Dawn just breaking, Keir pulled on his shirt and leather riding trousers, buckling his boots as he held his dark hair cord between his teeth. Pulling his dark hair messily behind his head, he secured it before grabbing his cloak off the edge of his bed. Despite being spring, mornings were still pleasantly chilly, warming up by the early afternoon. Before he left his chambers, Keir quickly grabbed a buttered roll from a tray left by his desk, chewing on it as he quickly walked to the stables. 

The prince did not sleep peacefully last night, only managing a few hours of shuteye when his mind completely collapsed in fitful exhaustion. He kept replaying last night's events in his mind, cursing himself for letting the drink and his desires consume him. Lucas's lips had been so warm and so soft, his lower lip fitting perfectly in the space between them. Before he knew it, he had been sent staggering back, Lucas's hands slamming into his chest. Keir sobered up quickly, dread filling him.

Grimacing, Keir briskly walked past the bowing servants and stablehands, going straight to Persephone, who pounded her hooves happily on the ground as she saw him approaching. Keir smiled a little as the horse whinnied, resting her chin on his shoulder as he stroked her neck.

"You always make me feel better, girl," Keir laughed, kissing Persephone's muzzle as she neighed happily, Keir feeding her a carrot to her delight.

"Prince Keir!" a bright voice yelped behind him, Keir turning around to find Finnian bowing deeply, almost falling over as he tried to do so with the large bale of hay in his hands. The shorter boy was swamped by his cargo, his mop of bright red hair just peeking about the top of the hay pile.

"Finnian," Keir laughed, as the bundles of hay wobbled, Finnian gasping as the top wad slipped off the tower. Keir rushed to the boy's side, chuckling as he stabilised the tumbling tower of hay, Finnian blushing in embarrassment. 

"Apologies, Your Highness. To make you have to help a lowly servant like me..." Finnian wailed, lowering the hay into the stable before falling onto his knees, bowing his head to the ground. "Please forgive me!"

"Finnian, raise your head," Keir laughed, pulling the boy to his feet as he sniffled, green eyes watery. "You seem to be working very hard. How are you faring?"

"I thank you for your concern," Finnian said, wiping his eyes as he grinned widely, wiping his dirty hands on the front of his dirt-streaked pants. "But this is the minimum I have to do! The person who had this job before me always cared for the horses to the highest standard, so I must do the same!"

Keir nodded sadly, remembering the way Ahri tended so carefully to the horses. Keir often found himself wondering where his former lover had gone, whether he went back to his homeland or found a job at some other nobleman's palace. Keir just wished he could have talked to the man one more time, but now it was too late.

Just like how it's too late to take back what he did to Lucas.

"Your Highness?" Finnian asked, and Keir blinked as he turned to the boy again, who was looking up at him with creased brows drawn down in concern. "Is everything alright?"

"Not really," Keir admitted, laughing as Finnian's mouth open and closed as he tried to find words of comfort, his fingers twiddling as he floundered. "It'll pass."

"Well, if there is anything I can do, please just let me know!" Finnian said earnestly, his eyes, as green as the lush leaves lining the forests, filled with determination. Keir found himself smiling at the boy before him. Something about his innocence and light-hearted nature made Keir enjoy his company, in a completely different way from Ahri. Where Ahri provided him with heated distractions with his body, Finnian's pure smiles and genuinely flustered attempts at trying his best made the prince feel lighter. 

"If you insist on doing something, getting my girl Persephone here saddled up and ride ready would be much desired," Keir said, Finnian slapping his boots together as he straightened, nodding his head ardently. Keir chuckled as the boy sprinted off to collect Persephone's gear, his skinny frame darting around and under other stablehands, who gave the skittering boy with wary glances. 

