The faint trace of Kaelen's insincere gratitude still lingered in the air, a peculiar scent of artifice. Kaelen's lips, curving in a languid arc, blew a kiss of sorts, a theatrical gesture that grated against Lysander’s carefully constructed composure. Lysander merely tore at a strip of dried meat-floss from his lunch, his gaze fixed on Kaelen, though his mind wrestled with a sudden, inexplicable tremor in his leg. It felt like a youthful disquiet, a feeling he rarely indulged.
Remnants of his lunch, untouched save for that single strip, lay forgotten on the polished obsidian desk. Lysander nursed a candied moonpetal between his lips, its faint citrus-herb tang doing little to soothe the knot in his stomach. The memory of his prior exchange with Kaelen, and its peculiar awkwardness, gnawed at him. He understood precisely *why* it felt so unsettling, yet a stubborn part of him refused to articulate it, even internally. It was a sensation clear without sight, tangible without touch, yet dissolving into a clammy, formless mist the moment he tried to grasp it.
He rotated the moonpetal with his tongue, a slow, deliberate movement.
Is Kaelen truly so... unrefined? His boasts of raw magical power, his crude jests—they spoke of a path Lysander could never tread, yet one that, in Aethel, commanded respect. It was a stark contrast to his own world of ancient glyphs and forgotten incantations.
“Whoever borrowed my enchanted quills had better confess now!” A boisterous voice rent the air. “Or just return them!”
Orion, a burly scion of a minor House, bellowed, oblivious to the students still poring over scrolls nearby. Others, equally heedless, chimed in. Seraphina, a girl whose practical charms were as volatile as her temper, jabbed Orion's arm.
“Fool. The silver you owe me could buy a dozen such paltry tools.”
“My quills! And my silver!”
The rear of the lecture hall devolved into a cacophony of shouts and shoves, Orion and Seraphina wrestling with an almost animalistic disregard for their surroundings. Disgruntled gazes shot back from the front rows, where more diligent scholars attempted to salvage the waning afternoon.
Lysander subtly angled his head towards the source of the commotion, catching a glimpse of Kaelen. Their eyes met, a fleeting, charged instant across the cluttered desks.
Silence.
Slowly, deliberately, Kaelen reached out a hand. Lysander found himself mesmerized by the almost unnatural neatness of Kaelen’s nails, the long, slender fingers extending towards him. He sat utterly rigid as they twined, like a serpent’s coil, around the thin, crystalline stem of his moonpetal.
Kaelen pulled. A sticky, sweet film coated Lysander's tongue as the confection slid from his lips, grazing them, then popping free with a soft, almost vulgar sound.
“This, I shall savor.”
Kaelen’s lips, curved into a sly, knowing smile, closed around the melted orb. He licked his lips with an almost feline grace, a suggestive gesture that made Lysander’s stomach clench.
“Why?” Kaelen chuckled, a low sound.
Kaelen often laughed. But his laughter was rarely as pleasant as his humor initially seemed.
“That's... unseemly,” Lysander managed, his voice a tight rasp.
“Do you not know? The sharing of essence, a subtle attunement, it fortifies one's magical sympathy.” Kaelen’s eyes held a glint of amusement, a mockery of arcane theory.
“That's truly... uncivilized.” Lysander pressed his lips together, as if sealing a parched, cracked fissure in the earth. Kaelen merely rested a hand on his thigh, sweeping upwards to his knee, arching his back slightly. Lysander clenched his fingers, burying them deep within his palms.
He knew. He knew he was a fool, too, to let himself be so affected.
Kaelen, still sitting askew, his hand still on his knee, popped the moonpetal into his mouth and shrugged.
“You said you disliked sunstone flavor, didn't you?”
He drew on the confection, a faint whistling sound accompanying the slow intake of air between his lips. A bizarrely ordinary display for a scion of the Houses.
“That's star-lime flavor.”
“Then it is well. Star-lime, I find agreeable.”
Lysander said nothing.
And with an infuriating nonchalance, Kaelen continued to consume the sweet that had been in Lysander’s mouth, with a practiced, almost sensual ease.
---
Another cycle of the sun passed. As the crisp bite of autumn began to replace summer’s languor, the Arcane Academy braced itself for the austere winter months, the cobalt sky above Aethel growing sharper, heavier, devoid of dust. The High Conclave's professors, imbued with a solemn sense of duty, impressed upon their students the grave responsibility of forging their path within the Imperium. Yet, always, there were exceptions.
Orion, Seraphina, and others of their ilk, those excluded from the meticulously ordered ranks of model scholars, were like discarded pawns, their existence serving only to highlight the ascent of the majority. As the seasons turned, the consequences for their wanderings softened, and general interest in their plight waned. The sole distinction for one such as Jareth was his ancestry – his House, though minor, made his indiscretions a persistent nuisance for the Conclave.
