The Poisoned Cup

Whew... did I do the right thing?

Gripping Leoneld's wrist, Cesare cut across the corridors of the Imperial Palace. Only after he had found an out-of-the-way lounge, shut the door, and turned the lock did the heavy breath he had been holding finally tear free.

Things would have been better left alone...

He could not have defined, even to himself, why he had acted as he did. No—more precisely, he had no wish to explain it. He knew perfectly well there was not a single thing to gain from stepping in.

"..."

Could it simply be the foolish fondness he had conceived without meaning to, from rereading the man beyond the page dozens, hundreds of times over? But that didn't quite fit either, because it wasn't as though he had liked the protagonist Leoneld purely and simply. You could call it a tangle of feelings. At times he had cheered him on, at times he had hated him, and in certain moments—

Before he could finish sorting the thought, a suffocating stillness settled over the lounge. A chill, heavy silence, enough to drain the ornate decorations of all their color, stood like a wall between the two men.

"..."

"..."

Cesare furtively fingered the inside of his coat.

...Well. Either way, it had gone according to plan.

Two smooth glass vials met his fingertips. Their true nature was a bitterly ironic aphrodisiac. Cesare found himself recalling the order he had given his adjutant before the ball.

"...You are asking me to retrieve Cupid's Tears, my lord?"

"Yes. See that you bring back a pair. Both of them."

Cupid's Tears. The drug came as a matched pair, one vial red and the other blue, and the original story's rule was simple: whoever consumed the red would develop uncontrollable lust toward whoever had drunk the blue.

In the original, it was used in the arc where the heroine's life was threatened.

Cesare exhaled a small sigh.

...My plan was to feed this potion to the two of them. Leoneld and Lysian.

And the first order of business was Leoneld. Swallowing drily, Cesare made for the table to prepare the "sweet black tea" he himself had promised only moments ago. His hands were elegance itself as he poured hot water and steeped the bag, but his eyes were working harder than they ever had in his life.

He slipped the little vial out from where it was hidden inside his coat, and the red liquid bloomed softly into the steaming cup. The drug, faintly threaded beneath the mellow fragrance of black tea, should have gone unnoticed by his target.

Pair Leoneld with Lysian. That's my way out.

Once the drug had fully dissolved, Cesare lifted the cup and turned, slowly. The moment Leoneld, having drunk it, so much as crossed paths with Lysian, everything would flow exactly as designed. Wearing the most natural smile he could manage, Cesare set the ordinary cup before himself and the dosed one before Leoneld.

"Black tea. Will you have some?"

"..."

But all that came back was a silence that squeezed the breath from his lungs. Leoneld stared at the offered cup with an unreadable expression, then curled his lips into a bitter smile—one blended of deep cynicism and mockery, and the sorrow of a man who had just confirmed something.

"It seems you wish to deceive me again, Duke."

The air froze in an instant. Cesare's smile hardened into something brittle, and taking in that reaction exactly as it was, Leoneld went on in a voice gone cold and quiet.

"...Duke Valois. How many times do you suppose I have drunk from a poisoned cup by now?"

A single line of cold sweat traced down Cesare's spine.

"Your Highness... that is..."

"A few times, a few dozen... it is not something that can be expressed in numbers like those. Nine hundred and seventy-four. That is how many poisoned cups I was made to swallow."

A number beyond anything Cesare had ever imagined slipped out between Leoneld's dry lips. While his eyes wavered with bewilderment, Leoneld's gaze drifted down to the tea.

"And yet someone like me—"

Leoneld raised his head and looked Cesare dead in the eye. Deep in those blue irises swirled dark, unfathomable emotion.

"Did you think I would fail to see through that shallow little trick of yours just now?"

The frostily settled voice resonated low. The alien trace of a drug hidden behind the fragrant black tea—he had already seen through it completely. No matter how thoroughly the scent of tea covered it, it could not deceive senses sharpened by dying countless times.

While Cesare stood frozen, unable to offer a single excuse, Leoneld smiled bitterly once more and reached for the cup.

"...Or perhaps."

Click—the sound of slender fingers closing around it rang out with cruel clarity.

"Should I swallow it this time as well, knowing full well it is a poisoned cup?"

In that moment, Cesare felt his mind snap open with blinding clarity even as something heavy sank in his chest.

...Ah.

That was it. The protagonist of the original story, Leoneld, was a man who had swallowed poison hundreds of times before his regression. It wasn't that he was a fool who couldn't tell the cup was drugged. Nor was it simply the crown prince's threats. It was because only when he drank that viciously poisoned cup did his family—always cold as ice—turn even a scrap of warm attention on him. Knowing full well it was a poison steeped in deception and hypocrisy, he had swallowed it willingly, all for the faint warmth and affection spreading toward him. Because of that thread-thin possibility that maybe, just once, they might become a real family.

