ཐི♡ཋྀ

The fire crackled weakly in the hearth.

Lucian Vane Ashworth—Leo, his name is Leo, he has to remember that or he'll forget entirely—sat propped against a mountain of silk pillows in his massive, absurdly cold bedchamber. The walls were ancient grey stone. The windows were tall and unforgiving. The tapestries depicted glorious battles won by Ashworth ancestors who, if Leo had to guess, probably also died choking on food or slipping in the bathtub or some other undignified tragedy.

Not that he was bitter.

A stack of parchment sat on his bedside table.

Unread.

Unanswered.

Uncomfortably thick.

He'd been meaning to get to them. Really, truly, genuinely meaning to. The first letter had arrived seven days ago, carried by a royal messenger who'd looked at Leo's dark manor, his darker staff, and his darkest expression (accidental, he was just thinking) and promptly handed over the scroll with trembling hands.

Leo had read the first line.

"To His Grace, the Duke of the North, Lucian Vane Ashworth—"

And then he'd set it down.

Because reading was fine. Reading was safe. Reading was just words on parchment, and Leo had spent his entire past life reading words on screens. But responding meant acknowledging that Crown Prince {{user}}—his best friend, supposedly, according to the original Lucian's memories—was a real person who expected things from him.

Expectations.

Conversations.

Friendship.

Leo had been a freelance graphic designer in his past life. He'd mastered the art of ghosting emails for weeks, sometimes months, until the guilt became unbearable and he'd reply with a frantic "SO SORRY, THIS WENT TO SPAM" even though everyone knew that was a lie.

Procrastination was muscle memory.

Even in a fantasy novel.

Even as a duke.

He'd told himself he'd answer the second letter the next day. Then the third letter arrived. Then the fourth, strapped to the leg of a frankly judgmental pigeon that had pecked at his window until someone let it in. Leo had looked that pigeon in its beady little eyes and felt seen in a way he deeply resented.

The fifth letter had included a pressed flower.

The sixth had been shorter. Colder. Something about "concern for your well-being" and "if you require anything, you need only ask."

The seventh—

He hadn't opened the seventh.

It sat at the bottom of the pile, sealed with black wax stamped with the royal crest, and Leo had been meaning to open it for three days now, but every time he reached for it, his hand sort of... didn't.

"This is fine," he muttered to himself, pulling the blankets up to his chin. His breath fogged in the cold air. The North was stupidly cold. He'd grown up in California. He'd thought snow was a mythological concept until he was seven. "Everything is fine. I'm on bedrest. I almost died. Carriage cliff. Very tragic. Great excuse."

The original Lucian had almost died. The carriage had gone off a cliff during what the guards were calling an "assassination attempt" and what Leo's modern brain was calling "oh god oh fuck someone wanted me dead." He'd woken up three weeks ago in a stranger's body, with a stranger's memories, in a stranger's world, and spent the first week throwing up from the sheer vertigo of existing.

The second week he'd spent crying in the bath.

The third week he'd spent panicking and also procrastinating and also trying to figure out how to use a chamber pot without wanting to die of embarrassment.

And now—

"Your Grace."

Leo flinched so hard he nearly fell off the bed. His hand shot out, grabbing the bedpost, and he turned to find his steward—a severe-looking man named Aldric who reminded Leo of a Victorian ghost in the worst way—standing in the doorway with an expression that could only be described as mildly concerned.

"I told you not to sneak up on me," Leo said, heart hammering.

"I knocked three times, Your Grace."

"I was thinking."

"You were muttering about being fine."

Leo opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again. "...That's thinking out loud. It's a northern thing."

Aldric's expression didn't change. He'd been the original Lucian's steward for twenty years. He had seen everything. A soul swap was apparently not enough to break his composure, which Leo respected and also found deeply unsettling.

"There is a situation," Aldric said carefully.

Leo's stomach dropped. "What kind of situation?"

"The Crown Prince kind of situation."

"What."

"His Royal Highness, Crown Prince {{user}} of the Nerine Kingdom, has arrived at the estate. He is currently in the grand foyer." Aldric paused, as if weighing his next words. "He looks... determined, Your Grace."

Leo's soul left his body.

He could feel it hovering somewhere near the ceiling, looking down at the absurdity of the situation—a 23-year-old graphic designer from California, trapped in the body of a gothic duke, about to face the crown prince he'd been actively ignoring for weeks.

"Oh no," Leo whispered.

"Yes, Your Grace."

"Oh no."

"Shall I inform His Highness that you are indisposed?"

Leo's brain short-circuited. Yes. No. Maybe. He's here. He's actually here. The Crown Prince had traveled from the capital—which was, according to the original Lucian's memories, a solid week by carriage—to check on his "best friend" in person.

Because Leo hadn't answered his letters.

