he himself isn’t capable of. 

Waveringly and pitiful, Felix chokes out, “What is that? T-that you can’t make up for.” 

Chan pulls back, eyes darting around Felix’s stricken face with frustrating sympathy. They fall on Felix’s lips, and with their closed distance and the intimacy of their current vulnerability, on contrasting ends of a grievous spectrum, Felix almost thinks they’re going to kiss. And if Chan were even a hint cruel, they would. But the tender way in which he retracts from Felix, silent and refusing to respond, is cruel enough. 

Acceptance must drown you, when the thing you’re accepting is as dark and hopeless as what Chan faces. It must choke him noiselessly and spread over his entire body, filling his lungs just enough to make each breath a pain, but not enough to deal the finishing blow. It must take you slowly and surely, sparing not a second of throbbing agony. So that by the time what you’ve accepted comes, it hurts less than anticipating it. 

But denial, denial is aggressive. It stalks you evilly and pays your ignorance in jabs. Knives and daggers, pins and needles, just beneath your skin. They wait for each moment acceptance draws near, flipping to their points and stabbing. And Felix feels each one of them now, up and down his arms, in the freezing skin of his quivering cheeks, tear streaked and aching with the remembrance of a lingering touch. 

It hurts. It hurts so much. But at last he isn’t drowning. And as he watches Chan retreat, back stiff and despondent, he knows Chan is reaching the brink, fluid leaking with each step. Not from his eyes, but crawling up his throat. 

Denial and acceptance. 

Felix and Chan. 

Why does fate keep them so far apart?

+

They’re slow and silent, working through the guard one by one, merciful and efficient. They sneak behind a person, two at a time, one for Changbin, one for Mnho. With the blunt end of their knives, they butt the head of their opponent, nonlethal because some of these guards were working for their lives. Mnho recognizes one, big and burly and mindless, the one that had caught Seungmin and Jeongin, and he makes sure that when he knocks him out, it’ll do a bit more than bruise. 

Changbin watches with a raised brow as he goes down, commenting, “That looked personal.” 

Mnho kicks the incapacitated body aside, ready to move on. “It was.”

“Oh, is that…” Seungmin pops up beside him, tilting his head curiously. His eyes tighten at the edges and he grips Mnho’s shoulder tight, his mouth a firm line imprinted upon his face. He was behind them, much less experienced in stealth and taking people out without lethally injuring them.

They’d split into two pairs of three and a pair of two. In each, they made sure they had a way of communicating with each other while largely distanced. Jeongin in the single pair with Chan, and Felix placed in a group with Jisung and Sam. Jeongin and Chan together so they can communicate with Felix and Jeongin simultaneously, making sure everyone was aware of the situation in ever corner. And they were two of the communicators in a single group, because they had the most dangerous task of everyone. 

“I”ve had the most time to study her magic,” Jeongin had given when roles were distributed, apprehensive but ready . In his short time alone, he’d pondered and resolved what he, what they were up against. It was an inevitability, if he was going to continue to love and cherish the people beside them, then he was going to fight this battle. There was no longer any hesitation. “Her journal . Whoever faces her, I’ll go with them. I know more technically than any other here.”

And all but Felix and Chan themselves, looked towards the two magic users after. Which of them was going to be facing Keres? 

Mnho steps a bit aside, lightly gesturing to the unconscious man who had been the first to pin a nail in the wall that had sheltered Jeongin and Seungmin’s life. He smiles like a devil, but it’s laced with anxiety and hesitation. “Honors?” 

Seungmin stares for a short moment, though it seems infinitely long, drawn eternal with the height of the stakes and the depth of their fears, each one entirely too probable. Right now, each and every of their family, was stepping into a different realm of danger, and they won’t know until it’s most likely too late if something happens. 

He shakes his head minutely and walks resolutely past the man, not a thought thrown his way. “We’ve gone through about three-fourths of the outside guard.” Since he wasn’t with them to fight, he was with them to assess. They were all great at picking up details, but Seungmin was there to make sure they were paying attention to the guards, and he the environment. “The others as a combined force probably already took out the few inside, but I wanna reunite as quick as possible.” 

And that was a sentiment easily shared. 

They take out two more. 

It’d been a heavy tension for all the time it took for Chan and Felix to decide between themselves who was going to face Keres. Mnho had thought they were going to walk away again, but it quickly became clear that the previous encounter they had like that, had left them too fragile and wounded, Felix’s eyes rimmed in crimson as bright as Chan’s hair, Chan’s own eyes dead and dull. 

Neither looked at the other. They couldn’t bear too, and that was what made everyone else the most aware, because at every other time, they couldn’t look away. A sun and rose, they were made to face the other, but the rose was withering and the sun was mourning leathery petals. At first it was a war of safety. 

“I’ll do it. Keres underestimates me more.” 

“I’ll do it. I’m more experienced.” 

Then a battle of rights. 

“Keres hindered my life. But she took everything from Chan. That can’t be accounted for.” 

“She took from me, but she didn’t tortue me. I could live without her cage.” 

But then Felix had finally looked up, grave. “You said you would take her down, Chan. Do it. For the both of us. Besides, Doyle was the one who tortured me. She just administrated.” 

The situation had been settled. But none of them felt nearly relieved. In fact, all that ensued was more disrest. If the rose is dead, and the sun is dim, what will defeat Keres’ shadow.. 

Another two. 

“Halfway through the last fourth,” Seungmin announces, swiping a scrape on Mnho’s face with a handkerchief already stained. Mnho has to wonder if it was from Felix’s supply, the ones Jeongin had packed for the nosebleeds that had once frequented with them, unknowing that Chan would easily break that trait. 

He doesn’t mind it, and he thanks Seungmin with a wordless nod. There’s a bead of sweat along Seungmin’s jaw and Mnho frowns. “Worried?” 

Seungmin slumps with a large exhale, and Changbin rounds beside them, setting his knife in his sheath, fingers still wrapped around the hilt, never leaving. He seems to have gathered their conversation, looking at Seungmin with wide, open eyes that portray is willingness to listen. 

“Incredibly,” Seungmin admits a bit stiffly, but it makes sense. Unlike Felix, when emotions are too hard for him to instantly word, he doesn’t continue to try and make them, he simply lets it exude in his actions, so what he says, will be entirely under his control. Verbally, he tends to stay reclusive. But he has the time for neither of his preferences, hurried and labored with his concern. 

“I trust both him and Chan, to take care of themselves and each other. But it’s Keres...She’s only human, but with all she’s managed, she seems so untouchable. She’s weaker than the force of us united, it’s doubtless. But right now they’re alone. Chan is weakened, and Jeongin is inexperienced and magicless...how does Felix manage every day like this?” 

Worrying and aching for the one he loves most, constantly plagued by the cord of danger wrapped tight around his neck like the promise of a death wish

“I can feel the moment Jeongin gets in trouble,so it’s not like I have to worry about that. But I won’t feel anything until he gets in trouble. And I have to be by his side when that happens. I have to…” 

Mnho clicks his tongue and Changbin shifts at the sound, stance forming from relaxed to alert. “We’ll be there. C’mon, loverboy, we’ll get the last of these real quick, then we’ll meet with princeling number one and the two dorks. And in no time, we’ll be with princeling number two and your bonded whatever.” 

Changbin cocks his head curiously, the corner of his mouth lifting teasingly. “You’ve gotten a lot more reassuring as of late, valet.” 

“I’ve had far too much practice.” 

And with the light chatter, Seungmin’s shoulders untense. His face doesn’t brighten, but a ease flows into his demeanor, and he accepts easily, that the only way to solve his concern, is by moving as quickly as possibly right now, so that in the next few minutes, he’ll be grounded beside Jeongin again.

As they move forward, Changbin silently mutters, “You know, I think it was good, you and Jeongin getting a little space from each other. You rely on him too much to keep you sensible despite it being your defining trait, because you let him deal with all that is illogical, while you dealt with all that is. I think both of you have a good portion of both now.” 

And Mnho considers it. Changbin is right. And it shows starkly fro the first meeting with Mnho, not exactly shy, but guarded despite never having any reason to be, to the first and second confrontations he’s had with comforting Mnho. He’d been more blunt in the beginning, and more soft at the edges after.

“I think Jisung, I, and Chan were like that in the beginning, too,” Changbin continues wistfully, “Though even now, I can’t imagine our trio without Chan...Let’s continue.” 

Seungmin and Mnho exchange a glance, swallowing leaden hearts and stomaching tears of acid.

Chapter Text

“You’re sure he’ll be down here?” 

Out of the corner of their vision, Jisung and Hyunjin share a wary look. As Hyunjin ventures forward, lighting their way with a bead of light Felix created for him, Jisung turns around and explains. “When Hyunjin was trailing the king he came down here.” 

“And when Minho was tracking their movements more recently,” Hyunjin quietly adds as they catch up. Felix shivers, placing his hand on Hyunjin's back for the both of their comfort. It’s getting colder and colder as they descend, and it seeps through Felix’s bones and into lungs. It’s a terrible mixture of the actual cold as they get lower below ground level in the fresh wave of winter, and the fear of their destination. 

He can warm himself if he thinks less about how these dungeons were the place where he lost Chan, both in flesh and mind, but where Chan found him, and in a sense, he refound Chan. Even if it took a whole other journey from there for them to actually be reunited. It was still the start of Felix’s life changing. And he bears no resent for that, heart blooming with heat, his magic simmering against the stone walls. It seems to soothe Hyunjin too, who relaxes under the warmth that radiates from his fingers. 

“He reported that the king was often sent in this direction, and, there’s nothing else but the dungeons down here.” 

Felix ponders that, “He’s monitoring the magic, isn’t he?” And with that he realizes a couple of other things. 

Hyunjin seems to sense the worry as Felix’s hand falls away, nervously hanging from his side. “Hey, if any of us get taken by it, it’ll only be a little setback. We’ll return in no time...Plus, I don’t think it’s like a distance thing. If the King visits it everyday, and nothing happens to him, we’re all good.” 

But Jisung is silent, and when Felix looks at him, he’s pale, hand blindly flailing for Felix’s. They both latch on tight as Felix gulps. “But Chan’s in the castle now,” he breathes, “If it finds him, he won’t come back.” 

An uneasy quiet follows, and Hyunjin falls back to standing between them, their shoulders squeezed up against each other in the tight space. But no one complains. They move froward, until finally, he pushes open the passage and into the hall where the dungeon stairs crawl from. The doorway stares at them ominously as they step through, eating them and chewing them maliciously with fright and distress. 

Felix tries not to let it overwhelm him, he let it before, but he can’t now. The quicker they move through this, light flickering over rough, uneven steps and crooked bars of windows, the quicker they taken down Doyle and Keres, the quicker they get Chan out of this castle, and the quicker they can break the curse. The quicker everything can be alright again. 

So with swiftness, he outraces the anxiety and terror dripping down the steps behind them, noiselessly sprinting down the stairs. But as he pads down to the floor, he stumbles back, falling into a quick reflexed Jisung, who catches his arms with a soft woah. He can’t feel the touch though, enveloped in a feeling of pins and needles like every part of his body has shut down, but is entirely functioning. 

He recognizes the feeling as what Hyunjin and Jisung have described before, as well as the girl they’d discovered outside his room. And Hyunjin does too when he joins Felix and reaches out for the wall with a largely disgruntled expression. He lifts his head like it’s made of metal, rolling his neck. “The magic,” he grunts, “It’s a lot stronger than before...more volatile.” 

Carefully, Jisung tests it, wincing immediately. “Yeah, something’s off…Let’s keep going.” 

And it’s either that or go back. And neither choice seems to do them well, really. 

