Chapter Text
Fern wasn’t expecting things to go so great, but he wasn’t complaining either.
The humans seemed to be adapting well to the fairy realm and there hadn’t been a single mishap worth worrying about. Of course, some grudges between both races had been difficult to obliterate, but things changed for the better after the ball. Fairies learned to not be as scared. Humans started to find joy in simple magical things, endearing mothfolk, who felt especially flattered at how the human group kept admiring their wings every time they could.
Fern was also fascinated by someone, though his person was way more boring and didn't have magic or stunning wings. It was a human, in fact, named Arcade. Fern would find themselves staring at him when he was in the same room, stretching their hand towards him when Arcade was close enough to touch. Every wink or smile Arcade threw in response was enough to make their heart rate skyrocket and send their whole body to heaven.
The pleasant warmth that flooded their limbs reminded him of years before, but Fern couldn’t stop thinking that it was different from back then. Had it been so long that Fern had forgotten how friendships felt like? When they were kids, he also got a tingling feeling on his chest from seeing Arcade, also used to have a sudden urge of throwing himself in his friend’s arms to get a hug.
But it was distinct now. It had to be. Because they were having those same sensations, but amplified by ten, and they had only been with Arcade again for five days. His tilted lips made their heart explode like a bomb, spreading sparks all over their body, and the impulse to be near him was so overwhelming they wished they could do more than just hug him. Fern even stared at Arcade’s mouth sometimes, when he spoke, their face blushing when he caught them and smiled in return.
They didn’t understand why they felt that way. Was it because they were older? Nine years could make everything different, after all, and he kept focusing on all the small details that had changed. Like those brown eyes that light up his world with just a glance, becoming their new sun. Like Arcade’s hands, now bigger, that Fern wished could hold them forever. Like his dyed hair, soft even when Arcade used ungodly amounts of gel to shape it on his distinctive hairstyle; and his voice, soothing and weightless, grounding and safe.
He knew something was different, but Fern didn't mind the change. Because Arcade had been with them almost all day for five days, the fairy realm and the humans had made it to the celebration with no casualties, and he wasn’t alone for the first time in years. Even being about to be crowned the new king of a whole realm wasn’t worrying anymore.
Fern couldn’t be happier.
Until the day actually arrived.
The prince wanted to go see Arcade before the formalities started. However, they woke up slightly shaken up, his parents kidnapping them first thing in the morning to get them ready and make sure everything went on smoothly. So instead of being with his friend, they were standing in front of a mirror in a dressing room, wishing for their tailor to finish up already.
Someone knocked at the door, making Fern’s ears perk up. They had a brief moment of longing, hoping to see caramel skin when they turned around, but his tingling fingers clenched into fists when he saw his mother. He masked his face quickly, though, covering a wave of disappointment that shouldn’t even be there in the first place.
“Your Majesty,” the tailor said, bowing slightly. Mae returned the gesture with a nod before the man went back to clipping the gold decorations on Fern’s chest.
Fern averted his gaze. After a few seconds, his mom walked up to him and stood right behind him, placing her hands on his shoulders. “You look great,” she said, smiling at his reflection in the mirror. Fern couldn’t avoid the sight anymore, and he felt his stomach swirl at the touch of their own mother.
“Thank you,” they mumbled.
Mae’s face was full of freckles even if age lines were starting to form in the corner of her eyes. The flowers on her hair remained endlessly lively, and her hands were firm and warm, still holding him with all the care and protectiveness in the world. Fern loved her, they truly did. But they always got a dull pain in their chest due to holding a grudge against her, for not having helped them so many years ago.
Mae ran her hands up and down Fern’s bare shoulders, her fingers brushing their sleeves. The tailor crouched down, making sure that his belt and boots were appropriately fastened, which gave a clear view for Fern to see his mom’s and his reflection in the mirror. The sight made him realize how similar the two were, only the crown on Mae’s head marking a significant difference. His wings fluttered at the idea of having a similar one, soon enough.
