“Smile, little bird,” Tserriednich hums, coming up from behind you. He rests his hands on your shoulders, thumbs pressing into your upper spine, silently signaling for you to fix your posture. You glance back at him, catching the languid smile on his face as he looks out toward the crowds of nobles attending the banquet. “People are watching. We wouldn’t want them to think you’re unhappy. You’re not unhappy, are you?”

It scares you how easily you fell back into old habits. 

It didn’t even take a week. By the fifth day, you were already standing the way he liked again—shoulders back, wrists still, gaze softened just enough to suggest obedience instead of fear. Nearly three weeks now, and it’s as though you never left. The routines have settled into you: morning tea at seven, lounging in his quarters reading until noon, when the two of you would go down to whatever afternoon event is taking place on Tier Two, you hold his arm as you make small talk with officers and dignitaries, you smile when expected, you laugh when expected, you comment when expected, you are silent when expected. He walks you back up to your quarters so you can rest, and then you repeat the next day. 

It’s just how things used to be.

Or, maybe not exactly. He’s gentler than you remember, more patient with your mistakes, lenient toward your whims. If you forget to greet him properly, he only laughs, brushing it off with a teasing remark instead of a reprimand. When you spill tea on the sleeve of his robe, he waves away your apology and changes without a word. If he sees you growing bored with whatever book he chose for you, he lets you pick your own, and the next day, he has one picked out more similar to the one you chose.

It’s unsettling. You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop; you know he’s lulling you into a false sense of security, that the kindness will not last. But each day passes, and nothing changes. You start to wonder if it’s always been this way. If distance and anger had twisted your memories, making you believe that he was worse than he actually was. Then you remember the garden, the kitten, the songbird, the servant boy, the tutor—all of the things he has taken from you over the years, the way he would make you watch as he ripped them away, until you learned not to become attached.

The kindness is a facade, and you must be prepared for when he lets it fall.

“I’m not unhappy,” you answer, and then you smile. Prettily. The way he taught you to. He used to say that when you smiled properly, your beauty would put the stars to shame—a face that could launch a thousand ships, he would murmur pridefully when a noble would comment on your beauty.

“I’m glad,” he says. “I know this isn’t easy for you. You don’t believe me, but I did hope that I would be wrong about your fated. It hurts me to see you upset over a mongrel like him.”

A thousand ships, you think bitterly—yet not even enough for your soulmate to fight for.

“I’m not upset anymore, Tserried,” you deny instinctively, sighing and looking away when he gives you a look from the corner of his eye. You know how I feel about deceitful women, little bird. You correct, “Maybe a little, but I’ve moved on.”

Tserriednich kept his word to you after Hisoka and Chrollo’s second clash. He did not touch the Phantom Troupe once they were imprisoned. He held it over your head for quite a while during that first week—since he promised not to have them drugged and sedated, they were able to break free from their cells two days after they were taken into custody. You thought they would come for you. You think Tserriednich did too, because he upped the number of guards stationed in your quarters.

They didn’t.

You waited. Four days turned into five, then a week, then two. You told yourself there must’ve been a reason, but the silence stretched, and stretched, until every excuse began to feel like humiliation. Every morning you woke up expecting chaos, rescue, retribution—something. But nothing ever happened. You drank your tea. You smiled when spoken to. And no one came.

Tserriednich never said I told you so, but you would catch the faintest flicker of amusement behind his gentleness, as though he was indulging a child who had finally learned her lesson. He puts up the facade of sympathy, which you hated more than if he’d been smug. It wasn’t your fault that you’d never been able to get rid of that childish hope for your soulmate, he told you, don’t cry for a pig who used you so callously. He insisted that over and over again—that Chrollo used you, that he had no way of getting to the upper tiers without your help, and was only entertaining the bond to get close to Hisoka Morow and the Hui Guo Rou heirlooms. Chrollo Lucilfer is a thief, he reminded you, a liar, a charlatan, a conman—someone who could make anyone believe anything, if it suited him.

Even you, Tserriednich murmured, pitying your gullibility. Especially you.

He said it with such conviction, such effortless certainty, that sometimes you almost believed him. He described your bond as nothing more than an elaborate performance, another mask worn for advantage, and you cannot be blamed for trusting the serpent’s words when he wears the promise of a future you’ve dreamed of. You used to argue with him in the early days after the Troupe’s escape from confinement, when the silence between you and Chrollo still felt temporary. You told Tserriednich that he didn’t understand, the bond isn’t something that can be faked, but he would just wear that patient, knowing smile—the one that made you feel small—and ask, then why isn’t he here?

You stopped arguing after that.

“That makes me happy,” Tserriednich murmurs, smoothing a hand over your hair to fix a strand that fell out of place. “I’m meeting with Zhang Lei and Luzurus tomorrow. Will you join?”

Your gaze shifts up to him, curious. If he’s meeting with Zhang Lei and Luzurus, then the three bosses will definitely be there too—Brocco Li, Onior Longbao, and Morena Prudo. You haven’t spoken to Luzurus or Brocco Li since before everything went down with Hisoka. The last time you made contact with Zhang Lei was to deliver the head of Onior Longbao’s eldest son to him. And Morena Prudo—well, you don’t know if you want anything to do with that woman, not after what you heard was happening on the lower tiers. You’re not even really sure how Tserriednich managed to get her up to Tier One and put an end to the havoc. You’re not sure if you want to know.

“Is that a good idea?” you finally ask quietly. “I doubt our elder brother will take kindly to my presence.”

Tserriednich gives you a lazy smile. “He won’t,” he agrees.

That’s the point.

Ah, you realize, gaze flicking up to Tserriednich, amused. He winks at you before turning to a lesser noble approaching the two of you. You follow along absently as the man tries to make conversation with Tserriednich. Your brother is wildly unimpressed; you can tell that much from the bland smile and thinly veiled condescension in his eyes, but you’re glad for the interruption. 

You need to think—what is Tserriednich trying to accomplish by bringing you to a meeting with your two brothers and the bosses of the three families? Why does he need to antagonize Zhang Lei and Onior Longbao? Nothing he does is without purpose; there’s some sort of scheme he’s trying to see through. What is it?

Zhang Lei is notoriously hard to antagonize. He’s too careful, too diplomatic. You would even go as far as to say that he’s the hardest to provoke of all of your siblings. Maybe it’s not Zhang Lei then, you consider. Tserriednich wouldn’t waste effort on someone who won’t rise to the bait unless it serves a larger purpose. 

What is the larger purpose?

If Tserriednich wants everyone in one room, four heirs of Kakin’s royal line, and the bosses of the three crime families that prop up the kingdom’s underbelly, then he has some major goal he’s trying to accomplish. If he wants you there, at his side, then it’s because he needs you to lend him some extra legitimacy. 

Oh, you think you understand. When the three families and their benefactors meet, ordinarily, Zhang Lei and Tserriednich would be vying for dominance. Zhang Lei is the eldest, so he would take precedence in both blood and decorum, but Tserriednich is the second son of the First Queen. 

You’ve never attended one of these meetings before, but you can picture it: Zhang Lei presiding with that impeccable composure of his. Luzurus would defer to him out of habit, if not respect. Even the crime bosses, for all their volatility, know how to play to hierarchy when the older princes are present. Tserriednich, though, would not be so quick to submit. He’d smile through Zhang Lei’s opening remarks, say little, but every word from his mouth is a test—you know this better than anyone. He’d drop a question sharp enough to draw blood, something that a lesser prince wouldn’t dare to try; it would be so perfectly phrased that to ignore it would make Zhang Lei seem weak, and to answer would mean stepping into Tserriednich’s tempo.

And if Tserriednich controls the tempo, he controls the meeting.

You doubt Zhang Lei falls for it every time. He’s far too calculated for that. But with you there—and with Morena there, who you remember was having her disciples hunt down the Xi-Yu en masse less than three weeks ago—he’ll be off-kilter, more prone to posture, more susceptible to letting Tserriednich lead him by the nose. Zhang Lei is careful and diplomatic, but he is also proud. Being in a room with two people who openly insulted him will leave him straining to maintain his composure.

But why?

Tserriednich gives you a faint smile, as though he can tell exactly what you’re thinking. Maybe he can. You know why, he tells you silently as he starts to dismiss the noble who had approached the two of you.

Do you?

Your gaze cards across the room as though it will give you the answers you need, and—and it does. You inhale through your nose as your gaze falls on Benjamin. Your eldest brother decided against enacting special martial law once the Black Whale passed into the uncharted waters. With you and Tserriednich now united, he doesn’t want to risk a majority of the military siding with the two of you, especially now that he knows Tserriednich’s personal army has shown itself willing to flout orders when he demands otherwise. 

