Two days after Elara’s unsettling declaration, a small, tightly rolled parchment appeared tucked into the spine of Caelen’s favored lexicon. It bore no crest, no official seal, only a single, elegant glyph for ‘meeting point’ and the hour of the Midday Recitation.
“*The Scriptorium Annex, before Glyphic Practice*.”
Caelen unrolled the parchment, its fine vellum cool beneath his thumb. He considered for a fleeting moment if it could be a clandestine summons, perhaps from a patron seeking his expertise in some obscure text. But the delicate script, the faint floral scent clinging to the paper, stirred a different, unwelcome suspicion. Elara. Her recent intensity, the lingering phantom touch of her lips on his scarred foot, made the thought a cold knot in his stomach. Yet, no. She would not be so brazen, not after her outburst and Lord Kaelen’s cruel warning.
He dismissed the notion of anything so personal, anything that might hint at intimacy. This was the Academy of Veiled Arts, after all. Affairs of the heart, particularly those involving a scholar of common birth and a scion of a noble House, were not whispered confessions but potential scandals. Certainly, it couldn’t be what his mind, unbidden, had first suggested. He set the thought aside, pushing it to the farthest corners of his awareness, until the chiming of the first bell for Midday Recitation pulled him back to the parchment.
Before the fourth period, Glyphic Practice, Caelen changed into his simpler, unadorned robes, suitable for work with unstable inks and ancient dust. A faint curiosity stirred within him. Who would choose such a location, such an hour? He gave it little more thought, assuming it was a minor academic query, a request for assistance with some vexing translation.
He navigated the labyrinthine corridors, the polished stone cool underfoot, the air thick with the scent of aged parchment and latent magic. The Scriptorium Annex was a rarely used wing, reserved for the most fragile and volatile texts. A place where few ever ventured alone.
He found her there, nestled between towering shelves of crumbling folios. Elara, her black hair neatly pulled back, her hands clasped before her. Her eyes, usually so sharp, were downcast. She worried at her lower lip, a nervous habit that twisted his gut.
“Lady Elara?”
His voice was a low murmur in the hushed space. Her head snapped up, revealing a faint flush on her pale cheeks. She managed a small, hesitant gesture, a shadow of the bright smiles she’d offered when first they met. That faint, fragile gesture, like a bruised butterfly, annoyed him. His brow furrowed.
“What is it? Why so sudden?”
In response to his blunt question, Elara nervously twisted her fingers, adorned with the delicate rings of her House. The quiet rustle of parchment seemed amplified by her silence.
“Caelen… I… I have something I wish to impart.”
“Speak, then.”
He wanted to leave, to return to the anonymity of the main archives, to bury himself in the safe embrace of dead languages. He did not want to be seen with her, not alone in such a secluded place. The whispers that already clung to their association were a tangible weight, a threat to his precarious position. He only ever engaged with Elara as much as propriety and his duties allowed – no more, no less.
Oblivious to his deepening discomfort, Elara continued to chew on her lip, her gaze darting around the dusty shelves, avoiding his eyes. Her face showed a strange blend of indecision and fierce resolve. Each time she seemed poised to speak, her mouth would clamp shut.
An unfamiliar irritation stirred within Caelen. He’d never quite understood Elara, and her current demeanor, this trembling hesitancy, only deepened his unease. Her small, pouting mouth moved again, silently, an action that some might find endearing. To Caelen, it was simply vexing. He realised he was perhaps overly sensitive, stretched thin by the recent events.
“My apologies, Lady Elara, but I must attend Glyphic Practice. Could you simply state your purpose?”
Adding to his frayed nerves, Caelen felt a dull throb behind his eyes. His mind was a tangled knot of the past few days, the uncomfortable intimacy of Elara’s devotion, and the shadow of Lord Kaelen’s gaze.
Perhaps his anger wasn't truly directed at Elara. Perhaps he merely sought an outlet, a target for the simmering frustration that had taken root in his gut. His stomach had been a churning pit of anxiety ever since Kaelen’s veiled threats.
As he wrestled with these thoughts, Elara finally seemed to steel herself. In a voice barely above a whisper, hesitant and fragile, she began.
“Caelen… I… you see, I…”
“Yes?”
He responded, his tone clipped, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. The bell for Glyphic Practice would sound soon. He wished she would just utter the words, whatever they were. He felt an irrational urge to reach out, to gently pry her lips apart and extract the confession himself.
Then, abruptly, the heavy iron-bound door of the Scriptorium Annex swung inward with a jarring groan. Both Caelen and Elara turned, their eyes locking with Lord Kaelen, who stood framed in the archway, his chest heaving. He was not looking at Caelen. His furious gaze was fixed on Elara.
“Hmph, hmph…”
His labored breathing betrayed the urgency of his arrival. Lord Kaelen had been running, searching the Academy. Caelen’s chest tightened, a suffocating premonition. He could almost picture the enraged noble tearing through the hallowed halls, seeking his betrothed.
Lord Kaelen let out a long, shuddering exhale, then strode confidently into the annex. Unconsciously, Caelen dropped the hand from his neck. Kaelen’s eyes flickered between Elara and Caelen, his expression a mask of chilling fury.
