A chill, ancient as the Collegium itself, permeated Elias Thorne’s humble chambers. Dust motes danced in the slivers of weak morning light that pierced the high, leaded window. Elias’s gaze, typically fixed on the complex glyphs of an archived spell-matrix, drifted to the stack of forgotten academic scrolls. He felt the weight of them, not as the familiar comfort of knowledge, but as a monument to his neglected studies.
‘Lysander Valerius’s steward’—the unspoken title clung to him like a damp cloak. Each time the thought arose, Elias felt the stark truth of his predicament. He was now tethered, his scholarly ambitions entwined with the fragile health of a noble scion.
Adulthood. The concept felt ill-fitting, like a tunic several sizes too large, constantly chafing. Countless nights, sleep had been a fleeting visitor, vanquished by the inherited responsibility of Lysander’s well-being.
Morning found him among the Collegium’s lecture halls, his mind half-present. Evenings drew him to Lysander’s private quarters in the Noble Wing, a lavish cage where arcane remedies struggled against a persistent malady. He barely attended half his lessons, his prodigious memory stretched thin, his focus fractured.
With a heavy heart, Elias would enter the Valerius suite. Lysander would look up from his silken pillows, eyes bright with an almost predatory anticipation, as if Elias were a crucial piece of a forgotten puzzle.
And, as if Elias had been waiting for him, Lysander would unleash the day’s frustrations, the accumulated grievances of a vibrant mind trapped in a weakening form.
“The Arch-Magi’s tinctures are bitter as despair itself. Another week of fasting before the ritual purification. My blood will be thinned to water, Elias. And the tonics they send… they taste of mud and forgotten dreams. Am I an invalid of the common quarter? My palate demands more than this peasant’s broth.”
Lysander’s complaints, though cloaked in the refined disdain of his class, held a genuine misery that stripped away his noble veneer, revealing something akin to a frustrated child.
Elias sighed, a faint puff of air barely stirring the heavy, perfumed atmosphere. His satchel, usually filled with rare tomes or parchment, now carried a faint, cloying scent of roasted quail and spiced winter fruits.
He despised the way the aroma had seeped into the aged leather. A faint tremor tightened his jaw.
But carrying it exposed, through the hallowed halls, would have drawn far more unwelcome notice. His own discomfort was a small price.
“What?” Lysander asked, a slight tilt to his head, a hopeful glint in his pale eyes. Elias almost imagined a visible tension in his shoulders, like a hound awaiting its master's command.
He suppressed a flicker of distaste. Such unbridled expectation was unsettling. Elias carefully extracted a lacquered bento box from his satchel.
Lysander’s gaze swept over the offering, his initial gloom dissolving, replaced by an unmistakable curiosity.
“What is this confection?”
“A collation,” Elias replied, keeping his tone flat. “I inquired, and they confirmed you are still some weeks from the major purification. You may consume this.”
“A collation, then?” Lysander echoed, tracing a finger along the smooth lacquer.
“Do not imbue it with further meaning. I merely procured it from a provisioner near the Collegium gates.”
He spoke those words with deliberate casualness, hoping they would extinguish any nascent sentiment. The truth, a quiet shame, was that he had indeed imbued it with meaning. He would never confess to seeking out the one purveyor known for their delicate, nourishing fare, suitable for sensitive noble constitutions, yet palatable enough to soothe a weary spirit.
He simply wished to appear as one offering a detached, practical kindness. Nothing more.
But even that seemed to be enough for Lysander.
Lysander's barely functional right hand, weakened by illness, trembled as he reached for the box. A faint flush rose on his gaunt cheeks.
Elias’s gaze drifted to Lysander’s fingers. They curled slightly, stiff, almost malformed by the languor of his illness. Elias’s stomach clenched. Why did such minor details seize his attention? Why could he not look away?
A tightness pressed against his ribs.
“...My gratitude, Elias.” Lysander’s voice, usually ringing with command, was oddly subdued.
Lysander glanced at Elias hesitantly. Their eyes met, and Lysander flinched, pulling back as if caught in a transgression. He fumbled with the bento box lid, eyes downcast.
Perhaps he only pretended to be startled. As if being observed in a moment of vulnerability was something to conceal. As if he did not wish Elias to witness his quiet pleasure.
Lysander began to eat, his movements stiff, almost mechanical. Elias leaned back against the plush velvet divan, his own body protesting the day’s exertions. A peculiar mixture of revulsion and pity stirred within him.
