Two days following the incident in the Collegium’s infirmary, Lyraeus found a crisp parchment slipped beneath his personal scroll case in the Valerius solar. The script was unfamiliar, yet carefully formed, almost reverent in its neatness.
“My Lord Valerius, could you grant me a moment in the Green Sanctuary before your midday studies today?”
Lyraeus frowned, a delicate line appearing between his brows. His first thought was a petition, perhaps from an artisan seeking patronage, or a junior scholar requesting a review of their work. A summons for something less formal, a private appeal. He dismissed the fleeting notion of a romantic overture; such impropriety was unheard of within the rigid strictures of the imperial court, doubly so for one of his standing.
Of course, it could not be that. He folded the note precisely, tucking it into a sleeve of his robes. The request, mundane in its wording, soon faded from his immediate thoughts, overshadowed by a particularly vexing geopolitical map he was redrawing for the Imperial Strategium.
As the midday chimes echoed through the palace wings, marking the shift to his afternoon schedule of private research, Lyraeus made his way towards the Green Sanctuary. It was a secluded conservatory, rarely visited, its glass ceiling dappled with the shade of ancient laurels. He felt a mild curiosity about the sender, yet gave it little true consideration. The matter, he presumed, would be inconsequential.
However, the figure awaiting him proved to be anything but inconsequential. Septimus stood amidst the exotic ferns, a shadow among the vibrant foliage. His plain tunic was neatly pressed, his usually disheveled hair combed flat against his skull. He wrung his hands, a small, anxious gesture.
“Septimus?” Lyraeus’s voice was cool, laced with a subtle surprise. He had not expected this. He had not anticipated seeing the boy again so soon, let alone in such an intimate, secluded setting. The memory of the scarred foot, the fervent kiss, resurfaced, a faint tremor in his stomach.
Septimus’s head, which had been bowed in apparent contemplation of a potted orchid, snapped up. His eyes, wide and almost luminous, met Lyraeus’s. He offered a small, hesitant wave, the familiar awkwardness still clinging to him. The sight ignited a flicker of irritation within Lyraeus. This boy, again.
“What is it? Why so suddenly, and here?” Lyraeus kept his tone neutral, though an internal tension began to coil. He did not wish to be seen alone with Septimus, not after the strange, discomfiting display in the infirmary. Rumors in the Imperial City moved faster than the desert winds, and were far more destructive.
In response, Septimus nervously picked at the cuticles of his fingers. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, his gaze darting around the lush confines of the Sanctuary. “Ah, my Lord… I… I have something I wished to convey…”
“Convey what, Septimus?” Lyraeus prompted, his patience wearing thin. He wanted to depart as swiftly as possible. His reputation, his careful construction of aloof respectability, felt fragile in this moment. He extended his patronage to Septimus out of a sense of duty, a calculated display of magnanimity—no more, no less.
Oblivious to Lyraeus’s mounting discomfort, Septimus continued to bite his thumb, his eyes wide with a mix of indecision and desperate resolve. Each time he seemed on the verge of speech, his lips would clamp shut, a visible struggle playing out on his face.
Lyraeus simply watched, a growing vexation prickling at him. He had never truly liked Septimus, had merely tolerated him. Every action, every nervous tic, served only to deepen his existing disquiet. The boy’s small mouth continued its hesitant movements—an act that might have appeared endearing to a more sympathetic observer, but to Lyraeus, it was maddeningly tedious. He recognized, distantly, that his reaction might be unduly harsh, a manifestation of his own internal turmoil.
“Look, Septimus, I regret to inform you, but my studies beckon. Can you not simply articulate your purpose?” Lyraeus’s voice was edged with a brittle formality.
To exacerbate matters, Lyraeus felt inexplicably out of sorts. His mind felt a tangled knot of frustration and a strange, lingering confusion from the last encounter with Septimus. Perhaps his sharp tone was not truly aimed at the boy, but at the suffocating weight of court expectations, at the gnawing insecurities that whispered from the shadows of his own pride.
While Lyraeus wrestled with these internal resentments, Septimus finally seemed to steel himself. In a small, stammering voice, barely audible above the rustle of the conservatory’s leaves, he began to speak.