And now, with Tyson and Tubeppa dead, and whatever balance their presence once lent to the succession contest vanishing with them, there’s little left to temper the extremes. Halkenburg has succumbed to the King’s ideals, as you expected—he understands now that the only way to “save” Kakin is through bloodshed. The pacifist is dead, the moderate is silenced, the idealist has become jaded, and now only the predators and the children remain. 

Benjamin, Camilla, Zhang Lei, Tserriednich, Luzurus, Halkenburg, and you. 

Kacho, Fugetsu, Marayam, and Woble. 

Benjamin is still the biggest threat with the military unless the mafias can usurp control, but he knows his leadership over it isn’t absolute, which is why he hasn’t enacted special martial law. Tserriednich is trying to force him into it through a tripartite alliance between the mafia families, and he wants to make sure that he’s at the head of it when it’s declared. 

Then, between the faction of the military loyal to you and the families under his thumb, the two of you would have full dominion over the Black Whale.

How terrifying.

“Atta girl,” Tserriednich murmurs after the noble scurries away. “Knew you would figure it out.”

You say nothing, only inclining your head in acknowledgment. His approval sits heavily on your shoulders, warmer than it should be. The noise of the banquet hums back into focus—laughter, small talk, the low melody of string instruments—and you exhale slowly, trying to quiet your racing thoughts.

The world feels smaller now, closing in around the two of you. If he pulls this off—and you know he will—then there’s no stopping what comes next. The succession contest will escalate into a war that might bring the whole ship to the bottom of the ocean.

You reach for a glass, trying to steady your hand, and that’s when you see it—just for a moment, a flicker of pink at the edge of your vision.

You try to crush the hope that swells in your chest as your head snaps to the side. Machi? Her name crosses through your head desperately, but when you search for her familiar face, you’re met with a sea of unfamiliar nobles and dignitaries instead. You let out a soft breath, expression dropping as your gaze shifts back to the ground. The disappointment you feel is crushing, even though you know it shouldn’t be. 

You shouldn’t still feel this way, you remind yourself. 

You shouldn’t still hope.

“Smile,” Tserriednich reminds you.

You smile.

—————

The conference chamber is uncomfortably large. The air is perfumed with incense that makes your nose twitch, and the lighting is dim enough to make your eyes feel strained. The table at the center isn’t round, but triangular, each side long enough for three seats. A deliberate choice from Tserriednich, undoubtedly: no head, no hierarchy, three equal sides that force every gaze inward. He’s forcing Zhang Lei into an appearance of equal footing—shallow optics, maybe, but the type that matters to someone like him. 

Luzurus and Brocco Li have already arrived. Luzurus lounges in his chair, one arm draped across the backrest, the other idly swirling the water in his glass. He keeps looking at you, and you can’t bring yourself to hold his gaze. You don’t want to see that same disappointed look that Benjamin gave you in the theater that fateful day. Brocco Li, on the other hand, is straight-backed in his seat, eyes sharp and lips drawn tight. You assume he has a feeling that he knows what this meeting is going to be about, and he probably doesn’t like it.

You can’t blame him. If everything goes according to Tserriednich’s plans, in the best case scenario, they hand far too much power over to someone who will inevitably become a dangerous enemy, and in the worst, there’s a good chance that the Black Whale will end up at the bottom of Lake Mobius.

Zhang Lei and Onior Longbao enter last, the door shutting softly behind them. To his credit, Zhang Lei doesn’t react to seeing you or Morena Prudo sitting on either side of Tserriednich. Onior Longbao, unfortunately, does, and that’s a mistake that will cost Zhang Lei dearly. Tserriednich’s lips curl up into a faint smile when he sees how Onior’s face twists in fury; already, the scales tip in his favor. 

“Starting out diplomatic negotiations with open insults is bold even for you, Tserriednich,” Zhang Lei says as he takes a seat, folding his hands over the table. “Unless, of course, you bring our sister here as an offering.” His gaze flicks over to you blandly, and you raise your eyebrows, bored. “Blood for blood.”

Lex talionis. He’s mocking you. He wants to call on the law of retribution for Zimo Longbao’s death, just like you did. Ah, Benjamin was right—you really did open a can of worms by invoking the old laws. 

“You speak of insults, and give our family the greatest one,” Tserriednich drawls, tilting his head to the side. “You would consider the son of a Second-Track Faker equal to a true-blooded daughter of the King? That is bold.”

You don’t know how Tserriednich wants you to handle this. Your gaze shifts between the two of them, hoping your discomfort doesn’t show on your face. You tried to ask him what he expected of you, but he only gave you an infuriating smile, letting you know that what he expects is for you to know what he wants without him having to tell you. But Tserriednich can be so fickle—it’s impossible to know what he wants at any given moment. What he expected of you yesterday can be the opposite of what he expects today; what he expected five minutes ago can be the opposite of what he expects now.

“Zimo Longbao should’ve been more careful not to insult a prince, brother,” Tserriednich finishes dismissively. “Lèse-majesté—our sister didn’t even need to invoke lex talionis if she wanted him dead. You would do well to remember that.”

“Yes, because it was she who was insulted,” Zhang Lei counters dully, but his gaze sharpens, and you raise your chin. You know where he’s going with this before he continues. “All of us know about her… ah, relations with those terrorists from Meteor City. We—”

“You’re wrong,” you interrupt, a faux pas in negotiation meetings like this, but you don’t care. Zhang Lei raises his eyebrows at your audacity, but you barrel on. “Zimo Longbao insulted me. The whole of the Xi-Yu has insulted me, and if it were up to me, I would have every single one of them butchered and strung over the side of the ship. You should be grateful to Tserried, Zhang Lei, because he’s the one stopping me from following through with it. If you expect an apology from me, you’ll get none. The only thing I regret is that I was unable to follow through with the rest of my plan.”

Was that a mistake?

You don’t care if it was, you realize as soon as the question crosses your mind. Zhang Lei stares at you with an unreadable expression, and Onior looks seriously disturbed. You don’t think a prince has ever so openly threatened one of the three families like that before. You hear Luzurus snort to your left, taking a sip of his water, but Brocco Li doesn’t seem nearly as amused, looking between you and Onior carefully. He probably took it as a threat, too—anyone who would so openly threaten one mafia… Well, what’s stopping them from taking the same stance against one of the other two? That’s the whole basis for this meeting—finding a common enemy against Benjamin.

But it doesn’t matter. You won’t sit here and pretend you enjoy sitting at the same table as Zhang Lei and Onior Longbao. It makes you sick just to even look at them for too long. You glance at Tserriednich, wanting to gauge his reaction to your words, but his gaze hasn’t left Zhang Lei. He looks pleased, though—or well, he doesn’t look displeased, and Tserriednich would’ve made it known immediately if you’d acted out of line, so you assume you reacted as he planned. 

“You heard her, brother,” Tserriednich says easily. “You should be grateful. Now, shall we get to business, or are you going to waste more of our time?”

And just like that, Tserriednich is the head of the meeting. God, it scares you sometimes how easily everything always works out for him. From his time in the Academy to politics to learning nen—you’ve never met someone who just has everything fall into place for themselves so neatly. It’s frustrating to watch, and you’re not even someone who struggles heavily. Strategy and combat came to you easily, just not as easily as Tserriednich. Politics came to you easily, just not as easily as Tserriednich. Nen came to you easily, just not as easily as Tserriednich.

You don’t like to think you’re a jealous person, but the bitter envy you feel toward your older brother is undeniable. If you were half as lucky or skilled as he is, your life might’ve been different. Instead, you were forced to grow up in his ever-looming shadow, hanging on his coattails so that you weren’t swept up in the dangerous currents of Kakin’s courts.

You exhale through your nose quietly, trying to tune back into the conversation so that you don’t miss anything important, but you pause when you feel someone boring into the side of your head. Your gaze cuts to the side, unnerved, and meets a pair of empty brown eyes that send chills right down your spine.

Morena Prudo.

She’s more beautiful than you expect. When you heard rumors of the mad Heil-Ly boss who nearly brought the ship to the bottom of Lake Mobius with her actions on the lower tiers, you imagined someone wild and disheveled, blood under her nails and mania behind her grin. But the woman seated on Tserriednich’s other side is immaculate. She doesn’t seem to be much older than you, with long, glossy blue hair and fair skin—or, she would be immaculate were it not for the two scars running parallel from the center of her forehead over her left eye to her jaw, signaling her status as a second-track. 

There’s something about her that unnerves you. You don’t like the way she’s looking at you. There’s an almost contemplative look on her face—like you’re a piece on a chessboard that she didn’t expect would be useful, but has suddenly seen its potential, and is already planning how to move it. 

