“What?”
Like he was the one whose room had been invaded, whose bed had been bled on, whose entire kingdom had been made a joke by the arrival of a frost-drenched devil with fever and too much pride.
Seungho let the moment hang, watching the blush crawl up Haneul’s throat. He took in the wild hair, the glazed eyes, the angry red lines slashing over sharp bones, the way the silk clung to ribs still rising too fast.
“You’re awake,” he said at last, voice low, almost careless.
He leaned forward, forearms braced on his knees, gaze slow and assessing, king and animal all at once.
“I cleaned you. Treated the wounds. Rebandaged your feet.”
He let his eyes linger—first on Haneul’s face, then on the fresh marks across his chest, a catalogue of what had been done and what still needed healing. His voice dropped, softer, a note beneath the world’s noise:
“You were thrashing. Crying in your sleep.”
The words hung in the space between them—confession, accusation, intimacy that neither had ever chosen.
A pause.
Then Seungho’s eyes sharpened, hungry and private:
“Was I in your dream, Snowdrop?”
He barked it instantly, voice sharp as frost: “That’s bullcrap. I’m a man. I don’t cry.” The words shot from his cracked lips like knives meant to drive off ghosts and pity alike—raw bravado slung over a tremor too fine for anyone but Seungho to catch. Haneul’s hands—still bandaged, still trembling—tightened in the sheets, a petulant cub bracing for mockery, his whole body curled defensively on the edge of the Fire King’s bed.
Seungho didn’t laugh. Didn’t even smirk. The Fire King’s silence was heavier than any jeer—a stillness that stretched, demanding honesty without demanding a confession. Haneul’s gaze darted, furious and vulnerable, always a storm refusing to break. He scooted forward anyway, bracing one foot against the floor, the other still tucked beneath him, every inch a picture of battered pride.
“Fuck…” Haneul hissed, his voice cracking with each movement as his abused body argued against stubbornness. He pressed a fist to his side, glaring at the wall with glassy eyes—pain bright and unshed in their depths, not for the world to see. “They did a number on me… bastards. I’m going to destroy them…”
The words were half threat, half mantra. His hands fisted the silk sheets—knuckles split, fingers callused and twitching, skin so raw Seungho could feel the memory of every wound in his own palm. The boy sat hunched, a living contradiction: all storm and edges, spine quivering with the effort not to fold.
Seungho waited until the room’s hush turned electric. Then he crossed the floor, each step deliberate, and stopped before the bed—towering, unreadable, a mountain cut in firelight and shadow. He reached out and, before Haneul could snarl or shrink away, took his hands. Not to comfort. Not to coddle, but to unclench.
Slowly, methodically, Seungho pried those fists open, thumb smoothing over each tense joint until Haneul’s hands—elegant, battered, stubborn—lay bare and unresisting between his own. Warmth radiated from his skin, an anchor as steady as any mountain, no gentler than a sword but somehow less sharp.
“You didn’t cry,” Seungho said quietly. “Fine. Maybe you didn’t.”
He held the boy’s gaze—let Haneul feel the full, calm burn of his scrutiny, as if he could see straight through every mask and snarl. “But you came back here. Hurt. Starving. Half-dead. You came here. To me.”
His voice dropped, softer and lower, like a promise dragged through broken glass. “And you let me carry you.”
A beat, heavy with truth neither of them could afford. “Which one do you think scares your brothers more, Snowdrop?” Seungho murmured. “That you cried… or that you let the Fire King touch you?”
Haneul’s scowl deepened to something mythic—brows nearly meeting, lips curling, eyes flashing their wild storm. He yanked his hand away as if Seungho’s touch burned, tucking it behind his back and hunching over like a fox caught between fight and flight, like he was guarding a wound only he could see.
“Why are you so obsessed with crying?” he snapped, refusing to meet Seungho’s gaze, jaw clenched and cheeks flushed. “Do you cry a lot? Or… does it turn you on or what?”
Seungho blinked once, slow, not taking the bait—just watching theboy curl deeper into the nest of silks and furs, the color high on his sharp cheeks. Haneul twisted the sheets between his fingers, winding himself up like a storm coiling for another strike.
“Your bed is too hot,” Haneul muttered, brittle and venomous, but the venom sounded almost childish for someone his age and temper. “And it stinks—”
He bent, sniffing at the furs with a disdainful wrinkle of his nose. Then—
“Ah-CHH!”—an explosive sneeze, a flash of ice magic bursting from his skin, sending a cloud of snow flurrying over the Fire King’s thighs, the nearest sheets, the pelts. The cold misted and glittered in the air, then settled in a crackling frost over the bedding, little shards of winter sparkling against the deep red silk.
He sniffled once, unimpressed, and then—“Hhuhk-chh!”—another, smaller sneeze, dusting the pillows with a second shower of frost.
He didn’t flinch. Didn’t apologize. Just curled tighter, a snowy leopard cub marking its den, huffing quietly as if to say,Mine, now.
