all flesh rots.

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household."

Machi did not tell you what Hisoka asked her to pass on to Chrollo, but she did tell you about the two legs that he broke. You regretted asking anything at all when she did. 

Six—Shalnark—was a founding member of the Phantom Troupe; Machi said she could hardly remember a life without him in it. The longer she spoke his name, the tighter her expression became; remembering what she lost was clearly still an open wound, and you felt uncomfortable pulling it open with your questions. Twelve—Kortopi—on the other hand, had been the youngest member of the Troupe until Kalluto Zoldyck joined, but they’d known him just as long as the other founding members—raised in the same shit-strewn streets of Meteor City, idolizing Chrollo until the day he was finally allowed to stand at his side all the way up to his brutal death at the hands of Hisoka. 

Her voice went quiet when she spoke their names; the grief she felt was so raw that it made your chest ache. Several times, you almost caught yourself making an excuse to go lie down, but you stopped yourself because you didn’t want to be an asshole. She blamed herself for their deaths. She said Hisoka had spared her when he had killed the two of them, and she trailed off before she said anything else, but you knew the unspoken implications: she would’ve rather died fighting with Shalnark and Kortopi than live at the mercy of the man who butchered them. Hisoka probably knew that, and that’s exactly why he did what he did.

He was always good at knowing how to make someone suffer.

You found yourself thinking about Chrollo a lot after that conversation with her. Not the monster you want him to be, who you met in the backseat of that car with Kurapika two years ago, but the one who you sat across from the dinner table after your interrogation about Hisoka—pale, exhausted, and hollowed out by losses you couldn’t begin to understand. If Shalnark and Kortopi had been family to Machi, then they’d been family to Chrollo, too. They were mine, he said, too painfully. And that realization unsettles you, because it forces you to see him in a light you don’t want to see him in—more human than monster, and you don’t like it.

He is a monster, you remind yourself over and over again throughout the day. You don’t like that it feels like you’re having to convince yourself.

“Are you ready?” Machi asks you, leaning her head into your room just as you start to rise to your feet. “Oh, you are. Let me go tell Nobu.”

You sigh as you smooth out your clothes, fixing your hair in the mirror one last time before you make your way out of your bedroom. You want to fiddle with the bracelet you usually wear on your right wrist, but it’s been missing since your dinner with Chrollo. You feel uncomfortable in your uniform; you want nothing more than to shed it and curl up in bed. 

When you returned to Kakin two years ago, you made your home back in the barracks—it was the one place you knew you’d be able to hide without Tserriednich forcing you back into his shadow. He had eyes on you, of course, but you were mostly out of reach. The Academy had once been the one place you were free from Tserriednich after twelve years of his overbearing presence in your life. You thought maybe you’d get used to wearing your uniform again, but after three years of near freedom, there was nothing you hated more than the physical reminder of the chains that keep you tied to the empire. 

But it’s a necessary evil if you want to get past your father’s soldiers into his quarters. So, you don the white and gold, and you painstakingly pin every medal awarded to you onto your uniform. Each one feels like the weight of the sky, doubled, tripled, quadrupled; it’s unending and unbearable, you can barely breathe beneath it. There are few officers in the Kakin military more decorated than you, Benjamin being one of them. If there’s one thing Queen Unma never failed in, it was birthing children who thrived in war, for better or for worse.

“Uh, what is with the get up?” Nobunaga immediately asks as soon as you enter the room, pausing mid-step as he finishes sheathing his katana. 

“Don’t bring more attention to it than necessary,” you mutter. “I already feel sick.”

“Okay,” Nobunaga drags out the word, sharing a look with Machi, but you move forward, making your way out of your quarters and into the hall. 

You instantly halt when you realize that Benjamin’s lapdog is still waiting outside your door. The soldier is younger than most of the others on this floor—probably no older than the twins—and he swallows thickly when he sees your uniform and the awards pinned to it.

Kakin recognizes only two things—strength and authority, and your uniform, the pins, and your station are more than enough to put anyone other than your elder siblings in their place. That is why you’ve gone through the effort of putting on these heavy clothes. If you can get your father’s guards to falter for even a second, you’ll have free rein to utilize your nen.

“Noel,” you say dryly, passing by the boy. “Tell my brother that he cannot force me to accept you as a guard, so if you are still here by the time I’m back, I will consider it a declaration of war, and it is day two of the voyage. It seems wildly unnecessary for us to go to such lengths over guards this early into the trip.”

Noel blanches, looking down at the ground. “I—I will pass the message, my prince.”

“Good,” you reply, turning the corner and making your way in the direction of the reception hall leading to your father's quarters. 

“Cold as ice,” Nobunaga mutters, but you shoot him a flinty look from the corner of your eye, and he rolls his eyes, quieting down.

You step into the hall, and you see your father’s brigade waiting. You tell Machi and Nobunaga, “Stay out here,” before you move forward. 

You vaguely recognize the five men standing guard. You watch them exchange nervous looks with one another when they realize who you are.

“My prince, the King will not see anyone outside of the banquet. I have to ask you to return to your quarters.” The captain steps forward, clearing his throat.

“Don’t piss me off. My father will see me,” you tell him, continuing toward the door leading to the king’s quarters. The guards look at each other again, unsurely, not having expected you to ignore them the way you did. When you see them swallow thickly, glancing down at your uniform and the pins, you know you’ve won. “Don’t move until I return from his quarters.”

Instantly, all five of the soldiers freeze—one mid-reach for his gun, another midstep, the rest all in varying stages of movement, preparing to stop your approach. You see them try to move, their gaze is the only thing that can follow you as you glide past them through the reception hall and into your father’s quarters.

Mandate of Heaven. 

The divine right to rule. 

It is not your primary nen ability, but a manipulation hatsu that you developed in righteous anger over Tserriednich’s glaring influence on your natural hatsu. It’s an ability rooted not in brute force, but in the quiet tyranny of belief. With a single command, you can bend others to your will, but only if, in that fleeting moment, they see you as superior. That is why you had to put on the show of your uniform and the awards you’ve been given over the years. It isn’t domination by power alone, but by presence—charisma, intellect, aura, station. Even the smallest things can tilt the balance in your favor.

Once that sole condition is met, even if it’s only a few heartbeats of submission, your words become law that cannot be disobeyed. Like the Kakin emperors of old, whose right to rule came not from might but divine favor, your authority becomes a god-given edict.

King Nasubi Hui Guo Rou’s quarters are as exorbitant as you expected. The floors are gilded and ornate, and the furniture is a heavy, carved mahogany that groans beneath the weight of its own grandeur. The walls are smothered by priceless canvases—originals worth millions of jenny, layered so thickly that the burgundy beneath peeks through in only the smallest cracks. It’s a thief’s paradise; if the Phantom Troupe went through with their plans to rob the Hui Guo Rou dynasty blind, the King’s quarters would certainly be the place to start.

“Daughter,” King Nasubi hums, gaze flickering up to look at you with mild curiosity. He’s flipping through a hefty leather-bound tome that you can’t make out the cover of; he only spares you long enough to acknowledge you before he looks back down to continue reading. The glance is fleeting, but more than most receive. “My guards had strict orders not to let anyone through.”

“I did not give them the opportunity to stop me,” you reply evenly, coming to stand in front of him, hands locked behind your back, if only to hide the way your fingers tremble. You don’t like speaking to your father. You never have. “I would like answers.”

“Answers to what, pray tell?” King Nasubi asks distantly, distracted. His eyes are already sliding back to the page like you’re not worth his time. You push away the indignation that eats at you. “I believe all has been made clear.”

Your lips tighten in irritation because nothing has been made clear, in your opinion, but your father will be unimpressed with that answer, so instead, you focus on the most pressing issue: the nen beasts. You need to figure out as much as you can about this contest first, because your bond with Chrollo won’t matter if you’re dead.

“What are these beasts you’ve attached to us?” you finally ask. “Why can I not see any of my siblings’ beasts, and why has my own not manifested?”

Somehow, you still manage to disappoint him. You can tell from the bland look he casts you, the way his eyes rove over you once before he purses his lips and looks back down at his book. Your eye twitches, but you smother your anger and force yourself to remain collected. 

“What a shame. I had high hopes for you,” King Nasubi replies idly. “You reminded me of myself when I was young.”

You don’t take that as a compliment. You repeat, “What are these beasts? I know they are some form of nen, but I can’t make sense of why I can’t see them. What were the conditions of the Seed Urn Ceremony?” 

King Nasubi’s gaze flickers up again, and you realize that you said something right, because his hands still on the book before he closes it with deliberate care, setting it aside to give you his full attention. The weight of his stare bears down on you, and it almost makes you want to shrink away. Almost. King Nasubi rarely gives any of his children his undivided attention. During formal events, when he makes a show of familial affection, his gaze is always angled toward the cameras, the diplomats, the audience—never truly at you or your siblings. You think this is the only time he’s fully acknowledged you besides your early graduation from the Academy six years ago, and even that was fleeting at best. 

“You’re trained in nen. That explains how you handled the Chimera Ant crisis on the southern border,” he says, a statement rather than a question. 

His eyes rake over you like he’s truly looking at you for the first time, and then his lips curl up into a faint smile. It’s not the theatrical, painted expression he wears for the public. This smile is genuine. You hate it. It unsettles you so deeply that you shift, unable to remain still beneath it. You want to tell him to stop smiling at you, but you don’t think he’ll take kindly to it, so you stay silent.

“Did you know,” he continues, resting his chin on his hand as if indulging in pleasant recollection, “that I spent a few years away from Kakin as well when I was a teenager?”

You blink.

“Uh, no. I did not,” you say honestly. You know little about him beyond what is common knowledge. You can count the number of times you’ve spoken to him privately like this on one hand. The forty-ninth King of Kakin. The sole survivor of his nineteen siblings. A man who favors theater and battle with equal fervor, who despises the taste of pomegranate so vehemently that none dare let it grace the banquet tables in fear of drawing his ire, who had followed in the First King’s steps and severed his bond with his soulmate—somehow without dying. That is the sum of what you know about your father. “Where did you travel?” 

“To the west,” King Nasubi says, and something strange passes across his face—something close to longing, though it’s come before you can be sure. You’ve never once suspected that your father resented the crown, but perhaps there’s a part of him that still mourns the freedom and love he lost in gaining it. “I spent several years at Heavens Arena.”

Your eyes widen. “You—”

He hums in satisfaction at your surprise. “When my own father called me back to Kakin for our succession contest, it’s safe to say I had an advantage over the rest of my siblings. I, too, was the Tenth Prince of my generation.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” you finally say, pressing your question instead of indulging his reminiscence of the past. It’s only a matter of time before more soldiers get here to kick you out. You need answers. “What are the conditions of the Seed Urn Ceremony? What are these nen beasts? What are the conditions of this contest?” 

He laughs like you’ve asked something terribly naive. “Ah, the beasts. My children are always so impatient. You are correct in that they are nen beasts, parasitic ones, to be precise,” he explains, although you’ve already narrowed that down with the spiders. “They are manifestations of your thirst for the crown. The conditions for the contest are simple: fifteen will become one, and one will become king. There is only one way this contest will end, daughter. You know this. If you are trained in nen, then you should know how nen contracts work. That is all I will divulge so as not to give you an unfair advantage over your siblings.”

You press your lips together, realizing what he’s implying about the beasts. 

Has yours not manifested yet because you have no desire for the crown? It would make sense—you don’t care about the Kakin throne. In fact, the further you can get from the empire, the happier you’ll be. Still, the notion worms right into your chest, and you’re not sure why it bothers you so much.

And the conditions. That can’t be true, can it? There are ways to break nen contracts that don’t necessarily end in death, but—

“A frail and complacent vessel has no chance of becoming king,” King Nasubi continues, cutting off your train of thought, expression a bit colder as he looks down at you. “The Seed Urn only blesses the worthy.”

“The worthy? What does that mean?” you hiss immediately, before you can think. Heat burns under your skin, jaw tightening in your rage. Anger you hadn’t thought yourself capable of feeling for this ridiculous succession contest tints your vision red. You don’t want the throne, but hearing your father dismiss you so easily as unworthy, to be cast aside like you’re nothing. It stings more than you expect. “You expect me to believe that dimwitted loser Sale-Sale is more worthy than I? Tyson and Luzurus? Even the children have manifested beasts.”

“What have I told you your whole life, my daughter?” King Nasubi replies dismissively. “A child of mine who has no ambition for the throne is no child of mine at all. The Seed Urn only gives my true children the advantage in this contest.”

“Your true children?” you demand with a breathless laugh, voice rising in your anger. He can’t be serious—of all of your siblings, you’re the only one who could actually do something worthwhile with the Kakin crown. “I am the only child of yours who would sit well on the throne. Benjamin is a bull-headed idiot, and Camilla is a spoiled brat. Zhang Lei only cares for the money lining his pockets. Tserriednich is a sociopath. Tubeppa is a scientist before she would ever be a king. Tyson, Luzurus, and Sale-Sale—need I even explain everything wrong with them? Halkenburg is so blinded by his own ideals that he’ll never be able to make the difficult decisions. And the children—you expect me to believe that they are more worthy of the crown than I am? That they can lead Kakin back into a golden era?” 

King Nasubi’s expression shifts slightly. You can’t tell if it’s annoyance or interest. You wonder if you insulted him by saying that Kakin is no longer in a golden era. But it’s true. Kakin was once the ideal regime of the world. You read the scrolls and books like it was scripture, Tserriednich made sure of it. The First King was a man of wisdom and restraint. He pursued harmony between the crown and people, protected his citizens from hostile neighbors, and even sacrificed his own soulmate to ensure the people’s safety. In those early days, the kingdom was a golden order, with a ruler concerned with truth, justice, and union over personal ambition and wealth. 

But no regime remains pure. Over time, the wisdom that guided the throne calcified into pride, and pride into vanity. Kings begat heirs who mistook the symbols of virtue for virtue itself, who polished the mask of justice while letting its spirit rot beneath. From order came ambition, from ambition the iron rule of the strong. One by one, the pillars of Kakin crumbled under the weight of greed, flattery, decadence, and violence. 

Your siblings are living proof of it.

“Kakin would be blessed to have me on the throne instead of one of my idiotic siblings. It would thrive with me as king. We’re entering an era of unforeseen need for diplomacy now that the V5 has become the V6. You think Benjamin or Camilla would be able to sit at that table with other world leaders? Only I can bring that to the empire. I’m the only one of the fifteen of us who has walked foreign cities and understood them instead of mocking them. I’m the only one fluent in more than our mother language and the common tongue. I am not blinded by pride, or shackled by greed, or undone by my temper. I know how to hold my tongue when silence is wiser than speaking, and I know when to press my advantage until the other side breaks. I’ve studied the histories of empires greater than ours, seen how arrogance and lack of discipline rot them from within. Is that what you want for Kakin? Because that’s what your true children would bring. I’m the only one who can sit across from other world leaders without bringing shame and ruin to our homeland. I’m the only one who is—”

—perfect.

You cut yourself off before the wretched word can escape you, but it echoes in your head all the same. Tserriednich’s shadow has never hung heavier over you; you can feel his hands on your shoulders, his lips brushing your ear as he praises you for saying the right thing, wearing the right smile, making the right argument. You thought you’d escaped him, made your own place in the world, and forged yourself in your own image rather than his. But here you are, standing before your father, backed into a corner and spitting out the very lessons Tserriednich drilled into you. Words sharpened by his philosophy, tempered in his cruelty. The tilt of your chin. The cadence of your speech. The perfect blend of confidence and degradation that makes people lean in instead of dismissing you. It’s all him. All of it. 

Bile rises in your throat. 

Five years away, five years convinced that you were your own, all for naught. Tserriednich had succeeded—you’ve never been more sure of it. He’d made you into exactly what he wanted you to be. Even in his absence and your self-imposed exile, he lived inside of you, crawled deep into your skin, and made a home of your bones. His voice is yours, and his teachings bleed through you no matter how much you claw at your skin to scrape them away. 

Where did that even come from? 

You don’t want the throne.

Right?

King Nasubi doesn’t take notice of your internal struggle. His eyes have drifted somewhere above you, to something that you cannot see. 

“Ah,” he says quietly. “There it is. All you needed was a little push.”

“What?” you rasp, lifting your gaze to figure out what he’s looking for, but all you see is the ceiling above you and the walls on either side of the room. “What are you talking about?”

“If that’s all,” King Nasubi replies as if you hadn’t spoken at all, “you may leave now.”

“But—”

King Nasubi pulls his book back into his lap and reopens it to the page he left off on, silently dismissing you. You hear a commotion coming from the entrance to his quarters and realize your time is coming to an end.

Not yet, you think desperately, stepping forward.

“It’s not all,” you say quickly. “How did you do it? All of the kings before? How did you sever your bond with your soulmate and live?”

King Nasubi pauses, gaze lifting once more to study you. “Have you met yours?”

“Irrelevant,” you say. “I don’t want my fate bound to another’s. How were you able to do it without dying?”

His eyes linger on you for a moment longer before he looks back down at his book, gaze flitting across the lines. Behind you, the doors to his chambers fly open as soldiers pour into the room to force you out. You don’t budge, ripping your arm from one’s hold as you wait for his response. You’re about to demand it again when he finally speaks, voice quiet and idle:

“The crown and love cannot coexist.”

——————

Your nen beast manifested that day. You knew something was up the moment you left the King’s quarters because Machi and Nobunaga were looking above you in the same way your father had been. It was only once you got back to your own quarters that they told you what they saw: dozens of radiant gold masks hovering above and around you, whispering words that neither of them could decipher. 

It hasn’t manifested again, but you can tell the spiders are on edge. You suppose you can’t blame them; you have no idea what the beast is capable of, or what its intentions are. You can assume that it won’t hurt you, but there’s no way to safely assure them of the same. They’re not your friends, and they’re only allies by circumstance. If you start to view them as the enemy, they have a nen beast with unknown potential to worry about. 

The theater on Tier Two is hosting an art exhibit tonight, and that is where you’re waiting to meet Chrollo. You’re standing in front of a large painting on the west wall depicting the siege and burning of an ancient city-state that once was the heart of what is now the Kukan’yu Kingdom. Machi is still hovering in the shadows of the room, watching over you until he arrives. 

Luckily, no one has approached you because you’re here in your official capacity. 

Unluckily, since you are here in your official capacity, there are dozens of eyes on you, which means your meeting with Chrollo will not go under the radar as it did at the restaurant.

Tserriednich is not here, which is as fortunate as it is foreboding. You expected to see him, of all of your siblings, here in attendance, but he’s nowhere to be found. You see Camilla on the opposite side of the room, dressed in a long golden gown as she chats with the poor party-goers who had the misfortune of entering the room near her. Kacho and Fugetsu are in the corner of the room by themselves, whispering to one another. And—

“Yo.”

You exhale heavily, glancing over your shoulder at your half-brother, Luzurus, as he comes to stand next to you. He looks oddly sober, much to your surprise, which means he probably wants something from you.

“What do you want?” you ask flatly, hands behind your back as you return your gaze forward.

“Tch. You’re so rude. I’m your older brother, y’know? Be respectful,” Luzurus mutters, rolling his shoulders as he looks down at you. You keep your gaze trained ahead. “You could look at me when I’m talking to you.”

“I’d prefer not.”

He mutters a derogatory word under his breath, but you ignore it. “I was going to see if Tserriednich wanted to team up. You think he’d be down?” You side-eye him, silently asking him why he felt the need to ask you this. He shrugs at your unspoken question and says, “You know him best.”

His reasoning is so casual and absolute that it makes your skin crawl, but you tell him honestly, “Tserriednich thinks you’re a bumbling idiot. He would smile to your face and kill you as soon as you turn your back.”

Luzurus doesn’t look bothered by your words, only exhaling deeply and looking up at the ceiling. “I made an enemy of Tubeppa.”

“That was foolish of you,” you say dryly. 

“No shit.”

“Is there a reason you’re talking to me, Luzurus?”  you ask, turning to look at him. “I’m busy.”

“Doing what? Staring at a painting?” he scowls at you. “Benjamin is coming after you, y’know? Camilla, too, I’m pretty sure. They’re not working together, but they both think you’re the biggest threat right now.”

“I couldn’t imagine why,” you say quietly. “I’m the most isolated of us.”

“You think so?” Luzurus replies, and you catch him giving you a long, strange look from the corner of your eye before he notices you looking and instantly smooths his face out. What was that? Does he know something you don’t? “I mean, I could imagine why.”

“Yeah?” you ask dryly, watching him suspiciously.

“Well, you’re trained in nen, aren’t you? You learned it while you were gone.” Your head snaps to the side to look at him. He raises his eyebrows at you challengingly. “I’m right, aren’t I? You were different when you came back to Kakin two years ago. Plus, everything that went on with the Chimera Ants—it makes sense now how you’d been able to cull the colony. Everyone thought your dispatchment was a death sentence. I only saw you once at a banquet after, but even I could tell something was up. I didn’t put it together until we found out about nen a few days ago, but Benjamin and Camilla—I’m pretty sure they already were trained too. They probably figured it out faster than I did. That’s why they’re so dead set on taking you out.”

Luzurus is… a lot more perceptive than you thought he was. Your throat tightens as you glance over him once, wondering what else he managed to figure out. If he was able to put that together so quickly with minimal information…

He gives you a smug look. “Not as much of a bumbling idiot as Tserriednich thinks, am I?” he drawls, crossing his arms over his chest. “What do you say we team up, hm?”

“Team up?” you scoff. “Why would I do that, you loser?” 

“Don’t be so rude. I’m your older brother. You’ve got no one else,” Luzurus replies, holding a finger gun up to your head and mock shooting it. “You said it yourself. You’re the most isolated. Even if you did manage to get yourself a couple of guards, what’re you gonna do when Benjamin, Camilla, and Zhang Lei all come at you at once? You gonna crawl back to Tserriednich for help? I’m sure he’d love to have his little doll back.” 

“Watch your tongue,” you tell him, voice low. Your whole aura shifts at his words, becoming darker, more malicious, and Luzurus, even incapable of utilizing nen himself, can feel it from the way his throat bobs nervously. 

“I’m just saying,” he says defensively. “Think about it. We could be useful to each other—don’t forget who’s in my pocket.”

The Cha-R. You don’t say anything else to Luzurus as he lazily waves his hand over his shoulder and walks away, pretending to be unbothered by the oppressive pressure lingering in the theater, but you know better. His stride is too stiff, and his hand is brushing his collar as though trying to loosen the invisible grip your nen left there.

You breathe in sharply, willing yourself to calm down, but it doesn’t work. Your heart is racing in your chest, your pulse thrums in your ears, and you squeeze your hands to try to forcibly settle down. You fail.

Little doll.

That’s how they all see you.

Tserriednich’s little doll.

“Ah, the Siege of Orsage. A stunning painting, if not a bit gruesome. We were going to nab it at the auction in Kukan’yu three years ago, but we got delayed in Ochima,” a familiar voice hums from your left. You hate that you exhale a bit in relief when you see Chrollo from the corner of your eye; you hate even more that your aura starts to settle down when you feel his hand slip down to your lower back, and then around to your hip to pull you closer to him. There’s a look of warning in his eyes as he looks at you, leaning his head down to brush his lips against your ear as he murmurs, “I could feel your nen three rooms away.”

You scoff, glancing down at the ground. “It was only a few seconds. Did you sprint here?” 

He gives you a long look and then averts his gaze to the painting in front of the two of you. “I thought you might’ve been in danger.”

Your chest squeezes and tightens like a chain has wrapped around your heart. You ignore it and say dryly, “Only my pride and mental stability.”

You feel his gaze shift to you briefly, like he doesn’t believe you, and you brush his hand off your hip. There are too many eyes in the area for you to allow it to remain there; already, you’ve noticed Kacho’s eyes lingering on you, and though the girl is harmless, there are others who are very much not who you risk drawing attention from. Camilla is too close for comfort.

“You’ve been standing in front of this painting for a while,” Chrollo notes. If he’s bothered by the way you brush away his touch, he doesn’t show it. “Is it a favorite of yours?”

“I thought you were three rooms away,” you say blandly, eyes tracing the flames painted orange and red on the canvas before you, the spears driven into dying men, the first flutter of wings to lead to the fall of an empire. “It is. I think it’s beautiful.”

“Beautiful?” Chrollo asks, surprised, like that was the last word he expected you to use to describe the art. “Tragic, maybe. Gruesome, even.” Then, as if he remembers the first comment you made, he says, “Machi told me you’ve been standing here staring at the same painting since you got here.”

“The next time you make me wait, I will leave.”

You can hear the faint smile in his voice as he says simply, “Then I’ll take care not to keep you waiting again.” His tone is light, casual, even, but there’s a weight to it that makes you hesitate. He gestures faintly toward the painting, but his gaze remains trained on you. “Why is this your favorite?”

Your tongue darts out to wet your lips before you speak. It’s a good distraction from Luzurus and Tserriednich. You like talking about history—even if it is Chrollo you’re talking to. “The Yorbian Empire was the greatest empire the world had ever seen, you know? Stretched across most of the known world, richer than any modern nation. Kakin can hardly begin to compare to what Yorbia once was. There was no power in the world at the time that could hope to rival it. And it’s just… funny, I guess—Yorbia was… obsessed with this small Kukan’yuan city-state called Orsage. It had little military power and few allies; the only thing it had going for it was that it was a port city. A trading hub. The Yorbian senators just couldn’t cope with the fact that there was a city-state out of its control, thriving economically. So, they declared war on it.”

