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The Prince is carried in through the halls of the castle in chains, the metal carving raw and bloody wounds into his wrists, creating something of artistry against the marble floors as he is dragged across it.
In an unceremonious heap, he is cast out across the foot of the throne room, forced to kneel against the cold, bloodied, tiles. He refuses to look up.
“Remove his cloak,” the ‘King’ orders, his voice booming over the throne room, his shadow engulfing everything.
The man on the ground scoffs as the King’s men rip away his hood, revealing him in his entirety underneath. “Careful,” Prince Neil Josten warns, a ghastly twisted smile bleeding across his face as he stares at Riko Moriyama’s shadow. “I’m wanted.”
“Prince of the Damned, Nathaniel Wesninski,” Riko says, tasting the words on his tongue like poison. With the point of his sword jutting into Neil’s neck, he forces the runaway’s chin upwards to meet his own eyes. “Coming to take back the Empire you abandoned? I can’t decide if your suicidality is desperation or idiocy.”
“Can’t I be both?” Neil laughs, bitter and biting against the cold, the threatening blade pressed against his throat. He narrows his eyes. “I’ve only come back for something I left behind. Give me what’s mine, and I’ll leave this place the way I left it.”
Rotten, glorious heartbreak burned something awful within Riko’s eyes as his gaze sharpens. He spits, “You left behind your life when you stepped foot into the castle gates. When your Daddy sold you to us, did he forget to mention you’re mine forever?”
Ooh. Someone’s still mad he got broken up with.
“You really don’t want to do this again, do you?” Neil asks, all so casually and terribly that he can hear the hollow rasp of Riko’s lungs as he breathes, remembering the faltering of his voice from the night Neil left him. Neil smiles at the memory, savouring it on his tongue like glass. “Did you miss the taste of your broken teeth and blood that terribly, My King? Because of you, I’m wanted across all the Kingdom, so maybe you simply missed my charm? I know it mustn’t have been the sex considering your impotence every time you tried to–”
Riko digs the blade further into his throat, breaking skin but only just. The King’s Knights positioned around the prisoner raise their own swords to Neil with Riko’s order all the same. “Your threat is cute, but remember what leaving cost you the last time?” The King snarls, and Neil, for the first time, doesn’t feel bored anymore but an acidic vengeance that had driven him back to his damned Kingdom in the first place. He goes to tear Riko’s throat out with his teeth, but is interrupted when Riko commands, “Stay where you are, my darling Nathaniel. You’re surrounded.”
“All I’m surrounded by is a crooked kingdom and dead men,” Neil says instead. And then, the words heavy with the weight of an unbreaking promise, he tells Riko, “Give me the Jester.”
Riko’s mouth twists, ugly and aching. Still unable to save himself from his own lovesickness that was anything but, he grits out, “He’ll be as damned to rot in the same earth underneath this kingdom as you, Nathaniel. Surrender to me, and maybe he’ll live in your place should the stars align.”
Neil, nailing his coffin shut if it meant coming back for what he came for, says, “Fuck your stars. Tell me where the Court Jester is and I'll only piss on your grave twice.”
Riko comes closer, replacing his blade against Neil’s chin with his own hand, fingertips digging into Neil’s skin, leaving bruises. “You’ll never find him,” he whispers against Neil’s lips. “Not alive.”
“Tell me, Riko,” Neil promises. “Or I’ll kill everyone in your fucking Empire. Where is he?”
For the first time, Riko smiles, and Neil gets the awfully suffocating feeling that he’s been had. Somewhere, somehow, this has all gone terribly wrong and they will die for it. Riko leans in closer, relishing in the dawning realisation across Neil’s face, almost enough to kiss him. “Your ‘true love’? I was so brokenhearted after you left, I killed him.”
All at once, Neil breaks. The words leaving him without another thought, and the only thing in the whole fucking universe is –
“Where is Andrew?!”
Neil’s voice shattered against the castle, the King’s Knights raising their swords to strike, with Riko basking the the chaos of it all, but –
– and in the distance, a bored harlequin crosses the room from his shadows, and goes to stand in the centre of them all with his back to the King and his godforsaken cesspool of an Empire.
“Shut up, Rabbit,” the Court Jester tells him. “Your dramatics are giving me a headache. Are you done making a ruckus of this monarchy once again?”
“Almost,” Neil says. In one glorious, fateful moment, the Prince of the Damned breaks his chains, flourishing out of his rain-drenched and blood-soaked cloak, revealing the knives of his bloodline under. Before the Knights can strike him down, he throws out daggers in each direction, all the while Jester rolls his eyes and studies his nails as if waiting for something interesting to happen. He seems remotely less bored when Neil pins Riko’s shoulder to his own throne with an agonising scream, but not enough to look over towards said commotion. He gives Neil a flat look as Neil looks back at him. “Hi.”
“Hi,” Andrew says, giving nothing. Around him, all the Knights are dead, while their King is left groaning. He still feels the need to say, “Is this supposed to be my rescue?”
Neil shrugs. “You win some, you lose some. Now, I’m still wanted, so let’s get the fuck out of here.” He offers his hand, bloodied and coated with all things awful but nonetheless there for Andrew to take should he still want it.
“Not yet,” Andrew tells him, picking up a dagger from one of the many bodies left dead, and not bothering to look back as he threw it behind him, stabbing Riko through the chest, killing him dead. “Now we can go.”
He takes Neil’s hand in his own, walking away from the ruins of the Empire. Two Princes of the Damned, he supposes. “You’re wanted too, now,” Neil says helpfully. “Just so you know.”
“Great,” Andrew replies. “Being wanted by you is tiresome enough.”
“You say the sweetest things,” Neil smiles until Andrew shuts him up with a kiss.