“What are you doing here with him?”
The question hung in the air, its target uncertain. Kaelen’s hands clenched, then slowly unclenched, a terrifying restraint. Beneath Caelen’s outwardly calm demeanor, his insides felt as if they were being hammered raw. After a long, torturous pause, Kaelen’s gaze finally settled on Caelen. The intensity, the sheer venom in his eyes, was unbearable.
“What in the Void, Kaelen.”
Please. Do not look at me like that. Blame Elara for summoning me. Why are you staring at me, the humble scholar, with such consuming resentment? I am merely a pawn in this sordid game.
Even as the thought echoed in his mind, Kaelen’s burning eyes remained locked. Caelen knew those were not the eyes of passion, nor even simple fury. They were the eyes of a man consumed by corrosive jealousy, by a madness that twisted his handsome features into something grotesque. It was the face of a man deranged by a possessive love – a face Caelen found both pitiable and utterly despicable.
“Why are you here with him!”
You are pathetic, Lord Kaelen. So utterly pathetic. Caelen glared back, a silent defiance. Yet, in that moment, he knew the truly pitiful one was not the raging noble, but himself.
Before Caelen could react, Kaelen’s long strides carried him directly in front of Caelen. The moment Caelen truly met his gaze, the world tilted sideways.
“...!”
He couldn’t even register the impact. His body toppled, striking the hard flagstones, and only then did his mind replay the swift, brutal arc of Kaelen’s fist.
“Impossible…”
He had been struck.
Lord Kaelen had struck him. Lying on the cold floor, Caelen touched his throbbing cheek with trembling fingers. He could not comprehend it. How could you… How could you do this to me?
“C-Caelen!”
“You wretch! I told you to wait for me! No, don’t even look at him – don’t even think of him, you fool!”
Elara, her face horrified, took a step towards Caelen, but Lord Kaelen screamed like a cornered beast. Seeing Kaelen’s furious visage, Elara’s expression grew increasingly pale, her resolve crumbling to fear.
“My apologies, my apologies.”
“You promised! You swore an oath! Damn you!”
Elara recoiled, her face on the verge of tears. But no, she was not the one who should be weeping. It was Caelen.
He felt the sting of tears welling, threatening to spill. Mercifully, before he could utterly break, Lord Kaelen let out a raw curse and stormed off, dragging Elara by her arm, ignoring her whimpers. It all happened with a dizzying speed.
Left alone, a crumpled heap in the Scriptorium Annex, Caelen stared at the half-open door. A thin shaft of sunlight cut through the gloom. Something inside him finally gave way. The dam holding back his humiliation and pain burst, and silent tears flowed freely.
He hated everything. Elara, who had drawn him into this perilous dance. Lord Kaelen, who had struck him down. He wished they would both simply vanish. He felt wretched, reduced to a mere bystander in their twisted, aristocratic drama.
He pushed himself up, his cheek throbbing, the scent of dust and fear clinging to his robes. He skipped Glyphic Practice, instead making his way to the Master of Apprenticeship’s office to request an early dismissal. His swollen, reddened face made his excuse – a sudden, debilitating headache – entirely believable. The Master, a gruff but discerning man, seemed to understand without prying.
---
Back in his sparsely furnished chamber, Caelen collapsed onto his narrow cot and sank into a fitful, dreamless sleep. When he awoke, his face felt bruised and puffy. Out of habit, he reached for the small, polished scrying-mirror he used for Academy communications. A message from Lord Valerius gleamed on its surface.
They rarely exchanged direct messages. Any contact was usually mediated by Kaelen, or involved official Academy matters. Now, a message from Valerius. He was second in standing to Lord Kaelen, a shrewd operator with significant influence among the younger nobility. Caelen couldn’t afford to ignore him.
“*Thorne, when did you depart so abruptly?*”
Caelen clicked his tongue, the sound a dull ache in his head. He belatedly replied to the message, which was hours old.
“*My apologies, Lord Valerius. A sudden indisposition.*”
He kept his reply deliberately vague, light. He did not want anyone to know the truth of his current situation. The thought of word spreading that Lord Kaelen, a high noble, had struck him, a humble scholar, over Elara, was unbearably humiliating. And all of it, ultimately, because of Elara.
“*Are you well?*”
Lord Valerius, showing concern? The strange, unsettling sensation made Caelen switch off his scrying-mirror.
Hours later, a wave of profound sadness washed over him. Even Valerius’s message felt suffocating. Other scholars he worked with had sent polite inquiries, but none of it was what Caelen, in his secret, pathetic heart, truly wanted.
No one seeking him out was Lord Kaelen. He must be mad, Caelen thought, to even entertain such a foolish hope. Still, he found himself clinging to a desperate, irrational thought: this was the fate of anyone caught in the maddening currents of obsessive affection.
Even knowing the bitter truth, he lay there, a bruised and foolish scholar, doing what he did best – closing his eyes and turning a blind eye to the painful reality.
“...It’s not only me.”
