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In the heart of the palace, Lacus Welt stands as still as the statues along the walls, their marble eyes as deadpan as his own. The vampiric guards tearing apart each room don't faze him, dispersing with such speed the fire in the candelabras shifts as they pass. From the might of their collective footsteps, the chamber quakes.
Desperation forces their every move. It should’ve. But Lacus fears nothing.
“Check the drawing den!” a progenitor shouts. Lacus never remembers his name. “The library! None of you are receiving a drop of blood until he’s found!”
He would make good on that promise as well. The last time their prince disappeared, their three-day satiety almost passed, and the thirst crept in. Needles pricking along the back of the throat. Languid heaviness in the pit of the stomach. The guards became irate, interrogating every stray vampire that didn’t belong to the kingdom ‘proper.’ If they refused to provide intel or betrayed even a hint of the prince’s whereabouts they wouldn’t share, they severed their heads.
“Idiots…” Lacus mutters. “You won’t find him there.”
They better hope word doesn’t reach the queen. If she, or her loose-lipped right hand Ferid Bathory, discovers her favorite pet escaped everyone’s notice again?
Their punishment would be worse than starvation.
“Lacus.”
One of the few vampires he can tolerate approaches—a pleasantly familiar face, often blasé, with deep shadows beneath the eyes.
“René…”
“Come. Join me in the white gallery.”
A request in the form of a command.
That’s how he always spoke to his peers, but it irritates Lacus no less.
So he remains still. Doesn’t utter a word.
He only accepts orders from one vampire.
René takes a couple of steps until he realizes he’s not being followed.
“… Aren’t you accompanying me?” he asks over his shoulder.
Arms crossed, Lacus lets out a laugh that won’t relieve him of the ugliness in his chest. Festering in his throat. The sensation reminds him of when he drinks blood fodder for too long, past the point of them being appetizing. They soured after they died.
“Because I’m not searching for the prince! Why should I care whether he lives or dies—”
“Lacus Welt.”
His heartbeat skips for only a moment, but a moment is all it takes for the indignation to thrum in his veins. He despises the sensation. It’s revolting—reminiscent of a humanity that should’ve fled his body years ago.
He turns, and the treasure the entire palace sought enters through the window like always.
Mikaela—their newest monarch, with a surname those close to the queen never disclosed.
In truth, Lacus still finds his liege rather jarring in appearance. Those once blue eyes betrayed something deeper , something the crimson can’t mask even now. With his cherubic features, he befits the living’s cliche depiction of an angel more than any blood-sucking vampire.
It mattered little before, but now it’s impossible to disregard—the extent to which he doesn’t fit in .
The guards hear his voice no matter where they stand in the palace, a gift of vampiric ears, and they flock to him at once.
Like the dedicated sheep they were.
“Your Royal Highness!” one cries. “Are you all right?”
“Is that blood!?” demands another.
Lacus hadn’t noticed—for his gaze never departed from Mikaela’s face. But a glance at his hands reveals they’re stained. Sticky with blood between the fingers. Caked beneath his nails.
An impartial stare is Mikaela’s only answer.
“Did someone attack you!?” the progenitor—now that Lacus thinks about it, he believes he’s the eighth—asked.
Another guard asserts, “It’s the stray vampires around the kingdom! Find them and bury their heads underground—!”
“Enough.”
Lacus breaks through the flock of guards with ease. As easily as he lurks through a crowd of blood fodder to steal a sip of blood. They respect him—create a path for him—for the mere fact he’s the vampire assigned as Mikaela’s retainer.
Lacus only took advantage of this reverence when it suited his mood. Or allowed him to silence a group of guards making his head hurt.
He bows before his prince.
“Allow me to clean your hands.”
Mikaela says nothing—as is his habit. He’d been a vampire of few words since the day they paired Lacus with him.
As he starts for the washroom, all the guards fall back, returning to their posts.
Lacus could read their expressions effortlessly. There’s more they want to say, and more questions to ask, but they must’ve learned by now that Mikaela would leave them dissatisfied.
They meant nothing to him.
Mikaela said his name when he returned.
No one else’s.
They were nobodies. Not like Lacus.