“That boy, Arcade,” Mae finally said, in a whisper, as if trying not to let the tailor hear. Fern’s whole body tensed at his mother’s tone, almost dripping distrust. She took a deep breath. “I think you should be… careful. With him.”
“He’s not doing anything wrong,” Fern whispered back, defensively. Mae gripped his shoulders with more force, like believing he could dissolve at any moment. “Why do you have to hate him?”
“I don’t…” Mae sighed, stopping herself. Arcade was a touchy subject for her son, and she didn’t know how to warn him without coming off out of place. “I don’t say this to harm you, but you know what happened with him before. The way he acts, as if nothing had changed… Have you two, at least, talked about it?”
“Not the time, mom,” Fern replied, making his best effort to not shake her hands off him. His tailor had already finished, but hadn’t straightened yet, not wanting to interrupt the pair. Fern wished he did. “Just because he’s a human…”
“I’m just worried about you,” Mae said, attempting, and failing, to hide the way her voice raised up an octave. “I don't want you to get hurt, and I feel there’s something about Arcade that…”
“Knock it off!” Fern insisted, more annoyed now. Mae froze in place, her hands letting go of him when he turned around to face her. The tailor stepped back to give them some sort of privacy. “You never helped me before, but now you want to? Arcade and I are finally on good terms. He hasn’t even brought up that incident once. Why do you want to ruin it?”
Mae stayed silent. Fern didn’t want to snap at her like that, but he was getting tired of others telling him how to feel. He was about to be crowned king, for magic’s sake, and he was perfectly capable of choosing his own friends... Or whatever the hell Arcade was becoming. He was so close to retrieving the only real relationship he ever had, and he just couldn’t lose him. Again. They would never forgive themselves.
Fern looked through the window of the dressing room. The sun was reaching its peak in the sky, the event was close to starting, and he didn’t have enough time anymore. He turned back to Mae to put an end to their conversation. “I’m going to be late, mom. See you in the coronation,” they said, walking towards the exit.
“I love you,” Mae responded, but her voice got muffled by the door closing behind the prince. She heaved a sigh, clutching her chest and hoping that nothing went wrong that day. Fern was so on cloud nine that any misstep, no matter how small, would plummet him straight to the ground.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫
Fern couldn’t go look for Arcade. He didn’t want to risk being behind schedule, no matter how bad he wanted to, so he had to make his way toward the event hall immediately after leaving his mom behind. He was aware that the coronation was the most important thing he had to attend to, and that it wouldn’t take too long, and that he’d be able to meet up with Arcade afterward. But he was still grumpy about it.
The event hall was already full of moth fairies, the human guests occupying a row just behind all Frenatae’s nobility, but Fern barely glanced at everyone before locking himself in the backroom. Waiting for the ceremony to start, he sat backwards on one chair and used the back of it as an armrest, placing his chin on top of his arms. And right in front of him, floating over a red cushion, was his crown.
It had three golden spikes on top and sparkled under the sunlight, its jewels giving off a mystical glow that made Fern dizzy. He liked to think that he was ready to govern, but constantly wondered if it’d be a lonely life… again. Or if a simple piece of gold could give him the courage to finally leave behind his fears and make real friends. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life like he had spent the last several years, and refused to be a king like his father. He liked to think he could do better.
He hoped so.
Someone knocked at the door, but Fern didn’t answer. Both his parents could access the room with no problems, and the servants that would help him take the crown out had a different entrance they could use. So the prince just stayed there, for another five seconds, until the person knocked again, more insistently that time.
Fern groaned and hid his face in his arms.
“Fern?”
But bolted out of his chair at Arcade’s voice seeping through the door.
His heart started to beat faster, racing just as fast as his mind. He had already given up on seeing Arcade before the event, so he wasn’t expecting him, but he wasn’t about to complain, either. Fern took a deep breath, and when he opened the door, his eyes stumbled with the fancy fairy clothes that Arcade was wearing, with his skin peeking through the flowy silk and his collarbones glowing with powdered gold…
“Hi,” Fern said, their fuzzy vision focusing once it reached Arcade’s eyes, who smiled in response. Fern’s wings went up behind them. “What are you doing here? The coronation is about to start.”
