A cloying scent, sweet and faintly metallic, lingered in the quiet corners of Elias’s mind. Caius, earlier, had asked if he enjoyed the plum conserve served with the midday meal, then, without awaiting an answer, had casually licked a smudge from Elias’s thumb, his gaze unnervingly keen. The memory, a prickle of repulsion, made Elias’s jaw ache. He tore a crust from his untouched roll, the coarse wheat dissolving on his tongue into a tasteless pulp. His thighs twitched beneath the heavy wool of his trousers, an echo of the adolescent uncertainty that churned within him, a fog he couldn't disperse, a question he couldn't form.
The dry bread sat forgotten on his desk. He worried at a splintered fingernail, mulling over the recent exchange with Caius, the peculiar intimacy of it, the disquieting implications. Why did it feel so wrong? He knew, abstractly, the truth. Yet admitting it felt like stepping onto thin ice. The truth seemed clear without truly seeing it, palpable without actual touch. But what he grasped was only a cold, clammy mist.
He watched a speck of dust drift lazily through a shaft of wan sunlight. Caius, he reflected, had spoken of Alaric Finch's rumored assignations with Lysander Blackwood, painting them with a brush dipped in something dark and transactional. Were the whispers true? Lysander Blackwood, whose lineage, though ancient, carried a stain of profligacy, whose academic standing had always been precarious—a future, Elias grimly surmised, not unlike that of Garrick, or the younger Finch brothers. Their lives, no matter their names, were often variations on a single, bleak theme.
“Someone’s filched my sketching charcoal! Pay up, you thieving curs!”
Garrick’s voice ripped through the hushed air of the classroom. His crude outburst startled a scattering of diligent scholars. They flinched, then resumed their work, their backs stiff with disapproval. The usual suspects, the younger Finch brother, a pale, gangly boy named Rhys, shoved Garrick, a loose-limbed scuffle erupting at the back.
“Owe me, you lout. The pence you owe could buy a hundred fine pencils, and then some.” Rhys spat, his face flushed.
“My charcoal! My good charcoal!”
The back of the room devolved into a cacophony of shouts and shoves. Garrick and Rhys wrestled, oblivious to the displeasure emanating from the front rows. Elias saw the Master’s assistant, a stern man named Mr. Abernathy, cast a withering glance toward the unruly corner. The academy's rigid decorum was fragile, easily shattered.
“That lot grows tiresome,” a voice murmured near his ear. Elias instinctively stiffened.
Turning, he met Caius’s gaze. Caius sat in the adjacent row, his posture relaxed, a faint smirk playing on his lips. His hand extended slowly, elegantly, toward Elias, a languid gesture. Elias watched, mesmerized by the neat arc of his fingernails. He sat stiffly as Caius’s long fingers twined around the slender wooden shaft of his newly sharpened quill.
Caius pulled gently. A faint scrape sounded against Elias’s lips, a phantom pressure. Then, the quill slipped from Elias’s grasp, the fine nib clicking against Caius’s teeth. “This will serve.”
The tip of the quill, dark with ink from where Elias had been contemplating, was now between lips curved into a sly, knowing smile. Caius licked his lips, as if savoring a taste. “Why the grimace?”
Caius often laughed, but his mirth rarely carried true warmth. It was a sharp, cutting sound, like the snap of a dry twig.
“It’s… unhygienic,” Elias managed, his voice barely a whisper.
“Surely you know,” Caius countered, his eyes glinting. “The exchange of humors fortifies the constitution.”
“That’s truly grotesque.” Elias pressed his lips together, a parched seam in his pale face. Caius placed his hand on his thigh, sweeping upward to his knee, arching his back slightly. Elias curled his fingers, hiding their tremor within his palm.
He knew, then. Knew he was an idiot, too, for allowing such trespass.
With his hand resting on his knee, his body angled casually, Caius leaned back, nibbling gently on the quill tip. He shrugged. “You prefer a finer point?”
He drew the quill from his mouth, leaving a faint sheen on his lower lip. A whisper of air escaped his parted lips. Caius, for all his cultivated refinement, carried a hint of the untamed.
“That’s my drawing quill,” Elias corrected, his voice flat.
“Then it’s quite fitting. I enjoy a fine line.”
Caius, annoyingly, licked the very quill Elias had held, the gesture a deliberate, skilled provocation.
---
Another day deepened into the season. As autumn’s chill seeped into the ancient stones of Aethelgard, the academy braced for the harsh winter ahead. A sky, perfectly clear yet growing sharper and heavier, promised biting winds. Masters spoke of responsibility, students felt the grave duty to carve their mark upon their lives. Yet, there were always those deemed exceptions, those who strayed from the prescribed path.