...And after he met his death like that, he turned completely dark.

Which was why, all through the novel, Cesare had hated the protagonist for acting like a cold-blooded monster without blood or tears—and at the very same time had been unable to hate him at all. He had rooted for him, resented him, and more than anything—

He had pitied him.

If he let Leoneld drink this tea as it was, he could see, instinctively, exactly how the scene to follow would unfold. It would amount to carving into Leoneld's deepest wound all over again.

However much I don't want to be on the receiving end, having been dropped into an omegaverse world...

He at least did not want to be the one holding the knife.

"No."

Cesare shot his hand out and roughly wrenched the cup from Leoneld's grip.

"You don't have to drink it."

There was no calculation left in Cesare's eyes. Only a pure, unguarded remorse for the wounded protagonist before him flickered there.

"I... want you to be happy, Your Highness."

He meant it. Cesare genuinely wanted Leoneld to find happiness. All through reading the original, he had raged alongside him at his trash of a family and desperately prayed that this wounded protagonist would somehow be saved. He might have been a cold-blooded bastard who discarded comrades without mercy and shed not a single tear even at the heroine's death—but Cesare had wanted this novel's happy ending. No, his happy ending. For this one moment, at least, it was a truth with no lie in it.

...How foolish of me.

Cesare gave a self-mocking laugh. It would have been so much easier to simply dose him—why did he have to go and make a detour like this? His throat felt oddly scorched, so he took a sip of the tea he had prepared for himself.

"...Ha."

Leoneld's blue eyes shook violently. Staring at Cesare with an unreadable gaze, he murmured low.

"You really are..."

He couldn't have said why. But before Cesare could so much as react, Leoneld snatched the cup right out of his hand—and without a moment's hesitation, drained it to the dregs.

"...?!"

While Cesare stood frozen, a dumbfounded wha—? catching in his throat, the empty cup came down on the table with a sharp clink. Wiping the tea from his lips, Leoneld favored Cesare with a languid smile. Unlike the bitter one from before, this smile carried a strange, almost liberated ease.

"Even knowing everything, I still can't figure you out."

No, you insane bastard, that tea is drugged—!

As if the thought itself had summoned it, Leoneld's rigid body lost its center and swayed. A deep heat was already flaring up the pale nape of his neck.

"Your High—Your Highness...!"

Cesare lunged in a panic to catch him before he could fall. But Leoneld's body, which should have crumpled soft into his broad chest, was—contrary to every expectation—rigid as iron.

"Hah... ngh... Duke..."

The grip clamping his shoulder carried the crushing strength of a wild beast, and rough breath tore out between Leoneld's lips. In the same instant, something of overwhelming mass erupted into the room—enough to thin the lounge's air in a heartbeat.

An alpha's pheromones. And not just any: an overwhelmingly domineering, vicious eucalyptus scent, the kind a maddened beast might spew as it swallowed a territory whole.

The alpha pheromones, reacting to the drug's heat, ran wild beyond all restraint and scattered in every direction. They seized the entire room with brutal speed, swelling as if to force their way through the seams of the locked door.

"Hhk—!?"

Cesare groaned under a pressure like a hand closing around his throat. He was an omega—helplessly undone, endlessly fragile, before a rampaging alpha's scent. His mind strobed white. A chill swept through him with a tingling shudder up his spine, and strength drained from his legs until he felt he might crumple where he stood.

"Your Highness... wait, this is... nnh."

"...Duke."

Rough heat shimmered in the blue eyes fixed on Cesare.

"I want... to hold you."

"...! Wait—"

Before he could answer, hard fingers seized the back of Cesare's neck. The world lurched—thud—and his body was slammed down onto the sofa. Above him, Leoneld's enormous shadow closed in.

Cesare screamed inside.

What the hell—why is he coming at me?

No one had drunk the blue potion yet. Not Lysian, the intended target. Not a single soul. Least of all him.

Then why, in God's name—

He was fumbling inside his coat in a panic, desperate to make sense of the situation, when it registered: the weight in the vial his fingers had closed around was strangely wrong. He yanked it out to check—and the blue potion that should have been inside was gone.

"...Wh...?"

Air hissed out between Cesare's lips. His gaze slid to his own cup of tea—the one he had gulped down in desperation when his throat had burned. A sense of dread crept over him.

Don't tell me...

Cesare lifted his eyes slowly to the man pinning him down. And Leoneld, meeting his gaze, was—

"You brought this on yourself first, Duke."

—smiling, as if he had known about every last part of the trap.

It was him. He did this.

Leoneld. He had turned the whole scheme on its head. Only then did Cesare understand that he had dug his own grave.