Chapter 46: The Sudden Ache

Xavion stood in the middle of his bedchamber, staring at a small table that was currently buried under three silver hairbrushes, two bone-handled letter openers, a pair of fur-trimmed riding gloves, and a brass compass that didn’t even point true north.

Dinner had been a mercifully quiet affair. Unlike the absolute feast the estate’s head chef usually threw together, the kind of absurd, multi-course spectacle that looked like it was meant to feed an entire starving mountain village, tonight’s meal had been modest. Just roasted fowl, root vegetables, and a simple barley broth. Xavion had been grateful for it. His stomach hadn’t been up for heavy spiced meats anyway.

Now, though, he had to deal with the aftermath of Lioren’s shopping spree.

He had unpacked a few of the smaller parcels before heading down to the dining hall, but returning to the room afterward made the sheer scale of the disaster hit him all over again. Boxes littered the rug. Paper wrappers rustled softly whenever a draft whistled through the window joinery.

There were practical things, of course. Three high-collared wool coats tailored for northern blizzards, six pairs of fine leather riding trousers, linen shirts, toiletries, and soft leather boots. Those made sense.

It was the other things that left him utterly bewildered.

The carved glass swan. The silver-embroidered handkerchiefs. The tiny brass oil lamps he had only paused to glance at because the glass work was slightly uneven. Lioren had bought every single one of them.

Xavion picked up a heavy wool coat, carefully folding it over his forearm before carrying it to the tall wardrobe against the wall. He needed to organize this. He couldn’t just leave half a market stall sitting in wooden crates until the day they loaded the carriages for the North.

Why had Lioren done it?

They had known each other for less than a what... four days? Three days? Their entire relationship was built on a bizarre, sudden proposal at a royal victory banquet. Was this mere northern hospitality? Was Lioren simply an excessively, pathologically generous man? Or was he still trying to balance some invisible debt over of a dried pastry?

Xavion sighed, rubbing the back of his neck as he set two brass candlesticks onto the mantelpiece. None of the answers made complete sense.

A soft, polite knock at the open oak door broke his line of thought.

"My goodness," a dry, melodic voice drawled from the threshold. "So the rumors circulating among the housemaids weren’t exaggerated after all."

Xavion turned to see Evelia leaning against the doorframe. She had traded her structured maroon court dress for a looser, emerald-green house gown, her dark hair pinned loosely at the nape of her neck. Her eyes swept over the scattered boxes with a look of pure, amused disbelief.

"Lady Evelia," Xavion said, lowering the stack of folded shirts he was holding. "I... apologize for the state of the room."

"Oh, don’t apologize to me," she chuckled, stepping inside and carefully navigating around a pine crate sitting near the rug’s edge. "I came to see it with my own eyes. Therin told me Lioren bought out half the lower avenue, but I assumed he was being dramatic. My brother has truly outdone himself this time. He seems entirely determined to fill every available square inch of your quarters with trinkets."

She stopped beside the writing desk, picking up the small carved wooden bear Lioren had proudly presented earlier. She turned it over in her palm with a quiet, snorting laugh. "A bear. Of course."

"He insisted it was a vital investment," Xavion murmured, the faint smile touching his lips.

"He’s a fool," Evelia said affectionately, setting the bear down. She rolled up her loose sleeves with a sharp, practical flick of her wrists. "Well, come on then. You’ll be sorting through this pile until sunrise if you do it alone. Let me help you put some order to this chaos."

"You don’t have to trouble yourself..."

"Nonsense. If I leave you here, my brother will probably burst in at dawn with six more boxes of boots."

Xavion didn’t argue further. He picked up a leather trunk and set it near the wardrobe while Evelia began folding the lighter linens, neatly stacking them on the lower shelves.

For a few minutes, they worked in a comfortable, rhythmic silence, broken only by the rustle of wrapping paper and the low hum of the hearth.

"He’s never done this before, you know," Evelia remarked casually, taking a bundle of silk cravats from a paper box.

Xavion paused, his hand resting on the latch of a shoe chest. "The shopping?"

"The attention," she corrected, looking over at him with a thoughtful, softer expression. "Lioren has always been... peculiar. He’s reckless, he acts on instinct, and he treats high court politics like a nuisance to be brushed off his boots. But toward people? Toward potential suitors?" She shook her head, a soft sigh escaping her. "He’s always been a stone wall."

