Part lll : The poison thorn revelation
The forest was in bloom again. It always seemed to be when Nareech's heart was in turmoil.
Soft winds brushed through the wild branches, and petals danced in the air like they remembered something tender. Nareech walked barefoot that morning, the hem of his robe brushing against the dew-soaked grass, a woven basket in hand.
He wasn't looking for anything in particular—just wildflowers. But the path he chose told another story.
The same path that led to the border.
The same tree where Ratchathai had waited before.
And as if fate listened to unspoken desires, there he was again.
Ratchathai.
He sat beneath the same tree, one leg bent, a silk cloak draped over his shoulder, trying to look composed. But Nareech saw it instantly—the tension in his jaw, the uncertainty in his hands that clutched nothing, the quiet desperation behind those storm-grey eyes.
Nareech approached him. This time, he didn't walk away.
"You've been watching from afar for days now," Nareech said gently, setting his basket down. "Are you guarding the border, Your Highness, or waiting for something more dangerous... like me?"
Ratchathai flinched. "I didn't mean to—"
"I know," Nareech interrupted, voice calm. "But you look troubled. What is it?"
Ratchathai looked up at him, and for a moment, the arrogance of a crown prince slipped away. All that was left was a boy—lost, yearning.
"I've always known how to take things by force. A throne. A kingdom. Fear. But when it comes to you..." He swallowed, looking away. "I feel like anything I do might push you further."
Nareech's expression softened. "And so you wait, under trees, like a lovesick poem."
Ratchathai laughed once—bitterly. "I confessed to you. I meant every word. But you left before you answered."
Nareech looked down at his hands. "It's not that I didn't feel something. It's that I do."
Ratchathai turned to him fully now, voice low. "Then what stops you?"
Nareech hesitated. The wind stilled.
"I've lived through betrayal cloaked as love. I've watched kingdoms fall for it. And I've lived among ghosts of people who once swore loyalty… only to raise daggers behind my back."
Ratchathai's breath caught. "You think I would betray you?"
"I think I don't know what I believe anymore," Nareech said. "And… there are two people from my past—two knights—who still carry pieces of my heart. Pieces I didn't know how to bury."
Ratchathai lowered his gaze, pain flickering through him.
"I don't want pieces of your heart," he murmured. "I want all of it."
Silence.
Then Nareech stepped forward, slowly, and crouched beside Ratchathai. He touched his hand briefly, warm against the cold skin of the prince's fingers.
"I need time," Nareech whispered. "Not to reject you. Not to mislead you. But to find out if what we have is real… or just something born of longing and brokenness."
Ratchathai clenched his jaw, but nodded.
"I'll wait. I've waited this long. I'll wait as long as it takes."
Nareech stood up. "Then wait with patience. And without pressure. Let me find my own way to you."
And with that, he turned back toward the village, leaving behind a basket of plucked flowers and the faint trace of a smile.
Whispers traveled faster than wind in the court—especially when they carried the scent of scandal.
The exiled king and the crown prince... together?
It didn't take long before the rumors reached the ears of Prince Aeolus, the crown prince of Pylos, whose lips curled in a bitter smile when he heard them. The thought of Ratchathai—his rival, his neighbours friends by name only—falling for Nareech's, the man Aeolus once admired and envied in equal measure, was too much to bear.
Jealousy twisted in his chest like a serpent. He slammed a goblet against the table in his chamber.
"So," he muttered, "the forest recluse has become the object of a royal's affection. How poetic."
But Aeolus did not cry. He plotted.
It began subtly. A group of cloaked men wandered near the village, asking too many questions about Nareech's daily path. A wild dog released near the flower fields, meant to drive Ratchathai's horse mad. Poison slipped into the village wine sent as a "royal gift."
But none of it worked.
Ratchathai with his intelligence always step ahead—watchful eyes on every gate, silent guards hidden among the trees. He had grown sharper, warier, ever since Nareech entered his life. He intercepted each plan, dismantled every trap before it could touch the man he now cared for deeply.
"You're not very good at hiding your jealousy, Aeolus ," Ratchathai once said in a letter he never sent, fingers trembling too much to finish writing.