Food spilled, a few grains of spiced rice clinging to the corner of Lysander’s mouth. Lysander’s little finger, ring finger, and middle finger remained partially bent, unyielding. Elias could not discern if this was genuine weakness or a performative display.
He shifted closer, slowly, and took the silver spoon from Lysander’s hand.
“What will you have?” Elias asked, his voice low.
Lysander’s eyes widened slightly.
“The roasted quail?”
At the very least, Elias felt a responsibility to acknowledge the authenticity of Lysander’s suffering. Lysander, lips smeared, chewed slowly, his head bowed slightly, a small, private smile playing on his lips.
Elias could not comprehend why this individual—who would never regain full strength in his limbs, whose skin was mottled with the marks of his sickness—could smile so brightly. He truly could not understand.
Elias found himself unable to meet Lysander’s luminous gaze. What could possibly be so amusing? Were Elias himself in such a state, he would wish only for oblivion.
He selected a choice morsel of quail and guided it to Lysander’s mouth. Lysander chewed with renewed vigor, still smiling. Elias felt an unshakeable unease whenever he was near Lysander.
The truth of the collation was tangled with the memory of his visit to the Valerius estate, only days before.
—
It had been the second time since Lysander’s last major arcane cleansing ritual. Elias still held the temporary steward’s pass, a symbol of his unofficial charge. He had encountered Lysander’s immediate family only thrice in this new capacity. Once, briefly, with Lord Valerius. Twice with Lady Valerius.
Lady Valerius, in particular, had adopted a tone of fragile concern towards Elias, a subtle reward for his silent assumption of the responsibilities she so readily delegated. Lysander, during their last encounter, had simply rested his chin on a hand, watching his mother’s retreating back with an unreadable expression.
Elias had only gone to collect certain research materials and personal effects. Lysander had expressed a deep boredom with his forced convalescence, an ennui Elias understood far too well from his own shadowed past in the Collegium infirmary. He knew precisely what the isolation demanded.
He convinced himself it was not sympathy. Or even affection.
That day, instead of returning to his spartan dormitory, Elias had journeyed to the Valerius urban estate. The grand entrance hall, usually a hive of activity, now felt hollow, echoing.
But Seraphina, Lysander’s elder sister, had not offered such a vacant welcome. Leaning against the polished wood of Lysander’s deserted study, she spoke with a dry, knowing tone:
“You still linger in Lysander’s orbit?”
Elias held no particular warmth for Seraphina either. How could she neglect her brother’s plight, never visiting his chambers? The instinctual pull of a deeper morality, an understanding of familial bond, made him judge her. He had not even realized the judgment was forming, only its sharp sting.
Once he recognized it, Elias clamped his jaw shut, forcing more of Lysander’s scrolls into his satchel.
“Yes.”
“He truly is mad for you, isn’t he? That… intensity of his. Obsessed, one might say.”
Elias’s hand froze mid-reach. He turned, as if pulled by an invisible thread.
“...Obsessed with me?”
“What, does the notion please you?” Her voice held a mocking lilt.
“No. I merely inquired.”
“No one merely inquires, Elias Thorne. You desired to know, so you asked.”
She muttered something under her breath, a low, guttural sound, but Elias feigned deafness. Still, she stepped closer, ignoring his discomfort. The entire Valerius family possessed a talent for such social transgressions. Seraphina. Lysander. Even their father.
“Tell me, where did you vanish after the Midsummer Conclave?”
Elias blinked.
“Ah, yes. The whole city-state knows. It was hardly a secret.”
“It’s not as if I sought the information. But Lysander… he threw such a fit. He, who never gave heed to the Collegium’s Old Ways, suddenly spoke of ancient divinities, then tore apart the ancestral phylactery Father gifted him. He screamed, they said.”
“The phylactery?” Elias asked, a cold dread seeping into him. Lysander, abandoning their family’s sacred ward?
“That trinket, yes. He treasured it once, you know? Called it a mark of his lineage. Then he cursed the Sky Father, or some such heresy. He locked himself in his chambers for days. Our estate was finally peaceful. He doesn’t even grasp who the true fool is. Pitiful.”
Her voice, which had been laced with scorn, suddenly softened, perhaps in response to Elias’s tightly controlled expression.
“What now? Your face is flushed.”
“It is not.”
“Impossible. Do you truly... feel something for him? You like him?”
“I told you, no.” Elias’s voice was sharper than he intended.
“...By the Arch-Magi’s beard.” Seraphina gasped, covering her mouth as if in genuine horror. “You are truly unhinged.”
