A sudden, sharp movement fractured the placid hum of the lecture hall. Lysander, his face flushed and a muscle twitching in his jaw, raised a defiant fist, a silent challenge poised in the air. Before the theatrical gesture could bloom into anything more substantial, Alaric’s hand shot out, a swift, practiced slap landing squarely on Lysander’s thigh. The tension deflated, not with a clash, but with a limp shudder.
Lysander’s brief, petulant show of bravado dissolved into an undignified whine. A sound like a startled guinea fowl escaped his lips, choked and utterly bereft of menace. Cassian and Marcus, perched on the desks beside him, erupted into uncontrolled peals of laughter. Lysander rounded on them, a storm cloud of indignation gathering. “Oh, finding this amusing, are we? So utterly droll?” He punctuated his retort with a playful, but firm, jab to Cassian’s arm.
With that minor ripple of contention fading, the three figures stormed from the classroom. Just before vanishing through the heavy oak door, Lysander cast a glance over his shoulder, offering a casual wave. I returned the gesture without conscious thought, a reflex honed by years of navigating social expectations. The silence that settled in their wake felt, for a moment, like a physical weight lifted.
I reclaimed my seat, the polished wood cool beneath my fingertips, and drew my textbook closer. My hand closed around the cool, metallic cylinder of my self-feeding pencil. Before I could even begin the first problem, my gaze drifted upwards, sweeping across the pale, unadorned walls of the lecture hall. The Imperial Academy, for all its storied legacy, retained an austere, almost monastic simplicity in its daily spaces.
My head dipped, returning to the open page. I was wrestling with the third problem, the lead of my pencil tracing absent patterns on the margin, when my attention was snagged by the world beyond the window. Outside, the majestic ginkgo trees lining the main thoroughfare were ablaze with gold, their scent — sharp, almost acrid, like fermenting fruit — permeating the autumn air. Above, the sky stretched an improbable, crystalline blue, a perfect contrast to the earth's fiery decay.
“A seminary for young ladies would prove a far less strenuous assignment.”
Professor Meriwether, our esteemed history tutor, had been fond of that particular lament. His voice, hoarse with years of pontification and perhaps too many evenings spent with a brandy snifter, would lower conspiratorially. “It is a veritable menagerie, I tell you. A jungle. These boys, they must first establish their dominance, you see. By May, things settle into a tolerable rhythm. But until then? Constant skirmishes, displays of peacockish vanity, probing the boundaries of authority. My head throbs simply contemplating it. And then, the cycle begins anew with the incoming cohort. Let us consider… under what celestial animal were *they* born?”
He would then unfurl a gnarled hand, counting the joints of his fingers, a murmured litany escaping his lips. “Serpent, Horse, Goat, Monkey… Ah, yes, that would mean…”
I mimicked his movement, extending my own hand, tracing the delicate ridges of my knuckles. My eidetic memory, usually a reliable guide, offered no immediate key to his esoteric pattern. I abandoned the attempt, flipping my hand to count the raised bones along its back. One, eight, thirty-one… The numbers blurred, a useless sequence. I would have never predicted, in the balmy languor of early summer, that late September would feel like the agitated rebirth of spring.
“These young gentlemen are nothing short of barbarians. Irrational, driven by base impulse, utterly lacking in reasoned thought.”
My gaze fixated on the prominent bone of my middle finger, and I began an absent rhythm, tapping the polished wood of my desk as if it were a piano key. The rasp of the professor’s voice, a gravelly counterpoint to the sharp scrape of chalk on the slate, filled the room. My eyes flickered to the empty seat near the front. For an instant, a phantom impression seemed to hover there—the subtle indentation of a head, one side pressed, the other almost floating above the desk’s surface.
My tapping ceased. I turned my head. Alaric Vance was hunched over his workbook, his face half-obscured by the pages. His eyelids drooped, heavy with an unseen weight. He would fix his gaze on a problem, a predatory intensity in his eyes, only for the resolution to crumble. His forehead would then slump forward, pressing against the unforgiving paper. I watched, a flicker of something akin to morbid fascination, as his nose flattened between the pages and his skull.
Then, I turned away. Had I drifted, perhaps, for a fleeting moment? A disquieting sensation, as if my consciousness had momentarily detached. I placed a neat star beside the third problem and moved on to the fourth.
---
Lunch arrived, a rather uninspired serving of curried lentils and a small ceramic cup of sweetened yogurt. Alaric finished his yogurt with swift, almost surgical precision, then fixed me with a sudden, direct gaze. “You’re second in the class, aren’t you?”
“Indeed.” The word felt clipped, precise.
