A cool, almost medicinal breeze stirred the fine linen curtains of my bedchamber, chasing away the remnants of a restless night. Beneath my fingertips, the faint swell of my cheek had receded, leaving only a shadow of discolored skin. It was a bruise, yes, but one easily dismissed by a polite society, a minor indisposition rather than a stark injury. A tremor of relief passed through me. This visible wound, at least, would not betray the deeper ones.
Veridia’s morning light, usually a golden benediction, felt sickly, muted by the heavy stained-glass windows of the Sunstone Scriptorium. I stepped into the grand hall, the polished obsidian floor reflecting the ornate frescoes above. My heart, however, felt heavy, leaden in my chest. Lord Kaelen Varrus’s presence always cast a pall.
My gaze, an involuntary twitch, sought out Lysander Varrus. He was Kaelen’s younger brother, a timid shadow usually tethered to his side. Today, Lysander shuffled in just before the morning lecture commenced, his usual promptness barely maintained.
A breath caught in my throat. My carefully constructed composure faltered. Lysander’s face was a ruin. A split lip, a purpling eye, swollen and almost entirely obscured. It was worse than my own injuries, far worse. A wave of profound guilt washed over me, a bitter taste in my mouth. I had allowed a fleeting, childish thought—a flicker of schadenfreude—to cross my mind yesterday. Now, the sight of him made me despise my own callousness.
“By the Mother Goddess…” A whisper escaped my lips, lost in the cavernous hall.
Lysander entered hesitantly, his eyes darting across the familiar faces. His gaze snagged on mine. For a long, agonizing moment, he froze, a mask of startled terror contorting his features. He averted his eyes sharply, almost violently, and hurried to his usual desk, leaving a chasm between us.
Such a strange, unsettling reaction. Instinctively, I scanned the Scriptorium. The reason became painfully clear. Lord Kaelen, seated at the head table, was drilling his gaze into me, a silent, murderous promise in his shadowed eyes.
“Damn it all.” Regret, sharp and sudden, pierced me. I should have feigned illness. I should have stayed confined to my rooms.
Throughout the morning sessions, Lysander maintained his distance, avoiding my attempts at contact. During the brief mid-morning recess, he vanished, as he often did, with Lord Kaelen. His absence left a hollow ache in the opulent hall.
Left to my own devices, I gravitated towards Alaric for the communal midday repast in the Refectory. A part of me yearned to seek out Kaelen and Lysander, to confront the escalating tension. But a deeper, colder fear held me rooted. What horrors might I discover if I did? The image of Lysander’s battered face swam before my eyes. Surely, Kaelen wouldn’t strike him again, not so soon. Yet the question lingered, a poison in my thoughts.
Alaric, blessedly, remained oblivious. He chattered with his usual lighthearted abandon, untouched by the shadows that consumed my mind.
“Did you feel it?” Alaric leaned closer, eyes wide. “The tension in the scriptorium? I almost choked on my own nerves.”
“Yesterday, you seemed perfectly content with those candied figs,” I pointed out, a faint smile touching my lips.
“A true artist, I am. I suppressed my internal turmoil, a master of deception,” Alaric declared, a dramatic flourish of his hand. He winked, a mischievous glint in his eye.
“Candied figs are meant to be consumed with a certain… flourish.” He dissolved into laughter at his own jest. I nudged his shin lightly under the table. He rubbed his jaw, a strangely abashed expression on his face. It was so out of character, I almost dismissed it.
---
Such is the unpredictable nature of life. From our first meeting, I harbored no desire for Alaric’s company. Indeed, I found his flippancy grating. Yet, here we were, and he had become an anchor, the closest approximation to a friend I possessed.
His easy laughter, his utterly unserious demeanor, possessed an uncanny ability to prevent me from sinking too deeply into the crushing weight of my own thoughts, the suffocating expectations of my station. In earlier days, I had disdained these very qualities, dismissing them as shallow. Now, I clung to them, a lifeline in this gilded cage. If Kaelen and I had remained… as we once were, I might never have recognized my profound need for Alaric’s simple, unburdened presence.
Days turned into a week. Lord Kaelen’s attendance grew sporadic. He began to distance himself from his usual retinue. Sometimes, he’d disappear with Lysander for hours, other times he’d summon a few lesser Guild members, only for them to return with troubled faces, shaking their heads in hushed murmurs. Some even outright refused his summons, a rare display of defiance in this rigid hierarchy.
