Mabsuli Blood || txt

Sixteen: Turning the Tide

The castle settled into a new normal. The catch was it wasn't actually normal, but only a good chunk of them knew that.

From an outsider's perspective, nothing was wrong. Just two princes spending more time together and becoming closer. In reality, the two were using each other for their own benefit.

In Taehyun's case, he was using Beomgyu to try and get his entire family closer to the Akabi bloods so their mission would be easier, as well as trying to satisfy his own suspicions about the youngest Royal Son.

Beomgyu's case wasn't much different, using Taehyun to keep a closer eye on the "Verdel" bloods to find out who they really were and what they were hiding while also trying to figure out their threat level to keep his family safe.

In each other's minds, that's all their hangouts were. On the surface, they each acted like they were just casually hanging out with the other out of choice, but it was only a mission to them. Get information and report back; Taehyun to his family and Beomgyu to Yoongi. For the first couple of weeks after they started hanging out, that was the only thing on their minds. Get info, report info, get more info, keep going until complete exposure.

But something changed.

Neither of them could pinpoint exactly what was different or when it started, but they soon found themselves looking forward to meeting up. It wasn't anything special; they'd usually just sit or walk around, talking about nothing. But nothing began to mean everything, and soon they found themselves smiling simply because the other smiled or laughing simply because the other laughed. They found themselves having to remind themself about their mission, their purpose, the whole reason they were doing this in the first place.

Until one night they forgot about it completely.

What were they doing that they completely forgot about their original objective, you ask?

Oh nothing much, just sneaking into the kitchen at two in the morning to steal some cookies.

"So why are we doing this again?" Taehyun asked as the two princes crept towards the kitchen. Beomgyu looked over his shoulder with a mischievous grin.

"Because cookies," he said. When Taehyun rolled his eyes, he lightly smacked his arm. "Come on, I know you want some too. You wouldn't have agreed to this otherwise."

"Not true!" Taehyun protested. The reason he agreed was because—!

Wait, why did he agree? He was certainly surprised when someone knocked on his door past midnight only to find Beomgyu standing outside it, even more so when he told him his reason. "Our chefs left some leftover cookies in the kitchen, and I'm craving something sweet," he had said. "Wanna come with me?"

And Taehyun had said yes without a second thought. Why?

Beomgyu scoffed. "Yeah. Sure it isn't." Taehyun could just hear the eyeroll in his voice.

"It isn't! And are you sure we won't get caught? Our fathers would be pissed."

"I know," Beomgyu said, and Taehyun swore he saw him slightly shudder. "But don't worry, we won't. I've done this many times before, and I've never been caught."

What he didn't tell Taehyun was that all the previous times he had used magic to help him. Nor did he tell him this was actually his first time attempting to sneak some food with another person. He knew Taehyun would immediately back out if he told him about his lack of experience, and he wanted him there with him. Why? Because—

Actually, why did he? Why did he even ask Taehyun to accompany him in the first place? Logic told him that it would be harder to sneak in with more than one person, but he just felt a need for his presence there. Maybe he just wanted to be with someone? Yeah, that's probably it.