Chapter Text
[Soobin]
It wasn’t a letter this time.
It was the silence.
The kind of silence that followed when a crown began to slip—when power stopped being assumed and started being questioned.
Soobin paced the length of the chamber, the wine in his glass untouched. Reports from the treasury had gone missing. A quiet audit had begun without his signature. Nobles who once clung to his every word now nodded cautiously, eyes flickering toward Yeonjun when they thought Soobin wouldn’t see.
And Yeonjun—
Yeonjun hadn’t come to dinner in three nights.
Not once.
Not even to pretend.
Soobin clenched the stem of his glass until it cracked.
He knew betrayal when he saw it.
And this—this was calculated.
This was coordinated.
But what tore at him most wasn’t that Yeonjun was slipping away.
It was that Yeonjun had never really belonged to him at all.
Not in the way he’d hoped.
Soobin set the shattered glass down with care.
No more waiting.
Tonight, he would speak to Yeonjun.
And Yeonjun would listen.
⸻
[Yeonjun]
The knock came just after midnight.
He didn’t answer.
The door opened anyway.
Soobin stepped inside, moving with the stillness of a storm barely held back.
“You’re avoiding me,” he said.
Yeonjun looked up from the ledger in his hands. “You’ve noticed.”
Soobin’s jaw tightened. “Why?”
Yeonjun closed the book slowly. “Because every time I speak to you, I lose another piece of myself.”
A pause. The fire crackled.
Soobin stepped forward. “You think I’m the enemy?”
“I think you want me to be yours,” Yeonjun said quietly, “more than you ever wanted me to be free.”
Silence.
Then, Soobin’s voice dropped—low, careful. Dangerous.
“I gave you everything. This palace. This protection. A place in my world.”
Yeonjun stood. “You gave me a gilded leash.”
Soobin’s control faltered. Just slightly.
“I took you from a world that used you.”
“And then did the same,” Yeonjun said. “Only you smiled while doing it.”
Something shattered between them then. Not glass. Not stone.
Trust.
Soobin stepped closer, eyes burning.
“I’ve been patient,” he said. “Gentle. But if you truly believe you can tear down what I’ve built—”
He stopped himself.
And that, Yeonjun realized, was the final crack.
Because Soobin was no longer speaking like a prince.
He was speaking like someone afraid.
Yeonjun’s voice softened—not with mercy, but finality.
“You built it on chains,” he whispered. “And now you’re watching them snap.”
Soobin didn’t respond.
He just looked at Yeonjun—truly looked—like he was seeing him for the first time not as something he could control…
…but as someone he had already lost.