The thought brings an emotion he would perish before he named.
Anger takes its place in seconds, anyway.
As they journey through the palace, passing countless paintings of the queen, Lacus recalls a time when he enjoyed the silence between them. He used to have fun—dare he call it—imagining what occupies his prince’s mind.
Not anymore.
Not since that appalling October evening.
He sits Mikaela at the edge of the bath, searing. Its steam drifts to the ceiling. Its water catches the moonlight spilling through the window. Servants around the clock keep it hot—awaiting their monarch for occasions such as this.
Mikaela offers his bloodied fingers, and Lacus pauses. These were the very hands that broke the bodies of their enemies. Crushed skulls and tore off limbs. He’d seen them inflict countless wounds. Should he be in the mood to use one, they defined artistry with a sword.
He admired them once.
He dips the cloth beneath the water. Wrings the excess. Then he sponges every stain.
“… You didn’t tell them where you went,” he notes, goading Mikaela to speak.
But his prince wouldn’t inform him , either.
Whatever. He doesn’t need to say a word to arouse Lacus’s suspicions.
It’s the way his face softens. How the frigid vampirism in his gaze diminishes, if only by a fraction.
It makes Lacus sick.
Beneath the blood, the bruises on Mikaela’s knuckles heal in seconds.
This won’t be the last time he journeys past the palace walls, facing delusional enemies who want to steal his life and the throne. If Lacus looks closely, he can make out the vestiges of flesh between Mikaela’s fingers. The tiniest fragment of bone. He tore them apart until their shattered bodies could no longer heal themselves.
“Killed them, huh?” Lacus asks.
This time, Mikaela answers with a flat, “Yes.”
Lacus sucks his teeth. This confirmation brings him no satisfaction. The first few times Mikaela returned with the blood of his enemies, Lacus experienced a giddiness second only to drinking from the source. His prince was perfectly cold. Despotic without fault. He was an untouchable monarch, empty of all emotion but the lust to consume blood and a disdainful boredom of everything else.
Everyone was beneath him.
At least, that’s what he thought.
Mikaela isn’t supposed to show interest in anyone—that’s what makes him exemplary. A pleasure to be around. The idea of dying by his prince’s hand, should he do anything less than obey, thrilled Lacus.
So who is this person whose mind has been elsewhere lately?
The distance between himself and his prince—did he not push everyone away? Isn’t every vampire and human unworthy of his time?
It’s not because…
He refused to even think about it.
He had to be wrong. That night must’ve been a mistake.
Mikaela couldn’t have been with—
“Are you finished?”
Lacus, yanked from his reverie, returns to the lukewarm cloth. He had been wiping the same spot for minutes now.
Pulling himself together, he says, “Obviously not—”
But Mikaela rises. With one hand halfway clean and the other sullied with the remains of a life lost, he walks away.
Lacus follows.
All Mikaela has to do is take a left, and Lacus knows he isn’t returning to his chamber. It’s likely he’s going out again, wandering who knew where and torturing the guards with yet another departure. Mikaela’s blatant disregard for the chaos he unleashed amused Lacus once.
Now it grates.
Mikaela goes left.
“Wait!” Lacus cries. His prince halts his steps, but he doesn’t turn around.
That’d have to be enough.
“Are you seriously leaving again!?”
Mikaela lifts the same window sill. His answer.
“… You’re toying with me.”
He steps forward, and Mikaela is gone.
Lacus storms to the window, and the guards—those hopeless, worthless things—are on the ground. The blood on Mikaela’s hands betrays where he knocked them out.
A leap is all it takes for him to overcome the barrier, venturing into the world outside the palace.
A twinge in Lacus’s gut tells him where he’s headed. But he doesn’t want to believe that anymore. He wants to be proven wrong.
So he jumps from the window and joins him over the wall.
When Mikaela enters the forest that surrounds the palace, Lacus’s breath halts.
But he lurks behind him, regardless.
With no clear path to tread, most who venture this deep end up hopelessly lost. Mikaela, however, makes long strides as if he explored this endless maze every night.