Evelia picked up another bundle of cravats, then paused as her gaze wandered over the mountain of parcels still waiting to be unpacked.

"Honestly, what was he thinking?" she muttered. "Buying so many things in one afternoon. Does that man not own a mirror? He ought to take a good look at himself before accusing anyone else of being extravagant."

Xavion glanced at her, caught off guard by the sudden complaint.

Evelia turned toward him, seemingly realizing how her words might have sounded. "Oh, I’m not blaming you for any of this, Your Highness," she added quickly. "You didn’t ask him to buy half the shops in the market."

A faint smile tugged at Xavion’s lips.

"I know."

"Good." Evelia let out a breath, returning to the cravats in her hands. "Because if anyone is responsible for this mess, it’s my dear brother. He has a perfectly good head on his shoulders, yet sometimes I wonder what he keeps in it."

Xavion looked down at his hands, his fingers tracing the coarse grain of the wooden trunk.

"I still don’t understand it," Xavion admitted quietly, his voice dropping into a low, gravelly register. "I have spent hours trying to make sense of his motives. Is it a sense of debt? Because of the reception?"

"House Roscaire takes life debts very seriously, yes," Evelia agreed, picking up a silver-handled hairbrush and placing it neatly on the vanity. "If he thinks you saved his life, he would protect you with his steel until his last breath. But this?" She gestured toward the mountain of boxes with a faint, wry smile. "Buying out an entire market because he saw you glance at a glass swan? That isn’t debt, Prince Xavion. That’s... well, I don’t think Lioren even knows what it is himself yet."

Xavion remained silent. The thought settled heavily in his chest, not unpleasantly, but with a strange, confusing weight. He was a man with a shattered magic, a disgraced former general whose titles had been stripped away by his own people. He was accustomed to being viewed as a political pawn, a dangerous prisoner, or a fallen hero who had long since outlived his usefulness.

To be looked at with such frantic, overwhelming affection by a man like Lioren Roscaire... it was entirely uncharted territory.

He reached down to lift a heavy wooden box filled with leather-bound books...

THUMP

It was a sudden, violent pulse that spiked directly behind his right temple.

Xavion’s breath caught in his throat. The world tilted sideways on its axis, the warm golden light of the sconces smearing into long, disorienting streaks of yellow. A sharp, searing pressure, like a white-hot iron needle driving straight into bone, exploded right behind the leather eyepatch covering his ruined right eye.

His hands lost their grip. The book box slipped from his fingers, hitting the floorboards with a heavy, echoing clatter.

"Your Highness?"

He didn’t hear her clearly. The sound of his own pulse was roaring in his ears like a surging river. Instinctively, his right hand shot up, his fingers pressing hard against the thick leather patch strapped over his right eye socket. The skin around the old scar tissue felt suddenly, terrifyingly hot, a deep, throbbing ache that pulsed in rhythm with his rapid heartbeat.

He staggered back half a step, his shoulder catching the edge of the tall wardrobe to keep himself upright.

"Your Highness!"

Evelia was at his side in an instant. Her hand caught his left elbow, her eyes wide with sudden, sharp concern as she looked up at his face.

"What’s wrong? What happened?" she asked quickly, her voice sharp with alarm.

Xavion squeezed his single violet eye shut, forcing his breathing down, dragging air into his lungs through his nose. He held his palm flat against the leather patch, pressing hard until the blinding, sharp needle of pain slowly began to recede, dulling back into a low, throbbing ache behind his eye socket.

After five long, agonizing seconds, the room stopped spinning.

He slowly lowered his arm, his pale fingers trembling just a fraction before he clenched them into a tight fist at his side. He forced his posture to straighten, leaning away from the wardrobe and taking a quiet step back.

"I am fine," Xavion said, his voice flat, tight, and entirely devoid of emotion, the tone of a commander dismissing a minor scratch on the parade ground.

Evelia didn’t let go of his elbow. Her eyebrows were knitted tight, her eyes scanning his face with intense scrutiny. She saw the thin sheen of cold sweat near his hairline, the tension locked into his jaw.

"I don’t think you are," she said firmly, as though she wouldn’t entertain any objections.

"It was merely... a brief spell," Xavion insisted smoothly, clearing his throat. He adjusted the strap of his eyepatch with his thumb, carefully keeping his posture rigid. "The eyepatch... it was merely itchy. Nothing serious."

But he squeezed his eye shut, praying desperately for the pain to stay away.