“Uh, my Lord… I… uh, you see, I…”
“Yes?” Lyraeus responded, a half-hearted sigh escaping him. He rubbed a hand over his jaw. The midday bell had sounded, and he wished the boy would simply deliver his message, whatever it was. He felt a ludicrous urge to force the words from Septimus’s mouth himself.
Just then, the carved wooden door to the Green Sanctuary creaked open, admitting a sliver of the bright midday sun. Both Lyraeus and Septimus turned. A young man stood framed in the doorway, gasping for breath. It was Cassian Valerius, Lyraeus’s junior cousin, a minor Praetor whose ambitions far outstripped his meager talent.
Cassian’s chest heaved. He had clearly been running. Lyraeus felt a strange, suffocating pressure in his own chest, imagining his cousin tearing through the palace in search of Septimus. Cassian exhaled, a long, ragged sound, and strode purposefully into the sanctuary. Lyraeus’s hand, which had been idly rubbing his neck, dropped to his side. Cassian’s gaze flickered between Septimus and Lyraeus, his expression a tight mask of fury.
“Why are you here with him?” Cassian’s voice was low, seething. It was unclear to whom the question was addressed. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, knuckles white.
Beneath Lyraeus’s carefully cultivated calm, a tremor of pure shock ran through him. He felt as if his very bones were being ground to dust. After a long, agonizing pause, Cassian’s furious gaze settled on Lyraeus. The look was unbearable. It was an assault on his dignity, a raw, open challenge to his authority as the boy’s patron.
“What is the meaning of this, Cassian?” Lyraeus demanded, his voice dangerously quiet.
*Please, please, do not look at me like that.* Blame Septimus for this clandestine meeting. Why gaze at him, his kinsman, with such venomous resentment? Lyraeus had been drawn into this messy affair by the boy’s peculiar devotion.
Even as these thoughts raced through his mind, Cassian’s burning eyes remained fixed on him. Lyraeus recognized the look. These were not the eyes of passion or fervent commitment; they were the eyes of someone consumed by rage, by petty jealousy, by a deranged sense of possession. It was the face of a man twisted by an obsession, a face Lyraeus found both contemptible and pitiable.
“Why are you here with him!” Cassian repeated, louder this time, his voice cracking.
*You are pathetic, Cassian. So utterly pathetic.* Lyraeus met his cousin’s glare with a cold, aristocratic disdain. Yet, a sudden, piercing insight struck him: perhaps the truly pathetic one was not Cassian, but himself.
Before Lyraeus could fully process this thought, Cassian’s long strides had brought him directly in front of Lyraeus. The moment Lyraeus looked closely into his cousin’s contorted face, the world seemed to tilt. A sharp shove, deliberate and forceful, caught Lyraeus off balance. He stumbled backward, arms flailing, and crashed clumsily against a ceramic planter filled with exotic, thorny flora. A searing pain shot through his hip as he landed awkwardly, a dull thud echoing in the quiet sanctuary.
“No… impossible,” Lyraeus whispered, struggling to regain his breath. He had been *struck*. Not with a fist, but with an intentional, public humiliation. He felt a rush of blood to his face, a burning shame.
Lying amidst broken pottery shards and scattered soil, Lyraeus touched his cheek. It throbbed from the fall, his hip already aching. How could this be? How could Cassian… how could he do this to Lyraeus, a kinsman, his senior, a House Valerius scion?
“M-My Lord!” Septimus cried out, his face pale with horror. He started towards Lyraeus, a frantic hand reaching out. Cassian, however, roared like a cornered beast.
“You cur! I warned you to steer clear of him! No, don’t even look at him—don’t speak to him at all, you grasping little worm!”
Septimus flinched, retreating a step, his face on the verge of tears. But no, he was not the one who should be weeping. Lyraeus felt tears welling, hot and stinging, threatening to betray his composure.
Mercifully, before Lyraeus’s carefully constructed façade could shatter entirely, Cassian cursed violently and seized Septimus by the arm. He dragged the bewildered boy from the Sanctuary, the heavy wooden door slamming shut behind them. It all happened with disorienting speed.