For Chan. With great difficulty, Chan lifts his legs, his bones made of lead, and pushes through the force. The air feels like molasses, tangible and tense. The feeling of magic, upset and haywire, does not leave a single bit. He can’t feel himself moving past the physical static, relying purely on his vision which is an odd sensation in and of itself. 

He has to shield his eyes when he rounds to the open cell he’d been kept in, a bright light dousing the area, so pure and unfiltered that the stones beneath his feet disappear, a solid white that entirely disorients him. Even his hearing becomes fuzzy, all of his senses at this point rendered half useless. He turns his head back and Hyunjin and Jisung are clinging to each other behind him, trying to ground themselves with anything as their bleary, hazed eyes find him. Clumsily, Jisung flashes him a poor and nonreassuring thumbs up. 

And at the center of it all, stands the king, unaware of their presence, most likely used to the worst of the natural magic’s punishment, but not immune. His face is drawn tight, a blue like the sickly Seungmin that they had left behind to get here, purpled lips pursed and white brows pinched. There’s a clear concern for something and it hangs over him in a cloud. Tendrils of it slip around Felix’s fingers and he clenches them into fists. 

Jisung and Hyunjin are directly at their back and he doesn’t bother keeping his voice low when he asks them, “What do we do?” It’s not like the noise will travel over to the king anyways, and they need to be able to hear each other, crucially. 

“We’re both incredibly vulnerable,” Jisung points out with a hiss, “But honestly...it seems like we have the upper hand. Numbers, magic, senses.” He’s saying helpful information, but it doesn’t answer Felix’s question, and they all know it. 

Decisively, Hyunjin goes ahead of them, and it’s almost like he’s disappearing. Impulsively, Felix grabs onto his collar, not to hinder or halt him, but just so he knows they’re both there together. “Take him out,” he states, “Make sure he’s down long enough for the others to help us decide. Simple and blunt, so that he can’t take advantage of whatever this is, and turn the tides on us.” 

For a moment, they stand there, and in the next, they come to a silent agreement. Felix sighs longsuffering, “We didn’t even need to distribute magic users if this is all we’re doing,” he sulks fruitlessly, knowing the decision was completely fair. Either way, he probably still wouldn’t have been sent in with Chan, and he broods over that as they anxiously watch Jisung approach the king, and knock him out with underwhelming ease. 

Hyunjin frowns, licking his lips. “I honestly feel kinda disappointed. This man has lorded over our lives, and all it took was this.” 

Jisung grins a bit wryly. “It wasn’t them who ever had any real power. They used a curse centuries old and tortured a child. I’m not unsurprised this is all it took.” He crosses his arms and surveys the area, any hint of amusement fading fast. “The hardest part will be getting him out of here...Is it just me or is this thing giving off a really bad vibe?” 

Inching closer, Felix puts his hand out, grimacing at the neverending odd sensation. It deepens to a harsh scowl as he gets closer. “...It’s like it’s pulsing.” He lowers his hand and shudders, pulling his sleeve over it as if to erase the feeling. He goes over to help Jisung lift the king, arms burning at the weight but gratefully, it’s something that isn’t prickling numbness. 

“Uh, guys.” 

They look at their third. 

“The white is spreading.” 

+

“She doesn’t get any power from the gold,” Jeongin said, “However, maybe it’s placebo, or maybe it’s natural properties or whatnot, she’s still stronger near it. Felix’s room and wing are gold proof, both because they didn’t want his magic accessible, and because he hates the stuff. I’m sure they removed any of his jewelry with the stuff.” 

So here they are, sitting in agonizing silence at the end of Felix’s bed. With trembling fingers and harsh breaths, because while he no longer fears what will happen to him, or if it’ll hurt, his body does. Rarely, does a body succumb to death. And Chan wonders if that goes for a conscience as well, if he should be accepting the idea of demise so effortlessly. 

It’s not like it makes him happy, but it would be useless to deny. 

He unclasps his mother’s necklace from his neck and holds it heavy in his palm. He and Jeongin stare at it for a moment. In his head, Chan thanks his mother, for everything, and forgives her, for not being able to prevent the curse from taking her. Because emotions are irrational, and Chan has never been angry with her for what she couldn’t help, but still feels like forgiveness is necessary. 

He raises the red gem to his mouth, shuts his eyes and exhales. Carefully, Jeongin takes the necklace, and flings it through the open window, falling back onto the bed with stammering gait. He’s as resolute as Chan, but he’s still young, and he has yet to know to accept a death. 

And they’re left to wait. 

He leaves his hand on the pristine bedding, and lets Jeongin find it, clinging onto it with a hopeful youth. Chan squeezes his eyes shut and lowers his head to his knees, staving off the influx of nausea and remorse. Gold fills his veins, more than they ever have, and his magic flares in sonic waves, and he can practically see Keres sensing it and gliding through the halls to find its source. She aims to kill. And in a way, she’ll succeed. But Chan only wishes she wouldn’t at times like this, when Jeongin is beside him and wordlessly praying for his survival. 

Chan shoves aside his guilt. If all works out like it should, then Jeongin won’t have to mourn long. Chan just wants for none of them to have to grieve at all. But it’s cruelly necessary now.

“Was this your room before?” Jeongin wonders, thankfully not trying to appraise or assess Chan’s state, trying to fill the quiet with something casual. If it had been anyone else in his stead, Chan might have gone mad with the pressure increasing behind his eyes. He’s incredibly glad it was Jeongin. Jeongin will make it easy to forget his future, blank. A canvas Hyunjin might never paint, a world Changbin might never envision. 

Sucking his teeth, Chan raises his head and bears the toll of dizziness the action elicits. “It was, actually. But I hardly stayed in it when it was. I was either always outside, on the ground or in the Seungmin, or in the library with Felix...definitely more so outside before I met him.” 

“So you didn’t know him from birth?” says Jeongin a little incredulously and it makes Chan snort. 

“No, but we did know each other for a long time. About...four years or so. Still wasn’t enough though. I want to be with him forever.” And oh, he regrets saying that of all things. It’s the truth, plain and crude. The universe laughs at him as he does. But it’s a taunt unto himself. He feels the pain ripple through him. 

Thankfully, Jeongin barely acknowledges it. Perhaps he rightfully isn’t optimistic enough to try and say it’s achievable. 

Heels click outside the door, distant but quick. They slide off the bed, skin clammy where they hold each other. Jeongin leans close and whispers, practically embracing him, and that’s probably what he’s trying to do, as indirectly as possible. “Are you ready?” 

“I have no choice.” 

Jeongin squeezes once, and then slinks into Felix’s emptied wardrobe, the clothes stuffed in packs in the forest. It shuts without noise and Chan stares at the gilded furniture fearfully. He inhales shakily and faces the door, wiping the blood from his nose and watching it drip to the floor anyways. 

The doors click open. 

+

They get through the passageway Hyunjin had told Minho to go down without struggle. They don’t expect the first thing they see when they push open the door to be Jisung, Sam, and Felix, plopping the king’s motionless body to the floor without any preamble or cushioning. Even Changbin winces as the king’s crown clatters against the ground, rolling around with a metallic echo before settling a few feet away. 

Wiping his hands against his pants, Hyunjin sheepishly greets them, “You surprised us.” 

To make up for the measly explanation, Felix quickly tacks on with colorless lips and permanently wide eyes, panting. “We’re a little unsettled right now, please excuse us. Not that...we’re particularly apologetic if Doyle gains a concussion or something.” 

“Or something,” murmurs Changbin trying to peer at where the king’s head landed from afar. He’s still breathing, and that’s gracious in their opinion. 

Minho and Seungmin hook onto the first bit with razor-sharp talons though, Minho stepping beside Felix and thoroughly examining him. “Unsettled? What happened?” 

Jisung squeaks, eternally distressed by the explanation. “We can explain on the way. I really want to get up a floor or two.” 

So they hurry back up from where they came, unworried about the unconscious body they leave behind. Doyle won’t be able to come at them before Keres is out at the very least, and at that time, he’ll be rendered powerless against either six or eight of them. Really, he’s the last of their priorities, and Seungmin personally rearranges those in his head as Hyunjin explains in urgent tones what they’d discovered, and the time limit that has been explicitly placed upon them. 

“The magic Jisung and I discovered a while back, the one that we theorized to be taking the staff in search for Chan. It’s about reached its limit. Since it can’t have Chan, it’s going to take the entire castle, and possibly this whole reality with it, flushed away in a mystical black hole, for another reality to start anew in our place. It’s moving slowly, but not nearly enough for…” us to break the curse in time . 

Swallowing shards of glass, Seungmin bursts ahead of them, running to the first floor with a window, and presses his face to the glass. He never thought he’d miss the dreary smoke laden clouds as pure white stares back at him, the castle floating in a never-ending abyss. It’s downright off-putting. It’s like an unfinished painting, the wall beside him and the glass under him rendered in perfect detail, while the village he once called home, was erased, discarded as a scrapped sketch. 

Minho hurries behind him and frantically they come to the same conclusion. “We need to get Chan,” Minho gasps with raw horror, “He was right.” 

Seungmin curses and bangs a clenched fist against the window, startling everyone else as they filter into the hallway, thrown off by his sudden and uncharacteristic spout of anger. “I was hoping he was delusional,” he whispers, “Just this once, I was hoping he was crazy. Wrong.” 

He can feel Jeongin’s questioning presence lick the back of his mind and abruptly he feels like curling up in a ball in the corner and letting everything barrage his back at once. He runs his hand through his hair, face stone stiff. Minho pushes away from the window, disheveled with a crazed look of grief streaking his irises. “You damn princes and your dangers.” 

Felix looks at him desperately. Through their bond, Seungmin uses the little bit of communication he can. Hurry . He urges. Hurry, hurry, hurry please. It’s simple, and it’s all he needs. He can tell from the bright hot flame of alarm mending with his own along his spine, that Jeongin has gotten the message loud and clear. 

“We have to get to Chan and Jeongin,” he states, staggering away from the window and compressing hours of thinking into single span thoughts. It’s overwhelming and exhausting but he doesn’t know how else he’s supposed to handle what he should’ve already dealt with. He thinks Minho is going through the same process a few feet away, hugging himself tight with a faraway look. 

Chan told them, warned them, and still, they’d been unprepared. 

Seungmin wants badly to apologize to Felix and Jisung and Hyunjin and Changbin and everyone because it’s been a little time of paradise but it didn’t take much for them all to love as one and Chan was not excluded. And he realizes far too belatedly, that he cared much more than he initially thought about the Crimson Prince whose wellbeing was once of no significance to him. And he has to come to terms before anyone else, before the event has even taken place, and it sears like a fiery brand against his heart. 

If this is even a fraction of what Chan has gone through, Seungmin can understand why in their last moments all together, he’d already looked lifeless. 

He has no words. For once, he has nothing. He just stands there mouth agape and eyes burning with salt, arms limp at his sides as he tries to race through the process of grief within a single agonizing minute. He fails. 

Like Changbin has said, he’s gotten into the habit of trying to parse the illogical in spite of his nature. But this is something neither logic or illogic can comprehend. Even if Jeongin were at his side now, he’d still be flailing. And he wants the thought to be more terrifying than what lies in store, but at the moment, nothing can be. 

It’s Minho who finally croaks out to get them moving despite Seungmin’s concerning condition, “We need to get to them. Now.” 

+

“Prince.” 

“Why even bother calling me that?” he inquires with layered fatigue. 

She squints and shuts the door behind her, like it will do anything for either of them. Though it does make Chan a bit antsy. It’s an exit of Jeongin’s potentially blocked. “I can’t quite remember your name. It’s quite forgettable. What is it again?” 

He can’t help but flinch, the blow relentless and low. 