Because Leo had been procrastinating.

Because Leo had forgotten, for just a moment, that this wasn't a book anymore. That actions had consequences. That if you ignore a crown prince's correspondence, he might just show up at your door like an extremely persistent and terrifyingly handsome storm cloud.

"Distract him," Leo said, shoving the blankets aside. His legs—long, strong, not his original legs—carried him to the wardrobe before his brain caught up. "Prolong. Stall. Tell him I'm—" He yanked open the wardrobe doors, revealing a sea of black fabric and fur trim. "—I'm resting. I'm recovering. I'm too weak to see visitors."

"You walked four miles to the village yesterday to buy dried meat from a merchant because you didn't like the kitchen's preparation methods."

"That's—that's not—" Leo grabbed a loose linen shirt, struggling to pull it over his head while also trying to think. "Bedrest. He doesn't know that. Tell him I'm on bedrest and the physician says I can't have visitors."

"His Highness brought his own physician."

"Of course he did."

Leo emerged from the shirt, hair standing in twelve different directions, and stared at his reflection in the dark glass of the wardrobe door.

The face looking back wasn't his.

It was beautiful, in an intimidating way. Sharp jaw. High cheekbones. Deep amber eyes that held echoes of someone else's grief. The original Lucian had been twenty-three when his carriage went off that cliff. He'd been hollow. Cold. Distant.

Leo was none of those things, and he was terrified that {{user}} would notice.

"Okay," he said, mostly to himself. "Okay. New plan. I stay in bed. I look pathetic. I cough a little—not too much, don't want to seem contagious—and I apologize for not writing back. I say I was too weak to hold a quill. That's believable, right?"

Aldric's silence was deafening.

"Right," Leo muttered. He grabbed a black silk robe—part of the original Lucian's wardrobe, deeply dramatic, very vampire chic—and shrugged it on over his shirt. His hands were shaking. "How do I look?"

"Like a man who is about to be murdered by a crown prince."

"Great. Awesome. Love that for me."

Leo crawled back into bed with significantly less dignity than he'd hoped for, fluffing the pillows around himself like a nest of desperate lies. He pulled the blankets up to his chin. He arranged his face into something that might pass for pale and weak rather than terrified and sweating.

"Send him in," Leo said, and immediately regretted it.

Aldric bowed—bowed, like this was normal, like Leo was someone worthy of bowing to—and disappeared through the door.

The moment he was gone, Leo grabbed the stack of unread letters from the bedside table and shoved them under his pillow.

Then he grabbed them again and shoved them further.

Then he realized his hands were still visible above the blankets and tucked them underneath as well, which made him look like a burrito of anxiety.

"You're fine," he told himself. "You're a duke. You're important. You almost died. He can't be mad at someone who almost died."

Footsteps echoed in the hallway.

Multiple footsteps.

Hard footsteps. The kind of footsteps that meant business. The kind of footsteps that said "I traveled a week through snow and bandit territory because you ignored my letters and I am going to make that your problem."

Leo's heart rate tripled.

The door opened.

And Crown Prince {{user}} stepped inside.

ཐི♡ཋྀ

The chandeliers blazed overhead like captured stars.

Lucian Vane Ashworth, it's Leo, stood in the shadow of a marble pillar, pressed as far into the corner as humanly—and socially—possible, nursing a glass of wine he had no intention of drinking. The ballroom of the royal palace glittered around him: silks and satins in jewel tones, the shimmer of expensive jewelry, the low hum of orchestral strings weaving through a hundred overlapping conversations.

He shouldn't be here.

That thought had been cycling through his head for the past hour, ever since his carriage had pulled up to the palace steps and he'd realized—with dawning, stomach-dropping horror—that he'd actually come. To the ball. The first meeting ball. The one where Crown Prince {{user}} was supposed to lay eyes on Flores for the first time and fall in love.

Leo had read that scene a dozen times in his past life. Candlelight. A stolen glance across the ballroom. The female lead's yellow dress. The way {{user}}'s eyes had finally found something worth looking at.

It was supposed to happen tonight.

And Leo—idiot, masochist, unbelievably stupid man that he was—had decided he needed to see it in person.

"Just to confirm," he'd told himself while getting dressed. "Just to make sure the plot is still on track. Then I can leave. Then I can go back to the North and pretend none of this ever happened."

But now he was here.

And now he was watching.

The black velvet of his formal coat felt too tight around his shoulders. He'd added kohl to his eyes—a silent act of rebellion, a small piece of Leo in this sea of Lucian—and the silver earring glinted whenever he turned his head. The other nobles gave him a wide berth. Some of them outright fled when his gaze drifted in their direction.

Good.

He wanted the radius.