Her gaze lingers a beat too long, pupils unnervingly still, and even when you look away to focus your attention back on the discussion at hand, you can feel the weight of her stare. Morena isn’t paying attention to the meeting, not in the way the others are. Her attention is fixed entirely on you, eyes glinting faintly with curiosity. She leans forward slightly, resting her chin on her palm, and for a fleeting moment, her expression softens into a smile. You don’t know why, or what it means, but you have a feeling it doesn’t mean anything good. 

Tserriednich must notice the subtle change in your demeanor, because his hand finds yours under the table, fingers curling over your knuckles in a silent command to stay still. Don’t show weakness, he says without saying anything at all, so you don’t. You keep your expression neutral, eyes forward, spine straight, the perfect picture of composure.

“Ever the sophist, brother,” Tserriednich hums suddenly—you really need to pay attention, forget Morena—and though Zhang Lei doesn’t react to Tserriednich’s dig, you know it bothers him. There’s nothing that the Third Prince prides himself on more than his intellect. “Every second we waste circling semantics is a second that mutt Benjamin will spend consolidating his power on the upper tiers.”

“Even if your personal army is able to get up to Tier Two, there’s no way we’ll ever be able to contest Benjamin for the upper tiers, prince,” Brocco Li says, shaking his head as he lights a cigar and takes a long drag of it. “The military presence is too condensed—we could barely sneak a handful of our members up, and that was before—”

“We don’t need to sneak anyone else into the upper tiers,” Tserriednich cuts him off before he can finish his sentence. It’s not like him to make such a faux pas—was Brocco Li trying to say something that Tserriednich didn’t want to be said? Before what? Now that you think about it, you don’t have a clue what’s happening on the lower tiers right now. “All we’re talking about right now is pushing Benjamin into enacting special martial law. We can do that by using the lower tiers.”

“And when he does, Tserriednich?” Zhang Lei sighs, shaking his head as he looks away. “Without our men on the upper tiers, we’ll be easy pickings. He’ll have us thrown in the VVIP holding cells and pick us off one by one.”

Tserriednich gives Zhang Lei a placating smile. “Now, you don’t really think I brought our dear sister here just to insult you, brother?”

In an instant, all eyes in the room are on you. You smile mildly and then say, “I can guarantee that enough of the military stationed on the upper tiers will answer to me so that we are not… how did you phrase it? Easy pickings for Benjamin.” You give Zhang Lei a droll look. “Not that I would ever be easy pickings, of course.”

Zhang Lei’s lips tighten at your remark, a small, controlled irritation that never quite reaches anger. “You make broad promises,” he says coolly, “On what authority do you presume to call those men yours?” 

“Ah, brother,” you say, giving him a languid smile, “when you graduated from the Academy, you took the position of strategist and hid behind the grand walls of the palace. I bled with and for at least half of the men stationed on the upper tiers—when Benjamin cowered during the Chimera Ant invasion, I went down to the front lines. Dozens of the men stationed on Tier Two were set to be the next line of defense before I took over command, and would’ve fallen just like the last five lines we had. Triple that have friends and comrades who only survived because of me. Don’t pretend you don’t know this—we both know I was one of the ones you planned on targeting first once our father announced the contest for this very reason.”

Zhang Lei’s lips curl up into an unreadable smile. “I was indeed aware, I didn’t know you were yet.”

So, Luzurus was right, you think bitterly, sparing a glance toward your older brother, who is luckily too busy murmuring something to Brocco Li to catch your gaze. They were all counting on the fact that you wouldn’t realize how much sway you had in the military. 

Why did they all think you were so blind?

Worse, why were they right?

You wonder if it’s a good or bad thing that Zhang Lei knows that you’re aware of this now. It’ll help push forward Tserriednich’s plans, but it’ll definitely work against you once the tripartite alliance of the mafias inevitably falls apart. It would’ve been nice to be able to catch him off guard with it.

Zhang Lei still doesn’t seem convinced of Tserriednich’s plan. You don’t know if it’s because he doubts it will be successful, or if it’s because he’s realizing he’ll be handing way too much power over to Tserriednich. The latter, probably; it was the first thing that crossed your mind too, but… power to Tserriednich is power to you right now. He’s relying on you as much as you’re relying on him—the thought almost thrills you, it echoes through your head a second and a third time. This is… the closest you’ve ever been to equal footing with Tserriednich.

“Don’t you tire of pushing the boulder, big brother?” you ask him absently, tilting your head to the side. Zhang Lei raises his eyebrows at you, and you give him a bland smile. “You’ve been trying so hard to scheme your way around Benjamin’s impossible advantages over us, but every time you think you’ve caught up—” You drag your finger through the air mockingly in the arc of a hill. “—you find yourself back at the beginning. There’s nothing you can do against him alone. Surely, you, of all people, have come to this conclusion already.”

“Lord knows our other, ah, intellectual sibling came to that conclusion early enough, “ Tserriednich drawls. The casual lilt of his tone leaves you unprepared for what he’s about to say. “Tubeppa was too pragmatic to keep playing once she realized what the game required. She slit her own throat rather than let anyone else make the move for her.”

You don’t let the pain cross over your face, but your chest feels heavy when you think back to the days Tubeppa would come find you in the library under the guise of lessons to give you a break from Tserriednich’s impossible expectations of you. You think she would be disappointed if she saw you now—you’re almost glad that she’s not here to see it. That being said, everyone in the room knows that Tubeppa didn’t kill herself, that’s just the story that’s been spread to the public.

In all likelihood, it was one of your three brothers in this room who killed her, but none of them will lay claim to it. Only Benjamin is bold enough to do that. Maybe Camilla. But not these three, which is why it must be one of them.

“So what would you have me do instead?” he asks coolly. He doesn’t like being reminded that he’s been running in circles since the voyage began—that he can’t seem to catch up to the princes who know nen, even when Tserriednich somehow has. “Throw my weight behind a plan that ends with the ship at the bottom of Lake Mobius?” 

Tserriednich laughs softly under his breath, a low, pleased sound that makes the hair on your arms rise. “You see?” he says to you, not to Zhang Lei. He turns his head to look at you, expression dancing with amusement, like the two of you are sharing an inside joke. You hate that it makes you feel important. “He’s always so afraid of the fall, not realizing he’s already tipping over the edge.” He addresses Zhang Lei again, “You worry too much about the future, big brother. You’ll die in the present, and you won’t even get a chance to see what it holds.”

Zhang Lei’s gaze is cold. “I’m afraid of stupidity,” he says flatly, and that irritates Tserriednich from the way the corners of his eyes crease a smidge. Only enough to be noticeable to you. “This plan is reckless. Even if it succeeds, I put myself in a worse position by handing you the advantage, Tserriednich.”

Tserriednich’s gaze drags from Zhang Lei to Luzurus. He drones, “And you, little brother? What’s your opinion on my plan? You’ve been awfully quiet.”

Luzurus’s expression twists in irritation at how Tserriednich addresses him, but his gaze flicks between the two of you, lingering on you for a second too long. Tserriednich catches it, squinting slightly at him.

“I’m in,” Luzurus shrugs lazily, as though he doesn’t have a care in the world. You think Tserriednich might believe it, because he’s always viewed Luzurus as a bumbling idiot, but you worked with him for the first three weeks of the expedition, and you know very well he’s the furthest thing from it. He’s planning something, otherwise he never would’ve agreed so easily, but what? “We should wait for the masquerade banquet to make a move. This upcoming Sunday. Make a spectacle of it—there will already be confusion with the masks. If we can force his hand during a public event, he’ll have no choice but to enact special martial law. Doesn’t want to look weak.”

Zhang Lei gives Luzurus a side-long glance, irritated, like he didn’t expect the man to agree so easily. You almost do too, but you refrain, simply narrowing his eyes and directing your gaze ahead. You’re definitely missing something here, and you can’t figure out what it is. Luzurus is good at playing the fool, but he’s not one. What does he have up his sleeve? He must realize that agreeing to this is as good as handing the succession contest over to Tserriednich. 

Tserriednich, if he has any doubts, doesn’t let them show on his face. He smiles faintly and raises his eyebrows at Zhang Lei, giving him a chance to reconsider his answer. Zhang Lei rises to his feet, and for a second, you think he’ll leave without saying anything else, rejecting Tserriednich’s proposal for an alliance. 

Then, he says, “And once Benjamin is… removed from the equation? What then?”

Tserriednich smiles easily. “Every man for himself, I guess.”

Zhang Lei scoffs, fixing his cuffs as he looks away contemplatively. You’re sure he’s already thinking of the best way to take out Benjamin and Tserriednich in one fell swoop, and you’re sure Tserriednich is already accounting for it. What a fucking snake pit, you think pitifully, already exhausted. 