Left alone, sprawled on the ground of the Green Sanctuary, Lyraeus stared at the half-open door. A beam of sunlight pierced the gloom, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. Something within him, a dam holding back a torrent of emotion, finally gave way. Tears flowed freely, silently tracing paths through the grime on his cheeks.
He hated everything. Septimus, who had drawn him into this sordid tableau. Cassian, who had dared to touch him, to humiliate him so utterly. He wished them both to simply vanish. He felt wretched, reduced to a mere casualty in their twisted, unspoken feud.
---
Lyraeus rose, stiff and aching. He abandoned his midday studies, instead retreating to his private chambers. He sent his personal valet, Tiber, to request early leave from his remaining court obligations, citing a sudden malaise. His face, bruised and streaked with dirt and tear tracks, made his excuse painfully believable. Tiber, ever discreet, seemed to understand without needing to pry.
Later, confined to his chambers, Lyraeus collapsed onto his divan and drifted into a fitful sleep. When he awoke, his face felt puffy, his hip a dull ache. Out of habit, he reached for the small, intricate device used for sending short missives. A message from Kaelen. They did not often correspond outside of scholarly debate, but he had often joined Lyraeus in the Strategium. *Damn them all.*
Were it any other acquaintance, Lyraeus would have ignored it. But Kaelen, a junior advisor in the Imperial Archives, held a certain influence among the more intellectual circles of the court. He could not afford to dismiss him.
“My Lord, did you abscond from the midday colloquium?”
Lyraeus clicked his tongue. He replied belatedly to the message, now several hours old.
“Haha, merely feeling indisposed.”
He deliberately kept his tone light, dismissive. He did not want anyone to uncover the ignoble truth of his situation. The thought of the court learning that Cassian had publicly shamed him, and all because of Septimus, was an unbearable humiliation.
“Are you well, Lyraeus?”
Kaelen, showing *concern*? What strange new world was this? The unexpected solicitude unsettled Lyraeus. He switched off the device, the silver casing cold in his hand.
Hours later, a wave of profound desolation washed over him. Even Kaelen’s message felt oppressive. Other scholarly friends, those he had spent countless hours with, had also sent discreet inquiries, but none of it was what Lyraeus truly craved. Not a single inquiry, not a single message, came from Cassian. Lyraeus must be truly mad. Still, he consoled himself, this was the unavoidable fate of a soul caught in the throes of a maddening love – or so he told himself, attempting to rationalize Cassian’s viciousness.
Even knowing the truth, Lyraeus lay there like an idiot, doing what he did best: closing his eyes, turning a blind eye to the bitter reality.
“…I am not the only one,” he murmured into the silence of his chamber. Perhaps Septimus and he were bound in a shared predicament. A strange, twisted, grotesque thought, clinging to a selfish, wicked, childish hope. As he stared at the ornate ceiling, another message arrived. The sender was an unknown cipher, a number he did not recognize.
“My Lord, are you suffering greatly?”
Lyraeus frowned. Who among his peers would address him so intimately, yet use an unknown transmitter? Kaelen? But it was not his registered cipher. Before Lyraeus could deliberate further, a follow-up message arrived, relentlessly, infuriatingly.
“I am sorry. Truly sorry. This is all my fault.”
“I am sorry.”
“Please, forgive me.”
Whether it was three words or four, each hammered at his already frayed nerves, making him want to scream. He hurled the device onto the silken rug in frustration. How had this boy, this apostate, acquired a device, let alone his private cipher? And how was someone who supposedly had no means of communication sending him missives?
Then it struck him. Oh. He had once made a direct summons, a private exchange of ciphers, to Septimus himself. Lyraeus cursed his own idiocy, a bitter sigh escaping his lips. To vent his impotent rage, he pounded his fists against the soft cushions of the divan for a while, until exhaustion finally claimed him and he drifted into a troubled sleep. Just before his thoughts completely faded, one final message from the unseen sender lingered in his mind.
“Please, do not despise me.”
*Funny,* Lyraeus thought, a humorless laugh caught in his throat. *I have already despised you for months.*
The next morning, when he woke, Lyraeus’s face was swollen, his hip a dull throb beneath his touch.