“The First Ferox War,” Chrollo says absently, realizing what you’re talking about. “Yorbia won, but it was by the skin of their teeth. Nobody expected Orsage to hold out the way it did.”

“Yeah,” you agree, “and the Yorbians hated that. They were humiliated that this small city-state managed to make a fool of them. They became obsessed with seeing it burned. After every senate meeting, every debate, no matter what it was about, one of the senators would end the congregations with ‘Orsage must be destroyed.’ It took a few years, but they eventually got their wish, and Yorbia razed Orsage to the ground and sowed the earth with salt so that no man could ever rebuild it.”

“And that is why it’s your favorite?” Chrollo presses, though he sounds unimpressed.

“No,” you answer, thinking back to your conversation with your father yesterday, unsettled by how familiar the words taste. “It’s my favorite because it heralds the strength of an empire while depicting the very same moment it ensured its own ruin. The triumph they tried to enshrine marked the beginning of their decline, but they just couldn’t see it yet. The fall of Orsage’s trading routes led to the rise of Kakin’s. The rise of Kakin led to the fall of Yorbia. An empire blinded by pride destroys what it envies, and in doing so, sows the seed of its own demise. All that power undone because they couldn’t tolerate the existence of something that did not belong to them. They wrote their own epitaph with four words.”

Chrollo tilts his head, studying you instead of the painting. “And history moves in such vicious circles, doesn’t it?” he murmurs.

Ah, you think to yourself, he understands what you’re saying. 

Obsession and greed—the vices that destroy both gods and men. 

Your gaze flicks up to him at last. A bandage covers the tattoo on his forehead, but it does nothing to hide the softness of his features as he looks down at you. He wears a similar sleek black suit to the one he wore the other night, the fabric cutting clean lines across his frame. The circles beneath his eyes are impossibly darker than they were when you last saw him, and his skin is still stretched too thin over bone, but the dim light of the theater makes him almost unbearably striking. Beautiful in a way that feels dangerous, like the lilies in western Kukan’yu and northern Kakin that can decay with the barest touch.

Lucilfer. Lucifer. The Morning Star. The fallen angel. God’s favorite, cast down, and somehow made lovelier by the ruin. How revolting. You hate the sight of him. You can’t even stand looking at him. You want to look away, but you can’t bring yourself to.

You finally force yourself to look away and whisper, “It does. Every empire believes itself invincible until it crumbles; the world is littered with the ruins of people who believed they were eternal. Greed, arrogance, obsession—the vices that invariably turn pillars from stone to sand, and yet, somehow, people never learn.”

Your gaze drifts from the painting to the far side of the theater, where Camilla is giggling with a tall man you don’t recognize. She hides half of her face behind her hand, eyes lidded as she looks up at him; you almost pity the poor soul falling for her false charm. 

They all exhibit the same flaws, you think bitterly, becoming more irate the longer you watch her flit around like a vapid bird, remembering King Nasubi’s implication that someone like her could be considered his true child, but not you. Greed, obsession, unending envy and unquenchable wrath. Camilla is, at the very least, up front with her defaults. You think your other siblings—Zhang Lei, Tserriednich, Tyson—are even worse, putting up a facade of upholding justice and honor and beauty, but only truly caring about preserving the appearance of them to make themselves look good.

You find yourself inexplicably sad. Frustrated, even. You hate this shitty succession contest, but you hate your siblings more. The words you spewed at your father—you didn’t understand them as you spoke them, but maybe you do now.

Kakin is following the same doomed path that has brought down empires far greater and older. You see it in Camilla, Benjamin, Zhang Lei—all of them. Rule by wisdom has decayed into rule by might, and even that is corroding into rule by appetite. Your siblings scramble not to guide or lead, but to gorge—on power, on wealth, on the thrill of survival and victory in this loathsome succession contest. The throne is no longer a seat of balance. It’s a pit into which every vice tumbles, consuming what’s left of Kakin’s dignity. 

The succession contest is necessary to save Kakin, you understand, and your older siblings must die.

Like Camilla can feel your eyes on her, her gaze snaps up above his shoulder to land on you, and her expression shifts into a sneer until she sees Chrollo standing next to you, and she becomes more intrigued.

You despise the way your gut twists with something close to possession. 

“Is that one of your siblings?” Chrollo asks curiously, gaze flitting between you and Camilla briefly before he focuses back on you.

“Camilla, the Second Prince,” you say dryly. “She’s one of the three older siblings who are gunning for me right now.”

“Then,” Chrollo starts, drawing you from your thoughts, voice too casual for you to brace yourself for what’s about to leave his mouth, “would you like me to kill her?”

Your eyes snap toward him, wide and haunted, before you look around frantically to make sure no one overheard him. “Are you insane?” you demand, voice hushed. “You can’t say things like that in public.”

“Hm,” is all Chrollo says, amused by your nerves. He reaches out to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, and you swat his hand away. “And why not? Is that not the point of this whole contest?” 

“It’s not public knowledge,” you hiss, “and the Black Whale is not lawless. Any man who is caught threatening or harming a prince, or attempting to, will be imprisoned and executed.”

“I see,” he understands, but he still looks far too amused. “That’s why nen users are so important. To kill without getting caught.”

“Yeah,” you say quietly, turning to walk in the opposite direction of your older sister. Chrollo trails alongside you. “Of my siblings, Luzurus believes only Benjamin, Camilla, and I are trained in it. That’s why the two of them are so insistent that I be taken out quickly.”

“Then they’ve underestimated you,” Chrollo murmurs, falling into step at your side with ease. “But underestimation can be a gift. It lulls people into leaving their throats exposed.”

You shoot him a sharp glance and mutter, “You talk about fratricide in the same tone other people use to comment on the weather.”

“Ah,” his lips curve faintly, “perhaps. But they’re not so different, are they? Both a storm and a death can bring an empire to its knees.”

“Spare me the philosophy,” you mutter. “You make it sound like slaughter is some form of higher art.”

Chrollo tilts his head to the side, eyes glinting. “Is it not? All of the greatest works of art end or start in tragedy. Half of the paintings displayed tonight were inspired by it. The Siege of Orsage, the Death of Sardanapalus, the Raft of the Medusa… Your family’s tastes are quite morbid, I must say.”

“I figured that much was obvious from the death contest,” you say dryly, coming to a stop in front of another painting that you’re fond of—Orpheus and Eurydice, the ancient lovers whose love moved the gods to give them a second chance, only for it to fail because of a simple mistake. The painting is set before Orpheus’s descent into Hades; he clutches his wife’s corpse, mourning her before he steels his resolve to plead to the Lord of the Dead for her life. Another story that starts and ends in tragedy. “And the Southernpiece Auction? Was that also art to you?”

“Indeed,” he replies, gaze tracing the painting before it falls back to you. You don’t return it, so he looks back up at the art, though you can tell from the corner of your eye that he’s not really looking at it. His gaze is distant, like he’s looking at something that’s not there, and his voice is soft as he recites, “Forever set a precious moon is lost. Others mourn him, with ceremony grand. Rising up to heaven, mighty moon of frost, with melody from the marching band.”

Your gaze lifts up to him, breath catching when you see the glassy look in his eyes, the faint tremor at the corner of his mouth betraying something he otherwise keeps locked away. He finishes quietly, “Southernpiece was a requiem for… a dearly departed friend.”

You swallow hard, the room suddenly feels colder, smaller, and the dim lights cast shadows across his face that make his expression even harder to read. You remember Machi’s words—the way she spoke about Shalnark and Kortopi, all of the thoughts that have been plaguing you since. You don’t like the uncertainty that builds in you, so you ask bitterly, “And the Kurta Clan massacre? Was that, too, a… requiem?” 

His eyes snap to yours, sharp now, and the faint tremor in his lips vanishes. There’s a pause long enough for your chest to tighten with dread, but before he can speak, you see a blur of movement from the corner of your eyes. You turn your head to the side, too slow, and something draws across your neck, a shallow cut through the skin above your carotid and jugular—not deep enough to nick either, but it could’ve been. 

You lift your hand to your neck in shock as blood dribbles from the superficial wound, gaze lifting to Chrollo, whose dark eyes are pinned to the cut. You look up to figure out what had attacked you, and your heart drops into your stomach when you see a playing card—a queen of hearts—embedded in Eurydice’s chest. Your blood dribbles down the painting in a mockery of the tragedy it depicts.

Hisoka.

Chrollo realizes it at the same time you do, and it’s only sheer luck that gives you time to react before he can do something rash. Your hand darts out to wrap around his wrist, and his whole body tenses as his gaze cuts down toward you, pupils blown wide with a type of mania you never expected to see from him. The type you’d only seen in Kurapika when faced with a spider. 

If your aura had been menacing when Luzurus mentioned Tserriednich, then Chrollo’s is downright apocalyptic. It radiates outward in waves, heavy and suffocating, thick with the promise of blood and vengeance. The hairs on your arms stand on end, and your body is stiff with the instinctive need to flee from danger, but you force yourself to remain still. His entire frame is trembling, not with fear, but with righteous fury and restraint, trying not to hurt you in his need for annihilation.

He hisses through his teeth, “Let go of me.”

“You are not doing this here,” you say, voice tight as your grip on his wrist tightens. “Are you out of your mind? The theater is full of some of the most important people on this ship. If a single one of them is killed, you’ll be hunted down and killed. This is not the place for your deathmatch with Hisoka.”

“Don’t be naive. I don’t give a damn about any of these people\. Anyone who gets in my way will die, so I suggest you move,” Chrollo replies, voice uncharacteristically harsh, scorching rage fogging any logic he might have. 

His gray eyes dart around the theater with no concern for anyone around him, nor any calculation for their safety. All he cares about is finding his target and spilling his blood. You need to get him out of here. His bloodlust is drawing too much attention; people are beginning to look your way and whisper. You press your hand against his chest, feeling the tense muscles beneath his dress shirt, and when he’s caught off guard by your touch, you shove hard, knocking him off balance so you can drag him away from the theater.

He’s so out of it that he doesn’t even regain his footing until the hall door slams behind the two of you. When he does, he staggers slightly, eyes still ablaze with fury and void of coherent thought. You shove him hard against the wall, watching the air leave his lungs with an oof. You keep your forearm pressed against his chest, holding him still even as his gaze begins to clear and sharpen. His hand comes up to grab your wrist, and he glares down at you, expression dark, but he doesn’t push you away.

“Move,” he says, voice low and strained. “Get out of my way. I won’t say it again.”

“No,” you repeat, matching his tone. “You’re not thinking. Don’t you think there’s a reason that Hisoka antagonized you in there? You’re playing right into his hand. This is Hisoka we’re talking about. He’s not going to give you the fight you want right now. It’s a trap; he wants you to lash out so everyone on this ship starts hunting you down. You won’t be able to evade capture forever—two thousand soldiers, eight hundred mafiosos, six hundred hunters, including the Zodiacs, my siblings and their nen beasts, and their personal guards. And that’s only the official passenger list. If you guys snuck on, who knows who else was able to.”

His jaw ticks, fingers flexing against the wall behind him as if to anchor himself. His gray eyes, still clouded with rage, flicker briefly with a hint of calculation as he considers your words. You take the hesitation to press some more.

“Chrollo, think,” you say desperately. You dislike the way your voice catches over his name, but you push past it. He’s going to screw both of you over with this tantrum. “He wants you to snap and make a mistake that gets you locked up, so he can hunt down the rest of your spiders when there’s nothing you can do to help them. You need to calm down.” 

He exhales. Once. Twice. On the third, his breath hitches and his chest seizes beneath your touch. Your gaze darts down in concern before checking his face, only to find it twisted in pain. Your lips part to ask him what’s wrong, only for the words to die on your tongue as he chokes suddenly, knees giving out from under him. You’re barely able to react quickly enough to stop him from hitting the ground hard, one arm slinking around his waist to hold him up as his face falls into the crook of your neck. 

You stiffen immediately, body frozen for a moment at the weight of him leaning against you like this. A cough rips from him, wet and ragged, and you feel it shudder through him as his fingers tighten around the fabric of your shirt—a spatter of crimson dots your collarbone, and your stomach knots.

“You are sick,” you realize. Your suspicions from the other night were correct. “You lied to me.”

“I didn’t lie,” he rasps against your neck, breath hot and unsteady, fanning against your skin. Your fingers dig into his side, holding him up as best as you can. You can feel him trying to regain the strength to push himself back to standing position, fingers finding purchase on your hips as he steadies himself, but it’s taking him more effort than he’d like. His eyes dull under the weight of the pain wracking his body. The aloof, enigmatic Chrollo Lucilfer is suddenly fragile in your arms, and the thought tightens something in your chest that you wish would go away. Monsters do not love, do not mourn, do not show weakness—the thought mocks you, the same way it has been since you spoke to Machi. This isn’t right, none of it is right. “It’s nothing.”

“Nothing?” you demand, unable to stop your voice from rising in panic. “You’re coughing up blood on my favorite shirt. You need to go to the infirmary, you—”

“I thought your argument was to avoid my imprisonment. Now you advocate for me to hand myself over,” Chrollo says dryly, voice hoarse as he finally gathers the strength to stand on his own again. His hand presses weakly to his mouth, trying to hide the way it’s stained red. “It’s nothing. It will pass.”

“Pass?” you echo, shocked by his flippant attitude. “What—what is it? What are you sick with? My life is tied to yours, if you’ve forgotten—”

“I assure you, I haven’t, exalted,” he replies tightly, but there’s something disappointed in his expression that you refuse to acknowledge.

“Do your spiders even know that you’re sick?” you continue as though he hadn’t spoken at all. “You shouldn’t be wandering the tiers alone if—”

“Enough. Don’t tell them,” he interrupts so coldly that you falter. “I don’t want them to know.”

“But—”

“Do not tell them,” he repeats, leaving no room for conversation. “It will pass.”

You don’t know how to respond to that. You want to argue with him, or press for more answers, but you find yourself hesitating as he wipes the blood from his mouth. His thin fingers are still trembling, and his breath is uneven. He’s still in pain, but trying not to make it too obvious. At once, all of your observations about his exhausted demeanor and sickly pallor make sense.

You don’t look away as his gaze lifts back to your neck, where the shallow cut is still dribbling blood. A dark look crosses his face. You don’t move either when he lifts his free hand, thumb brushing gently over the cut to wipe away the blood. Your heart beats painfully in your chest, lashes fluttering slightly as he cradles the side of your neck. 

Move away, you tell yourself. Move.

You do not. 

“We’re being watched,” he finally says, but he doesn’t look all too concerned, so you frown and follow his gaze to the left, where a familiar figure is hovering near the door that leads to the theater.

“Kacho,” you murmur, and then raise your voice, “why did you follow us here?”

“Sister,” Kacho clears her throat before she speaks, but her voice still wavers. The detestable persona she wears as a mask to protect Fugetsu wavers as she glances between you and Chrollo, revealing her for the scared girl she is. “I wanted to speak to you.”

“Then stop lurking in the shadows and come speak to me,” you say dryly, tilting your head to the side as you watch her approach. She holds her head high and her shoulders tall, even as her fingers tremble. “What is it?”

“I would like to know your intentions for the contest,” Kacho tells you, swallowing thickly as she holds your gaze only for a second.

“My intentions are not to be killed,” you say flatly, “as is everyone else’s, I’m sure.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Kacho replies, voice rising in pitch as she glances back to the door, clearly concerned one of her guards is going to come looking for her. “You have a chance at winning, will you… allow the younger princes to live if they bend the knee, or will you follow the rules of the contest?”

For a second, Kacho looks terrified. She can’t meet your eyes, and her lips wobble. She’s sixteen, you remind yourself. She’s sixteen, and she’s trying to turn her own guards against her so they save Fugetsu if they’re forced to choose. She doesn’t want to die, but she wants even less to live a life without her twin. She seeks you out, and probably Halkenburg and Tubeppa, in hopes that one of you will shield them if you win, but more than likely, her real plans…

Kacho flinches when you reach out to place your hand on top of her head. You say quietly, “I’m not going to kill you or Fugetsu, Kacho. I don’t want to kill any of you—” a lie, but only to make her feel better “—just focus on surviving, and don’t do anything stupid. There’s no escaping the contest once it’s begun. Just wait for Tubeppa, Halenburg or I to win. We’ll make sure the younger princes are unharmed.”

“But what if—”

“There is no escaping the contest,” you repeat firmly. “You know about the beasts that have attached themselves to us and the existence of nen?” You wait for her to nod before continuing, “The Seed Urn Ceremony set conditions for the succession contest. We cannot escape the contest, or I anticipate, we will die to fulfill the conditions. Focus on surviving.”

Kacho chokes over a sob, but quickly muffles it with her hand, wiping her eyes furiously. “I’m scared,” she admits before she can stop herself. Her composure crumbles under your touch. “What type of father makes his children kill each other? I don’t understand. He must know that the younger princes don’t stand a chance. What if one of you wins, and he makes you finish the contest anyway?”

You exhale, gaze averting to the side for a moment before you answer quietly, “Then he’ll end this expedition in one of the coffins he prepared for us.”

Kacho inhales sharply, eyes wet and wide as she looks up at you. “You—”

“Go back to Fugetsu, Kacho, and don’t forget what I told you.”

She hesitates, gaze flickering to the side—you’d almost forgotten Chrollo was with you, he’s been eerily silent behind you. After a moment, she whispers, “I think you should try to win.”

“Kacho—”

“Tserriednich… When you left, he—he was angry. He tried to hide it, but we all knew. He tried to replace you, and Mother—she was too scared to do anything. Luckily, he gave up quickly because he thought Fugetsu was too soft-hearted, but she cried for weeks after. Her pet rabbit and two of her ladies-in-waiting went missing.” Kacho rushes out, fists clenched at her side as she speaks. Your blood pressure skyrockets at the mention of Tserriednich. You hadn’t anticipated that he might go after your younger siblings once you left. You should’ve. It’s your fault. “I want him dead, and I know you must too.”

“Was it only Fugetsu? Momoze—do you know if she…?”

Kacho shakes her head. “He didn’t go near her. Queen Sevanti and Queen Unma are close. He didn’t come near me either. He thought I was too much like Camilla,” she says the words distastefully. “He thought Fugetsu was still soft enough to shape, I guess, but didn’t realize how soft she was. He wasn’t fixated on her for long…barely a week but…”

Your jaw tightens. “Don’t worry about him,” you finally say. “I’ll take care of it.”

Kacho lets out a soft puff of air and nods, glancing back at Chrollo nervously once more before she raises her chin, straightens her dress, and turns to leave. 

“Kacho,” you call, waiting for her to pause. “If you tell anyone what you saw here, all bets are off. I’ll gut you and Fugetsu.”

You won’t really, but she’ll believe you.

Kacho inhales, but you see her nod. She says quietly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t see anything.”

“Good,” you reply, gaze flicking up to the door as it opens. 

Your heart drops when you see a familiar face behind it—Melody, Kurapika’s friend and one of Kacho’s guards. She frowns as she looks at Kacho, and then gasps when her gaze lifts to you, and pointedly, to Chrollo.

She whispers your name and then says, “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay, Melody,” you say with a small smile. “Please take care of Kacho.”

“But—”

“You can hear my heart, can you not?” you ask the woman quietly. “I’m sure you put together what happened that night in the car. So you know I’m okay. Please, go with Kacho and leave me be.”

Melody gives you a concerned look and then shoots a suspicious one at Chrollo, but she lets Kacho pass by her and closes the door to the hall. You let out a heavy breath and let your shoulders slump, eyes sliding shut.

The brief peace you have is ruined when Chrollo speaks. His voice is steadier now, but you can tell he’s still recovering from whatever that episode was. “What was that about?”

“I thought it was pretty obvious,” you say dryly, turning to look at him. “My younger sister begging for her and her twin’s life.”

“No,” Chrollo murmurs. “At the end—Tserriednich? One of your brothers?”

You don’t want to have this conversation. Not with anyone, but especially not with him.

“None of your business,” you answer, leaving no room for conversation. “We’re not friends. We’re allies only because if one of us dies, the other will. Let’s not pretend we’re something we’re not. As soon as this is all over, we’ll go our separate ways like the bond doesn’t exist. Are we clear?”

You pretend not to notice the unreadable expression that crosses his face, and you especially ignore the tight feeling in your chest. He gives you a tight smile and says, “Crystal.”

You wish it made you feel better, but for some reason, it only makes you feel worse.

——————

“I don’t see why we have to sit in here,” Nobunaga says for the sixth time, pacing agitatedly between the bookshelves. You lift your gaze from the book you’re reading, giving him a bland expression. He doesn’t even catch it, too busy scowling as though the library has personally offended him. “Let’s just get the books you want and go back to the room.”

“We’ve been sitting in the same room for four days,” Franklin replies flatly, not even looking up from the book he’s skimming. “You’d think you’d appreciate the change in scenery.”

Nobunaga half snarls over his shoulder before he goes back to pacing. “Yeah, maybe if it were a bar instead of a fucking dust farm,” he snaps. “My nose has been itching for the past hour. You’d think the Kakin royal family could afford a cleaning staff. Half these books look like they’ve been rotting since the goddamn dark ages.”

“Maybe they have,” you murmur, turning another page without looking up. This book is another dud. You can’t find anything about how your father managed to sever the bond with his soulmate and evade death. “The Royal Archives date back over a thousand years.”

“Oh, great,” Nobunaga says dryly. “Maybe I’ll catch the fucking plague from one of these crunchy ass scrolls.”

“I don’t think that’s quite how it works,” you reply absently, closing the book and looking up at him. “You don’t have to stay. We’re in the royal archives. There are ten soldiers guarding the entrance, and plenty of nen-enforced traps throughout the room. Nugui personally is upkeeping them. I’ll be fine on my own for a few hours.”

You would prefer it, actually. You don’t want them getting curious about what you’re researching, because you don’t think they’d take well to finding out that you’re trying to learn how to sever your soulbond with their boss. You’re lucky that Franklin and Nobunaga were the two who offered to come with you, because you think Machi would’ve figured it out in an instant if she’d come. Franklin has been busying himself with reading old Kakin myths, occasionally asking you questions about them, and Nobunaga has been pacing, failing to distract himself from boredom. 

“No,” Nobunaga says sharply, scowling at you.

“There are picture books on the far side of the room,” you tell him with a sweet smile. “I’m sure those will entertain you.”

Nobunaga turns a wicked glare on you, but then he lets out a huff and storms off to the other side of the room. Franklin snorts, pointedly ignoring Nobunaga’s loud, “Shut the fuck up! I heard that!”

You place the book you were reading down on the table in front of you, sighing as you look over the old scrolls you have left. Only a handful of them are written in Kakin’s script or the modern language; a lot of them are in the old tongues, and your ability to translate them is rusty at best. Maybe you’ll try to convince Nugui to let you take them back to your quarters. Focus on the ones you can read quickly for now.

As you reach for the one closest to you, you pause when you see Franklin watching you from the corner of your eye. You pull the scroll into your lap and look at him, blinking once before asking, “Yes?”

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and your brows furrow. After what feels like an eternity, he finally says, “It’s nothing. I’m just curious about you… I think most of us are.” He smiles a little to himself as he glances away. “We used to make bets about you.”

You raise your eyebrows with a huff of laughter. “Bets?” you ask. “Like what?”

“Where you were from, what you would be like, what you would look like,” Franklin answers dismissively, waving his hand. “Phinks was convinced you’d be from Meteor City like us. Machi thought Saherta. Shalnark, for some reason, was dead set on you being from the Balsa Islands, would never explain why.”

“Did anyone guess Kakin?” you ask, curiosity getting the best of you as you set the scroll aside.

You watch as Franklin sighs, a heavy expression crossing his face as he looks away again. “Yeah,” he says, voice a bit rougher. “Pakunoda.” Your gaze lowers instantly. Pakunoda, the blonde who came to the airlift station at Kurapika’s request and took Kurapika’s judgment chain through the heart. “She would’ve liked to meet you. Really meet you. Not the shit that went down in Yorknew.”

You don’t know how to reply to that, knowing that Kurapika is the reason she’s dead, so you don’t. Instead, you clear your throat and say, “Shalnark was technically right, too.” Franklin’s gaze snaps toward you. “My mother, Queen Unma, is from the Republic of Hass in the Balsa Islands.”

Franklin stares at you for a second before he laughs loudly. “No shit,” he says. “God, if he were here, he’d never let us hear the end of it. Phinks and Uvogin used to clown him for it. Said only he would pick the most random corner of the map and call it intuition. He pretended not to care, but we all knew he was keeping score. He liked being right more than he liked breathing.”

You don’t like hearing about them, you think, not for the first time. The dead spiders. You don’t like hearing the others talk about them. You don’t like the fondness in their voice, and the grief in their eyes. You didn’t like how Machi’s face got all pinched with pain as she spoke about them. You didn’t like the softness in Chrollo’s voice as he told you about the Southernpiece Auction. And you certainly don’t like the way Franklin’s laugh warms the air, how easily he recalls them, as though they’d just been a group of friends instead of hardened killers. As if they were capable of affection, and inside jokes, and something as small and human as teasing each other. It doesn’t fit. It shouldn’t fit. It’s not supposed to fit.

You spent two years thinking of them as monsters—faceless, blood-soaked things that Chrollo, the worst of them, kept on a leash. Monsters are easy to condemn. Monsters are safe because no god would bind a human to a beast, so your bond must’ve been a mistake, and all you have to do is reject it because it was never meant to be. You don’t want them to be real people who laughed, and had inside jokes and favorite drinks and stupid bets and moments of warmth between all of the death and destruction they caused. It unravels the image you built of them, everything you’ve told yourself, everything you’ve been angry about, everything you’ve feared. It changes everything, leaving you with more questions than answers. 