Perhaps Elara and he were in a similar predicament, both trapped, both helpless. The strange, twisted, grotesque thought lingered, a selfish, wicked, childish hope intertwining with it. While lying on his cot, staring at the dimly lit ceiling, another message flickered on his scrying-mirror. It was from an unknown, untraceable sender.
“*Caelen, are you in great pain?*”
Caelen frowned. Who among his peers would use his given name so familiarly? Valerius? But this was not his scrying signature. Before he could ponder further, a follow-up message arrived, relentless and infuriating.
“*I am so sorry. Truly, profoundly sorry. It is all my fault.*”
“*Forgive me.*”
“*Please, forgive me.*”
Whether it was three words or four, each one made him want to scream. He hurled his scrying-mirror onto the floor in frustration. How did this wretched woman get his private frequency? And how was someone who rarely used such devices, someone so heavily guarded, sending him these messages?
Then it hit him. Oh. He had used his own mirror to communicate with her regarding texts, hadn’t he? She must have remembered his frequency.
He cursed his idiotic brain and let out an angry sigh. To vent his frustration, he pounded his fists against the cot for a while, the rhythmic thumps dull and unsatisfying, until he was too tired to continue. He eventually drifted back into sleep. Just before his thoughts completely faded, one last message, unread, glowed on the shattered mirror’s surface.
“*Please, do not hate me.*”
Funny. He had hated her, in his own quiet way, for weeks.
The next morning, when he woke, his face was swollen like a bruised gourd.
---
He skipped his morning lecture on Obscure Incantations. No matter how diligently he pursued his studies, he was not so foolish as to appear in the Grand Hall with a face like this.
The Academic Aide, a sour-faced woman tasked with overseeing the scholars’ basic needs, brought him a meal. As he ate the bland porridge and tasteless stewed greens, she could not resist scolding him for his carelessness, for the unsightly bruise. He swallowed it all without truly tasting it.
As he set down his spoon and reached for a cup of cool water, the Aide came to clear the dishes. With the tray in one hand, she said,
“Scholar Thorne, you have a visitor.”
“What?”
“Shall I admit them?”
A visitor. His heart fluttered, a tremor of an emotion he refused to name. Before he could even identify the feeling, his mind had already begun to conjure an image of who might be standing at his door.
Could it be… Lord Kaelen?
It seemed a wild fantasy, utterly impossible given the prior day’s brutality. But it wasn’t entirely so. There were few at the Academy who knew his personal chamber. Among the other scholars, only a handful had ever dared approach. If it was him, then he must have come to offer some form of recompense, an apology for his outburst, his hands perhaps finally stinging with guilt. Lord Kaelen had never struck him before, not once, despite their previous clashes. Yes, he must be worried, perhaps even upset by his own actions. The thought filled him with an inexplicable warmth.
“Yes, please, admit them.”
The fantasy solidified into a certainty. Even though he chastised himself for such foolish hope, he couldn’t help but feel a small, pathetic sense of satisfaction. Despite everything, he still held some significance, some importance to Kaelen, however twisted. That thought, fleeting and dangerous, offered a strange comfort. He quickly turned toward the entrance, his pace quickening with an illicit excitement.
But the person waiting there was not who he had expected.
“Thorne. Looking worse for wear, I see.”
Lord Valerius, sharp-featured, his eyes glinting with amusement, leaned against the doorframe, a small pouch of exotic fruit clutched in his hand. The moment he saw Caelen’s bruised face, his smirk faded, replaced by an unusually serious frown.
“What in the blazes happened to your face?”
Caelen’s knees almost buckled from the sudden, bitter letdown. How did Lord Valerius even know the location of his private chamber, let alone feel inclined to visit?
“...An unfortunate tumble,” Caelen replied flatly, the lie tasting like ash.
Lord Valerius’s lips twisted in that familiar way, the precursor to a cutting remark.
“You always were a clumsy wretch, weren’t you?”
Caelen didn’t bother to argue. He merely rubbed his throbbing cheek, a dull ache reverberating through him. Humiliation surged, hot and bitter, as he recalled his earlier, idiotic anticipation. He was such a fool. Lord Kaelen did not think of him as someone important. And here he was, wagging his tail like a hopeful cur – a complete imbecile.
“Here, take this.”
Valerius tossed him a small, chilled ceramic pot. Caelen caught it reflexively and immediately peeled back the wax seal, revealing the contents.
“...Aconite salve.”
“Is it? Didn’t notice. Good for bruising, I hear.”
“Figures. Why would you care?”
“Damn, that’s harsh, Thorne. A simple ‘thank you’ would suffice.”
“What are you even doing here, Lord Valerius?”
“What do you think? Came to verify the extent of your ‘tumble’. Mind if I enter?”
“Hey, wait!”
Without hesitation, Valerius’s long legs carried him past the threshold and into Caelen’s meager chamber.
“Where do you keep your private texts?”
“Lord Valerius, where are you going?”
“Where else? There’s nowhere else of interest in your chamber.”
“…”
Caelen had no retort. Valerius was right. All scholar’s chambers, save for the most esteemed, were much the same. Feeling awkward, and deeply unsettled, Caelen followed Lord Valerius, who seemed oddly intent on inspecting the interior of his humble residence, as if searching for something far more valuable than a simple salve.