A peculiar disquiet settled in Kaelen’s breast, an insidious tendril of curiosity regarding Lord Valerius and Elara Lyra. He found himself contemplating their interactions beyond the Lyceum’s formal confines, the unwritten rituals of their shared journey to the Lyceum’s private wards at day’s end.
From observation, Elara often maintained a quiet distance, a respectable space between herself and Valerius. Yet, the image of Valerius, a scion of formidable lineage, trailing Elara with an intensity that bordered on infatuation, gnawed at Kaelen. This fascination felt perilous, akin to toying with an ancient, sealed arcanum—a Pandora’s box of forbidden knowledge.
Such a vessel, if unlatched, would unleash not merely despair but a cruel, deceptive hope. A scholar knows the danger, yet the allure of discovery remains irresistible.
“My mind is straying,” Kaelen murmured, pressing a hand to his temple. Indeed, his thoughts were unbound, reckless. Despite this self-admonition, he found his path subtly diverging, following the faintest echo of their departing footsteps one twilight.
He did not journey far.
Cautious to remain unseen by Valerius’s ever-vigilant eyes, Kaelen watched as Valerius’s gaze fixated upon Elara’s retreating back. They moved through a seldom-trod quadrant of the Lyceum’s older grounds: crumbling gargoyles overlooking choked courtyards, corroded bronze gates, and sections of wall where arcane symbols had weathered to near illegibility. A tableau of faded grandeur. Elara, a silhouette ahead; Valerius, a shadow behind. And Kaelen, a silent witness from the obscurity of an archway.
It was a scene wrought with a peculiar pathos, utterly devoid of the usual aristocratic pretense. A foolish, almost pathetic indulgence. Kaelen turned back.
Later, ensconced in the shadowed embrace of his private study, the air thick with the scent of aged parchment, Kaelen considered his retreat. A quiet satisfaction settled within him. Curiosity, though potent, need not be sated at all costs. To press further, to uncover what lay beneath that fragile surface, might have been disastrous. Better this way. Better not to know. He was not so reckless as to tear open a potent, unforeseen enchantment out of idle speculation.
Lord Valerius’s single-minded pursuit of Elara grew more pronounced, more brazen. Elara, in turn, seemed to retreat further, a palpable weariness shadowing her eyes. Or perhaps, a profound disdain.
Disdain, surely. What else could one feel for a relentless, often boorish, suitor? Kaelen felt a cold, distant surge of vindication. A part of him was glad he had not intervened when Valerius first began his more overt, forceful overtures. Perhaps it had been for the best.
Kaelen laced his fingers behind his head, leaning back in his tall, leather-bound chair. His gaze drifted to the ornate, crystal chandelier that illuminated his chambers, a constant reminder of the unearned privilege of his birth. His family had always afforded him comfort, education, and access to arcana far beyond most.
“Damn it all,” he breathed.
He had once believed himself immune to the petty whims of fate, above the common struggles of lesser men. Until the inconvenient truth of his own heart asserted itself, aligning with Valerius’s trajectory. Lord Valerius, for all his arrogance, had shown Kaelen the harsh reality: some desires remained forever unfulfilled. Kaelen suspected Valerius was learning that bitter truth now, too.
The world, Kaelen mused, possessed a merciless, exquisite cruelty.
At least he had cultivated a semblance of control, a mask for his deeper sentiments. Valerius, conversely, appeared utterly consumed, his raw emotions betraying him in the way his eyes clung to Elara. That sudden, abnormal intensity must surely be discomfiting for him.
Kaelen understood. He knew the sensation intimately. But where Kaelen endured in silent concealment, Valerius lashed out, his clumsy attempts at affection only earning him Elara’s resentment. For Kaelen, in a morbid way, this suited him perfectly.
“Remain oblivious, please,” he whispered into the quiet air.
Or better still, for Elara to grow weary and simply depart the Lyceum. He did not wish for Valerius to turn his attention to him. Such a shift, Kaelen knew, would be terrifying.
He harbored but one desperate wish: for a day to dawn when his own heart no longer ached for Valerius, and for Valerius to find solace elsewhere. That was all. But the world, as Kaelen knew, rarely conformed to such gentle pleas.
Adding to the disquiet, Valerius had, with audacious disregard for protocol, moved his lectern to sit directly beside Elara’s. This was a grave breach of custom in the Great Hall, blocking the viewing angles for lesser scholars and attracting the immediate, disapproving gazes of the tutors. Elara’s original lecture partner, Caspian Volkov, merely offered Kaelen and another acolyte a curt, strained nod, his expression a tight mask of embarrassment and irritation.
“A good day to you both,” Caspian intoned, his voice clipped.