Truly pitiable was Elara, a gifted commoner. Had she not become entangled with Jareth’s wild proclivities, she might have earned a place in a respectable arcanist guild, secured a comfortable life. Or, if her elder had not succumbed to the creeping blight.
Lysander, however, resolved to ignore all that transpired beyond the confines of his singular purpose. He had long concluded this was the wisest course for his existence.
And so he lived, until the inevitable demanded his attention.
All possibilities, however remote, had the potential to manifest. Especially with a fool like Jareth, who seemed to accelerate his own downfall with an almost deliberate lack of foresight.
Jareth returned to the classroom.
---
Lysander clicked his tongue, a soft, almost imperceptible sound of irritation.
He could discern Jareth, slumped over a desk near the podium, visible through the slightly ajar lecture hall doors. Word had filtered through the student gossip network: Jareth’s House Elders had finally apprehended him, almost a fortnight after his truancy. If one intended to abscond, Lysander mused, one ought to flee to the desolate reaches of the Ash Wastes, not lurk conspicuously within the Imperial capital. Why Jareth had practically begged to be found remained a mystery.
Lysander tapped his fingers against the polished architrave of the entrance.
To enter now felt unduly precarious.
As he pondered, his gaze fell upon the back of Jareth’s head, a few stiff strands of dark hair stubbornly upright. There had been a time, long past, when Lysander might have subtly smoothed them down, under the guise of an accidental brush. Now, that memory seemed so distant, so faded, he chose to sever any lingering threads of attachment. He turned, making to descend the grand stairwell. He knew no good could come from an isolated encounter with Jareth.
The Academy of Aethel was a labyrinth of watchful eyes, its very stones seeming to whisper secrets. Even a simple exchange with Jareth would undoubtedly spark rumors: ‘Lysander Thorne seen conversing alone with the disgraced scion, Jareth Vex.’ Such whispers would inevitably be amplified, distorted. The gravest scenario, one that curdled his blood, was Jareth’s volatile temper igniting once more, his fist connecting with Lysander’s jaw. The thought of such a public humiliation was intolerable.
The most favorable outcome would be Jareth ignoring him entirely, but Lysander was no fool to stake his reputation on such slender odds. The sagest choice was to preempt the undesirable situation altogether, unseen.
So, he retreated to the lower galleries, loitering near the communal storage alcoves, pretending interest in the inscribed scrolls until, a quarter-bell before the closing of the Outer Gates, he merged seamlessly into the throng of students converging for the day's final lessons. Only then did he reclaim his assigned seat, his theoretical texts splayed open, as if he had been there all along.
He strove to display no interest in the upheaval caused by Jareth, or rather, to conceal the profound interest he truly felt. His consistent efforts, he believed, were proving effective.
Yet, Jareth remained his greatest unpredictable variable. Frustration and a familiar wave of disgust washed over him. *Damn it all.* Discomfort and a burgeoning anxiety gradually consumed his emotions, a phenomenon that had intensified noticeably since Kaelen’s arrival at the Academy.
Kaelen approached Jareth as if their long-standing animosity were an illusion, even offering a casual greeting.
“Long time no see, Jareth Vex?”
His friendly tone was so utterly absurd it momentarily stunned Lysander. For an instant, curiosity eclipsed his anxiety. Looking up, Lysander observed Kaelen, bag slung nonchalantly over one shoulder, pulling the corner of his mouth into a broad, insincere smile. Jareth merely grunted, offering no verbal reply.
“Such a cold reception. Where's the warmth?”
Pushing Jareth’s desk with his boot seemed an act of profound disrespect, especially from Kaelen, who had played no small part in Jareth's plummet from social standing within these very halls. However, unwilling to involve himself in such petty displays, Lysander attempted to redirect his focus to the intricate ‘real’ problems detailed on his theoretical tablets. That effort, alas, was swiftly disrupted as the Prefect Arcanist entered for the morning roll call.
The Prefect seemed genuinely relieved by Jareth’s return, and a distinct air of guilt clung to him regarding the continued absence of Elara. What a timid and fragile soul, Lysander thought.
“Elara is absent again today,” the Prefect murmured, a theatrical sigh accompanying the words, clearly intending a deeper implication. He then concluded the roll call with a soft tap of his hand on the attendance tablet.
---
The incident unfolded with a swiftness Lysander had not anticipated.
As Jareth rummaged through his desk drawer, seeking a textbook, he grimaced at the layers of grime and neglect coating its interior. At that moment, a pair of students who had left their own grimoires in the communal spell-lockers raised their hands and departed. Jareth’s expression darkened further as they left.