“Very well,” Zhang Lei agrees as he leaves the room, Onior not a step behind him. It’s an insult to leave a negotiation meeting like that, but you’re sure Tserriednich doesn’t care, not when he’s essentially just been handed the crown on a silver platter. “Until Benjamin is removed from the equation.”

Tserriednich’s teeth glitter like knives as he smiles, lifting his wine glass mockingly, to Zhang Lei’s back. “Until Benjamin is removed from the equation.”

“Right,” Luzurus agrees, drawing out the word as he pushes himself to his feet, stretching obnoxiously. “Well, this was enlightening. Can’t say I expected a sibling gathering to end without blood on the table.” He rolls his shoulders, glancing between you and Tserriednich. “We’ll have the Cha-R briefed and make the necessary arrangements for Sunday.”

Tserriednich swirls what’s left of his wine. “Naturally. I trust your discretion.”

“Well, it would be a bullet in both of our heads otherwise,” he says sarcastically, and then looks at you. “You gonna be at the banquet, or are you skipping this one out again?”

“A chance to see Benjamin flounder? Wouldn’t miss it,” you say dryly, averting your attention to the side when Luzurus’s gaze lingers a bit too long. 

“Want me to walk you up to your quarters?” Luzurus offers, frowning when you instantly glance at Tserriednich. “What? He’s your keeper or something? Can’t go somewhere unless he says it's okay?”

“Fuck you, Luzurus,” you say immediately, rising to your feet and giving him a dirty look. 

Tserriednich’s eyes narrow as he looks between the two of you, but before he can say anything, Morena, who didn’t say a word during the meeting, finally speaks up, “I would like to talk to you anyway, prince. Perhaps it’s best if she goes on ahead.”

Morena glances at you once, an unsettling expression on her face. You would wait for Tserriednich, but waiting for Tserriednich means waiting for Morena, and you don’t want to waste a second longer in that woman’s presence. Tserriednich lets out a heavy sigh, eyes rolling up briefly before he nods for you to go ahead.

“I’ll stop by later,” he tells you, and you hesitate before turning to leave, following Luzurus and Brocco Li out of the room. You stop just short of stepping through, glancing back one last time at Tserriednich and Morena.

Tserriednich is already saying something quietly to the woman, but Morena’s gaze is still fixed on you. Unnerved, your jaw tightens and you give her an accusing look—what do you want? And then she—

She smiles at you. A soft, self-assured curve of her lips, the expression of someone who knows more than she should. She didn’t say a word during the meeting, and yet, somehow, looking at her, you can’t shake the feeling that she’s the one who came out on top.

—————

It’s wrong how at ease you feel right now. 

The thought settles deep in your stomach, weighing heavily on you even as you cover your mouth to smother the giggles threatening to burst out over the snide comment Tserriednich made about Camilla. It’s not right that you’re laughing—laughing at something Tserriednich said, nonetheless—and it’s not right that you’re enjoying yourself, and it’s not right that you’re not on edge. Nothing about this is right, but you still can’t help the laughter that tumbles from your lips.

“You’re laughing because you know it’s true,” Tserriednich drawls. “She is vapid. Attracted to anything that glitters brightly enough. You should’ve seen her at the event earlier. It’s a shame you weren’t feeling well.”

“Like a magpie,” you add, turning your head to the side to look at him where you’re lying on the couch in the main room of his quarters. You rest the book you’re reading on your chest, watching as he huffs out a laugh at his desk, pausing whatever he’s writing to look up at you.

“You insult magpies by comparing them to her,” Tserriednich replies solemnly. “They’re far more intelligent.” 

“They are,” you admit, still smiling. “Magpies are clever.”

“So are you,” he says, returning his attention to the paper before him. You shouldn’t feel so warm from that compliment, but you do, smile softening at the edges as your gaze shifts to the side. Then he asks, “Have you finished it?”

You glance down at the book on your chest. “Most of it.”

“Mm,” he hums, pen tapping against the paper once before he asks, “and?”

“And what?”

“Has your opinion changed?” He looks up again, curious. His lips curl up slightly, and he adds, “You said last time that you didn’t understand it. You got frustrated because he kept contradicting himself. I remember it took you weeks to get through.”

“Oh,” you realize, fingers tracing the spine of the book absently. 

You open your mouth to go on, then stop, trying to gather what you actually think. The pages made more sense this time, or at least, they’d stopped feeling like nonsense, but you’re not sure if you’ve properly grasped them, and you don’t want to sound like an idiot. 

“I’m not sure I understand all of it,” you finally say honestly. “He still sounds like he’s arguing with himself half the time.”

“That’s the point,” Tserriednich says, flipping to the next page of the paper in front of him. “Contradiction is the only honest language. Humankind is incapable of singularity. We’re built from opposing hungers, and the truest thing we can do is let them war inside us without pretending we’re whole. Only lesser minds demand coherence.” 

This… is a test. 

You realize it as he’s speaking, instantly on edge because you don’t know what he’s testing you about. Contradiction, opposing hungers, pretending we are whole—what is he referring to? It has to be something with the soulmate bond, and you don’t want to give the wrong answer.

“Perhaps I have a lesser mind then,” you say with an awkward laugh, trying to draw out some more information from him to figure out what he’s getting at. “Because I wish for a bit of coherence myself.”

“Not nearly,” Tserriednich disagrees instantly. “The way you’ve handled yourself the past two and a half weeks has been impressive. I know you insist that you’ve moved on from what happened, but I’ve seen how uncertain you look when you think no one is looking. I’m trying to tell you that it’s okay. The conflict. It’s not a sign of failure—quite the opposite, in fact. It’s good that you’re warring with yourself about what you should think of the bond.”

What is happening right now?

Is he trying to lower your guard? 

You don’t understand—not for the first time since the incident between Chrollo and Hisoka, you find yourself confused and out of depth with Tserriednich. He’s always been difficult to read and predict, but never more than now. Why is he being nice to you? Why is he acting like you longing for the soulbond is okay? A month ago, it aggravated him to the point that he nearly killed you in this very same room—you can still remember the white flash of pain when his fist struck your face, the bruises he left on your throat. Is he baiting you? Is he trying to get you to admit something that’s going to get you in trouble? He’s played games like that with you in the past, when you were young and foolish and fell for the trap every time because you trusted him and didn’t think he would trick you like that.

“I don’t understand,” you admit slowly, unsure if this might get you punished too, because Tserriednich has never liked it when you fell behind in conversation. You sit up on the couch to look at him more carefully, palms pressing against your thighs. “What are you saying, Tserried?”

He doesn’t answer right away. His gaze slides over you the way it always does when he’s thinking, slow and unreadable.

“That your confusion is expected,” he says at last. “You spent nearly two decades pining after this bond—” this again, you think bitterly, glancing away “—and it’s partially my fault for not doing what had to be done and crushing it before it grew into… this.”

Your stomach twists; his tone is calm, and his expression is deceivingly gentle, but the memory that flickers behind the words isn’t. You remember the days you spent locked in your room when he caught you tracing the words on your forearm, the horrible lessons in impermanence, and the cruel reminders that he was the only thing in your life that you could count on to remain.

And maybe he was right, you think traitorously. Who is here with you, and who is not?

“You were young,” he goes on. “You didn’t understand what it meant. You still don’t. You confuse inevitability with choice, love with compulsion. The bond between ‘soulmates’ has never been what you hoped it would be. I’m glad you’re beginning to realize it.”

You force your eyes back to him. “And you… understand the bond better than I do?”

“I understand you better,” he says, so certainly that you almost believe it. “You think the bond is some grand design—destiny, perhaps—but it’s not. It is just… a self-fulfilling prophecy. Someone tells you that your other half is out there, and you spend your life looking for them. Every dream, every pull in your chest—confirmation bias dressed up as fate. It becomes a habit, even. A habit of feeling, and a habit of longing, but like all habits, it can be broken.”

“You want me to… break it?” you ask, and your voice sounds smaller than you expect. You hate the unsurprised expression on his face, because you realize that all you’ve done is confirm what he already knew was true: you’re not over what happened, you still long for the bond. For Chrollo. “Tserried—”

“I want you to outgrow it,” he corrects, voice far too pitying for your liking. You don’t like this. You want him to stop talking, but he continues. “I want you to stop mistaking dependency for fate. You think what you feel for him is sacred simply because it’s promised. It isn’t—sacred or promised, that is. It’s repetition, muscle memory of devotion. You call it love because you’re afraid to admit that it can be anything else.”

“What is it, if not fate, Tserried?” you ask quietly. “How can you explain the fact that our lives are tied to someone else’s? How—”

“I’m not saying the bond does not exist,” he interrupts. He leans back in his chair, folding his arms over his chest as he looks at you. “There’s undeniably something that tethers our lives to another person’s. But it’s not what it’s made out to be—love and fairytale endings, two halves of a perfect whole. That’s wishful thinking. People want their suffering to mean something, so they twist it into a story that does. They want to believe that the person they’re bound to is their destined other half, their fated romance, so they force it until it fits the narrative they’ve built.”