“And the entire Academy?”
“Still second.”
“By the Emperor’s beard.” His surprise was evident, a sharp intake of breath.
“What troubles you?”
“So, the top student in our cohort… she’s the pre-eminent scholar of the entire Academy?”
“You were unaware? Lady Annelise has always held the first position, keeping it just beyond my reach.”
“She’s even more occupied than you, isn’t she?”
“Her private tutors finish with her well past midnight.”
“Confound it, that’s relentless.”
“She works with considerable diligence.”
I had no inclination to prolong this line of inquiry. I scooped a generous portion of lentils onto my spoon and conveyed it to my mouth. Fortunately, Alaric did not press. He merely nodded, a thoughtful expression on his face. An awkward silence began to bloom, the conversation having withered prematurely. I considered my options, despising the void of unfulfilled exchange. Without quite thinking, the words tumbled out.
“And you, Alaric? What is your standing?”
His utensils, poised mid-air, froze. My eyes inadvertently fixated on his hand. He wielded his fork with an almost surprising grace, his posture impeccable. If there was one thing Alaric Vance did correctly, it was his dining etiquette.
“In the class…”
“Yes?”
“Ninth.”
My brows furrowed, an involuntary reaction. “Ninth?”
“Why do you scrutinize me so intently?”
I quickly averted my gaze from his perfectly held fork. Could he be serious? Was this not some elaborate jest? The surprise was so potent that the question almost escaped my lips, but a thread of caution caught it. Confound it, that was a near miss. To cause offense might unleash a tempest of his famed volatility. I hesitated, weighing the social calculus. Would he prefer praise? Or a feigned indifference, as if his ranking was precisely as expected? My mind, a finely tuned instrument of survival, swiftly tabulated the safest response. He did not, after all, seem particularly fond of his companions. The latter approach was the more prudent.
“Indeed. You perform rather better than I had presumed.”
“What? Presumed? How utterly dense did you deem me?”
“I did not imagine you dense, Alaric, merely… I understood you found Imperial History a particular challenge?”
“Imperial History is my sole failing. Only that.”
“Yet you do not employ a private tutor.”
“The absence of a tutor does not preclude study. Good heavens, did you truly believe me an imbecile?”
“No, no, not at all.” I waved a dismissive hand, a quick, apologetic flutter. “It is impressive, however, given your independent study.”
“Truly?” His voice softened, a faint uncertainty in the single word.
“It is, Alaric. Quite impressive.”
For some inexplicable reason, Alaric began to mash his spoon into the remaining lentils on his plate. And—was he blushing? A fleeting glimpse caught the tips of his ears, a delicate flush of crimson. I recalled then that Lord Julian had ranked thirty-second. And that was only because there were others who performed with even less distinction. Thirty-second out of thirty-six. A sudden, jarring realization struck me. My thoughts, once so meticulously ordered, had been consumed by a pathetic, obsessive fixation—precisely the kind I once disdained. Meanwhile, Alaric Vance, oblivious to my internal maelstrom, was clearly basking in a newfound confidence. His tone, when he spoke again, brimmed with self-satisfaction.
“Ah, yes! You likely were unaware—my command of the Common Tongue is rather exceptional.”
“Indeed? To what extent?”
“A perfect score. I have never yielded a single mark in the Common Tongue.”
“Khhkk!” A violent, unexpected cough seized me. The words, so utterly out of character, had startled me into spitting a mouthful of water onto the table. Alaric scowled, yanking his tray away with a swift motion.
“By the Gods, what sort of reaction is that?”
“I merely… was not anticipating such an assertion.”
“Is it truly so shocking?” He frowned, a slight pout forming on his lips. “Yes, my Imperial History score is abysmal, but what does it matter?” There was a peculiar hint of self-deprecation in his voice, almost an invitation. I responded with a jest.
“Perhaps a perusal of scholarly texts, from time to time?”
“What nonsense do you utter? I am utterly a devotee of literature.”
“A devotee? I have never observed you with a book in hand.”
“That is because I indulge my passion in the strictest privacy, at home.”
“Why on earth would such a pursuit require concealment?”
Alaric’s eyes, which had been curved in amusement, drooped slightly as he scooped a spoonful of lentils. Then, casually, he pressed his lips to the spoon’s edge. Something about the gesture, both deliberate and oddly intimate, unsettled me. I bit the inside of my cheek. Alaric met my gaze as he drew the spoon away, then lowered his eyes, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss to its very tip. “Erotica, too, is literature.”