Kaelen and the acolyte exchanged a brief glance, offering a perfunctory nod in return.
“Hmph,” Caspian huffed, a dry sound that dissolved into the general murmurs of the Hall. Neither Kaelen nor his companion offered further response. The petty squabbles of social standing held little interest, save for their implications.
Valerius sat rigidly beside Elara, offering no word, no gesture of apology, his silence a heavy cloak. Kaelen, observing from across the hall, silently wished—no, desperately prayed—that this tense, awkward stasis might persist for the remainder of their studies. That someday, this moment would fade into a forgotten, fleeting dream.
---
Another shift in Valerius’s comportment soon manifested. Valerius, who had, until recently, indulged in boisterous, public displays of social conquest and nightly revels, abruptly curtailed his pursuits. So it seemed. Whispers from Caspian’s inner circle suggested the cessation was not absolute, but the loud boasts and the lingering scent of decadence no longer clung to him during morning lectures.
For Kaelen, this offered a small reprieve. He no longer had to endure the cloying evidence of Valerius’s debaucheries.
“Valerius, my lord! No more grand tales? No more… conquests such as these?” Seraphina, a lesser scion known for her vulgarity, swayed her hips provocatively before Valerius, her hands gesturing suggestively near her abdomen, a crude imitation of courtship.
Valerius’s face twisted into a mask of disgust at the lewd display. His gaze flicked towards Elara, then back to Seraphina, his voice sharp with anger.
“Wretch! I bade you cease such vulgarity in public!”
“Why such sudden prudery, my lord?” Seraphina pressed, a smirk on her lips.
“Should you utter another word of this, Seraphina, you shall regret it.”
“But Valerius—”
“I said, silence!”
“...As you wish, my lord.”
The others in their usual circle registered palpable disappointment. Valerius, with his commanding presence and aura of worldliness, had once been the perfect conduit for the prurient curiosities of Lyceum acolytes.
Those within Valerius’s orbit were no novices; they had all navigated clumsy, early forays into worldly pleasures. Compared to naive scholars, they craved bolder narratives. With Valerius’s wellspring of exploits now dry, their attention drifted to Caspian. But Caspian merely bared his teeth, an expression of profound disdain.
“Filthy perverts,” he hissed.
“Ah, there he goes again! Caspian and his righteous pronouncements!”
“Such an ascetic. Truly, what a waste of potential.”
Laughter rippled through the Hall, sharp and fleeting.
Most of the young men in Valerius’s circle had, at some point, explored forbidden avenues of pleasure. Yet Caspian Volkov, for reasons unknown, had not. While they jested, calling him an uninitiated scholar, none truly disrespected him. He was Caspian Volkov, after all, a prodigious intellect. Moreover, Caspian possessed a lighthearted, almost flippant disposition regarding most matters, rendering his words easily digestible, his actions perceived as casual. This dichotomy often made him charming or approachable, despite his intimidating demeanor.
“Cease your glaring, cur. You’ll make me spill my ink.”
“Aye, his visage is truly fearsome.”
“Do you dolts possess a death wish?” Caspian scowled, and the group erupted into laughter, though the jest held little humor. A scattering of lesser scholars in the back of the Hall, perhaps his acquaintances or simply hangers-on, joined in with their hollow laughs and chatter, adding to the general din. As Kaelen sat amidst them, his gaze drifted to his own clasped hands, lost in quiet contemplation.
“...”
To Kaelen’s recollection, his physical urges had never once stirred for a woman. This, he supposed, designated him as inherently different, perhaps since birth. He had felt fleeting stirs watching suggestive arcane rituals involving both men and women, but never had his mind conjured a woman’s form during solitary moments. The former, he concluded, was an environmental stimulus; the latter, a simple absence of desire.
He had once been lured to a clandestine gathering by Valerius, but Kaelen had not even passed the wards. He lacked the requisite sigil. Instead, he had waited outside until Valerius emerged. Private chambers of pleasure? Repugnant. The mere thought of such places repulsed him. He wondered why any would seek them out.
Because of this, the others in their circle mockingly dubbed him “Ascetic Thorne,” yet his abstinence was, to a great extent, an involuntary state.
Kaelen exhaled a silent, barely audible sigh.
His peers were too engrossed in Caspian’s sardonic tales to notice. Seizing the opportune moment, Kaelen’s eyes flickered to Valerius, who sat in rigid silence. Valerius’s unwavering gaze remained fixed upon the back of Elara Lyra’s head as she diligently studied across the Hall.
And, as it always did, regret bloomed anew. Why had he looked? Why this incessant curiosity? To distract himself, Kaelen posed a question to Caspian, one of apparent triviality.
“So, Volkov, do you truly intend to remain celibate until the rites of formal pairing?”