“I just wanted to wish you good luck,” Arcade answered, scratching his neck, his cheeks slightly blushed. “And… wanted to see you, too?”
The backroom was on top of the event hall’s stairs. Fern was supposed to leave that room and complete the celebration on a landing just in the middle of the steps, and the location meant that all guests could see them from their seats. Fern could even hear their chattering from below. There was… no privacy. So, for the sake of trying to appease the warmth inside their chest and the way his stomach swirled, Fern stepped back a little for Arcade to get into the room.
Once inside, Fern closed the door. Arcade looked around, his eyes lighting up at the sight of the crown just a few feet away, but Fern’s attention had deviated, again, towards Arcade’s back and his totally visible shoulder blades. Of course Arcade’s attire had to let his whole back exposed like that; he had taken it from a fairy wardrobe, a race who needed space for their wings on all their clothes.
Fern fidgeted with the hem of his shirt. The silence started to feel heavy and feverish, so they cleared their throat to get Arcade’s attention, trying to focus on anything except his friend’s skin. “Sorry I didn’t go to see you earlier,” they began, but Arcade moved one hand through the air, dismissively.
“That’s okay. I figured you’d be busy anyways,” he replied. Fern kept noticing little details of Arcade’s presence, like the rasp of his voice or the movement of his muscles beneath the silk, and that was driving them insane. Everything inside their mind was getting blurry, but Fern forced themselves to continue talking.
“Yeah, my tailor spent more time than expected with my attire,” they explained, looking down at their own clothes. Maybe not having to look directly at Arcade would help his heart calm down. However, he suddenly appeared in front of them to take their hands and stop them from playing with their shirt’s hem.
“I think it was worth it,” he mumbled, so close to Fern’s face that they could feel his warm breath fanning on their cheeks, heating them up even more than what his touch had already done. “You look stunning.”
Fern tried to respond, but the words got stuck in their throat when Arcade brushed the prince’s cheek with the back of his hand. His eyes moved all over Fern’s face, examining their freckles, darker than usual due to their flushed skin, and their amber glassy eyes and slightly opened mouth… Every passing second was more overwhelming than the previous one; Fern’s body felt too small, too tight, not able to contain the sudden anticipation swelling inside their chest.
“Arcade,” Fern managed to say, their voice barely a whisper. They wanted to ask what he was doing, why they were hyper-aware of every place Arcade was touching, why they weren’t moving away.
Until Arcade started to lean in, towards their lips, and Fern’s thoughts shut down, their breathing becoming elaborated. Arcade cupped their face to keep them in place, causing their wings to flutter in small involuntary movements, and Fern realized, too late, that Arcade had been guiding them for days to their downfall.
“Hey. Don’t tell me you thought all this was true,” Arcade mumbled, so close to their face that their lips brushed with Fern’s, but far enough for a cold flow of air to keep them away. Fern’s ears twitched, confused, and the prince felt themselves lose their grasp on reality when Arcade smiled. “Don’t tell me you believed me. Did you?”
The ground gave way below them before Fern’s mind could understand what was going on. Arcade’s touch burnt, scorching hot, and he was still looking at them, still smiling at them, but his expression was so unlike him that Fern felt as if they were seeing opposite images overlapping with each other. The world around them spun and faded away at the same time, making them sick, when Arcade started to laugh wickedly.
He tightened his grasp on Fern’s face, making sure that the prince was looking at him, and was able to see Fern’s expression lose all the light they had been accumulating for the past five days. Arcade was sure he had looked just as devastated when Fern brushed him away, years ago, but it wasn’t enough yet. He needed to show them what it was like to be loved, and then thrown away; to lose everything you ever considered worth it.
“Don’t tell me you actually thought that I had forgiven you. Are you aware of how stupid that would be?” he added. Fern grabbed Arcade’s wrist, trying to get him off, and Arcade knew he was hurting them with the harsh way he was holding their face. But he didn’t care. “You actually trusted that I didn’t hate you? I can’t believe you were so naive.”
