A peculiar alchemy, perhaps divine intervention or merely the soothing balm applied with such care, had worked its gentle magic overnight. My cheek, once an angry, swollen caricature of itself, had receded. A faint puffiness remained, tinged with a delicate violet, but it was the sort of bruising one might casually attribute to a clumsy encounter with a library shelf. Manageable, I decided.
With a lightness I hadn't expected, I made my way to the Aethelred Institute. Yet, the air within the Grand Lecture Hall was anything but buoyant. It pressed down, a palpable weight, and the cause was immediately evident: Cassian Vane.
My gaze, almost instinctively, sought out Julian Kael. He arrived just as the first bell tolled, slipping into the hall with a breathless urgency that barely forestalled a demerit.
I blinked once, twice, my focus utterly snared. A half-formed, childish thought from the previous night—that he might have suffered a similar fate—dissolved into a cold knot of guilt. Julian’s face was a ruin. His lip was split, a dark, weeping line, and one eye was swollen shut, a bruised and purple plum, mirroring the injury I had once carried. A suffocating wave of remorse washed over me, heavy and bitter. My petty imaginings were vile.
“By the Elder Gods...” A whisper escaped me.
Julian entered the hall with a hesitant step, his eyes flitting nervously. Then, as if tethered by an unseen thread, his gaze snagged on mine. He stared for a long, agonizing moment before his features tightened into a startled grimace. He abruptly averted his face, shuffling towards his assigned bench as if to escape my very sight.
“What was that?” The abrupt shift left me with an unsettling premonition. My eyes swept the room, and the reason crystallized, sharp and cold. Cassian Vane was glaring at me, a silent, murderous promise in his frigid gaze.
“A curse upon this morning.” Regret, sharp and potent, flooded through me.
From that moment, Julian Kael, who had once clung to my periphery with an almost desperate eagerness, became a ghost. He avoided my gaze, sidestepped me in the corridors, and during the midday repast, he vanished entirely, following Cassian Vane to some undisclosed recess of the Institute.
Alone at my usual table in the Refectory, I found myself sharing bread with Seraphin Dubois. A part of me yearned to seek out Julian, to confirm the lingering dread, but the thought curdled in my stomach. I abhorred the admission, but fear held me captive. What fresh horror might I uncover?
Surely, Cassian would not have subjected him to further brutality... would he? It was not my concern, I told myself, a weak protest against the image of Julian's ravaged face, etched into my mind.
Seraphin, meanwhile, possessed an almost preternatural ability to remain untroubled. His usual stream of witty, irreverent banter flowed, entirely oblivious to the maelstrom brewing within me.
“See? I told you the air was thick enough to chew. My nerves were a single twitching cord.”
“You seemed perfectly composed consuming that crème glacée yesterday.”
“A credit to my stoicism, Thorne. I merely absorbed the tension like a sponge, then wrung it out with cold sugar.” Seraphin offered a conspiratorial wink, a mischievous grin playing on his lips. “One must, after all, extract all pleasure possible.”
Irritated, I nudged his shin beneath the table, a light reprimand for his self-congratulatory jest. He rubbed his chin, a fleeting expression of sheepishness crossing his face. No, that couldn’t be right. Seraphin Dubois was rarely anything but brazen.
---
Life, I reflected, often unfolds with a perverse irony. From our very first, rather grating encounter, I had harbored no desire for proximity to Seraphin Dubois. Indeed, his very presence had once grated on my nerves. Yet, here we were, and he had become an unexpected anchor, the closest companion in my solitary orbit.
His lighthearted mien, his flippant and often scandalous remarks, possessed a peculiar power. They prevented me from becoming entirely submerged beneath the crushing weight of my own thoughts. Once, I had disdained these very qualities, dismissing them as the superficial trappings of a trivial mind. Now, I found myself clinging to that levity, a lifeline in a turbulent sea. Had Cassian and I remained within our old, comfortable patterns, I might never have recognized the profound, albeit inconvenient, necessity of Seraphin's presence.
After that grim morning, Cassian Vane began to excise himself from our usual coterie. Sometimes, he would disappear with Julian Kael, their departure a silent, unsettling ritual. Other times, he would draw a few more malleable students into his orbit. There were even moments when some, invited to join, would flatly refuse, their faces etched with a discomfort they struggled to conceal.
One such instance involved Lysander Volkov. I chanced upon him scaling a low wall by the Institute’s western facade, clearly evading a passing prefect. He recounted, with a strange mix of wry amusement and genuine disquiet, how Cassian had been ordering students to strike Julian, each delivering a single, calculated blow. My features must have mirrored my disbelief, for Lysander quickly added that he had been avoiding Cassian’s company for weeks, finding the spectacle increasingly unpalatable. He then mumbled something about meeting Hadrian Finch at the local scriveners’ arcade, begging me not to misinterpret his absence. With a hurried wave, he vanished over the wall.