Because—

Because if they are human—if they’re truly capable of laughter and loyalty and love—then what does that make your bond with Chrollo? Not a mistake, that’s for sure, and if it’s not a mistake, then what does that make you? You, who are bound to him, who has felt his hand in yours, his breath against your skin, his words soft enough almost to sound sincere. You, who have seen him smile and mourn and become blind with rage. 

You don’t know how to survive being bound to a human who has done so much wrong and still feels. You don’t know how to justify accepting a bond with someone who has stolen, tortured, and killed others without remorse, and still might be capable of love. You don’t know how to make sense of that contradiction—how can he speak with reverence about art, about faith, about you, and still slit a throat without hesitation? And how can you, who values life and strives to protect people, be fated to love someone who causes so much ruin mercilessly?

If they are people, he is too. And if he’s human, and the gods didn’t make a mistake by accidentally binding you to a thing that looks human but is really not, then what does it make you?

You think Franklin realizes this conversation is making you uncomfortable, because he lets out a breath. The humor fades from his face. “He’s not all that bad, you know?” Franklin says quietly. You don’t need to ask who ‘he’ is. Your throat tightens, and you look away. “He used to be the runt of the group, smaller than Feitan, if you can believe it. I was always having to look out for his ass.” 

“Why are you telling me this?” you ask through gritted teeth. Your nails tighten around the fabric of your pants. “I don’t—”

Franklin shrugs. “He would be pissed if he knew I was,” he admits. “I don’t know. He’s changed a lot over the years, but the one thing that never did…” he trails off, glancing down at your wrist, where Chrollo’s words are carved into your skin. 

“Enough,” you say, looking away. “I came here to read, not to talk.”

Franklin sighs, and you feel guilty for shutting him down so harshly. You don’t want to be their friend, you remind yourself as you turn away from him. You don’t want to be Chrollo’s soulmate. You don’t want any of this—you’re just doing it to survive the voyage. This is a business transaction, and you need to treat it as such. You want to hate them cleanly, and they are not letting you.

You grab the scroll a bit too harshly, folding your leg over your knee and shifting away from Franklin, making it clear that you no longer want to talk to him. You direct your attention down to the scroll, skimming the title, the old Kakin script barely legible, and for a second, you’re not sure what you’re looking at.

You lift your hand to your lips, eyes dancing across each line greedily. You know the old story; they used to tell it in the palace halls when you were small, meant to sound tragic and divine all at once. A god-touched emperor, bound to a soulmate born under the same star. A kingdom that began to rot. Priests whispering of famine, imbalance, and divine retribution. The First King, standing at an altar with a blade in his hand and a prayer in his mouth. You know how the story ends: how he did killed her himself, and the gods supposedly restored the land, and he lived the rest of his life praised, glorified for saving the people of Kakin, but the stars never spoke to him again.

This is it. All of the Kakin Kings had followed in suit, severing their bond and sacrificing their soulmate for the good of the empire. This is when the tradition began. But it doesn’t say how. Frustrated, you nearly crumple the scroll and throw it away, but you stop yourself, shaking your head and looking away.

How? How did they do it? How did they sever the bond and live?

The scroll gives no answer. The same hollow praise and sanctified lies dressed as scripture. You can almost hear the priests’ voices echoing through the marble halls of your childhood, telling you that sacrifice is sacred, duty outweighs desire, and the gods love nothing more than the sound of something breaking for their sake. But no one ever said how. No one said what it took to cut your soul in half and keep walking. 

Fuck.

You rub your face harshly, eyes sliding shut. There must be a way to do it. It doesn’t make sense that it’s only limited to whoever becomes King of Kakin, not unless—

The Seed Urn Ceremony?

You sit straight in your seat, pressing your hand to your lips, mind racing. Is it that simple? Could it have to do with the Seed Urn Ceremony? The Guardian Spirit Beasts? The deaths of all of your siblings in exchange for the survivor being able to live after the severing? All of the Kakin Kings take part in the Seed Urn Ceremony—it’s always been the traditional way of choosing the next King. But if that’s the case, then… 

Then you would have to win.

Fuck. 

You hear a bang from your left, and Franklin is instantly on his feet, bracing himself for whoever had entered the library. He motions for you to stay behind him, but you get curious, peeking your head around his large frame and pausing when you recognize Halkenburg standing stiffly in between two rows of shelves. Nobunaga is behind him, hand on the hilt of his sword, and your brother’s face twists as he looks between the two suspiciously.

“Halkenburg,” you say quietly. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you,” he answers with a pinched expression. “What—Aren’t these people—”

“I suggest you don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to,” you tell him before he can finish speaking, voice tight, “because your honor will demand you do something about it, and then you’ll have made an enemy of me.” His eyes meet yours as you finish quietly, “You do not want to make an enemy of me.”

Halkenburg exhales, eyes sliding shut. “Okay,” he agrees, making his way toward you. Franklin stiffens, but you wave him off. Halkenburg is the most docile of your siblings besides the children. “I heard you spoke to our father.”

“I did,” you say, sitting back down at your table. Halkenburg takes a seat across from you, visibly uncomfortable when Nobunaga follows him into the area you’ve secured for yourself, gaze flicking between the two spiders. “I did not get useful information from him, if that’s why you’re here.”

“How did you get through his guards?” he asks you, folding his arms over his chest with a frown. “I’ve been sending letters, but I don’t even believe he’s reading them.”

You raise your eyebrows at him, lips curling up into an amused smile. “You’re sending… letters?” 

“To get him to let me through for a discussion,” he confirms, and you have to hide how you almost want to roll your eyes. Oh, Halkenburg, always the most by-the-books and moralistic of the Hui Guo Rou siblings. 

“I used force,” you tell him, watching how he blanches. “You will have to, too, if you want to speak to him.”

“But—”

“You know our father, Halkenburg,” you interrupt, not in the mood to go back and forth with him. “The only thing your letters are doing is making him think less of you. He wants his children to take the initiative. He’d be more impressed by you putting a gun to his head than a pen to a paper.”

Halkenburg looks seriously uncomfortable by your comment, but he does seem to be considering it. You figured that he, of all of your siblings, would be the most upset by this contest. You’re honestly surprised he agreed to it at all in the first place, but you suppose it was probably just to help King Nasubi save face publicly—unfortunately, it means that his blood is bound to the nen contract of the Seed Urn, so there’s no getting out of it now. But you’ll leave King Nasubi to have that conversation with him; you don’t want to deal with the headache.

“Is that all?” you ask dryly, eager to get back to your scrolls. 

It’s not that you don’t like Halkenburg, because you do. Of all of your brothers, he’s probably the most bearable to be around, if a bit annoying to deal with because of his self-righteousness. You just get… frustrated. He is your full-blooded brother, technically the third son of Queen Unma, but he was fortunate enough to be pawned off to and adopted by Queen Duazal, so he wasn’t raised by Benjamin or Tserriednich. You get jealous sometimes, because you wish viciously that it had been you instead. Or even that he’d stayed in Queen Unma’s section of the Inner Palace so that you were not alone with Tserriednich your whole childhood. 

Not to mention, he for some reason thinks the world of Tserriednich, as if he’s not the most depraved and disgusting of the Hui Guo Rou siblings.

“No,” Halkenburg says, much to your displeasure. “I spoke to Kacho.”

“Ah,” you say, “and what did she say?” 

“That you would be willing to work together to end the contest without any more of our siblings dying.”

You scoff, “I did not say that.”

Halkenburg blinks at you, “What—”

“Our older siblings have to die,” you say, folding your arms over your chest. “Benjamin, Camilla, Zhang Lei, Tserriednich—none of them will agree to ending the succession contest. In fact, three of them are eager to kill the rest of us. If you want to save our younger siblings, we have to kill them.”

Halkenburg disagrees; you can tell before he even speaks. “I will not sit on a bloody throne,” he tells you through gritted teeth. “Whether it’s the blood of our younger siblings or elder ones, I have no desire to take a bloody crown.”

You tilt your head to the side, lips curving up into a smile that doesn’t reach your eyes. “Oh?” you ask quietly. “Who said it would be you on the throne?” 

Halkenburg falters, and you raise your eyebrows. “Well, I mean—” he frowns. “I did not think you were interested in the throne. You spent three years away from Kakin.”

“I did, and I’m not,” you say, watching the confusion spread over his face. “But if the only other options are brutality, obsession, greed, and…” You trail off, gaze flicking over him boredly. “Naivety. Then someone has to make sure the throne doesn’t become a monument to everything that’s wrong with this family, and I know well enough that none of the others would break the cycle, only calcify it.”

Halkenburg’s brows furrow, and his jaw tightens. You tilt your head to the side and ask curiously, “Do you think I’m unfit? Like our siblings?”

Halkenburg inhales, and you can see him carefully choosing his words. “You spent a long time away,” he finally answers, as political as you expect, “and abide by many of Tserriednich’s… philosophies.”

That comment pisses you off, but you force yourself not to let it reflect on your face. “And here I thought Tserriednich is your favorite brother.”

“He is,” Halkenburg confirms, and you barely withhold an eyeroll at that, “but some of his beliefs are… extreme, and I would not want to see them shaping a ruler.”

You let out a sharp, humorless laugh. “Extreme is a generous word for sociopathic.”

Halkenburg cringes slightly. “He’s brilliant,” he insists, as if that excuses anything. “He understands the structure of power and the nature of people better than anyone. He just—misapplies it.”

“Misapplies it,” you repeat, disbelief flickering across your face before you wipe it away. “You call butchering people a misuse? Torture a misapplication of intellect?”

Halkenburg’s frown deepens, but his tone remains maddeningly even. “I didn’t say I condone it. I only meant to say that he sees through illusion and understands that petty vices can bring our dynasty to its end.”

“That’s because he doesn’t believe in anything or anyone besides himself,” you say coldly. “He looks at people and doesn’t even see them as human—what’s useful and what’s useless. What can be opened, dissected, and broken to prove a theory, and what’s better off dead. That’s what he sees. That is brilliance to you?”

“I think,” Halkenburg says, not appreciating your accusations, expression closed off, “that you and he are not as different as you like to believe, so you should be careful throwing stones.”

You bite your tongue hard enough to make it bleed before you lean forward, elbows on the table, eyes narrowing. “And if you think I’m unfit, like our brother, what will you do if I insist that I want the throne?” you ask. “What will you do if Tserriednich does? Benjamin? Camilla? Sit down and debate morality?” 

“We will come to an understanding, I’m sure,” Halkenburg says. “This can be solved with—”

“And that is why you can’t be king, Halkenburg,” you say coldly, rising to your feet. “There is no coming to an understanding with them. They’re beasts driven by vices that will bring the empire to its knees. If you want to take the throne, you’ll have to kill them for it. I understand that much of what our father expects from us, but I disagree with the need to eliminate the children.”

As you grab your scrolls and turn to leave, Halkenburg speaks up one last time: “That’s what Tserriedich calls the others, too.” His voice is too pointed not to be an insult disguised with levity. “Subhuman. Beasts.” When you look over your shoulder at him, he’s unflinching beneath the rage plain on your face, jaw tight and eyes ablaze. “He dehumanizes everyone who doesn’t fit his standards. So do you. That is why you can’t be king, sister.”

Is that—

You feel like the breath has left your lungs as you stare at Halkenburg. The way you refuse to see Chrollo and the spiders as anything but monsters, terrified by the thought of them being human—no, it’s different.

It has to be. 

You give him a sharp, strained smile. “We’ll see whose ideals sit on the throne then,” you say tightly. “You mistake one thing, though. The difference between Tserriednich and me is that Tserriednich dissects for pleasure. I do it because I have to. And that, dear brother, is the difference between a monster and someone willing to kill one.”

Halkenburg exhales, the air leaving him as though he’s aged a decade in seconds. “I plan to speak to our father this week.”

“Good luck,” you say flatly, walking away, Franklin and Nobunaga at your heels. You can practically hear the questions they want to shoot at you. You feel the headache coming on already; you don’t want to talk about Tserriednich. “Perhaps he will enlighten you, since I could not.”

You’re halfway to the door when the quiet breaks again—a rush of air, a glint of silver, you pivot just in time to see the flash of steel between the rows. You drop your scrolls, cursing, but the blade is already in motion. You try to conjure your glaive, but there’s no room. You hear Halkenburg shout your name, the sound coming too late as the knife arcs toward your throat and—

And meets a thick hand instead of your skin. Blood splatters across your face as the knife cuts through Franklin’s hand instead of your throat; the man spits out a string of irritated curses, and Nobunaga draws his sword, a lethal arc that lops the assassins’ head off before they can even think of a second attack. 

As quickly as the attack takes place, it ends, and Halkenburg stands frozen at the far end of the table, chest heaving, face pale, lips parted in shock.

You turn to him, voice level despite the way your hands are trembling. You would be dead right now if not for the spiders. You didn’t react fast enough. The aisle was too narrow to conjure your glaive. “You still think we can come to an understanding with them?” 

He doesn’t answer. His gaze shifts from the body of the assassin to the spiders behind you, and you can see the realization sinking in: how much he underestimated the ruthlessness of his siblings. It surprises you, honestly, for a man who has dealt with more assassination attempts than anyone else in the family, how he still manages to look shocked each time. As if every blade raised is a personal betrayal instead of a long foregone conclusion. As if he hasn’t learned that in this family, blood is something to be spilt rather than protected. He still believes in the goodness of them. He still thinks that there’s decency left to appeal to. You can see it in the way he looks at the blood on the floor. 

You almost envy his faith, but you know that it’ll be shattered in due time.

“Welcome to Kakin, brother,” you say quietly. “I may have been the one away for years, but I was the only one who ever learned what this place really is.”

——————

You get to the casino on Tier One early Thursday night. You were grateful when Machi told you that Chrollo wanted to meet you there instead of the gaudy event taking place on Tier Two. You’d almost been certain that he was going to drag you down there and you’d be forced to endure another night of pleasantries, on edge with the number of dignitaries, nobles, and your siblings in the same room as you and Chrollo Lucilfer. So you were pleasantly surprised when she told you the meeting would be elsewhere.

You’ve been there for two hours already. When Machi said that he’d be there at ten, you insisted that you come down early at eight so you had some time to enjoy yourself before he crashed your night. The air smells of heady perfume and liquor that you just can’t get enough of; the soft whir of the slot machines and the muted clatter of chips is music to your ears. The casino floor is the only place on Tier One where people don’t bother to look too closely at one another—anonymity is part of the fun of gambling. You like that. It makes it easier to breathe. You’ve been here long enough for the haze of cigarette smoke and neon lights to start feeling like a second skin.

You’re several drinks in at the roulette table, seeing double as the ball bounces around in the wheel. You put too many chips down on the table, a thrill running through you each time you lose. You’re not here for the money. You just want to feel something—anything—to ease the stress of this shitty contest, and your shitty siblings, and the shitty Phantom Troupe, and shitty Chrollo Lucilfer. Your conversation with Franklin threw you off more than you already were, and then Halkenburg left you totally off kilter, reeling with the knowledge that maybe you really are just like Tserriednich. 

The dealer gives you a wary look as you slide another stack of chips forward onto the fifteen—lucky number fifteen, fifteen siblings, fifteen coffins waiting to be filled. You snort, lifting your hand to cover your smile. You swirl what’s left of your drink, watching the pink liquid slosh to the rim before you down the rest, waiting for the ball to settle in the roulette wheel. Everything feels detached from the rest of the ship. Too loud, too alive, too human.

The ball lands on thirteen. You lose. Again. 

You smile, giddiness spreading through you—the kind that comes when the fall finally starts to feel like flight. The dealer slides the chips away indifferently, and you push another stack forward, careless with your movements. You’ve lost count of how much you lost. Maybe that’s the point.

“Fifteen has gone cold, you know,” an unfamiliar man says as he slides into the seat next to you. He’s handsome in a sleezy sort of way. His smile is too lazy, and his blue eyes are too sharp. The first two buttons of his dress shirt are undone, his tie is loosened, and his blonde hair is mussed. He looks about your age; your gaze meets his curiously after roving over him once. Your wandering eyes only seem to make him more smug, but you don’t care. “Thirteen and two are hot. You’re better off betting on those.”

“I know how to play roulette,” you say, swiping another drink from a passing server. “I like the number fifteen.”

“Fair,” he grins, and then places a stack of chips down on the number fifteen with yours.

You glance up at him, slightly amused. “You really shouldn’t copy other people’s bad luck.”

He laughs, low and easy. “Maybe I just like your odds. It’s gotta hit eventually.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” you say, but there’s no bite to it. The alcohol has made you loose-tongued, soft around the edges.

“I’ve been called worse.” He leans forward, elbows on the table, watching the wheel spin before he looks back up at you, closer now. “You come here often?”

You roll your eyes. “That’s your opener?”

“I could’ve asked if it hurt when you fell from heaven,” he says with mock seriousness. “Thought this was better.”

You snort, half a laugh slipping out despite yourself. “Barely.”

He grins wider. “Still worked.”

“Did it?”

The ball drops. Two. You lose. Again.

“Shit outta luck. I guess it’s not our night,” he says, signaling for another round. The dealer’s expression doesn’t flicker, too used to drunks and doomed flirtations. “What do you say we head to one of the private rooms?”

You bite back a sigh. “You move fast.”

He smirks, leaning in just a little too close. “Only when I see something worth chasing.” His voice dips lower, suggestive, lazy with confidence. “Besides, it’s quieter upstairs. Easier to get, ah… lucky.”

“You’re proud of that one, aren’t you?” you ask dryly, sliding your chips back out onto lucky number fifteen.

“I thought it was pretty good,” he agrees, pushing his chips with yours again. “You don’t think so?”

“You’re going to have to try harder than bankrupting yourself if you want to impress me,” you say, watching the dealer spin the wheel. “You’ll run out of money way before me, and I promise that’s not a turn on.”

He laughs, unabashed. “Maybe I’m just showing commitment.”

“Or stupidity,” you counter, taking another sip of your drink as you watch the blur of red and black. “Hard to tell the difference sometimes.”

He leans in closer, the smell of cologne and cheap whiskey clinging to him. “I’m willing to take the risk if it means I get your attention.”

You hum noncommittally, swirling the last of your drink with a frown. “You’ve got it for about five more seconds.”

The wheel slows. The ball clatters and drops—ten.

Another loss.

He groans, dragging a hand through his hair. “You really are bad luck.”

You glance sideways at him. “And you really don’t know when to quit.”

“Not when the odds are worth it,” he says, grin returning, and your gaze slides to the side when you feel his hand slide to your waist, pulling you a bit closer to him. “I’ve got a good feeling about the next round.”

You frown and try to shift away from him, but his grip is a bit too firm. You start to give him a cutting look, an insult on the tip of your tongue, but you find that you don’t have to, because his hand is forcibly pulled from your waist. The stranger yelps, trying to yank his hand back, but whoever grabbed his wrist is stronger.

You don’t have to look to see who it is, but you do anyway.

The conversation at the nearby table dulls, and the laughter softens. Even the dealer’s practiced motions slow down, gaze flicking up hesitantly, shifting for the first time from the indifferent expression he wears. The lights don’t dim, but somehow, the room feels darker.

Chrollo’s grip on the stranger’s wrist is painful; you can tell from the way his knuckles are white, and how the man’s expression contorts in pain, the easy charm draining into panic as he tries and fails to twist free.

“What the hell, man?” he demands, voice shaky. “Let go.”

“You should be more careful of where you put your hands,” Chrollo says softly, almost conversationally. He’s smiling blandly, but his eyes are cold. “It’s a habit that tends to end badly.”

The man stammers, looking between the two of you. “What—I—I didn’t—I don’t understand—”

“You don’t understand what?” Chrollo asks, still smiling, though there’s nothing kind in it. 

The man’s eyes dart between the two of you. He tries to pull free again, but Chrollo doesn’t budge. You think you hear something crack. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he says quickly, forcing a normal laugh. And then, as though desperately trying to regain some of his lost dignity, he adds, “Didn’t realize she was spoken for. You should take better care of your things, shouldn’t you?”

The silence that follows is deafening. Chrollo doesn’t react beyond a slight tilt of his head, expression unreadable, but you think the words get under his skin, unintentionally striking far too close to home with everything happening between Hisoka and his spiders. You can tell the stranger regrets the words as soon as he speaks them, glancing around as though to see if anyone will intervene to help him. It’s impressive, you think, that Chrollo can command this type of presence even when not utilizing his nen. Everyone in the immediate vicinity seems to have made the same quiet decision: to pretend they see nothing.

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? Let go,” the stranger says, face pale and clearly in pain. Chrollo doesn’t respond for a moment, but then he releases his wrist. He stumbles back as though he were shoved, clutching his arm to his chest and staring at the bruises already blooming across his skin. 

“The next time you touch something that doesn’t belong to you, be sure you can afford the consequences,” Chrollo murmurs, voice light, but clearly a threat. The stranger opens his mouth, closes it, pride and survival instinct warring on his face before the latter wins. He turns sharply and vanishes into the blur of gamblers and cigarette smoke.

“You totally killed my vibe,” you mutter, folding your arms over your chest as you turn your back to him, looking back down at the roulette table. “That was so unnecessary.”

Chrollo sits in the man’s vacant chair like it’s where he was always meant to be, folding his hands neatly on the table. In his panic to leave, he’d left all of his chips behind, and Chrollo hums as he looks down at them before splitting them into four stacks, placing one on six, one on nine, one on eleven, and one on twelve. The dealer stares at him for a moment, and Chrollo gives him an easy smile, as though daring him to say something. 

He doesn’t.

“Au contraire, I think it was quite necessary,” he murmurs. “He was becoming far too pushy, and he made a rude assumption.”

You blame the alcohol for the way you instinctively try to make a dig. “About you not taking care of your things?”

His lips press together briefly, but then he smiles lightly. “I take excellent care of what’s mine,” he says softly. “Some people just need to be reminded to keep their hands off.”

You scoff, turning back to the wheel, though your pulse hasn’t quite settled. “You’re unbelievable.”

“Undeniably,” he agrees, resting an elbow on the table. His eyes track the ball as it bounces around the wheel, watching as it slows down and finally lands on the number nine. Nine—Pakunoda, you remember distantly as a fond expression crosses his face, lashes fluttering briefly. “Ah, my win, it seems.”

You huff and look away as the dealer takes yet another stack of your chips while dolling out a massive stack to the too-smug man on your right. Chrollo gives you an easy smile, “Have you had your fun gambling away your money yet?”

You don’t respond to him beyond a bitter look, but you do glance at the woman on your left briefly before sliding the rest of your chips to her. “Here,” you mutter, “for you.”

“Uh—wh—” she starts to stammer out, but you’re already on your feet to leave. Unfortunately, the floor tilts beneath you, and you nearly go careening into it. Luckily, or unluckily, Chrollo is quick out of his seat once he pockets all of “his” newly won chips, grabbing your waist to stop you from hitting the ground hard.

He helps you back to your feet quickly, one hand sliding around your waist to hold you steady against him. Amused, he asks, “How much did you drink?”

“Not nearly enough,” you reply, but you find yourself leaning into him as you walk, each step unbalanced. 

Christ, you think, blinking to clear your doubled vision. Maybe you did drink too much—it didn’t hit you until you started moving.

“You’re slurring quite heavily,” Chrollo notes.

“I’m doing no such thing,” you snap instantly, but then frown as you try to listen to yourself, trying to figure out if you are slurring. “Where are you taking me anyway?” 

“To one of the rooms upstairs,” he explains, casting you a long look when he sees you swipe another drink from a passing waiter. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?” 

“Not nearly,” you tell him again, and then accuse, “So you’re no better than him, trying to get me into one of the private rooms while I’m intoxicated. Pervert.”

Chrollo’s face shifts. “He was trying to get you into one of the private rooms?” he asks, voice low.

You don’t catch his tone, rolling your eyes. “Obviously, what else do you imagine he was feeling me up for?” you ask dryly. 

Chrollo doesn’t respond for a long while, so you look at him, lips parting when you see the eerily blank expression on his face. His grip on your waist tightens just slightly, not enough to hurt, but enough that you feel the tension hidden behind the carefully constructed mask he wears. 

“I see,” he finally says, the words quiet and so devoid of emotion that it’s worse than rage. 

“Relax,” you tell him as the two of you reach the spiral stairs leading to the second level of the casino. You take a sip of your drink and then stare up at the daunting ascension. Already, the steps are swirling into each other; you feel unbalanced just looking at them. You glance at Chrollo, and then say, “The boat is rocking a bit too much; I don’t know if I’ll be able to get up the stairs.”

“The boat, is it?” he asks with a small smile, the coldness draining from his expression as he looks down at you.

“Indeed,” you say with a nod of your head that makes you terribly nauseous, so you immediately stop. “The boat. Must be rough waters.”

“Must be,” he echoes. “Just lean into me. I won’t let you fall.”

You think to protest, but the idea of it is exhausting, so you only exhale, leaning your head against his bicep as you take your first step up. You blame the alcohol for the warmth you feel when his arm tightens around you, guiding you effortlessly up the narrow staircase. The world tilts and sways, but you don’t stumble once. You’re acutely aware of the heat radiating from his body, the pressure of his hand at your waist, the rhythm of his breath near your ear. The smell of him—something faintly metallic beneath expensive cologne—makes your head spin worse. 

He smells good, you think. Really good. 

“What was that?” he asks, amused.

“What?” you ask flatly, embarrassment flooding you in an instant. Did you really just say that out loud? “Nothing.”