He smashes the twigs that came across his path. Anticipated every low-hanging branch. Moonlight falls from the dispersing clouds and illuminates their walk. But Mikaela doesn’t need it. He would’ve known his way in consummate darkness.
The thick, evergreen foliage rustles above their heads—the crisp lisping of mid-autumn Lacus never liked. He always preferred the frigid stillness of winter. A breeze whisks through the trees, moist from the recent rain, and to his irritation, leaves a subtle dampness on his skin. The leaves from the few dying branches, now scattered amidst the ground, flash red and gold with his every step.
Maybe Lacus is wrong.
Perhaps he was only seeing things that night, and the signs he put together were a figment of his bored imagination.
Mikaela had always been perplexing. He came out of nowhere as Queen Krul’s ‘special progeny.’ He expressed none of his thoughts, but that was the appeal. With his coldness and unmitigated apathy, his presence had taken root in Lacus. He jeered at the idea at first. His pride wholly revolted against it. With indignation, he denied any and all accusations of something as lofty and human as ‘admiration’ taking place in his heart. Ferid’s suggestions were pure folly. On the rare occurrences he was alone, and he couldn’t get his prince out of his mind, he cursed under his breath both Mikaela and himself.
Mikaela is just an ideal—an embodiment of what a vampiric monarch should be. There’s nothing more to it than that. No despicable thoughts, worthy of all his shame, arose from being his retainer.
However.
If Mikaela turns out to be… different—if his suspicions ring true…
Lacus clenches his jaw—balls his hands into fists as he stomps through a meager creek Mikaela had stepped over.
His prince had to have heard him.
His ears were much too keen, and senses much too sharp, to be followed without notice.
He let Lacus come along. He cared that little for his presence.
How was he to take that?
His indignation boils once more when the last of the branches part, and the ground beneath his feet transforms from soil to cobblestone.
From looming trees to worn, half-timbered houses.
To the homes of the blood fodder.
The moon has yet to hang its highest in the sky—nor is it time for the collectors to stalk the streets and drain the rations of their blood. On second thought, this isn’t even the night they travel into the villages, anyway.
No—there has to be a purpose.
Anything other than that.
Perhaps he, too, disobeyed his ‘mother’s’ law of drinking directly from the source. Lacus always preferred it when blood was fresh from the neck. By the time the vampires seized it, and the royal phlebotomists segregated it by gender and age, careful to align with the preferences of each vampire, it lost its warmth. The taste of life itself. The delight that went straight to his head.
Their prey had nothing close to that kind of ecstasy.
Lacus, then, understands.
That’s just like his prince. How cruel of him.
To witness him executing random blood fodder would be the highest privilege. He’d commit a taboo for his own gain. For the pleasure above all pleasures. That’s what makes Mikaela great. Makes him worth following.
Mikaela stops outside a home at the end of the cobblestone path. Compact, with wood more worn than the other houses and red shingles spread haphazardly across the roof. The fence is pitiful. It wouldn’t defend the blood fodder from any stray vampires, much less a member of their own species. The knowledge this was Sanguinem’s territory alone must’ve kept them from being pillaged.
What pathetic, lowly creatures.
Mikaela had the right to take one’s life away.
This is what they bred the fodder for—from the food they ate to the water they drank. They were a vampire’s meal.
Excellent. He picked a victim.
This would be the end of the puny existence living inside—
“Yuu!”
A name?
Mikaela called out a name.
Who?
His gaze lingers on the sorry excuse for shelter, but he couldn’t have been shouting for a…
No. It didn’t have to be a name. It could’ve been a word. Some sort of code.
What did it mean? What is ‘Yuu’ in this context?
The answer leaves him speechless.
Blood fodder emerges from the window, his cheeks rosy with fresh, ever-flowing blood. His eyes brimmed with life, too much life, and were paired with a smile whose brightness reminded Lacus of the sun. He despises everything about it. The only refuge for his sight is the hair, akin to the comforting darkness of night.
“Mika!?”
Who is ‘Mika?’ Lacus wonders.
Then it dawns. A nickname.
A shortened version of Mikaela’s name as though they were equals. Or worse. The blood fodder deserves to die for that alone. He shouldn’t have even gazed at Mikaela with those off-putting, glittering green eyes—too antithetical to a vampire’s.