You shake your head and ask, voice far too desperate for your liking, “What would it be if not love?”

Tserriednich’s smile curves before he speaks the word you’ve dreaded ever since you understood who your soulmate truly is:

“Punishment.”

“Punishment,” you echo, voice barely over a whisper.

“Punishment,” he confirms. He sighs, pushing himself out of his chair to make his way over to you. He sits down next to you. His expression is pitying; you want to snap at him to stop looking at you like that, but the words die in your throat when he rests his hand on top of your head. You stiffen briefly, expecting fingers twisting in your hair and a rough yank backward of your head, but Tserriednich only smooths his hand over your hair, and then he pulls you closer to him, letting you rest your face in the crook of his neck. “My sweet sister, you’ve always been so hopeful and naive. You thought the bond would make you whole, that it would explain the ache in you, but it only magnified it, didn’t it? Because that’s what punishment does. It reminds you of what you can’t have, over and over again. It dangles meaning in front of you, calls it destiny, but it’s something that hurts you to accept—I know you must’ve questioned how such a vile man could be your fated love, and the answer is simple: he’s not. But you convince yourself that your pain must have meaning, and the one who wounds you is the only one who can heal you, so you keep crawling back until you’ve bled yourself dry.”

No, you want to say. It’s not true. It can’t be true. You—you’ve started to understand why Chrollo is your other half. Through the dreams and spending time with him. It’s started to make sense to you. Tserriednich’s hand stills at the back of your head, thumb brushing idly against your hair as though he’s petting something fragile.

“You chase answers and absolution from a man who has only ever used and damned you, because it’s the only thing you’ve ever allowed yourself to want. And it’s my fault, perhaps, for teaching you that you were to want for nothing. You clung too desperately to a pipe dream that only ever hurt you, because you thought your pain served a purpose for a promised future that will never come.” He presses his lips to the top of your head. “You’ve already suffered enough for him, haven’t you? It’s time for you to move on. Let it end, little bird. Let it die. What remains after will be yours. Ours.”

You’re crying, you realize. Tears splatter against Tserriednich’s skin, and your vision blurs as you stare at the wall behind him. He returns to stroking your hair, soothing you, and you find that you lean into it. He lets out a soft huff. 

“It’s okay,” he murmurs. “I’m here. It will all work out in the end. I’ll take care of everything, as I always do. You don’t need to hurt anymore.”

—————

There’s an awful ache in your chest as you make your way back to your quarters. You pass by Tyson’s and Sale-sale’s room—too quiet, too empty. Every time you leave Tserriednich’s quarters, you’re reminded that four of your siblings are dead, and you can’t even go the long way around, because you think that passing Tubeppa’s and Momoze’s rooms would upset you more than Tyson and Sale-sale. 

You don’t know why it makes you feel so heavy. You’re not grieving them—you hardly even know most of them. The only interaction you ever had with Momoze was when she gifted you that knitted blanket two years ago, and Tyson and Sale-sale may as well have been strangers. 

Strangers—Tyson gifting you her old fairytales, holding a finger over her lips, and winking at you. Don’t let Tserriednich see. Sale-sale sneaking you out of the palace when Tserriednich is away, letting you sit backstage as he performs in front of a crowd in the southern district of the capital. Tserriednich can’t keep you locked up forever—you’ve gotta explore and see the rest of the world.

No, you think immediately, pushing the memories away before they can take root. Instead, you let Zimo Longbao’s last words to you ring soundly through your head: The Second Prince, the Third Prince, Sixth, Eighth—they’ve all had their share. You can’t damn me without damning yourselves.

Carne Levare, the hunts, the mafia families.

They’re not worth mourning. They’re depraved and vile, just like the rest of your siblings, you tell yourself, stepping into your quarters and grimacing with discomfort when you see Tserriednich’s friends scattered around the room. 

You recognize most of them from your childhood—Borksen, Momolly, Otocin, they all graduated the same year as Tserriednich from the Academy. Tserriednich would bring you with him sometimes when he met them down in the training grounds. You think this is his way of being kind to you, by sending familiar faces to protect you, even if it is also just another means of surveillance. 

It was Otocin, actually, who introduced you to the glaive; you’d been so hyper-focused on following in your brothers’ footsteps in classical sword training that you’d never even considered wielding anything else. You would watch them spar on the palace terrace when you were small—six, maybe seven years old—and you tried to mimic them once, swinging one of the dulled practice blades against the hay dummies when you thought no one was looking. Until, that is, Otocin started laughing at you from the shade of one of the trees, and you nearly tripped over yourself in embarrassment.

“You’re not built like Prince Benjamin and Tserried. You’ll get killed if you have to get in close like that,” he’d told you. “You need something that gives you reach.”

He’d handed you the glaive and spent half the afternoon showing you basic maneuvers before he went out drinking with Tserriednich. You found Benjamin that night while Tserriednich was gone—still in the training room, swinging around his sword, drenched in sweat. He’d been drinking too, but not enough to dull the precision in his movements. You were still carrying around the wooden training weapon Otocin gave you, and Benjamin stared at you blankly when you pointed it at him and demanded to spar with him.

You figured he would kick you out of the training grounds for bothering him when he scoffed at you, but he tossed his sword to the side and grabbed one of the wooden glaives himself. He didn’t say anything—adjusted his grip and waited for you to move first. You remember how your heart hammered in your chest, shocked that he was taking you seriously. For all of Benjamin’s many faults, you appreciate that he never treated you like you were fragile. When you swung wide and clumsily, he parried easily and sent the haft of his glaive into your ribs hard enough to bruise, waiting to see if you would get back up.

You did. Again, and again, and again, until your palms split open with popped blisters and your arms trembled violently. He didn’t praise or correct you, only blocked, countered, and knocked you down each time you lunged too close. Still, you learned. You started to recognize the moments he left himself open, the places where you could’ve struck if you’d been faster or stronger.

You kept watching his training sessions from the terrace in your free time, hidden behind the stone balustrades or the line of potted plants that circled the courtyard. Benjamin must have noticed, because within a week, he’d switched half his drills to the glaive. You memorized everything—the twist of his hips, the turn of his wrist, the way the weapon became an extension of him rather than something he wielded. In the rare moments you were alone in the yard, you imitated him as best you could, moving until your muscles burned and your breath came ragged. 

Slowly, the clumsiness began to fade, and you became as much a weapon as your two brothers were. By the time you entered the military academy at twelve, you were well ahead of all of your older classmates. 

You think about it sometimes—how everything you know comes from watching the men in your family destroy things. It’s no wonder that all you’re good at is destruction as well.

“You good?” Otocin asks with an easy grin when he sees how you stand in the middle of the room. “How was Tserri? Did he ask about me? I bet he did.”

“What did I say about abbreviating the prince’s name, boy?” Corporal Gipper barks from across the room. “Do you want your eyes gouged out, is that it?”

“He was fine,” you say, ignoring the Corporal. “He did not ask about you.”

 Momolly snorts and takes a sip of her beer, and Otocin pouts dramatically. “Really?” he asks. “Not even a ‘Hey, what’s Oto been up to?’ or even ‘What did—’”

“No,” you interrupt with a bland smile. Otocin withers, sinking in his chair to gulp down the rest of his drink. Sometimes, you wonder why Tserriednich lets Otocin get away with how he talks to and about him. He doesn’t even let you get away with it sometimes. “I’m going to go lay down. I’m tired.”

“You don’t want a drink?” Otocin asks, waving around an unopened bottle of beer. “Saved you one.”

“Let her rest, Otocin. You’re so goddamn annoying,” Momolly snaps, and then looks up  at you, giving you a half-smile. “Sleep well, prince. Do you want us to wake you in the morning for tea?”

You shake your head. “I’ll wake up on my own.”

Before you can get into your room, Otocin speaks up again, calling your name much to the Corporal’s extreme displeasure. You look over your shoulder and raise your eyebrows at him, beckoning him to hurry up and say whatever he wants to say. For a second, he looks unsure, which is so unlike Otocin that it makes you hesitate.

“You know nen, don’t you?” he asks, and the others all exchange looks around him. You inhale—you’d been wondering when they were finally going to ask about it. You’re honestly surprised it took this long. “Would you… teach us?”

No, you want to say instantly. Otocin, Momolly, Borksen, Gipper, all the others—they’ve been good to you these past two and a half weeks, but they’re still Tserriednich’s, and Tserriednich has been good to you, too, but he’s unpredictable. You’re still scared he’s going to pull the rug out from under you after the two of you have dealt with all the rest of your siblings. The fewer people who know nen on his side, the better, because you have no one if it comes down to it. Maybe you could contact the Zodiac; you still have that phone number from Bobotai Gigante, and Kurapika and Leorio will vouch for you, but it still remains that it’s dangerous for the Zodiac to get involved with foreign politics, because if things go wrong, it’ll bring a shitshow for the Hunter Association.

