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Lazare is a soft boy, with the heart of a little dove. That is what his mother tells him, at least, when he is reading simple stories by her bedside, as practice. He always has his brows furrowed and melancholy paints his brown eyes darker. But when his mother praises him, his cheeks get lightly dusted with pink and he casts his eyes to the ground. His mother loves him, and he loves his mother – sometimes she would have him in her bed, stroking the top of his head as if he was a favourite pet of hers. (He got his hair from his father, dry, frizzy locks, impossible to tame, “the wig will cover it well, just you wait,” they all said. Lazare never told them he wouldn’t want to wear wigs. They look itchy and uncomfortable, and functionless. Apart from, of course, covering his unappealing hair.)His father did not approve of that. Keeping the boy in their bed, and raising him to be soft and gentle.“That is his character,” his mother always defended him, bringing Lazare to a protective embrace. “He has a heart of gold, and he feels deeply. It could be a virtue in this world. To be sensitive.”“It may be, but not for my firstborn son. Firstborns will be strong and capable and proudly bearing their title.”Lazare was born as the only child between them: his mother was sickly and weak. It took her years to conceive (“I prayed every night that you would see the sun one day,”) and the boy never had any siblings. Surely, he was the only legacy his father could leave – and the only child his mother could shower with her love. Trapped between motherly affections and his duty towards his father as the firstborn, as the only son, needing to meet all expectations perfectly, he grew up to be an awkward child. Shy and embarrassing, with spurts of valour, trying to prove himself to the Monsieur le Comte de Peyrol.They live south. In summertime, his mother would spend time outside in the garden of their estate, without her wig, a stole covering her narrow shoulders. Her hair is yellow underneath the warm rays of the sun and as she reads out aloud for her son, Lazare braids her locks with shaky fingers. She teaches him a lot, silent lessons, with only her manners and sensibilities. To Lazare, she is the most beautiful. But they have to separate soon enough.When Lazare’s father is promoted, and he goes to the Versailles as the head of the royal guards (reprising the role once his grandfather held), he takes Lazare with him.“He will take my position once. It is time he learned the manner at court and gave up his useless pursuits (with you),” his father said.Lazare cried in the carriage for days. When his mother parted, she gave him her most beloved ring, as a keepsake. It was unsure when the boy would first visit and his heart was so fragile, of a dove’s... His father tells him he better pull himself together by the time they arrive at court. And he exits the carriage with no tears in his eyes. Only his nose is tinted red. His mother’s ring: hidden in the small pocket above his heart.Lazare is twelve now, soon thirteen. He keeps his chin up (and he is already taller than most of the children) and stares everyone in the eye like his father told him. But his heart is trembling in his chest, scared of the unknown. All the children know each other here, intimately – and they look at the newcomer with interested, but hostile eyes.“Never make enemies, Lazare,” his father warns him. “Make allies, find people who trust you. Prove yourself. To be resourceful, to be loyal. Know your inferiors, and know your superiors even better. Never obey your inferiors – they will think you daft for it, but always follow your superiors’ lead without trembling. These children are the leaders of your future. Learn your place well. Do you understand?”His mother taught him everything he knows. Of love, affections, devotion. Surely, his father talks about a hierarchy that works in a different way, but Lazare can only follow his instincts when looking for a leader. (And he only hopes his father would be pleased, even though there is nothing in him that urges him to please his father. Only obligation.)Among the aristocrats’ children, the youngest royal prince is the ringleader. He notices Lazare the very first minute he enters the court and follows his moves with cold interest. When he first touches him, his skin is cold like a snake’s, like there is no life in him. His eyes are most resembling two huge, black buttons, darker than the night sky. When he looks into them, Lazare feels dizzy, the world turning upside down with him. It is bottomless.“I am Charles, but you will call me Your Royal Highness, as I deserve to be addressed. Your father is handsome,” the prince says. “You do not look like him. I like that. If you want, I will introduce you to the others, so you could play with us. Or… you could play with only me.”When he asks this, Lazare takes another look at him. His mother had a hair like wheat but he is black as a raven, his wrists slim and fragile. He paints his lips dark purple, like a plum, thick and sleek. He is mesmerized. The prince turns his palm towards him, invitingly – and Lazare answers the beckoning.“I want to play with only Your Royal Highness.”Charles asks him how they play back at home, south, where he hails from.“You teach me a game, and I teach you one in return,” he promises.Soon enough, he finds himself in the prince’s bed, reading a story aloud to him. They haven’t known each other for more than an hour, and Charles is already dozing off next to him, his breathing slowly becomes regular. When Lazare notices, he stops, and for some reason, he could feel his heart sink. He rests the book to his chest, open where they have left off, so they could continue. Lazare takes another look.The prince is beautiful and there is something so inviting in his expression. So he caresses a stray lock out of his face with a soft movement, careful, not to wake him up.On his first day, he is endeared by the prince, because he saw him sleep, so innocent, like a marble statue of God’s most beloved angel. He wants to kiss his hand, like he would kiss his mother’s, in appreciation of all the beauty he sees in him. The prince is a gentle, kindred soul, he thinks. Not only beautiful but kind-hearted too. They will get along well.When the prince wakes up, he looks up at him from half-drooping eyelids, and says “I will show you something fun, now.” They go outside. Fencing. Charles wins, five out of five times, and laughs his sweetest laugh each time. There is nobody to watch them, and Lazare only feels mildly embarrassed about the lack of his talents in sparring. Then, he remembers: the prince is his superior. His father would be pleased if he showed humility to him. And from that time on, he takes pride in losing to him.For the next week, the prince spends all his time with him: he barely sees other children around. Charles reads him poems in his bed, while the evening sun pokes through the curtains, painting the floor a rich orange. The sheets are all white around them, and Charles sits in the middle, the centre of his world. When the boy could see his teeth peeking out as he reads, his heart almost bursts. He lets Charles win in fencing every time because he is a boy who knows humility and he wants to please his superiors. But most of all, because his eyes shine the brightest when he sees Lazare defenceless, defeated.Within a week, Charles makes him feel at home. He never felt like this before. He knew he had devotion, but he never knew devotion could fill him with so much warmth, that the frostbite would burn with so much pleasure where Charles’s cold fingers brush against his skin. It may be a coincidence that on the last day before this ends, his heart is at a capacity.The prince recites a poem for him, his hair undone. Lazare kneels behind him on the bed, and buries his hands in his hair, soft as velvet. He sniffs at his hair, and he smells of roses and incense. Charles doesn’t react at all.