"I hope you're feeling like a hard ride today, Persephone," Keir murmured against the horse's mane as she whinnied, clapping her hooves on the ground again as energy rippled off her smooth hind. Grinning, Keir patted her neck as Finnian returned, leather and metal draped over him as he struggled to maintain his balance as he carried all the gear towards them. 

~~~

Lucas and Rose walked arm in arm down the castle halls. The large window lining the halls framed the miserable drizzle that fell from dark clouds outside, the dirt grounds turning into a murky slush. Lucas was only half listening to his fiancé as they walked about the castle after finalising the design and setting of the tableware that was to be used at the royal wedding banquet, Rose wishing for the two to return to the music room as she wanted to practice a new sonata that had just been composed as a wedding gift by a local musician. 

Lucas was distracted, his mind controlled by Keir despite making every effort to clear such painful thoughts. He had replayed everything that Keir had divulged to him over and over, feeling sick every time he imagined what Keir had suffered through, wondering if he could have survived through the ordeal as defiantly as Keir had. Lucas didn't think he could, recognising that his mental fortitude couldn't have matched Keir's, not now, and certainly not as a young child fresh of his mother's breast.

One of the things that he had come to realise after learning of the horrors Keir's past held was how well he had hidden them. Rose, who had grown up with him and seen him every day, the two siblings now still joined by the hip, had not even a breath of knowledge about the darkness within her brother. Lucas's heart weeped as he imagined a young, soft-cheeked and wide-eyed Keir crying himself to sleep alone, and having to wake up in the morning and plaster a facade of contentment in front of his sister. 

Lucas wanted to shoulder everything for Keir, to share his pain and alleviate his demons. He had wanted to, yet when Keir had kissed him, he had reacted the only way he knew how.

Rejection.

Lucas had rejected the man after he had relived his nightmares in front of him, and watching Keir shutter up his heart in iron chains had made a heavy helplessness nestle itself within Lucas. He had gone over and over the kiss in his head, trying to think of why Keir had kissed him. He had conjured up a plethora of possibilities, some fanciful and some grounded in bitter reality, though none he could confirm as truth. 

Lucas knew that Keir had no qualms with holding and behind held by a man, that was as obvious as the large crystalline rock adorning his fiancé's slender ring finger. Lucas thought that it could have been a slip clouded by drink and momentary vulnerability, as Keir had said, yet the look in the man's eyes urged that it was something else. With Ahri, the man of his affections gone to God knows where, the heated kiss may have stemmed from a sudden gust of loneliness, of basic need to touch and be touched. Just carnal desire devoid of underlying emotion. It was possible, and the idea was painful, Lucas hating the fact that he yearned for more than just primal lust. That was another possible, inconceivable idea that invaded the prince's thoughts.

'What if that kiss meant something more? Something beyond just sex or a mistake driven by drink. Something that exceeded mere friendship and brotherhood."

Lucas knew what that something was, though he didn't to usher it as it would shatter everything. It was the thing that he couldn't manage to spit out when he was with Rose, the word that tasted of a lie. The thing that somehow had come to belong to the man who looked like her but was everything more.

But it was a thing that could never be, and though Lucas regretted his actions as he pushed the other prince away, he knew that it just ended something that would have been cut off sometime. Ending this thing early before it became more complicated and rooted was for the best, no matter how much it stung now.

"Lucas, are you listening, my love?" Rose asked, the hand resting on Lucas's bicep tightening. Dark brows frowned up at the man of their affections, resting on distracted brown eyes. Lucas placed his hand over his fiancé's apologetically, Rose sighing. "You have been distracted lately, my love. What troubles you?"

'A thing.'

"Just some stress with the wedding preparations," Lucas smoothly feigned, giving his fiancé a reassuring smile that felt stiff on his face. "There is just so much to prepare, I'm a little overwhelmed." As the reached the main foyer, where a cluster of hallways intersected, Rose pulled Lucas into a warm his, her fingers stroking his hair soothingly. 

"It'll all come together, Lucas. Our special, most precious day will come before you know it, and we will know true happiness when it comes," Rose said, her voice soft as she tried to relieve her fiancé, though her words unknowingly made him more troubled. 

As they held each other tightly, a figure drenched in rain with the smell of the forest winds clinging to his damp skin walked in, black hair dripping down his unblemished neck as a servant dabbed at his wet form with a towel as they walked. The man's step faltered as he took in the couple embracing sweetly in the centre of the foyer, feet then quickening their pace as his eyes fell to the floor, his footsteps tracking a stream of mud inside.

Lucas's eyes widened as he saw Keir walk past, eyes ignoring his presence, face hidden from view by his slick hair. 

