A cool draft ghosted through the antechamber, rustling the heavy silk banners that depicted the Vance lineage. Lord Kaelen’s thanks for Cassian’s swift retrieval of a forgotten dossier had been a silken lie, barely concealing his amusement. He offered a slight, almost imperceptible smirk, a gesture akin to a wolf baring a single, elegant tooth. Cassian merely tore at a strip of dried venison, his gaze fixed on the intricate carving of a griffin on the wall. A tremor ran through his thigh, a nascent anxiety he could not quite name.
He sucked on a plum pit, the stone’s smooth coolness a stark contrast to the churning thoughts within him. The memory of Kaelen’s earlier jest, veiled in academic curiosity, still pricked at him. Cassian understood the discomfort, though he refused to give it shape. It felt palpable, like a phantom limb, yet remained elusive, a clammy mist clinging to his resolve.
He turned the plum pit in his mouth.
Was Kaelen truly aligned with figures like Master Alaric? Master Alaric, whose repute had been dragged through the dust of the lower city, a name whispered in conjunction with Lord Elian’s ruin. These men, whether Elian, Alaric, or any other, lived lives equally precarious. It seemed a ridiculous and brutal dance.
“The archives are in disarray! Who dares to touch my personal scrolls?”
Young Lord Gareth’s voice, raw with indignation, cut through the quiet. He ignored the handful of scholars still bent over their ledgers. His peers, no less boisterous, paid him little mind.
Lord Torvin, pale and gaunt from his recent return, punched Gareth’s arm. “Fool. The debts you owe me could buy a hundred of these petty scrolls.”
“My compensation!”
The far corner of the antechamber dissolved into a skirmish of shouts and jostling. Torvin and Gareth grappled, oblivious to the sharp, displeased glances from the senior scribes in the fore. Cassian felt a tightening in his chest.
“Lately, he’s become quite a nuisance.”
The words drifted on the air, light and casual. Cassian’s eyes met Lord Kaelen’s. Kaelen sat across the room, observing the ruckus, a faint, predatory glint in his eyes.
---
Without warning, Kaelen slowly extended a hand towards Cassian. Cassian stiffened, mesmerized by the perfectly manicured nails, the long, elegant fingers that twined around the plum pit between his lips, like a snake around its prey.
Kaelen pulled gently, the smooth stone sliding along Cassian’s tongue, grazing his lower lip. Then, with a sudden pop, the pit was gone from Cassian’s mouth.
“I shall enjoy this.”
The plum pit rested between Kaelen’s lips, curved into a sly, knowing smile. He licked his lips, as if to cleanse them, then chuckled softly. “Why?”
Kaelen often laughed. Yet his mirth seldom carried warmth.
“It is… unclean.”
“Have you forgotten? Sharing a taste is a profound connection, a way to understand another’s palate.”
“That is truly… distasteful.” Cassian clamped his mouth shut, his lips dry as cracked earth. Kaelen then rested his hand on his thigh, sweeping upward to his knee, arching his back. Cassian curled his fingers into a tight fist, concealing them within his palm.
He knew. He knew the foolishness that lay within him, too.
With his hand resting on his knee, sitting askew, Kaelen tossed the plum pit into his mouth and shrugged. “You prefer the tartness of a green apple?”
He sucked on the pit with a soft, whistling sound. An unsettling sound, considering the circumstances.
“That was a black plum.”
“Ah. Then it is fortunate. I find plums quite agreeable.”
“…”
And with an infuriating nonchalance, Kaelen continued to savor the plum pit, a fruit someone else had tasted, quite skillfully.
Another day unfurled. As the crisp breath of autumn began to sharpen, the sprawling Valorian Dominion braced for the inevitable chill of winter. The noble houses, like ancient oaks, sensed a grave duty to carve their mark upon the season. Yet, exceptions always existed.
Lord Gareth, Lord Torvin, young Master Krell, and others, cast from the gilded circle of esteemed scions, were pawns. Discarded if they stumbled, their failures serving as grim lessons for the majority. As time wore on, their missteps were less punished, more simply forgotten. Lord Torvin, however, remained a vexing presence, his father’s distant influence a persistent shadow.