“If you remember me at all,” Chan utters, eyes to the ground where her feet are, not foolish enough to take them off her entirely. “Then you remember my name.” 

There’s the rustle of her flowing skirts and golden chains as she crosses her arms, cocking her head and raising a brow. “You’re as bold as I remember, pest. Yet you look as sickly as a ghost already past. Where does all the bravado come from, Chan?” 

Clicking his tongue, he glares at her with more hatred than he will ever be able to harbor for anyone else again. “Aren’t you here to kill me? Why don’t you just get it over with?” 

Unimpressed she smiles, “Don’t think I don’t know about your friends attacking my partner in the dungeons. If this was your version of a diversion, it was a poor one. I don’t know what you’re playing at, pest, but it won’t work. You’ll suffer in your last moments, but don’t worry. I’ll make sure they fade quick.” 

Her threats are ineffective on him. She’s woefully outplanned here and he knows that, deep down, his magic already touching the natural source already here in this castle and easing its disrest. It still makes his stomach lurch to think of her slimy hands anywhere near his friends after he is gone. But that’s what he’s here for. 

“Don’t think I’m an idiot either, Keres. I know you’re bluffing. If you don’t fix what you screwed up with the curse, then you’ll disappear just as I did. And no one but I knows your name. The chance I’ve had to exist beyond disappearance is not a privilege you’ve granted yourself. People know who I am, the poor prince whose life you ruined. But no one will remember who you are. Never.” 

That digs beneath her skin and she steps closer, dropping her nails to the spiraled metal of Felix’s bed, the scraping sound absolutely grating to the ear. “Do you want to know why I did it?” 

His eyes widen, and he wishes he sounded any less breathless and anticipated when he admits, “Who wouldn’t want to know why someone ruined their life?” 

His breath labors as she gets right in front of him, taking those claws and digging them gently into the apples of his cheeks, pressing just enough to make them red as one, but not a single bit more. He tries not to let his anxiousness show, clenching his hands tight at his side and biting the inside of his cheek, his head pounding with the closeness of all that gold, right beneath his face. He can feel himself sicken by the second.

“I was weak. I was a sweet, little mage with hope for the world, but the world was cruel. I was useless to it. I wasn’t a gifted human, and I wasn’t a powerful mage. As fate saw it, I was to die young and alone, surrounded by my pathetic attempts at a reputation. I looked like you . Powerless to do anything about even myself. Death would have been a gift to someone like that.”

And that hurt, just a bit. It wasn’t a good truth, but it was close to one. Chan was practically dying just at her nearness. He was feeble beyond measure and he couldn’t change it, life halfway drained from his veins. But sparks not an ember of sympathy within him. If it kept everyone else safe, he would die. And he would do it gladly. He would never level himself with Keres.

“But I didn’t want that, so I changed that. I began to take the magic that presented itself to me. It wasn’t killing or stilling, it was magic’s way of offering me something and I took it. I knew about your curse for as long as I have lived. It was considered an abomination in the world of untainted mages. But to me, it was precisely what the original creators made it out to be. A gold mine. What choice did I have but to enact it. Your throne gave me power, pest, and now I am no longer the little mage trampled by the world. I am feared and obeyed.” 

She squeezes his face and it begins to ache, bringing it to hers and grinning maliciously. “Don’t you think that’s inspiring ?” she hisses. 

He grits his teeth and finds the knife within the folds of her dress, tired of her monologue, and furious at even the thought that her actions deserved any sort of gory. As he slips the blade between her fingers, he sees the Felix he’d left behind, cornered in those terrible dungeons by Keres, her fingers placed on his face just the same, bruised and bloodied and suffering . A child, played with like a stringed dummy by this woman who thought that made her something big and grand. He thinks of the Felix he was to leave behind, how strong he was, how beautiful, and how he smiled, despite what the cruel mage had done to him. 

And there is no hesitation, not a pause, before he takes the knife with her hands wrapped around the hilt, and sinks it into his shoulder. The pain doesn’t even register, blood trickling warmly down his white shirt, already soaked crimson. She stares in shock and bewilderment at the scene, smart enough to look frightened. The most powerful spell Chan had ever cast, to keep his life when all else wanted to take it, was when he was bleeding and furious. 

And he was to do it again. 

“You did away everything I loved,” he rasps, the undertone of his voice strong and foreboding, not a waver or crack in it, “And I will do the same to you. But you can have what I lost.” 

It wasn’t a proper spell, but the strength of his words, his emotion; grief, anger, love, it outrivals anything she could ever speak, anything she could ever write, ever manifest, ever imagine. She was weak, not because she had less potent than him in magical ability, but because she gave up in the worst way possible. She slaughtered, and turned herself cruel. And it was a firm veneer, but it was delicate. It shatters like porcelain beneath the past she’s given him, her own deeds working against her. 

He sees the woman she might’ve once been, in a single glimpse, and she doesn’t even look afraid. Resigned, and incredibly sorrowful. So sorrowful. Because instead of making herself into something strong by natural magic, letting herself love and be loved, letting herself be helpless and helped, letting herself grow before she could cut her roots to shreds. She’d done this. She’d taken hundreds of lives, animal and human and mythical , and she’d ripped others apart more torturously than bandits. And this was her payment. 

He pushes her off, instantly pressing the heel of his palm to his wound to keep it from gushing. But he’s already a thousand coins healthier than he’d been moments before. And if it did anything for him, it would keep him going for the next few. She doesn’t resist, dropping to her knees with her skirts swirled around her in terrible beauty. Her hair brittles and browns, her skin turning a mottled peach. She looks up at him with human eyes, and they cry. 

Jeongin stumbles from the wardrobe just in time, taking in the scene before him with shock and concern. His sharpened gaze travels from Keres on the floor to Chan’s stab injury and finally to Chan’s face. And something about the certainty and resolve their must calm him, because he doesn’t panic, merely ripping off part of the curtain as he rambles. 

“We need to meet with the others quick,” he informs as he wraps Chan’s shoulder in a tight bandage of cloth, the fabric already soaking but it slows. “Seungmin says he we need to hurry. He seems distressed. More than I’ve ever seen from him. Ever. I’m a little frantic, Camine, do you think we can make it there in time?” It’s evident in his quickened speech, so fast it begins to tumble and slur, the syllables trampling his tongue and tying it in a vicious knot. 

He knows why Seungmin is so upset, but it’s nothing he will share with Jeongin, nodding assuringly instead. “Of course, let’s go. We’re finished here.” 

Jeongin casts Keres a doubtful and sympathetic look. She just stares back, the weight of a hundred deaths storming behind dark eyes. Souls at unrest will haunt her for the rest of the life. Chan honestly doesn’t wish her the worst. He wants her to live with it all in the body she’d once deemed to weak for it. She’ll learn it’s stronger than the blue power hungry one she had as she pinned him to a grave, if it’s able to handle all this without turning to rubble. And she’ll die without rest. Just like him. 

“What did you do to her?” he asks awed. 

Chan leans against him, grim but relieved. She can’t hurt Jeongin anymore. Not any of them. He could say, he’s broken their curse, even if he’s yet to break his. “I took her magic,” he answers, “And gave her my nightmares.” 

Aghast, Jeongin silently escorts him out the room, eyes wide. Trying to discern all that that could entail. “What does that mean?” he finally asks, curiosity getting the better of him and clawing from his mouth a floor beneath Felix’s. “Your nightmares.” 

“My whole life,” Chan replies, deciding there’s no reason to hide it now, “If I were to ever sleep, all I could see were those erased by the curse. Both in existence and in the natural life. My parents and I have not been the only victims.” 

Neither of them have any pity for the queen who reigned hell, but with the curse Chan has placed on her in turn, they can’t help but shiver. It’s a rightful, but terrible punishment. Deserved, but Chan will never do it again to anyone else. It’s too cruel. 

He thinks he’s earned himself a single act of cruelty. He’s never been pure anyways, diluted like bad milk. 

“Chan,” Jeongin says suddenly, “The windows.” 

Chan looks as he’s told, and his world flips on its head. Color has either been drenched in such severity or drained of it, as all they can see before the window pane is floating objects amidst an eerie sea of white. He has to wonder, with a nauseating jolt, if this is wall his parents saw as they faded away from his view, all those terrible years ago. It’s absolutely terrifying, in the worst way. 

“C’mon, we need to move faster. Any shortcuts, Jeongin?” 

“Plenty.” 

+

“She’s gone?” Felix puzzles. It’s almost incomprehensible to him. Just like the king. The two had made themselves out to be so untouchable, but it’d barely taken a flick to tear them into tiny pieces, so much tinier than the eight of them combined. “She’s gone.” 

“Not dead,” Chan clarifies for Jeongin, and Felix about breaks his neck to examine the former prince. The sight before him makes bile rise to his throat. He rises to his feet in a rush before Chan can even get his next words out, pressing the silky fabric over Chan’s shoulder down and watching it bleed. Chan hisses and Felix frowns down at him, forcing him to sit against a wall. “But taken care of. You guys don’t ever have to worry about her again.” 

The wording is odd. Skeptical, Jisung sees it too. “What’s the catch?” 

Jeongin is the one to answer, sitting on the other side of Chan, him and Felix the prince’s supporting pillars. “None. He took her magic and cursed her. I don’t think she’ll ever be persuaded to harm anyone ever again.” He looks a bit haunted at that, but no one questions, a bit too hurried to get all the gritty details when at any hour from now, they’ll disappear. 

Seungmin and Minho are still unnaturally non-contributive. To any conversation. And they’ve been like that since they’ve seen the white. Felix looks back at Chan, and he too is staring at the two, but there’s a guilt there too strong to bear and Felix backs away, feeling awful himself, not knowing why and loathing it. THe absolute uncertainty that tears into him with a sharper blade than Changbin’s. 

“So we can’t exactly leave,” Hyunjin remarks, voice going several octaves up as a frenzy overtakes him. Changbin grabs and holds onto him tight around the midriff, keeping him out of his head and in the present. Though at this point, whatever darkness sits in Hyunjin's head might be preferable to this. 

Oddly, as if nothing is happening around them, Chan nudges Felix, suddenly calm and casual. Felix’s brows furrow and he has half a panicked mind to tell the other to freak out because their lives were on the line and why did he look so assured ? It didn’t sit right in Felix’s gut but he has no right to take away whatever calm Chan has that they can’t accomplish just because he’s about to climb the walls. 

“Your band,” Chan hums, lids lowered as he indicates to the only piece of gold beside the rose chunk Felix has kept on his body since Chan’s identity and curse was revealed. “Keres’ magic is gone. I can touch gold now. Can I see it?” 

And that’s something to process. In his haze, Felix just nods. Chan scoots closer, his entire side pressed against Felix’s and everything just feels so out of place Felix begins to believe this is a dream, a really weird screwed up dream he’ll wake up from at any second. Chan twines their fingers briefly, skittering the pads of his along Felix’s before gently removing the band, exhaling as the gold sits in his palm without injuring him. 

“Why are you bleeding?” Felix demands out of the blue, trying to find anything that makes sense. 

Chan spins the band around his finger, throwing it up into the air and catching it carelessly. Felix sees a child in it and almost screams at Chan to stop, it’s delicate or fragile or breakable, but it’s not, so he bites his tongue and brings his knees to his chest, shaking. “I needed blood to take her magic. It’s when I’m most powerful, I guess. I probably didn’t have to be so dramatic about it.” 

“Oh,” Felix responds dumbly, rubbing his wrist. The skin is ashier than the rest of him, the freckles barely present. He’s never taken off the band. He feels naked. Exposed. 