"Keir," Lucas called out to the man, untangling himself from Rose's arms as he stepped after the man, who did not slow as he unwaveringly walked into the bathing chambers down one of the halls. Lucas's legs followed him, but before he could walk through the doors that had just closed behind the man, Rose's arms shackled him into his place.

"The music room isn't down this way, silly," Rose laughed lightly, as Lucas stared at the door before him.

"Your brother..." Lucas started, Rose looking at him blankly.

"Is having a bath?" she finished for him, nodding her head towards the door. "He looked awfully wet after riding in the rain. He probably wanted to bathe to warm his cold body. He has only recently recovered from his wound, it wouldn't be wise for him to fall ill."

"Of course," Lucas replied, just as a deathly piercing scream erupted from behind the door in front of them. Lucas was instantly in motion, his palms slamming the heavy doors open as Rose jumped beside him at the chilling noise, quickly picking up her skirts as she gracefully stepped after her fiancé.

"What in the heavens was that?" Rose gasped, as her fiancé suddenly halted, his arm raised at his side as to stop her from approaching further. Confused, Rose pushed her fiancé's arm down, fingers gripping it tightly as she peered over his form. In her line of vision was her brother, who stood transfixed in front of them was his hands limply swaying by his side, and the servant woman that had accompanied him shaking violently with her hands over her eyes, the drying cloths she was carrying dropped in a forgotten pile at her feet. Rose's eyes tracked forwards, before a horrified scream tore from her throat.

In the grand bathtub, overflowing with water, was a servant woman's naked body motionlessly submerged, with one pale arm slung over the container's edges. Mouth open in a soundless scream, eyes rolled back and hair floating in the water like a wraith, Rose felt bile rise to her mouth as she took in the deep slit at the base of the woman's throat, which painted the water red. The woman's chest had been ripped open from sternum to pelvis, rib cage spread like a woven basket that held nothing. In the red abyss, the woman's organs were missing, only scraps of meat floating sickeningly in the water.

"Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god," Rose chanted, her dizzy body collapsing into Lucas, whose eyes shied away from the grotesque sight before them, arms supporting his fiancé's weight despite his own knees weakening. Keir stood still, his eyes unable to leave the horrifying display.

"Young maid," Keir said slowly, finally turning away from the corpse as he looked at the breathing maid by his side, who had just retched onto the pile of towels on the ground. The woman shakily turned to him, eyes stricken with terrified tears as the prince softly ordered her to go alert the guard, the only thing betraying his calm expression a slight tremor to his words. The girl couldn't have ran out of the room faster.

As a cluster of guards rushes in, weapons unsheathed and faces grim, the royals were escorted out and into a secure room, guards standing with uneasy alertness outside the door. Rose fell into a chair as her chest heaved with sobs, hands shaking in her lap as Lucas lowered himself beside her, though his eyes did not look at her, but fell onto the still man staring listlessly out the window. When Lucas saw the man's shoulders shake as he bit his lip to stop the tears that threatened to fall, Lucas readied his body to run to the man, to comfort him and to hold him. As his thighs left the surface of the chair, Rose wrapped her arms around his core, burying her head into his chest as she weeped.

"I'm terrified, Lucas!" Rose choked, the image of the corpse seared into her mind, making her stomach churn with acidic bile again. "Oh god, that poor girl. The horror. Lucas, I am so afraid." Rose's arms around him felt like lead as his arms gently laid across her back, wishing they were somewhere else. Around someone else. 

The door suddenly opened, a soldier quickly reporting their preliminary findings, assuring the royals that the perpetrator was likely not on site and that the castle was secure, though they would be cautious and confine the royals to their chambers while further patrols were conducted. 

"We will escort you to your chambers. This way, please, Your Highnesses," a soldier said, Rose gripping onto Lucas tightly.

"I-I don't think I could endure the night alone," Rose said quietly, laced with fear, her eyes pleading with Lucas as he looked down at her. Eyes leaving hers, Lucas turned to Keir, who did not look back at him.

"Princess Rosenwyn may stay with His Highness, Prince Keir?" the soldier offered, Lucas nodding with the proposal, until Keir stepped in with a definitive shake of his head. 

"I wish to have a word with the guard before I return to my chambers," Keir said, the guard nodding at the Prince's order, though he was unsure what the prince had to say. Turning to his sister, Keir gently kissed her on the forehead, the woman calming slightly with the tender touch. "My sister should stay with Prince Lucas. Their wedding is to be held in mere weeks, and with the nature of tonight's events, it would be best to have them support each other."

"If Your Highness agrees, we will arrange for guards to escort you both to Your Highness's chambers," the guard said, bowing to his kingdom's prince, who hesitated. Rose's tightening grip around his arm forced his lips to agree to the arrangement, Keir's eyes still not meeting his. "Follow these soldiers then, Your Highnesses. Prince Keir, I will escort you personally to a secure room for discussions."

As the two princes were pulled in opposing directions, Lucas gazed after him, sensing that Keir was more unravelled than he appeared.

He was right.