“You’re back!”
And what the hell is that look? What is that gleam? Lacus doesn’t have a term for it. Perhaps… softness? The word ‘tender’ enters his mind, and Lacus decides it should never be in his lexicon again. Whatever it is, it radiates weakness. An ugly expression only the living can fix their face to make.
The fodder departs from the window, and Mikaela approaches the fence.
They were going to meet , and Lacus’s initial shock collapses into unadulterated fury.
He was right. He had been correct all along.
No. It can’t be.
This isn’t enough. He needs more evidence.
As Mikaela waits for the blood fodder to open the gate, Lacus leaps over it from the side, hiding in the bountiful shrubbery of a garden. There, he had a clear view of the backyard. What he doesn’t fathom are the pink-petaled plants infesting the grass. For what purpose were they grown? They weren’t the greenery that’s native to the village. Is that how his rations wasted time? Raising random weeds?
Mikaela is welcomed into the yard and shares a dry-rotted bench with the blood fodder. A ridiculous occurrence. This is no place for his prince. At the very least, his sacrifice should’ve kneeled at his feet and offered his blood already. How dare he position himself on an even level with him?
Just when he recovered from that shock, that outrage, the corners of Mikaela’s lips turn upright.
He mirrors the blood fodder’s face.
He smiles.
“What the hell…?” is all Lacus can force from his throat, low and guttural. In the years he spent being his retainer, not once did he imagine his prince capable of such an expression. It’s uncanny—doesn’t belong on his mouth. Lacus’s world cracks into pieces, and the dull throb that composes his heartbeat intensifies into something… stranger.
“I couldn’t wait anymore… I needed to see you again.”
How is that Mikaela’s voice? His words weren’t laconic—his intonation isn’t cold and unforgiving. It’s kind, almost gentle. Rarely did he give Lacus a complete sentence, and the blood fodder received two without having to ask a question?
“I was hoping you’d come…” his prey answers.
He warms Mikaela’s face in his hands. With the impertinence to touch him, he closes those unsettling eyes and joins their foreheads.
It’s a gesture Lacus hardly understands.
What about this human forced Mikaela to tolerate this utter disregard of his space?
Lacus is never that close.
“Mika…”
He sighs that awful nickname in contentment, and Lacus wants to tear out his throat so he can never use his lungs like that again.
At last they part, and when the blood fodder notices the blood on Mikaela’s fingers, he gasps, seizing his wrists.
“Your hands!”
Lacus almost laughs.
Mikaela wouldn’t explain.
His prince doesn’t think he owes anyone an explanation—
“I got into a fight.”
“Another one!? What did I say about being more careful on the way home!?”
With what gall did the blood fodder scold his prince? Where did he come off telling him what he ‘needs’ to do? His only worth is the blood flowing through his veins. His words mean nothing.
Furthermore, when is Mikaela going to drink him already?
“Wait here!”
A command? Not even the highest progenitors demanded the prince do anything.
“Okay…” Mikaela says, and Lacus’s head spins.
Mikaela obeyed. Sits there alone. On a miserable bench. Waiting until the blood fodder returns with a bucket of lukewarm water and a tattered cloth. He also tucked… something beneath his arm, but Lacus couldn’t get a good look at it.
Some frivolous human object, of that he’s certain.
“Hold still…” he says, and Mikaela does.
The blood fodder takes his hands as if Mikaela is some feeble, delicate creature. Like holding him too tight would shatter him into pieces. The hands only Lacus, the queen, and her right hand had leeway to touch were now being cradled by… him. And Mikaela is taking it. He lets him clean every drop. Scrub off each stain.
He didn’t wait for Lacus.
He didn’t.
But for this—this living meal worth less than the dirt on Lacus’s shoes…
A pang hits his chest, and as he strays away from the meaning of it, Mikaela speaks.
“Thank you.”
Thank you.
Words of gratitude. Words he didn’t believe Mikaela could say.
That’s how little he—how little the other vampires mattered to him.
The blood fodder grins, not a fang to be found amongst his teeth, and Mikaela draws nearer.