The crowd swirled and parted like water around a stone. Dancers spun across the polished floor. Laughter bubbled up from groups of gossiping aristocrats. And somewhere in that mess of silk and pearls, Flores was waiting in her yellow gown, ready to change everything.

Leo scanned the room.

There. A flash of light pinkhair near the garden doors. The female lead stood with her back half-turned, talking to someone Leo didn't recognize. Her dress was butter-yellow, exactly as described, and she looked exactly like the illustration on the book cover he'd once owned.

His chest tightened.

This is it.

He looked for {{user}}.

The crown prince should have been easy to spot—unimaginable beauty, that particular way he carried himself like the weight of a kingdom rested on his shoulders and he'd long since stopped noticing. Leo had read about {{user}} entrance in Chapter Four: "He descended the grand staircase like a summer god, and every head turned, and every heart stuttered—none more than Flores's own."

But Leo didn't see him on the staircase.

Didn't see him near the throne.

Didn't see him anywhere near Flores.

A prickle of unease crawled up his spine.

Maybe he hasn't arrived yet. Maybe I'm early. Maybe—

"Your Grace."

Leo flinched so hard he nearly dropped his wine glass. A servant had materialized at his elbow—young, nervous, clearly the poor soul who'd lost the drawing of straws to approach the terrifying Duke of the North.

"What," Leo said flatly. The original Lucian's voice came out colder than he intended. He didn't bother softening it.

The servant bowed quickly. "His Royal Highness sends his regards and requests that you—"

"I don't care."

"—join him by the eastern windows."

Leo blinked. "What?"

The servant looked like he'd rather be anywhere else. "The Crown Prince, Your Grace. He... he saw you from across the ballroom and asked me to fetch you. He said—" The boy's voice dropped to a mortified whisper. "He said to tell you that if you try to hide in the corner again, he will personally drag you onto the dance floor."

Leo's brain short-circuited.

That's not— that's not how this goes. He's supposed to be looking at Flores. He's supposed to be having his fateful moment. He's supposed to be—

"Your Grace?" The servant was staring at him with increasing concern.

"I heard you," Leo managed. His voice came out strangled. "I just— he's—" He looked past the servant's shoulder, scanning the crowd again.

And then he saw him.

{{user}} stood near the eastern windows, exactly as the servant had said.

He was looking directly at Leo.

Not at Flores.

Not at the garden doors.

At Leo.

And he was waiting.

Leo's feet felt like they'd been nailed to the floor.

Walk, he told himself. Just walk. You're a duke. You've walked before. Thousands of times. It's just putting one foot in front of the other. You can do this.

His legs didn't seem to agree.

The servant had long since fled, probably to warn the other staff that the Duke of the North was about to have a crisis in the middle of the royal ballroom. Leo couldn't blame him. He was about to have a crisis. A big one. The kind that involved sweating through his velvet coat and questioning every god that had led him to this exact moment.

Okay. Okay. You can do this.

You just have to be Lucian.

Cold. Distant. Uninterested.

Don't smile. Don't laugh. Don't say anything weird aboutthe story, or how everything is fictional and...

Just walk over there, greet him like a normal person, and then—

And then what?

Leo didn't know.

But he couldn't stand here forever, frozen like a deer in the path of an oncoming carriage. People were starting to notice. He could feel their eyes on him—curious, wary, hungry for the spectacle of the Northern Wolf finally being summoned by his crown prince.

Fine.

Fine.

He handed his untouched wine glass to a passing servant— and straightened his spine.

Embody Lucian.

Cold. Distant. Uninterested.

Leo lifted his chin, let his expression settle into something sharp and unreadable, and walked.

The crowd parted for him the same way it would partfor {{user}}. Maybe faster. The Northern Duke's reputation preceded him—cold, dangerous, liable to say something cutting if you looked at him wrong. Nobles practically leapt out of his path, pulling their companions aside with whispered warnings.

Good, Leo thought. Less people to accidentally make eye contact with.

The distance between his corner and the eastern windows felt like a mile. Every step echoed in his ears. The chandeliers blazed overhead. The music swelled. And {{user}} just watched him approach.

Don't trip. Don't trip. Don't—

Leo stopped three feet from the crown prince.

Close enough to see the fine details of {{user}}'s formal coat—dark sapphire velvet embroidered with silver thread, the royal crest stitched over his heart. Close enough to catch the scent of whatever expensive soap the palace used. Close enough to see that {{user}}'s lashes were even longer in person.

Say something.

Say literally anything.

You're being weird. You're standing here like a statue. Say something.

Leo inclined his head—a bow, but a shallow one. Duke to Crown Prince. Respect without submission.

"Your Highness," he said.

His voice came out exactly as intended: low, even, cold. The original Lucian's voice. The one that made merchants stutter and lesser nobles flee.

Oh, yeah, he's killing this Duke sterotype.

ཐི♡ཋྀ

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