Ven tripped when the soldier threw him across the threshold. He fell to his knees, too dazed to even think about making a run for it while the door stood open. His brain struggled just to make sense of this once-plush bedroom as his new prison cell.
      He only looked up at the sound of more footsteps coming up the tower; More guards, holding another man in their grasp. Clad in armor, face concealed with a helmet, he bore the same colors as them: the red and black of the Kingdom of Remnant, with a silver trim that marked him as someone important; yet the way they were handling him clearly marked him as just as much a prisoner as Ven.
      The guards tossed the stranger into the cell with just as little grace as they had Ven, and only then did the door fall shut behind them.
      Unable to hide his surprise, it was all Ven could do to openly stare at who he supposed was now his cellmate. In turn, the man didn’t acknowledge Ven’s presence at all, content to stalk around the room as though he owned it. His armor was banged up in places, including a wide-open tear across his upper right arm; the metal bent outward along the lips of the opening, and through it Ven could see a vile gash seeping blood on golden skin. His cape hung in tatters at his back, the clasp on his left shoulder broken—not just broken; Ven could see telltale signs of the damage caused by a piercing weapon. Someone had tried to stab him through the neck and had either barely missed or been stopped in the nick of time.
      The visor of his helmet was a smooth, perfect dome, but there was enough on display elsewhere—his breastplate, his gauntlet, even the remnants of his cape. Ven had been around royal courts all his life, enough to pick up on the heraldry on display here; and besides, he had seen this armor once before, just earlier that same day. This wasn’t just a high-ranking officer; he was the prince of Remnant itself. One of them, anyway—one of the orphans taken in by the emperor and molded into weapons more than they were heirs.
      Just a scant few hours ago, Ven had been set to meet this man and marry him. That was before his country’s delegation turned out to be a covert invasion force. The last Ven saw of him, he’d been swallowed up by the fighting, wielding a nasty-looking sword in one hand and swinging a chain in the other like a whip. It had looked to Ven as though he was fighting his own countrymen, though Ven hadn’t believed his eyes at the time. Evidently, he hadn’t been mistaken.
      He was unarmed now, but moved about the room as if neither that nor his wounds bothered him. Then, after an agonizingly silent minute, he turned his whole body to face Ven, helmet tipped down to make it clear he was looking at Ven’s crumpled form.
      A surge of pride forced Ven to stand up before the prince could close the distance between them, but that didn’t stop him from flinching when the other prince crowded into his space. He stepped back, eyes darting for something to defend himself with. The prince may have been unarmed, but this armor looked sturdy enough to cause damage, and Ven had no idea what dark forces he’d been trained to wield besides.
      But the word that came from beneath that helmet wasn’t one of aggression. “Relax,” he said, and he sounded bored—or amused, perhaps.
      The tone shook Ven’s fear loose, leaving him with only incredulity.
      “‘Relax?‘ It’s only a matter of time before they execute me. And you, probably.” The princes of Remnant may be prized as sons—up to and including their use as bargaining chips through marriage—but they were weapons first, and from everything Ven knew of the emperor, betrayal wasn’t something he’d tolerate.
      “My stepfather wouldn’t hurt us.”
      “Your stepfather,” Ven hissed, “killed my family. And put us in here.”
      “Yeah. And he spared you and put you here with me. Which is how you know you’re safe.” The prince crossed his arms, but in doing so, his tattered cape slid from the shoulder where the clasp had broken and threatened to fall to the floor. He had to scramble to catch it; the way he turned his helmeted face back up to Ven afterwards, slightly tilted, made Ven think he was glaring from behind the visor, as if he resented that Ven had seen that display.
    But it wasn’t his cape that caught Ven’s attention. “Your voice,” he said. It was distorted by the helmet, but Ven had heard enough to realize it sounded familier. 

“I—who are—do I know you? Have we met before?”

      For a moment, the prince stood still. “Well, if we’re stuck up in this tower, I suppose I’ll have to take this off at some point—” He reached up for his helmet, fingers deftly dancing over the latches, and pushed upwards. The helm slid over his face, and Ven stood still, transfixed, as the prince’s face came into view.
      He couldn’t believe what he saw—not when he saw the first hint of golden eyes, not when a mass of dark hair came loose from the helm’s confinement. And yet, he had no choice but to believe it.
      “Vanitas?”
      “It’s been a while, hasn’t it,” Vanitas replied with a wry smirk.
      Time wasn’t the problem; the fact that Ven knew Vanitas as the kitchen boy Ven used to sneak out with in his youth was. “How are you a prince of Remnant?”
      “Adoption, then marriage.” He said it matter-of-factly, as if that was the only explanation Ven needed. As if it made any sense. “Not my marriage.”
      “That doesn’t help.”
      “Does it matter?”
      “Does it m—” Ven’s brain struggled with the question he had no choice but to repeat it, but cut himself off in a strangled, frustrated noise. “Yeah, I’d say it matters quite a bit!”
      “No, it doesn’t. I’m here. That’s what matters.”