Meanwhile, in the quiet morning haze, two cloaked travelers arrived at the edge of the village. They moved like ghosts, quiet and familiar. The first bore a scar down his cheek and eyes full of restrained fire.
The second—taller, with gentler features—held something else: hope.
They were Sir Haskib and Sir Haska, Nareech's knights. His most loyal friends once, until the day the crown was torn from his head and silence was forced into their throats.
Now they had returned.
Nareech stared at them when they appeared at his doorstep, disbelief washing over his face like a wave. His voice caught in his throat.
"...You're alive," he whispered.
Sir Haskib bowed deeply. "We swore an oath to your name, Your Highness. That oath does not die with a crown."
Haska stepped forward, eyes lowered. "There's trouble back home. Your brother sits the throne. The Queen Mother Bahema is gravely ill—some say cursed by her own ambition. And your name… has begun to stir in the wind again."
Nareech's heart clenched.
"I'm not a king anymore," he said softly.
"But you are still the true heir," Haskib said. "And the people—some of them still remember. They want to believe."
A silence fell. The wind whispered through the trees.
Nareech looked over his shoulder, toward the path that led to Ratchathai's visits. His heart warred within him.
"I've built peace here," he said. "A life without bloodshed or betrayal."
Haskib stepped closer. "But the kingdom you left behind is crumbling. We came not to drag you back—but to tell you that it needs you, now more than ever."
That night, Nareech sat by the old tree near the flower field. Ratchathai found him there, as if drawn by an unseen thread. He said nothing, just sat beside him, shoulder brushing gently.
"Did you know your brother tried to poison the well in your village?" Ratchathai murmured.
Nareech's eyes widened.
Ratchathai looked at him. "I stopped it. Again."
Nareech's hand trembled, and Ratchathai took it.
"I don't know what you're afraid of, Nareech," whispered, voice thick with emotion, "but Ratchathai will fight beside you. Even if it means
The kingdom and the village grew quieter after Nareech's secret departure. Too quiet.
Ratchathai, the Crown Prince of Duanphen , waited every dawn by the border, eyes scanning the horizon where the wildflowers once greeted them both. But the exile king never returned, not even a message—no sign, no reason.
And in the silence, rage began to bloom.
Ratchathai's heart refused to believe Nareech had simply vanished. Not after what they had shared. Not after that night of tears, of promises, of trembling kisses beneath the stars.
There was only one person in the entire kingdom who would benefit from Nareech's disappearance.
Aeolus. The Crown Prince of pylos.
Ratchathai stormed into the court, slamming a parchment of evidence before the throne—illegal dealings, stolen taxes from border towns, silenced witnesses. And he spoke, not as a prince, but as a man robbed of something precious.
"He threatened The king of pylos. I know it. And if the exile king is missing... it is because of Aeolus."
Aeolus's father, the aging king of Pylos, and a trusted leader to the royal family of Pylos, went pale as he read the accusations. He could not protect his son any longer. Not from Ratchathai as the son of his friend as king (Narai l) which is also neighbours and especially Not from truth.
In a rare moment of justice, the King agreed to exile Aeolus—to strip him of his title and wealth, to send him away from the kingdom that bore his name.
But Aeolus was not one to lose quietly.
On the eve of his exile, Aeolus entered the neighbouring kingdom of Duanphen , In King (Narai l)'s private chamber—where the former monarch lay, paralyzed and silent, his eyes still sharp beneath a withered brow.
"I was always the evil," Aeolus whispered to his father's friend —the king who once treat him like his own son .
"Second to Ratchathai. Second to Nareech. Second even in my father's eyes."
He drew a small vial from his sleeve. "But now... I'll be the only one for myself." including with a evil laugh...
The poison was swift. Silent. The king never had a chance to cry out.
By the next morning, the castle mourned. The paralyzed king had passed away in his sleep—or so they believed.
Ratchathai, struck with fresh grief, couldn't shake the feeling something was wrong. And on the other side , Aeolus was being led out of the palace under heavy guard, a servant girl dropped to her knees before Ratchathai, sobbing.
