I Became the Villain Alpha's Omega (BL)-Chapter 49: A Room Too Small

"Push, you miserable excuses for Northmen! If a shadow-beast sneezes, half of you will be flat on your backs before the spit hits the ground!"

Elios’s voice didn’t just carry across the training yard; it seemed to vibrate the very frost off the stone battlements. It was the most normal thing Zarius had heard in weeks. He stood on the observation balcony, the wind whipping his heavy cloak, feeling a strange, almost foreign sense of... solidity.

Beside him, Flio was busy trying to look busy with a stack of logistics reports, though his eyes kept darting toward the Duke.

"The third company looks sluggish," Zarius noted. "They’ll be meat for the grinders if the pass breaches before the moon turns. We need to tighten the formations for the subjugation."

Elios, having finished traumatizing a young soldier, stomped up the stairs to join them. He was huffing, his face a shade of brick-red that usually signaled a looming lecture. He stopped, wiped sweat from his brow, and just... stared at Zarius.

"You’re standing up straight," Elios blurted out. No ’Your Grace,’ no ’My Lord.’ Just blunt, Northern confusion. "Usually, by this hour, you’re leaning against the masonry like a wilted weed."

Flio chimed in, finally dropping the pretense of the reports. "It’s more than that. You pale skin? It’s gone. You look... Well, you look like you might actually survive the month. I’d bet my best horse it’s the boy’s doing. Whatever voodoo he’s practicing in your chambers at night, it’s working better than a mountain of royal tonics."

Zarius didn’t answer immediately. He let his gaze drift across the churning mud of the yard, his mind retreating into the quiet, dark hours of the previous nights.

It was an absurd arrangement. Every night, like clockwork, he and Cherion would retire to the same bed, an intimacy that would have sent the Capital’s gossip-mongers into a literal coma. They sat or lay there, hands locked together, fingers intertwined as if they were trying to fuse their very souls.

They had to do it that way. The logic was as grim as it was practical. During their midnight heist into the Forbidden Section, they’d found the Maleficarum of Agony.

The book had been a revelation. An Agony-type curse wasn’t just a static poison, it was a sentient, spiteful parasite. During the day, while Zarius moved, commanded, and bled, the curse fed on his adrenaline. It tightened its grip on his mana, turning them into brittle glass. But at night? The curse went dormant.

That was when Cherion worked his magic. His healing energy wasn’t just restorative, it filled Zarius from the inside out, little by little, like warm light flowing through fragile pipes. By the time morning came, his body wasn’t fully untouched by the curse, but it was strengthened, stabilized, ready to endure the day without collapsing under the poison feeding off him.

And it had to be at night.

It was the only time they could do it without anyone poking around, asking questions, or deciding the Duke had finally lost whatever remained of his mind. Night meant privacy. Night meant they could work without interruption.

"He’s... efficient," Zarius finally said, the word feeling too small for what the boy was actually doing. "He’s doing his duty."

"Duty? Is that what the kids are calling ’sleeping in the Duke’s bed’ these days?" Flio muttered with a grin that earned him a sharp elbow from Elios.

Zarius ignored them, but his hand instinctively twitched, remembering the warmth of Cherion’s palm. It was a terrifying thought, really, that his life was now tethered to a boy the King had discarded like a used glove.

The sun set early, as it always did in the North. By moonrise, Zarius found himself pacing his own room. Usually, he waited for Cherion to come to him. It was the "safe" routine. But tonight, a restless energy was buzzing in his chest, a byproduct of the healing that he didn’t quite know how to spend.

He decided, on a whim that felt dangerously impulsive, to go to Cherion’s room instead.

When he reached Cherion’s door, he knocked and Soren was the one who opened it.

The aide blinked, clearly caught off guard, though he tried to hide it. Only the faint hitch in his posture betrayed him. "Your Grace? I... I apologize. We weren’t expecting you here."

Zarius didn’t move to enter yet. He just loomed. "Where is Cherion?"

Soren stepped aside with a jerky, nervous movement, his eyes darting toward the interior of the room. "He is within, My Lord."

Zarius stepped over the threshold. Cherion was sitting by a small table, looking genuinely bewildered. His hair was a mess, something Zarius was beginning to realize was its natural state, and he was clutching a quill like a weapon.

"Your Grace?" Cherion blurted out, then immediately turned pink. "Why are you here? I was just about to head over to your room. Did... did I miss the time?"

Zarius let his gaze wander over the room. It felt remarkably small compared to his own, almost cramped. "I felt like walking," he said simply. "And as this is my house, I believe I am permitted to visit any room I choose. Is there a reason I should not be here?"

Cherion let out a disgruntled grunt, the kind of sound a cat makes when you wake it up from a nap. "I mean, technically, sure. It’s your house. You’re the big, scary Duke. You can stand in the pantry all night if you want, but it’s just... so unusual."

Zarius glanced over at Soren, who was still standing by the door like a gargoyle carved from ice. "Soren. You are dismissed for the evening."

His gaze shifted to Cherion then back to Zarius. There was a question in it. No, not a question. A calculation.

For a second, something tightened in the aide’s jaw. His mouth parted slightly, like he meant to speak, but nothing came out.

Whatever words had risen to his tongue were swallowed back down.

"Of course, Your Grace," he said. Soren bowed deeply, every inch of it proper and precise. As he straightened, though, his eyes flicked to Cherion, lingering just a second too long.

Zarius caught it. It was only a second, but it was unmistakable. That wasn’t irritation. It wasn’t boredom or wounded pride. It was something darker. Territorial.