DAY 41-3: TRUMP

"Leda! I'm so glad you're all right!"

Being throttled into a hug first thing upon entering the prince's room is the last thing Leda could've anticipated. Yet, here she is, in Avel's arms, him grinning goofily from ear to ear.

"A-Avel?" Fumbling for words, she blinks rapidly. "Um..."

"I was so worried." Retreating via a push to the shoulders, he pouts. "I couldn't focus all day knowing I put you in even greater danger. How are you? You're fine, right? Did anyone mistreat you in any way?"

Stunned, Leda's mouth flaps, wordlessly, her heart warming in her chest.

See! her mind shouts. Avel is kind. There's no way this is fake!

The thought shatters her previous apprehension.

Yeah. Whatever Hadey told her was baloney. Looking back, there's no reason why Leda should've been obliged to believe her. Everything stated in their conversation could've been lies she fabricated just to screw her over.

"By the way, Leda," Avel says once he unhands her. "What's that in your hand?"

Snapping to her senses, she momentarily recalls the bag furled tightly in her fingers. She extends it. "Oh. Valentina wanted me to give this to you."

His face flickers with delight. "She did? I've been begging for these parts all day!"

Beaming, he sets it aside on the table behind them.

"I wonder what changed her mind? Did something put her in a good mood?"

Before Leda can get a word in about her nightmarish experience—or ask him about Ro—a low titter pervades the room.

"My, my. Isn't she cute."

Leda's shoulders square as her eyes dart in the direction of the doorway. The individual standing at the threshold of the large doors wears a wide smile. Her red dress is unique, alongside her bright orange hair and diamond-shaped green eyes.

"Remi!" Avel's proclamation is instantaneous. He hastens to her side. "You came to visit!"

The small-statured girl uses a fancifully decorated fan to cover her broad smile. "I was waiting for you to join us during lunch but you never showed up. I got a little concerned because my attendants notified me that you'd locked yourself up in your room since yesterday."

He sheepishly laughs. "I was working on a little something." He catches Leda's staring and his eyebrows rise. "Oh, Leda. This is Remi. Princess of the Dia Kingdom."

A greeting should've been in order. However, Leda can't pry her eyes from the pointy ears sticking out of her head. "A... fox?"

Not only that. Three miniature animals identifying as such donning matching orange fur, coddle the area around her feet, gazing at Leda with big, beady eyes.

Finding her gawping amusing, Avel says, "Trust me. It suits her."

Remi chuckles. "You shouldn't spread such terrible things about your future wife."

The distaste that morphs Avel's face is clear as day.

"Hmm," she muses, fluttering her lengthy eyelashes, "are you still against it? You know it's in the best interest for both our kingdoms."

"Ah, but I really, really want to marry Leda!" He puffs his cheeks. "It's not fair."

Leda stiffens. "Avel!"

Accordingly, Remi sends her a strangely sly look. Her lips thin. Then, all lightheartedness vanishes from her eyes. "I was wondering," she says, low voice a purr, "but why are you speaking so nonchalantly to your master like that?"

Leda recoils. "H-huh?"

"You're a maid, aren't you?" she elaborates. "Don't you think you're behaving a little too friendly with the prince?"

The mention stiffens Leda to the bone. "W-well, um..."

Oh, no. She's suspicious. Rightfully so. Nonetheless, as someone who's in close contact with Valentina and the Queen herself, one conversation alone can instantly blow her identity.

"About that," Leda stutters on.

Remi silences her with the shake of her head. The ear-splitting grin that surfaces when she lowers her fan stuns her into silence. "A little too many night rendezvous that you're so close-knit, huh? I must say—I never thought you had this kind of side, Avel. From what I hear, you're incapable of settling with one girl."

Avel tugs Leda to him, a smirk coating his lips. "Are you doubting the loyalty of a Heart, Remi?"

"Of course not." She shrugs. "Well, even if it is true, that will not change our engagement. The Queen of Hearts has already spoken. And we all know nobody crosses her desire, right?"

Avel is quiet. His fingers slip from Leda's shoulder.

"Are you allowed to be here?"

"Of course not. The head castellan is very strict about the two of us meeting alone so I had to tell a little lie."

"How befitting of the fox you are."

She snickers. "Believe me. Seeing your face has been well worth the risk."

Swivelling on her flats, fan masking half her face, she ganders back at them.

"Nevertheless, I should take my leave. I've got to awaken as soon as dawn to finalize an outfit for our upcoming party." One foot out the door, she continues, "It's been nice seeing a fellow Mond as well. Thank you for sending them my way."

"Orian?" Leda murmurs.

Oh, yeah, she realizes. Avel arranged he stay by Remi's side...

At that, Remi disappears into the dark hallway. The door shuts after the last fox scampers after her, out of the room.

Leda flutters her eyelashes when a faint scent reaches her nostrils. Lemon? Have the maids stopped by to clean? The room is tidier than it was yesterday...

As the notion comes to mind, Avel turns his back, brown sack in hand, as he strolls up the spiral staircase leading to the second floor. Leda's heart leaps to her throat as she pursues him.

"Avel, what is Ro's condition?"

"Your friend is stable. He'll surely live past tonight," he replies, lightly. "Truthfully, I finished making a trial remedy just now. I was about to have it tested."

"Tested?"