They all just sit in a nerve-wracking tension, no idea how to proceed. Minho and Seungmin are unresponsive, Changbin holding onto Sam, Jisung trembling on his feet like at any moment he’ll scatter into a tiny million leaves, autumn incarnate. Felix hopes he doesn’t. At any point, it seems like all of them will inevitably. He himself would be summer, he concludes deliriously. 

“Seungmin, Minho,” Chan calls, and they jump like rabbits, eyeing him warily. He smiles back, eyes shrinked to crescents. “I’m sorry. Take good care of everyone, alright. And tell them how I feel.” 

Minho bursts into tears and Felix is two seconds from throwing up. Why is he crying? Why is Seungmin crying? Oh, gold. But Chan grasps his chin and pulls them close. He’s panting, and he can’t feel even a whisper of Chan’s breath against his lips. “Chan?” Deja vu slaps him in the face, and he can hardly breathe.

“I have so much I want to say to you,” Chan murmurs, low and earnest, and Felix realizes in a horrible instant why this all feels familiar. That same face of gentle soothing in stride of absolute chaos. He begins to shake his head over and over, a broken doll haunted and aimless. 

“I don’t think I have to say it all though. You already know most of it. Just...keep smiling, and absolutely, don’t forget me this time, my prince. I love you, all of you, more than anything in this entire world. And that’s why I’m doing this. Don’t forget it.” 

And as he flails blindly to grab onto Chan and keep them together by the force of his strength alone, he shrieks. But it’s too late, Chan takes his precious band, and he dissolves it into a puddle over his palm, dribbling over his fingers and onto the floor like ichor. 

He can’t even hear his own screams when they’re enveloped in blinding light.

Chapter Text

He’s nervous. Incredibly so. Predictably, that makes him jittery. Mama spent half the time trying to tame his hair as he wildly jerked about, apologizing clumsily and attempting to stay still as she goes on a spiel about how much the boy he’s meeting will adore him and how if she can be such good friends with his mother, than he can be such good friends with the woman’s son. 

Really, it’s crude and nonsensical logic, how is it supposed to comfort him at all?

He’s meeting a prince for gold’s sake. If he can hardly befriend the staffs’ children he lives among, how can anyone possibly expect him to make buddy with the queen’s son, the crown prince who’s infamous for being able to make friend with even the grumpiest of their chefs. Those chefs scare Felix. By gold, Felix loves the queen. She’s a wonderful woman and she gives him neat toys, but couldn’t Mama have been friends with a lowly baker. A lowly baker’s son sounds like a lot less pressure to play with. 

What if he wins hide and seek, because he’s always been the best at seeking and he never loses which makes all the other kids angry. What if the prince gets angry just like them, and he’s condemned to a life of prison? He bites his lip and shifts again, his hair falling into his eyes and Mama sighs, taking both hands and mussing it up entirely. “Let’s just go before we’re late, hm?...You know you can tell me if you don’t want to go. I won't force you.” 

But the thing was, while he was horrified of messing it up with the crown prince, he did want to go. The prospect of having a friend at all, much less someone as cool as the prince who wasn’t scared of the older staff, had him exhilarated. Mystified. A friend. If it weren’t for his nerves, he’d be bouncing on the balls of his feet begging Mama to hurry, hurry, hurry.

He grabs her hand and shakes his head, drawing an amused smile from her as she adjusts her flowing skirt and leads them out of their room. She seems so sure, and though he still questions her belief on this friendship, it begins to soothe him. He walks with a lot more pep in his step and his excitement begins to shine through.

They meet in the library, and it takes a lot for him not to hide behind his mom in the foreign setting. He spends all his time tailing Mama and the queen as they work, or with the queen when Mama is taking care of the prince somewhere else. It’s honestly surprising that they haven’t interacted yet with all the time their mothers spend together and them with each other’s mothers. 

They go up the steps to the second floor where the sun shines brightly through large windows that span over three-fourths of the wall cut into framed glass squares. On the large sill beneath it, is the prince, sitting cross-legged with his chin in his palm, staring out onto the villages wistfully. Aside him, the queen notices their arrival and smiles softly, gently tugging on her son’s shoulder to shift his wandering attention. 

It is the first time the servant boy and prince ever really look at each other. Felix sees mirrored on the prince’s face his cautious, fearful apprehension. And it calms them both. They’re both afraid of this meeting, but they don’t want the other to be, and it forces them into an assurance of appeasing each other. As their mothers sit at the long table behind them, the prince jumps from the sill and approaches him. His hair is a pretty color and it shines brightly in the sunlight like falling rose petals and his smile is dimpled and it washes Felix with bubbly admiration. 

The prince bows to him first and it renders Felix speechless. He trips over himself to bow back, which makes the other laugh so it has to be worth it, cheeks flaming pink. 

“Hi,” the prince introduces, “I’m Chan and I’m nine.” 

Hesitantly, Felix raises both his hands, putting down four fingers. “I’m Felix. I don’t know how to read.” 

Chan brightens at that opportunity, eyes darting around at the towers of books. “I’ll teach you! Come with me.” He grabs Felix’s hand and tugs him down the stairs pushing him on a large red chair that seems to take all color from the rest of the room, vivid and towering, the focus point of everything. “This is my favorite chair. It’s the comfiest. Make room.” 

They hardly have to squish on the chair, it’s so big, and Chan lays out an easy book over their laps with delicate illustrations and simple but captivating words. Felix learns every one of them with utter fascination, drinking them up hungrily. From then on out, he wants to be Chan’s very best friend, he decides with the most conviction he’s ever possessed. 

Chan pauses and it throws the younger off as he stares into Felix’s eyes with an intensity that doesn’t belong to a nine year old. “Don’t forget.” 

Felix frowns, pouting petulantly though his head has begun to throb strangely. “I won’t.” 

And he jolts awake. Surrounded in lavish sheets, his entire body aching viciously. It feels like all his joints have inverted and he sits up, regretting it with a wince. Most of all, his head won’t stop pounding, a ringing in his ears that has him wanting to run through a wall. He pulls and rubs them, the skin feverish wherever he touches. 

There’s something wrong, a balance so warped he feels like when he stands, he’s going to completely tilt to the floor, or the world will spin around with him as the axis. He pushes his blankets to the floor and examines himself. He has all his limbs, theres nothing out of place, but when he really does stand, he falls to his knees, heart beating furiously as if trying to climb through the shredder of his ribs. Tears spring to his eyes unbidden and he can’t comprehend why, torn by something he cannot gather. 

Using his bed as support, he walks. He frowns. His curtains are ripped, the fabric missing. Wind rushes over him through the open window, making him feel even more exposed than he already does. He raises his arm to block his face from the worst of the chill as he closes it, and then he just stares at it against the sill. His wrist is bare. And it seems like an understatement when it’s merely an observational fact. It is bare, but it feels more than bare, like the skin itself had been stripped raw and he was staring at the pink of his innermost flesh. 

He rips his gaze away and pushes from the surface, his steps strengthening gradually. He turns and stops dead, knees threatening to buckle beneath him. His breaths come out in shallow pants, gold magic coating his mind like a thin layer of acid. Absently, he realizes he hasn’t slept in the bed he woke in for over a month. 

There’s a puddle of blood before his bed, shimmering aureately. 

+

He takes a deep breath, letting the oxygen spread throughout his body, imagining it as a cleanser for his anxieties. He folds his hands together and places them behind his back, just as he should, drawing his feet together and straightening his spine. He shakes his bangs out of his eyes and whispers beneath his breath. 

“You can do this, Minho.” 

He raises his hand to knock on the looming doors carved with expense and wealth. His fist lands on air and he stumbles back, cursing internally as his perfect posture is so easily ruined. Droopy brown eyes stare up at him, bright and curious. For some reason it makes him ache. Mouth curving downwards the other remarks as he opens the door fully, “You’re young.” 

Indignance rises boiling hot in Minho and he can’t help but glare through his indifferent mask. “I’m twelve. That’s only a year younger than you, your highness.” He hmphs and returns to what the staff had told him was the perfect demeanor to be held by a royal’s valet. 

The prince’s face contorts with distaste and he crosses his arms, slouching broodily. Minho almost loses his cool as he watches the prince behave so improperly. “Please just call me Chan,” he requests tersely before physically shaking himself out, exhaling. He smiles awkwardly with trepidation and starts anew. “I didn’t mean anything by it, you’re just very young to be staff.” 

And that is true. He only reason he was allowed to be appointed this duty was because the prince happened to be around his age, or he’d be chained down to the staff floor with all the other staff children...Not literally, of course. They enjoy the freedom of no chores much more than he does. “I’m orphaned. I’ve been here for a long while. I wanted to work for you. Do something other than just sit on the staff floor. Please, allow me.”

Sympathy blares bright over Chan/s expression for a second before itś casually dashed, and Minho is grateful for the lack of pity. Even more grateful when the prince nods his head emphatically. “No, no,” he insists, “I have you a better job, though if you want it.” The grin growing on his lips is toothy and mischievous and Minho regard it warily, fiddling with his fingers hidden behind his back. 

“What is it?” 

"Be my friend! Then we can both assist each other.” 

Gaping incredulously, Minho finds himself agreeing, his body pulled into the prince’s room with a force he didn’t know a thirteen-year-old could possess. Maybe it’s his training. Minho would like to find out himself.

He has to settle and find his balance when the prince lets him go, trying not to trip and humiliate himself in front of royalty. When he looks up he startles, Chan mere inches from his face, the look he wears unfitting compared to the childish sulking and playful smile from before. It’s downright unsettling and Minho feels a fear, older than he and rooted deep in his chest. 

“Don’t forget.” 

He jumps and nearly hits his head against a lamp on his desk. Blearily, he rights it before it can fall and start a fire. He frowns at it for a minute, disoriented. He switches his stare to the table he’s sitting at, greatly confused. There’s no work there. Then why had he fallen asleep here instead of his or Felix’s bed? 

He looks around his room for any explanation but nothing is provided, everything in order as if completely untouched. As it usually was. Seldom did he spend his time in here. He leaves his chair and stretches, flinching at the numerous cracks that resound from his sore body. Sleeping at a desk is never restful. 

He pauses again, realizing he’s doing that a lot, bewildered and lost even though this is the room he’s inhabited for years on end. He’s missing something, a gap in his head and chest that leaves him hollow as a drum. But there is pain, deep-rooted and vast and when he broaches it, it feels like burning from the inside out, gasping and falling back into his chair, grasping at his chest. 

He takes a long minute to regain any composure, wondering what in the hell was happening to him. Was he sick? Was he going to have to take the day off or be taken in by a mother hen Hyunjin and Felix? Groaning, he rubs his aching head and prays not. That sounds like a torture worse than whatever fever is ailing him. 

If it even is a fever. He has extreme doubt when he considers it as such. It doesn’t fit the description, what he’s feeling. An unbearable pain that doesn’t come from his environment, but from his heart. It’s not natural, and that makes it even worse to experience. 

Once he feels even a semblance of gathered, he pushes his hair back and goes to the window, the only thing he really treasures about the room, the only thing that really holds value, all else in Felix’s room or tucked safely within his mind. It’s bright out, and grey, but there’s no water on his glass and it’s not as cold as it should be to the touch. He presses his nose closer, and he smells...smoke. 

The sun is red, and the villages he sees out his precious window, are ash.

It hits him all at once and he stumbles into a sprint, racing to Felix’s room with pure fright. 

+

He’s always hated his house for how oppressive its richness was. It wasn’t too grand, but it was grander than any other. He’d wanted more to live in the pleasant little stone homes he saw on the way to this new kingdom, his carriage starkly standing out in a cold blue against the warm toned villages where people bustled and busied themselves. 