“Um…” He hesitates, crumbling Lacus’s image of him further. “May I see it?”
At last.
Surely he desires his neck. That scrawny human neck. So he’ll finally take the only substance that matters. This took far too long. To endure this pretense, this blood fodder must’ve tasted amazing—a flavor worth preserving and prattling on with—if it meant he could have more later.
“Yep!”
But of all things, the object he tucked away was a book.
Those insignificant items that only quell his boredom when he’s particularly desperate. Ferid Bathory kept them in his ‘library.’
And Mikaela’s frigid eyes warm further. They brighten.
“I’ll skip to your favorite part,” his sacrifice says.
He flips through the text, and Lacus can discern pictures of mountains. Trees. Lakes. Everything is illuminated by his nemesis in the sky. Soon, the pages grow still, revealing a picture of something called ‘the sea.’ Lacus heard of it. But what’s the point?
Mikaela and his meal lean forward in unison, so close their foreheads almost touch again.
Repulsive.
“It says the ocean is a gigantic body of water—bigger than any pond we have in the kingdom! It covers up most of the world, apparently! And it’s full of salt! These ‘waves’ always moving because of the wind, and—and different creatures live in it!”
So what?
Only the living could be interested in such things.
And yet…
Mikaela appears just as enthralled as he reads.
“You and I will live near it one day! We’ll have a house right by the ocean!” the blood fodder says, his most ridiculous statement thus far.
Mikaela’s the prince of Sanguinem.
He can’t leave with some rations and his stupid fantasy.
Mikaela doesn’t agree, but his smile shines brighter than before, letting Lacus know he’s on board with this insanity.
“The dirt before it looks strange…” his prince says, running his fingers along the page.
“That’s sand! See? It’s made of little rocks and minerals. All kinds of stuff!”
‘What nonsense,’ Lacus thinks. There’s blood in the palace. Blood is everything a vampire wants. All Mikaela should want. So why would he care about this large body of water?
Why is Mikaela’s gaze transfixed on the page?
The blood fodder takes his chin, raising his head so their eyes meet.
“It’s breathtaking…”
He’s touching him again. A blade is all Lacus needs to remove his hands, a suitable punishment for his crime.
Perhaps he’ll decapitate him next.
Mikaela leans into his touch.
“The life we’ll have… I want to hear more.”
Beaming, the blood fodder prattles about. Doesn’t matter what he says. Not to Lacus. Those smiles can not belong to Mikaela. He’s only mimicking his meal in some deranged game. There’s no way he desires to leave the palace for this . How would something as inconsequential and far-fetched as this blood fodder’s ‘dream’ awaken his prince?
The question wracks his brain until he comes to a realization.
A relieving one.
It isn’t this blood fodder that Mikaela’s taken an interest in.
It’s the novelty of his existence. He’s bored—as every vampire is. Pleasure can’t be found in anything but the consumption of blood, so he couldn’t grow to like anybody. And once this stops being new, the blood fodder will no longer captivate him. He’ll come to his senses, and Mikaela will drink him dry.
“Um… you know,” his future sacrifice says, closing the book at last. He pushes it in Mikaela’s direction. “You can keep this if you want. I’m not sure I’m worth the risk of sneaking out…”
Lacus can’t agree more.
If Mikaela wants a book so badly, Ferid has plenty in his library.
This whole excursion made no sense—
“No.”
Lacus freezes. Every thought in his head comes crashing to a halt.
“It wouldn’t be the same…” Mikaela insists. He touches the blood fodder the way a vampire never should. It’s careful and saccharine. Foul.
“Your happiness is mine. I only want to go there with you. This is our dream.”
Our?
“If I can’t have you by my side, it’s worthless to me…”
“Mika…”
A shock unlike any other hits Lacus. The heartrending, bitter vexation that’s followed by a total failure—the crushing of all one’s hopes, and a fresh swell of rage rises in him.
A repugnant gesture, only belonging to the living, takes place between his prince and the blood fodder.
Mikaela’s lips find his. And they remain there. Deepen.
His hands cradle his cheeks.
And something in Lacus dies.
