The tavern was a temple of decay. The air, thick and greasy, clung to the skin—a stew of cheap perfume, sour ale, and the meat-sweet smell of human sweat. It wasn't laughter that filled the space, but a raw, animal clamor. Bodies, slick and shameless, moved not in rhythm but in a desperate, grinding seizure under the jaundiced gaslight. Silk clung to damp skin, not as adornment, but as a second layer of grime.
In the darkest corner, Sebastian was a study in stillness. The chaos broke against him like a wave against a cliff. A woman with painted lips and empty eyes worked at the buttons of his shirt, her fingers practiced and unfeeling. Another traced the hard lines of his abdomen through the fine linen. He registered the touch as one registers a draft—a minor atmospheric change. His gaze, flat and black, watched the room as a taxidermist might survey a collection.
With languid precision, he plucked a cigarette from a silver case. The scratch of the match was a tiny, violent sound swallowed by the din. He inhaled, and the smoke poured into the room like a spreading stain.
"Sebastian." The voice was a familiar anchor in the swill. Arthur emerged from the gloom, a wolfish grin on his face, his hand locked around the hip of a blonde creature. His fingers dug into her flesh with casual ownership. She offered a smile that was all teeth and calculation, and when Arthur crushed his mouth to hers, it was less a kiss than an act of consumption.
"See?" Arthur breathed, pulling away, his eyes bright with vicarious hunger. "I told you this was where the real veins of the city are opened." He gestured at the women circling Sebastian like carrion birds. "Pick one. They're all yours for the taking."
Sebastian took a long, final drag and let the cigarette die between his fingers, crushing it slowly into the scarred wood of the table.
"I have seen nothing here that holds my interest," he said, his voice a low blade of sound. "Just flesh. Common, screaming flesh." He didn't raise his voice. He didn't need to. "Get out. All of you."
The women flinched as one, their seductive masks slipping into something wounded and cheap. They scattered, melting back into the shadows from which they'd crawled.
"For God's sake, Sebastian. Even a prince must eat," Arthur sighed, watching the retreating forms with genuine regret. "They're exquisite meat. Look at the line of that one's—"
"You have the taste of a stray dog, Arthur," Sebastian interrupted, his tone frigid. "Your gate swings open for anything that casts a shadow and wears a skirt. It's pathetically democratic."
Arthur barked a laugh, tightening his grip on his companion, who gasped softly. "Then I shall be a democratic fool in a rented room for the night. Try not to drown in your own nobility, brother."
As Arthur disappeared into the deeper dark, Sebastian finally moved. He snatched a bottle of whiskey from the table, its contents the color of old amber. He didn't pour it. He drank from the neck, a long, punishing swallow that burned a path of empty fire to his gut. The liquor was a poor substitute, but it was the only cleansing flame this place offered.
Foolish, he thought, the word echoing in the hollow space Arthur's levity had left behind. But the sharper, quieter thought followed: He is free in his debasement. And I am a prisoner in mine.
He took another swallow, wishing it were poison, and let the darkness inside him mirror the room.
His gaze, heavy and dismissive, began to lift—then halted.
There, a pale smudge in the gloom, stood a creature that did not belong. Hair like the frost of a forgotten morning fell around a face of startling, fragile symmetry. Eyes the color of a winter sky, wide with a terror so pure it was almost sacred. Her skin was the white of a moth's wing, so thin he could almost trace the blue tributaries of fear beneath. She was a specter of innocence, a stark and screaming silence in the cacophony of flesh.
A slow, cold heat uncoiled in Sebastian's gut. Ah, he thought, the word a dark bloom in his mind. There is my quarry.
Before he could move, a thick-shouldered man, stinking of sheep and stale ambition, yanked the girl backward by her silver hair. A soundless gasp parted her lips. She fought like a bird in a snare, desperate and futile, her struggles making no more sound than a ghost.
"Come, beautiful," the man slurred, his mouth wet against her temple. "Let's find a quiet corner." His paw groped for the neckline of her simple dress.
Sebastian was already crossing the space. The world narrowed to the arc of his swing. His fist was not just a fist, but a hammer of bone and royal wrath. It connected with the man's jaw with a wet, splitting crunch—the sound of a melon dropped on stone.
The man crumpled, a sack of sudden ruin. A ribbon of blood and saliva unfurled from his ruined mouth onto the sawdusted floor.
A moment of stunned silence swallowed the corner of the tavern. The man groaned, pushing himself up on trembling arms, rage and ale clouding his vision. "You!—" he roared, surging upward.
The roar died, strangled in his throat. His blood-drained face met the glacial, pitiless eyes of the Crown Prince. Recognition was a physical blow, more devastating than the first.
"M-my… Prince," he stammered. The fight left him utterly; he folded, forehead thudding against the filthy toe of Sebastian's boot in a grotesque parody of fealty. "Forgive me… I didn't know… I beg—"
Sebastian's lip curled. He did not speak. He simply shifted his weight and kicked, his boot connecting with the man's ribs with a dull, wooden thud. The air left the man in a pained whimper.
"You soil the air," Sebastian said, his voice low enough to freeze the spilled blood. "Vanish. Before I decide the gutter is too good for you."
The man scrambled backward, then fled, a broken animal into the night.
Sebastian turned. The girl had not moved. Her winter-blue eyes were fixed on him, immense with a shock so deep it bordered on vacancy. A single, silent tear traced a path through the grime on her cheek.
He closed the final distance between them. The scent of her—fear, and something clean like linen and cold air—cut through the tavern's stench. He reached out, not to comfort, but to claim. His thumb, rough and stained with tobacco, brushed the tear away, then came to rest, possessive and hard, under her chin, tilting her face up to his.
He leaned close, his whisper a venomous promise meant only for her.
"Mine," he breathed, the word final as a tomb sealing shut. "Let us see what sound you make when you break."