Caspian, sprawled in his chair with an air of practiced nonchalance, suddenly turned his direct, unblinking gaze upon Kaelen’s hands. His stare was so unsettling that Kaelen instinctively crossed his legs, a meager shield. What in the Abyss?
“You are not my sworn partner, Thorne, so why such concern? Or are you, perhaps, offering yourself?”
“...”
Of course. Caspian’s wit was always laced with a malicious edge. The others chuckled, and Kaelen delivered a sharp kick to Caspian’s shin beneath the table.
Such was the rhythm of Kaelen’s days—a perpetual, unbroken cycle of observation and veiled discomfort.
---
Alone in his private quarters, Kaelen often found himself adrift in thought, contemplating a myriad of scenarios. Inevitably, these ruminations sometimes drifted into unsettling fantasies.
Today, he wondered what might have transpired had his heart fixated upon Caspian Volkov instead of Lord Valerius. It seemed a far less torturous prospect than his current predicament. Had he loved Caspian, he would have been spared the exquisite agony of Valerius’s incessant pursuit of Elara.
Even so, his heart would still ache.
Neither Lord Valerius nor Caspian Volkov would ever return Kaelen’s affections, after all. But at least the sting of Elara Lyra’s presence would be absent.
This line of thought invariably led to a familiar wellspring of inferiority and a muted anger. In the end, Kaelen merely wished to graduate, to become but a forgotten acquaintance to Lord Valerius.
---
At some point, Kaelen had unconsciously developed the habit of resting his hands beneath his desk whenever he sat. This began in his second year of Lyceum studies, and the cause was invariably the same—men.
As he idly traced the ancient carvings on the underside of his desk, his thoughts drifted. Should he? Or should he not? The faint rasp of his thumb against the aged wood filled the quiet room. Just as he applied a deliberate pressure, contemplating a clandestine release, a sharp knock echoed at his door.
“Kaelen? Are you studying?” It was the voice of his aunt, Lady Seraphina.
“...Ah, no! I mean, yes! I am!”
His heart leaped into his throat. Today was evidently not the day for such indulgence. Mortified, he buried his face in his arms. Confound it.
---
Lately, Lord Valerius had grown increasingly vexing.
Sometimes, when Elara’s gaze inadvertently met Kaelen’s, Valerius would deliberately interject, initiating a conversation with her. Elara, caught between them, would glance at Kaelen, her lips parting as if to speak, only to close them again. Then, as if wary of Valerius’s oppressive presence, she would lower her head and offer a barely audible reply.
“Y-yes, my lord…”
Always just so.
Elara, however, began to subtly seek out Kaelen’s presence, and started addressing him with a shortened, less formal appellation: “Thorne.” Aside from the senior scholars, almost none outside his family used such a familiar address, so the change was conspicuous. She seemed to believe she was being discreet, but Kaelen knew better. The worst part was Valerius’s barely concealed discomfort whenever Elara displayed any hint of independent thought or camaraderie.
“Elara Lyra, cease bothering Kaelen Thorne while he pursues his studies.”
“What?” Elara’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I said, cease bothering him. Do you not comprehend?”
“Oh… uh, y-yes, my lord…”
When Elara stammered and averted her gaze, Valerius, with an infantile display of frustration, slammed his fist against the leg of the lectern beside him. Kaelen pretended not to notice. Annoyingly, the guileless Elara seemed to believe no one cared about her use of “Thorne” anymore. She grew bolder, employing it with increasing casualness, as if it were entirely normal.
“Uh, Thorne… forgive my interruption during your study.”
Kaelen stiffened, staring at her in disbelief. Was she utterly bereft of sense? Valerius was seated directly beside her.
Predictably, Valerius’s fist connected with the lectern again, a sickening thud. Damn it.
“Elara Lyra!”
“...My lord?”
The atmosphere curdled instantly.
“I warned you.” Valerius’s anger was blatant, a raw wound.
“I told you not to call him ‘Thorne,’ did I not?”
“...W-well…”
“Call him Kaelen Thorne. That is his name—Kaelen Thorne.”
His gaze, sharp and predatory, pivoted to Kaelen. Kaelen despised that look and instinctively lowered his head, a blush creeping up his neck. At that moment, Caspian Volkov, seated casually beside Kaelen, draped an arm over his shoulders. His low, distinctive voice murmured near Kaelen’s ear.
“Lord Valerius, persist in this manner, and you shall truly unravel yourself.”
“What drivel do you speak, Volkov?”
“I merely suggest you shall rue this path.”
Caspian smirked, and Kaelen felt a flicker of irritation, for one reason only: the casual, almost possessive weight of Caspian’s arm across his shoulders.
“Lord Valerius, heed my words.”