He didn’t like the castle either. It was worse. Don’t get him wrong, he was grateful for the roof over his head and the sheets on his bed but those things don’t make his parents smile, and it certainly doesn’t make him smile, so what good was it. But there was something in the castle he liked that not even his mansion had up in the hills far away from every kingdom nearby. Escape. 

He only feels bad for the servants who’ll receive his bedsheets after he and his family return to their estate as he lays them out in a dingy passageway, dim and dirty with years of disuse, the only light a single torch he’d had to very, very carefully bring along. They’re pure white in comparison, and where they touch the walls and floor, immediately turn brown. He’s glad he brought them though so it’s not himself bare against the dirt. His parents would have his head. 

Sighing, he sits down on the comforter and relaxes. A smile rests on his face as the cool fabric embraces him. He’ll never feel this comfortable again. 

“Who are you?” 

He shrieks and a hand is pressed against his mouth. Someone crawls into view. Hyunjin's eyes go comically wide. It’s the crown prince. Though he looks so much more sickly than the portrait had shown, exhaustion bared under his eyes and fear laid over his face like a clear mask. Maybe Hyunjin had given him a fright. 

“Uh...Hyunjin.” 

Recognition flares in the other’s expression and he sits beside Sam. “Oh, so you’re the son of the visiting duchess and duke. You weren’t even alive the last time they visited, in your mother’s belly.” 

“You know my mother.” 

“She’s friends with mine.” 

And oh, that’s kind of obvious. Awkwardly, Hyunjin shifts, missing his previous peace of solitude. “What are you doing down here?” 

The prince’s mouth purses and he thinks. “I’ve started to come in here when I’m scared.” 

That’s worrying, and intriguing. Brows furrowed, Hyunjin leans forward, a chill sliding down his neck. “What are you scared of?” 

There’s a loud thud from above and Hyunjin yelps, shrinking into his blankets and staring up at the ceiling. He’s been navigating the passages as long as he’s been visiting and he’s never heard a sound through the thick walls unless he was right up against the entrance. The prince joins him, pallid. “I think you should stay here,” he says, voice cracking, “For a little while. Maybe take a nap. Or...go near the entrance and wait for the noises to stop.” 

“What’s happening, your highness?” 

“It’s Chan and...I don’t quite know. Just stay safe here, okay? I’ll come back...hopefully. When things are clear. And then we can talk more, alright?” 

Shaking, Hyunjin nods, shivering, the air starting to feel colder than it was. A hand lands on his shoulder and he bites his lip, trying not to show how off guard he was. The prince’s warm gaze shifts and ominously. 

“Don’t forget.”

He hugs himself tight, blinking awake in pale, slitted sunlight. The familiar dank smell of the stable welcoming him. There’s a warmth he’s laying against and stretching out, flinching at the subtle throb throughout his body, he realizes it’s a horse. 

More specifically, it was Berry, still kicking and fighting. In fact, when she looks in his eyes, there’s a sharpness he hasn’t seen from her before, glinting alight with what Hyunjin can only describe as happiness, dulled bittersweetly, but there nonetheless. Cooing he hugs her sitting form fondly. 

“Oh, what a good girl,” he murmurs, soaking, basking in her warmth of life. “What’s got you in such a good mood, darling Berry?” 

He looks up and is a bit baffled to see her still staring intensely at him, as if trying to convey something with her eyes alone. He shifts and sits up completely, feeling put on the spot. A deer in lamplight. A rabbit snared. It takes him too long to realize he’s breathless, like he’s been running for miles, fear and hurt pulsing from his heart through his blood. 

“What’s that all for?” he tries, voice weak. 

Still sitting, she takes a hoof, and flicks a stray sugar cube lying on the ground towards him, bits of sugar flying over a small expanse of floor around it. It’s scattered an entirely random, but within it, he sees the semblance of a face, droopy and disformed. He scurries to his feet, pushes out of the stall, and runs. 

“I’ll be back, Berry!” 

+

“You’re finally awake.” 

The prince peers up at him, looking like he’d climbed through hell and back, beaten red, purple, and blue all over. “Kinda regretting it,” he rasps, eyes widening as his voice leaves, holding his throat like it’s failed him. Changbin panics a little and grabs his own flask of water beside him, shoving it into the prince’s hand. 

“Being awake?” 

The prince stares through the small hole into the water, swirling it around thoughtfully in his hands. “Thank you,” he mumbles, hardly strong enough for anything to sound more than a whisper of sorts. As he gulps it down and hands it back, he smiles drily, “Existing.” 

Squirming, Changbin easily makes the connection, ducking his head with a deep frown. “I wasn’t going to leave you behind, your highness.” 

“You’ve saved my life, call me Chan. You look familiar, do I know you from somewhere?” 

Changbin swallows, the action hurting as fresh sadness threatens to well over his rib cage and into his lungs to drown him. “You may know my mother. She was the queen’s personal guard for a long, long time.” 

“You’re Changbin’s son?” the prince-Chan inquires with awe before his voice drops abruptly, followed with realization. “She didn’t make it did she?” There’s an underlying heat in his tone, an unerupted volcano of anger. It persists, though doused when the prince forces himself on unsteady feet, shocking Changbin and making him reach out for him. He was too weak to be doing all this. 

And then the prince gets on his hands and knees and bows with his bandaged head to the dirt. “I’m sorry,” he says once, a whisper of his voice, and a whisper of himself. As Changbin stares in utter bewilderment, his shoulders begin to shake and a sob tears painfully from his mouth. “I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault!” 

He’s loud, and it’s grating Changbin’s nerves, irritation blooming in him irrationally, with no good reason. For a moment, he’s going to take it as the prince says it. Blame him. Blame the nearest and most vulnerable thing he can torment. So that the sorrow and mourning for the mother than never followed him out the castle when she said she would, would be appeased. 

But she was the same mother who raised him. And she raised him right. With compassion and kindness and consideration. He pulls the prince towards him and out of the pathetic bowing position. “My mother’s death is not your fault, and I will only be angry with you if you say it is. You’re no more than two years older than me, how were you supposed to prevent this, your highness?” 

“Chan,” the prince feebly reminds, chin wobbling. Changbin realizes the tears are soaking through his bandages, salt easing its way beneath. He curses and sits the prince down beside him, quickly unwrapping them. He tries not to flinch when the wounds are exposed to him. 

They look a lot better than when he first found the prince, but every time he cleans them, he feels a churning in his stomach. All he can imagine is the pain that must have come with them. “What happened?” he asks, “How did you survive the curse but get injured?” 

The prince’s voice only shakes more as Changbin tenderly cleans the vivid scars across his face, eyes squeezed shut. “I don’t know. I really don’t know, Changbin. I didn’t wanna. It’d hurt less if I had disappeared.” 

Changbin feels severe pity for the prince, stilling with a sad sigh. “Well, you’re not gonna put all my hard work to waste, huh? You better stay living, Prince Chan. My mother died failing to protect your parents. I won’t let her down with you.” 

The prince gazes at him with a sort of awed admiration and it makes his ears heat red. “Okay,” he says, “Don’t forget it?” It’s a sort of plea. Currently, the prince has no will to live for himself, but he wants to somewhere deep within if he’s managed to outbeat a curse that took his family and so much more. 

Changbin nods resolutely. He’s lonely too now, without his older sister and mother, he too doesn’t really have any will to continue. He’s young and abandoned, and so is this prince. But he too, wants to, for his mother and himself, keep living. He wants to thrive. Just like she always hoped for him too. “I swear.” 

The prince’s eyes flash cold and Changbin retracts his hand confused. This wasn’t how this went. He knows that. There was more. Something different that happened, softer and more personal. But all Chan says is, “Don’t forget.” 

Changbin opens his eyes to racks of weapons and armor. It shouldn’t be as comforting as it is, it still does little to rest is unease but the presence of it all keeps him calm. His limbs and spine feel as stiff as the staffs he sees before him and it bites cold and uninviting as he pushes himself off the mapping table he was sleeping against. He holds his neck as he stands, looking around dumbfounded. 

How had he fallen asleep in here? Exposed and unguarded, he could’ve been killed in a split second. Where was Hyunjin and Minho? Had they left him behind? Was this Chan’s punishment for him sneaking into the armory and stealing some of the supplies? They had to come back soon. They really couldn’t just leave him here with the least knowledge of the castle’s layout. That was dangerous and stupid. 

He stays in the room, wandering around and waiting. Curious, he strays towards the map table again, this time looking at the contents atop it. There’s a certain map that draws his attention and he approaches it, hand flattening it as he reads it. He spots his camp, marked in the forest beyond the castle. It’s line in vicious red, the ink scratched so violently into the paper it there were little holes that sunk to the table, dotting it crimson. 

Chan. 

He stops waiting. There’s no use. He needs to find someone.

+

Wiping his eyes and trying to erase the evidence of why he’d wandered out further into the forest, he slips back into the clearing the knight’s son had chosen to be their best option. It was vast and empty, and in his mind, it was as big as the village he’d fleed, burnt to the ground and desolate. He shudders, biting his tongue and forcing back a fresh wave of stricken tears. Pushing his palms against his eyes, he walks forward. When he uncovers them, he yelps, jumping back and cowering. 

Innocuous and a bit startled, the prince gazes at him, bandaged up like a mummy but his drooped eyes on full display beneath gauze white. Bits of red seep through and fresh blood wells in beads on his lips. In short, he’s kind of a terrifying sight, especially to someone who doesn’t expect him. Exhibit Jisung.

“Oh you’re awake,” he chirps, high-pitched. 

“I know Changbin,” the other responds, “But who are you?” 

Lowering his arms from his face, he answers unsurely, as if he didn’t know his own name. “Jisung. I, uh, have never been in the castle.” 

Chan blinks, nodding. He seems lethargic and bit out of it. Jisung can’t blame him. When he’d found the pair, Chan had been bleeding profusely from all sorts of injuries all throughout his body, a tick of the clock away from his final hour. It would make sense now if his body was rebelling against him, his mind unable to keep up with the pace of his recovery. 

But it didn’t dull his observations though, the prince frowning. “You were crying.” 

Jisung laughs, fake and hollow. “What? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” The prince’s expression remains unchanged, glancing at him with open concern, big and gooey and Jisung latches onto the warmth like a cat looking for nap. Exhaling, Jisung plops beside the prince, slumping. 

“Maybe you can’t see,” Chan hums, “But I was too. Look...if it makes you feel better.” It wouldn’t in any way, but Jisung searches, seeing puffy redness only a really odd hit to the face or extensively crying could cause. It adds to the ghoulish appeal, and bites Jisung’s fragile heart. 

“Why were you?” 

The prince blanches. “Do you not know? My curse caused all this. I...I kind of didn’t want to wake up when I collapsed in the forest. But thank you anyways, for helping me. You got all my supplies, didn’t you?” 

Aghast, Jisung nods. It’s overwhelming, the honesty and morbidity in which the prince bares himself to Jisung with. He feels obligated to return it, at least a speck. “I did. And I was crying because, like you now I guess, I don’t really have anything left. My entire village went up in flames. I barely managed to escape. I, uh, I think my hair is even singed.” He knew actually. Changbin had told him when they’d gotten a moment of calm. 

“Like me now...a lot of people suffered because of that stupid curse, huh?” 

Jisung shifts, muttering awkwardly. “You too. If you’re thinking it’s your fault. It’s whoever set my village on fire’s fault. Did you do that?” 

“I would never.” 

“There.” 

He looks up and Chan is examining him, something like fondness pursed between his lips and resting in the dimples that follow. “You remind me of someone...how about we make it up to each other?” 

“Make what up?” 