“Sure,” he agrees. You can hear the smile in his voice. 

“Nothing,” you repeat, glaring at the stairs like they personally betrayed you. “Don’t sound so smug.”

“It’s not smug,” he says, though the faint lilt of amusement in his voice betrays him. “I’m flattered. That’s the first time you've complimented me. I think I’m growing on you.”

“You wish,” you bark, pushing away from him, and immediately tripping over the next stair. He grabs you quickly before you can hit the ground, steadying you again, all too pleased with himself.

“I do,” he murmurs, too honestly. You don’t think you’re meant to hear it, because when you glance up at him, you realize that his smile falters and his eyes are a bit too honest as he stares ahead.

He’s changed a lot over the years, but the one thing that never did…

You push the traitorous thought away instantly, cursing your drunken, wandering mind, trying to focus as he leads you down the hallway lined with private suites. You tell yourself you’ll sit for a minute, get some water, then leave. It’s dangerous being around him when you’re so intoxicated, but especially after the conversation you had with Franklin yesterday, and the one with Machi the other day.

“You’re very compliant when you’re drunk,” Chrollo observes lightly as he leads you into the room he unlocked, hand never quite leaving your waist, even as he slides the door shut behind the two of you. The lighting in the room is nice and dim, a soft amber glow spilling from a chandelier overhead, catching on the silver rim of his earrings and the edges of his hair. The noise of the casino fades completely once the door shuts, leaving only the faint hum of electricity and the sound of your own uneven breathing.

The room feels too quiet, too warm. Too close.

You remember what he said after a moment too long and scowl, “Don’t get used to it.”

You shrug out of his hold, but his hand lingers a fraction too long against your side before falling away. You take a step toward the low table in the center of the room, reaching for the neat bottle of wine sitting there before you let yourself fall back onto the couch, sprawling out. 

“I won’t,” he says, reaching to take the bottle of wine from you to place it back on the table. You think that’s his way of cutting you off without saying anything, so you scowl at him. “It’s not half as entertaining as watching you get yourself all worked up.”

“I bet,” you say with a frown. “You always pick the nicest places for our arguments, don’t you?”

He doesn’t answer right away, and you don’t feel his gaze on you, so you glance at him curiously, catching the pensive expression on his face as he looks down at the center table. When he speaks, his tone is mild. “We don’t have to argue tonight.”

“That’s optimistic,” you mutter. 

“Perhaps,” he concedes, and then makes his way over to the couch to sit next to you. He’s careful to give you space, which you appreciate, because you don’t think you’ll be able to think straight if he comes any closer. His expression is far too genuine as he tilts his head to the side to look at you and says, “I like watching you get yourself worked up. I don’t like arguing with you.”

You wrap your arms around your torso and look away from him, Franklin’s wretched words echoing through your head yet again. You mutter petulantly, “Could’ve fooled me.”

Chrollo hums quietly, a small, thoughtful sound that somehow makes the silence feel heavier. You spare a quick glance from the corner of your eye, and your heart jumps into your throat when you see that he’s looking down at his forearm, where your hateful words are carved into his skin. His thumb traces over them absently, and it makes you feel nauseous. You blame it on the alcohol, again, and grab the nearest pillow to hug it to your chest.

“What are you ill with?” you ask. You look away instantly when his gaze snaps up toward you. “Do you know?”

Chrollo doesn’t respond for a moment. You start to think maybe he won’t at all, until he takes in a small breath and tells you quietly, “I do not.”

“You were coughing up blood,” you say. It’s an accusation as much as a question. He said it would pass, but coughing up blood is not something that just passes. 

“I was,” he agrees, and says nothing else. 

“Have you since?” 

He doesn’t answer, but that in itself is an answer.

“So, it did not pass,” you say simply, pressing your lips together.

“It will,” he replies, voice clipped.

“And if it doesn’t?” you press.

“I think you are the one who likes arguing,” Chrollo says blandly, looking away from you.

“I’m not trying to argue,” you whisper. Your voice is too small and too worried; you want to take back the words as soon as you’ve spoken them. You don’t dare look at him, because you can feel his gaze back on you. 

He exhales. “It will pass,” he repeats, signaling that’s the end of the discussion. 

You want to press some more, but you find yourself exhausted, so you nod slightly, more out of defeat than agreement, and sink deeper into the couch. The silence that follows is thick and uncomfortable, heavy with all of the things neither of you will say. You trace the edge of the pillow with your thumb, and you watch him from the corner of your eye carefully. 

He’s still looking at you. You can’t tell him to look away because you don’t want him to know that you’re looking at him, so you shift uncomfortably and hold the pillow tighter to your chest instead.

“I know you’re looking at me,” he says, faintly amused, and you immediately snap your gaze ahead again, ignoring how he lets out a huff of laughter. “How much did you drink before I got here?”

“Perhaps too much,” you finally concede, resting your cheek on the pillow and letting your eyes slide shut. “I lost count after the fifth, you see.”

“Is my company really so terrible that you would go to such lengths?” he drawls. His voice is light, but not entirely without edge.

You let out a faint hum, your words slurred with fatigue. You feel like you’re on a ship with how much your body seems to be rocking—well, you are on a ship, but the Black Whale is much too large to be rocked around like this. 

“I thought it would make being around you bearable.”

“That’s unkind,” he says, though he sounds more amused than offended.

“Everything I say to you is unkind,” you murmur, sighing softly. “You bring it out of me.”

He makes a soft sound in his throat—you can’t tell if it’s a chuckle or a sigh, maybe both. “Is that so?”

“Mhm,” you agree, too tired to respond properly.

You think you might’ve dozed off for a second, because you’re a bit startled when you hear him speak again, heart racing and eyes shooting open before you settle down again. He says quietly, “I do not want you to have to endure my company if it’s so… unbearable.”

You glance at him, catching the faintest trace of sincerity on his face. It’s disorienting. You immediately shut your eyes again. It’s easier to pretend he’s just being himself: suave and charming and far too manipulative.

“Isn’t it, though?”

“I would hope not,” he answers softly. It sounds more like a confession than a retort. You bite your bottom lip hard and then turn your head away. You hear him inhale, and then he asks, almost hesitantly, “Do you think… Ah, never mind.”

“Hm?” you hum, interest piqued, feeling awake again all of a sudden. “What?” 

“Nothing.”

“Tell me,” you say, sitting up to turn to look at him again, shifting closer and leaning in slightly. “What were you going to ask?” 

He gives you an amused look, and you’re not sure why. “It was nothing important.”

“Tell me anyway,” you insist, becoming more energetic with each refusal to explain. “What do I think of what? What were you going to ask?” 

He sighs heavily, looking ahead, but you see a small smile curving at the corner of his lips. Your breath catches slightly when you see the soft look in his eyes. He looks almost… no. You don’t even dare let the thought cross your mind, and you desperately try to ignore the flutter in your chest. 

He keeps his gaze fixed somewhere ahead. “I was only going to ask if you think that there is… a path forward for us,” he says at last, tone carefully neutral. You blink, brows furrowing as you process his question. “I understand that I’m not, mm… I’m sure you envisioned someone different as your—” He doesn’t say the word. He pauses again as though he’s unsure how to phrase what he’s trying to ask, but you understand. “You do not need to answer. It was… just an indulgence.”

Asshole, you think. Asking you this when he knows you’ve been drinking, probably hoping you won’t remember in the morning. Spitefully, you hope that you do remember, but then you would also have to remember the mortifying comment you made on the steps, and the fluttering in your chest just before when you were looking at him, and you don’t think you want to remember that. 

You shouldn’t answer at all. He doesn’t deserve a response from you, and you don’t know how to answer it anyway, and if he can’t even articulate the question properly, then—

“I do not want a future with you,” you say, raising your chin and shifting to fold your knees beneath you. You’re far too close to him. You can see the corner of his mouth tighten, and you find yourself fumbling out more words before you can stop yourself. “I was hoping that this was a mistake, you see. I thought maybe you were a creature from the Dark Continent—” Chrollo is visibly startled by that, turning his head to look at you with furrowed brows and confusion written all over his face. “—some of the Chimera Ants looked very human, you see, it’s not too far-fetched.”

“I’m not sure what answer I was expecting, but I think that’s worse,” Chrollo says dryly. “Forget I asked.”

“I’m not done,” you protest.

“I promise, you do not have to continue.”

You continue anyway. 

“But I have concluded that you’re not a Chimera Ant,” you say, “or any other type of Dark Continent creature, for that matter.”

“How generous of you,” he mutters, dragging a hand down his face, tone flat but eyes flicking toward you with an incredulous sort of disbelief that you pointedly ignore. “I’m relieved to be cleared of that particular suspicion.”

You nod solemnly, as if you’re having a serious academic discussion rather than an emotional breakdown in slow motion. Ah, you really should not drink so much, you think belatedly as your mouth runs on uncontrollably. “Yes, well, I had to consider it. You’re strange enough that it warranted some investigation.”

“I see.” He pauses, lips twitching faintly. “And what was your conclusion, then? If I’m not a creature from beyond the known world?”

You pause, suddenly feeling all too sober, although the nausea you feel and the unsteadiness point otherwise. There’s a heaviness on your chest that you desperately wish would go away. You chew the inside of your cheek, holding the pillow tighter. You turn away from him, looking forward, ignoring his eyes on you. 

“I think you’re just… a man,” you finally say softly. “Which is somehow worse. Because that means there was no mistake, and you are my—” You also don’t say the word. Your voice cracks when you try, so you skip over it. “—and I’m scared of what that might mean. About me. If you and I are—” You skip over it again. “—even if there is a path forward for us, I don’t want it. I hate you, and I hate what you stand for, and I hate what you’ve done, and I hate that you’ve hurt so many people—my friends.”

“I understand,” he replies, and the way he says it, so gently, unoffended despite your cruel words—it makes you hate him even more. 

You fall quiet, sinking back against the couch, staring stubbornly at the dim chandelier instead of his face. “That was cruel to ask while I’m drunk,” you accuse quietly after a moment of silence.

“I know,” he agrees. “I apologize.”

“I don’t forgive you.”

“I know.”

You find that the following silence is not quite as awkward as you expect it to be, and your gaze tracks back over to him. He looks calm—he always looks calm, but there’s something off about it this time, brittle on the surface, a veneer that threatens to slip away. His hands are folded loosely in his lap, but the tendons in his wrist are drawn tight, and his expression, though composed as ever, doesn’t quite reach his eyes. You think that he looks tired. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes, the kind that sits deep in the soul and waits. You remember how he spoke of Uvogin at dinner the first night, and then Machi’s words about Shalnark and Kortopi, and then Franklin’s comments at the library. 

You wish that maybe you hadn’t spoken at all. You feel guilty, you think, and you shouldn’t feel guilty. He asked. It’s not your fault he didn’t get the answer he wanted. It’s not. You are tired. All you wanted was a break from everything, and somehow, you only made yourself feel even worse.

“It scares me.” You find yourself repeating, tired and drunk and immediately regretful, but it doesn’t stop you from barreling on. Your words are clumsy and unsure, thoughts only half-formed in your addled brain. He glances at you, quiet but questioning. “I… Because you are my soulmate—” You say the word. It makes your chest squeeze unbearably tight. His eyes widen slightly, but you press on. “—and a part of me will always want this… you. And I think a part of me wants the path forward. But—if there’s a path forward, it means I could take it. It means that…” You trail off, losing your train of thought. “I don’t know what that would say about me. That’s all.”

“I understand,” he says again quietly.

You feel antsy. You don’t like how much you just let spill.

“Did you really use to be the runt?” you blurt suddenly to make up for what had just tumbled out of your mouth, gaze shifting to look at him. You blink slowly when you see how Chrollo pauses at your question, as if processing it, and then slowly looks down at you. “Hm? Did you?”

“I—” he starts to say, and then pauses, as though composing himself. You find yourself snorting when you see the pink flush that begins to spread over his cheeks. Chrollo Lucilfer, flustered, you never thought you’d see it. “... Where did you hear that, exactly?”

“That’s not a no,” you say, yawning, eyes fluttering shut as drowsiness starts to hit you hard. You exhale, head lolling to the side. You don’t notice that it rests on his shoulder. “I’m not surprised. It’s kind of fitting.”

You’re already asleep by the time he asks, “… What does that mean?”

You don’t see the fond look in his eyes as he looks down at you, nor do you see the crestfallen one as he looks away. You don’t remember any of this in the morning. 

It’s for the best.

——————

It is 3:15 PM on Friday, August 13th, the sixth day of the voyage to the Dark Continent, when you finally come face-to-face with Tserriednich for the first time in five years. Three years abroad, looking over your shoulder every second of every day in fear of him finding you, and two years in Kakin, devoting yourself to the front lines of the skirmishes between the empire and Ochima and against the gruesome invasion of Chimera Ants so that he can’t reach you—all for naught.

Your day was going good, too. You woke with a hangover—you don’t remember much of the night before, but Chrollo evidently got you back up to your room. You’re quite terrified about what might’ve happened while you were drunk, god knows what you said, but that’s an issue for future you. But Machi, bless her, had some hangover cure ready for you in the morning, so you were able to meet with Luzurus in the morning. As much as Tserriednich made him out to be an idiot who couldn’t tell up from down or his way out of the bottom of a bottle, the Seventh Prince is unnervingly perceptive. He’s used his station as son of the Second Queen to get an abundance of information about Zhang Lei, Sale-Sale, the twins, Marayam, and Woble; his intel on Benjamin and Tserriednich is lacking, and Camilla, Tubeppa, and Halkenburg have all been seriously guarded, but having some insight on Zhang Lei is game-changing for you.

Luzurus offered you a simple exchange: he wants you to teach him nen, and have his back against the older princes; in return, he will have yours, and he’ll give you equal say and power over the Cha-R while the expedition is ongoing. After you agreed, you taught Luzurus the basics of nen and told him to practice opening and closing his aura nodes through meditation. Once he can create a ball between his hands, you’ll come back and give him some more drills. He was displeased, realizing that learning nen isn’t going to be an easy task, but he agreed and sent you off to talk to your uncle, Brocco Li.

That conversation was much longer and far more taxing than your meeting with Luzurus, but even more fruitful. You spent three hours trying to figure out how to go about pinpointing Hisoka Morow’s location on the Black Whale. You don’t know why you’re expending so much of your time on this. This was not part of the deal you made with Chrollo. You told him you would get him access to the upper tiers so that they could continue their search, but you weren’t going to be getting involved personally. You tell yourself it’s because Hisoka dragged you into it the other night when he attacked you, but you know it’s not that simple.

Brocco Li agreed, begrudgingly, to move some of his men from Tier Five to Tier Two, but he said that he wouldn’t make any moves in Heil-Ly or Xi-Yu territory, so if Hisoka moves back down to Tier Three or Four, that will be on the Troupe to handle. 

You think there’s something else he’s not telling you, because when you pressed for answers as to how Hisoka even managed to get to Tier Two, he got cagey and changed the subject. You were tempted to press, but you would save that conversation for your next meeting with him. Your partnership with him is through Luzurus, and you don’t want to tick the man off when you’re not even sure how he feels about this alliance.

You do know that he doesn’t like the Phantom Troupe, which doesn’t bode well for you. His whole demeanor changed when you brought them up and admitted that you were working with them. You didn’t tell him why you were working with them, because you don’t want anyone to know who you are to Chrollo, but you had to at least tell him that you have a deal with them, because it was what led into your conversation about Hisoka. 

You’re glad that you left Machi and Nobunaga outside while you spoke to him, because you don’t think either of them would’ve appreciated what he had to say about them: lacking the etiquette required of people with power, savages who don’t hide their talons and don’t care about life or death, freaks who couldn’t even fit into Meteor City. You found yourself uncomfortable with his comments, and you’re not sure why. He’s right—they are savages, they don’t care about life and death, they’ve proven it time and time again, but you couldn’t help the way your gut twisted up the longer he insulted them. 

Eventually, he said, “As long as you can keep them under control, I guess we can work with that. I suppose this is a good thing.”

You weren’t going to correct him if it meant the Cha-R would be working with you and the Troupe to track down that godforsaken clown. You left the VVIP Living Quarters in high spirits, if only a little uncomfortable. You got everything you needed—that’s all that matters. Now, you can go back to your quarters and rest.

Or so you thought.

You hear Tserriednich before you see him. His voice is smooth, poisoned honey. Laughter follows, the same low, indulgent, cruel laugh that has haunted you every waking night for the past five years. All of your fight or flight instincts fizzle away as you freeze midstep, Nobunaga and Machi’s voices suddenly sound like they’re deep underwater—or you are. Your body remembers before your mind does: the press of fingers digging into the bruises he left on your upper arm, the stench of blood and his rich cologne, the soft, tender murmurs of instruction whispered against your ear as he guided you into whatever role he wanted you to play.

You remind yourself of your promise to Kacho. Your promise to yourself.

Neither works to break you from your stupor.

You only barely manage to breathe out, “Don’t intervene, no matter what happens,” before he turns the corner. Machi and Nobunaga both shoot you wildly concerned looks and then glance at one another, but you can’t bring yourself to say anything else.

He pauses at the corner when he realizes that you’re standing there. His hair is longer now, his frame taller and leaner, but his lips curl up into the same smile you’ve seen hundreds, thousands of times before. 

“Little bird,” Tserriednich drawls, making his way toward you like no time has passed at all. “Have you been avoiding me? I missed you these past few years.”

“She’s my responsibility. You don’t have to bother with this, big brother. I’ll scold her properly.”

You don’t reply, your heart is racing, words that he isn’t speaking ring through your head, old memories that make your throat feel tight and your pulse skip with fear. Fuck, you need to snap out of it.

“Angle your hand just like this. It’ll peel up smoothly… There you go, that’s my girl.”

His lips curve up in amusement as he continues. “You gave me quite the scare when you didn’t come back home that Sunday. I was worried. You always came back to me on the seventh day. No matter how far you went, no matter what trouble you found, you’d return. I used to wait for it—six nights, and seven mornings, always certain you’d appear. You were very punctual in your rebellions, you know? A creature of habit. Predictable, even when you thought you weren’t. It was endearing, in a way. Like a cat that thinks it’s gone feral but still comes scratching at the same door when it’s hungry. You thought I didn’t notice, didn’t you? The way you’d test the leash and then crawl back before it could snap.”

You don’t respond, fists clenched at your side as you stare at him with wide eyes.

“Until you didn’t. Seven days passed. Then fourteen. Then thirty. I started to wonder if you’d finally learned how to run properly—or if someone had simply taken you apart before you could.” His voice drops a bit quieter, taking a sharp edge that makes your hair stand. “Do you know how many people I sent to find you? How many cities I burned through, names I had to cross out? I was so relieved when you were finally spotted in the Mimbo Republic.”

What?

Your stomach drops. Mimbo. You were in Mimbo six months after you left. He’s known where you were that long? He could’ve come for you at any time, you realize. He let you think you were free of him. It was as you always feared: every moment you spent looking over your shoulder was with good cause. You were never out of his reach. Not really.

“You’ve grown,” Tserriednich muses, lifting his hand to tug at a strand of your hair, walking around you as if inspecting some work of art he once abandoned but always meant to finish. His pace is steady, the same way a predator’s is when it knows its prey has nowhere to run. “I always knew you would be beautiful when you grew up.”

He presses his knuckle to the small of your back and then drags it up your spine to the spot between your shoulders, signaling for you to fix your posture. Your body reacts before your mind can stop it—your shoulders straighten, chin tilting the way he taught you years ago. The motion is carved into you, a reflex you can’t unlearn in spite of years of trying and oceans between you. Rage burns hot in your chest at your own compliance, but he hums low in his throat, as though pleased by the behavior of a well-trained hound.

Pull yourself together. What are you doing?

“Good girl,” he praises, approval threaded through every syllable. He leans in close, breath ghosting the shell of your ear as he whispers only for you to hear, “I would hate to think all of my efforts were wasted in your silly bout of rebellion.”

You dig your nails into your palms, drawing blood, but not even the pain can draw you from whatever fucked up spell he has you under. You want to cry. Scream. Fold in on yourself. You’re going to kill him—you promised Kacho, you promised yourself. You’re going to kill him. He would die by your hand.

But how are you supposed to kill him when you can’t even bring yourself to breathe without his permission? How are you supposed to kill him when the moment you’re back in his presence, you’re ten years old again? Weak, scared, and too obedient for your own good. You loathe it—you loathe him. 

Your spine stays straight, your chin lifted, your gaze trained on him. Meek. Pathetic.

“Talk to me,” he murmurs, circling until he stands before you again. His hand rises, the back of his knuckles brushing your cheek with mock-gentleness. “I heard you spent some time in Yorbia—Yorknew City. I’ve never been so far west. Did you go to all the museums? I know you were fascinated with its history. How was it? Did you miss me?”

He’s taunting you.

He tilts his head, studying you with idle amusement, and then, because he can’t help himself, he presses further. “After that, wasn’t it Swardani? You must’ve enjoyed their libraries, right? I heard they have the largest in the world. And then that charming little port town in Kukan’yu. Did you visit the ruins of Orsage while you were there? I bet you did.” His smile widens as your breath hitches, satisfaction glinting in his eyes. “You never were hard to find, little bird. Do you know how many times I almost came for you?”

Your chest burns with humiliation and fury, with the crushing weight of all of your efforts being reduced to another one of Tserriednich’s mind games with you. He let you run because it amused him. He could’ve snapped his fingers and had you back in his grasp at any time.

“I—” you start to say, but the words are little over a breath, and you can’t push out the rest of your sentence.

Tserriednich’s eyes glitter playfully. “What was that? You’ll have to speak up.”

“I hate you.”

The words cut your throat on the way out. They feel like knives dragging against your vocal cords, a betrayal of every instinct drilled into you under his hand. His smile widens, teeth flashing, and then he laughs, delighted.

“Adorable,” he says at last, pinching your chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting your face up to his. “Your wings have started to grow back. I’ll enjoy clipping them again.”

You bite your tongue until you taste iron. Your vision blurs, but you refuse to shed the building tears. After what feels like an eternity of him studying your face, he speaks again, “Smile for me. Prettily. The way I taught you to.”

The command is old and familiar, the same one he would speak before the two of you would enter events together. The ballroom lights, the endless crowds of nobles with prying eyes and sharp tongues. The way he would tighten his grip on your wrist, low enough that no one else could see, when your expression faltered. The ache in your cheeks from holding a perfect expression for hours while he paraded you at his side like some prized possession. It all presses heavily into the back of your skull. Your jaw twitches on reflex. 

For a heartbeat, you resist. You’ll deny him of this at least. 

And then, your lashes flutter slightly. Your lips curl upward.

Slow. Perfect. Just the way he trained you to. 

It makes your stomach turn, bile burning your throat, but you do it.

You smile.

Tserriednich’s gaze softens like a man beholding his prized possession restored, delight dances across every line of his face. “There she is,” he croons. “My beautiful little bird. Still mine, even after all this time apart.”

You don’t realize a tear slides down your cheek until Tserriednich wipes it away with his thumb. Your heart pounds in your ears, drowning out everything as he drags his thumb down to the corner of your mouth to trace the shape of your smile. He leans in to press his lips against your forehead.

“I’ll call for you soon,” he finally says, stepping back. Even with space between the two of you, you still can’t breathe. “My girl, Theta, has been teaching me nen. You probably learned it while you were abroad, yeah? You can tell me how I’m doing. You’ll be impressed, I bet.”

Nen. 

Nen.

Tserriednich with nen. 

You’d known this was a possibility since Kurapika blasted the existence of nen beasts over the shared comms and offered to train the other princes’ guards, but it's only been six days. There’s no way that he actually managed to make progress that quickly, right? Your gaze drags over to the blonde woman standing slightly behind Tserriednich. She looks guilty—ashamed—and you know all of your worst fears have come true. Any advantage you might’ve had over Tserriednich, gone in an instant.

“See you,” he says casually, brushing past you to continue on wherever he was going.

You don’t move. Machi and Nobunaga only do now that he’s gone. Machi shifts in front of you, grabbing your arm to get your attention, outrage painting her expression. She demands, “What was that? Are you okay?” 

“I need to—” You try to speak, but the words don’t come out right. They stumble and choke in your throat, leaving you half-retching over air. You look desperately in the direction of your quarters, vision swarming with black dots and tears, and the two spiders understand without you needing to finish. Machi slips under one arm, Nobunaga under the other, hands steady as they guide you forward, even if they’re visibly antsy with the number of questions they have for you.

“Franklin, get her water,” Machi orders the moment the door shuts behind the three of you. Nobunaga reaches for the trash bin near the couch as soon as he sees you gagging, and Machi is quick to grab your hair, uncharacteristically gentle as she eases you to the ground, heaving into the bin. “Shit.”

“What happened while you guys were gone?” Franklin demands as he comes into the main room, still a bit bleary with sleep. His massive presence fills the room as though he can shield it from whatever just happened, grabbing a bottle of water off of the counter to bring it over to Machi.

“Huh? Is she okay?” Shizuku asks airily with a yawn and a stretch, making her way over to you and Machi. She hesitates before touching your shoulder, kneeling down on your other side. “What happened?”

Distantly, you hear Nobunaga talking to the two of them—low, quick words that the others catch but you can’t. His voice is sharp, almost defensive, and you know they’re talking about you, around you, but their words blur and distort until they’re just unintelligible noise to your ears.

Your world narrows to the sour burn in your throat and the heaving in your chest. You don’t know if you’re vomiting or sobbing anymore; you feel like you’re being torn apart from the inside out. Tears stream hot and blinding down your face, soaking your hands as you clutch the edge of the bin.