“My prince… may I?”He braids his hair. There is jewellery on the nightstand, and he braids all of them up in his hair, building him a crown. When he is finished, the boy shines, like never before. He presses his back to Lazare, and they lie on the bed like that, with the prince’s scent in his nose. Soon enough, Charles grabs him by the wrist and locks his hands around his own belly, forcing himself into a tight embrace and Lazare draws him as close as possible. He only giggles when he could feel the boy’s excitement through his trousers, but he says nothing. Instead, he presses his head to his chest, even stronger. Their skin and bones are a distraction, keeping them apart, he thinks. Lazare’s little dove heart breaks under pressure, and he could feel something sharply poking his chest, right above it.His mother’s ring, of course.Only a week is gone, and he shyly places it on Charles’s palm, after they part. He is embarrassed for Charles has caught him. But he feels special: the only person the prince showers with attention.The next day, it all changes, and Lazare cannot help but think: it is all his fault. It is the insolence of his own body, he tells himself. He could not teach it humility, even if in his heart, he was always servile. His prince does not invite him to read with him.“I want to play with everyone, today,” he says. “You don’t mind, do you, Lazare?”Lazare doesn’t mind, of course. Whatever his prince would want him to do. He does not wear the ring on his fingers, but his hair is still as Lazare has left it, dazzling with precious stones. That is how he will challenge Lazare to a duel, with all the other children to watch.Charles sends him to the floor once, twice, three times. The third time he kicks him down, sword pointed at his heart.“Isn’t this pathetic?” he asks the others, cackling. “The newcomer cannot even win one out of three games. You are not even trying. What are you? A man, or a maiden?”They all laugh at him. Lazare can feel the blood rushing to his cheeks: the prince has never been like this to him at all, during the past week. Never harsh: only ever gentle and sweet. That is the boy he felt so enamoured with. He orders Lazare to get up and throws the sword back at him.“I asked you a question. What are you? A man, or a maiden?”It is reminiscent of his father’s complaints. He is too soft. He is brought up to be a young lady with a modest dowry instead of a nobleman. What will happen to him? How will he stand his ground? The prince clearly wants a man, not a young maiden.“A man, Your Royal Highness,” he answers, but his voice dies out to nothing more than a whisper.“Then prove it.”Charles wins again, and he keeps winning. He finds himself more often on the floor and the laughter of the other children simply bleed into each other. His face is burning from shame. And anger.“Pathetic!” Charles yells at him. His hair comes undone, dangling by his shoulders, and he is the most beautiful creature Lazare has ever seen. There are jewels all around them on the floor, and they are stepping on them as Charles drives his point home, emerging victorious one more time. “Should we even waste our time on someone who only has failures to offer?”Lazare stares up at him from the ground, afraid of him for the very first time. Angry. He is fragile. The prince has a small frame, narrow shoulders, skinny calves. And yet, as he stands there, he is taller than God himself, and the darkness in his eyes suddenly turn as cruel as death. Black never caresses him anymore, he cannot find comfort in them. It frightens him.“You talk about your mother all the time. The poet.” These are Charles’s last words to him and he could feel something turn in his stomach. “Why won’t you go back and hide behind her skirt, then? We don’t have time for cowards like you. I find you boring.”He throws both of the swords on Lazare, who sits there humiliated. It is one thing that he’s disappointed his father, and displeased his superior: it is another that he lost the favours of his beautiful prince. In a matter of seconds, he runs after Charles, begging for another chance.“Your Royal Highness,” he pants, half desperate. “What would you have me to do, to show you I am brave? And worthy to associate yourself with?”Charles, the benevolent, whimsical child god listens to him. For a moment, he pierces Lazare with his eyes as he considers the offer, and then, he nods. He talks to him when the others cannot hear.“So you want to please me?”“Yes, my prince.”“The cook has an orange cat. She loves that thing more than anything in the world - always feeding it when she thinks nobody could see her. But I hate the cook. She is a whore and she thinks she can order me around. I want that cat, far away from her. Bring it to me." And after he stole it, he is not satisfied. Charles makes him break the poor animal’s neck. It is not a kitten anymore, but soft and skinny, a comely animal. It has big, blue eyes. Before, Lazare begged him three times and then pleased him, crying. As he watched him do it, nothing changed on the prince’s face. There wasn’t even a single sign of satisfaction on his hollow, powdered face. None of the other children wore makeup, it was only ever Charles.As night fell, he wanted fireflies and made Lazare light insects up with a candle, one by one, as the others were watching. The flames burned yellow lines into his eyes and he could not properly see for long minutes. And the smell? It was disgusting and heavy with guilt. He only wanted to be loved by the prince again. Lazare imagined that if he did all of this, the prince would take him to his bed again, and read, nuzzling up against him. He imagined the prince would press against him one more time, slowly rock back and forth, and he would kiss each finger of his in devotion and braid his hair.“Is this enough, my prince?” he asks. “Are you pleased?”“No.” The answer comes flat and cruel. “You showed me you can hurt the defenceless. That is the lowliest of them all.”There is something pulling at his stomach again. Something he felt before when Charles conquered him during fencing. It is the bitter feeling of frustration and blind desire. He wants to please the prince but there is no way he could succeed. And that angers him.“What should I do, then?” he asks, his voice trembling.“Show me you are brave. And strong, like a man. Show me you could stand up against a real opponent. Someone who could fight back.”“My prince, whatever you ask of me.”“Strangle Louis,” Charles says without a second of reconsideration. His black eyes stare intently into Lazare’s. Louis is the Crown Prince.All the other children gasp, and clearly, Louis is not pleased. In fact, he is scared. Lazare knows: he could either go against his prince’s wishes or go against his utmost superior. The Crown Prince will be his king, soon enough, and he knows that. But what if he cannot prove that he is a man to them? (To the prince.) Charles shakes his head and reconsiders.“No, Louis is so fat, you could never lock your hand around his neck.” He undoes his cravat with a single motion and pulls Lazare closer to himself. “Suffocate me instead.”Charles traps himself between Lazare’s body and the chamber’s wall, bringing the boy’s hand on himself. The others are watching, breathless. He looks up at the boy from under his long, dark eyelashes, his mouth half open.“My prince, I cannot do that,” Lazare protests immediately. His throat is cold against his skin, and yet, it only makes his palm hotter and hotter with each second.“What are you, Lazare? A man? Or a maiden?”“I am a man.”