It was undeniably a jest. The son of a viper. My face burned, a furious blush creeping up my neck. To conceal it, I snatched the crumpled napkin beside my tray and flung it at him. It struck just beneath his long, narrow eyes, fluttering harmlessly onto the table. One of his eyes twitched almost imperceptibly. I cared not, but on the off chance he was genuinely piqued, I adopted a facade of displeasure.
“Cease that vulgar display. Especially in a gentleman’s academy. It is utterly repulsive.”
“Oh? This? You refer to Lord Julian’s peculiar habit?”
“I care not whose habit it is. Desist.”
“Is this not, pray tell, a rather fashionable affectation amongst us now?”
I stared at him, attempting to decipher the sincerity behind his casual inquiry. My sleep had become less fragmented, a tell-tale sign that my body, finally, found a measure of comfort. Mornings, which had once felt leaden and dry, now possessed a crisp, almost invigorating clarity. It was a welcome transformation—for in my estimation, the gravest sins at eighteen were complacency and excessive slumber.
“Ah, confound it—.” My jaw clicked with a painful audible protest as I brushed my teeth. Ever since Lord Julian’s unexpected blow, an odd grinding sensation accompanied any wide opening of my mouth. Beyond that minor irritation, the day promised to be a good one. Yet, even in my newfound tranquility, sudden shafts of irritation would occasionally pierce through. The source, invariably, was Lord Julian. Or, more precisely, the various complications that stemmed from him.
Most of these, of course, manifested within the Academy walls. “Ah, yes. I chanced upon Lord Julian last evening.” Marcus spoke, biting into a rather questionable confection from the convenience stall, rumored to be composed of ground poultry scraps and other, less savory, ingredients. Lysander, who had been playfully jabbing Marcus’s ankle with a mock-dagger hand, suddenly perked up.
“By the gods—that reminds me! I was about to impart this very nugget of information. Through the grapevine, I’ve heard… you know Baronet Silvanus, do you not? That rather… unconventional fellow? I’ve heard Julian is lodging at his residence.”
“Baronet Silvanus? That blithering oaf, Silvanus?” Alaric, rummaging through a paper bag, asked with casual detachment. His hand emerged, clutching two small, foil-wrapped lozenges. For some inexplicable reason, he offered one to me.
My brow furrowed. “What… is this?” I met his gaze, questioning, but Alaric merely offered a slight nod, as if the gesture were its own explanation. Lysander, whose bag of provisions had been raided, reacted most vehemently. “By all the saints! I purchased those! Why do you rascals insist on plundering my belongings?”
“Oh, as if you’ve never pilfered from mine, you glutton.” Marcus executed another mock-dagger strike towards Lysander’s throat. Lysander instantly whirled, seizing Marcus’s collar, and swung a feigned punch towards his face. Naturally, neither intended to connect. It was simply the peculiar language of their camaraderie. I ignored their absurd bickering, my gaze fixed on the lozenge in my palm. The wrapper bore a small, stylized depiction of a lemon, cleanly halved. I peeled the foil, slipped the candy into my mouth, and raised my head.
“What say you? The very essence of first affection?” Alaric grinned, a sardonic twist to his lips.
“I find lemon unpalatable.” My response transcended the mere taste of the candy; it was a judgment upon his poorly delivered jest. And more than anything, I found no amusement in the notion of ‘first affection.’ That cloying, faintly acrid sensation lingered at the back of my throat, stifling any nascent hunger. In the end, I could not even finish the candy. I dropped it into a waste bin.
“Oh, such profligate waste,” Alaric mocked, cupping his cheeks with both hands. Ignoring him, I reached into Lysander’s bag, seeking a different flavor. Only lemon or lime. Lime was, perhaps, the lesser evil. I unwrapped one and placed it on my tongue. “In any event, Baronet Silvanus, eh? Sounds precisely like Julian.”
“What, because they are both unprincipled libertines?” Alaric’s words were sharp, cutting through the ambient chatter. A wave of discomfort washed over me, and I turned to regard him. He was sucking on his lozenge with an unnerving impassivity, twirling the white stick between his lips. I removed my own. Something about this felt profoundly wrong. Alaric, however, seemed utterly unconcerned. He tilted his lozenge in the air, a miniature sword, and began making random, jabbing motions.
“He dallies with his clientele—be they gentlemen or ladies, it matters not. And when he encounters someone… suitable, he dispatches them directly to Julian. A full rotation. Engaging in the act, passing one another about.”
“So Baronet Silvanus is also… inclined towards men?” Lysander interjected abruptly. Whether he had concluded his playful skirmish with Marcus, or merely paused mid-lunge to eavesdrop, I could not discern. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully, as if genuinely processing the implications of Alaric’s pronouncement.