The corridors stretched on longer than they had any right to. Noah followed behind Abel, half-limping, half-dragging his feet, staff clunking against the floor. The prince moved like nothing had happened—sword on his back, regal posture, toga still somehow dramatically swaying like it was animated by smugness itself.
Noah was not doing so great.
"So," he panted, "this castle. Nice place. Terrible interior design choices, but solid bones. Is it cursed year-round, or just a seasonal vibe?"
Abel didn't respond.
Noah squinted up at him. "No? Okay. That's fine. We don't have to talk about real estate. We can talk about you. Like… how long have you been stuck like that? Do you remember anything? Are you single? Asking for a friend."
Still nothing.
They reached the base of a wide marble staircase. It went up. And up. And up.
Noah tilted his head back and let out a quiet, defeated, "No."
Abel didn't even pause. Just started climbing like it was a casual stroll up a few steps and not a death march into leg-day hell.
"How far up is it?" Noah asked, not expecting an answer.
He didn't get one.
He sighed and began climbing anyway. One step. Two. By step fifteen, he was wheezing. By thirty, he was dragging himself by the banister. By forty, he was debating lying down and dying dramatically like one of those Victorian fainting women.
He slumped onto the next step, flopped over, and mumbled into the stone, "I changed your diaper back there. You owe me."
A shadow passed over him.
Noah looked up.
Abel stared down at him with the expression of a man who'd made peace with his mistakes.
And then—without a word—he bent down and swooped Noah up under one arm.
Like he weighed nothing.
Like he was some kind of moody little handbag.
"What the—hey—no—" Noah flailed once, weakly. "Put me down, you jacked mother—ugh, fine."
He went limp. This was fine. This was fine.
He didn't know if he was humiliated or aroused.
Probably both.
"Is this how you carry all your dates?" Noah muttered, dangling.
Abel didn't answer. Just kept walking. His arm was annoyingly firm. His chest was annoyingly close. His entire aura was annoyingly competent.
By the time they reached the top, Noah had mostly accepted his fate. He was carried. He was cargo.
When Abel reached a pair of massive doors and pushed them open, Noah expected to be placed down gently.
Instead, the prince just let go.
Noah dropped like a sack of wet laundry, face-first into a rug that probably cost more than his soul.
"Cool," he mumbled into the floor. "Romance is dead."
He rolled onto his back with a groan, one leg still flopped awkwardly over the threshold. Abel, meanwhile, walked in like nothing happened and started rummaging through a wardrobe the size of a small chapel.
Noah lay there for a while, staring up at the high, gilded ceiling.
"…I can't feel my legs," he said to no one in particular.
Then louder: "And I think I'm in love."
Abel was still digging through what had to be the most obnoxiously overstuffed royal wardrobe in existence, mumbling to himself about formal versus practical wear like any of it mattered in a goddamn cursed ruin. Meanwhile, Noah finally peeled himself off the floor, wincing at every creaking joint and aching muscle.
Then he saw it.
The bed.
Huge. Four-poster. Velvet-draped. Blankets fluffed like clouds by long-dead servants. Honestly, the thing looked like it could fit five people, maybe six if they liked each other.
Noah whispered, "Oh thank fuck," and crawled toward it like a dying soldier crawling toward water.
He barely managed to hoist himself up before flopping face-first into heaven. The sheets were soft. The mattress hugged his battered body like it was happy to see him. His legs sprawled out over the edge, his arm flopped off the side, and his brain started shutting down instantly.
Until movement caught his eye.
He cracked one lid open.
Abel, across the room, had finally shed the makeshift toga and was stepping into fresh clothes—some fitted royal uniform, deep navy, silver trim. But before the pants came on, Noah got a full view of all that glistening, scar-slicked muscle, that unnervingly perfect ass, and—
Yeah.
Yep.
The exhaustion didn't cancel out everything.
Noah blinked slowly. "Gods bless that bloodline."
Abel froze.
Turned his head.
Realized he wasn't alone.