“But you’re weak…” Charles spits. Frustration emerges in his belly. “What is the use of a weak man? You are pathetic. You are weak and you are a coward: you only hurt those who cannot fight back. I don't even have pity for you. You cannot even follow a simple order and…”He gasps from surprise when Lazare’s fingers sink into his throat, squeezing his trachea. His eyes roll back, both of his hands gripping on the boy’s jacket, and Lazare finds himself unable to stop. Something in him awakens, blinding all his senses, and there is only Charles in the world, his plump lips falling open, and Lazare’s fingers curling around his throat.He only comes to himself when he is sitting in a room with his father, and some other men he cannot even recognize. Charles is weeping, his left hand protectively covering his own throat. When he removes it, the bruising is clearly seen. He points a finger at Lazare.“He did it! I don’t know what happened. I just won against him in fencing once and the next thing I know, he is at my throat like a common savage…” he pants out, unable to even finish the sentence.Panic washes through Lazare. He has done this, of course, but the story is twisted!“He ordered me to do it!” he cries out in despair, and only then he realizes how unbelievable that is. All the grownups shake their heads at him. “He told me to suffocate him!”“All the others were there,” Charles sniffs, his eyes red from crying. “They will tell you, it wasn't that way. Why won’t you listen to their testimonies?”They all testify against Lazare. Saw him being cruel to animals before, they said. He killed a cat, too, the orange one. Lazare cries and yells that it was the prince’s express wish. His father slaps him across the cheeks twice, once they are left alone in the room.“Do you understand the gravity of your actions?” He doesn’t shout. He howls. The only thing scarier than him is the prince himself and his cold behaviour. Lazare doesn’t feel cheated. He feels confused and inadequate. “That is a royal prince you decided to choke!”Lazare breaks down crying and insists that he did all to please the prince, but there is nobody to listen to him. They scrutinize him again. It is him and Charles in the same room and five adults and Charles cannot stop weeping and he shines his evil, black eyes at him, lips curling into a wicked smile when nobody could see his face. Lazare only feels mournful.“I feel endangered,” the prince says, his body, round and fragile, curling onto the lap of one of the officers in the room. He talks to him, whispering into his ears, but everyone can hear. “I have nightmares of his fingers clasped around my throat. I cannot even bear the sight of him!”Then, he adds in a much lower voice, with wistfulness in his tone.“If you humiliated him publicly, I would feel recompensed for my pain.” He stares at Lazare, who is red in the face from anger, frustration, and fear. “Fifty lashes and I would be pleased.”However, the adults have none of Charles's ideas. He wants to be entertained, he wants a show to pay for his suffering and they deny that from him. Then they say they would send the boy to the École Militaire instead, to be disciplined. To learn how to obey and behave. He receives this news with some sort of a humble resignation. His dove heart barely feels, from all the strange experiences he had to suffer and his head feels light – as if this wasn’t even happening to him but to someone else entirely. He doesn’t even have the strength to appeal against the decision. Instead, Charles’s eyes grow big in surprise and he runs to Lazare’s side, grabbing his hand.“No!” he yells and interlaces their fingers. “You cannot take him away! I said fifty lashes! In front of the whole court, for all of us to see. I refuse to release him until you grant my wish! You cannot take him away from me!”The two boys look at each other, Charles’s despair meeting with the boy’s dazed indifference. The prince starts wailing again, demanding that they let his friend stay. His own mischief turns against him. They pry Lazare out of his hands and escort him away.They won’t see each other for years.
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When he is fifteen, freshly out of the École Militaire for the first time, Charles turns seventeen. The school made Lazare how his father always begged him to be. Stern, ready to follow any orders, strong. He learns how to keep his calm, and when to unleash his wrath. Now, he knows how to speak to his superiors and how to give orders to the ones below him. He has confidence, but not too much of it. And learns how to mask his insecurities, and how to hide his interest in poetry, and all the other feminine, sentimental pursuits. But when he sees Charles, seventeen, slim at the waist, his dark gaze burning him alive, his knees still go weak. The prince takes him by the arm, putting his chin on his shoulder. He is seductive. Beautiful.“Do you remember me?” he asks, batting his eyelashes.He still wears ornaments in his hair, golden flowers braided into his thick, black curls. With his heavily made up eyelids, and the dark lips, he looks like a Greek goddess – or an exquisite prostitute, Lazare cannot help but think. There are a few things he learns from his mates at the military school. Like where their superiors go out at weekends. (Sometimes they curiously have a look at the brothels, where heavily made up prostitutes entertain the soldiers with bare breasts and rings around their ankles.) At seventeen, Charles is even more radiant than he used to be, losing the baby fat from his cheeks, his chin becomes even more pointed. His black eyes are like the Virgin Mary’s, massive, black, innocent. His scent sneaks into the boy’s nose and he wonders how he could even forget it for a second.“I remember you well, Your Royal Highness,” Lazare tells him, and his tone doesn’t yield the trembling of his little dove heart, somewhere still alive in his cold chest. Of course, he remembers. He remembers the way the prince used to lie in his arms, pressed against him. Light as feathers and smelling like flowers.“Read me a poem, why won’t you?” the prince asks, and as if nothing has happened between them between the first week of Lazare’s stay in the Versailles, and the past two years, he takes him by the hand and leads him to his bedchambers.Lazare follows him. Blindly. Hungrily. He forgets everything the prince has ever put him through because the kindness in him lures him in. The prince sprawls across his bed as he reads to him but this time he doesn’t fall asleep to his voice. Instead, he creeps behind him, as he sits on the side, and starts playing with Lazare’s jacket, gradually easing it off of him. (It is disruptive, but he still keeps reading, as the boy slowly undresses him. Lazare accommodates him by holding the book with only one hand at times.) For a moment, he presses his pointy chin to Lazare's shoulder and peeks at the book from afar. He missed being so close to him: it is almost as if no time has passed between they last saw each other. They always fit together so seamlessly, the boy tells himself, because that is what he wants to believe. The prince lays Lazare on the bed, with his back to the pillows. Soon, he would find himself having completely stopped reading, the book knocked out of his hand, and Charles lying between his thighs, resting his head on the boy's chest. For a while, he simply rests there, listening to his quickened heartbeats. They do not say a single word to each other. Lazare undoes the prince’s hair, and takes the ornaments out, curling the black locks around his finger. He still smells the same, this divine, rose-watered, child god. His makeup stains Lazare’s white shirt, and for a second, anxiety finds him: he is going to be chastised for this later. His rational mind tells him to get out of there right now, but his little dove heart is bursting. Charles giggles and props himself up with a hand placed on the boy’s chest.He leans close to Lazare’s ears, a wet sensation meeting his earlobe. He gasps, in surprise, and most importantly, in the suddenly found pleasure. The prince’s teeth sting, and soon he targets Lazare’s neck, quick fingers undoing his cravat. He only uses his tongue. All of his defences crumble down, alongside with his common sense, as the prince falls on his side, and beckons him with his dark gaze. Lazare opens his mouth as he looks him up and down: his pants are bulging. The prince takes his hand and pulls the boy on himself, impatiently.