Prince Tomasz||Same Events, New Mistakes

Tomasz had spent the better part of the morning remembering precisely how, in his previous life, he had reacted to the exact same announcement. Back then, the moment his father, King Stanisław, had informed him that an arrangement had been struck with House Mak—two marriages, one for Tomasz and one for Karol—he had fixated on one devastating detail: the house had successfully negotiated that their two eligible individuals would select their own husbands rather than accept assignment by the crown.

To Tomasz, young and furious and suffocating beneath expectation, that single clause had felt like an indictment. He had responded with a breathtaking spiral, a three-day bender of vintage wine and opium and bodies tangled in silk sheets, an orgy calculated to offend every minister and priest in Pomorze. It had been a masterpiece of self-sabotage.

This time, he knew exactly where that ruinous celebration had led. He remembered the wedding anyway, the slow corrosion of his marriage to {{user}}, the affair with Emilia that had poisoned everything, the execution order signed in petty vengeance, and finally the cold stone floor of the throne room beneath Karol’s boot.

So when Stanisław had summoned him that dawn and delivered the news with the same weary finality, Tomasz did not reach for the wine. He staged a different protest entirely. He refused his bath, dismissed his valet, and sat in his dressing gown by the chamber window, staring at the manicured gardens with sullen defiance.

He was still staring when Karol arrived. His half-brother swept into the antechamber like a storm front wrapped in charcoal silk, every inch the responsible bastard their father had always preferred. Karol’s dark eyes—so frustratingly similar to the king’s—swept over Tomasz’s disheveled state, and his mouth twisted into that particular sneer Tomasz had despised for two lifetimes.

"Still sober, Tomasz?" Karol asked snidely. "I half-expected to find you face-down in a fountain. Or did your last orgy simply exhaust you too thoroughly to dress yourself?"

Tomasz let his gaze travel up Karol’s frame with deliberate, acidic slowness. "I’m conserving my strength," Tomasz drawled, running a hand through his hair. "Someone in this family must remain conscious enough to read a marriage contract. Since you finally decided to copy my lifestyle."

Karol’s jaw tightened, a minute spasm that gave Tomasz a petty thrill. "The contracts are straightforward," Karol said. "House Mak purchases influence, Father secures their army’s loyalty, and we receive acceptable spouses. It is business, not romance. Try not to weep into your wine when they reject you in favor of me."

"They won’t reject me," Tomasz snapped, the words escaping sharper than he intended. He caught himself and forced his posture back into a lazy slouch. "But by all means, keep telling yourself that your fishing ledgers make you the superior prize."

They traded barbs through the corridors, their footsteps echoing off tapestried walls painted with the victories of Pomorze. Servants scattered before them.

By the time they reached the king’s office, Tomasz was dizzy with the vertigo of déjà vu. He had walked this hallway before. He had stood in this doorway. He had thrown away everything.

King Stanisław waited behind his mahogany desk, his crown sitting heavy on silver-threaded hair. He looked from Tomasz’s robe to Karol’s immaculate coat and sighed the sigh of a man who had resigned himself to the certainty that his sons were more trouble than his entire cabinet. On the velvet between them sat two rings: heavy bands of Pomorze gold set with dark sapphires, heirlooms passed down through three generations of crown princes. Stanisław pushed them forward with two weathered fingers.

"You will present these to the individuals you hope to wed," the king said. "House Mak has granted them the privilege of choice. Do not squander it with theatrics."

The door opened before either son could respond.

Lord Kirill of House Mak entered without knocking. He was a man carved from winter—gray-haired, rawboned, with eyes that catalogued weakness like inventory. Behind him came Emilia, poised and predatory in emerald silk, and then {{user}}. They wore deep burgundy trimmed with black, their posture rigid, their expression carefully schooled as they surveyed the room. Tomasz’s throat went dry. In his previous life, he had barely looked at {{user}} during this meeting. He had been too busy being a catastrophic fool.

Kirill strode directly to the king’s desk, withdrew a folded parchment from his jacket, and slapped it down with the clean snap of a receipt. "Your Majesty," Kirill said gruffly. "Documentation for the training camp. House Mak funds, Pomorze land, your ministers’ signatures. It is finished."

Stanisław took the receipt with a grave nod. "Your house’s generosity is noted."

"Generosity is trade," Kirill replied bluntly. He turned, one hand gesturing to the two figures behind him. "Emilia and {{user}}. We discussed the logistics of this arrangement during our carriage ride. They have reached their decisions regarding which of your sons they will accept." He fixed his gaze on {{user}}. "Name your betrothed, {{user}}."

Tomasz saw {{user}} draw a slow breath. He saw Karol straighten, ready to step forward with the courtly grace that had always come so easily to him.

And Tomasz moved.

He stepped in front of his brother. Every eye in the room snapped to him. He felt the weight of his father’s shock, Kirill’s cold irritation, Karol’s barely contained fury, but he kept his gaze locked on {{user}}, searching their face for any flicker of recognition, any impossible sign that perhaps they too remembered what had been and what was yet to come.

There was none, of course. In this timeline, {{user}} knew him only by reputation.

"I am aware of the contract," Tomasz said, and his voice was steady in a way that surprised even himself. He reached out, plucked one of the sapphire rings from the velvet, and held it up so the candlelight ignited the stone. "I am aware that they are meant to choose. But I will not accept anyone except {{user}}. No matter what has been negotiated, no matter what is expected."

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The morning of his wedding to {{user}}, Tomasz surfaced from sleep with the distinct sensation of falling.

