I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)-Chapter 46: The Grip That Slips

Zarius didn’t falter. He kept his walk measured, hiding the tremor in his hands beneath the heavy, brocaded sleeves of his doublet. He stopped exactly three paces away. Not close enough to be intimate, not far enough to be cowed.

"Your Highness," Zarius said. His voice was a dry rasp, sounding like old parchment being smoothed over stone. "It’s been awhile."

Yerel turned then, a slow, predatory pivot. His gold-stitched silk caught the dying amber light filtering through the high windows, making him look less like a man and more like a hero carved from spite and privilege. He didn’t answer at first. Instead, he simply looked Zarius up and down, his eyes lingering on the pale, sunken hollows beneath the Duke’s cheekbones.

"Duke Valtrane," Yerel began. "By the Heavens, you look dreadful. Truly. It’s like looking at a corpse that’s forgotten to lie down." He stepped closer. "Should I summon the royal physician for you? I’d hate for you to collapse before we’ve even exchanged our first round of insults. It would be such a waste of a perfectly good evening."

Zarius felt the heat rising in his throat, not the heat of embarrassment, but the jagged, burning itch of his lungs betraying him. He swallowed hard, forcing a thin, brittle smile. "Your Highness is too kind. But your concern is as misplaced as it is uncharacteristic. It is nothing more than the dust of the road. A minor..."

The lie was cut short.

A racking, violent cough tore itself from his chest, doubling him over. Zarius snapped covered his mouth with his hand, his entire frame shuddering under the force of it. It wasn’t a "royal" cough. It was a wet, ugly sound that echoed off the vaulted ceiling, stripping away every ounce of the Duke’s carefully curated composure.

Yerel didn’t move to help. He simply watched, tilting his head with a look of mild curiosity.

"’Nothing,’ he says," Yerel remarked, his voice smooth and untroubled. "My dear Duke, you are practically vibrating with decay. If that’s ’nothing,’ I should hate to see what you consider a crisis. You’re one strong breeze away from becoming a decorative pile of bone meal."

Zarius finally straightened, his breath coming in shallow, whistling hitches. He just wiped his mouth before looking the Crown Prince dead in the eye.

"I suspect, Your Highness," Zarius rasped, his voice regaining its cutting edge, "that I would recover much faster if I weren’t being actively suffocated. There is a cloying scent in the air... like lilies at a funeral for a man no one liked. Your perfume, I assume? It is remarkably aggressive. Or perhaps you’re simply trying to mask the scent of your own desperation. I’ve heard it’s a difficult thing to scrub off the skin."

For a heartbeat, the room went still. Then, Yerel let out a short, sharp chuckle.

"Your sense of humor is really not that great, Valtrane," Yerel said, shaking his head. "Truly. If you try that line on Cherion, he’ll likely just have you flayed for being tedious. He has such a low tolerance for anything that isn’t a direct complement to his own brilliance."

Yerel began to pace, his rings catching the light. "Oh, by the way, try not to be too terribly upset with my father for his recent... generosity. Giving my ’leftovers’ to you wasn’t meant as a personal slight against you. Well, perhaps it was. But you know how the King is... he likes to ensure everyone knows exactly where they sit at the table. And right now, Duke, you’re barely in the room."

Zarius watched him. He knew what Yerel was doing. The Prince wanted to see him flinch. He wanted Zarius to be bitter or to be small. But the sting didn’t come. Perhaps he was too tired for it, or perhaps he just saw through the theater.

"I find it fascinating, Your Highness," Zarius said, his voice steadying, "that you think I care for the scraps falling from the King’s table. "And if I am barely in the room, then you should pray I never decide to step fully inside."

Yerel stopped pacing, his eyes narrowing. The "fun" was clearly starting to wear thin for him. He didn’t like it when his prey didn’t scream.

"You’re very bold for someone who looks like he’s about to be claimed by the earth," Yerel spat, the veneer of polite mockery finally fraying at the edges. "But I suppose that’s all you have left, isn’t it? Words. You can jab and poke all you like, but at the end of the day, we know who will be standing in the light, and you are the one hiding in the shadows of the garden, hacking your lungs out."

He stepped closer once more, leaning in until the scent of those funerary lilies was an invisible weight on Zarius’s chest.

"I think I’ll go now," Yerel whispered. "I won’t bother you anymore. It’s clear you can’t actually continue this conversation without falling apart, and frankly, it’s becoming a bit pathetic to watch. You’d best head to bed and rest. If you collapse on the marble, I certainly won’t take responsibility for the mess. The servants have enough to do without cleaning up the remains of a Duke."

Zarius didn’t blink and just stared back. "Your concern is noted, Your Highness. And promptly ignored."

Yerel snorted, a sharp, ugly sound. He stepped forward without warning, closing the narrow space between them until silk brushed brocade and the air turned thick with lilies and heat. For a fleeting second, it almost looked as though he might shoulder Zarius aside.

Instead, he walked straight past him.

The heavy sweep of his cloak dragged against Zarius’s arm as he passed, the intentional contact impossible to mistake. It wasn’t enough to stagger him, but it was meant to remind him how easily he could be moved.

"I’ll leave you to your coughing fits, then," Yerel called out. "I truly do hope we can meet again in the future, Valtrane. Preferably one where you actually look like a man who’s still alive."