“So? Will you reciprocate?” he breathes, baring his own neck.They never kiss on the lips. The boy is too shy to do so on his own, afraid of making any offence – even though Charles’s lips are more than tempting – and the prince never gives him explicit permission. Lazare places soft kisses on his neck (with nothing else but his desire driving him), until the other starts instructing him. “Bite. Use your teeth,” he orders, eyes closed. His voice is close to whimpering from pleasure. Lazare is hesitant but he obeys. “Suck on it.”Before long, the prince’s neck would be covered in generous love bites. Charles rips his own shirt open and the delicate fabric breaks immediately. But he keeps Lazare almost fully dressed. His hair gets all tangled up in knots under himself, his cheeks rosy, even under the many layers of powder. In all his sweaty, dishevelled glory, he’s never been more beautiful. He sighs under Lazare, full of desire, pressing a hand to his own lips to silence himself. Then, having given up waiting, with a single motion, Charles undoes the front of the boy’s trousers, and he doesn’t even have enough time to feel embarrassed. He pulls Lazare down on himself.“Don’t stop,” he breathes in a weak voice, full of wistfulness and pleasure. His nails somehow scratch his face, hurting Lazare’s left eye - but he does not understand what is happening. Then, on a much louder, desperate tone, the prince shouts. “Stop! Don’t! Stop it right now!”He only comes to himself again when it is way too late, and he is standing stock still next to the prince’s bed, with his breeches undone, eyes cast on the ground. Nothing has changed, Charles is weeping again. But this time, Lazare does not want to prove him his love and devotion anymore. He wants to clasp his hands around his neck and silence his vicious tongue. To fall into his sweet trap once - that was to be expected. To let himself be fooled again! His father won't be proud. “I invited him to recite poems with me, as we always did before when we were young,” Charles sniffs, and through his tears, he stares at the boy knowingly. It is the same dark gaze he used to know from before. The world spins with him because he knows exactly how the story is going to end. Charles points at the book on the floor. “Then he knocked the book out of my hand, and he forced himself on me, trying to have his way with me. Even though I begged him to stop!”“That’s not true,” Lazare says, almost calmly. “He stripped me down as I was reading, kissed me, and asked me to reciprocate.”Charles tells him to examine his neck, then. But the boy’s tongue left no mark on Lazare. It is like the prince never touched him at all. That is when he understands the extent to which he formed his plans carefully to lure the boy into a trap he could not escape from. There is but one stinging red mark on his earlobe and the redness in his eye from Charles’s nails.“That is how I struggled free,” the prince explains and stares at the men with his black, innocent, Virgin Mary eyes.Lazare wants to hate him but he cannot bring himself to. In any case, he is filled with helpless disgust. When they decide to let the scandal slide and send him back to the military, to receive further training. Once he would have his own troops (far away from the prince). But it seems like Charles is unsatisfied with the decision, once again. Pressing his lips together, he demands them to reconsider. He even comes to see him off when Lazare leaves the next day, his lips pursed up as he looks down on the boy for one last time from the stairs."That is almost like a reward," he claims. It seems like his reasoning has improved from the last time. "Do you mean to reward him for wanting to ravish me? Who do you think I am?"They have none of his demands. The prince even comes to see him off when Lazare leaves the next day, his lips pursed up as he looks down on the boy for one last time from the stairs. When they lock eyes, he turns away. He would go back to the military next month. In the meanwhile, he pays a visit to his mother back in their estate at the south.Lazare always thought it would be harder to be separated from her – but his first week was so eventful at Versailles, he barely thought of her. Then, the next two years at the École Militaire taught him not to ever cry for his mother. Seeing her reclining on the old sofa they used to read on still gives him chills now, however.Her yellow hair is heavily coloured with grey now, and she stopped wearing wigs completely. She embraces Lazare as he comes in and rests his head on her chest, holding the boy close to him. They exchanged letters, while he was gone but he became secretive. He never wanted to tell her about the shameful things they sent him to the military school for. It was like he started to lead completely different lives for all the people who were involved with him. He learned that he cannot ever be honest fully honest with anyone. Not even himself. “My dear boy, my dear boy, what have you done?” she murmurs, and Lazare understands the pain in her tone too well… She knows…It must have been his father who told her, in an attempt to hurt her and show that her precious, dove-hearted little boy was capable of such ugly things. Her fingers curl into his hair, like he was nine again, not fifteen and awkwardly fitting into her arms. Lazare is angry at his father, because of all people, of all people it was his beautiful mother who never deserved to learn such things about him. (And the story must have been twisted too - and he can never clean himself of those accusations!) “Mama…” he whispers back, afraid to hear his own voice, “Mama, they are sending me back to the military.”When she looks up at her, it is clear on her face that she does not recognize the son she raised for all these years. She does not recognize the boy who used to read her stories aloud by the bedside. There is love in her eyes but the love has transformed into affection for a stranger. Lazare wants to crawl back into her arms and pretend that not a single day has passed since they last saw each other. But it is undoable, he knows that too.She kisses his brows.“What did he do now? Why does that prince hate you so much that he would send you back to the military with his hatred again?” she asks.So she knows everything, Lazare thinks. His father would not spare her of any disgusting detail. He absent-mindedly touches his ear, where Charles’s teeth bit him and says.“He does not hate me, Mama. I don’t think so.”That is what he would want to believe, still. “I told your father in my letter, too. There is no way that my Lazare would do any of the sort. To suffocate a royal prince? I know my son. I know you better than anyone in this world. You would not act so violent on your own if you could help it. He must hate you so much to make you do such foul things.”He would suffocate the prince if he could now, out of nothing else but pure helplessness. Charles rendered him unable to act, frustration blooming in his chest. He hates what that had done to him. And now, he has sent him away again, for an unknown period of time, far away from everything Lazare likes. (He does not even remember what he likes anymore. Reading? Poems? Lace making with his mother? They are all nothing more but a distant dream.)