They finally part, but only for him and the blood fodder to share a laugh—a laugh, of all things! And then they return to each other. Those hands Lacus once admired twine about the blood fodder’s neck, and he let the tongue of this most unworthy, vile being into his mouth. His voice is nothing like a vampire’s. A whimper but… joyous. Foreign enough to worsen the pang of emotion Lacus dared not name.
His symbol, before his very eyes, is taken away.
By this—No. He’s worse than a mere bearer of blood.
What does Mikaela call him?
A ‘Yuu?’
This ‘Yuu’ is a monster . And he needs him gone .
Lacus seizes the rapier at his hip and bursts through the shrubbery.
In one swift motion, he’ll get Mikaela back.
“Die!”
He barely sees Mikaela move.
And now, the sword from which Lacus hangs shatters his rib cage and plunges straight through his heart. Had he been the same lowly creature as this ‘Yuu,’ it would’ve taken his life in an instant.
“Ah…”
Mikaela’s stare grows cold again. Despotic and ready to kill. The expression Lacus always wanted—all this time. But it isn’t, really. It isn’t for the reason he desired.
Is that what made a mess of his heart?
The anger in his eyes… it’s for ‘Yuu’s’ protection.
“Mika, what’s going on!? Who is that!?”
“Don’t…” Lacus chokes out blood—his command transforms into a scream. “Don’t address the prince with such familiarity! Stop touching him with your filthy—”
Mikaela throws him off his blade, and Lacus drops into the grass, his blood seeping into the earth. A severe wound. Organ damage. He’ll need to drink blood to heal it. And fast.
Mikaela isn’t even looking at him.
He returns to his ‘Yuu,’ rubbing the tip of his nose against his. His voice is gentler than it’s ever been.
“Everything’s okay… why don’t you go back to bed?”
Mikaela’s ‘Yuu’ seems to forget about him as well, enraptured by his prince. He clings to his shoulders like this is the last time they’ll meet each other.
But it won’t be.
Lacus knows his prince by now.
“… Will I see you tomorrow?”
Pathetic.
Didn’t he just offer the prince freedom from visiting him?
“I promise.”
That isn’t enough for his ‘Yuu.’ He lingers by his side, so Mikaela joins their lips in that repulsive, human gesture again.
Still, he stays.
His ‘Yuu’ is a terrible listener.
Instead of retreating indoors, he lowers his collar to expose his neck.
“You must be thirsty, right? If so, I could…”
Lacus lifts his head.
Was he correct all along?
Was this entire endeavor nothing but a ritual to take—
“No…” Mikaela answers, fixing his ‘Yuu’s’ shirt.
He raises his hand, resting his lips on his knuckles.
“I’d never drink your blood…”
Defeated, Lacus’s skull meets the grass.
There has to be something wrong with this ‘Yuu.’ For him to be so audacious with his ruler. His subduer.
Only when he returns to his home does Mikaela look at Lacus.
And it feels as though his heart will burst. That hostile stare… it’s supposed to be for anyone. For every worthless blood fodder and vampire in the kingdom alike.
It reads so differently now.
“Hey…” Lacus struggles to stand. “It’s time to head back, Your Royal Highness.”
Without a word, Mikaela departs from the yard, and Lacus’s laugh is bitter.
“You’re leaving me behind…” he muses.
How mistaken he’d been.
He’s no different from the guards.
And what a foolish impulse he gave into—thinking the death of that ‘Yuu’ would solve his problems. If anything happens to him now, his prince will know it was him. The sole vampire aware of his secret. Whatever satisfaction Lacus receives from killing him will earn him an eternity of burning on a cross.
No one would question his prince’s command.
He’d need no elaboration to end Lacus’s life.
Mikaela surmised that from the beginning.
Even when Lacus drew his blade, his prince never saw him as a threat.
Lacus, on his feet at last, takes a single step.
Then he pauses.
Someone’s behind him.
He turns, and looking out the back window is the one who ruined everything.
Nights passed from this moment, and still Lacus can’t recall whether that ‘Yuu’ had smiled at him—a self-satisfied smirk, aglow with mockery for the prince he took away—or he crafted it all in his memories.