One afternoon, I chanced upon Master Elian scaling a garden wall, clearly evading a senior archivist. Elian, usually so stoic, wore a peculiar mix of amusement and unease. He confessed that Kaelen had been instructing his chosen companions to deliver blows to Lysander, one at a time. My face must have betrayed my disbelief, for Elian quickly added that he’d been avoiding Kaelen’s summons recently. He was on his way to the Lexicon Quarter with Scholar Rhys, he explained, urging me not to misconstrue his absence from our usual circles. With a hurried nod, he departed.
Scholar Rhys, once a close confidante of Kaelen in our earlier years, had gradually drifted away after being assigned to a different Scriptorium wing.
Later, during the midday repast, Alaric and I procured a delicate rosewater sorbet from a vendor in the Refectory courtyard. Its cold sweetness spread across my tongue, offering a fleeting, fragile solace. But beneath that brief respite, a bitter knot of unease tightened in my chest. I swallowed it down, determined not to betray my turmoil.
“Is it good?” Alaric, already halfway through his vibrant saffron-flavored confection, eyed my sorbet with a childlike hunger. Half-teasing, I brought my spoon, glistening with my own saliva, near his lips. Without a moment’s hesitation, he smirked, a corner of his mouth curving upwards, and took a surprisingly large bite.
“Gods above! You actually ate that?” My voice held genuine surprise.
“You offered,” he countered, a twinkle in his eye.
“That’s… unseemly. And why such a monstrous bite?”
“Just one,” Alaric shrugged, a grin splitting his face. The moment, despite my inner turmoil, felt unnervingly peaceful. The autumn air, usually so brisk and clear, offered no explanation for the turmoil within me.
Where were Lord Kaelen and Lysander now? A few desolate corners of the Archives came to mind, places where shadows clung. I did not go looking. Perhaps I feared what I might uncover if I did.
I tried desperately to banish Kaelen from my thoughts. But the harder I fought, the more his image asserted itself, occupying every chamber of my mind.
How long, I wondered, would it take to excise someone like him from my heart? How much effort would it demand? I had no answers. It felt like wandering lost in a vast, parched desert, a landscape not merely sad and suffocating, but terrifying, unbearable in its endlessness.
Sometimes, I retreated. Like a scholar too close to the scroll, unable to discern the script, I needed distance to comprehend. When the weight became too much, I spoke with Alaric. That was the extent of my solace.
“Alaric,” I asked suddenly, the words feeling clumsy on my tongue.
“Hm?”
“Do you believe… flowers might ever bloom in a barren desert?” The question felt embarrassingly raw, overly emotional, the moment it left my lips. I scratched my head, flushing slightly. Alaric, however, did not mock me.
“They will,” he said, his voice unusually soft.
“…”
“They must. Life, after all, is wretched enough.” To hear such a sentiment from Alaric, the most carefree soul I knew, struck me with the bitter futility of my desperate hope. How much longer could I cling to these meaningless, destructive feelings?
“Yes. Life is wretched,” I echoed, the words heavy.
Lord Kaelen. That useless, cruel bastard. Why did he seem so intent on breaking the loyal, tail-wagging dog I became, despite myself, every time our paths crossed? Kaelen, who had abandoned all the basic tenets of Guild decorum, now came and went from the Scriptorium as he pleased. And always, a pathetic shadow, Lysander by his side.
As the situation festered, a strange, uneasy hum began to permeate the Scriptorium. Kaelen’s casual cruelty was escalating. A fog of resentment, subtle but pervasive, spread through the ranks of our peers. None of it felt right. None of it felt good.
So, when I saw Lord Kaelen dragging Lysander by the wrist down a deserted corridor, I stopped dead in my tracks. My gaze flickered between their two faces, the cruel grip, the pained subservience, before I spoke.
“Your esteemed father, Lord Varrus, has expressed concern for your recent conduct.” It was not an apology, nor flattery. It was a calculated lie, a manipulation. That was the extent of my pride, my twisted ingenuity. Kaelen, famously estranged from his father, would likely not know it was a fabrication. And even if he did, I could always argue that, at this rate, his father would soon have ample cause for worry.
I always crafted an escape route.
“If a beating must be dealt, let it be yours alone. What has Lysander done to deserve this?”