“What did he do now?” his mother asks again but he cannot bring himself to say it. He kisses the woman’s hand gently and excuses himself.Later, when the servants aren’t around, his mother takes him out to the garden, and they stroll around, far away from the estate. She walks slowly, and her face looks a lot older in the sunlight. Worry deepened the lines on her face, but for Lazare, at this moment, she is still the most beautiful. When he stares into the mirror, he could see her. Apart from the hair, they are like brother and sister. “You can confide in me, Lazare,” his mother says and takes his hand. Before he left, she used to stand taller than him, now she is tiny. “If you do not trust your own mother, who could give you peace of mind?”“He said I forced myself on him,” Lazare bursts out before he could think, and stares at the ground in embarrassment. With his free hand, he is fiddling with the ear Charles touched. “I didn’t, Mama. I didn’t.”His mother does not react anything. Her face remains the exact same as before, colourless, expressionless, blank as if the words did not fully reach her.“Why does that prince hate you so much?” she merely asks again, knowing that there is no real answer to the question. “What have you done to him, Lazare?”“I don’t know,” he breathes, and never confesses that he gave the ring away to him.He often wonders, what happened to it? Did the prince laugh at how pathetic and sentimental he was and threw it away? Did he ruin it with showing his true heart? Charles never wore it, not as far as he knows. It was nothing but a lesson never to trust anyone, never to yield them his deepest affections like that again.Until next month, he remains at the estate. When he reads to his mother, his voice sometimes goes faint, his thoughts going straight back to the prince’s bedroom. No matter how strong he thinks he is, at night his thoughts also wander back to the very same scene, Charles’s bulging pants, heavy eyelids and the strong makeup, and he touches himself, promising it would never happen again. (It happens again.)At home, there is no strict daily routine he needs to keep, and since his mother is sickly, she wakes late in the morning. It allows Lazare time for himself in his room, and time for undisciplined thoughts. His mother still wears all white on some days and inside the house, where the sunlight doesn’t reach that easily, she is still beautiful like the fairest, youngest maidens. Lazare brings her flowers from the garden and braids them in her hair. They laugh at each other and pretend that she is young again.She kisses Lazare on the cheek when he leaves for the military school, and squeezes his hands.“Stay away from the prince,” she warns him. “Stay away from him, if you want a safe life.”He promises to do so and secretly cannot wait to get back to the Versailles, to face him again.But it takes him five more years to set feet to the palace again. He serves in the military, working his way up from the lowest position – just like his father and grandfather did once. Starting at the countryside, he is in charge of a few troops from the age of seventeen, and by nineteen, they say there is not a better commander in the country. He is not invited to the new king’s coronation, and he misses every single important event. At work, however, due to his previous experiences, he becomes exquisite: impersonal, brief, and inflexible.He scarcely has personal affairs, and he conducts them in the utmost privacy. Unsure how many people might now of his past deviant behaviour, he only ever approaches women, from time to time, so there would be no rumours floating about him. If he does not indulge in physical pleasures at all, they will think he pursues something forbidden in secret. (At night, he would scarcely think about that time in the prince’s room still, but the memory starts to fade, and it is nothing more than an elaborate fantasy even by the time he is sixteen.)They say he presents older than his age. He is like an old man, without any interests or passions. (Even his hair starts lightly greying by twenty.) This is why he is so successful as a leader: he only ever cares about his assignment. No matter who he has to work with, he finds a way to command them, for his voice to reach them and within weeks, all his men are loyal and servile. There is never a personal touch, they always remain strictly professional – no comradery between him and his underlings.Then, at twenty, he gets word from the Versailles. His father has suddenly passed away, and he is to replace him, as the head of the royal guards: his record is perfect for that. (Apart from his little affair with the youngest royal prince, of course, he thinks. But again, the records are largely silent about that.)His mother is gone before his father. When Lazare is seventeen. That is the last time he remembers crying. They were still frequently writing to one another, and it was true that he learned not to channel his affections anywhere, but through his long letters to her mother. He would write to her not about his days, but about how he missed her, promising later visits and long, solitaire walks at the estate. In exchange, the woman sent her poems and selected verses, transcribed in her beautiful handwriting.She would sometimes write in English, and that would also be the way he replied to her in different sections. They had their own little world, their own little language – it was not hard to break into it, but maybe challenging enough so nobody tried. At one time wrote in confession that he longed for her kisses – in English. She sent pressed flowers in her letters the next time and the letter paper smelled like her perfume. He cherished it the most.When his father died, his tears were already all dried up. Saying goodbye was not particularly difficult, and he was almost relieved to finally go back to Versailles. As much as he wanted to see Charles again at fifteen, five years later the need subdued. Because time made him forget, he thought the memories could not re-surface again strongly.But he is not that naïve, innocent boy he used to be before. The prince cannot play with him the way he used to, by now, he tells himself. For the first few days, they won’t even meet, and Lazare almost has his guard down. In the palace, the atmosphere is a lot different than what he is used to: if he was, to be frank, he feels like they are wasting his talents on assignments like this.But when they meet again, it is almost like being spirited away. (Sometimes his face as he remembers it would still haunt him at night.) He is always caught off guard, with the prince.“It’s been a long time,” he purrs at Lazare when they encounter each other one day. “I almost forgot how comforting it is to see your face.”Lazare only pays a single glance at him. The prince has reached his peak sometime before his twenty-second birthday, he surmises. At seventeen, he was beautiful. At twenty-two, he is a little short average, with his eyes dark from the long, sleepless nights he spends at intimate gatherings in salons. His makeup does not make him attractive anymore, it is too thick, mask-like, fake. Lazare thinks he could finally see him for what he truly is. The illusion fades. “Your Royal Highness,” he nods and tries to disguise the motion as a bow.“You still resent me, Lazare,” the prince observes and touches his face briefly, trying to freeze him in motion, so he could have a look at the boy. His wrist smells strongly of incense and of something else, and for a second, Lazare could clearly see him lying on the bed, seventeen, and beautiful. He clears his mind. “Let us put the past behind us. You are not some foolish child anymore.”“I agree, my lord,” he says.The prince steps away from him but the smell of his perfume is beckoning him. He wants to step closer to him once again. Charles turns his palm towards him and on his ring finger, with the ornamented parts turned inside, Lazare recognizes his mother’s old jewellery.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
