THREE

    "What... what-" he coughed, his fingers clawing uselessly at the hand constricting his windpipe. "What are you doing here, hmm?" the prince asked, his voice a low, deadly whisper.

    "I was just sightseeing, you dumb ass... ack!" The pressure increased slightly. Keith looked dumbfounded. Even in this mortal peril, the foreigner had the gall to curse him. For a reason Mars couldn't fathom, the prince released him, letting him drop to the floor in a gasping, sputtering heap.

    His mass of black curls was a wild mess around his face as he glared up, tears of pain and frustration pricking his eyes.

    Effortlessly, Keith bent and picked him up again, this time by the waist, and flung him back over his shoulder. "Let me go, you brute!" Mars yelled, his struggles as effective as they had been the night before. Keith’s grip was immovable as he carried him into a nearby room and dropped him onto the floor with a jarring thud.

    "Ow..." Mars groaned, climbing to his feet. He met Keith's gaze and quickly looked away. The man’s chaotic energy was palpable. He was a crazy, important person. Mars was a nobody, an interloper from another world.

    Biting back a torrent of insults, Mars retreated to a low, wooden chair tucked in a far corner.

    Keith paid him no further mind, his expression shifting to one of intense focus. He settled into a high-backed chair behind a massive desk and began to read through scrolls and documents, a peacock-feather quill scratching rapidly across parchment.

    Mars studied him. The prince’s features were jarringly familiar. He was tall and powerfully built, his shoulders broad and his posture radiating a latent, predatory strength. His hair was a riot of fiery red, like embers in a forge, contrasting starkly with his sun-kissed, olive skin. His face was all sharp, arrogant angles—a blade of a nose, a strong jawline dusted with stubble, and those piercing, unnervingly bright green eyes that missed nothing. He was, as the book had described, a god carved from desert stone and hellfire.

    A knock at the door grabbed both their attention. A strikingly pretty woman entered, her hips swaying with practiced grace. In her hands was a tray bearing a bowl of steaming lentil soup and a cup of what looked like sparkling pomegranate juice. She was blonde, with ample curves displayed to their best advantage by a tightly-laced dress of sheer, gauzy linen.

    She sauntered over to Keith’s desk. "Prince Keith," she cooed, her voice pitched artificially high. This 'Keith' raised a brow at her, his lips in a deep frown, his expression screaming rage.

     'Why the fuck are you angry now?!' Mars thought shrinking further into the chair he sat on. Charlotte slightly wavered but quickly composed herself and smile brightly, "I brought your breakfast." She bent low to place the tray on a clear spot on the desk, her cleavage prominently displayed in what Mars mentally noted as a ‘foolish and unnecessary’ gambit.

    'Prince Keith...' Mars filed the name away. Keith, however, looked utterly unimpressed.

    "Your Highness," the woman said after a moment of lingering, seemingly blind to Mars's presence in the corner. Her entire world had narrowed to the man whose attention she craved.

    "Hm?" Keith only grunted, his eyes still fixed on a military report.

    "Won't you take me with you to the Grandmasters' event?" she asked, her voice dripping with saccharine seduction. This finally drew his gaze. His eyes were cold, flat, delivering a silent refusal she clearly already expected.

    "I wasn't even going anyway, hmm?" he said, his tone dismissing her and the event with equal disinterest.

     She kept pressing, whispering too close, touching where she had no right- until Keith’s patience snapped.

He fisted his hand in her hair and dragged her down hard, forcing her to her knees between his legs. The movement was sharp enough to steal her breath.

     “Do not confuse favor with permission,” he said, voice low and cutting. “Know your place.”

     He guided her face closer, the pressure of his thigh unmistakable, the shape beneath his clothes impossible to ignore as it strained forward. She tilted her head willingly, lips parting in anticipation.

     Mars’ breath hitched.

     The realization landed all at once—heavy, humiliating, impossible to look away from. And then, as if only just remembering there was an audience, Keith lifted his gaze.

     Their eyes locked.

     Sharp green. Bright blue.

     Mars stood frozen, heat flooding his face, his throat tight, his ears burning. He felt exposed, dragged into the moment without a single touch laid on him.

     The woman worked eagerly, her muffled sounds full of approval, her hands braced against Keith’s legs. But Keith wasn’t watching her. Not really.

     His attention stayed on Mars.

     Unblinking. Assessing. Mischievous.

     Keith’s jaw tightened as he took in every shade of red spreading across Mars’ face, the way the boy swallowed, the way his body betrayed him by going perfectly still. A low sound escaped Keith’s throat as the tension finally broke.

     He shoved the woman away abruptly, already done with her.

     She coughed, recovered quickly, and smoothed her dress as if this were nothing more than routine.

     “So?” she asked with a knowing smile.

     Keith lifted a brow, a slow smirk forming. “Acceptable.”

     But his gaze had already drifted back.

     Back to Mars.

     Lingering there far longer than necessary—long enough for the meaning to settle in.

    Only then did the girl's eyes flicker to the corner, landing on Mars. Her pretty face soured into an expression of pure annoyance. She glared at him before turning on her heel and flouncing out.

    "What? Did you want to join in, maybe?" Keith teased, turning his predatory amusement on Mars.

    Mars hiccuped, looking away, his pale skin flushing crimson. "Nope, no thank you!" the 18-year-old virgin stammered between hiccups.

    He thought about the scene that had just unfolded. It was a powerful déjà vu. But how could that be? His mind raced, sifting through memories until they settled not on lived experience, but on printed words. Words on a page. Pages in a book... 'oh my god!'

    He looked at Keith, the description a perfect match. He scanned the huge office: the walls of scrolls, the great map of the kingdom on one wall, the obsidian statue of a jackal-headed god in an alcove. It all matched. Even the girl. Charlotte. The story's villainess.

    The horrifying truth crashed down upon him.

    He had been sucked into the very book he had read. The lewd, violent, graphic novel. The man before him was the Prince of Elarion- Keith Elarion, the Mad Demon of the Battlefield. The girl was Charlotte- he searched his memory for a suitably low-born name- Charlotte Tasiri, his soon-to-be fiancée and eventual murderer.