Chapter 55: A Win Is a Win

There was no grand surrender, no dramatic speech, not even a deeply meaningful sigh. Xavion simply lowered his chin and nodded, looking every bit like a man who’d just clicked I Agree on a thirty-page contract without reading the fine print.

Whether it was Lioren’s dubious political logic about court gossips that had finally breached his defenses, or whether the former general simply couldn’t endure another ten minutes of his betrothed staring at him like a condemned prisoner awaiting the executioner’s block, Lioren couldn’t quite tell.

Honestly? He didn’t care which one it was. A victory was a victory.

Lioren’s entire face lit up like a tavern lantern at midnight, a bright grin breaking across his face as he let out a loud, utterly unrefined snort of pure triumph.

"Thank you!" Lioren crowed, practically vibrating in his boots as he shot Xavion a thumbs-up. "Honestly, legendary move. Top-tier compliance."

Behind the wild, theatrical theatrics, though, Lioren’s hyperactive brain finally slowed down just enough to feel a quiet wave of genuine relief wash over his chest. Gods, I really hate playing the overbearing fiancé. Xavion looked like he’d rather challenge an entire enemy army armed with a wooden spoon than sit through a doctor’s appointment. The last thing he wanted was to become the sort of person who made Xavion feel like he needed permission to breathe under his own roof.

But when it came to the man’s health? Yeah, no. If good manners had a problem with that, they could take it up with the nearest wall. Lioren wasn’t budging when it came to Xavion’s health.

Naturally, Lioren attempted to play it entirely cool. He didn’t jump up and down on the rug. He didn’t pump his fist in the air. He certainly didn’t look like a man who had just successfully negotiated a high-stakes peace treaty after three grueling months in the trenches.

He merely smoothed down his clothes, gave a tremendously dignified little cough, and scrambled to his feet, attempting to look regal despite having just made a complete mess of himself on the floor.

And then, without waiting even three seconds for Xavion to change his mind, he practically sprinted toward the study door to yell for a page to fetch the house physician immediately.

With her arms crossed against her chest, Evelia watched Lioren bounce around like an overexcited puppy, looking thoroughly entertained by the entire spectacle.

"You know," Evelia drawled, "you look considerably more triumphant right now than you did when Father named you his successor. Which is hilarious, considering you spent half your childhood drawing pictures of yourself wearing the title. What was it, a thousand times?"

Lioren turned back around. "That is because the two situations are entirely incomparable, my dear sister. Becoming Grand Duke was simply what I’d been preparing for my entire life. But convincing my absurdly, pathologically independent fiancé to take basic care of his own health? Now that is a monumental, historic achievement. They should write songs about this."

He paused, catching himself before his loose tongue slipped further. He certainly didn’t want to use a word like stubborn, Xavion was far too proud, and the last thing Lioren wanted was to bruise his feelings when they had just made progress.

"I mean... his deeply principled self-reliance," Lioren added quickly, puffing out his chest. "A noble trait! Exhausting, but noble."

"I am here, Your Grace. I can hear every word."

Lioren’s posture transformed in a fraction of a second. The smug, self-satisfied grin vanished, replaced instantly by the picture of a deeply attentive, immensely respectful, and utterly devoted betrothed.

"And every word is spoken with the highest admiration, Your Highness!" Lioren insisted blithely, giving a sharp, theatrical little bow. "Total admiration."

The house physician arrived later that afternoon, carrying his leather medicine bag and a collection of instruments for the examination.

They moved the examination to the small parlor adjoining Xavion’s bedchamber, where afternoon sunlight streamed through the windows. Lioren planted himself firmly in an armchair and made it abundantly clear that he had absolutely no intention of leaving. Evelia took another chair by the window, watching the proceedings with a smile that suggested her brother’s determination to supervise a perfectly ordinary doctor’s appointment was the most entertaining thing she’d seen all week.