Why did she persist when he had already denied it? Annoyed, Elias yanked his satchel’s zipper shut. A retort sprang to his lips. He wished to criticize her, too, to peel back her own layers of hypocrisy.
“Why did you speak of this to me? Your father claimed Lysander was his ‘second son’,” Elias stated, the words clipped and precise.
“What? What in the nine hells are you babbling about?” Seraphina’s elegant brow furrowed in confusion.
A true contradiction. He knew it too. Even Lyra, his only confidante in the lower quarters, once said of him—Elias always ends up performing acts of quiet kindness, no matter his intentions.
But at this moment, Elias had an excuse. The faint, mottled scars spreading across Lysander’s delicate skin. Just as Lysander could not meet his eyes when discussing his illness, Elias found himself unable to truly meet the gaze of Lysander’s deeper vulnerability.
“Elias?” Lysander’s hoarse voice, closer now, startled Elias back to the present.
“Yes,” Elias replied, trying to sound detached, but he listened, every nerve alert.
“Then… may I believe in you?”
Elias feigned indifference. “What precisely are you speaking of?”
“I will not venerate you.”
In that instant, Elias’s composure shattered. His heart plummeted. A cold knot twisted in his stomach. Something tightened around his chest.
He almost asked—without thinking. *Why not?*
The words nearly escaped. His true, hidden thoughts, the dangerous core of his yearning for acceptance and recognition, had almost burst forth. Elias, you are a fool.
He clenched his fists, swallowing the volatile question down. Yes. This was for the best. For both of them.
“Then instead, I will believe in you.” Lysander’s voice was a strange tangle of sorrow and joy, a devotee receiving a sacred revelation. Was there any other way to describe him in this moment?
Elias did not comprehend the words. And yet, he did not pull his hand away. Did not flee. The suffocating weight pressing on his chest no longer just squeezed—it felt like a precise, agonizing stab.
“I am an atheist now, Elias. Honestly, your counsel is far more tangible to my life than any distant Sky Father.”
“Silence your blasphemy.”
Lysander…
“You mock the tenets of the Collegium’s founding houses every day.”
“No, that is not true! I was raised a devout follower of the Old Ways, you know!” Lysander protested, frantically shaking his head.
“Then what was that declaration just now?”
Lysander’s tone was desperate, as if he might weep. If Elias did not believe him, he might genuinely dissolve into tears. Elias, caught off guard, was left speechless.
Then, as if a sudden decision had galvanized him, Lysander slid from the divan and dropped to his knees before Elias.
“Then I shall show you.”
“Lysander, what are you doing?” Elias’s voice was tight, barely a whisper.
A slender hand reached out and grasped Elias’s ankle. Elias had been seated with his legs propped casually on the divan, a rare moment of repose. He slid forward, now precariously balanced on the edge of the seat, his foot dangling, held firmly in Lysander’s grip.
Lysander’s gaze landed on a small, faded scar on the sole of Elias’s foot—a jagged memory from a shard of broken glass, a relic of a past Elias preferred to forget. Lysander’s brow furrowed. And, to Elias’s disbelief, his eyes welled with moisture.
Elias instinctively jerked back, attempting to pull his foot free. Before he could escape, Lysander lowered his head.
“What are you—”
“In the name of the Ancestors, the Arch-Magi, and the Living Lore.” Lysander’s voice, a soft incantation, brushed against Elias’s ankle.
A sharp ache shot up Elias’s calf, deep into his stomach. What was this madman doing? Elias tried to yank his foot free, but his strength abandoned him.
Lysander looked up once, his gaze piercing, unwavering. And then, with an expression devoid of a single ounce of disgust—like a devout acolyte touching a sacred relic—
“I acknowledge my Architect.”
He pressed his lips to the tip of Elias’s foot. Lysander’s fine, silken hair brushed against Elias’s ankle, a light, unsettling tickle. The gentle press of his lips warmed the base of Elias’s toes.
“S-Stop this…” Elias threw an arm over his face, as if to ward off an unseen blow.
Lysander’s grip on Elias’s ankle tightened, a fragile, trembling hold. And in that moment—
Elias stopped resisting.
Lysander’s three weakened fingers, a delicate, fragile hold, tapped lightly against Elias’s skin. The lips that had just blasphemed ancient divinities traced a slow path up Elias’s calf.
Elias did nothing to stop him.
That’s when he truly understood. This relentless, incurable disease—this dangerous, unsettling truth of being Lysander’s steward—still wasn’t over.