Every time you shut your eyes, he’s there.

Smug. Delighted. Smiling at your suffering, treating you like a possession. A doll. His voice echoes in your skull, his knuckles trail up your spine, his thumb rests on your lips. He demands a smile. Your lips instinctively curve up.

You gag again, dry this time, body shuddering so hard that you feel like you’re coming apart at the seams.

You hate him. You hate him. You hate him.

You don’t know how long it takes you to calm down. Could be minutes, hours, you can’t tell. The four spiders linger in the room until you do, and when you finally have, Machi draws your attention, eyebrows knit and lips pressed together tight.

“Do you want me to kill him?” 

You can tell from her expression that she’s serious. That if you say yes, she’ll make sure that Tserriednich is dead by nightfall.

“No,” you whisper, shaking your head. You rub the tears from your cheeks and take the rag that Shizuku had gone to get to wipe your face. “Don’t.”

“But—”

“It has to be me,” you say, voice breaking over the words as your grip tightens around the rag. “You can’t kill him, because it has to be me.”

Machi’s gaze flashes with understanding, and she lets out a huff of air. You can’t tell if it’s a laugh or a scoff, but then she nods her head and meets your gaze again, expression grim and jaw tight.

“Make it hurt.”

——————

When Saturday evening comes along, you’re not sure if Chrollo will ask for you, because you have no idea what transpired between the two of you on Thursday. You’re not sure if you want him to, which is more worrisome than anything else, though you convince yourself that it’s mostly because you just want to know exactly what happened that night. You spent the whole day on edge waiting to hear from Machi; each hour that passed without her delivering a message, the more antsy you became.

You find yourself inexplicably relieved when Machi comes into the room, half past six, and says, “Got something white to wear?”

Tier Two is hosting a white party to celebrate your first Saturday on board. Ostentatious, gaudy, and utterly inane—it is not the first white party you’ve endured in your life, but it will hopefully be the last. Unfortunately, because you had no entourage entering the ship (and also thought you would be dying rather quickly), you brought only a few bags with you. A handful of outfits, sleepwear, and some of your favorite jewelry. Nothing white, besides the uniform you loathe so much, so you find yourself highly irritated as you make your way down to Tier Two. 

Still, you don’t stand out too much. The nobles parade about in gowns and tailored suits, but white parties are a favorite pastime of Kakin’s military officers, and they too are dressed in uniform. More than once, you’ve been stopped for idle chatter, forced to feign interest while your patience wears seriously thin.

Luckily, you’ve avoided your siblings, for the most part. You saw Benjamin and Camilla briefly when you got to the deck, Zhang Lei is off whispering with his associates somewhere to your left, and Tubeppa is with her guards on the far end of the deck. You feel a bit unnerved knowing the three siblings who want you dead the most are all at this event, and though you know Machi and Shizuku are hovering around until you get to Chrollo, you still find yourself anxious.

“If you’ll excuse me,” you say to one of the starry-eyed officers who cornered you for a chat with a thin smile. 

Benjamin is still watching you from the upper level—you can feel his beady, murderous eyes tracking your every move. You give him a cold look from the corner of your eye, watching as he raises his chin and sneers down at you before you scoff and make your way over to the edge of the ship, intent on getting far away from the crowds.

You make your way up the stairs to the second level of the Tier Two deck, where the crowds are more dispersed, and the air is brisk against your skin. The sun is lowering, painting the waters in streaks of gold and red. For the first time in the evening, you almost feel like you can breathe, and—

Oh.

You falter as your gaze lands on a figure leaning over the railing, looking at the restless waters of Lake Mobius. Chrollo. He is ever the picture of contradiction: sharp and soft, divine and ruinous, the fallen angel of his chosen namesake. And yet, in this golden light, dressed in white, you imagine he looks less like the exile cast down from grace, and more like the angel before the fall—brilliant before his descent, beautiful in a way that defies sense, dangerous in the way only something meant to inspire devotion can be. The dying light of the sun paints his features warm and uncharacteristically open, and the sight unsettles you terribly, because you find your breath catching and your heart skipping a beat.

He turns to look at you, gray eyes unbearably soft, the sea breeze tugging strands of dark hair loose across his forehead. The faintest curve touches his lips, not quite a smile, but it still leaves you momentarily star-struck. You hate the way it disarms you. Hate the way your steps falter. How dare he look at you like this? How dare he—

“Hey,” he greets, voice low. You wonder if he can tell how he’s captivated you so easily. He probably can. “Beautiful night.”

“You look odd in white,” you say, and it’s not what you mean to say, but Chrollo’s lips curve up anyway. Odd is not the first word that comes to mind, but you refuse to speak that one out loud. You think he knows from how he tilts his head to the side.

“Odd is a step up from sickening, I’ll take it,” he says easily, gaze sliding over you as he takes in your outfit. “You were in the Kakin military?”

“You should know this already,” you answer blandly, pulling at the cuffs of your sleeve uncomfortably. “Machi didn’t tell you?”

“No,” he says. “I only asked her to tell me things she thought were necessary. I wanted to get to know you on my own.”

“Oh,” you say faintly, glancing down at the ground. His words make you feel oddly flustered. You swallow thickly and then say, “Yeah, I was in the military. I started at the Academy when I was twelve, graduated at fourteen, and then served for a year before I left. When I came back two years ago, I reenlisted to—” get away from Tserriednich “—not get wrapped up in court politics again.”

“Ah,” he replies quietly, reaching out to brush his finger against the collar of your jacket. You watch curiously as he pins something to it, unable to make out what it is with his fingers in the way. “You were young.”

Wryly, you smile and recite the words you’d been told your whole life—by commanding officers, your tutors and instructors, Tserriednich: “Better than anyone years above me.”

“I’m sure,” he agrees, and you think he’s being sarcastic, but you catch the genuine expression on his face and realize he’s not. He exhales as he looks down at what he had pinned to your jacket and says, “It’s unbefitting—the uniform.”

He means it as a compliment, you know that, but you still find yourself bristling. Your jaw tightens, “And what would you know?”

“I know that you prefer silver to gold,” he notes absently, running his fingers along the golden fringe on your shoulders. “That you fiddle with your jewelry when you’re uncomfortable, but since you can’t wear it with your uniform, you’re stuck playing with your cuffs—”

“I could wear my jewelry with my uniform if I want, but I’ve found that twice now, after our meetings, my favorite bracelet and ring has gone missing,” you say with a tight, accusatory smile. “You wouldn’t happen to know any thieves with an interest in Kakin jewels, would you?”

Chrollo’s smile widens. “Several, actually.”

You don’t reply to that, gaze drifting down to what he pinned on your jacket. You press your lips together when you see it’s a small, exquisitely detailed pin in the shape of a bird. The metal glints silver in the setting sun, tiny gemstones of sapphire and ruby catching the light. Clearly, it’s very expensive, far beyond anything a casual gift should be.

“Well, you should also know I hate birds,” you say quietly, Tserriednich’s pet name ringing through your ears. You smooth your hands over your white pants before asking snidely, “Who did you steal this from?” 

He uses two fingers to beckon you closer, and you raise your eyebrows at him before reluctantly taking a few steps toward him. You stiffen when one of his hands finds your waist, and he shifts you around so that you’re looking out toward the crowds on the lower level. Your body is flush against his side, and his hand slides down to your hip. It’s intimate, possessive, almost, and your chest tightens, every nerve in your body somehow screaming in protest and aching in need at the same time. You can feel the heat of his body through the thick fabric of your uniform, the pressure of his fingers anchoring you in a place you don’t want to be, but can’t seem to move from.

He dips his head down so that his lips brush your ear, and your breath hitches. He lifts his hand to point to your left; with his breath fanning softly against your skin and his body so close to yours, you almost forget what you’d asked him.

“That woman right over there,” he hums. Your gaze follows his finger to a beautiful woman with long dark hair, laughing at something Sale-sale is saying. You hadn’t even realized that he was here, too. “Slipped it off her dress.”

A fleeting thought crosses your mind that Chrollo must’ve gotten up close and personal to get it off of her dress without her noticing, but you push it away along with the tightness in your chest. 

“Lady Sohana Neral,” you say absently. “This is the fifth brother of mine she’s tried to seduce. She’ll likely succeed with Sale-sale, but she won’t get what she wants.”

“And what is it she wants?” Chrollo asks quietly. You’re sure he already knows the answer to his question, but you think he’s trying to make conversation with you.

“A name with more power than Neral,” you answer dryly. “The House of Neral is barely noble anymore. Too many scandals have followed them over the past ten years, and the recent crisis with the Chimera Ants left their estate in ruin. This bird is likely the most extravagant thing they have left to their name. You should return it. I don’t like birds anyway.”

“I’d sooner throw it over the side of the ship,” Chrollo replies, “and it’s not just a bird. It’s a phoenix. The great firebird that rises from the ashes, stronger and more resilient each time. Unbroken and ever-enduring. It reminded me of you. I thought you might like it.”

“Oh,” is all you can say, voice faint as you look down at the pin, lifting your fingers to brush against the edge of it. “I…”

Your voice trails off as you look up at Chrollo, heart jumping into your throat when you find that he’s already looking down at you. His nearness steals the air from your lungs. You’re caught in the narrow space you share—the flecks of black in his gray eyes, the uneven rhythm of his breath ghosting across your lips, the subtle brush of his nose against yours. 

One more breath, half a step, and you’d be kissing him.

Every rational part of you screams to step back, to shove him away, to remember everything he’s done, but your body betrays you. A foolish, impossible thought slips through your mind—you want to close the distance. You want to kiss him. Just once. Just to try it. Against all logic, all fury, all of the hatred carved into your bones, you ache to lean in. To close the distance. To give in to the bond. To taste him. Touch him.

It’s unbearable, the bond’s pull, dragging you where you swore you’d never go. You tell yourself that it’s not you, it can’t be you—you don’t want this, it’s the curse of the soulmate tie twisting your will, binding you to someone you despise. You hate him. You loathe him. He is a monster (is he?) and you want nothing to do with him. You want to tear him apart so that he can never hurt anyone again. You want nothing more than to see him broken and gone from this world forever. And yet—

You can’t move away. The way your pulse hammers and your heart flutters—it’s undeniable. You hate it. You hate it. You’re too close to him, far too close, and you still move in a little closer. His lashes lower, a hitch in his breath betraying him as he tips infinitesimally forward, and suddenly you’re dizzy, breathing his air, almost tasting the faint trace of wine on his tongue. 

His gaze drops to your lips, lingering there with agonizing intent before he looks back up at you, searching your eyes desperately, begging for permission. He wants to close the distance. He wants to give in as much as you do, maybe even more, and you want to let him, you want to—

A terrible coo of your name draws the two of you from whatever trance you were locked in. You’re mortified as you step away from Chrollo, smoothing out your jacket, turning your face away; you ignore the sigh that the man lets out as you focus your attention on who had spoken: your least favorite sister.

“Introduce your big sissy Cammy to your friend, mkay?” Camilla sings, hands locked behind her back, a sweet smile on her face. 

She doesn’t even look at you. Her gaze is focused on Chrollo with the same expression she wears when she’s flipping through a catalogue and finds a precious jewel that she desperately needs to have. Your tongue scrapes against your teeth as a bout of possessiveness wracks through you. You don’t want Camilla anywhere near Chrollo; she’s always been obsessed with collecting pretty things, and once she decides she wants something, she’ll go to any lengths to have it. 

“Fuck off, Camilla,” you say coldly. “Do us all a favor and throw yourself over the side of the ship.”

Chrollo coughs to cover a laugh, and Camilla’s gaze cuts toward you, the sweet mask dropping for something more sinister. Her lips curl up into a sharp smile, blue eyes wide with a type of glee that puts you on edge.

“Hah! That thick-skulled idiot was right, you did grow some claws while you were gone,” she croons, dropping the act. “I’ll let Tserriednich live long enough to clip them again before I kill you both.”

The words feel like a blow to the gut, and rage bubbles in your chest so quickly that you can hardly bring yourself to smother it. It’s Chrollo who anchors you, hand pressing against your lower back to bring you back to the ground, though you’re not sure if it steadies or unsettles you more. You realize, stomach dropping, that Camilla noticed the hand placement too, because she lets out a sharp laugh. 

“Oh? Does Tserriednich know you’ve gone and found yourself another keeper?” Camilla giggles, delighted. She tilts her head toward Chrollo, attention fully on him as she purrs, “You could do so much better. She’s damaged goods, through and through. Tserriednich made sure of that.”

Your nails dig into your palms so deep that you draw blood, but you refuse to flinch and let her have the satisfaction of knowing she’s managed to get under your skin. It’s what she wants: to peel you open in front of him, remind you of every scar Tserriednich left on you, every humiliation you’ve faced at his hands. 

Chrollo tilts his head, expression unreadable save for the faint curl of his lips. His thumb brushes lazily at your spine as he says, “It must be exhausting living in so much insecurity.” He looks down at you and states, “Yorbia.”

It takes a moment for you to understand why he said it, and when you realize, you snort and lift your hand to your mouth to cover your smile. 

You push the thoughts from your mind and ask wryly, “Does that make you or me Orsage?” 

“Both of us, I think,” he answers, lips curving up in amusement. 

Camilla is bothered by the fact that she doesn’t understand what the two of you are saying, sneering, making another derogatory comment, and then turning on her heel to storm off. You can breathe again once she’s gone, but Chrollo’s hand lingers on your back. You don’t push it away.

“Your other sister mentioned him too,” Chrollo notes quietly after a few moments. “Tserriednich.”

You scoff and shift away, looking out over Lake Mobius again. There’s still another two weeks before you get to the uncharted waters, but the waves are already rough—you can’t imagine what it’s going to be like once you get farther out. 

“You didn’t hear from Machi?” 

“She only told me that we needed to keep an eye on the Fourth Prince. She didn’t tell me much other than that,” Chrollo explains, coming to stand next to you, and you feel a lump swell in your throat, grateful that Machi didn’t spill what happened between you and Tserriednich in that hallway. “Should we be worried about him?”

“No,” you say flatly. “He’s my problem to handle. Don’t get involved.”

You can tell he’s unhappy with your answer because you catch him frowning at you from the corner of your eye. “But—”

“Hisoka is your problem. Tserriednich is mine,” you interrupt. “Stay out of it.”

“We’re—”

“Nothing. We’re nothing. We will never be anything, Chrollo,” you tell him, voice rising in pitch, worked up over your interaction with Camilla and still reeling from how you’d been so close to kissing him. Something shifts in his expression at your words—not quite wounded, but you can tell something about them knocks him off kilter. “Our deal was four of your spiders for access to the upper tiers. It’s been completed. You don’t need to pry into any more of my business.”

“Nothing? Never?” Chrollo echoes in a tone that you know is going to send you over the edge. “Funny,” he continues quietly, “considering what you were saying Thursday evening.”

His comment makes you still.

What the hell were you saying Thursday? 

Defensively, you snap, “Don’t tell me you actually took drunken ramblings to heart. Whatever I said Thursday, I didn’t mean it. I barely remember that night after you showed up and ruined it.”

“I remember,” Chrollo says simply. His voice is too calm. It makes your stomach twist. “You were honest with me finally.”

“Honest?” you laugh, brittle, a little manic. What did you say? “You think anything I said after half a dozen drinks was honest?”

“Yes.” His gaze is steady and unreadable. You want to walk away. You feel cornered. “You said it scared you, because a part of you will always want this.”

The words land like a physical blow. For a moment, your mind blanks, blood rushing through your ears. You don’t remember saying that, but it sounds too close to the truth to dismiss it outright. No, you think, no, you don’t want this. Chrollo is a monster, the bond is wrong, the gods were wrong—your thoughts are desperate and frantic, you think maybe you’re trying to convince yourself of their truth. 

“You’re delusional,” you tell him, taking a step back. “Even if I did say that, it wouldn’t change anything. A part of me is just that—a part of me, what sort of person doesn’t long a little bit for their soulmate, regardless of what they are. The larger part of me still wants nothing to do with you, because it doesn’t make you less of what you are. And what you are is a monster.”

Chrollo doesn’t answer immediately. His expression is unreadable as he studies you silently, but the faint tick in his jaw betrays him. When he speaks, his voice is low and cutting, “Delusional?” he intones. “You’re the one who shivers whenever I touch you. You’re the one who leans in. Who sleeps on my shoulder, and curls up against my chest. Tell me—who’s really the deluded one here?”

Mortified, you realize he still must be talking about Thursday. “Fuck you. I was drunk. Whatever you think you see on my end is nothing more than the product of this godforsaken bond that was forced on me. Who you are, what you stand for—it disgusts me. I don’t want you, and I never will.”

His lips twitch into something caught between a smile and a wince, like your words cut deeper than he wants to admit. “Do you think I want this?” he asks. You can tell he intends for the words to come out cold, but they come out angrier than he means for it to. Too emotional. Too vulnerable. Too human. “Do you think I want to be bound to someone who despises me?”

You’re startled by the heat in his words, throat spasming as you swallow, but you push yourself on. “Good,” you say, if your voice breaks over the word, you both ignore it. “Then we’re in agreement. Neither of us wants this, so do us both a favor and stop acting like you do.”

His eyes darken for a moment, but he quickly masks it. A hurt expression flashes across his face before vanishing behind his composed facade. But you see it for what it is now: brittle, fragile, the type of composure that only takes one wrong word to crack and crumble. His body is falling apart, he’s mourning the losses of his spiders, and he’s been rejected by the one person in this world meant to accept him.

At once, regret swells in your chest. The anger that had consumed you over Camilla, the bond, everything, it all feels strangely muted. You watch as Chrollo stands across from you, catching the way he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, and the next breath he takes in is wet. You’re abruptly reminded of how Machi spoke of Shalnark and Kortopi, of how Franklin spoke of Chrollo himself, of the expression on Chrollo’s face as he reminisced about his lost friend.

He’s human too, a traitorous voice whispers in your head. He’s not the soulless monster that you’re making him out to be.

That makes it worse, you want to cry. If that’s true, it only makes everything worse. How can he be human and—

You can’t even finish the thought.

You’re about to retract your words when he finally speaks, “You’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

He runs a hand down his face, hiding it for a moment, before shaking his head and looking at you again, eyes dull with the exhaustion of someone carrying more weight than he can hold. For a second, the deck feels impossibly empty. The wind off Lake Mobius carries the faint tang of salt and decay, and the world shrinks down to just the two of you. Chrollo has always seemed untouchable, but he is not right now. He is fragile, and hu—(no, he is not, he’s not, he’s not, he can’t be)—and unbearably alone. Your hand twitches at your side to reach out, to take back the harshness of what you’d said.

You don’t.

“You hate me,” he finally says, voice quiet. He forces a polite smile onto his lips as he looks up at you. “You have every reason to—I uprooted your life. You’re right, I’m a monster, and the last person anyone would want to have as the person meant to be their other half. And I…” He swallows, hesitates, and then straightens, restoring his mask. “I will not beg you to want me. Machi will walk you back to your quarters tonight.”

He lingers for a second, you think he’s waiting to see if you say anything, and when you don’t, his gaze drops and he turns to leave. Your lips part to say something, and you take half a step forward after him, but you stop yourself. Watching him go, your chest tightens. This bond—it’s always felt like a noose around your neck.

But this one? 

Your hand lifts to rub your neck absently, trying to physically push away the lump that forms in your throat as your gaze lowers to the ground.

“You should smile, prince.” Your father’s butler, Nugui, tells you as you stand away from the rest of your siblings, arms folded over your chest, eyes slid shut as you wait for the garish ceremony to end. “The world is watching the royal family leave to board the Black Whale, after all.”

You learned early to accept that freedom is a myth. 

Not because anyone said so—at least not so directly—but because you saw what it cost. Those who reached for it lost everything in their pursuit, left hollow and unsatisfied and full of bitterness and rage. You were not foolish enough to follow, not when you’ve been given the blessed life you had, Tserriednich ensured that much.

You understood quickly that your life was constructed for you in advance—by your title, your blood, and the brother who measured your worth in obedience. He decided when you slept, what you read, what tone your voice should take. You were not allowed to look at the sky, because the sky was an indulgence that was forbidden for a prince. He said that people who spent their days gazing upward accomplished nothing of value. Your duty was to look forward, never above, never behind, and never at the sky. You obeyed, and in time, the sky stopped existing for you, and so did the birds that flew in it, and the concept of freedom remained something distant and unattainable.

Still, you never stopped wondering what it might feel like—to choose. To want. If there are shadows on the cave wall, there must also be light from the sun, and you wanted to feel that warmth on your skin more than anything else in the world.

Looking back on it, you think, logically, that you shouldn’t have clung to the idea of a soulmate as much as you have. The words carved into your forearm binding you to a stranger are just a different form of the same shackles. Your life is not your own, they tell you, you were born to belong to someone else, and you do not even get to choose who that someone else is. 

And you? Do you seek righteous vengeance from me as well?

Still, you used to trace the letters when no one was looking, wondering what sort of person could say such a thing as a greeting. When you were too young to understand them, you fantasized a hero who would come along and sweep you off your feet, rescuing you from the ivory tower your brother had you locked in. Sometimes a scholar or a wanderer, a foreign royal or a common merchant—all with the same end, fated love and freedom. 

It crossed your mind, when you were old enough to realize that maybe your soulmate had done something wrong for him to ask you such a thing, that maybe your soulmate isn’t the hero you wanted him to be. But you preferred to believe otherwise. You hoped that he would be kind, clever, steadfast—everything that your brother is not—and though the image changed over the years, the longing never did.

Tserriednich had forbidden you from looking up to the sky, but he could not stop you from looking down at your forearm. It was the only dream you refused to let him take from you.

Not to say he didn’t try, though. He always said you would marry where he told you to, speak when spoken to, and smile only when it suited him. You were to be perfect, he would remind you, unlike the rest of your gluttonous sisters and the other treacherous women he’s encountered. You would be cultured. An artist, a soldier, and an intellectual. Soft-spoken, but never meek. Polished until you gleamed so brightly that no one would think to check if you were hollow inside.

To Tserriednich, you were not a sister so much as you were a project—something to be refined, elevated above the vulgarity of everyone else. He chose your tutors. He censored your books. He corrected your voice when it carried too much warmth, your smile when it revealed too much eagerness. Every hour you spent studying, every gesture practiced before a mirror, every carefully chosen word at court—it was all part of his design. 

You were his proof that perfection could be made, not born, and that he was the only one capable of creating it.

No one would ruin that for him. Not the rest of your siblings, not your parents, not any servants, and certainly not your ‘soulmate,’ who thought they had some sort of claim over the masterpiece he had so painstakingly crafted. You were not yours to give away, nor were you anyone else’s to have. If some nameless stranger imagined they had any right to touch what he had shaped with his own hands, Tserriednich would see them broken for their arrogance.

Against all odds, you did leave Kakin just once. Fifteen, rebellious, and newly graduated from the Royal Military Academy, you fled to the wider world. At first, it felt like you were breathing for the first time in years. The air was so sweet on your tongue, and you lifted your head to look up at the sky for the first time, feeling the warmth of the sun against your skin. But the further you traveled, the more you realized you hadn’t escaped anything at all.

Tserriednich’s lessons followed you everywhere. You spoke the way he taught you. You walked the way he taught you. You smiled the way he taught you. You lived a life that had you constantly looking over your shoulder, scared that he would find you again. You memorized escape routes in every building, and checked for hidden cameras in every room you entered. The world was bigger than you’d imagined, but it didn’t feel safer, and you didn’t feel free. You had only widened your cage.

Still, it gave you something your brother never allowed—people.

You met them during the Hunter Exam. The bright-eyed boy called Gon, who pressed his hand to his chest and declared that he was going to pass the exam and become a hunter to find his father. The child assassin called Killua, who you saw too much of yourself in, with the way he struggled to understand and accept his desire for friendship. The loud and brash Leorio, who fiercely tried to hide his kind heart behind a mask of materiality.

And Kurapika. 

Kurapika was your first real friend. Leorio, and Gon, and Killua, too, of course, but Kurapika was special. He was special to you, and you were special to him. You told him once that you wished the words on your wrist matched the ones he first spoke to you, and he smiled at you softly and said it was a nice dream. He didn’t know who you were—not really. You guarded your Kakin heritage and your station as though your life depended on it, because it did. The secrecy left you feeling like you were wearing someone else’s skin, living someone else’s life. Yet Kurapika, with a patience that was almost disarming, always found a way to convince you that what mattered to him wasn’t where you came from, but who you chose to be.

It was the first time someone valued you for that—for what you chose, not what you were born as—and when you cried, he brushed your tears away and let you hide your face in his shoulder.

The two of you were not soulmates, but maybe something close enough.

And then, you went to Yorknew City.

You weren’t there for most of the bloodshed, but you were with Kurapika when he captured the head of the spider, Chrollo Lucilfer. You sat on the man’s opposite side as Leorio drove to the airlift station, and you listened as he taunted Kurapika, goading him with his dismissive attitude and lax smiles, trying to ignore the inexplicable pull in your chest. You remember the quiet mockery in his voice, the lazy amusement in his smile as he turned to you and asked: 

“And you? Do you seek righteous vengeance from me as well?”

You didn’t answer. Couldn’t. You’d forgotten how to breathe. You’d traced those same words across your own skin so many times that your fingers remember their shape. But hearing them spoken aloud felt more like a stab to the gut than the warmth of the sun you expected. You spent your whole life imagining what your god given other half might be, and when you finally met him, you realized that a life not knowing would’ve been better. 