Xavion sat in an armchair in the center of the room. He kept his back straight, his hands resting flat against his knees. Even with a physician attending to him, the former general looked more like he was reporting for duty than seeking medical help.

Master Fane, the estate’s senior physician, a grey-bearded man whose calm, unhurried demeanor had survived thirty years of tending to stubborn northern lords, set his leather bag on the side table with a dull thud. He pulled up a chair, sitting directly opposite the Ostharian prince.

"Now then, Your Highness," Master Fane began, his voice low, steady, and entirely devoid of the nervous deference most capital servants displayed around royalty. "His Grace tells me you’ve experienced two episodes of sharp pain behind your right eye. Is that correct?"

"It is," Xavion answered quietly. His voice was flat, measured, carrying the precise, economical phrasing of an officer delivering a brief battlefield report.

"And how long have these spells lasted when they occur?"

"A few seconds. Less than a minute."

"Does the pain radiate down into the jaw or the neck?"

"Occasionally," Xavion murmured, his single violet eye staring fixedly at a point on the physician’s collar. "It is a sharp throb. It passes quickly if I remain still."

Lioren leaned forward on the settee, his elbow resting on his knee, his chin propped on his fist as he hung on every single syllable. He noticed how carefully Xavion answered, giving the physician the bare minimum required to satisfy the medical inquiry without offering a single detail about what happened to him.

He didn’t go into detail. He didn’t explain what had happened to his eye. To hear Xavion tell it, the damage was simply an old, unfortunate reality, a permanent scar left behind by a bitter poison some time ago, an inconvenient problem that occasionally flared up again. He brushed aside the matter with the practiced ease of a man who had long since accepted that half his eyesight was gone and his eye would never fully recover.

Master Fane listened patiently, nodding his grey head as he reached into his bag to pull out a small brass diagnostic lamp and a smooth pair of silver tweezers.

"Mmm. Poison-induced trauma to the optic nerve is notoriously unpredictable, Your Highness," the old physician noted smoothly, lighting the lamp’s tiny oil wick with a flint. "The scar tissue around the socket often hardens over time, creating pressure whenever the surrounding blood vessels dilate, say, from cold weather, exhaustion, or sudden stress."

The doctor adjusted the lamp, the warm light reflecting off his spectacles as he leaned in slightly.

"If you will permit me, Prince Xavion," Master Fane asked gently, his tone soft and professional, "I should like to inspect the socket and the surrounding tissue directly. May I ask you to remove the patch?"

The mood in the quiet parlor changed at once.

Lioren’s breath caught. He straightened in his chair, his eyes fixed on Xavion’s profile. In all the time they’d spent together, through formal court dinners, private morning conversations, and shopping trips in the capital, Xavion had never once unbuckled the leather patch covering his right eye. It had always been there, an inseparable part of his appearance, and Lioren had never pushed him to explain what lay beneath it.

"Is it... truly necessary?"

Master Fane gave him a small, sympathetic nod. "I’m afraid so, Your Highness. To determine whether the pain is caused by swelling or something deeper, I need to examine the area directly."

For a long, agonizing beat of silence, nobody moved.

Slowly, Xavion lifted his right hand and reached for the eyepatch. His fingers found the buckle at the side of his head.

For a moment, he made no move to remove it.

His fingers remained against the leather strap. His expression barely changed, his jaw relaxed and his violet eye steady, but his shoulders had gone stiff. He drew in a slow, shallow breath, so quiet Lioren might have missed it if he hadn’t been watching so closely.

It lasted barely a second, a moment of hesitation that might have gone unnoticed if Lioren hadn’t been watching so closely.

Master Fane waited without rushing him, holding the brass lamp steady between them.

Sitting nearby, Lioren felt a strange, sudden ache twist low in his chest. He noticed the stiffness in Xavion’s wrist, the way his fingers clung to the leather strap as if it were the last boundary he had left.

Lioren shifted in his chair, his heart thumping hard against his ribs, watching the man he was bound to protect hesitate before exposing his deepest, most painful wound.