“Move.” Kaelen’s eyes, the color of storm clouds, snapped onto mine. The mention of Lysander’s name seemed to ignite something cold within him. My chest tightened, a suffocating pressure. I hated him. Yet, Lysander, pitiful and pathetic, remained glued to Kaelen’s side, his tear-filled eyes wide, ready to spill over.
“Unless you wish for another lesson, like the last, step aside.”
“K-Kaelen, please,” Lysander stammered, his voice trembling, calling out to his tormentor. Only then did Kaelen pause his retort to me. His gaze, now narrowed, fixed solely on Lysander. All I saw was the rigid line of Kaelen’s back as he turned away from me, dismissing my presence.
“As I said, your father is wor—”
“…”
Lysander, on the precipice of tears, clung to Kaelen, a desperate, futile attempt to halt his progress. Witnessing that wretched scene, the sheer degradation of it, was unbearable. It was so excruciating that I closed my eyes, wishing the tableau would simply cease to exist.
After a moment, a long, drawn-out silence, Kaelen looked at Lysander, then, with an almost imperceptible shift, turned and walked back towards the Scriptorium. For the remainder of the day, he remained within its hallowed walls—just as he had a few weeks prior.
---
The long-anticipated day of the Archival Expedition had arrived. A carriage, opulent and gleaming, had been commissioned to transport us to a distant, rarely visited annex of the Grand Archives. While a few grumbled about being dragged away from our scrolls, most students buzzed with anticipation, eager for even a single day’s escape from the Scriptorium’s routines.
No need for travel satchels; we would return before dusk. The senior archivists offered only desultory warnings before releasing us. We were no longer fresh initiates. No giddy excitement had kept me from sleep. I viewed it as another day, a departure without a burden, a return without a gain. Little did I know, this day would become the crucible where my long-simmering frustration would finally boil over. I had anticipated its eventual eruption, but never with such sudden, brutal clarity.
Historically, whenever we ventured beyond the Scriptorium, my assigned place was beside Lord Kaelen. I was his closest, most trusted confidant. I had not even considered Alaric’s seating, for we had never before shared such a journey. At first, a flicker of apprehension pricked me. Would Alaric, in his oblivious good nature, gravitate towards Kaelen’s proximity? A pathetic thought, I realized now. Neither I nor Alaric would ultimately claim that contested space.
Upon our arrival at the Scriptorium gates, the carriage waited, its polished brass gleaming. I climbed aboard, seeking out our designated seats. The five rearmost benches were already claimed by a boisterous group, including Master Elian, who offered a tentative wave, then hesitated, pointing towards Kaelen’s usual spot.
“Cassian! There’s a place here!”
“Ah, yes.” Of course. It had always been my seat. Today, however, I found myself hesitating as I approached Kaelen’s empty bench. A fragile hope bloomed when I saw the cushion beside him still unoccupied. I swallowed hard, a sudden, fierce determination stiffening my spine.
It was my place. My pride—the last shard of my dignity I fiercely clutched—compelled me to claim it. Even after Kaelen’s brutal lesson, delivered because of Lysander, that seat remained a symbol.
My hand hovered over the rich velvet of the bench for a moment. I glanced around the crowded carriage, then quietly murmured,
“This bench… is it taken?”
“It is not yours. Find another place.” Before I could complete my query, Kaelen’s voice, cold and dismissive, cut through my words. His gaze remained fixed on the carriage entrance. Following his line of sight, I watched Lysander Varrus, small and timid, making his way toward us.
My fists clenched, my carefully swallowed words turning to ashes in my throat. My heart felt as though it had been flayed.
“Fine. As you wish.” I forced a tone of indifference, a performance for myself more than for Kaelen.
I quickly retreated from the seat, my eyes sweeping the carriage. I spotted an empty space near Alaric’s group, directly in front of where he was already seated. Relief, sharp and sudden, washed over me. I rushed forward, dropping heavily onto the bench, speaking before I even settled.
“Alaric, sit with me.”
No answer. I looked closer. He was already asleep, his head resting against the carriage window, gently bouncing with every jolt of the suspension. He often drifted off in the mornings, and this expedition was no exception. Shaking my head at his absurd sleeping posture, I retrieved my gilded pen case and wedged it between his head and the hard window frame. I leaned back into the plush, yet surprisingly uncomfortable, bench.
Across the narrow aisle, the dark brown of Lord Kaelen’s hair caught my eye. He was taller than most of our companions, unmistakable even from a distance. Though the angle obscured my view, I knew, with a certainty that sliced through me, that Lysander now occupied the seat beside him.