Since Jareth rarely devoted himself to serious study, the presence or absence of a particular grimoire likely held little import for him. The true affront, for Jareth, was undoubtedly the perceived disappearance of anything bearing his name, a symbol of his diminished status.
Every student in the lecture hall understood the unspoken truth, yet as if bound by a silent covenant, not a single soul uttered a word. None divulged who had cast out Jareth’s materials, nor who had orchestrated the slight.
“Who was it?”
As the lesson concluded, the moment everyone had unconsciously braced for began.
“I asked, who was it?” Jareth demanded, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his House robes, chin lifted in a defiant challenge. Those who found the atmosphere unbearable slipped quietly from the hall, while others, intrigued by the unfolding drama, cast furtive glances. In that charged silence, Kaelen, engrossed in scribbling arcane symbols into a heavily defaced, almost unrecognizable grimoire, spoke with an unsettling nonchalance.
“What exactly are you speaking of?”
“Who?”
“What do you mean 'who'? One must articulate their grievances for understanding to occur.”
The sheer audacity was breathtaking. Truly brazen.
“The bastard who purged all my study materials.”
It was unequivocally clear to Jareth that his texts had not merely vanished by chance, especially for one as acutely sensitive to hierarchy as him, akin to a predator sensing weakness. Moreover, Kaelen’s deliberate failure to specify ‘who’ served as an implicit acknowledgment of the truth. Even the most obtuse would grasp this. Yet, Kaelen continued to jest, as if utterly oblivious to the gravity of the situation.
“Did you even possess study materials? You were perpetually sprawled across your desk, slumbering through the lecturers’ incantations.”
And there he went again, laughing unnecessarily. There was no conceivable way Jareth would permit that slight to pass unchallenged.
“Enough. Was it you, Lysander Thorne?”
And naturally, Lysander was implicated. It was an inevitable conclusion; any fool could have foreseen it.
“...No,” Lysander replied, his voice barely a whisper.
In this lecture hall, no one possessed a wilder, less civilized spirit than Jareth, who seemed perpetually ensnared in his own foolish errors. He must have felt his downfall acutely, for every glance, every empty space in the room, held the weight of past emotions and memories. Yet, those sharing the same space pretended as if nothing untoward had occurred.
“Come now, would our esteemed scholar Lysander truly treat his cherished theoretical grimoires in such an unseemly fashion?” Kaelen's tone dripped with mock concern.
“Kaelen—damn you, why do you constantly interject?” Jareth's voice rose to a furious pitch.
“Interject? If a companion faces injustice, is it not the proper thing to offer succor?”
“What in the blazes are you babbling about, you moron?”
“Moron? That's rather harsh, wouldn't you say?”
“Cease your prevaricating. Who else here could have so thoroughly fouled the atmosphere during my absence, if not the two of you?” Jareth scoffed. Only then did Kaelen finally lower his arcane pencil, placing it deliberately on the desk. His lips still held that faint, infuriating smirk. Jareth’s face twisted in profound displeasure. Unable to contain his explosive anger, Jareth snatched a nearby component pouch and hurled it. Regrettably, it struck Lysander squarely in the chest.
“Ah!”
It wasn't particularly painful, as the pouch was not heavily laden, but the sudden impact was startling, robbing him of breath. Lysander frowned, watching the leather satchel slide to his knees.
“This madman simply hurls objects now,” Kaelen interjected, his voice already laced with a sharp edge of annoyance, before Lysander could even articulate a single word. At that precise moment, Jareth slowly lifted the corners of his mouth, a chilling, triumphant smirk.
“Ah, I see.”
It was the look of one utterly convinced of his victory, convinced he had unraveled some profound truth. What did he imagine he understood? Lysander’s furrowed brow refused to relax.
“Kaelen. Lysander. You two conspiring?”
“What?” Lysander was utterly bereft of words. Kaelen's playful smirk vanished instantly, replaced by a look of genuine, if theatrical, bewilderment. Lysander felt more utterly lost than Jareth, who had suffered the loss of his materials. Kaelen, it seemed, shared a similar, though far less genuine, sentiment.
“Jareth, I apologize, but your words are so... ill-formed, I struggle to comprehend them.” Despite clearly having heard every syllable, Kaelen cupped his palm near his ear, a blatant, audacious mockery. And from Lysander’s observations, Kaelen never confined himself to a solitary jest. This, he knew, was merely the prelude to a far greater provocation. Sensing the increasingly volatile air, Lysander slowly pushed himself to his feet. Meanwhile, Kaelen casually stuck his pinky finger into his ear, a gesture of profound disdain.