You don’t want to risk it, but you don’t want to say no and alienate yourself when they’re the ones guarding you right now.

“You wouldn’t learn it fast enough to be of use. Nen takes a long time to grasp,” you tell them, and then add, “unless you’re like Tserried, but you’re not like Tserried. No one’s like Tserried.”

Otocin exhales, disappointed. “If one of those nen users comes for you, there’s nothing we’ll be able to do,” he says, rubbing the back of his head. “I was hoping there were maybe some basic maneuvers you could show us so we could at least stall for time or something.”

“Nen doesn’t work like that,” you say simply. “There are no shortcuts or basic maneuvers. It’s a long process. By the time you start to grasp what it is, we’ll be at the Dark Continent. You’ll just have to get me if you sense something is wrong. I’ll be able to handle it.”

“Some guards we are,” Otocin mutters, looking displeased. “We’re essentially just a glorified alarm system. Who would’ve thought we’d be relying on Tserri’s little sister to protect us?”

You think you should be insulted by that, so you give him a heavy side eye, but Otocin only gives you a sheepish smile in return. Before he can apologize, Borksen finally speaks up, “Don’t forget it was the Tenth Prince who handled the border crisis two years ago, Oto.”

“Yeah,” Momolly agrees. “We’re probably safer up here with her than we were down on Tier Three with all of the chaos Morena Prudo caused down there.”

“Well, she’s up here now,” Otocin scowls. “It’s like we’re following that crazy woman when we were supposed to avoid her at all costs.”

“Her people are still down on Tier Three,” Momolly notes. “Pretty sure they’re causing trouble for the Hunter Association.”

“Are they?” you ask curiously, wondering if this is your chance to figure out what’s been happening on the lower tiers. You still don’t know why Tserriednich cut Brocco Li off at yesterday's meeting. You didn’t think to ask Luzurus on the way up to your quarters, too unnerved by Morena Prudo, and you’re not dumb enough to ask Tserriednich himself. 

“Oh yeah,” Otocin answers. “The lower tiers are a mess with—”

Otocin yelps, voice cutting off abruptly as he gives Momolly an accusing look, but the woman shakes her head at him. You scoff bitterly and look away—of course, they’re still Tserriednich’s. They’re not going to tell you anything he doesn’t want you to know. You hear Otocin call after you, but you’re already slamming your door shut behind you, storming over to your bed. 

You don’t know what you were thinking, and you don’t know why you’re disappointed. You had literally just refused to teach them nen because you’re afraid of giving Tserriednich more weapons to use against you if things go sour later on. You think maybe you’re just frustrated. You—

A hand presses over your mouth, another clamps down on your waist, holding you in place. The shock of it has your heart jumping out of your chest, mind flashing back to Hisoka in the bathroom, catching you off guard, and killing you because of it. Hisoka is dead, but you still have too many enemies, and your new guards don’t know nen. 

But you’re in your room this time. There’s space. You can fight. You can conjure your glaive. You start to move, muscles tensing, aura flaring, and then—a familiar low murmur at your ear.

“Don’t scream.”

You freeze. Every muscle in your body seizes with the shock of recognition. For a heartbeat, the room seems to tilt—your mind fogging with disbelief and the cruel, impossible hope you tried so hard to bury. The person behind you twists you around so that you’re facing the mirror on the wall of your bedroom, and your breath is ragged against his palm, chest heaving when you actually lay eyes on him. 

Chrollo?

He drops his hand from your mouth when he’s confident that you won’t scream, and you immediately step away from him, two steps, then three, until your back is to your wall. He doesn’t move to follow. He just stands there, watching you.

You hardly recognize him for a second. The last time you saw him, he was on his knees, half-dead. The veins to his heart were blackened with rot, his arm was hanging by its tendons, and blood was spilling from his lips in buckets. He was so close to death that you could feel him fading in your arms. 

But now?

His black hair is slicked back neatly, the same style he wore it in when you first met him—when he was all quiet arrogance and condescension—and he’s wearing that wretched coat of his, shirtless beneath it, arms folded over his chest. His pale chest, with no black veins marring the porcelain. His face is clean, stripped of the exhaustion that had clung to him during those first few weeks aboard the Black Whale. 

His expression is cool, impassive—that old mask of effortless indifference fitted perfectly back into place, and it almost makes you want to shrink back. No trace of weariness, no sign of the man who looked at you as though you were the only thing in the world that mattered to him.

This is not the Chrollo who rushed to you when Hisoka attacked you in the bathroom, falling to his knees to pull you in his arms. Not the person who laughed as you made a fool of yourself trying to get your stolen bracelets back. Not the person who was half dead on his knees, using the last of his strength to memorize your face. 

This—this is the Chrollo you met in the backseat of a stolen car in Yorknew City, king of thieves, bandit, murderer, punishment. Tserriednich’s words echo painfully through your ears. He used you and damned you. Left you to rot. You want to step back again, but you can’t. He looks—he looks okay, he looks healthy, he stole your ability and left you here with Tserriednich for weeks. Abandoned you, and he’s fine, he—

No, you realize, breath shuddering slightly as you try to calm yourself down, watching how the corner of his lip twitches, how his gaze flickers away too quickly, returning only to slip past you again, as if he can’t quite bear the sight of you. He’s not fine—he’s just pretending, like always. 

Your expression twists in frustration, and then your lips part to speak, but then you cast a wary glance over to the door leading to the main room of your quarters, remembering that you’re not alone. You let out a huff, giving him an accusing look before pushing off the wall past him, making your way into the bathroom. You hear him trail after you, shutting the door behind him quietly, and you pointedly do not turn around as you twist the faucet of your sink and tub on so that the running water will drown out your voices.

You brace yourself as you turn to face him, exhaling shakily. The bathroom is too small—you regret coming in here instantly, because he’s far too close to you, and he’s looking at you with that impassive, expectant expression, and your heart feels like it’s about to race right out of your chest. You’re so angry. How dare he stand in front of you like this? Like he didn’t leave you here for weeks with Tserriednich? Like he doesn’t know what it cost you to offer yourself up for him and his friends? He’s so shameless, he used you, he left you, abandoned you, manipulated you, drugged you, and stole your ability. He left you weak with the one person you couldn’t afford to be weak in front of. 

It is a punishment, you want to scream at him. This isn’t love, or fated romance, or destiny. It’s divine retribution for whatever you’d done wrong in a previous life. Tserriednich is right. You could never love him, and someone like him isn’t capable of loving anyone at all. 

You don’t realize you’re crying, and you don’t realize that you’re moving until you slam your fist against his chest hard. A second time. A third time. He lets you, taking each blow with lowered lashes and acceptance written all over his face. It makes you sick, he makes you sick, he does—he does—you hate him. You wish it had been anyone but him. Tserriednich is right. Tserriednich is right. Tserriednich is—

“I apologize. It shouldn’t have taken me so long,” he murmurs when you finally grow too tired to keep hitting him. 

You’re exhausted, drained—the past three weeks of uncertainty are finally catching up to you, constantly being on edge because you’re not sure when Tserriednich is going to pull the rug out from underneath you, the crushing disappointment of being left behind, forced back into the same place you tried so desperately to escape. It’s too much. Chrollo tries to reach out for you, but you shake your head and step out of reach, returning to your place against the wall, keeping as much space as possible between the two of you. You ignore the pain that briefly crosses his face at your reaction, wrapping your arms around your torso and letting your eyes slide shut.

“Why are you here?” you finally ask, hating how raspy your voice comes out. You shake your head again and force yourself to look at him. Pull yourself together, you tell yourself, you look weak. “Out with it, Chrollo. Why are you here? Do you understand the position you’ll put me in if you’re caught here?”

Chrollo’s lips part like he wants to say something, but then his brows furrow and he averts his gaze to the side. He pauses as though to collect himself, and then intones, “I thought that would be obvious.”

“Nothing about this is obvious,” you hiss, careful to keep your voice lower than the running water, despite your rising anger. “I’ve had to—”

Your voice breaks. You’ve been lying for weeks. To Tserriednich. To yourself. Smiling through Tserriednich’s patronizing pity and the bitter rage that eats away at your chest. Relearning when to look grateful and when to look afraid, when he wants your laughter and when he only wants your silence. Just when you were becoming comfortable with the idea of being king on your own chessboard, Tserriednich has dragged you back onto his, back to the pawn you’ve been since the day you were born. You’ve had to answer questions you didn’t want to answer, swallow every word that might sound like defiance, and what’s worse—

—what’s worse is that you’ve started convincing yourself that you’re okay with things being like this. It hits you suddenly now that you’re in front of Chrollo again—the shame. You’ve almost started believing him. That he cares. That he wants what’s best for you. That he’s being a good brother to you.