Hadrian Finch, I recalled, had been quite close to Cassian during our first year, but after their placement in different scholarly sections, their paths had gradually diverged.
At midday, Seraphin and I adjourned to the Institute’s enclosed quadrangle, purchasing chilled fruit ices from a vendor’s cart. The cold sweetness bloomed on my tongue, offering a brief, fleeting respite. But beneath that transient pleasure, a bitter knot of disquiet tightened in my chest. I held my expression carefully neutral, determined not to betray the turmoil within.
“Satisfying, is it?” Seraphin, already halfway through his own brightly colored confection, eyed mine with an exaggerated longing.
“Care for a taste?” I offered, half-teasing, bringing my ice, sticky with my own saliva, perilously close to his mouth. Without a flicker of hesitation, he grinned, lifted one corner of his lip, and took a large, decisive bite.
“Seraphin! Did you truly?” My voice held a note of shocked amusement.
“You extended the invitation.” He shrugged, utterly unrepentant.
“That’s... unsanitary. And why such a prodigious bite?”
“Merely a sampling.” He flashed another disarming grin, one shoulder shrugging. It was a moment of profound, unexpected peace. In stark contrast to my internal chaos, the crisp autumn air was clear, the sky a serene canvas of pale sapphire.
Where were Cassian Vane and Julian Kael now? Several grim possibilities presented themselves, but I made no move to investigate. Perhaps I was simply too afraid of the stark truth I might find.
I tried desperately to excise Cassian from my thoughts. But the harder I strove, the more apparent it became how vast an acreage he still occupied within the confines of my mind.
How long would it take to dismantle an attachment so deeply rooted, so thoroughly entangled with my sense of self? What monumental effort would be required to unlearn his presence? I simply did not know. It felt like being adrift in a vast, parched expanse, not merely sorrowful and suffocating, but terrifying, unbearable in its desolation.
Sometimes, I retreated into myself, much like the Ostensibly Blue, striving to discern the faint tracks left before it. When the emotional landscape became too overwhelming, I would occasionally articulate my fractured thoughts to Seraphin. And, well, that was that.
Suddenly, an impulse seized me. “Seraphin,” I began, my voice softer than intended.
“Yes, Elias?”
“Do you... do you believe that blossoms might yet unfurl in a barren desert?” The question, so raw and unbidden, embarrassed me the moment it left my lips. I scratched the back of my neck, flushing, but Seraphin offered no derision.
“They must.” His voice was unexpectedly firm, devoid of its usual playful lilt.
“...”
“Life is sufficiently cruel without such bleak certainty.” Hearing those words, spoken with such quiet conviction by Seraphin Dubois—a man I had once deemed incapable of such profound sentiment—a sliver of my desperate hope flickered, then extinguished. How much longer must I cling to these futile, self-immolating affections?
“Indeed. Life is abundantly cruel.” Cassian Vane. That infuriating wastrel. Why did he seem so intent on breaking the loyal, tail-wagging creature I so disgustingly became in his presence? Cassian, who appeared to have discarded all semblance of academic expectation, now arrived and departed from the Institute as his whim dictated. And always, a shadowed extension of his will, was Julian Kael.
As the days bled into weeks, the situation surrounding Julian grew increasingly ominous. The lecture halls, the common rooms, even the hushed libraries, buzzed with a low current of unease and fascinated horror. It became undeniably clear: Cassian’s callousness was escalating. And so, too, was the silent, creeping resentment towards him, a toxic fog seeping through the student body. None of it sat well within me.
So, when I saw Cassian Vane dragging Julian Kael by the wrist down the hushed expanse of the Grand Corridor, I stopped. My breath hitched. My gaze flickered between their faces, a terrible question in my eyes, before I finally spoke, my voice a carefully modulated lie.
“Your father,” I began, infusing my tone with a feigned gravity, “expresses concern for your recent conduct.” It was not an apology, nor flattery, but a calculated deception. Such was the extent of my bruised pride. Cassian, famously estranged from his sire, would likely not discern the falsehood. And even if he did, I could always parry, arguing that at this rate, his father would indeed have ample cause for worry.
I always, always left myself a retreat.
“If discipline is warranted,” I continued, a tremor in my voice I hoped he wouldn’t detect, “let it fall upon you alone. Julian has done nothing to merit such treatment.”
“Move.” The instant Julian’s name passed my lips, Cassian’s gaze locked onto mine, eyes like chips of glacial ice. A crushing pressure seized my chest. I loathed him. And yet, pitiful, utterly pathetic Julian stood glued to his side, his eyes brimming with unshed tears, looking at me as if on the verge of collapsing.