“The things we lost...we can be each other’s family, right? Or, at least you and Changbin if I don’t survive these.” Nonchalantly he indicates to the various bandages scattered about his person. Jisung feels a fierce rush of fierceness and he grabs the least injured part of Chan’s arm, shaking his head firmly. 

“No. Not just me and Changbin. All three. We found each other for a reason. And I won’t lose another family. So you better survive, prince.” 

Pleasantly taken aback, Chan’s mouth curls in a meek smile. “Alright. I’ll try. If you do something else for me.”

Pleased but suspicious, Jisung frowns. “Hm?” 

“Don’t forget.” 

He falls on stone-hard floor and groans, pushing himself up with shaking arms. It’s cold, even colder than he’s used to. The cot he rolled off somehow wasn’t even warm. It was dead chilly like no one had slept in it at all. He looks around, finding the room just as empty as his pitiful cot. Where were all the staff? At the very least, the staffs’ children. By now he’d be hearing their playful bustle outside, awaiting his addition. 

Are they playing a trick on him? He wishes it was any other kind. This kind makes him nervous a large space so empty. Like it’d been abandoned, unwillingly. Tragically. He pushes the thought deep down, getting up and rubbing his gritty hands against his pants. Odd, they’re the pants from camp and not Felix’s loaned ones. He was going to have to change out of them now. He reaches under the cot for his bag that he’d only really brung to hold his old clothes. But nothing was there.

The air was getting stranger and stranger by the second, pressing against him suffocatingly. Like a child, he just wishes he can go home, back to the camp so he can be with Chan and Changbin. With the thought comes a pain sharp and relentless right through his heart. He doesn’t want to deal with it, deciding to ignore everything, and search for the kids. 

He pushes the door open and calls out, “Alright, you guys can come out.” But no one responds, not a single whisper, not a single laugh, not a single sound anywhere in the vicinity. Unease falls thick against the back of his throat, threatening to choke him. 

He reaches up to feel the pouch of gold he and Changbin always carry around in case Chan ever for any reason has to perform magic, since he can’t carry any himself. It would comfort him, and pulse frenzies when he finds it’s not there, in its place another stone, wrapped with silver wire. 

Oh. 

He’s not undercover. He hasn’t been for quite a while. He nearly trips over himself to get to the stairs, desperation licking at his heels in merciless flames. He feels like he’s running from his burning village again, nothing but loss waiting for him on the other side of this freezing hell. 

His legs hurt and cramp but he doesn’t stop. He didn’t stop then, he won’t stop now. Not until he gets to his haven. He pushes open the doors with a loud burst like they’d fallen to the floor. It’s like he can only take his next breath when he sees the rest staring at him with the same lost look as he feels. 

“What the hell happened?” he pants, falling into one of the chairs beside Minho, gripping the armrests like they’d offended him. Beside him Minho shifts away, squeezing into the corner of his chair and appearing as small as he can. He presses his lips thin as if keeping from answering. Jisung surveys the room and blanches, “Why is there blood on the floor?” 

Faintly, Felix replies, “It’s Chan’s blood. He used it to get rid of Keres.” 

And it all comes back to him in blinding, searing flashes. He has to bend over his knees so he doesn’t vomit, head spinning violently. “Where’s Seungmin, Jeongin, and...Where’s Chan?” 

Before anyone can get the chance to enter the doors open once more, in stumbling Jeongin and Seungmin. Seungmin refuses to look at them, instantly dropping to the floor like a log, exhausted and overloaded. Jeongin refuses to look away gazing at them all with a frightening intensity. 

Jisung’s throat goes dry. The walls close in, and his world sets aflame. 

“He’s gone.”

Chapter Text

Seungmin blinks his eyes open, grunting as he rolls onto dewy grass. Beside him, Jeongin sits up, rubbing his eyes and trying to gather their surroundings. As the grogginess in them clear, it’s replaced with bafflement. He shakes Seungmin until Seungmin is wide awake and alert. “What?” he asks, voice lagging and sore. 

Jeongin points. 

Seungmin’s chest constricts, hugging his ribs, seconds from breaking them and with them, all the rest of him. Jeongin scurries to stand but Seungmin grabs his wrist and holds him back. “Don’t,” he pleads, “Stay here. Please.” Jeongin’s torn, looking between Seungmin and the odd scene. 

In the center of the clearing, is Minho and strangest of all, Seungmin. Another him. Or as Seungmin has quickly figured, a memory of him. One he desperately can’t let Jeongin experience. 

They’ve been keeping their secrets as of late, but right now, Seungmin knows he’s treading a line, an inch from crossing it. He knows and it hurts and he doesn’t want to keep anything from Jeongin. Anything but this. This, he can’t have Jeongin know whatsoever. For his sake. Or he’d already know. He would’ve known in a heartbeat. And it’s like Jeongin can feel it. 

“No,” he says firmly and tears away from Seungmin, and it feels like a stab through Seungmin’s gut, everything shredding and spilling out right there, both of them regarding each other with wide, hurt eyes. The line had been crossed. Never before, had either of them forcefully separated themselves. There was never any reason to. It was like a sever to their very bond, and Seungmin withers, shrinking away. “I can feel the bond,” Jeongin adds, softer and ginger, “This is bad, Seungmin. I need to see it.” 

And there’s no turning back, now is there? Exhaling and regaining his senses and wits, Seungmin stands, biting his lip madly. He’s shaken. He can’t tell why, but he’s more fragile than he’s ever been in his entire life, and none of this was helping, tearing through him mercilessly. He felt like he was falling apart, and only a fraction of that had to do with Jeongin. He holds out his hand and chokes on his breath, “Okay. But please, let me…” 

Jeongin isn’t cruel, and they’re not estranged. They’re as close as ever, maybe their recent distance somehow bringing them closer than they could’ve accomplished before the castle. So he doesn’t hesitate to take Seungmin’s hand, clinging onto it fearfully. He sees the torment Seungmin is going through all beneath the surface and displaying on his face in nicks and lines that age him a decade. It makes himself afraid. 

And they walk forward. As they step over some invisible threshold, the memory begins to play out before them. Seungmin presses himself close to Jeongin, hiding his head in the crook of Jeongin’s neck. He doesn’t need to see anything. He remembers it all distinctly in the back of his mind at all times. 

“Where am I?” Jeongin asks as the other Seungmin sits beside a shaking and silently sobbing Minho. 

“In the tent,” Seungmin mutters, “Chan didn’t wake up.” And with that Jeongin can make out exactly the time frame this is within. And then the other him speaks, congested with worry, and it makes Seungmin dizzy. 

“Minho?” 

“Seungmin,” Minho speaks, voice breaking and cracking like shattering glass, “I have something to tell you, and you can’t tell anyone else.”

“Minho, are you okay?” 

“Promise me, Seungmin. Swear it. Please.” 

There’s a moment’s lapse and Seungmin can feel Jeongin’s shoulders rise in intrigue and concern. “I swear it. Now, what’s wrong?” Other than Chan unconscious and unresponsive in a past they can’t reach in this memory. 

“Not even Jeongin.” Jeongin stiffens and the air tenses. When the other Seungmin speaks again his tone is thick and wary. 

“I swear.” 

Minho exhales in a small relief. He holds both of Seungmin’s hands with a death grip and tells in trembling breaths. “Chan knows how to defeat the curse.” 

Jeongin’s gasp is sharp and clear, audible as a bird’s chirp and harsh against Seungmin’s ear. He can feel a thousand questions well up in Jeongin, but thankfully he holds them back and within, waiting for it to be explained. The past Seungmin has done the same, sparing the broken down Minho. 

“He’s figured it out for a while now. Since the river. The reason he hasn’t told anyone is...there’s no telling if it will work. It relies on uncertainties. He doesn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. In case he really does disappear forever...It requires him to disappear for a short while though. He has to let the curse take him to break it. He doesn’t know how long, but it’ll be up to us to be silent if he wants to truly make it back. We have to make sure the others are okay and, we have to decide when it’s too late. When the curse really has worked.” 

“You’re making it sound,” the other Seungmin concludes, wavering, “Like there’s no real way to break it.” 

“‘Cause there isn’t really,” Minho responds hopelessly, shaking his head with fresh tears flying into the wind. “It’s a ruthless curse. It’s not breakable. Think about it. If he hadn’t survived in the first place, then there would be no second chance. The curse was enacted, and it’s a miracle he escaped it. Because there’s no breaking it. You can’t bring back someone who’s disappeared from the universe entirely.” 

Seungmin makes a frustrated noise, and the present one flinches, knowing how pathetic he had felt in that moment, and not wanting to see it. Helpless and despondent. Unable to do anything to keep their friend with them. It was worse than death, the fate Chan has been wrung through, and the fate that seems to be approaching him at rapid pace. “Then how? How is he supposed to come back?”

“Because the curse can no longer affect him fully. It’s gone to show already if he’s still fleeing it today. The spell itself after taking affect and not completely working, is near obsolete. The natural magic just needs to reset, and it practically already has, but it’s unsatisfied with the curse’s presence as it continues to actively alter time. We just have to remember him, keep his presence here permanently enough to remind time that he does belong here. That he was supposed to exist long ago.” 

“The book-”

“The book was written to appease everyone else... to give royal children like Chan, hope.” Seungmin truly despises that book, he’s known it from the beginning, first laying eyes upon it beside an absent, bleeding Felix. 

“We’re supposed to trick magic itself?” Seungmin exclaims incredulously, “There’s no way…” And his voice cracks, and Seungmin feels the tears run down both their faces. They were supposed to just sit back and watch as Chan be taken, with no closure. He could be gone their whole lives, and they’d have to wonder to their very last breath if he was going to reappear. 

Whoever designed the curse, had no mercy. No compassion. 

As Seungmin cries, they wake. 

Right in the hall of Felix’s wing they come to, holding each other just as they were in the vision, shaken to their cores. 

“Oh,” Jeongin breathes, “That’s why you didn’t tell me.” 

+

“He’s gone.” 

Felix looks up, digging his nails into the rug. “What?” 

Jeongin slumps, looking like he wants to join Seungmin on the floor, the weight of a life upon his shoulders. He avoids Felix’s gaze avidly, murmuring. “Chan. The curse took him. That was the only way to keep the magic from taking all of us.” 

There’s a moment of torturous silence before Jisung, pale and trembling like a leaf, curls into a ball, hands against his face, screams. It’s a pained shout of utter grief and disbelief that morphs into a despondent sob that reaches them before anything else can process, spearing them with the same ruthless realization. 

Chan was gone. And he was never coming back. Like dominoes, they fall. 

Changbin falls back into the wall, shaking his head over and over, sinking to the floor and whispering. “No, no. I was supposed to keep him here. He wasn’t supposed to leave. No, why? Why? Why him?” 

Hyunjin just holds himself and mutters, “Oh, skies. Oh, skies.” He can’t believe it. He doesn’t want to.” 

Jeongin joins Seungmin, trying fruitlessly to comfort him. 

Felix...Felix feels like he’s noiselessly drowning. An invisible agony climbs up his ribs with slick talons, crawling through his throat and stealing his tongue. He can’t breathe with its presence, he can’t think, he can’t, he can’t, he can’t . Haunting him, his last moments with Chan come back to him with a kick to the stomach, doubling him over. Chan had held his face, had smiled so prettily, had told Felix he loved him . And then disappeared. Forever. 

For the second time, he feels a rage so volatile it blinds and deafens him. How could he? Why would he do that to Felix? But a deep blue sorrow battles it, and Felix almost wishes it didn't. It was either Chan, or their entire reality. If he wasn’t Felix, Chan’s precious Golden Prince, he’d be praising Chan for his selfless, heroic, stupid sacrifice. It was Chan, or their entire reality. Really, the choice was obvious. But he is Felix. And the Golden Prince has just lose is Crimson Prince. The sun had lost its rose. 