      I’m here. The word sank in as Ventus processed them. He was here—not only that, but he was here to— “Did you—” He paused, unsure how to ask without giving away what he wished the answer would be. “Did you know this was all a trick?”
      “You’re gonna have to be more specific, Ventus.” The way Vanitas’s tongue curled around his name elicited a shiver down Ven’s spine. Light, had he forgotten what being near him felt like.
      “The arranged marriage. Between—” You and me. It sounded absurd to even say the words out loud. “Between the princes of Condea and Remnant. Did you know it was
a trick?”
      “Who said it was a trick?”
      Ven blinked, wondering if Vanitas was messing with him. “Does your stepfather really think I’ll still want go through with a wedding?”
      “From what I know about Emperor Xehanort, what you wanted hasn’t factored in his plans.”
      The bitterness in his voice draws the question from Ven’s lips before he can swallow it down. “Speaking from experience?”
      Vanitas huffed and gave a shrug. This time, his cape did topple from his shoulder, but Vanitas ignored it. “No, I just love being locked up in a tower,” he retorted, words dripping heavy with sarcasm. “That’s why I did what I did.”
      “Oh.” It was a weird feeling to hear him say that. Because on one hand, it meant they were in this together. But on the other hand, Ven couldn’t help a rush of disappointment. “I mean, of course,” he muttered. “As if you’d ever want to—” He cut himself off, but if Vanitas had heard him, he didn’t show a sign of it. Clearing his throat, Ven chose to take the easy way out and pretend he hadn’t said anything.
      “So what did you mean, then? That he would—force us?”
      “Of course he would. He knows your people—he was born here, after all. He knows a conqueror won’t hold the throne forever. An alliance, on the other hand—that lasts.”
      An alliance. It’s not that Ven hadn’t expected his marriage to be used for this very purpose someday; but he had hoped it would be more than a sham, a puppet show staged by the monster who killed his family.
      And if it was a puppet show— “And you would be his enforcer?”
      “I imagine we could have found enough common ground that it wouldn’t have been necessary.” If those words brought some hope in Ven’s heart, the shift in Vanitas’s eyes that followed dashed them. “But if it came to it, yes. That was the plan.”
      “And you would have just gone along with it?” Ven blinked, eyes suddenly blurry, but the sting of tears only made his anger flare up brighter. “After everything?”
      “Everything?” He scoffed. “What everything would that be? Last I checked, you left first, Ventus.”
      “I—” The retort cut the wind from Ven’s lungs, and he looked down in shame. Vanitas was right; Ven had left the royal court of Condea, shipped off to Ilysoir to complete his instruction—and make room for his younger half-sister to become the heir. That was all before he’d ever been found the courage—or the foolishness—to tell Vanitas, an orphan, a street urchin he’d somehow befriended as a child, how he’d grown to feel about him.
      If the bitterness in Vanitas’s voice was any indication, he knew anyway. And he resented Ven for it.
      “I was sent away,” Ven pointed out.” You know—”
      “I know you wanted nothing more than to leave.”
      That was true, of course; he’d said so himself. “I didn’t want to leave you.” Ven’s voice came out weakly, barely audible, but he forced himself to look up and meet Vanitas’s eyes. “Everyone—everything—else, yes. But not you, Vanitas.”
      “Well, you did. And now—” Whatever Vanitas had been about to say remained lodged in his throat, unfinished, melting into a sigh. “Now here we are.”
      Here they were. Ven, back home only for a wedding he didn’t choose, to a man he would have chosen if he’d known he could, only to be caught in an ambush and lose everything. And Vanitas, a traitor to the country that had lifted him from the nothing he once was. “Both prisoners,” Ven decided to sum it up.
      “Both prisoners,” Vanitas repeated. “But together.” His gaze shifted again, softening this time, and his next words came softer too, stilted, tense with nerves that were plain on his face. “I didn’t answer your question.”
      Ven didn’t need to ask which one.
      “I noticed.”
      “I didn’t know we were being sent to invade. I thought—I thought I would be going off to marry you.” He paused, just long enough for Ven to hear the drum of his own heartbeat in his ears.
      “I knew what it would mean. That I’d be there to threaten you on his behalf. But I was selfish enough to come anyway.”
      Selfish? Now Ven’s heart missed a beat. “You mean—”
      “When I realized what the troops were about to do,” Vanitas continued without heeding him, “I wanted to make sure they didn’t get to you.” He scoffed. “For all the good that did.”
      Ven stared, transfixed, studying the look in Vanitas’s eye, past the shield of sarcasm. And suddenly none of it mattered. He took a step forward, entering Vanitas’s space the same way he had earlier—but Vanitas didn’t flinch back like Ven had.
      “Well,” Ven said, “we’re here now. Together.”
      It wasn’t one of the thousand things he wanted to say, but a flicker of emotion crossed Vanitas’s face anyway. His hand came forward, gauntleted fingers linking with Ven’s. The metal was cold and hard, but his touch was so utterly delicate that it didn’t matter. Then Vanitas leaned in, pressing his forehead to Ven’s, eyes closed.
      “Yes,” he said in a breath. “We are.”