That’s the worst part. How he can still play these games with you, how willingly you let yourself be drawn back into them, how easily you allow yourself to be tricked. You thought that you would be stronger after years away; you’re aware of his games, aware of his tricks, aware of his manipulations, so he can’t possibly have the same hold over you that he once did, he can’t possibly play you like a fiddle the same way he would when you were a kid. But nothing has changed from back then—you still cling to him, or rather, the idea of him. The fantasy that if you can say the right words and react the way he wants, be the ideal he wants you to be, he would be good to you. He realized that the cruelty and tricks wouldn’t work this time, so he lowered your guard and lured you in with leniency and tenderness, and you fell for it. 

But how could you not? It’s all you’ve ever wanted from him. Why wouldn’t you let yourself indulge in it, even if it is just a front? Why wouldn’t you make the best of a bad situation? Could you really blame yourself?

You remember what he said to you earlier in his quarters: you convince yourself that your pain must have meaning, and the one who wounds you is the only one who can heal you, so you keep crawling back until you’ve bled yourself dry.

It’s not Chrollo, like Tserriednich wants you to believe. It’s him. The brother who you spent years desperately trying to appease, even when you knew in your heart it was a fruitless endeavor, because you wanted him to love you the way a brother should love his younger sister. 

Or both of them, maybe. You don’t know anymore. You’re not sure what to think about Chrollo anymore.

You tell yourself that you’re only biding your time, adapting to bad circumstances, but you know the truth in your heart: you’re pathetic. It’s humiliating. You can’t even lift your gaze to meet Chrollo’s, because you don’t want to see whatever’s written there—pity, guilt, you don’t want any of it. 

Instead, you push everything down. You breathe in sharply through your nose and then let out a long exhale through your mouth. You blink twice, and when you look up again, you’re free of the tumultuous emotions tearing you apart. Chrollo, to his credit, isn’t looking at you with any sort of pity, but there is a tightness around his eyes. 

“Why are you here?” you ask him again, voice colder this time. “You had two and a half weeks to come—”

“You… really think I didn’t try?” he interrupts. His lips press together, and his brows furrow, betraying the monotone his voice takes. “I’ve been—we’ve been—trying since we got out of the holding cells. Do you honestly think I’d just leave you here?”

You hate the emotion that blooms in your chest. The hope. The longing. You want it to be true more than you’d like. You found comfort in imagining it in the early days after their escape from the holding cells: that they were trying to get to you—desperately—but were thwarted at every turn. Like the fantasies you had as a kid. Your soulmate, a hero of legend, a knight from a foreign kingdom, who would fight away all of the guards that kept you locked in your tower, who would draw his blade against your cruel brother and show you a world of laughter and freedom. Except this time, it’s the king of thieves pulling off the grandest heist of all: stealing a prince from the walls of her own palace. 

“What am I supposed to think, Chrollo?” you ask, spitting his name scathingly and smothering the emotions that threaten to consume you. “You fucked me, drugged me, stole my ability, and then ran off to kill us both.”

Chrollo doesn’t flinch, but you think he comes close to it with the way he instantly looks away from you, gaze averting to the side to focus on the white tiled walls. It makes you angry that he can’t even hold your gaze. You reach forward to grab his coat, yanking it roughly to force his attention back on you, and his eyes slide back to you, too heavy. 

“Was it worth it?” you ask him. The words come out crueler than you intend, and you think, distantly, that you should stop. Hear him out at the very least. But once the words start, you can’t stop them from spilling out. “Was it? Betraying me? Putting me in this position? Getting one of your spiders killed? And for what? What did you gain? All you did was give Hisoka the satisfaction of knowing he could’ve killed you before he finally died. Was it worth it?”

Chrollo doesn’t respond right away, eyes listless as he stares at you, waiting for you to finish. After what feels like an eternity, his lips part and he says quietly, “Two.”

“What?”

“I got two of them killed. Kalluto and Shizuku. Hisoka killed them both.” The air leaves your lungs. All of the fire drains from you, leaving you hollowed and exhausted. You let go of his coat and take a step back. Shizuku, too? Your heart thuds painfully in your chest, remembering the absent-minded girl who stroked your hair after your encounter with Tserriednich and spent afternoons playing card games with you to keep you busy. “And to answer your question—no, it wasn’t worth it. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

Yes.

No.

You don’t know. Hearing him say it doesn’t make you feel any better. Your chest hurts, and you hate the pain he struggles to mask. They’re mine, you remember him snapping that first night at the restaurant. And then, Chrollo, thirteen years younger, still at the beginning of a path that will lead to death and destruction: I’m supposed to protect them. They chose me to be the leader, this was all my idea. 

“No,” you finally say, because you’re angry, but it doesn’t bring you any satisfaction hearing the grief and regret in his voice, or seeing it plain on his face. You swallow thickly and look to the side before continuing quietly, “I shouldn’t—I—”

“Stop,” he interrupts. “You have a right to be angry, I—”

“Angry, maybe, but not cruel,” you say, shaking your head. “That was uncalled for.”

He lets out a soft breath, eyes sliding shut in resignation. The quiet that hangs between the two of you isn’t tense, but it’s not comfortable. You want to fill it, but you don’t know what to say that won’t just make it worse. You don’t trust yourself. You’re too prone to cruelty when you’re angry, and you don’t know if it’s Tserriednich’s influence or if it’s just who you are, but you hate it. 

“We tried to get to your quarters after we got out of the holding cells,” Chrollo finally explains, voice even, and your gaze drops to the ground, throat tightening. “They locked down Tier One. Franklin and Phinks were still in bad shape, Machi’s nen was exhausted, and the Fourth Prince brought up the Dragon Zodiac to guard the room we were in. We had to flee down to a lower tier. We thought we would be able to get back up, but they sealed the throughway and the duct that connected Tier Three to Tier Two. We were only recently able to coordinate with the Seventh Prince to get back into the upper tiers. I came to you as soon as I could.”

Luzurus, you think desperately. Has he really been working with the Phantom Troupe to try to free you from Tserriednich?

Chrollo’s lips curl up into a small smile, and he adds wryly, “Your brother does not like me, but he’s worried about you. He was angry that the Fourth Prince refused to let him see you.”

“Oh,” is all you can say, and you lift your hand to your mouth, hoping to hide the way your lips are wobbling. You’ve hardly spoken to Luzurus at all since everything went down—you thought he would be just as angry, just as disappointed, as Benjamin was. When he never came to see you, you thought it was proof that he was. You should’ve known Tserriednich was stopping him from visiting.

Chrollo reaches out for you again, more hesitant this time, like he’s dreading another rejection. But instead of stepping out of reach, you step in, and one of Chrollo’s hands immediately cradles the back of your head, pulling you into his chest, while the other wraps around your body. Your arms instinctively slip beneath his jacket, circling his bare torso—your palms find the warmth of his skin, and for the first time in weeks, you let yourself breathe. The scent of him fills your lungs, grounding you in a way you didn’t know you needed. It feels so… good being in his arms, and for a brief second, you don’t know how you ever thought Tserriednich could be right. Punishment wouldn’t feel so right.

Right?

He doesn’t speak. Neither do you. The sound of running water fades into a dull hiss as you press your ear to his chest and listen to the steady beat of his heart. His thumb moves against the back of your neck in a slow, absent stroke. You feel his breath through your hair when he murmurs, “I’m sorry.”

You shake your head, voice muffled against his chest. “Don’t.”

“You don’t have to forgive me,” he says quietly. “I just don’t want you to think that I…”

He trails off. You can imagine why. There are countless ways for him to finish it: that I used you, that I manipulated you, that I abandoned you. It would be funny if the realization didn’t upset you so much.

“… that I don’t care,” he finally finishes, and you let out a quiet noise in the back of your throat.

“Do you?” you ask quietly, almost afraid to hear him say it out loud. “Care?”

“I do,” he tells you without hesitation. “Since that first day of the expedition. Down on Tier Five.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” you scoff, shaking your head, but your chest feels fluttery, and your arms tighten around him. You let out a shaky breath, nose brushing against his skin. You could almost drown in his warmth, his scent; you could almost forget where you are, what’s happened these past few weeks. How dangerous. “We—”

“It’s true,” he disagrees, and you swear your heart stills. “From the moment we met, you’ve occupied my every thought. I spent seventeen years bracing myself for when I would finally meet you, and I tried so hard to be indifferent when I did. I thought I could reject it. You and the bond. I convinced myself that I would be able to hold you at arm’s length. That it was better that way, and it’s what you would want anyway, considering all I knew were the words on my forearm. But the moment you spoke them to me, I knew it was all for nothing. Our eyes met, and I realized it was already over. I’d spent years preparing for the possibility of you—for what it would mean to meet the person fate chose for me. I thought I’d be able to meet you and turn away.” He pauses for a moment, but you can’t bring yourself to speak. You can hardly bring yourself to breathe. “Instead, all I could think was: so this is how it ends.”