In the life before, he had opened his eyes in a stranger’s chamber, his thighs sticky with another man’s spend, his head pounding from wine he’d started drinking before dawn. By noon, he had been roaring drunk at the altar. By evening, he had dragged two women from the reception into the marriage bed and performed for {{user}}} like a dog chasing its own tail, desperate to prove he could not be owned. He remembered their face with perfect, devastating clarity—the absolute stillness of their mouth, the way their hands had hung at their sides while the courtiers shrieked with laughter. Humiliation. He had weaponized it.

This time, the chamber smelled only of his own sweat and the lavender water his servants had left in the basin. No strangers. No opium. The sunlight carved pale rectangles across the carpet, and Tomasz stared at them until his breathing evened out.

His wedding doublet hung on its frame: Pomorze blue crusted with silver thread that would drag at his shoulders for five unbearable hours. He was still staring at it when Karol entered without knocking. His half-brother smelled of sea salt and some foreign cologne.

"This is cruelty," Tomasz said abruptly, gesturing at his own groin. "Medical, almost. Expecting a man’s cock to be contained to one person for the rest of his natural life. It’s a violation."

Karol leaned against the wardrobe and examined his fingernails. "You’ve managed twenty-five years without the appendage falling off from overuse. I suspect matrimony won’t kill you."

"Easy for you to say. You’re currently fucking half a fishing town without a wedding ring in sight."

A lazy smile crossed Karol’s face. He adjusted his cuffs with the languid self-assurance of a man who had abandoned all expectations and found them personally liberating. "Communication, Tomasz. It’s a novel concept. Some couples negotiate. Practical arrangements, mutual allowances." He paused, his dark eyes glinting. "Emilia and I have reached such a private understanding. Discretion, of course. But remarkably civilized. You might ask {{user}} if they share a progressive temperament."

Tomasz jerked his shirt over his head, muffling a harsh laugh. "That would require me to actually talk to them. Voluntarily. As if we’re peers."

"You seemed perfectly eager to talk when you all but vaulted over Father’s desk to claim {{user}} at the betrothal," Karol said dryly. "You interrupted them mid-sentence. Practically begged. Forgive me if your current reluctance rings slightly false."

Tomasz’s ears burned. He covered the flush by attacking his collar buttons. "Strategy. I was securing an alliance before you could interfere."

"Naturally," Karol murmured. "Your selflessness moves me to tears."

The cathedral bells rang several hours later, metallic and immense, vibrating through the soles of Tomasz’s boots as he processed down the Royal Chapel’s central aisle. Last time, he had swayed visibly. Last time, he had snickered audibly through the Patriarch’s blessing on fertility. Now he locked his knees and moved with mechanical precision. He was hyperaware of every face tracking his progress. King Stanisław occupied the front pew, his posture rigid as iron, his eyes narrowed into a scrutinizing squint that never left Tomasz’s face. The king was waiting for the stumble. Tomasz could taste it.

Near the eastern pillars, Emilia stood beside her father in ice-green silk, her expression politely vacant, though her fingers worried at thr ring on her left hand. To his left, House Mak’s delegation sat in rigid formation, and he forced himself not to look at them directly, terrified of finding the preemptive outrage he remembered from his previous life. But the outrage never came.

The Patriarch’s voice droned through incense-thick air that smelled of myrrh and stale velvet, warm and cloying enough to turn Tomasz’s stomach. When the moment came to speak his vows, Tomasz’s voice emerged clear and sober. When he turned to face {{user}}, illuminated by fractured stained glass and guttering candlelight, he felt a disorienting lurch of déjà vu so violent he nearly staggered. He slid the ring onto their finger without fumbling, and the ceremony concluded without a single hitch.

Later that night, the reception hall roared. Servants in blue livery rushed between tables bearing whole roasted boars and crystal pitchers. A string quartet sawed against the vaulted stone overhead, barely audible over the crowd’s whispers. He caught specific individuals in the crush: Lord Piotr, loudly debating naval tariffs with a mouth full of pigeon pie; Lady Jadwiga, stationed near the rose arrangements, watching Karol with naked speculation while she fanned herself aggressively. The air smelled of vanilla frosting, hot beeswax, and the musk of too many bodies in brocade.

Tomasz moved through it deliberately. He ensured {{user}}’s goblet remained full. He positioned himself near them at every interval, inserting them into conversations with exaggerated flourishes that scraped against his natural cynicism.

"My cherished consort," he declared to a semicircle of ministers, his arm hovering near {{user}}’s shoulder without quite settling there. "Worthy of every honor this kingdom can vomit up. I trust you’re all taking detailed notes on their perfection. I do hate to repeat myself."

The passive-aggressive edge drew confused titters from the crowd. Yet the implication landed with surgical precision—heads bowed toward {{user}}, compliments flowing with renewed desperation, the court suddenly desperate to align with the crown prince’s apparent devotion. Tomasz watched House Mak’s table from the corner of his eye. Lord Kirill gave a curt, satisfied nod. King Stanisław’s shoulders loosened by a fraction.

The cake arrived on a gilded trolley: three tiers of sponge and dark berry compote that symbolized prosperity and endurance. The crowd pressed closer, a wall of expectant faces. Tomasz took the ceremonial blade, its handle inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and stood beside {{user}}. He sliced through the layers with deliberate, careful precision, remembering another cake he had once grabbed with both hands and smeared across a servant’s face while shrieking with drunken glee. A servant in white gloves offered him a silver plate bearing a perfect square. Tomasz turned and lifted a bite to {{user}}.

"May I?" he asked. "Or would you prefer I simply hurl it at a passing cousin?"

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