Garrick, Rhys, the younger Finch brothers—they were excluded from the inner circle of model students. They were the discardable pawns, meant to highlight the successes of the majority. As weeks passed, the reprimands for their wanderings softened. Interest in their minor infractions waned. Only when a name carried significant weight, like young Master Alaric Finch, did the attention linger, transforming a nuisance into a palpable disruption.
The truly pitiable one was Lysander Blackwood. If not for the unfortunate rumors surrounding his entanglement with Alaric Finch, if not for the sudden, debilitating malady that had befallen his distant grandmother—a convenient ailment, Elias suspected, designed to remove him from the academy—he might have pursued a respectable course of study, securing a position worthy of his family name. Instead, he had simply vanished.
But Elias had decided to ignore everything beyond the strict confines of his studies, beyond his self-imposed sanctuary. That, he had reasoned, was the only way to safeguard his fragile existence within Aethelgard’s labyrinthine social strata.
He had lived by that principle, until the inevitable arrived.
Everything held the potential for disruption. Especially a heedless young man like Alaric Finch, who, without a modicum of discretion, accelerated his own downfall.
Alaric Finch had returned to the classroom.
---
Elias clicked his tongue, a faint, almost imperceptible sound of irritation. Through the narrow gap of the half-open classroom door, he could see Alaric Finch slumped over a desk at the front, his posture a defiant slump. His father, the formidable Lord Finch, had apparently cornered the runaway. Twenty days had passed since Alaric’s unceremonious departure. To abscond, only to lurk within the district, almost begging to be discovered—the sheer ineptitude of it baffled Elias.
He tapped his fingers against the cool, dark wood of the double doors. Entering now felt utterly untenable.
His gaze fell on the back of Alaric’s head. A few unruly strands of stiff, dark hair jutted out. There had been a time, long past, when Elias might have, under the guise of a casual gesture, smoothed them down. Now, that memory felt distant, hazy, dissolved like old ink in water. He decided to let the lingering tendrils of sentiment wither. He turned, intent on descending to the lower hall. To encounter Alaric Finch, especially now, with so few witnesses, promised only ill tidings.
Aethelgard Academy was a place riddled with watchful eyes, its ancient walls whispering secrets. Even a simple exchange of words with Alaric Finch would ignite rumors: *Thorne and Finch, seen conversing alone.* The whispers would swell, distorting the truth, twisting it into something ugly. The worst outcome, a scenario Elias had endured before, involved Alaric’s rough, unthinking fists. The thought of such public humiliation, a replay of past indignities, made his stomach clench.
The most favorable outcome, Alaric simply ignoring him, was a gamble Elias refused to take, a mere one-third chance. Eliminating the bad situation entirely, before it could blossom, when no one was watching—that was the only wise course. So, Elias retreated to the first floor, loitering near the shoe racks, feigning interest in the polished boots until, ten minutes before the great gates closed, he merged with the busiest stream of departing students. Only then did he find his way to his appointed seat, a textbook spread open, his mind attempting to grapple with theorems.
He steeled himself to show no interest in the upheaval caused by Alaric’s return. Or, more accurately, he strove to ensure no one perceived the significant interest he *did* harbor. His consistent efforts, he believed, were beginning to yield results. Yet, Alaric Finch remained an unpredictable variable, a jagged stone in the smooth path of Elias’s carefully constructed life. Frustration, a cold, sharp disgust, washed over him. Damnation. Discomfort and anxiety, a creeping dread, consumed him, intensifying after Caius’s arrival at the academy, like a cold mist settling upon the moors.
Caius, with a chilling lack of pretense, approached Alaric’s desk. “It has been a considerable while, Alaric,” he greeted, his voice pitched in a tone of absurd cordiality. For a moment, curiosity pierced through Elias’s anxiety. He glanced up. Caius stood with his leather satchel slung over one shoulder, a broad, unsettling smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. Alaric merely grunted, offering no reply.
“Such a cool reception. How ungracious.” Caius nudged Alaric’s desk with the toe of his boot. The act seemed particularly galling, considering Caius’s own subtle, yet undeniable, role in Alaric’s downfall within the classroom’s rigid hierarchy. Not wishing to embroil himself in such petty displays, Elias tried to force his focus back onto the theorems awaiting his attention. The effort was futile. Master Thorne, the stern Head of House, entered then, for the morning roll call.
The Master seemed genuinely relieved by Alaric’s presence, yet a palpable sense of regret hung in the air regarding Lysander Blackwood’s continued absence. “Lysander is not with us again today,” he murmured, almost to himself, the words carrying a subtle weight, a deliberate implication. He then tapped the attendance book, a crisp sound in the silence.