He knows absolutely nothing of the prince.By now, he understands enough to know that none of the faces he had shown to Lazare were real. He understands that there is no way to wrap his head around Charles. It might be that he does not exist at all, to begin with. All just an elaborate performance to create the perfect illusion of a person, but under the cold, human-like skin powered hollow he could very well be a snake, a rat, (but definitely not a god). He cannot hate him. But he has grown out of being infatuated with a trick, he tells himself. The prince was nothing more than a cheap show without any substance - and he is not a child anymore to be impressed by it. And yet, when he sees his mother’s ring, he cannot help but wonder. He is trying to see the human behind the ever-changing, staged personality. Was Charles cherishing his gift all along, wearing it for his own amusement, a touch of humanity in his cold act? And if not, what sort of odd coincidence made him put it on this time, when they were accidentally fated to meet in an empty salon? He always thinks back to his fifteen-year-old self as a foolish young boy, but at times like this, he truly feels he didn’t grow at all. The world is still a mystery to him. The world, by which he mostly means Charles. Maybe if he took all that makeup off, he would become faceless. His palm is still extended towards the boy and he stares at the ring mesmerized, as he was put under a spell once again. That ring should not belong to him. It taught him a harsh lecture: never to show his affections so foolishly and recklessly. He suddenly becomes aware of himself again. “If you excuse me, Your Royal Highness,” Lazare coughs. “I have duties to attend to.”“Of course, of course,” the prince says, somewhat reluctantly. He withdraws his hand. “Off you go!”He giggles when the boy leaves, and it is just enough to make him feel like his twelve-year-old self, embarrassed and lost in the Versailles. The boy detests the influence he has on him. Lazare is twenty, and he is much harder to be swayed, and he has stopped being naïve, and with the prince’s perfume in his nose, he thinks about him all night. Being in the palace is the real torture, he only realized it now. He used to long for being here again but the years had gone by. This time, what he wants most is to strangle the prince, on his own volition. To take matters into his own hand. He does not hate him but he is frustrated and vengeful: he wants to show him how much it hurts to be played with. But this is all he can never do. The prince’s royal blood was protecting him from every offense. Even if he found a way to strangle him, he would be executed for treason, or worse.Before he came back here to assume his new position, Lazare burned all of his mother’s letters. He only kept a single one, with the perfumed letter paper, and the pressed flowers. That was his gift for not crying over the loss of the other ones.It was only after his father’s death, and a few weeks into his servitude at the Versailles that he could make the journey back to his southern estate, and scout out his old letters to his mother. He picked all of them out from the woman’s secret drawer in the writing desk, and without reading any of them over once again, burned them all. Lazare is not stupid. For anyone who wasn’t him or his mother, those letters could mean something entirely different. He was not going to give them that advantage. Revisiting his childhood home after years is heart-wrenching. Would be heart-wrenching, if Lazare allowed himself to feel that way. He gets better and better at repressing his emotions - and once he is going to burst but it is not yet the time. Most of his mother’s belongings were still in the rooms untouched, as his father also did not return frequently from his post. Piles of books lie on the floor in rooms nobody used for years. Her clothes are all in the closet, but none of them bears her scent anymore. He dusts them off and disposes of everything. After a week of stay, he leaves an empty estate, only populated by a few servants, who would carry on the necessary duties there.He arrives back to the palace late at night because he is held up at the gates of the capital. There seems to be nothing out of the ordinary - and yet, he cannot shake this odd feeling off. The lights are scarce, with only a few servants awake, carrying out several silent duties, preparing for the next day. There are some voices faintly seeping through the walls of a few bedchambers, but no salon is occupied tonight, there are no important gatherings. The hallways feel almost eerie as he walks through them, only surrounded by lovers’ giggles and suppressed whispers. Everything seems calm, but he knows that the quiet is not genuine. Lazare returns to his room with a strange feeling in his stomach. He does not realize what is wrong, until he puts the oil lamp down to the bedside, ready to strip down for the night. His bed is undone, and under the covers, someone is curled up, lightly dozing off. Lazare shakes the intruder awake, but even in the dull greyness of the night, he could tell by the strands of black hair sprawling around on the pillow: it is his prince.His face is naked (he is not faceless, after all), and he softly whimpers as he turns towards Lazare, staring up at him from half drooping eyes. It reminds him of a similar scene from a long time ago, Charles falling asleep to his voice, fragile, defenceless. That time, he was beautiful, today he is almost repulsive. Is it his memories, that taint Charles's face? The prince blinks sleep out of his eyes.“Lazare… I was waiting for you all evening,” he whispers. He is wearing nothing but a thin dressing gown, which is now dangling off half his shoulder, exposing his pale skin underneath. “You are in my bed.” The honorifics are missing.Charles brings his legs under himself as he sits up, but he does not seem to be about to leave the bed. It occurs to him that he has never seen the man without all his powder and rouge masking the truth. Without the dark makeup, his eyes seem even rounder. Virgin Mary. The innocent. This is not what he wants to see. He reminds himself: this, too, is nothing more than a simple act. He doesn't know him.The prince shakes his head, black curls bouncing everywhere.“I wanted to talk to you, you know.” He suppresses a yawn with his hand. On his finger, Lazare recognizes his mother’s keepsake in the only ring he wears. Unwanted, his thoughts keep wandering back to the very same questions. What is the purpose? Why? Who are you? And what do you want? He wears the ring to bed when he has left behind all that ornament him. So it is more than an accessory. And it takes him no closer. “It is the middle of the night.”“Isn’t that the most convenient time of the day you and I could spend some time together? Your duties do not bind you… There are no courtiers breathing in our necks, listening closely to every word we say,” his voice is meek and velvety, but Lazare does not let himself be swayed. He commands himself to stay calm. Repress everything. "Rumours travel fast in this palace." “I know what happens when Your Royal Highness and I are in a room alone.”“Of course. You and I parted on such a bitter note,” Charles continues when he realizes that there would be nothing more coming from the man. “That is why I am here. I wanted to tell you… But look at you, you think I am bad.”He tugs at Lazare’s shirt until the man follows his lead and lowers himself on his knees. The prince gives him a silent smile of approval. He caresses Lazare’s face, and his wrist still smells strongly of his sweet perfume.