The world had never been kind to you, not from the moment you were born, but for all of the torment that your brother put you through, this was the cruelest thing that had ever happened to you. For the first time in your life, you thought that Tserriednich was right: soulmates were a curse, a burden, a chain disguised as fate. 

You had to watch the way Kurapika’s face shifted as he realized that if he wanted to kill the man who massacred his family, he would have to kill you as well—and you wanted to die.

You thought it would be better if you died. 

In one fell swoop, the only dream you’d ever allowed yourself to keep over the years was shattered, and you’d lost the only friends you’d ever known. 

For all of your longing for freedom and the sky, the warmth of the sun and the words on your wrist, you finally understand the truth. Freedom is gold for fools who mistake its glint for light, and there is no sun outside of the cave you freed yourself from.

I do not want to smile, Nugui, you think.

“You’re right,” you tell him instead.

You smile.

--------------

You are the 10th Prince of the Kakin Empire. You have no allies to defend you against the blades coming for your head, you have no friends to confide your fears in, and any taste of freedom you once had is long lost. You live on borrowed time now—you will be dead before the Black Whale lands at the Dark Continent. 

In all likelihood, you might be dead before the sun rises in the morning.

You exhale as your fingers trace along the map that you only barely managed to convince your sister, Tubeppa, to give you a copy of. You think she pities you—of all of the siblings, it’s you who is in the worst position. You’re an unknown after spending so many years away from the empire, and not young enough to be considered a non-factor, like the three youngest princes. Benjamin, Camilla, Zhang Lei—you think they’ll target you first, before you can get your footing, and potentially get yourself allies. There will be assassins in your room as soon as night falls, and you have not a single guard to protect you from them.

And Tubeppa has never been kind, but she has always been fair; it was she who sometimes would step in under the guise of teaching you science when Tserriednich was taking things too far with you. You learned about chemistry and arithmetic from her, but your favorite lessons were of the stars. She was solemn when you approached her for help before boarding the Black Whale; you imagine that she knows you’ll be one of the first casualties amongst the princes.

You have six hours before the boarding of the Black Whale finishes and the evening ceremony begins. You need to be gone before then. Once boarding finishes, it will be much harder to travel between tiers. Officially, there are only two throughways between tiers, and the royal army guards them at all times. The second and third tiers are the hardest to go between, separated by a thick bulkhead that can only be opened during emergencies from the second-tier side.

But that’s only officially.

Your finger hovers over the passage that connects the Xi-Yu Family’s boss to a crossbridge that leads to Tier Two of the Black Whale. From there, you can cross down into the lower levels through a duct on the left side of the ship. It will be dangerous on the lower levels, but you’ll at least be away from the main hunting grounds of the succession contest. And if they cannot find you, they cannot kill you. You just need to survive long enough to avoid the bloodbath that the upper tiers were going to become, and you could do that hidden among the masses on Tier Four and Tier Five.

The bosses of the three families are not yet in Tier One. They won’t be until much later—they have some things to handle with their subordinates before they make their way to their rooms. The military is patrolling the halls, but there aren’t many of them out there; they're too busy preparing for the departure ceremony in the evening.

Now is your chance. You won’t get another; if you don’t take advantage of it, you’ll certainly die.

Unless, of course, you go to Tserriednich. 

The thought makes you nauseous. You know he’s waiting for it—waiting for you. He knows you’re vulnerable, he knows you have no allies, and he knows that he’s your only feasible option if you want to survive. He’s waiting for you to come crawling back to him. You can practically picture the smug, expectant expression on his face. It makes you sick. He makes you sick. You would rather die than crawl back to him for help. 

So, with your heart in your throat and your fingers trembling terribly in anxiety, you stuff the map of the Black Whale into your back pocket and make your way over to the door of your quarters. You crack it open slightly, peering up and down the hall, and when you don’t immediately see any soldiers patrolling the halls, you swallow your fear and step out of your room. You have to make it around the corner over to the VVIP quarters, and you have to be quick; there’s no telling when a patrol will circle around, and if they catch you outside of your room, you’ll be thrown back in with a guard at your door making sure you can’t leave again. 

You only have one chance. You need to make it count.

You quietly make your way down the hall in the direction of the younger princes’ rooms. You can’t bring yourself to walk past Tserriednich’s room, even if it would be the quicker route to the VVIP rooms. You turn the corner and—

“Oof.”

You go careening backwards when you slam into someone’s chest, only not hitting the floor because whoever it was you bumped into instinctively grabs your waist, suspending you mid air. You look up, and your breath catches when you see a familiar face above you.

Kurapika’s lips part in shock when he recognizes you. His eyes are unfamiliarly dark—contacts, you realize—and he looks older than when you last saw him, but no less beautiful. There are bags under his eyes, lines marring his face, and such a lack of light in him that it makes your heart ache. He doesn’t steady you immediately; his grip on your waist tightens like he doesn’t want to let go, and you almost don’t want to say anything to disrupt the moment, afraid that when you do, he’ll walk away from you as he had in Yorknew.

But you’re running out of time.

“Kurapika,” you say softly. “What are you doing here?”

Kurapika swallows thickly and helps you stand straight, instantly putting space between the two of you. You instinctively take half a step toward him to close the distance, but he steps away, keeping the space between you. Your gaze drops to the ground, disappointed.

“I’m guarding the Fifteenth Prince, Woble,” he finally says stiffly. It stings more than you expect, even if you braced yourself for the answer. There's no other reason for him to be in this area if he isn’t guarding a prince. He sees the way your expression twists, and he adds after a moment, “You… never mentioned that you were from Kakin. Much less a…”

“There’s a reason I left,” is all you say in response, giving him a tight smile. 

“Ah,” he says awkwardly, gaze flitting to the side. “You didn’t put up ads. For bodyguards.”

“I couldn’t. My siblings would’ve slipped assassins in too easily,” you reply. Against better judgment, you ask hesitantly, “Would you… have applied if I did?”

You know the answer to your question before you even ask it. So you’re not surprised when Kurapika doesn’t reply, keeping his gaze trained to the side. You were once a dear friend to him—more, even—and that’s why he couldn’t bring himself to do something that he knew would kill you, regardless of his hatred and desire for revenge, but for that same reason, he also cannot bring himself to protect you, because he would be, by proxy, protecting the same man who slaughtered his clan.

“You should be in your room,” he finally says. “What are you doing out here?”

“If I stay there, I’ll die,” you say with a wry smile. “I… don’t want to let them win that easily.”

Kurapika’s expression twists. Even if the two of you haven’t spoken in two years, and even if the one you are fated to is his worst enemy, he doesn’t like to hear you speak so carelessly about your own death. He’s still too kind for his own good. You want to tell him you miss him, that if you could change who you were bound to, you would do it in a fraction of a heartbeat, but you think he knows all of this, because when his lips part to speak again, he suddenly looks so sad that you think he may cry. 

After what feels like an eternity, he clears his throat and gives you a tight smile. “Good luck,” he whispers. “Stay safe.”

You gnaw on your lower lip for a second before you nod. You pretend your voice doesn’t shake when you say, “Goodbye, Kurapika. I…” You can hardly push the words out, but you need to. Want to. “I’m glad I got to know you.”

He makes a noise in the back of his throat at your words, but you force yourself to push past him and leave before you run out of time. Just as you’re arm’s length away from him, you feel his fingers wrap around your wrist. They’re colder than you remember, but somehow you still feel warm beneath his touch. 

You don’t turn back to look at him.

“The Hunter Association… We’re going to do everything we can to stall the succession contest. You just need to survive until we make it to land,” he tells you, rushing the words out. “Do whatever you have to.”

“I’ll try my best,” you promise quietly, although you know it’s an empty promise. No matter how hard you try, you know that as long as you have no allies, this boat will be your final resting place.

“Can I ask you something?” Kurapika asks before you can leave.

“Anything,” you tell him, half-turning to look at him again.

“Did you…. know that the Fourth Prince had the eyes of my people?” The words come out as a waver; he asks them so softly that it’s almost comical how they feel like a stab to the gut. You can’t bring yourself to look at him, not with the way you can feel his fingers trembling around your wrist, like he’s scared of what you might say. 

Like he genuinely believes you might’ve known. 

“Do you really think so lowly of me that you think I wouldn’t have told you if I did?” you ask bitterly, staring down at the ground. You pull your wrist from his grip, covering his touch with your own. “I need to get going.”

“I didn’t—”

“Goodbye, Kurapika,” you say again quietly, making your way down the hall. “I’ll do what I need to do to survive. You should, too. Don’t be reckless against my brother. You have no idea what he’s capable of.”

--------------

It takes you five of the six hours before the evening ceremony to get down to Tier Five. Crossing over from Tier One to Tier Two was simple enough once you got into Onior Longbao’s quarters, but Tier Two to Tier Three felt like some sort of stealth mission. The military was much more active on Tier Two, and you had to figure out a way not to seem suspicious, because if you went sprinting around the area with a hood drawn over your head and your face turned down, you’d be stopped by a soldier immediately.

So you had to keep your pace slow and steady, and instead of a hood, you decided to wrap your scarf around your head. You saw a couple of other women—rich aristocrats who you vaguely recognized from court—dressed that way with sunglasses over their eyes, so you assume you got lucky that Kakin court’s fleeting fashion trends were on your side.

Then, it was a waiting game to get down into Tier Three.

Every minute that passed left you more and more anxious. The duct that led down to Tier Three was evidently a heavily guarded spot by the military. There was never a time when there weren’t at least three soldiers in the area. At least, until alarms started going off on the opposite side of the deck. You suppose you got lucky again, because when all of the soldiers rushed to see what was happening, it gave you the opening you needed to get into the duct.

From there, getting to the lowest tier of the ship was easy enough, and now you’re wandering around one of the assembly points, trying to figure out how to get to the central dining hall. You figure that it’s nearly dinner time, so you could probably just follow the crowds, but the slow-moving masses have halted and are becoming increasingly antsy the more time spent lingering in the same spot. You know well that agitated crowds can get violent fast, and you don’t want to be in the middle of it when things escalate.

Thankfully, you seem to be getting close to wherever the crowd is funneling into, so you don’t think you’ll be in it much longer, but you still can’t tell what’s happening. You press your lips together as you try to peer around the bodies in front of you, but you can barely catch a group of three men that seem to be barring entrance to the cafeteria.

“What’s happening up there?” someone asks to your left.

“They’re demanding jenny for entrance,” another person scoffs. “Bunch of thugs.”

“What?” you press. You have no jenny with you; you forgot to grab it in your rush to leave your quarters. You should’ve taken some more time to make sure you were ready before coming down here. How are you going to buy food? Where are you going to sleep? The high of escaping the upper tiers is gone, replaced by steadily growing dread “How much? Who? Where are the soldiers manning the area?”

“Five thousand,” an older man with dark hair, lips turned down into a deep frown. “A mafioso group—” You blanch, instantly getting ready to turn tail and run on the off chance that it’s the Cha-R Family. The last thing you need is to be recognized as soon as you get somewhere you can hide. “Call themselves the Buor family.”

“The Buor Family,” you scowl, recognizing the name of the lowlife thugs that used to crawl around the capital. You suppose you shouldn’t be surprised that they weaseled their way onto the ship and are continuing their abhorrent behavior, but you’re irritated because you can’t do anything about it unless you want to expose yourself. You had been under the impression that Benjamin was going to take care of them long before this expedition took place. 

You become increasingly stressed as the people in front of you hand over their jenny, tugging your scarf up to cover your face and considering trying to bolt past the three thugs into the cafeteria. 

“Five thousand jenny,” one of the men says gruffly, hardly looking at you as he counts the bills in his hand before passing them over to the smaller man with him. “I said—”

Your lips part to respond with an excuse, and maybe an attempt to bolt past them, but you don’t get the chance to say anything. 

“What—” you start to gasp when you feel someone—two people, actually—grab your biceps hard, lifting you up off the ground so that you’re dangling in the air. You instinctively kick your legs out, trying to make contact with whoever grabbed you, but it doesn't seem to even make them flinch.

Your first instinct is fear that Luzurus had somehow found out that you’d escaped your room and spread word to the Cha-R Family, but you can feel their nen, and you doubt that the Cha-R have many nen users amongst their ranks. You consider using your own to force them off of you, but you don’t want to make more of a scene than they already have. Being caught by the Cha-R and forced back up to Tier One is the worst-case scenario; whoever these people are, you can deal with them, so long as you aren’t exposed.

Or so you thought.

“No,” slips out before you can stop it, expression falling when you recognize two members of the Phantom Troupe on either side of you. You don’t remember their names, but you can’t forget their faces. How did they find you? What the hell are you supposed to do? How are they even on the ship?

Does this mean that he’s here too?

Your stomach twists and turns, and your heart races. 

Fear? Uncertainty? … Something else?

“Yup,” the blonde says smugly before scoffing and giving the other man a sharp grin. “To think the chain user’s little girlfriend just manages to stumble right into us. Guess luck is on our side, right, Nobu?”

The man on your left—Nobunaga, you remember Gon and Killua calling him—doesn’t reply, but he does give you a cool look from the corner of his eye, and his grip on your arm tightens. His gaze flicks up to the three men blocking the cafeteria off, and he says flatly, “Move.”

The man in front gives him an offended look, but you’re more concerned by the shorter one, whose brows furrow in recognition as he stares hard at your face now that your scarf has dropped. 

Fuck, everything is going wrong, and it's hardly been four hours. 

The lead thug of the Buor Family spits something derogatory out at Nobunaga, but he’s instantly met with a palm the size of a textbook to the face as a huge man reaches around the three of you to bash his head into the wall so hard that his skull caves in. You blanch as you stare down at the gore, blood and brains and open skull. You hear the crowds behind you screeching and fleeing, and distantly notice the other two members of the Buor Family scatter, but Nobunaga and the blonde quickly drag you forward.

“You don’t want—”

“I’ll snap your wrist if you keep talking,” the blonde threatens before you can finish, and you instantly shut your mouth, gaze flickering around desperately for any soldiers that might be in the area. There are none. You’re going to— “Where’s the boss at? You see him?”

Oh, you realize, letting out a shaky breath. This could… work out. Maybe. Potentially. But at what cost? No, you think that this is no better than going to Tserriednich for help. If you speak to Chrollo Lucilfer, he and the rest of his spiders will know who you are to him. Once they realize that your life is tied to his, you’ll have your protection, but at a terrible cost. Do you really want these monsters protecting you on this ship? How would you ever face Kurapika again? Or Leorio? Killua? Gon? How would you ever even be able to look any of them in the eye?

Fuck. Fuck. This is such a mess. You almost want to let them kill you. At least, in your last moments, you’ll be able to get the last laugh knowing they killed their own boss in their blind quest for vengeance against Kurapika. 

You’re so frustrated that your eyes sting, teeth grinding together as the blonde and Nobunaga come to a stop in front of a table at the back of the cafeteria. You don’t even want to look up and meet any of their eyes, but you can’t help the way your gaze lifts.

It’s immediately drawn to him.

Chrollo Lucilfer looks oddly terrible—worse than even Kurapika did when you saw him earlier. The bags beneath his eyes are so dark that they almost look bruised, and his skin takes on such a sickly pallor that you almost can’t keep your eyes on him because you don’t like the uncertainty that instinctively spreads through you. You should be joyful that he looks so awful; this is the head of the spider, the boss of the Phantom Troupe, the monster who massacred Kurapika’s clan and cost you your first friends. Still, you can’t muster the smugness you should be feeling, but you can at least smother that flicker of uncertainty into apathy. 

You can tell he recognizes you from the way he tilts his head to the side slightly, but his expression is eerily blank, and his eyes are far too dull for comfort. His voice is hollow as he asks, “What is this?”

“The chain user’s girlfriend, we—”

Something strange flashes across Chrollo’s face when Nobunaga starts to speak, irritation, maybe; you’re not the only one who notices it, because Nobunaga instantly cuts himself off, squinting as he tries to figure out what he said wrong.

And you know. You know. You know that Chrollo knows who you are to him; you weren’t exactly subtle in the car two years ago with Kurapika, and people have always said soulmates just know, even when they don’t. You know you did—although you didn’t realize it until he spoke those dreadful words, something definitely changed within you the moment Kurapika shoved Chrollo into the car with you. If Chrollo felt what you had back then, on top of the weird reaction you and Kurapika had to the first words he spoke to you… Well, it doesn’t take much else to put two and two together.

“Let go of her,” he says, voice flat. 

To their credit, neither Nobunaga nor the blonde hesitates to let go of your arms. You scowl at them as you rub your biceps, but the blonde only scoffs and looks away, and Nobunaga ignores you. Chrollo’s gaze hasn’t left you, and you feel uncomfortable beneath it, but can’t bring yourself to look away. He pointedly looks down at the empty chair across from him, and when you don’t immediately move to sit, he raises his eyebrows slightly at you, amused over the fact that you think you have a choice.

You scoff bitterly and move to take the seat across from him, raising your chin and crossing your arms over your chest as you remain quiet. None of the rest of the spiders speak, but you can tell that they’re confused as to what’s happening. Nobunaga and the blonde sit down at the table, exchanging looks with one another as the silence draws on between you and Chrollo. 

“Really?” Chrollo drawls at your stubbornness. “Come now, we both know what the words will be. Let’s get this over with.”

You don’t actually know what you want to say to him. So many thoughts are bouncing through your head, and you have so many things you want to say to him, but at the same time, you don’t want to say anything to him. He doesn’t deserve it. Doesn’t deserve your time, your energy, and he especially doesn’t deserve you. You think you must’ve done something awful in a previous life to be dealt the one you have—raised by a monster, and fated to one. The only explanation is that you must’ve been one yourself.

A few long beats pass before you finally open your mouth:

“You make me sick.”

Chrollo’s not the only one to react to your words, but he’s the only one you bother to take notice of. He doesn’t flinch, not exactly, but he inhales a bit too deeply, and his gaze lifts briefly toward the ceiling, lashes lowering like he’s trying to school some passing thought back into order. If there’s pain, it’s gone too quickly to catch. By the time his eyes meet yours again, his expression is unreadable, perfectly even. You force your chin higher, even as shame curls hot and sour in your stomach. 

You hadn’t meant to say that. 

You wanted to make a snide comment about how there was no need to say anything because he already figured it out. Or, you were considering even just getting straight to business since he already knows who you are to him. You didn’t mean for your first words to be that, even if they’re true, and even if he deserves them because of everything he’s done. Your gaze flickers down to his left forearm, almost involuntarily, where you know the words are hidden, and your throat feels tight.

He follows your gaze. Without a word, he pushes his sleeve up slowly and deliberately. Pale skin, sharp bones—and then the words emerge, jagged and red, carved deep into his flesh:

You make me sick.

You can’t bring yourself to say anything else, forcing your gaze from the scarred words back to his face, but he’s no longer looking at you, eyes pinned to his forearm.

“I used to imagine,” he murmurs at last, voice almost conversational, “what kind of person would look me in the eye and say that.” His thumb drags idly over the scar, and then his eyes flick back up to yours. “Now I know.”

His words sting, for some reason, and you don’t like it.

“Anyway,” you force yourself to say. Your voice is hoarse, but you pretend it isn’t, clearing your throat as you continue, “Now that that’s out of the way, I—”

You cut yourself off when you hear a commotion coming from the cafeteria entrance, looking over your shoulder to see a whole squad of soldiers entering the room, scanning the room. Dread sinks in your chest when you see that rat from the Buor Family standing with them. He points in the direction of the table you’re sitting at, and the captain immediately starts making his way over. 

Seriously? So quick? 

You let out a huff of disbelief, pressing your fingers to the bridge of your nose. He must’ve rushed to them for some quick jenny in exchange for information on your whereabouts. Anxiety claws at you, triggering your fight or flight reflexes. You feel the primal urge to run, flee; you can’t let them bring you back up to Tier One. But they’re already coming your way. If you run now, they’ll just hunt you down. They would rip up all of Tier Five looking for a wayward prince. 

Fuck.

The pink-haired girl—Machi, you recognize—immediately hisses at the three men who had dragged you over here, “What did you three do? We were supposed to keep a low profile.”

“It was Franklin,” Nobunaga accuses instantly. 

“Seriously?”

You exhale through your nose, trying to calm yourself down. You tune them out as they start to argue, realizing you’re quickly running out of time. Your gaze snaps back over to Chrollo, who looks curious about your reaction, but you don’t have time to say anything. The soldiers come to a stop behind you; you don’t recognize any of them. They’re probably all low-rank fodder since they’re stuffed on Tier Five, but if they answer to Benjamin…

“We are to escort you back to your quarters, my prince,” the captain of the squad says, and your eyes slide shut when you see how the spiders immediately exchange looks with one another. “Please come with us.”

“I’m in the middle of a conversation,” you say with a strained smile. “Please wait at the doors.”

“I cannot, my prince. We have orders from the First Prince to use force if you refuse to cooperate. We don’t want to have to do that.” 

To his credit, the captain does sound regretful when he speaks the words, but it still sends a chill down your spine. Are these members of Benjamin’s personal army? Would he have them stationed on the lower tiers? If they are, they probably know nen, and you don’t know what types of abilities they may have. They could just be newer graduates from the academy, you rationalize, but Benjamin still could have asked them to take you out before you could get up to Tier One. When does the succession contest officially start? Now that you’re all on the boat? Or after it departs? 

You don’t know. There’s too much you don’t know. You didn’t ask Nugui enough questions—you should have. 

Shit, you think. Shit, you’re so fucked.

“I would like to see you try to use force with me. Did you think I was opening the doors to negotiation?” you say, keeping your voice steady, gaze flicking back to the man. Your voice belies the fear spreading through your body, but your hands do not. Your fingers are trembling terribly—you need to get some fucking control over yourself, or your siblings are going to eat you alive, the people you’re sitting with right now will too. You don’t know what’s gotten into you. You’re better than this. When you realize Chrollo is staring at where they’re resting against the table, you hide them in your lap. “Wait at the doors. That was an order, and I won’t repeat myself again.”

The captain doesn’t respond for a long moment, but then he finally says, “... Very well. We will wait at the door for as long as we’re able to.”

Once they make their way back to the entrance, one of the other spiders speaks—the blonde man asks flatly, “Prince?” 

“The tenth, to be exact,” you say blandly, and then focus your attention on Chrollo again. Get to business. This could work in your favor. But at what cost? “What do you know about what’s happening on this expedition?”

Chrollo tilts his head to the side curiously and then answers, “It’s supposedly going to the Dark Continent.”

“That’s the official reason for the expedition, yes,” you say, “but the real reason is that my father declared a succession war that’s going to take place on the ship. A deathmatch between my siblings and me, by the end of the voyage, only one of us will be alive, and they will be king.”

Chrollo doesn’t react immediately. He studies you with that same calm, inscrutable expression, like he’s weighing what you’re saying. The others shift slightly, uneasy but disciplined enough not to interrupt your conversation with Chrollo. 

They understand the gravity of your words. 

If you’re killed in this conflict, Chrollo will die soon after.

“You speak plainly for someone in your position,” he finally muses. “You must not have many allies. Any allies, even?”

It’s meant to be a dig, but you don’t rise to the bait. You might have some allies, depending on how many soldiers brought along on the expedition were involved with the Chimera Ant Crisis two years ago, but you have no time or opportunity to gauge how many, and you’re sure Benjamin was quick to screen any soldiers that might be loyal to you over him. You have to assume the answer is none.

“No, I don’t. Almost all of the soldiers on board answer to Benjamin, and I couldn’t seek out guards like the younger princes did because my elder siblings would’ve taken the opportunity to sneak assassins in,” you answer dryly. “I fled down to the lower levels to hide, but unfortunately, your spiders exposed me.”

You give the blonde a dirty look, and he gives you one right back before rolling his eyes, but he’s frowning, side-eyeing the soldiers in the distance, and then glancing back at Chrollo warily. You’re going to get what you need, you realize. But at what cost?

“So, what exactly are you proposing?” Chrollo asks you. “You can’t possibly think we’ll abandon our goals just to protect you, exalted.”

Seriously, you think, staring at him blankly, but Chrollo raises his eyebrows ever so slightly. You want to point out that you don’t think his comrades agree with his assessment, because Machi and Franklin instantly look at each other, lips turned down, but you bite your tongue.

“What are your goals, then?” you ask tightly. “Why are you here on the ship if not to take advantage of the succession contest?” Chrollo doesn’t respond, and frustration spreads through you rapidly. “I don’t have time for you to play coy. Tell me why you’re on the ship so we can come to an understanding, or let us both die on this shitty ship, for all I care.”

An understanding? What is wrong with you? Is this real life? Are you trying to come to an understanding with the fucking Phantom Troupe? With Chrollo Lucilfer? You might throw up.

“We’re looking for someone,” Chrollo finally says, and you think he’s being purposely difficult with the way he doesn’t tell you any more than that. When you give him a flat look, waiting for more information, his jaw tightens before he explains, “Hisoka Morow.”

Your brows furrow, taken aback. “Hisoka—why?” 

“You don’t need to know the details,” Chrollo replies, much to your displeasure, but you can tell he’s not going to budge from the dark expression on his face.

“Well, good luck finding him trapped on Tier Five,” you say dryly, looking away, folding your arms over your chest.

Chrollo directs a blank curve of his lips toward you. “I assume you’re about to offer me the means of becoming un-trapped on Tier Five in exchange for my spiders’ protection.”

What the fuck are you doing?

“I can get you passes that will let you move freely between Tiers Three, Four, and Five. There’s no pass to get between Tier Two and Three,” you hear yourself saying. “But I have a map of the ship—there are certain ducts that connect Tier Two and Tier Three. That will give you access to the upper tiers, and whoever you send up with me will have almost full access to Tier One.”