If there was no flower to beam for, what use was there in a sun shining?

He was still alive, and it was because of Chan. But like a fool, all he can wish is that they disappeared together. 

He thanks the other, for keeping their friends alive alongside him. If any of them had gone with him, he thinks he would force himself into joining them, no matter the circumstances. He can’t do this alone. He can’t do this. He can’t handle it. He can feel himself ripping apart at the seams, breaking apart and losing himself in the sounds of Jisung’s sobs and Changbin’s muttering of denial and defiance. 

A hand lands on his shoulder, and it feels like it’s covering a gaping wound, staunching Felix’s bleeding and keeping him together even though he’s not really injured. He looks up, gaping for air, and Minho smiles down at him, or pitifully attempting to. 

“C’mon, we have a castle to run.” 

Why when Chan left, did the world keep spinning? Felix’s world has stilled to a stop and is hurtling towards the sun it had orbited, wishing for destruction and death. Shouldn’t everyone’s? How can life continue without Chan in it? It didn’t seem possible. Time had taken Chan because he no longer was supposed to be . Felix doesn’t understand that all, because in his mind, time was not right if Chan did not show up in the next second and give him a toothy, dimpled grin. Because that dimple meant time was moving right. How could someone with such a lasting effect, fade without a trace. 

Natural magic had to be absolutely idiotic. That was the only explanation for how any of this could make any sense. 

But when he took his next breath, the world was still as it was before, even without Chan. And that was that. Chan was gone, and they weren’t. 

“Don’t make his sacrifice worth nothing,” Minho begs and Felix realizes the time it’s taken him to respond, his conscience and magic layers deep beneath his surface, wandering and searching for the presence that had accompanied it before. It didn’t know Chan’s magic would never return, and it questions him, wonders. “Please, Felix. I can’t lose you too.None of us can handle that.” 

So slowly he blinks, and stands on unwilling legs, and falls into Minho’s chest. “Okay,” is all he can say. 

Chan is gone. They weren’t. They have each other because of him. And right now, they can’t deal with another loss. Not him, not Minho, not any of them. So Felix’s only choice, is to keep going. To keep living. 

To keep smiling. 

Just...keep smiling . 

He lets it all wash over him, and through every stab of hurt, he sobs. 

+

.

.

.

Hyunjin sits back, feeling his spine ache from hunching over the easel and the canvas propped on it for hours on end. The mind numbing tapping of his paintbrush against the palette restless. Every time he sits back here, he’s frustrated and bitter For the life of him, he’ll put the brush to the cream surface, and cannot think of a single feature. He absolutely despises the feeling. All that sits before him on the large canvas, is a faceless man, clad and cloaked in ebony, as if penumbral rather than existing. 

His door creaks open and Minho sticks his head in, looking directly at Hyunjin to grant him privacy of his painting, knowing the very little that Hyunjin was touchy about it after working on it for a week and getting nowhere yet not moving on. “The coronation is in an hour,” he reminds, “Want me to help you get ready?” 

Flipping his easel around with a sigh, Hyunjin turns to him, “Is everyone in the lovebirds’ room?” 

Minho nods. “Everyone but Changbin and Felix…” 

Standing, Hyunjin wipes his paint-stained fingers against a stray cloth beside is workspace. He expected that. Changbin and Felix were the least social nowadays, and for an event like this, being alone was probably the best for them. But “Jisung’s with them too? That’s good. Let’s go. Is my stuff already there?” 

“Yep. And it is. Jeongin even let him hug him. He might’ve started crying honestly.”

Hyunjin snorts and closes his door behind him, following Minho up winding, gilded hallways. On the way to Felix’s wing, he can’t help but look at the drawn curtains a bit away from the stairs, seeming so dark underneath the draped fabric. It makes him uneasy and they quickly move past it, fidgeting until it leaves their sight. 

Jeongin and Seungmin had taken the biggest room in Felix’s wing, which they’d been surprised and not to find out wasn’t Felix’s. It has a big bed and had been full of dust and cob webs when they moved in. It’s more than anything they ever had and at first it overwhelmed them. Eventually, though, everyone began to sleep in that room on the king-sized mattress together. It filled the empty space, and kept their wounded hearts beating steadily. They stopped sleeping in Felix’s room, even Felix himself only going to the place to go through the window and up to his rooftop getaway. 

They’d long cut off the bloodstained part of the rug, but they couldn’t stare long at the floor without seeing it. No one was in there long, and it became practically uninhabited. It was a bit sad, to see the area they thought so comforting and warm, lit with flames and the first place most of them can identify as feeling belonged. So unwelcoming. But it was the easiest of things to mourn. 

They each have their own rooms, all along the same hall, but those ended up being mostly study rooms for their hobbies than where they retired for the night. The only reason Hyunjin had been downstairs, is because he wanted this certain project, to stay hidden. He felt equally protective of it as he was ashamed. But he had the same type of easel set up in his room surrounded with tubes of paint and a vast assortment of brushes. His bed was pushed forgotten to the furthest part of the wall. He only used it when he couldn’t bear being vulnerable to everyone for another day, or when Jeongin and Seungmin needed their own peace. 

Being the biggest, their room was at the end of the hallway, the doors grand and looming, but Hyunjin and Minho ignore its opulence as they push them open. Jisung immediately greets them, cheer overcompensated and overwhelming, but they welcome it with grateful joy. 

“Minho! My best friend!” Jisung exclaims as he throws himself at the older, holding onto him tight, before moving onto Sam. Hyunjin sinks into the touch, hiding the way he hates it. He misses Jisung’s old hugs, gooey and warm like a cushion of fudge. Now they were always edged with fear, Jisung’s fingers digging a little too hard into their backs, afraid of letting them go in the next minute. 

Minho chuckles, “Don’t let Changbin hear that.” 

“What about me?” Hyunjin whines into Jisung’s head, “Am I not even a candidate?” 

Seungmin rolls his eyes from where he’s already dressed, assisting Jeongin with the buttons of his shirt as Jeongin picks out fanciful jewelry for the other to wear. Seungmin’s head and neck were bound to be laden with ruby and garnet by the coronation. “Can the both of you just get ready? It’d be embarrassing if we of all people weren’t at the coronation early.” 

“‘Sides,” Jeongin murmurs before him, tongue between his teeth as he concentrates on matching silvers and chains, “I’m Jisung’s best friend.” 

“You’re all ridiculous,” Seungmin says after their encore of jeers and denies. At his tired exhale they all get into motion, Minho steering Hyunjin to his clothes as Jisung gets help from Seungmin and his own pick of jewelry from Jeongin. 

Everyone had asked Felix beforehand if he’d wanted the royal colors changed from red and gold, as before it all, he’d only associated the colors with the despicableness of his ‘parents’ and wanted them changed, rebelling by constantly wearing blue and silver. To their surprise, he’d resolutely insisted the colors stay red and gold. And Hyunjin thinks he sees why. The colors had never been Keres’ and Doyle’s, they’d been the colors of the previous royal family. They couldn’t be tainted now.

So Hyunjin stares in the mirror now, admiring the outfit specifically tailored to him. Loose fitting tan slacks rest at his waist and cinch above his ankles. Tucked into them was a plain pale blouse with red seams and billowing sleeves and a ruffled color, cut to expose triangular portions of his shoulders. Sitting over it is a cropped red corset, embroidered in sporadic threads of gold. His ears are cuffed in the same stuff, studded red gems at the lobes as well as draped over his neck in circles. 

He used to hate royal wear, but Felix has requested his clothing now to be unrestricted and free for all sorts of movement, making sure Hyunjin wouldn’t hate wearing it to the special event. He doesn’t hate this outfit. And though he could link it to several negativities, he doesn’t. He loves it, spinning in it and smiling smally. 

“Ready?” Jisung asks from beside him, sitting cross legged on the ground, finished peeing at his own sleek outfit in his reflection. The red perhaps makes the purple beneath his eyes pop out but it’s rivalled by the glitter bedazzling his lids. Like a tired saint, he smiles thinly, fatigued but glad for something. 

Hyunjin helps him up, adjusting the black earrings lining his cartilage. “Mhm. You?” 

Sniffling a bit and carefully wiping his eyes, Jisung simply shakes his head. “I always hoped to attend a coronation. But not this one.” And deep down, despite their adoration and respect for the up and coming queen, they all agree. The king’s throne will be empty beside her, but they wish it was reversed. She wouldn’t hold it against them, in fact, she’s probably just as reluctant to take the crown. 

“Yeah, me too.” 

From the center of the room, Minho claps his hands together and assumes the role he once had, but now fits into awkwardly, too small for the mold that has grown bigger than him, pushed to fit for two, but then abandoned. “Alright, time to pick up our princeling and Changbin.” 

Quietly, they assemble into a small cluster, too small, will always be too small, and depart the room, doused in soberness as they cross through into the hall. Hyunjin huffs a breath and doesn’t even attempt to alleviate the building pressure like a weight on his chest. Behind them enough space is left for a lingering ghost, one that will not stop haunting them. And when Hyunjin looks back at the slammed doors, he sees it vividly, faceless and melancholy. 

By gold, why can’t he remember it? He just wants to paint it. Give it a permanence so he won’t forget it entirely. He doesn’t know what will become of them the day he wakes up, and the deluded anomaly is gone. 

He hates the ghost, they all do, but desperately they cling to it. 

+

Before, Felix had hated red with a passion that was always uncharacteristic, but never fading. Now, he hates blue. 

Red to him was once the spilt blood of memories he couldn’t grasp, drowning the outer corners of his mind, constantly taunting a clueless, wrecked him from his peripherals. It was the color Keres and Doyle donned like festival costumes, parading in broad daylight as proud imposters of respectable and competent queens and kings. Blue hadn’t meant to much to him, but it was red’s opposite and that was what he cared for. 

He was naive. 

He shouldn’t have hated the colors that they stole, but the colors that they were. 

Keres and Doyle had been blue, the side effects of wronging magic staining their skin the sickly color of a corpse long drowned in ruthless river depths. Their eyes sometimes took on the sheen of ice that had pierced them all with something worse than contempt. Jeongin’s told him when he last saw her, that she’d been the color of a human, tan and red beneath the skin. 

Blue had been the color of his lips not weeks after Felix had finally reunited with him. Freezing and constantly on the verge between life and death, dancing between the line with stark azure veins beneath translucent skin, each breathtaking step heavy like it was his last. 

Red, red had been the color of his flaming hair. Of his lips when he was healthy and that was Felix’s favorite period of time. The color of the masks he’d discarded. The color of the rose he’d been named for. The color of the rose Felix had placed on his lips as they shared their first moment alone in the forest, drenched in freedom and giddiness and endearment. They’d been reunited at last, and he had bloomed crimson from ear to cheek. It’d been very pretty. 

So when the others ask him if he wants to change what he can of the royal colors, have his mother’s dress at the coronation be purple or pink or gold forbid, blue, and the accents of their own outfits to match. He refuses. So as the queen and king beforehand, the queen will be adorned in stunning shades of ruby. 

He himself, will be standing beside those he holds closest as they themselves bear the same color. He thought at the end of this, the color would hide more scars, but none of them had any that were physical. When one worked in magics, wounds were hardly all on the surface, and so they may seem unscathed, but they are anything but. Like a scapegoat he had tried to take all their pain, but he knew the worst if it would never show to their people. A blessing and a curse. 

And in red, he is. And scars, it does hide. He wears simple plain pants, tight-fitting and flexible, knee-high black boots cutting into them. But in it is tucked a blouse with white ruffled bell sleeves that nearly blend into the layers of crimson that extend from his elaborately gold-embroidered vest. He moves, and the train trails over the ground like a river of blood. He looks like a bride of the dead. Fitting. 