“I am not bad,” he continues. “My heart breaks that you think of me that way. Look at you: you are a changed man, strong, awe-inspiring, handsome. The same way, I am also a changed man.”Lazare looks at his bare shoulder, the way his collarbone pokes through the transparent, veiny, hollow skin. The prince is almost glowing in the dark, he is cold, most resembling alabaster in his lifelessness. Lazare wants to think him unappealing. But like a sculpture, the alabaster might shape a homely face, and be considered stunning. Lazare scolds himself for considering the decline of the prince anything close to artful. Lazare reminds himself, he should not be swayed again. He has grown, he has this under control. All this time, he has learned all the prince's cheap tricks. His perfume changes the atmosphere in the room. When his hand slides down to the belt around his dressing gown, his fingers fiddling with the knot, Lazare darts up, grabbing his wrist. He tries to lead the prince towards the door, shoving him outside and getting rid of the danger. “Leave,” he asks. “It is late.”Charles looks down at the hand squeezing at his wrist. His stature is small, and his cheeks are glowing slightly pink from the offence he has just taken. Suddenly, his expression changes, and from the endearing, sweet prince, who means no threat and comes to negotiate peace he turns into a slimy, dark snake again, spitting venom.“So you do not wish to listen to what I have to say? Who do you think I am? You do not give commands to me. Unhand me immediately, or I will scream,” he hisses. Lazare does nothing. “Unhand me. Otherwise... We are alone in your room, with my clothes half off, your bed messy and undone. People will know what happened. I won't even have to say a word, this time.”“I only arrived home.”“And then you lured me into your room with the promise of reconciliation… And I am so foolish. So trusting. Look at me now. My dressing gown torn, my dignity hurt: you tricked me again. Will I ever learn?" His eyes are full of ugly, hateful determination. Nothing has changed. "Test me. If you do not unhand me, I will scream, and ruin your reputation.”“My reputation is already ruined,” Lazare thinks but he releases him at the same time. When the prince steps closer to him, he could smell alcohol on his breath for the first time. “What do you want from me?”“I wanted you to listen to me. I wanted us to… We used to see eye to eye when we were young. Remember? You would have me on your lap and talk about your mother to me. I can still recall how excited you got each time. I was always wondering. Was it me, who excited you…? Or was it your mother? The one you idolized so much and couldn't stop talking about?”Lazare knows that the prince is only provoking him with this – he has no idea what he is talking about. There is no way he could have known about the letters, about the perfume. And even if he did, there is no way he could truly understand. And yet, anger washes through Lazare and he grabs him by the wrist again, and squeezes his upper arm with such force, for a second he thinks the prince would break. He just wants him to stop talking, to finish his silly games. The prince is always a step ahead of him and he plays with his head, effortlessly. “Take that back,” he asks. This time, his voice is steady and full of resentment.“If I take it back, will it make it any less true?” Charles’s lips curl into a wicked smile. He has found the boy's weak spot. “You wanted to fuck your mother, the same way you wanted to fuck me, when you forced yourself on me, defiling my own bed with your rotten thoughts.”“I did no such thing,” Lazare claims again, and he refuses to release him. He could feel anger brewing in his chest, even stronger than ever before. The military taught him nothing, he was still full of rage, desperately struggling against the prince’s claims. He is disappointed in himself but full of rage.The military taught him nothing, he was still full of rage, desperately struggling against the prince’s claims. He is disappointed in himself but full of rage. But it is not only that. There is more. “I saw the way my ring caught your eyes… Your gift. It was your mother’s wasn’t it? I knew it! You gave it to me, so you could live out your fantasies with me instead. You are obsessive. You are obsessive and dangerous.”“Not true.”But Charles does not stop: his mouth still spurts out lies and dangerous accusations. With every passing second, the boy is sure that he is going to break him, his grip growing gradually firmer and firmer on him. There is only one thing he wants to do: to silence him. But he has no idea how: the more he wants Charles to stop, the more he speaks. Inside, Lazare wants to cry. Everything is at a breaking point: there is no way he could get out of this unharmed. “And you are violent, too. I bet you derived pleasure from seeing me helpless and gasping for air when you had your hands around my neck. I bet you would have enjoyed it if it was under your grip that I died. So? Did you abuse your mother, too? Or were you just thinking about it, playing with the thought? Do you touch yourself when you reminisce of hurting me?”“Stop.”He is blinded by anger. He is helpless. Each time he thinks he has finally learned all the prince’s quirks, he comes up with something new and twists the narrative. “And if I said no?”That is when he slaps him across the cheek before he could even think. It is the capacity of his calm, it is the capacity of both his dove heart and his stoic stature he was forced to adapt in school. In the looming greyness of the room, he could see Charles’s eyes widen, as he stares at him half in disbelief. There is a stray tear in his eye, possibly from the sudden pain, and this is when Lazare fully realizes the gravity of his own actions. He lay his hand on the royal prince. He only proved him right.“Your Royal Highness, I’m…”He cannot even finish his apology: Charles uses his momentary disbelief and confusion to struggle free from his grip. Without a moment of hesitation, he targets the door.“That’s it!” he murmurs under his breath, proud and offended. Before he reaches his door, he rips a hole in his silken dressing gown. “You surely left a mark. Now there will be no doubt you were trying to ravish me, daunting me with a strike. They won’t even need much convincing.”He is trapped. It is over. There is no way he could resolve this anymore - anything he does, he cannot win. The prince's hand is on the knob already, and he would scream, “help” just like last time. Except, this time, Lazare’s hand covers his and pries it off of the golden handle. His head bangs against the door as Lazare turns him over and locks the door. He can't let him go out! He can't let him ruin him. Lazare has no plan: he only has helplessness and despair. With his other hand, he twists Charles’s wrist, and lifts it above his head, pinning him to the wood.The prince is breathing heavily.“I will scream,” he warns.