Her right foot connects with the uppermost step. Eyebrows high, she digests the view before her. Unlike the first floor, the second is nothing you'd link to a prince, let alone royalty. It's almost hospital-like. White floors, walls, and beddings. Syringes, medicine cabinets, surgical tools, and documents are scattered about as well. At the furthest end of the room, whispers erupt—both of which Leda likens to men donned in snow white lab coats. Quacks.

Whether it be its similarity to a hospital, or the thought of Ro's condition, it suddenly becomes difficult to breathe.

Something underfoot hooks her ankle, and Leda stumbles. She saves herself in the nick of the time, only to glance at the large, thick wires hooked up to a large container a foot away.

The sight of what's inside stalls Leda's heartbeat.

Fairies—beings identical to Blaze whom Leda had seen with Valentina earlier—lie half-dead. The shackles restricting their tiny limbs and wings is painful, not to mention the liquids being drained from their bodies through a vein stemming from the container, drip into a nearby bucket.

If Blaze had been the most charming being she'd ever laid eyes on, these look nothing more than squashed bugs.

Avel, who's tossed on a new coat from a nearby hook as well as gloves and a mask, rips open an adjacent container. Then, with the sack Leda had provided him, he tilts it over and empties it.

Three more fairies tumble out, into the container. The instant Avel shuts the lid, their already mangled bodies are mutilated by the blades inside. Their whimpers vanish whilst their bodies are gnashed into pieces, and their bodily fluids tinker through the tubes, out into the same bucket as earlier.

Leda's chest physically hurts—her eyes are bulged beyond compare, brain a mess, stomach churning... All the while Avel, lighthearted as can be despite his inhumane actions, pours the fluid into vials containing other coloured liquids.

"A...Av..." Leda can't even speak.

He blinks. "What is wrong, my dear? You look as if you've seen a monster."

Her extremities jitter. That bag... The one Valentina gave her... Why was it filled with living fairies?

"No matter what happens, do not look at what's inside." The memory of Valentina's smirk twists and distorts behind Leda's eyelids. "Am I understood, Curly-head?"

Shuddering, Leda gapes wordlessly, while Avel approaches the two quacks.

"Jarzo. Quok."

"Yes, Your Highness?"

The quacks totter to face him. Avel grins and extends them.

"Drink these."

They stare at him in disbelief.

"B-but, Your Highness," 'Jarzo' stutters. "That's... the first batch. It could very much be lethal—"

"Which is why we're not giving it 'Ro' first, duh." His smile grows until his ears. "I am a genius, aren't I? You can trust your future king a bit more."

Quok adjusts his glasses, though the dubiety is clear on his face. "Y-yes, sir."

Once in their hands, Avel nods and sets his palms on his waist. Eyes practically glistening, he beckons they drink. With a shared glance, the quacks do.

They explode into a waterfall of red thereafter.

The blood flows from them like a geyser, staining everything in visibility red.

The curtains. The walls. Even the cracks between the white tiled floor. Every inch of the once beautiful room is covered by the gore of blood and bodily fluids—scattered organs and spinal cords; crushed bones.

The quacks' corpses are no longer discernible. And the person standing front and centre, huffing from pleasure, heart-shaped eyes wide as he emits a deep laugh, is the culprit.

Leda's body has turned to ice.

A dream.

Knees noodle-like, she slips, falling face-first into a puddle. Something squishes beneath her, moist and wet. And when she clambers up to find it's some mutilated organ—an abdomen ripped entirely in half with their innards gushing and pooling—she shields her mouth, ready to barf.

This... has to be a dream.

"A...v...l..."

She can't help but sob. Her vision blurs, and her utterance shifts into indecipherable sounds.

"Well, that sucks. They died so easily." Avel laughs, its once sickly sweet tone drenched in malice. "Couldn't even be bothered to scream for me—suffer like they should've. How disappointing. Their organs weren't even salvaged... Such a waste. I wonder what I did wrong?"

He crouches over, stringing his fingers through the bloody mess of intestines and flesh. His eyes grow steadily more dangerous—more alive. But he isn't done; mercilessly ripping out bones and blood vessels alike. The more blood that pools out, the wider this grin expands. He never stops crushing and yanking and cackling until he's drenched in innards from head to toe, in as unrecognizable a state as the men who've just perished.

"I need to summon more quacks straightaway—use as many as them as test subjects so we can finish the antidote as soon as possible."

His mint green eyes flicker left onto Leda. He makes his way through the Red Sea around them. Open-mouthed, Leda tries to run, but can't. On her butt, every inch of her body jittering, she can only gawk as Avel crouches at her side.

His trademark grin is the furthest thing from comforting now.

"H-how... Wh-why..." Her voice can't stifle her fright and tears. "A...are you so c-calm... about—"

"What do you mean why am I so calm?" he says, innocence reflected in his head tilt. "Miracles come with sacrifices, my dear. Those quacks and fairies were simply unlucky to be them."

There's a flash across his insanity-washed irises as he brings his blood-stained face to hers. Leda's mind empties to black when he presses his sole sterile glove across her cheek.

This is...

"I'm going to save your friend no matter what, Leda. Even if I have to dye my entire kingdom in blood, kill even my blood-related sister—if it means I get to have your cute little human heart all to myself, I'll do it. Ah, what a rare delicacy I've found." He releases a pearly smile, giggling to himself. "A human, huh? Our future is going to be so much fun together. I can't wait."

...a nightmare.