As he clips on a necklace that somewhat resembles the one that was enchanted to dispel gold, and slips on the golden earrings he once hated but now only feels a dull surrender to, there’s a knock on the door. Stilling, he looks once more in the mirror, exhaling out through puffed cheeks and straightening his sleeves. 

He opens the door and they all stand there admiring his outfit, even Changbin which he guesses they had already picked up. All their own look different, tailored to their person with vivid personality, and stained in carmine like a testament to the kingdom’s losses. To their losses. 

“You look nice,” he practically whispers, cursing himself for the lump that has already congested his throat. 

Minho smiles and pulls him out. “I’d say you look the nicest, my prince. Officially by blood.” 

Felix only acts like it’s an honor for his mother. This is a role he has never wanted, and even more so after the events. But his mother deserves it and it’s what the former queen would have wanted, he’s proud. His responding smile is strained, but he nods as if resigning to it, and he knows that’s all Minho expects. He pushes Minho behind him and in succession of pairs, his friends link arms. All except him. His other half stranded amidst a reality nothing but the forgotten can access. 

Inseparable, tied by their very limbs, they make their way to the throne room. It was a room that had rarely been visited in the past, Keres and Doyle far to uncaring and negligent to host any hearings or help in there. The only one that had been threatened, had been Hyunjin's, but they’d never made it to that one. He can feel Hyunjin shrink into Minho as they near, and Minho responds in kind. It’s not something they’ve had time to forget. 

But as soon as they pass through the entrance, the atmosphere transforms, the somber mourning flung to the air as they’re surrounded with dancing and bustling crowds of excitable villagers and staff, hushed whispers to shouted praise ringing through the air for their new queen. For their new life. Started from scratch and promising a future they can cling to unlike any of their generations before. 

No longer cursed, and no longer endangered, their kingdom can finally become something more than a place to survive and die. 

It’s infectious, really. With so much joy around them, coursing through the air in all senses, they’re not invulnerable. It permeates through their ears through their skin and to their hearts. One by one, the smiles on their faces, become earnest. Changbin comes up beside a frozen Felix, and hesitantly, his lips curve up, sadness strong in his eyes, but cheer pushing up his cheeks. And then Felix lets himself grin too, hurting his face like it was something foreign. 

They’re alive. He’s gone, but they’re alive and they’re together. They had many things to mourn, but they had many more to celebrate. 

“Up there!” Seungmin shouts through the welcome noise, “That’s where we’re supposed to go.” 

In fascinating synchronization, the crowd parts for them. They don't really acknowledge the boys’ presence, still stuck up in the cotton candy clouds of their hopeful chatter and ecstasy, but they still make way. And as they line up on either side of the of the stairs that lead to the throne’s platform, each person on each step, three on one side, four on the other. In order of age, Minho to Sam, Seungmin to Jeongin. Above Minho, an empty space sits solemnly. Hyunjin stares at it long before Changbin flicks his shoulder and they look to the grand doors that lead from the village to the palace. 

Slowly, the large room falls silent, draped in awe and admiration kept teeming under noiseless containment. Through the doors, steps in Mama. In all his visions, and after some time his true memories, his mother is cloaked in pale, considerably drab colors. A queen’s right hand, and nothing more, contrasting her vibrant personality and capability. Though it is impossible, Felix wishes the former queen could see this, he knows she would be so happy. 

Tears choke him and he has to put a hand to his mouth as sorrow and exuberance mix into something so wonderfully human and painful it stabs straight through his heart. 

Like a poppy bloomed, Mama spreads her arms over her sides, her sleeves billowing around her arms, her shoulders bare and freckled, her neck laced in all sorts of gold, but not nearly enough to make her precocious, just enough to recognize and appreciate her great role in their kingdom. Her dress’s hoop extends from one side of the rolled out carpet to the other, massive and breathtaking and it’s all a thrilling, dizzying, crimson. In her hair are various flowers braided over and through a humble crown. 

As she ascends the steps, she stops by each of them, murmuring her thank you’s and her appreciation before gently taking their faces and kissing them on the head like they’re precious porcelain. And as fragile as such, with her touch, they crumble into dust, tears melting through their skin and escaping from the cage they’ve been kept in since the world reset. 

Felix shifts almost fearfully when his own mother approaches him, the second highest up but the last to be broached, gulping back anxiety and apprehension, knowing in front of thousands, he is going to break when he had impossibly maintained this mirage of stability and okayness when he felt all but. He looks at his friends, Minho turned away from them all ith a red nose and bitten lips, Changbin with his hands over his face, shoulders shaking, Hyunjin with tears leaking down his face and a heavy melancholy drenching his aura. 

On Felix’s own side, Jisung is on his knees, trembling violently, aching with a mother’s love, and aching for the vestige of an older brother’s touch. Seungmin is absolutely still, dead-eyed as regret cloys around his being like a demon. Jeongin just frantically tries to wipe away the tears like none of the others do, not used to being so exposed in front of so many people. And then there’s Felix. 

“I wish I’d been able to help you through it all,” Mama murmurs, nostalgic for a childhood that never existed, “And I’m so sorry you had to go through so much to get us to this point, little chick. I hate becoming a queen, because my best friend is not. And I know you feel the same for your lost prince. You have my sincerest apologies and condolences, and I promise to make up for all the tie I’ve lost, as a queen, and as a mother. I love you, so much. Don’t forget it.” 

And maybe it’s the words, his words, and her following peck against his head that he used to sleep to every night once upon a time, but he doesn’t crumble like he thought he would. He cries, oh does he cry, nodding his head emphatically with salt on his smiling lips. But he doesn’t crumble. And he realizes neither are the people around him. They’re becoming stronger. They’re healing. Even if it looks so despondent and hopeless from the outside, it’s the entire opposite. 

Mama will make the perfect queen, he already knows, and it took sacrifices that never should have been made, but it’s what they have come to. Her rightful place is in and out the throne, a right hand, and a queen. But now, she will take up the latter, and she will do it the best she can, and that will be best for the kingdom. She’s perfect for it honestly, and it’s visible in the assuredness in which she sits, a heavy, grateful grin upon her face. It’s visible in the boys before her who she’s shown an immense amount of compassion, moving them from their sorrow into something like healing. 

She’s the queen, and she will rule the kingdom with hope. And that’s what they need most. 

Outside, the first storm since the fires started, brews.

Chapter Text

Despite the coronation feeling like the final puzzle piece to their closure, it isn’t. Recovery is never smooth, and the same can be said for their band, as tight-knit and supported as they are. 

Like boiling water, their frustration at the unfairness of it all, bubbles. And it’s yet to overflow whatever capacity they’ve gathered in enduring what they have. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. 

Minho and Seungmin know this, and they’re lying in anxious wait, watching their cherished people around them gradually tense, basking in their own personal hell of knowing . But they were picked specifically for this role because he knew they wouldn’t lash at each other. He knew alone, they might’ve, at anyone nearby, but together, they were somewhat balanced. 

But it took a third person to really maintain that, and trios really have always worked best in Minho’s opinion. 

“Jeongin knows,” Seungmin says suddenly one day in the library where somehow it’s managed just to be the three of them. Jeongin on the window sill, Seungmin in a chair placed next to him, and Minho just diagonal, seated at the table. For a second, Minho has to guess what exactly that’s implying. 

There’s a quick spark of anger but he immediately snuffs it, frowning and turning back, resting his chin on the back of the chair. “You weren’t supposed to tell anyone. Not even Jeongin. You swore.” And it’s not really upsetness that underlies his voice, just a vague disappointment. 

If Seungmin broke and told Jeongin, then it must’ve meant the secret-keeping was really getting to him, and Minho couldn’t blame him for that. He couldn’t tell Felix, no matter what, and it just happened that their circumstances were so vastly different despite being in the same castle with the same friends and the same situation. 

Jeongin could handle knowing before it was time. Felix couldn’t. And that’s why he probably told them to keep them secret in the first place. 

Seungmin winces and Jeongin lolls his head against the window, piercing Minho with a defensive stare. “He didn’t. Before we woke up in the castle, we were taken to the memory where you told Seungmin about the curse. He tried to keep me from listening but I think I was supposed to listen. For you guys...He might have told me, really, if he weren’t so protective of me.” 

Frankly, it’s true. They don’t say it was the natural magic’s will that placed Jeongin in that memory. Perhaps, it had been, but they no longer trusted natural magic to the extent they once did. It was all-powerful and retained some sort of omniscience, but clearly, natural magic was malleable and gullible as well as it was influential. Easily swayed, fragile, sensitive. It was the most undefeatable presence to ever exist among life, but it was not fit for human minds. It was incomprehensible to them, but Minho has begun to believe it was the same the other way around. 

On the other hand, as well, he’d been protective over Jeongin in a way he wasn't even over Felix. It probably had something to do with being the oldest and Jeongin the youngest of them, a sort of caretaker or self-giving trait that never seemed to stay dormant. But also just their dynamic overall that lead to both of them shielding each other in the oddest of ways that were hard to understand for anyone else. They were defenseless against change, but they didn’t let it disturb them as was typical. 

Even describing it had Minho’s brows furrowing. 

“I can see that,” Minho sounds out, “So, you know everything?” 

“Everything.” 

There’s a lapse of silence, each heavy gaze resting on the small patch of floor distancing them. Wordlessly, with the sound of the chair scraping pushed in accompanying him, he moves to the sill and bundles Jeongin tight in his arms. They don’t do much else, just sit there in mutual comfort as Seungmin goes on about whatever book he just finished perusing. Not a tear shed, not a condolence passed, just them wanting to be as close as possible with the knowledge they bear, sharing the weight and not breaking still. 

+

“Hey! Hey! Stop it!” 

Jisung never imagined himself here, not ever. But as he stands limp and dejected, a cut on his lip that spreads iron over his tongue, he has no choice but to really see what has become his destination. Even though the fight has well left him, Minho is still holding him tightly, keeping him grounded and upright all at once. He breathes heavily in Minho’s embrace, and tries desperately, and succeeds with only his old immense pride, not to break down right there.

He thinks Hyunjin is doing the same, across from him in Felix’s grip, panting unsteadily, purple bruising unevenly over his cheek, anger dying in his expression quicker than a fire could even spark. Jisung thinks he sees the same desolate level they’ve brought themselves to, and his eyes wander over their audience, lingering over an empty space, and he crumples in on himself. 

Changbin bursts from his room, startling them all, as he stands with faux indifference before the scene. Jisung winces just at the still sight of him, and wished if they had to do this anywhere, it couldn’t been not in front of Changbin’s room. He didn’t want Changbin to see this, and he didn’t want to disturb Changbin from his silent process of grief in any sense. But he especially didn’t want Changbin to be exposed to volatility of his own, displayed now like a broken sculpture pitifully for all to see. 

“What the hell is happening?” 

Felix hauls Hyunjin into his arms despite the older being much taller, grunting. “These two,” he gasps incredulously, “They were...they were fighting!” 

Changbin’s eyes widen and immediately dart over Jisung in surprise. Jisung ducks his head and shrinks into Minho’s chest, wishing he could just run and hide. Changbin wouldn’t be surprised that Jisung had lashed out on Sam, maybe at the fact that Hyunjin had so eagerly reciprocated, but at the fact that Jisung’s outbursts had returned. 

Long ago, when Jisung had just been settling in with Changbin and him , despite their saint levels of patience and neverending care for him, he’d been the youngest by three years, a child. Overwhelmed by what their lives had become, and angry at it all. Often, he’d lash out, before he managed to fill the empty space left behind by his village of ash with love and hope instead of desolation and fury.