"What—! Don't look!" the prince snapped, face instantly red. "Turn around!"
Noah made a lazy spinning gesture with one hand but didn't move. "Look, if I had the strength to turn around, I wouldn't be horizontal right now. It's fine. I've seen worse. Or better. Hard to say."
Abel huffed like a scandalized duchess and yanked the rest of his uniform on with speed that probably came from years of battlefield training. Noah didn't even flinch—he was too busy sinking into a pillow like it had personally promised him a better life.
"Anyway," he mumbled, "if you want me to help save your parents or kill a king or whatever, I need, like… a nap. At least two hours. Maybe a coma. You can figure out your life over there. Cry a little. Plan your noble redemption arc."
He shifted to one side, sighing in bliss.
"Or you can join me. I won't bite. Unless you ask really nicely."
Abel stared at him, flustered, jaw tight, hands balled into fists at his sides like he was trying to resist every urge to throw a pillow at Noah's face.
He didn't say anything.
Noah grinned into the sheets.
"Didn't think so."
And with that, he let his eyes fall shut and let the exhaustion drag him under.
He'd earned this nap. The prince could deal with the emotional fallout of re-humanization on his own for now.
Noah was out cold the moment his eyes shut. No system pings. No whispering spirits. Just blissful, heavy, dreamless dark.
Abel sat on the nearby chair—straight-backed, arms crossed, face carved from stoic marble. Or so he tried.
His eyes drifted.
Back to Noah.
To the curve of his back as he lay half-curled under the velvet sheets, golden hair splayed like a halo. To the way his lips parted ever so slightly in sleep. To the pale column of his throat. His long lashes. The faint scars and scratches still visible along his arms and collarbones from the battle earlier. The ones he'd taken to protect—
Abel looked away.
Then he looked back.
And then back again.
And then he caught himself thinking something he absolutely should not think about someone who was unconscious, snarky, and currently drooling on royal linen.
He blinked. Jaw clenched.
What the hell is wrong with me?
With a long-suffering sigh, he leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes—not to sleep, but to force the thoughts down where they belonged. Deep. Buried. Behind all the knightly discipline and trauma repression.
Poke.
Another poke.
Poke-poke.
"…You're lucky I don't bite in my sleep," Noah muttered, cracking one eye open to find a fully dressed, fully brooding Abel standing over him, jabbing him with one stiff finger like he was checking if he was still alive.
"Get up," Abel said, sharp as ever.
"'Morning, sunshine," Noah yawned, stretching like a cat and shamelessly letting the sheets fall just low enough to show skin. Abel's eye twitched.
"We're not going to my father. Not yet."
Noah blinked up at him. "Not a fan of patricide before breakfast?"
Abel didn't even dignify that with a response. He just looked toward the window, voice quieter. "My mother… she's still alive. In a way. She's been half-asleep since the curse took her. Frozen in that state, barely breathing, barely conscious. Trapped in time."
Noah sat up, rubbing the sleep from his face, growing a bit more serious now.
"She doesn't deserve to suffer like this. Not anymore."
Noah sighed and reached for his cane. "Gods, you people and your emotional plotlines…"
But he stood anyway, groaning dramatically as he stretched. Abel's gaze flicked to him again—just a second too long. Noah caught it and smiled, stretching more.
Abel cleared his throat and turned on his heel. "Follow me."
"Oh, I do like it when you give orders," Noah muttered, grabbing his gear.
This time the journey was less torturous. Sure, Noah still wheezed like a grandpa halfway up the stairs, but at least he made it without being manhandled. He even resisted asking how Abel's ass still looked that good while walking ahead of him. Barely.
Down another winding hallway.
Up another narrow staircase.
Until finally, they arrived at a sealed door—ornate and heavy, covered in tangled vines and silver-blossomed growth, as if nature had tried to swallow it whole.
Noah tilted his head. "I'm guessing this is it?"
Abel nodded slowly. "This is where she sleeps."
And for once, even Noah didn't crack a joke.