The truly pitiable one was Lord Perrin. If only he hadn't entangled himself with Torvin, he might have ascended to a respectable station, secured a promising match. Or, if only his grandmother hadn’t succumbed to the Thorne blight. Cassian, however, had long ago decided to ignore the currents outside his own quiet harbor. That, he believed, was the only path to survival.
So he lived, until the day he was forced to confront the inevitable.
Anything held the potential for disaster. Especially Lord Torvin, who seemed to hasten towards his ruin without a single thoughtful plan.
Torvin returned to the antechamber.
---
Cassian clicked his tongue, a soft, dry sound. He saw Torvin slumped over a writing desk near the entrance, visible through the partially opened chamber doors. Torvin’s father had finally brought him back. Cassian had heard the hushed whispers of his capture.
It was an awkward timing. Nearly three weeks after his escape from the family estate, and only now apprehended. If one planned to flee, one should have the sense to seek a truly remote province. Why he had lingered so close, practically begging to be found, Cassian could not fathom.
He tapped his fingers on the ornate carvings of the doorframe.
Entering felt profoundly uncomfortable.
His gaze fell upon the back of Torvin’s head. A few strands of his once-proud dark hair now stuck up, unkempt. There had been a time, long past, when Cassian would subtly smooth them down, under the guise of a shared study session. Now, that memory felt distant and blurred. He decided to sever any lingering threads of attachment and turned to descend to the lower archives. He knew an encounter with Torvin, especially with few eyes present, promised no good.
The court was a place of endless scrutiny. Even a simple exchange of words with Torvin would undoubtedly breed rumors – that Lord Torvin and Cassian Thorne were seen conversing alone. These whispers would inevitably swell into accusations of conspiracy. The worst scenario? Torvin, in a fit of rage, might strike him again. The thought of such a public humiliation, from a disgraced noble, was intolerable.
Best outcome: Torvin ignored him. But Cassian was no fool; he would not gamble on a single chance. The wisest course was to eliminate the perilous situation entirely, when no one would be privy.
He retreated to the lower floor, lingering near the stacks of ancient cartouches until, ten minutes before the evening’s closing, he blended into the stream of junior scribes arriving for their evening duties. Only then did he find his designated station, a pile of unbound maps awaiting his meticulous hand.
He sought to project disinterest in all the turmoil surrounding Torvin, or rather, he sought to conceal the significant interest he truly held. His consistent efforts, he believed, were paying dividends.
Yet, Torvin remained his most volatile variable. Frustration and a quiet disgust settled upon him. Curse it all. Discomfort and anxiety, a gnawing unease, gradually consumed his composure. This phenomenon intensified sharply after Lord Kaelen’s presence had graced the court this morning.
Kaelen approached Torvin as if nothing untoward had ever occurred, even offering a casual greeting.
“It has been a while, Lord Torvin?”
His friendly tone was so utterly absurd it stunned Cassian. For a moment, curiosity pierced through his anxiety. Looking up, Cassian saw Kaelen standing with his hand resting on the hilt of his ceremonial dagger, pulling at the corner of his mouth in a broad, unsettling smile. Torvin merely nodded, his gaze distant, offering no verbal reply.
“Such a chilly reception. What a pity.”
Kaelen nudged Torvin’s desk with the toe of his boot. This seemed an act of profound disrespect, especially from the very man who had orchestrated Torvin’s public downfall within the intricate hierarchy of the court. Not wanting to become entangled in such petty dramas, Cassian attempted to refocus on the ‘real’ problems laid out on his desk. His concentration, however, shattered as the master archivist entered for the evening’s roll call.
The archivist seemed genuinely pleased by Torvin’s return, and a clear, though subtle, guilt lingered about Lord Perrin’s continued absence. What a timid and fragile old man.
“Perrin is not with us today either,” he murmured to himself, his voice thick with unspoken implication. He concluded with a soft tap on the attendance ledger upon his desk.
The incident occurred more quickly than anticipated.
Torvin rummaged through his desk drawer, grimacing at the filthy state of a half-unrolled parchment. A couple of junior nobles, whose personal effects remained in the locked armoires, excused themselves and exited. Torvin’s expression darkened with their departure.