You draw back slightly, trying to read his expression, but it’s infuriatingly calm. His gaze drifts past you, unfocused.

“I knew you would ruin me,” he continues. “Not because you wanted to, even if you did, but because I wanted you to. Because after everything I’ve taken and broken, everyone I’ve hurt and killed, it felt almost merciful to finally have something that could destroy me back.” He looks at you then, lips curved up into a faint smile, and you know he’s telling the truth. This is not a lie or an attempt at manipulation; you think maybe this is the most honest Chrollo Lucilfer has ever been with you, and it breaks you. You hate it. You hate him. How dare he say this to you as though he hasn't been the one doing the ruining? As though he didn't leave you? As though— “And I decided I’d let it happen. Gladly. If that was what it meant to have you.”

“I don’t want that,” you say after a moment, shaking your head, and it scares you how true it is. After everything he's done, everything he's caused, you do not want it. You should want it. You know that. But you are just—you are tired. You are so tired. “I don’t want to destroy you.”

His smile softens, eyes curving up slightly. “I know,” he agrees, voice low and steady, almost tender in its resignation. 

You wish you didn’t understand what the silence after means, but you do. It doesn’t matter what you want. Some things, once set in motion, don’t stop. They just follow through to their end. And Chrollo is certain that this bond, that you, will lead to his destruction, and he’s at peace with it. 

Worse, when your lips part to protest, to call him an idiot and refuse his words, you can’t even bring yourself to say anything because—

Because he’s right, maybe. Depending on what path you take, this will end in his destruction. The crown and love cannot coexist. If that’s the path you take, then…

“Here,” he says quietly, and you watch as he conjures Bandit’s Secret in his right hand. Instinctively, you draw back, shooting the book and then Chrollo an accusing look. He gives you a half smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes, and beckons you to come closer to him, holding the book out toward you. You stare at the handprint on its cover, and then look up at Chrollo again, waiting for him to explain. “If you place your hand back on it, it will return Golden Standard to you.”

You don’t hesitate, don’t even consider that he might be lying to you, you immediately place your hand back on the cover of his book, and you let out a shaky breath of relief when you feel the familiar warmth of your ability returning to you. At once, you remember the circumstances that led to the loss of your ability, and you’re irritated again, giving Chrollo a dirty look.

As though he can sense the turn of your thoughts, he shifts the subject and asks, “How do you want to proceed from here?” 

“Hm?”

“I can kill the guards your brother has stationed outside of your bedroom, and we can take refuge in the lower tiers,” he tells you, and your stomach twists uncomfortably. Otocin, Momolly, and Borksen are Tserriedich’s friends, but… you don’t like the idea of killing them. They’re not a threat. They don’t even know nen. And they’ve been good to you. Always have been. Chrollo can tell that you don’t seem fond of that option, so he amends, “Or, if you would rather, we could turn the whole succession contest upside down?” 

“How do you mean?” you ask, folding your arms over your chest and leaning back against the wall.

Chrollo’s lips curl up into another faint smile, gray eyes glittering in a way that warns you that you should brace yourself for whatever’s about to come out of his mouth next. “A requiem, perhaps. For all of Tier One to behold.”

Southernpiece. Yorknew City. He wants to bring that destruction to Tier One.

“Are you crazy?” you hiss, voice hushed. “We’ll risk bringing the ship down with something like that.”

“You’ll have to face them eventually,” Chrollo reminds you, voice low. “Your siblings, I mean.”

“Don’t patronize me,” you say through gritted teeth. “I know what this contest is. I know what has to be done. It cannot be done while we’re still nineteen days from docking.”

Chrollo looks unconvinced. He frowns at you slightly, but you ignore him, shaking your head and letting your eyes slide shut. “Are you and the others able to stay on the upper tiers? Or will you have to go back down to the lower tiers? Can you travel freely between them again?”

“Don’t worry about us,” he tells you. “We’ll do what needs to be done. How do you want to proceed?”

You inhale through your nose, hardly able to believe what you’re about to say. “I think… I think things should stay as they are for now. At least until the next banquet, maybe the one after that. Tserried and I—we just put together a plan to get Benjamin to enact special martial law. It’s going to take place during the masquerade banquet this upcoming Sunday. If we succeed, I might be able to end the contest without the ship sinking or any more of the younger princes dying. There will be a power struggle with Tserried, but if you guys are here on the upper tiers too…”

It could work, you think, mind already racing as you put together all of the pieces. It could really work. Tserriednich won’t expect the Phantom Troupe; he’ll be caught off guard by their presence. So they why—what is this uncertainty clawing at your throat? Why are you hesitating? Is that… guilt?

No, you think, it can’t be.

Nerves, maybe.

Chrollo is watching you carefully, an unreadable look on his face as he studies you. He finally accedes, without protest, “If that’s what you want.”

You exhale, pushing the thoughts from your mind as you turn off the faucets in the sink and tub. He gives you a curious look, and you say quietly, “I need to sleep. It’s been a long day.”

“Ah,” he murmurs, sounding slightly disappointed. “I see.”

You hesitate, and then ask, “Will you… stay a little longer? Until I fall asleep?”

His lips curve up into a small smile. “Of course,” he says softly.

You step back into the bedroom, making sure your door is locked before you quickly change into your pajamas. You hear him moving behind you—the faint ruffling of his coat and the creak of the floorboards as he walks toward the bed. He’s already sitting on it when you turn back around, and you can almost imagine that it’s three weeks earlier, and he’s commandeered your room to rest in, the rest of the spiders outside your door bickering and playing card games with one another. Shizuku and Kalluto still alive. Tubeppa and Tyson still alive. You free. 

Your gaze shifts down to his chest, and you say quietly, “You’re not sick anymore,” as you make your way over to the bed. You shift beneath the covers, turning on your side to look at him.

There’s an odd expression on his face for a moment before he looks down at you. “I’m not,” he confirms.

“Why?”

He tilts his head to the side with a curious smile, “Do you prefer me that way?” he asks lightly. “Fragile, fevered… Easier to keep in bed?”

You blink, and then you squint at him, realizing he’s deflecting. “That’s not what I meant. You were dying, Chrollo, and now you’re… fine.”

“Fine is subjective.”

“Stop being purposely obtuse,” you snap.

“Obtuse,” he mouths to himself, amused, much to your irritation, but then his smile softens at the edges and he sighs, looking away. “Let’s just consider it good fortune that we have one less thing to worry about, okay?”

“But—”

“Drop it,” he says, voice a bit cooler, and your gaze snaps over to him, surprised. He looks apologetic for a moment, and then he adds quietly, “Please.”

You do, after a moment, exhaling heavily and giving him another long, suspicious look before you nod and pull the covers up to your chin, intent on trying to get some sleep before you have to go to Tserriednich in the morning. You’ll have to be careful, because you don’t want to tip him off that you saw Chrollo tonight—everything is banking on him being caught off guard by the Phantom Troupe, and he can read you far too well. It’s going to be a very difficult four days until the banquet. 

Chrollo draws you from your thoughts, reaching out to brush his fingers against your cheek. His lips part to speak, but then he pauses, as though trying to gather his thoughts. He finally says, “I am sorry for how things transpired that night. I… don’t want you to think it was all calculated.”

You sigh, glancing away from him. “Wasn’t it?”

“Not all of it,” he disagrees, and your lashes flutter as he tilts your face to the side, forcing you to look at him again. His gray eyes are unguarded, too honest. “I wanted you. Not because it would make you easier to deceive, not because it fit into some plan. I wanted you. Want you.” His lips curl up, the faintest trace of self-deprecation tugging at his mouth. “And then, when the moment came, I used it anyway. I suppose that says everything it needs to about me… I don’t expect you to believe me. I don’t know if I would if I were in your shoes. But I don’t want you thinking it meant nothing to me, because it’s the furthest thing from the truth. If I could go back in time and change what happened that night, that would be the one thing I wouldn’t change.”

Your heart feels as though it’s lodged in your throat. You hate how warm his touch is against your skin, how you want to lean into his hand—you want to stay angry at him, you are angry at him. You’re not ready to forgive him, not for what he did, not when it cost you so much. So, instead, you let out a shaky breath and turn onto your other side, back facing him.

He exhales, disappointed.

“Goodnight, Chrollo.”