You feel sick with yourself when you see how Chrollo is considering your words, when you realize you were about to demand three of his spiders in return. You’re making a deal with the devil—selling your soul, your morals, everything you’ve ever stood for—is your survival worth the price you’re paying for it? 

A deal with one devil to take out another, you think, rubbing your hands against your thighs as you come to your decision. If you have the slightest chance of surviving this—or even just surviving longer than the first night—then you’ll do what you can to take out your brother. It’ll be worth it.

Tserriednich will die, and it will be by your hand. Maybe then, when you return his people’s eyes to him, Kurapika might find it in his heart to forgive you. You doubt it, not after the deal you’ve just struck, but it’s a nice dream.

“I want three of your spiders in exchange,” you finally tell him.

Chrollo stares at you for a moment before he says, “I’ll give you four. They’ll sleep in shifts of two; two will be with you at all times. Machi, Shizuku, Nobunaga, and I—”

“Not you,” you interrupt, ignoring the way Nobunaga immediately rolls his eyes and sighs at Chrollo’s words. “I don’t want to be near you.”

To his credit, Chrollo doesn’t react to your words. He stares at you listlessly for a moment before he says again, “Machi, Shizuku, Nobunaga, and Franklin will be assigned to you. You and I will meet every two days. I’ll convey to Machi the time and place before every meeting.”

Your expression twists, and you ignore how Nobunaga rolls his eyes obnoxiously, displeased with his assignment.

“For what reason?” you demand. 

“To exchange information,” Chrollo replies.

“Unnecessary,” you snap. “You can exchange information between your spiders. I—”

“Non-negotiable,” he counters, lips curling up into a small smile that would’ve been disarming if it reached his eyes, but the emptiness in them only leaves you unsettled. This man is nothing like the suave and confident man you met in the car two years ago—what had happened during that time that changed him so much? “Our first meeting will be tomorrow.”

“Wh—”

“My prince, we are being urged to bring you up to your quarters immediately.” You hadn’t even noticed the soldiers approaching the table again, so focused on Chrollo. You sigh and look down at the table, irritated. “Please come with us.”

You rise to your feet, exhaling as you prepare to follow them out of the cafeteria. You don’t know if the four spiders Chrollo assigned to you will follow you, and if they don’t, you might end up dead before you even cross up into Tier Four. The tension only slightly—slightly—starts to ease from your shoulders when you hear their chairs scrape against the ground as they rise to their feet.

The captain of the small squad assigned to deal with you pauses, reaching for his gun, “What—”

“They’ll be joining me,” you interrupt, “as part of my royal guard.”

The captain stares at you blankly. “My prince, these are—”

“Members of my royal guard,” you finish before he can, giving him a steady look. They’re still criminals, you remind yourself—you are working with criminals, thieves, murderers, terrorists. Nobody can know. If you get thrown in prison for colluding with them, you’re as good as dead. “You would do well to only refer to them as such.”

The captain looks unsure, but he evidently decides whatever is happening is out of his pay range, because he nods. “Of course, my prince. I’ll escort you to Tier One.”

He doesn’t say anything else, so you follow him out of the cafeteria. You itch to look back one last time, just to see what expression might be on Chrollo’s face, but you refrain.

You’re better off not knowing him, not seeing him, not even thinking of him. The gods were wrong when they chose him as your soulmate. They are not infallible, as people purport, because they made a mistake. You don’t even know if someone like Chrollo Lucilfer can be considered human—he’s closer to one of those Dark Continent creatures than mankind, you think, so there must’ve been some sort of mistake. You’re better off alone than tied to someone like him. You would use him for protection until you could get off this forsaken ship, and then you would leave him behind without even a thought to spare for him.

The gods are wrong, and you will never accept Chrollo Lucilfer as yours.

--------------

Momoze is dead.

You exhale through your nose as you stare at the wall opposite of you. The call came in twenty minutes ago from a distraught Halkenburg—she was smothered in her sleep after retiring to her bedroom early. It has been less than twelve hours since the Black Whale deparated, and already one of your siblings is dead. You knew that your elder siblings wouldn’t waste time, but this is beyond you. You didn’t think someone would be dead before night even fell.

Irrationally, you blame yourself. 

Whoever it was that went after Momoze certainly wanted the bragging rights of drawing first blood in the contest, and you think that it should’ve been you. Would’ve been you if you hadn’t fled down to the lower tiers and bargained with the Phantom Troupe of all people. Instead, it was Momoze, the Thirteenth Prince, who had only just celebrated her fourteenth birthday last week, and liked reading fairytales and knitting clothes, and was far too good at pretending her mother’s neglect didn’t bother her. She gifted all of the other princes hand-knitted scarves and sweaters for their birthdays over the last year. You brought yours with you. 

You can’t be thinking of this. You need to focus. You hardly knew Momoze anyway. She was as good a stranger to you. There’s no reason for you to be so caught up by her death.

Instead, you should be more worried about Tserriednich. You were only barely able to evade Tserriednich during the ceremony—you’ve been relaxing in your room since, trying to settle down your nerves. You don’t know how long you’ll be able to avoid seeing him; sooner or later, he’s going to call for you to come to his room, and when he does, you’re either going to officially make an enemy of him or you’re going to be forced to see him.

You don’t know which is worse. 

The spiders that Chrollo sent with you have not been as unpleasant company as you expected. The two men, Nobunaga and Franklin, are quiet mostly, aside from when they’re bickering about petty decisions and occasionally asking you questions about Kakin and the expedition to the Dark Continent, although you don’t know much about the latter. The two women, Shizuku and Machi, are better company; they lounged around with you during the day, and sometimes played cards with you when waiting around the room became too agonizing.

They don’t talk about Chrollo with you. They’re defensive of him, you can tell that much; mostly because they don’t play around with you and your safety—you haven’t spent a single moment alone since they joined you on Tier One—but also because you’ve found them staring at your covered wrist multiple times over the past day with conflicted expressions. Every time you do, you’re reminded of the words you spoke to him—the ones that are carved on his wrist, and have been carved on his wrist since he was eight years old—and you feel ashamed.

No, you think firmly. You are not ashamed. It’s not on you; Chrollo Lucilfer’s decision to become a monster was his own. Your words to him are the consequences of his own actions coming back to bite him. That’s all. 

“You good?” Machi asks suddenly, looking up from where she’s shuffling a deck of cards with Shizuku and Franklin. You didn’t join them this time, curled up on the couch beneath a blanket. You give her a questioning look, and she elaborates, “You look upset.”

“I’m okay,” you say after a moment. “Thanks for asking.”

“Were you close with her?” Franklin questions. “Your sister?”

Your jaw tightens.

“No,” you force out. “She was eight when I first left Kakin, and Queen Sevanti tended to keep her two children separated from the rest of us. She was a good kid, though. Only just turned fourteen last week.”

Franklin and Machi give you lingering looks as though they don’t believe you. You ignore them, grateful when Nobunaga interrupts the conversation.

“That creature is gone,” Nobunaga says gruffly as he exits the bedroom he was sleeping in. There are still dark bags beneath his eyes, and he looks severely irritated, but far less crazed than he was yesterday. “I wonder if it had to do with that prince.”

“Wow,” Machi says dryly. “You look like shit.”

“Shut the hell up!” Nobunaga barks. “You didn’t have that thing in your goddamn ear for six hours.”

“I still don’t understand what these nen beasts are,” Shizuku says airily, placing down a card. “Oh! I win! Um, but yeah, I don’t understand them. We still haven’t seen any besides the one that was talking to Nobu, right? Where did they come from? How did they even get on the ship?” 

“I wish we could go to that meeting the chain user is hosting in the Fifteenth Prince’s quarters,” Franklin murmurs. “It could be enlightening, at the very least.”

“Yeah, like that would go over well,” Machi snorts, taking the cards back and reshuffling them. “We’ll need to figure it out on our own.”

“Deal me in,” Nobunaga demands as he sits on the ground with the three others. “What did you guys figure out while I was sleeping?”

“It’s from the ceremony,” you realize quietly. They all turn to look at you, but you stare down at your hands, at the prick in your right finger that never healed after the Seed Urn Ceremony. “The Seed Urn is one of the three relics of the Royal Family. Nugui said that after proving the lineage of succession in our blood to the pot, it’s believed that it will bless the contenders for the throne with special powers. It must’ve given us nen beasts. I knew something had happened when I gave it my blood; I felt my nen change, but it was so quick that I thought I imagined it… But why couldn’t I see the beast yesterday? Why can’t I see whichever one is attached to me?”

“You wouldn’t be able to if it’s parasitic,” Machi realizes, leaning forward. “It’ll use your aura to power its abilities and materialize, but it acts without your control—or even your awareness. So, you wouldn’t be able to see it. That being said, we haven’t seen it yet either. I don’t think it’s manifested yet.”

“Yeah, but the other prince’s beast? Why wouldn’t she be able to see that one?” Nobunaga asks, rolling his eyes at whatever cards he was dealt and instantly tossing them in the middle. “Load of shit. Can’t even get a good hand. Fuck this game.”

“Ah!” Shizuku says with a bright expression, showing her cards. “I win again! What if she can’t see it because they all came out of the same pot?” 

“It could be,” Franklin muses. “The ceremony probably has certain conditions and restrictions to give the nen beasts out. Without knowing what they are….”

“I could try to speak to my father, but I doubt he’ll tell me anything,” you sigh, looking down at the ground. “He didn’t even tell us about the nen beasts—or nen in general, I only knew because of the Hunter Exam. If he wanted us to know about any of this, he would’ve told us.”

You feel frustrated. 

Not for the first time in your life, and certainly not for the last, you think that you hate your father. You hate him more than your mother, who never spared you a second glance after you’d been born a girl and not a boy. You hate him more than you hate Benjamin, whose shadow loomed so large over you that you could never escape from it; no matter how much you proved yourself at the Royal Military Academy, your success was always compared to his. And, maybe, you even hate him more than Tserriednich, who made your life a living hell from the moment you were born, who saw you as a piece of property to own and control, a project to create and shape into perfection.

If it weren’t for your father, your life might’ve been different. Happier. Kinder. But King Nasubi Hui Guo Rou only cares for one thing, and it is not his children, not his soulmate, nor even himself—it is Kakin. He sees his children as pieces on a chessboard, to be disposed of as he sees fit, as tools to sharpen one another so that the strongest may sit on the throne and rule over the empire. If he were a little kinder, a little more caring, a little more present, then maybe Tserriednich wouldn’t have been able to usurp your life the way he had. Everything that has gone wrong with your life has started with him.

Wait. 

Your father. 

His soulmate.

Or, lack thereof, that is.

The thought consumes you immediately. You pause, staring intensely at your lap. You do need to talk to your father. The man, as monstrous and cold-hearted as he is, knows something that you need to learn for yourself. There’s a reason the Kakin kings survive what no one else can, and you need to find out what it is. 

The Kakin kings sever their soulmate bonds.

It’s a rite—a grotesque performance dressed up as tradition. Each new ruler is “freed” from mortal attachment before ascending the throne, and their soulmate is sacrificed for the good of Kakin. And somehow, despite losing their soulmate, they live, and they shouldn’t have. Every record you’ve ever read—each one agrees that soulmates cannot live without the other, and yet, the royal line endures. The kings walk away from their ceremonies unscathed and unbound.

How?

There must be a logical explanation, and you need to figure out what it is. Maybe then you can free yourself from at least one of the shackles weighing you down.

“Danchou wants to meet you at a restaurant on Tier Two in an hour,” Machi says, interrupting your thoughts. Your eyes slide shut as you sigh and start to shake your head. “Ten o’clock. He, ah, made it pretty clear that it wasn’t up for discussion.”

“He can’t order me around,” you scoff bitterly, turning your head to the side. 

None of them respond to you, but you can see them all exchange looks with one another through the reflection. He can order you around; otherwise, he can take away the people protecting you. Though you don’t think they’ll actually abandon you, if only because Chrollo will die if something happens to you, you don’t really want to test it.

“Anyway,” Machi drawls. “You should go start getting ready. We’re going to start heading over soon. I heard they’re taking a while screening people who are going down to Tier Two; they might give us some trouble.”

“They won’t give me trouble,” you mutter petulantly, rising to your feet. “He didn’t say how long the meeting had to be, did he?” 

Amused, Machi replies, “He did not.”

“Good.”

--------------

Chrollo is late.

The longer you sit in this wretched restaurant, the more irked you become. He specifically chose one of the seedier restaurants on Tier Two—the kind of place that clings to the idea of respectability while reeking of everything but. Candlelight flatters every patron into anonymity, and each table is spaced just far enough apart that conversations can’t be overheard without a combination of effort and carelessness. 

It’s good because the last thing you need is for word to spread that the Tenth Prince of the Kakin Empire is meeting with the leader of the Phantom Troupe, but it would be better if he had actually arrived on time. Since you’re alone, you’re open—already, you’ve had three men approach you with offers ranging from dinner to “company for the evening,” each cloaked in the oily kind of charm that passes for subtlety in places like this. The first tried to impress you with his watch, the second with his name, and the third with the quiet assurance that he “knew who you were and was good at keeping his mouth shut.” All three left with thin smiles and shattered egos, though the last lingered long enough to make you consider drawing blood just to speed his exit.

A fourth is approaching you now—another well-dressed parasite who’s going to try his hand at a night in your bed. Your fingers drum against the linen tablecloth. You’re not worried about them, you’re just annoyed, and more than that, you’re pissed at Chrollo for putting you in this position. The longer he takes, the more visible you become. 

“I’m not interested,” you say coldly, not looking up when the fourth man approaches you. You swirl your glass of wine absently, watching as the red liquid sloshes up to the rim of the glass. “Leave.”

“Ah, but I’ve only just arrived. How cruel.” 

It is not a stranger’s voice that reaches your ears, but the low hum of Chrollo Lucilfer’s. Your gaze snaps up in surprise, eyes falling upon his familiar face. He looks handsome, you think instinctively, hating the thought the moment it crosses your mind; he’s dressed nicely in a sleek black suit, but the bags beneath his eyes are worse than they were yesterday, and he somehow looks even paler. 

He looks handsome, yes, but he still seems seriously unwell. 

You smother the flicker of concern that bubbles in your chest, but before you can speak, you find yourself faltering. Chrollo’s lithe fingers slip beneath your free hand, lifting it off the table slightly so he can lower his head to brush his lips against your knuckles. His gaze remains trained on the man who had been mid-approach to your table, and you can feel his lips curl up into a smug smile against your skin as the man freezes and quickly turns to walk away. You want to snap your hand back, but you’re so flustered and surprised by the action that you freeze, heart rate skyrocketing.

It takes too long for you to pull your hand from his, and it’s a wonder that your voice is steady as you say, “Sit. You’re late.”

“My apologies,” he replies, teeth sharp as he smiles at you. “I was just telling Machi that she could head back up to your quarters and rest. I’ll walk you back after our meal.”

Your jaw tightens, and Chrollo’s eyes glimmer with delight at your reaction. He only sent her away so that you couldn’t storm off five minutes after he’s arrived, fulfilling his request, but remaining spiteful and uncooperative. Malicious compliance, if you will. You wonder if Machi told him what she thought you were planning, or if he just predicted your actions himself. You don’t know which is worse.

“How kind of you,” you say sarcastically. 

“I thought so,” he agrees politely, taking a seat across from you. “Have my spiders been treating you well?”

“Well, I’m still alive,” you reply dryly. “That’s about as much as I can ask.”

“Have they been good to you?” Chrollo presses again, not satisfied with your answer. He tilts his head to the side, eyes lidded as he studies you. You want to hold his gaze, but you can’t bring yourself to, averting it down to the table.

“Yes,” you answer quietly. “They have been.”

“Good,” he says softly. “I’m glad.”

The words sound oddly genuine, and it makes you uncomfortable. You shift in your seat, keeping your gaze trained on your drink, and then you clear your throat and say, “Why did you want to meet?”

“Is it so odd to believe that I just want to get to know the one who’s fated to me?” Chrollo cocks his head to the side, lips curved up into a sweet smile. 

He’s mocking you, you realize, tongue kissing the back of your teeth as you push down the rage that bubbles in your chest. He only looks more amused by your visible irritation, so you swallow your anger, raising your chin as you lift your eyes to meet his before you say, “Don’t call me that.”

Chrollo rests his chin on his hand, raising his eyebrows in amusement. “Don’t call you what? My fated? It’s only a fact—just like how the sun rises in the east, the tides change with the moon, and thieves take what’s not theirs.”

The words are almost lazy, but there’s a glint of something calculating in his eyes—not quite teasing or serious, but as though he’s testing to see just how far he can push you before you go careening over the edge. Your patience is on its last legs; you’ve been irate since long before you arrived at this place, and Chrollo is determined to make you snap.

“It—”

“—makes you sick?” he drawls, voice and expression sharper now as he watches you flinch back when he throws your words back in your face. Sarcastically, he adds, “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

You push away the shame that starts coiling in your stomach again, shaking your head and looking away from him. You pull your hands into your lap, absently toying with one of your bracelets; you brace yourself to ask him again what he wants, but he talks again before you can.

“I didn’t have any words on my wrist for eight years,” Chrollo muses, looking back down at his wrist. He doesn’t roll his sleeve up this time—you’re grateful for it. “Meteor City… it’s not a place where soulmates mean much of anything. Still, for children, at least, it gives us something to look forward to. But since I didn’t have my words for so long, I was, ah, a bit of an outcast. They liked to say something must be wrong with me, since I don’t have one like everyone else.”

You know where this is going. The dread you feel weighs heavily on your chest, but you still can’t help but say, “I can’t control when I was born.”

“No,” Chrollo agrees softly. “You can’t. You know, half of the population doesn’t know what it’s like for the words to appear because they’re born with them. The other half is typically so young that they don’t remember the pain. I was old enough, though. The pain was excruciating. It felt like someone was taking a knife to my skin and carving each letter in down to the bone. But still, I was… happy, because it meant that you existed. That I…”

Chrollo doesn’t finish his sentence, trailing off as the waiter approaches your table. The man clears his throat politely, a practiced smile on his face. Chrollo doesn’t even glance at the menu before placing his order, and you already had plenty of time to decide what you wanted to eat while you were waiting for him, so it’s not long before the waiter wanders away, and Chrollo’s gaze slides back to you.

“Well, it’s safe to say my excitement dimmed when I wiped away the blood and read the words.”

“What do you want me to say?” you ask, jaw tight. “Do you want me to apologize? Those words weren’t what I intended my first to be to you, but I meant them all the same. I think you’re disgusting. The sight of you makes me sick. Knowing I’m bound to you makes me sick. Are you really so surprised by the fact? Knowing all of the awful things you’ve done?”

To his credit, he’s facially unbothered by your words. His jaw doesn’t tighten, his lips don’t twitch, his gaze doesn’t even falter from where it’s pinned to your face. You hate how indifferent he is; it makes him impossible to read. 

“Surprised? No,” he says, lips curling up into an unsettling smile. “But I have to ask, don’t you think it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy?”

“... What?”

“The words,” he elaborates, and you know you’re not going to like whatever he’s about to say, because there’s an anticipatory gleam in his eyes, like he’s eager to see how you respond. “If your first thought on meeting me was disgust—if you felt it so strongly that you branded me with it—then why wouldn’t I lean into it? Why wouldn’t I give you every reason to be right?”

He folds his hands on the table, tilting his head slightly to the side. There’s no malice in his tone as he continues. “People treat you the way they believe you are. Growing up in Meteor City taught me that lesson very early. You told me what I was before I even knew what I was. So, I became it.”

“Is that your justification for everything you’ve done?” you say through your teeth, knuckles white around the seat of your chair as you try to push away the increasing rage you feel. “You just blame me.”

“No,” he disagrees. “I’m trying to thank you. You made becoming myself very easy.”

You don’t know how to respond to that. He’s watching you again—or, he hasn’t stopped really—but you’re still struggling to hold his gaze. You want to be angry about what he’s implying, but it only makes you feel ashamed. Again. This time, you can’t push it away or convince yourself otherwise. And you know you shouldn’t feel ashamed; it only makes you even more frustrated than you already are. But it’s not so simple. 

This Chrollo deserved what you said, there’s no denying that, he is a monster, and he’s committed such horrific acts that he’ll burn for eternity in whatever hell waits for him after death. But you knew before you opened your mouth that this Chrollo wouldn’t be the only one affected by the first words you spoke. That’s why you were trying to be careful, that’s why you hadn’t meant to say what you did. The idea of an eight-year-old—any eight-year-old, not just Chrollo Lucilfer—who had been anxiously waiting for their soulmate’s first words to appear, only to be met with that, makes you sick with guilt and shame. 

“You feel guilty,” Chrollo murmurs, fascinated. “You shouldn’t. I told you, I’m trying to thank you.”

“I’m not heartless, although I’m unsure if you can say the same for yourself,” you say snidely, taking a sip of your wine to calm your nerves and edge away your guilt. “What do you want from me? Why did you want to meet me tonight? To taunt me?”

“I told you, I only want to talk to you,” he says with that polite smile that irritates the hell out of you. “I want to get to know you. I—”

Chrollo pauses suddenly, an odd expression crossing over his face. He lifts his hand to his mouth and clears his throat. From the way he grimaces briefly, he either tastes something in the back of his throat, or more likely, was hit by a sudden spike of pain. You notice how he so quickly covers it up—if you hadn’t been paying attention, you would’ve missed it.

“Are you hurt? Sick?” you ask sharply, grateful that your voice comes out more accusing than concerned.

“How sweet, are you worried about me?” You don’t fall for the bait, and he sighs, “Not at all,” as he lets his hand fall back to the table as though nothing happened. “Just… an irritated throat is all.” Your eyes narrow in suspicion, but he waves it off with a faint flick of his wrist, as though shooing a gnat. “Anyway, as I was saying—where were we?” 

“You were about to say something nauseating,” you mutter, setting your glass down a little too hard, still giving him a dubious look, because if something is wrong with him, it affects you.

“Ah, that’s right.” His smile returns, lighter now, amused by your antics. “I’d like to know you. Even if you’d rather claw my eyes out than sit across from me.”

“That’s putting it lightly,” you scoff more to yourself than to him. “Well? What do you want to know? Let’s get this over with so I can go sleep. It’s been a long day.”

“I have to ask,” he drawls, gaze flicking up to the waiter as he brings Chrollo his drink. He gives the man an easy smile and his thanks before turning his attention back to you. His smile at you feels oddly intimate in comparison, and you find yourself averting your gaze to the side. “Why is it that you detest me so deeply? I haven’t done anything to you personally, have I?” 

“You think you have to do something personally to someone for them to hate you? You don’t think maybe the mass slaughter and torture of women and children would do the trick?” you ask dryly.

“No, this is different.” He leans back, eyes never leaving yours. “That look on your face—it isn’t righteous outrage. It’s personal.”

You open your mouth to respond, but something in his expression stills you. He tilts his head, gaze sharpening, and for one infuriating moment, you feel entirely transparent. Like he can see right through you, read you like a book.

“Oh,” Chrollo breathes out, more to himself than to you. The faintest trace of laughter escapes his lips in a puff of air, but for a second, the amusement doesn’t reach his eyes. You almost think you imagine it. “How delightfully ironic.”

Your stomach knots up. “What?”

His eyes are soft now, almost sympathetic, but you can tell he’s mocking you. Perhaps mocking himself too, you realize after he speaks. “You’re in love with him,” he says simply. “The chain user.”

The breath leaves your lungs. “I—”

“Ah, fate does have a sense of humor,” Chrollo goes on, conversational as ever. “My soulmate, devoted to the last living Kurta. And I, the man who erased his entire clan.” He swirls the wine in his glass, the amusement fading from his expression as he stares down at the red liquid. “What a charming arrangement.”

You don’t know how to respond to this either. You want to deny it with a scoff, or even laugh in his face, but you think he’ll be able to read through you instantly. You had loved Kurapika—you told him that you wished he was your soulmate, you cried after you realized who it was you were fated to instead, and it felt like your heart was ripped out of your chest when he first walked away from you after the events of Yorknew. Two years apart have done nothing to quell how much you care for him, that was made clear enough to you when you bumped into him the other day. 

Chrollo rests his elbow on the table and his cheek in his hand, smiling lightly like you’re two schoolgirls sharing gossip with one another. “Tell me, how did he go about spurning you after he realized it was me you were fated to? Was he gentle? Did he let you down easy? Or did he just cut you off without another word?” he questions curiously, and then his eyes take on a sharper look, his smile becoming a bit crueler. “How desperate were you to keep him? Did you think spre—”

The wine glass in your hand shatters, cutting deep into your hand, and the quiet conversation in the restaurant goes silent. Chrollo is instantly out of his seat, making his way over to you and waving off the waiters who rush to clean up the mess. He kneels at your side and pulls out a handkerchief that he must’ve slipped out of some unfortunate rich man’s pocket on the way to the restaurant, because the initials embroidered on it read ST rather than CL.

You hate the way your heart jumps when his lithe fingers wrap around yours, lifting your hand from your lap to wrap the handkerchief around the cut in your hand. He looks up at you through his lashes, gray eyes light with amusement.

“Did he love you back before he knew?” he asks softly, disarming you with how gentle his touch is as he dabs the blood away from your hand and taps absent patterns on your thigh, waiting for a response.

You don’t give him one, though. You look away—you don’t know if he did, but you want to believe so. The way he spoke to you, looked at you, touched you. He had to have. He had to have loved you, or at least something close to it. 