Since he rarely studied, possessing or lacking a particular scroll likely held little import for him. The true issue for Torvin was undoubtedly the disappearance of an item marked with his name.
Everyone in the antechamber knew the truth. Yet, as if by unspoken accord, no one uttered a word. Not about who had destroyed Torvin’s commissioned maps, nor about who instigated it.
“Who was it?”
As soon as the archivist concluded his roll call, the moment everyone had unconsciously braced for began.
“I said, who was it?”
Torvin, hands shoved deep into his fine breeches, his chin lifted in a defiant challenge, demanded answers. Those who abhorred conflict slipped from the antechamber, while those intrigued glanced around, their eyes alight with morbid curiosity. In that tense atmosphere, Kaelen, holding a thoroughly soiled, almost unrecognizable stylus covered in grime, scribbled something onto a loose sheet of parchment. He spoke with utter nonchalance.
“What are you referring to?”
“Who?”
“What do you mean? One must articulate their grievances clearly if they wish to be understood.”
His audacity was staggering. Truly brazen.
“The bastard who ruined all my commissioned maps.”
It was clear to Torvin that his maps had not merely vanished by chance, especially for one as sensitive to the delicate balance of court hierarchy as he, a man akin to a caged wolf. Moreover, Kaelen’s failure to answer ‘who’ implicitly acknowledged complicity. Even a fool would grasp this. Yet, Kaelen continued to jest, as if oblivious to the gravity of the situation.
“Did you even possess commissioned maps? You were always just sprawled across a table, sleeping.”
There he went again, laughing needlessly. Torvin would not let that slight pass.
“Enough. Was it you, Cassian Thorne?”
And naturally, Cassian was implicated. This was, in the cutthroat dance of the court, a predictable turn. “...No.”
In this antechamber, no one was more volatile, less civilized than Torvin, who constantly stumbled into foolish blunders. He must have felt his downfall acutely, as every glance and every space held all the raw emotions and bitter memories. Yet, those sharing the space, including Cassian, pretended as if nothing had occurred.
“Come now, would our esteemed scholar Cassian truly treat his beloved maps with such disregard?”
“Lord Kaelen – curse you, why do you keep interfering?”
“Interfering? If a friend faces an injustice, it is only right to offer aid.”
“What in the name of the Valorian Gods are you speaking of, you moron?”
“Moron? That seems a trifle harsh.”
“Cease this charade. Who else in this entire dominion could have so thoroughly poisoned the atmosphere while I was gone, if not you two?”
Torvin scoffed. Only then did Kaelen finally put down his stylus on the desk. His lips still slightly puckered in that knowing smirk. Torvin’s face twisted in profound displeasure. Unable to contain his anger, Torvin hurled a nearby leather-bound ledger. Unfortunately, it struck Cassian squarely in the chest.
“Ah!”
It was not particularly painful, as it was not heavily laden, but the sudden impact was startling. Cassian frowned as he watched the ledger fall to his knees.
“This madman simply throws things now.”
Before Cassian could articulate a word, Kaelen interjected. His voice, for the first time, was laced with genuine annoyance. At that moment, Torvin slowly lifted the corners of his mouth.
“Ah, I see.”
It was the look of someone who believed he had won a crucial insight. What did he think he understood? Cassian’s furrowed brow refused to relax.
“Lord Kaelen. Cassian Thorne. You two are allied?”
“What?”
Cassian was utterly at a loss for words, and Kaelen’s playful smirk vanished instantly. Cassian felt more bewildered than Torvin, who had lost his maps. It seemed Kaelen felt the same. “Lord Torvin, forgive me, but your words are so disjointed I failed to comprehend them.”
Despite clearly hearing them, Kaelen placed his palm near his ear – a blatant, elegant mockery. And from what Cassian had observed, Kaelen never confined himself to a single jest. This was merely the overture to his deeper provocation. Sensing the uneasy air, Cassian slowly rose from his seat. Meanwhile, Kaelen stuck his pinky into his ear, feigning a thorough cleaning.