With every word that left their lips, Arcade felt more relieved, yet angrier at the same time. He could stop pretending, finally, and he had so many things to say, so much he wanted to scream... He wanted to hurt Fern just like they had hurt him, he wanted to revel in the prince’s tears that had started falling from their cheeks and the way their face showed them distressed, and miserable, and utterly distraught.
“You made me hate you. That horrible feeling inside your chest, right now? That’s how I felt. For years.” Fern closed their eyes, their legs trembling under the weight of Arcade’s words, and when he finally let them go, Fern collapsed to the ground. They looked pitiful, but the only thing Arcade could see was his eight years old self, crying, alone, inside an empty room. He fisted his hands. “I’m sure you will never forgive me for this. Why did you think I would? When I know you’re just a lie?”
Fern placed his hands on his ears in a pathetic attempt to block out any sound, but they were shaking too much for that to work, their sobs making their whole body tremble. Arcade looked down at Fern before turning their back to them and walking to the crown that was soon to be on the prince’s head. He took it with one hand, feeling the levitating magic snap under his fingers.
“You lied to me. You lied to yourself. And you’re lying to your whole kingdom,” he continued. The anger in his voice sounded like dry leaves being thrown into the fire. “You made me believe you were nice just to crush me at the end!”
Fern made a sound from the back of their throat, and it almost resembled a word, but Arcade’s ears were ringing too hard for him to hear them. Having to remember everything was clouding his thoughts, all reasoning buried under rage and resentment. Arcade felt his mind drift very far away from that room, his body moving on its own now, but he was so full of unresolved grief that he didn’t want to stop.
“Back home, I kept hearing news of what an amazing prince you were. Of how well you treated everyone, and I didn’t know…” Arcade’s voice was low, but it felt like a bomb in the otherwise silent room. The revenge inside their head was so hot it made his hands release a dark purple smoke that surrounded the crown. “Maybe you were deceiving everyone just like you deceived me.”
Arcade was running automatically by then. Fern was still on the ground, but they were hugging their knees and rocking themselves back and forth, and no matter how bad they wanted to explain, to tell Arcade none of that was true, they just kept murmuring sentences that nobody in the room was in their right mind to understand. Arcade tightened his grip on the golden crown, which was starting to change color, the metal darkening as if an invisible force were covering it in black oil.
“Everyone needs to see who you actually are. Everyone needs to see that you don’t deserve this crown, and you never will. You don’t deserve anything.”
“Stop!” Fern screamed, their voice broken, desperate.
Arcade felt himself snap out of a trance. He blinked, his eyes noticing how the crown gradually regained its golden color. Only when it looked spotless again did he dare to turn around and face the prince... who was still on the ground, still crying, and with their hands fisted so hard they were probably hurting themselves. Arcade stared at Fern for a few more seconds, but they didn’t say anything else.
Arcade placed the crown back on the cushion. It didn’t float again. Feeling slightly dizzy, with something in his stomach making him want to throw up, Arcade walked towards the exit, Fern still too disoriented and hurt to try to stop him, to stand up, or to even talk. They felt the pieces of their broken heart pierce open their body from the inside out, the pain enough to numb their entire existence.
However, before going out, Arcade crouched beside Fern. He held their face with both his hands, forcing them to look him in the eye, and was able to see how everything inside Fern emptied in the most painful of ways. He leaned towards Fern’s lips, his voice dark and dangerous, like the depths of the sea.
“Your love hurts, doesn’t it?” he whispered, making sure their lips brushed again, the touch feeling like hundreds of cold needles. Arcade pushed Fern away before standing up and opening the door. “Good luck, Your Highness.”
And left Fern crying, alone, inside an empty room.
⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫ ⧫
Arcade returned to his seat next to Marlee. He wasn’t sure of how long he had been inside the backroom, but his nerves eased when he noticed there wasn’t any group of guards barging inside the hall. He ignored Marlee’s attempts to start a conversation, too focused on calming down his own breathing, and crossed his arms to hide his hands from sight when he noticed his fingertips were covered in coal.