“Unless you yearn for another lesson, Thorne, move aside.”
“C-Cassian, please,” Julian stammered, his voice a reedy quaver, attempting to staunch his tormentor. Only then did Cassian’s menacing monologue cease. His gaze, now solely focused on Julian, turned from me, presenting only the impenetrable back of his head.
“As I stated, your father expresses—!” I tried again, a futile grasp at reason.
Julian, on the precipice of tears, clung to Cassian’s arm, a desperate, shuddering effort to stop him. Witnessing that piteous tableau was utterly unbearable. It was so exquisitely painful that I squeezed my eyes shut, a futile attempt to erase the image.
After a prolonged moment, Cassian finally looked at Julian, a flicker of something unreadable in his gaze, then turned and walked back into the Grand Lecture Hall. For the remainder of the day, he stayed within its confines—an echo of a few weeks prior.
---
The long-anticipated day of the Institute’s grand field excursion had arrived. A fleet of charabancs, hired specifically for the occasion, stood waiting to transport us to the renowned Exposition of Esoteric Cartography. While a few of the more studious apprentices grumbled about the disruption to their rigorous schedules, most were alight with the rare opportunity to escape the Institute’s walls, if only for a single day.
There was no need for elaborate preparations, no satchels of provisions, as we were to return by dusk. The Institute’s pedagogues offered only a few desultory warnings before releasing us into the sunlit courtyard.
We were no longer callow first-years; the giddy excitement that once kept us sleepless had faded. I regarded it as merely another passage of time—depart without a burden, return without one. I had no premonition that this particular day would be the crucible in which my bottled frustrations, my tightly coiled resentments, would finally shatter. I had always known the explosion was inevitable, but never had I imagined its abruptness.
As was tradition, I usually occupied the seat beside Cassian Vane whenever we ventured beyond the classroom’s familiar confines. After all, I had been, for so long, his closest companion. I had not even considered Seraphin Dubois’s seating arrangements, having never embarked on a journey by charabanc with him before.
Initially, a flicker of apprehension had pricked me; I feared Seraphin might usurp the coveted position closest to Cassian. Thinking back now, it was a pathetic, almost comical anxiety. Neither I nor Seraphin would occupy that particular space.
Upon our arrival in the courtyard, I located our designated charabanc, a hulking beast of polished wood and glass. I ascended the steps, scanning the interior for our assigned benches. The rearmost five seats were already claimed by a boisterous cohort of classmates, among them Lysander Volkov. He waved a jovial hand in my direction, then hesitated, his gesture subtly shifting to indicate Cassian Vane’s seat.
“Thorne! There’s an empty space here!” Lysander called out.
“Ah, yes.” Of course. It had always been my designated place. Yet, today, as I approached Cassian’s seat, a tremor of hesitation ran through me. A small gasp of relief escaped my lips when I observed that the space adjacent to him remained unoccupied. I swallowed hard, a flicker of stubborn resolve igniting within me.
It was my place. My pride—that singular, unyielding thing I clung to with desperate tenacity—demanded I claim it, even after the brutal lesson Cassian had delivered on account of Julian Kael.
My hand hovered nervously above the dark leather of the seat for a protracted moment. My gaze swept the length of the charabanc, before I quietly, tentatively, spoke.
“Tell me... this seat...”
“It is reserved. Find another place, Thorne.” Before I could complete my query, Cassian Vane cut me off, his eyes fixed with unnerving intensity on the entrance of the charabanc. Following his unwavering line of sight, I saw Julian Kael, small and timid, making his way gingerly towards us. My fists clenched, my words dying in my throat.
“Very well. As you wish.” I strove to infuse my voice with an air of indifferent dismissal, though my heart felt as though it had been meticulously shredded.
I quickly retreated from the contested space, my eyes darting through the remaining rows. I espied an empty spot near Seraphin’s animated group, directly in front of where he was already seated. With a surge of relief, I hurried over, collapsing onto the velvet bench, and spoke without waiting for an acknowledgement.
“Seraphin, join me here.”
There was no response. A closer glance revealed he was already lost to slumber. Seraphin possessed a remarkable propensity for morning dozing, and today was no exception. His head, adorned with its usual unruly curls, rested against the window, bouncing gently with each subtle sway of the charabanc. Shaking my head at his utterly ridiculous posture, I carefully wedged my leather-bound folio between his head and the window pane, offering a makeshift cushion. I then leaned back into the unyielding discomfort of the seat, attempting to find a measure of peace.
Across the aisle, my gaze snagged on a familiar shock of dark brown hair. It was Cassian Vane’s—his stature, taller than most of our peers, made him instantly discernible. Though the angle obscured a clear view, I knew, with a certainty that gnawed at my gut, who sat beside him. Julian Kael. The thought alone was a sharp splinter in my consciousness.