"Sire, the prince—Aeolus—he gave the king a drink. I saw it. I saw him—just before dawn."
Ratchathai froze.
Everything inside him snapped. He ran to the cell where Aeolus was being held until his exile escort arrived, and when their eyes met, it was no longer between two princes—but a friendship betrayed and a traitor unmasked.
"You killed him," Ratchathai said, voice cold and cracking. "You took my father."
Aeolus only smiled, unrepentant. "Now you understand, dear friend. Love makes fools of kings. It will be your downfall too."
Ratchathai turned away. "No. Love is the only thing that made me strong."
But while court spiraled into mourning, a different storm stirred elsewhere.
Far beyond the border, Nareech stood once again within the marbled halls of his old kingdom. His knights flanked him as the people whispered and bowed. The exile had returned—but not to reclaim the throne. Not yet.
He had come to uncover what remained. What could be saved.
And to his shock, a letter awaited him there—sealed in Ratchathai's wax.
It read:
> "If I could have followed you, I would have. But I have a kingdom to hold together, a death to avenge, and a love I still carry every day. Come back to me, Nareech. If there's still a 'we'—I'll be waiting."
Nareech's hands trembled. The wind outside the castle howled, as if calling him back toward a prince still holding on.
But a kingdom was rising around him, and the past demanded reckoning.
The wildflower garden no longer danced the way it used to.
Ratchathai, now crowned king, stood amidst the blooms as the wind teased his long robes. But it could not reach the hollowness in his chest. Not anymore.
His eyes scanned the horizon every morning, every evening—always hoping, never finding. The place where Nareech once stood now held only memory.
The throne room felt colder now.
His laughter was long gone. His court feared him. Once the golden prince who smiled at servants and kissed children's foreheads, King Ratchathai had become a cold, untouchable flame. The loss of his father, and Nareech's disappearance without a single goodbye, carved out his heart and left behind something distant, unrelenting.
He ruled with a sharp mind and an iron will—but those closest to him whispered: The king smiles at no one.
Yet still, every week without fail, he walked alone to the border—where the wildflowers bloomed.
And waited.
---
Far across the mountains, in the distant capital of the fallen kingdom of Auranis, Nareech had returned to gold and marble—only to find a cage.
He was no longer a free man with dirt on his hands and sunlight in his hair.
He was now the Crown Prince Nareech of Auranis—younger brother to King Aason, the usurper who seized the throne during Nareech's exile. And though Nareech bore the title of crown prince, he was nothing more than a puppet trapped in silk.
Aason made sure of that.
Nareech wasn't allowed to leave the palace without permission. He was flanked by guards day and night, denied letters, kept from visiting villages, and kept far from the borders. The exile king who once roamed forests now lived in golden silence—a prince imprisoned by duty and jealousy.
His heart ached—not just from the betrayal of his brother, but for the one person he had left behind.
Ratchathai.
He remembered the way Ratchathai cried in his arms, the warmth of his voice trembling as he confessed his love, the kiss stolen in the candlelight. And how Nareech had run.
He hadn't been ready. He had been afraid—not just of love, but of losing it. And yet, in fleeing to save Nareech from the chaos of his past, he had broken the very thing he wanted to protect.
"Does he hate me now?" Nareech whispered under his breath, staring at the moon through his chamber window.
The wildflowers he had once picked now only lived in his memory.
---
One night, during a storm, Nareech's old knight Sir Haskib snuck into his chamber, cloaked in mud and rain.
"There's word," he said quietly. "From the northern borders. A smuggler claims to have seen King Ratchathai himself, standing by the edge of the wildflower garden... still waiting."
Nareech froze.
"He's waiting for me?" he asked, his voice cracking.
"He never stopped," the knight said. "But he thinks you're gone. Or worse."
Nareech turned toward the stormy sky, tears forming in his eyes. "Then I must return. Even if I walk through fire."
"But the king—your brother—"
"I will not be caged anymore."
---
Elsewhere, King Ratchathai stared up at the dark clouds gathering above the border.
A storm was coming.
But so was something else.
Hope.