After who knows how long, Mae appeared, followed by Saturnius, and Arcade made his best to not recoil in his chair when the king looked at him. Saturnius started to say something about a tradition, something about a privilege, something about striving to be a good king… Arcade zoned out until he finally heard Fern’s name, and his head snapped upwards again, making Marlee laugh beside him.
Fairies and humans stood up when the door on top of the stairs opened, and a royal attendant, whom Arcade never saw get inside the backroom, appeared. She was carrying the cushion with the crown, which was levitating again. And Fern was following suit. Showing themselves to everyone who could see them. Disoriented, probably not knowing what they were doing, with their skin yellow pale and their eyes exhausted. Fern looked like a ghost, and Arcade got a restless feeling in his stomach.
The prince barely gave a glance to their guests before walking down the stairs, stopping on the landing next to their parents, their body so stiff it looked like it could suddenly break. It was evident that they weren’t completely there, and Arcade wondered if someone had used magic to get them off the ground and force them to continue with the ceremony. Mae caressed her son’s arm, trying to warm Fern’s robotic movements, and even dedicated them a smile. To no avail.
Saturnius kept talking while the attendant kneeled in front of Fern to offer them the cushion. Arcade felt his vision go blurry, so he pinched his arm to ground himself while Fern stretched out his hands towards the crown. They were supposed to say something before taking it, but Arcade could see how scrambled their thoughts were, barely hanging on, and it was already incredible that their shaking hands were the only evidence of their weak mental state.
Fern managed to take the crown and raise it up to his head. Arcade’s own mind was racing too fast for him to comprehend the formalities happening around him anymore, his eyes locked on Fern’s mechanical movements and the way their arms descended, slowly, until they put the crown on. The sole action made the world freeze in place, stopping so hard it made Arcade feel nauseous.
Fairies knew about the existence of magic in the human realm, though they could barely use it. They called it corrupted, and believed that humans couldn’t use it either. But truth was, the war had made things different, and humans had been employing that long-lost magic for years now, converting it into a weapon, keeping it a secret from the fairy realm. It was extremely dangerous for mothfolk because they didn’t know how to fight something they had never seen before, or bothered to study.
And Arcade learned it with the sole purpose of carrying out a single spell. The same spell that he had charged into the crown earlier that day. The same spell ㅡor better, curse ㅡ that had turned the crown into a bundle of thorns the second it touched Fern’s head, that was draining all the magic from their wings, causing them so much pain that their screams were louder than the commotion inside the hall.
Fern tried to take the crown off, but they only hurt themselves more with the thorns. Black smoke started to come off their wings, making the room smell like burnt coal, and everyone froze in place, staring in horror at the scene in front of them, totally helpless. Until, finally, after a few seconds that felt like an eternity, the smoke dissipated and Fern collapsed to the ground for the second time that day.
Arcade blinked, his head going high speed. He felt his ears ringing, as if he still could hear the shrill screams, and his eyes locked into the figure splayed face down on the stairs’ landing. The damaged person that once was Fern.
Their wings were destroyed, turned into a wrecked remnant. Their hair was green, decorated with a black thorned crown, and it was as if their clothes had melted, sticking into their skin, covering him almost completely.
Fern was unconscious, breathing so superficially that it was as if they could just… stop at any given point. Arcade blinked again. That… wasn’t supposed to happen. His curse wasn’t supposed to go that far. For some reason, having to see Fern fainting under everyone’s terrified faces wasn’t as satisfying. And Fern looked in pain, even with their eyes closed, their whole body still suffering from spasms, as if constantly struck by small lighting.
Arcade knew that Mae was crying, screaming her lungs out; that Saturnius was ordering the guards around, that people were panicking and just a step away from hysteria. But all those noises were muffled, as if he was underwater, barely processing the severity of the situation and the fact that he couldn’t breathe.
That wasn’t what Arcade wanted.
That was his last thought before the royal guards took all the humans out of the hall, and arrested them.