---
He avoided court that day. No matter how dutiful a scion of House Valerius he strove to be, he possessed insufficient fervor to present himself with a bruised, puffy face to the cynical gaze of the court.
Tiber, his loyal valet, brought him a light repast. As Lyraeus ate, Tiber could not resist offering a mild, gentle rebuke, advising more caution in his daily movements. The meal itself was simple: a bowl of restorative broth, delicately seasoned with herbs, and a plate of steamed river fish. Lyraeus swallowed it without much appetite.
As he set down his spoon, reaching for a goblet of spiced cordial, Tiber returned to clear the dishes. With a porcelain plate in one hand, the valet inclined his head.
“My Lord Lyraeus, you have a visitor.”
“What?”
“Shall I admit them?”
A visitor. His heart fluttered, a delicate, almost imperceptible tremor. Before he could even identify the surge of emotion, his mind had already begun to construct an image of who might be standing beyond his chamber door.
*Could it be… Cassian?*
It seemed a wild, improbable fantasy, yet it was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility. Few from the court had ever visited his private chambers. Among his many acquaintances, only a handful even knew the precise location within the sprawling Valerius wing. If it were Cassian, then he must have come to offer an apology, having finally succumbed to a flicker of guilt for his shameful display. Cassian had never, not once, laid a hand upon him before. Yes, he must be worried, distraught by his own unseemly behavior.
“Yes, Tiber, please admit them.”
The fantasy solidified into a fragile certainty. Even though Lyraeus chastised himself for such foolish naivety, he could not help but feel a small, perverse sense of satisfaction. Despite everything, he was still significant to Cassian, in some inexplicable way. The thought filled him with a fragile, illogical warmth. He turned quickly towards the door, his pace quickening with a flicker of anticipatory hope.
But the person awaiting him was not who he had expected.
“Yo, Lyraeus, what’s this I hear of your sudden indisposition?”
Kaelen’s sharp-featured face greeted him with a playful, yet knowing, smirk. He held a small pouch, the fine weave suggesting some delicacy within. As soon as Kaelen’s eyes fell upon Lyraeus’s bruised countenance, however, his lighthearted tone evaporated, replaced by an unusually serious query.
“By the Serpent’s Scales, what in the abyssal depths happened to your face?”
Lyraeus’s knees almost buckled from the sudden, crushing disappointment. How had Kaelen even known to find him in his private chambers? The question, though, was secondary to the bitter taste in his mouth.
“…A fall,” Lyraeus replied, his voice flat, devoid of inflection.
Kaelen frowned, twisting his lips in that familiar manner he adopted before delivering a sarcastic observation. “You are truly an utter imbecile, are you not?”
Lyraeus did not bother to argue. He merely rubbed his aching hip, the dull throb a stark reminder of his humiliation. Embarrassment surged through him as he recalled his earlier, foolish anticipation. He was such a fool. Cassian did not view him as someone important, not truly. And here he was, wagging his metaphorical tail like a hopeful cur—a complete imbecile, indeed.
“Here, take this.” Kaelen extended the pouch. Lyraeus accepted it, opening the fine drawstring to reveal a cluster of crystallised river berries.
“…These are sugared,” Lyraeus observed, a faint note of distaste in his voice. He preferred the tart, natural fruit.
“Are they? Didn’t even notice.” Kaelen shrugged.
“Figures. Why would you care?”
“Damn, that’s harsh, Lyraeus.”
“What exactly are you doing here, Kaelen?”
“What do you imagine? Came to check on you. Mind if I enter properly?”
“Hey, wait!”
Without hesitation, Kaelen’s long legs carried him past Lyraeus and into the chamber. He surveyed the rich furnishings with a casual, almost proprietorial air.
“Where is your private study?”
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Where else? There is nowhere else of interest in your chambers.”
Lyraeus had no retort. Kaelen was, in a practical sense, correct. Quarters in the palace, despite their opulence, served similar functions. Feeling awkward, Lyraeus followed Kaelen, who seemed oddly intent on inspecting the interior of his private world, as if searching for something Lyraeus himself had overlooked.