“No, you won’t.” To contrast his inner despair, Lazare presents calm and insubmersible. There is no way for the prince to struggle out of this position, he is locked down. But this is only momentarily: he needs to find a way to mend this situation and save himself. Deep inside he knows that there is nothing he could do. (Apart from breaking him in despair.) “I will scream! I will scream for help unless you silence me.” Lazare gives another twist to his wrist, but despite his warnings, the prince only hisses in pain. He loathes him, and he is afraid. No. He won't make a fool of Lazare again! “They will take you away again. You think I ruined your reputation before? You are not a child anymore, Lazare. They will not trust that military school could make you any more docile. If you won’t gag me, I will scream for help.”This time, he is completely in control of his actions. So he wants to be gagged? His fingers curl around Charles’s throat, and he silences him the only way he knows: by suffocating him. As he first touches the prince, he makes a sound that Lazare is unable to decipher. His eyes roll back, and with his free hand, he holds the boy’s, breathlessly clawing at his skin. At times it feels like he presses him to squeeze even harder. That scares him: he cannot kill the prince, after all! Treason. They have to see eye to eye. (They cannot see eye to eye.)When Lazare releases him, to let him breathe, he does not yell. He only pants heavily, his chest heaving. The prince lowers his gaze, measuring him up, which prompts Lazare to look as well. Under his white robe, the prince is unmistakably hard. When he looks back at Charles, he seemingly tries to become one with the white wood behind him, knowing that he was caught. So he felt excited by his helpless situation. Lazare was never any closer to understanding him. Their gazes meet, and they burn each other. With a single gesture, Lazare opens the dressing gown’s belt, and it falls on the floor, underneath them. The prince is exposed, naked, and vulnerable to him. Entirely vulnerable. (He's never been vulnerable before. He only pretended to be.)He could do anything to him now.Pay him back for all the pain he caused. “I will scream…” Charles breathes again.No, he won't. He covers the prince’s mouth with his hand, preventing any sound from coming out. When he touches him, Charles’s knees go weak. Some parts of him expect the prince to bite, or to struggle against him but only his tongue circles around Lazare’s palm, softly edging to the side and taking his fingers into his mouth. A rush of desire finally sends him off the edge, and he turns Charles around. With both of his hands occupied, later the prince would press a hand to his own mouth, muffling his cries of pleasure. He plays the accomplice and lets himself be used.Lazare never even takes him to his bed, he has him there, against the wall, fully clothed, with only his breeches undone. He wouldn’t even kiss the prince – never on the lips, and not even once on the neck. (He only bites him, so it would sting.) But he grabs his hand one time, squeezing at his fingers, and in a stolen moment, snatching back the ring that used to belong to him. When he is finished with him, he turns Charles towards himself once again. His eyes are red, and his lower lip is bleeding from biting into it too hard. With his hands shaking, he picks up his ripped dressing gown from the floor and covers himself as if he ever felt shy about his body. He does not scream. He does not ask for help. Lazare’s heart settles with disgust, confusion, and emptiness, as he arranges himself. They stare at each other for a while, Charles pursing up his plump lips, and hugging himself with both arms, like a timid child.“Well,” Lazare says. “At least your claims will be well founded now.” There is something entirely cruel in it. A long-awaited opportunity for revenge, and yet, it is without satisfaction. Charles leaves him without another word.He expects them to come back for him soon, the prince to accompany them with eyes red from crying and to tell them everything, from the beginning to end. It would all be true. There is nothing he could defend himself with this time, so he awaits them patiently, fiddling with his mother’s ring between his fingers. There was no way out of this, he tells himself, to justify what he did. They never come to get him. This time, the prince is silent as a grave, as if nothing happened between them. He cried wolf so many times, and when he was at peril, he let it all pass by.When he finally retires to bed, the sheets smell like Charles.Lazare does not see him for the entire day – and he does not miss him. He knows there is something he should tell him, there is something to be mended, and yet, he does not seek the prince out. If he feels anything, it is remorse, and on top of that, emptiness instead of crooked satisfaction. The helplessness is replaced by something else. And yet, it is not always on his mind, especially once he realizes that the prince will not report what he did.He simply goes on with his day and his duties, as nothing has changed. It is so easy to settle back to reality - he finds - when there is nobody to hold him accountable. (He feels the closest to the child Charles used to be, now.)In the evening, there is a knock at his door. His prince waits on the other side, dressed informally, in black culottes, with colourful flowers embroidered on the sides, and a shirt, his cravat undone and left behind somewhere. There is something broken about his performance. On his pale, milk-white neck, the marks of Lazare’s teeth turned bluish-purple. His face is fully painted, and there is a leather bound book in his hand.“Monsieur le Comte de Peyrol,” he says. His voice is hollow, and not velvety at all but he smells like rosewater and incense.“Your Royal Highness.”“May I come in?” he asks. “I brought something I want you to read.”Lazare gives way, but he says.“I am afraid I do not follow literary pursuits anymore, my lord.”“That is quite alright. I will read to you.”There is something entirely unthreatening about the scene. They return to another reality, picking up where they left off all those years ago before the prince shed his first mask. Lazare is confused but he does not object. Did the prince forget what happened last night? Does he remember too well? Charles closes the door behind himself and softly takes the boy by the hand – his touch is cool but by no means cold and it is without any strength. He leads Lazare to his own bed and climbs on top. His voice turns velvety the second he starts reciting the text, and soon enough, he draws Lazare between his thighs and lets him rest a little on his chest. As he reads, he mindlessly strokes the boy’s hair, as a mother would do to a child. No matter what has happened between them, compared to the previous times, Lazare’s heart feels the most perturbed now. (There needs to be a catch, deep inside he knows this. The prince never feigns kindness without reason.)When the prince finishes reading, he immediately emerges from the bed, trying to escape from the displaced feeling. “No, no, no!” Charles exclaims almost desperately and darts after him. He catches him in the middle of the room, hands tugging on Lazare’s sleeve, like a plea. “Not yet.”When he turns back, to answer something, Charles emerges on tiptoes and crosses the remaining space between their lips. His kiss silences Lazare, hands rested on the boy’s chest. It is when their lips touch that Lazare gives up on trying to comprehend the prince, to try and calculate his next step. He forgets all he (does not) know about him and melts down. He has a tiny waist, comfortable enough for Lazare to wrap his arms around and lift him up. The prince tastes like booze, sweets, and the whimsical child god Lazare once thought him to be. His rouge is smeared across his face and he carries him back to the bed, laying him on the sheets.For hours, he lies on Lazare, wrapping the boy’s arms around himself and using him as a pillow. They never talk about the night before, as if it did not even happen – as if it was nothing more but a moment of mysterious disappearance for the both of them. Charles dropping all of his masks. But now Lazare almost thinks of it with shame, hurting that innocent, angelic little creature who is resting on him, his palm covering the boy’s heart, where he keeps his ring again. Charles sighs. (He is playing with him.)The prince stares up at him with his black, Virgin Mary eyes, and he drowns in his gaze. His little dove heart starts to beat again.