The incident unfolded with a swift, brutal economy.
As Alaric rummaged through his desk drawer, seeking a textbook, his face contorted in a grimace at the filth he unearthed. Two students, claiming to have left their own textbooks in the communal lockers, raised their hands and exited. Alaric’s expression darkened further as they departed. He rarely studied; the presence or absence of a textbook was likely irrelevant to him. The true affront, Elias surmised, for someone so attuned to his place in the hierarchy, was the deliberate disappearance of an item marked with his name.
Every student in the classroom knew the truth, yet by unspoken accord, no one uttered a word. Not about who had defiled Alaric’s textbooks, nor who had orchestrated the malicious act. Silence, Aethelgard’s most potent weapon, reigned.
“Who was it?”
As soon as the bell tolled the end of morning lessons, the moment everyone had unconsciously anticipated began. Alaric, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his school trousers, his chin lifted in an arrogant tilt, demanded answers. Those who found the atmosphere repugnant slipped out. Those intrigued cast surreptitious glances around. In that charged air, Caius, holding a thoroughly grimy, almost unrecognizable pencil, covered in finger marks, continued to scribble in a textbook, his voice nonchalant. “What precisely are you referring to?”
“Who?” Alaric’s voice was taut.
“Who, what? You must articulate your thoughts, Alaric, if you wish to be understood.” The audacity was staggering. Truly brazen.
“The scoundrel who threw out all my textbooks.” Alaric’s gaze swept the room, resting momentarily on Elias.
Alaric knew his textbooks hadn’t simply vanished. For a young man as sensitive to social standing as he, as prone to instinct as a creature of the wild, the message was clear. Moreover, Caius’s failure to identify the perpetrator was, in itself, an admission of complicity. Even a fool would grasp this. Yet, Caius continued to jest, affecting an air of bewildered innocence. “Did you even possess textbooks, Alaric? You were perpetually sprawled across your desk, dreaming.”
There it was again, Caius’s needless, mocking laughter. Alaric, Elias knew, would never let such a deliberate insult pass.
“Enough of this charade. Was it you, Thorne?” Alaric’s glare, hot and accusing, fixed upon Elias. Of course. Any fool could have predicted this.
“No,” Elias managed, his voice barely audible, the lie tasting like ash.
“Come now,” Caius interjected, a theatrical sigh escaping his lips. “Would our exemplary student, Thorne, truly treat his beloved books with such disrespect?” Caius’s words were laced with mockery, a subtle barb aimed at Alaric, not Elias.
“Caius—damnation, why must you interfere?” Alaric snarled.
“Interfere? If a friend faces an injustice, it is only proper to offer aid.” Caius’s expression was one of exaggerated innocence.
“What nonsense are you spouting, you imbecile?”
“Imbecile? A harsh judgment, Alaric.”
“Cease this utter tomfoolery. Who else here could have fouled the atmosphere so thoroughly during my absence, if not you two?” Alaric scoffed, his gaze flicking between Caius and Elias. Only then did Caius slowly, deliberately, lay his pencil upon the desk. The smirk, however, remained. Alaric’s face twisted with displeasure. Unable to contain his simmering rage, Alaric hurled a nearby satchel. It spun through the air, hitting Elias squarely in the chest.
“Ah!” Elias gasped, the sudden impact startling him more than hurting him. It wasn’t heavily laden, merely a jumble of parchment and a light luncheon. He frowned, watching the satchel clatter to his knees.
“This madman simply throws objects now,” Caius interjected, his voice already edged with an artificial annoyance. At that moment, Alaric slowly lifted the corners of his mouth. A victorious glint appeared in his eyes. He believed, Elias realized with a jolt of dread, that he understood something crucial. What did he think he knew? Elias’s furrowed brow refused to relax.
“Caius. Thorne. Are you two collaborating?”
“What?” Elias was utterly bereft of words. Caius’s playful smirk vanished instantly, replaced by an expression of genuine, if fleeting, bewilderment. Elias felt more confounded than Alaric, the victim of the defiled textbooks. Caius, it seemed, shared the sentiment.
“Alaric, forgive me, but your pronouncement was so thoroughly ill-conceived, I failed to grasp its meaning.” Despite clearly hearing every syllable, Caius placed his palm near his ear, a blatant gesture of mocking disbelief. And from Elias’s observations, Caius never ceased at a single jest. This was merely the overture to his continued provocation. Sensing the uneasy air, Elias slowly pushed himself to his feet. Meanwhile, Caius, with deliberate slowness, stuck his little finger into his ear and began to twist it, as if clearing wax. The silent disdain was absolute.