Chrollo hums, eyes glittering and lips curled up into a humorless smile. “He did,” he intones. “I’m glad then that I get to take one last thing from him.”

You rip your hand from his, snapping it forward to backhand him hard, but Chrollo catches the blow right before it can land on his cheek. He’s too smug as he unfurls your hand, lowering his head to brush his lips against your palm, right over the jagged cut. When he lifts his head up to look at you again, his lips are stained red with your blood. 

You immediately pick up your knife with your free hand, and his gaze flicks over to it, amused.

“You’re vile,” you breathe out, voice trembling with fury and something you refuse to name as you snap your hand back into your lap.

“I’m yours,” he corrects with a poisonous smile, “and you’re mine. Fate has declared it. We were made for one another, born to be each other’s other halves—however vile I am, what does that say about you, who I’m meant for?”

This time, Chrollo doesn’t stop you when your free hand shoots out to wrap around his neck. He looks up at you with lidded eyes, lips still painted with your blood as his pulse thrums beneath your fingers. His throat is surprisingly thin in your hand like this, almost fragile. You find yourself wondering, with a mix of desire and morbid curiosity, how far he would let you push—how much he would endure if you tightened just slightly, if you tested that fragility.

Chrollo tilts his head back just enough to give you better access, as if inviting your curiosity, not afraid of the danger inherent in your hand resting there. His gray eyes remain locked on yours, calm, but the faint twitch of his lips suggests that he’s very aware of every thought running through your head.

This is all a big show, you realize spitefully. His way of showing you that he’s accepted this, his way of proving that he’s yours to do what you will with, his way of taunting you because you can’t accept that you’re bound to him. You pull your hand back into your lap like his skin has burned you, turning your body away from him. 

“Sit back down,” you spit. “You’re making a scene.”

“I’m making the scene?” he questions, amused, but he does rise to his feet and make his way back to the opposite side of the table. When he takes his seat, he tosses you a too-sweet smile and tilts his head to the side. “I’m enjoying getting to know you, exalted.”

“I bet you are,” you reply, voice low, forcing yourself not to sneer at the mocking title he gives you. “Isn’t it my turn now to get to know you?” 

Chrollo’s eyes widen slightly. He holds his palms upwards as if beckoning you. Voice a low hum, he says, “Nothing would please me more.”

“Why are you looking for Hisoka?” you ask without hesitation, relishing in the way the smile slides right off of his face. 

“He is a pest,” is all Chrollo says in response. About as forthcoming as you expected him to be.

“He has always been a pest,” you retort dryly. “What has made him such an extraordinary pest that you’ve decided the Black Whale, of all places, will be his hunting grounds?”

Chrollo doesn’t immediately respond, and your gaze flickers with interest when you realize that whatever Hisoka did, it must’ve really upset him. The corners of his lips are pinched, and his gaze is dark and heavy as he finally averts it from you to look to the side as the waiter approaches with your meals and a new glass of wine for you. This time, neither of you feigns politeness as the man bows his head and rushes off; neither of you touches your food either. 

“We were coming on the Black Whale anyway,” Chrollo finally says, forcing levity into his voice and his lips into a bland smile as he looks back at you. “A happy coincidence.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” you answer, but humor his attempt at deflection anyway. “Why were you originally coming on the Black Whale?”

Chrollo smiles again, this one is more genuine. His eyes catch the dim light with a glint that’s far too amused for comfort, and he tilts his head just a bit to the side, letting his hair fall slightly in his eyes. “Why ever would a band of thieves stow away on a vessel housing the wealthiest royal family in the known world, and the swarm of gilded sycophants that followed them aboard?”

You let out a sound so disbelieving that you can’t tell if it’s a scoff or a laugh. “You’re insane,” you breathe out, more to yourself than to him. “We’re in the middle of the sea. We’ll be in the uncharted waters in less than two weeks. There’s nowhere for you to run once you’ve made enemies of everybody on board.”

Chrollo raises his eyebrows, amused. “Then we’ll just have to kill them all.”

He says it so easily that it takes you a moment to process the words he spoke. When you do, you almost break a second glass of wine. He can tell from the way his eyes glitter in amusement. You laugh—scoff, maybe—and then ask, “How do you do it? Ever since I realized who you were to me, I’ve been trying to understand it—how you can do such awful things and still sleep at night. So, tell me, how?” 

Something shifts in Chrollo’s expression, as though he doesn’t like your question. His gaze turns up to the ceiling, considering your words, and when he finally looks back down at you, his expression is eerily blank.

“Because I can,” he says simply. “Because no one can stop me. Do I need more reason than that?”

A monster.

“You’re disgusting,” you say, but there’s no venom behind it this time. You turn your head to the side, hardly able to bear looking at him. “And Hisoka? What did he do that was so egregious that you would abandon your quest to rob my family blind?”

Chrollo doesn’t respond again; you don’t really expect him to, but you do vaguely recall the saying that follows the residents of Meteor City: We’ll accept anything you leave here, but don’t ever take anything away from us. Kurapika had said that the words were left behind after the massacre of the Kurta Clan, and they were the first thing that you were told when you spoke to your sources about the Phantom Troupe and Meteor City, trying to understand more about who your soulmate is and why he is what he is. Meteorites are a terribly vengeful group of people, and you doubt that Chrollo is an exception. 

“Did he take something from you?” you ask, voice soft in spite of the edge behind your words. “Treasures? Artifacts? No, I doubt anything so mundane would set you on this quest for revenge… But a leg, maybe?” Chrollo’s expression twists before he can school it back to a blank slate; you see the haunted look in his eyes. You find no pleasure in it, but force yourself to continue speaking anyway. “How many did he break? One? Two?”

The way his eyes slide shut is enough of an answer. You give him a smile that doesn’t quite reach your eyes as you mock his words from before, “How delightfully ironic.”

When he reopens his eyes to look at you, there’s no light in them. It takes an effort for you not to swallow thickly and turn your gaze down. His voice is void of emotion as he says, “They were defenseless. They had no means of fighting back when he butchered them.”

“Ah, killing the defenseless. What sort of monster would do something like that?”

For a brief second, you succeed in getting the reaction you hope for: his eyes flash with rage and his jaw tightens. He forces out, “It’s different.”

“How so?”

“Because they were mine,” he replies, and his voice is the harshest you’ve heard it, even if it’s probably the most childish reasoning you could’ve imagined. But the pain in his voice is raw, and it was clearly unintentional from the way his lips instantly turn down and his brows furrow in frustration at himself. He turns his face to the wall for a moment, and you watch him take a deep breath like he’s calming himself down. He repeats coldly, “It is different because they were mine. And I—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence, and you’re not quite sure what he was going to say, but you could imagine: And I protect what’s mine. And I take care of my own. And it was my fault. You want to make another snide comment, but you can’t bring yourself to.

“Then why don’t you just give him what he wants?” you ask, frowning. He shoots you a look that’s more accusatory than it is questioning, so you elaborate. “Back in Yorknew, he told Kurapika all he wants is the chance to fight you. Just fight him—you really think he’ll beat you?”

Chrollo gives you a droll look that pisses you off more than any other look he gave you throughout the night. “You must not be following the news,” he says dryly. “I gave him what he wanted. A grand battle at Heavens Arena. He lost.”

Oh. You did hear about that, actually—a battle between floor masters that ended with nearly a thousand casualties and the upper floors of the tower destroyed. You just didn’t know it was Chrollo and Hisoka.

“Then why is he still alive?"

“He shouldn't be,” he says with a thin smile, “and yet here he is, killing my spiders because he’s a sore loser.” 

The idea of Hisoka somehow dying and coming back to life is definitely one that makes your hair stand on end, but you try not to look as bothered as you feel, lips curving into a tight smile. “Hisoka Morow, a sore loser. Somehow, I’m not surprised.” 

“How well acquainted are the two of you?” Chrollo asks curiously; you could almost mistake the sharpness in his eyes for jealousy, but it’s gone before you can make sense of it.

“Well enough,” you say. “We took the Hunter Exam together. He was oddly fascinated with two of the boys I befriended. We were trapped in the same part of the tower during the Third Phase. He tried to kill me a few times—for fun, he said—and then he started trying to bed me. I preferred the murder attempts.”

Chrollo’s lips turn downward, a contemplative look in his eyes. “Do you think he might seek you out?”

You hum as you think. “Probably not once he realizes your spiders are with me. He knew what the words on my wrist were—once he sees them with me, I’m sure he’ll put it all together.”

“He’ll target you too, then,” Chrollo says quietly. “The message he left with Machi for me was quite clear.”

“Message?”

Chrollo’s expression fades. His lips part, and his dark eyes become a bit unfocused as he recalls whatever message Hisoka left behind for him. You quickly smother the concern that bubbles in your chest.

“Chrollo?” you press when he doesn’t immediately respond. 

His gaze snaps up as if he had forgotten you were there. He blinks once, twice, and then forces a smile on his face. “Ah… that was the first time you’ve said my name. Careful, I’ll think you’re becoming fond of me.”

It’s a blatant attempt at diverting your attention, and you give him a lingering look that tells him you know what he’s doing, but you let the subject drop. You’ll ask Machi what Hisoka said instead; you don’t feel like pressing Chrollo for it when he’s clearly not inclined to tell you.

“I’d like to go,” you finally say, folding your napkin and placing it on the table. Your food remains untouched, so does his. You lift your hand to beckon a waiter over. “You’ve wasted enough of my time.”

“You haven’t eaten,” Chrollo notes with a frown.

“Neither have you,” you reply dryly. “Do you plan to?”

Chrollo tilts his head slightly as though you already know the answer—which you do. When the waiter comes over with the check, you make a grab for the bill holder, but Chrollo is quicker, tossing you a fleeting smile before slipping a sleek black card into it and handing it back over to the waiter.

“I don’t need your bloodstained money,” you say tightly.

“No doubt,” he agrees with a hum. “I’m sure you have plenty of your own to spend… Don’t tell me you think Kakin’s wealth is clean?”

You flinch back at that, not expecting the dig, and definitely not expecting the cold, flinty look he tosses in your direction. One that’s far too personal to be objective distaste. Does he have a past with Kakin? One of the three families? The Cha-R focuses on weapons and drug trafficking, if you remember correctly; the Heil-Ly and Xi-Yu were human trafficking, you think. You don’t remember too well. You were never involved much with Kakin’s underworld; you only heard things every now and then through Tserriednich. Meteor City—doesn’t the Xi-Yu Family deal with them? Shit, you can’t remember, and you have no one to ask.

Chrollo gives you a disarming smile after the waiter comes back with his card, rising to his feet and holding his hand out to you to help you up. You sneer at him, but with as many eyes on you as there are, you don’t want to make more of a scene, so you place your hand in his and let him help you to your feet. 

“Anyway, it would be shameful if I let my soulmate take the bill on our first date, no?”

You rip your hand away from his immediately. “This was not a date.”

“No? A candlelit evening? Talking, getting to know each other over wine and dinner? What would you call it?” he asks, voice honeyed and teasing as he looks down at you. His hand slips down to your lower back, too intimate as he leads you forward—you want to push his hand away, but you don’t. 

“A meeting to exchange information,” you say stiffly.

He gives you a sweet smile as he looks down at you. “A date.” You roll your eyes, exasperated, but choose against going back and forth with him. Then he adds, “I’m eager for our next. Tuesday can’t come soon enough.”

“Oh, it definitely can,” you mutter more to yourself than to him.

You ignore the warmth that pools in your stomach as he huffs out a laugh at your words, and you especially ignore the way your chest feels full and your heart feels right when his hand slips around to your hip to hold you closer to him as you walk down the halls. It’s like you have to forcibly remind yourself of who he is and what he’s done. You have to make yourself sick when it should come easy, natural. What is wrong with you? This whole situation is fucked up.

Why does it have to be him? You almost want to cry, because it’s not fair—fate, the gods, whatever it was that bound you to him, it’s not fair. Why does it have to be him? How long can you convince yourself that this was a mistake? The gods don’t make mistakes. They’re gods. But it has to be. You remember what he said before: what does it say about you? You’re letting Chrollo Lucilfer hold your waist after a dinner—a thief, a murderer, a monster—and you don’t instinctively feel disgusted? It feels right? 

In Kakin, soulmates are meant to be two halves of the same perfect whole. So how is Chrollo, of all people, the one supposed to complete you? The sun to your moon, the heaven to your earth; it makes no sense, it has to be a mistake, not unless— 

𓆃 Tobirama is from an era where marriages weren’t done out of love—they were performed for social and political purposes. And so, you can expect behavior from him that tends to allign with tradition. But Tobirama isn’t entirely closed-minded and is generally open to formulating a unique dynamic.

𓆃 Tobirama treats a union as a formality, and while he doesn’t go out of his way to be cruel, he doesn’t see much of a point to being overly friendly.

𓆃 He is—and has always been— a soldier, and Tobirama doesn’t see much of a point in what he perceives as playing politics. Marriage is just another job, another mission.

𓆃 And so, it almost doesn’t matter if your relationship is arranged or not. Tobirama might as well treat both dynamics mostly the same.

𓆃 He’ll take on the role he’s been taught to play—that of partner, protector, and father if that is what your arrangement dictates. And perhaps that feels stuffy to someone looking for more from him.

𓆃 Tobirama gives a bit more leaway when it comes to a chosen arrangement, as his stuffiness can be interpreted as endearing and then redirected from then on.

𓆃 Because for being tradition minded—most people of the era are—Tobirama is by no means cruel to a partner and adapts quickly when he’s willing.

𓆃 Chosen or arranged, Tobirama is a dedicated partner who mainly expresses himself through acts of service.

𓆃 While getting him to spend an amount of quality time with you seems like a chore and while he’s not good with his words in the slightest, he will make certain that you never want for anything.

𓆃 No matter how close or distant your relationship is, no matter how much you may or may not disagree, he’ll always guarantee that your books are balanced, your leisurely activities are alloted for and alligned, and that your house always boasts fresh meat (or an extra allotment for your home farm, if that’s more your thing).

𓆃 He does it all quietly and never expects to be thanked. Because for Tobirama, dominance over the household is not nearly as important as his self-assigned role as provider.

𓆃 This role doesn’t tend to clash if you also prefer to be active in maintaining your affairs, as it’s far easier for the two of you to fall into a well-oiled system. You fill his cup and he fills yours.

𓆃 It’s always lucky when intersts and attitudes allign, but even if yours don’t, Tobirama always acknowledges what’s special to you.

𓆃 He may not like gardening, but you’ll find your garden freshly plowed when it’s planting season.

𓆃 You may never be able to bring him to your dancing lessons, but he always stays the entire duration for your performance during festival season, never letting his eyes stray away.

𓆃 Should you find yourself with children or students to mentor, Tobirama has proven himself to be excellent with children despite his otherwise cold exterior.

𓆃 And in turn, children love Tobirama. He could be his usual somewhat grumpy self and all the children in the village would still be begging him for a piggy-back ride.

𓆃 The juxtaposition is very endearing and if you didn’t have children of your own before, you might find yourself wishing for some (if that’s your thing).

𓆃 The best parts of your relationship happens when the world is quiet. The little moments in the kitchen where you end up having an in depth discussion neither of you had planned on.

𓆃 Times when he refills your tea without even being asked, never taking a pause from his response to something insiteful you’d just said.

𓆃 Because everything else—your relationship, what it’s for or what it's meant to be—melts away in that moment. Because it’s those little moments that reminds you that you’re just two humans from a different time in a new world.

“mine.” he mumbles against your neck, sucking marks into the delicate flesh, letting his fangs poke at it a bit. “all mine. say it.”

“i’m yours.” you say breathlessly, almost too lost in the feeling to understand what’s really going on. he hums a smile against the skin of your throat. “and i’m yours.” he bites down harder, ripping a wanton moan from your lips, clutching his biceps. “alucard!” you scold, panting from the pain and pleasure.

The moon cloaks itself amidst the twilight to leave room for the stars to illuminate the sky. Thousands gather closely together to observe the night's events, and whisper gossip that the breeze tells them. A castle, tall enough to hold the heavens and older than most museums, resides within the forest. Its worn stone enjoys the scenery's tranquility, and the surrounding wildlife serves as a reminder of its reason for standing.

There are two occupants in this castle; The legendary Alucard, A.K.A Adrian Țepeș, and you, his lovely wife. You have been married for almost two-hundred years, and there is nothing that you would change about the life that you have built together. You both enjoy travel, so the adventures that you go on together are eternally endless. Adrian has solidified himself into your soul, and he is part of you that you never wish to do without. In moments where you felt like you couldn't go on, his face came to mind and you remembered just how strong you are.

Adrian knows that the connection that you share will last far beyond the relevance of your immortal lives. Not even at the chance of death will your love's resilience waver, for it is a force stronger than any enemy that you have vanquished together. If you were not in his life, then he would not laugh, smile, ponder or explore as much as he has in your company. Adrian Țepeș is not a man who fears much, but the idea that plagues his mind into restlessness is how much darker his world would be without you in it. Imagining a reality where he lives without your rants about all of the things that he wouldn't think twice about, paired with its angelic echo chanting off of the walls of your home would send him into madness, if not for the comfort of your body lying asleep by his side in your shared bed.

Every day that you spend together is a day that you both cherish, and today has felt particularly special. From dawn 'til dusk, you walked through the forest and discovered things that you hadn't noticed before; The different flowers blooming within the grass or unfamiliar streams, for instance. You have lived in this area for some time now, yet when journeying with Adrian, all sorts of new encounters appeared. It was very fulfilling to wander out with him to see what awaited you.

Now, your exciting day has come to a close, and both of you agreed that the best way to wind down before bed was to stargaze together. You stand on one of many bridges of the palace, your hands resting on the cold stone railing while your eyes sparkle just as brightly as the stars you stare at. Adrian stands not far behind you, a smile gracing his pale lips as he admires the great darkness above. Every once in awhile, he will look back at you and treasure the warmth that pools within his chest. Your joy while looking up at the stars is more beautiful than any twinkling light in the sky, and if he spent his night watching you like this instead, then he would be just as content.

Occasionally, you'll point out an exceptionally bright star, or a constellation, and Adrian's eyes will follow where you lead them. You'll tell about the story behind how the constellation was named, and anything else that comes to mind in relation. Being born into a group of Speakers has left a lot of room for you to acquire all sorts of knowledge about a variety of different subjects, and at one point in your life, you found yourself very fascinated with everything related to space. As a result, you did a lot of research on the subject so that you could share it with your family, and anyone crossing your path willing to listen.

Both of Adrian's parents were people of science, so he gathered quite the bounty of information himself, but he would always make an effort to listen to you. No matter how many times you repeat the same tales and facts, he will nod along and asks questions as if it's the first time, just to prompt your endless, passionate rambles. Gaining the opportunity to share your wisdom grants you an ethereal, excitable glow that he will gladly blind himself with, if it means that the last thing he ever sees is your smiling face.

A comforting quiet lingers in the air while you both gaze up at the stars, cherishing the night's delightful weather that provides you the freedom to enjoy this moment together. Sky's stillness suddenly dispels when a star swiftly descends from the shadows, and immediately, it catches Adrian's attention. A blissful, child-like smile graces his lips as he takes a step forward, then points above while announcing, "Look, a shooting star!"

Instantly, your head whips into the direction where Adrian's finger follows, and you see it. Fortunately, before it leaves your view, you are able to make a wish. Many would see it as silly for an over three-hundred year-old vampire to believe in wishing on stars, for you have lived long enough to know that not all myths are true. Regardless, you like the hopefulness that the idea brings; That someone, somewhere is listening, with the goal of helping you achieve your dreams.

Wherever this comet is going, it's in a hurry, for it's leaving as quickly as it came. You squeeze your eyes shut and hold your breath, thinking about what you want most in the world. When you open them, you release the wind trapped inside your throat at the realization that the shooting star has disappeared over the horizon. Disappointment dwells in your heart and on your shoulders briefly before you spin around to look at your husband, whose arm has lowered. His face illuminates with a gentle joy as he gazes into the distance, a display that lightens your disheartenment and replaces it with bliss.

Long ago, you swore that you would commit all of Adrian's smiles to memory, so you take this time to do just that. The radiant expression that he wears is one of wonder, faith and longing, as if he wishes to chase that star to the ends of the Earth. You think that he looks so adorable like this, and you would hate for him to stop, but you become curious as to if he made a wish too, so you ask him, "Did you make a wish, Adrian?"

Blinking out of his awestruck state, golden eyes meet yours. You are so glad that during all of this time, the color of Adrian's eyes never changed. You think that it gives him individuality, and they remind you that through every hardship, you will always have someone at your side to endure it with. Sunshine dims into a soft sadness, which rawly clenches at your heart. Adrian's eyes glance to the ground, a frown on his face while he admits, "Oh, no. I didn't get the chance to."

The vessel which keeps you standing feels like it is being brutally mauled through at this response. Now, Adrian gazes out into the sky with furrowed brows, and your own face falls as his does. While he is skeptical about the idea of wishing on stars, he does find it fun to do sometimes. It didn't even come to mind when he saw it passing by, and seeing just how disappointed he is hurts more than any wound you could ever receive.

You use your quick-thinking skills to come up with something to cheer the dhampir up, when it hits you. You have been studying human magics for one-hundred years, and while you are quite skilled, you do not practice enough to fully achieve your true potential. Typically, you only use your magic on occasion when you're bored to make fun shapes, or when you're in combat with no other choice, but this is just as vital- no, even more-so. This is more dire than any foe that you have vanquished, more monstrous than any beast you have slain; Your sweet husband is sad, and as his wife, you want to make him feel better!

So, you cup your palms together and hold them out in front of you. Adrian notices the shift of your body, and turns to watch as you close your eyes. You focus on your desire, and think about the way that a star feels. You feel a tickling sensation spring its way up your back, as if stardust brushes your skin. Slipping into a deep state of concentration, you reflect on your early studies of magic when a yellow spark erupts into your hands. Adrian watches with fascination while the spark begins to brighten; It begins to take shape, until a thin, golden diamond glows in your grasp.

Adrian is completely blown away by your demonstration, his mouth hung open and eyes gawking widely at what you've just created. You open your eyes and smile at the dumbfounded look on your husband's face, giggling. "Make a wish, Adrian."

Realistically, you both know that this isn't what a star looks like, but that doesn't matter to your man. What matters to him is that it's yours, and it's perfect. For a moment, Adrian is silent, too bewildered by your manifestation to summon his voice. He knows that you are a very talented magician, and he has seen your capabilities at their finest. The fact that you have forged something so precious just to make him happy deeply touches Adrian. A smile adorns the man's face once more, eyes holding a love that is reserved only for you. He reaches a hand over to the side of your face to allow gloved fingers to graze your skin while he leans forward, and presses a gentle kiss to your lips.

You watch as he melts before you, your smile growing wider when seeing that he's happy again. Unexpectedly, he gives you a kiss, and this makes you feel even better. Adrian's lips have a very dastardly power to make you weak; One brush of them, and you feel like you could faint on the spot. His lips are soft, and he tastes of the most captivating spell. You would have dropped the illusion and wrapped your arms around him to properly relay your passion, if you didn't know how meaningful this was to him. Heat crawls its way into your cheeks, and your shoulders have hiked up from surprise, but they slowly lower themselves as you allow your body to relax. You return his kiss and tilt your head slightly to enhance the experience for both of you, and you stand like this for a moment to cherish how perfectly your lips mold together.

Albeit regrettably, Adrian is the one to back away. The sun of his eyes shines brightly with admiration, and the smile on his lips is tender. "I don't need to," He murmurs sweetly.

Seeing this look on the dhampir's face is everything that you could want out of tonight. You have shared a wonderful day together, but this has been the best part of it by far. A crooked grin curls its way your lips, and you give him a knowing look when you decide to tease him, "If you say it's because you have everything you could wish for right here, I'm going to hit you."

Adrian's posture straightens as he throws his head back to laugh. Light blooms within your chest at the sound, one that you would listen to every hour for all of your days if given the chance. Tilting his head upright, he meets your eyes and responds, "Alright, I hear you." Then, he leans over to examine the star in your hands more closely, asking, "Could we save it?" Your husband aligns himself upright again, reuniting your gaze to his while adding, "For my next wish."

You smile at the man, head slightly tilted while fondly gazing at him. Any request of his is one you will gladly satisfy, so you tell him, "I think I can do that."

The look on your face causes Adrian to soften, his shoulders noticeably relaxing a bit more at the sight. "Good." He then turns so that his side faces you, and offers an arm for you to take. "Shall we head to bed now?"

You squeeze your eyes shut and press your lips together harshly, charging all of your energy into the little splendor in your hands before hopping up. With your little bounce, the star shoots up into the sky, stardust hot on its trail, before it lowers down to settle itself floating slightly above you and Adrian. The dhampir turns around to recognize what you've done, that same stupefied expression on his face. You see it and laugh, an arm coming over your stomach as you take a step back and point at him. You gather yourself shortly after, and brush away any lingering dust on your clothes before you turn to face where Adrian is to take his arm. "Let's go."

It's only when you make contact with him that your husband comes out of his shock, his face relaxing when seeing yours and a smile decorating his lips. "As you wish."

With that, you head into the castle to begin your nightly routine. The star you created twirls around you both the entire way, and you laugh at mystical friend's enthusiasm. Love has brought you two a long way, and you guarantee that it will take you even farther. In every life, you know that Adrian would do anything to make you happy, and he knows that you would do the same.

@BUNNYLUVX ,, all rights reserved. do not copy/plagiarize any of my works or submit it into ai. any and all support is appreciated! <3