Two days following the incident in the Sanatorium, Alistair found a small, discreet note tucked into the lacquered wood of his private wardrobe alcove. It was folded precisely, sealed with a faint scent of cypress and ink.
His long fingers uncreased the vellum. *“Could we speak for a moment in the Armory Annex before Tactical Maneuvers today?”*
He read the words twice. A summons, then. Not an overture. Solstice Academy, with its rigid hierarchy and hushed ambitions, permitted little room for casual sentiment, certainly none so boldly declared. The thought of a true confession, a whisper of romantic inclination, was ludicrous. He dismissed the notion with a quiet scoff.
His mind, in truth, remained too clouded by Elias Thorne’s unsettling devotion. The memory of the cold marble floor against his foot, the press of Elias’s lips, still brought a flush to his neck. He had almost forgotten the note until the gong for the fourth period, signaling the imminent start of Tactical Maneuvers.
Changing into the academy’s practical, deep-cerulean drill tunic, Alistair made his way to the Armory Annex. He felt a flicker of curiosity, a faint, almost imperceptible pull. What trivial matter could warrant such discretion? He assumed nothing significant.
Yet, the figure waiting amidst the glinting racks of ceremonial blades and polished training shields proved unexpected. Lorien, a junior scholar from a provincial house, stood hunched, his dark hair falling over eyes that darted nervously around the chamber.
“Lorien?” Alistair’s voice held a note of mild surprise. His brow furrowed. Lorien, typically so diffident, waved a hand, a strained, almost apologetic smile on his face. That smile, a blend of timidity and forced cheer, grated on Alistair’s nerves.
“What is it? Why the sudden urgency?”
Lorien’s fingers began to twist, his gaze fixed on the polished floorboards. He cleared his throat, a sound barely audible above the distant clamor of students heading to class.
“Ah, I… I have something I wished to convey, Alistair…”
“Yes? Spit it out.”
Alistair wanted to leave. Urgently. Being found alone with Lorien, a student of lesser standing and known for a certain, unwanted awkwardness, could spark whispers. Rumors were a corrosive poison at Solstice, and Alistair, with his family’s faded prestige, could ill afford any that threatened his carefully cultivated image of detached propriety.
Oblivious to Alistair’s growing impatience, Lorien’s thumb found its way to his teeth. He bit at the nail, his eyes scanning the shadowed corners of the Armory Annex, a mix of indecision and profound fear etched across his face. Each time his lips seemed poised to speak, they clamped shut again.
Silence stretched, taut and irritating.
Lorien had always been an irritant. His meekness, his constant state of unease, seemed to magnify Alistair’s own frustrations. It was an unfair judgment, perhaps, but Alistair felt a prickle of raw sensitivity today. His head throbbed, a dull ache that lingered from the sanatorium visit.
“Look, I apologize, but class awaits. Could you simply state your purpose?”
Perhaps it wasn’t Lorien’s fault. Perhaps Alistair simply needed an outlet for his own swirling anxieties, his own unwanted intimacy with Elias. His stomach churned with a quiet unrest.
Lorien, as if finally galvanized by Alistair’s curt tone, swallowed hard. His voice, when it came, was a reedy whisper.
“Uh, Alistair… I… you see, I…”
“Yes?” Alistair’s response was perfunctory, a hand idly scratching his neck. Time was pressing. He yearned to simply pry the words from the younger scholar’s mouth.
Just then, the heavy oak door of the Armory Annex burst open. Both Alistair and Lorien spun, their gazes meeting with Lysander Valerius, who stood panting, his chest heaving. Lysander’s eyes, however, weren’t on Alistair. They were fixed, blazing, on Lorien.
*Huuufff, huuufff…*
His labored breaths confirmed it. Lysander, a prodigious master of bladecraft and a scion of one of Aethelgard’s most ancient houses, had been running. A suffocating tightness gripped Alistair’s chest. He pictured Lysander, his face probably contorted with panic, searching the sprawling academy grounds for Lorien.
Lysander exhaled a long, ragged breath, then strode purposefully into the chamber. Unconsciously, Alistair’s hand fell from his neck. Lysander’s fierce gaze flickered between Lorien and Alistair, his expression predatory.
“Why are you here with him?”
The question was a low growl, directed at no one in particular, yet piercing Alistair directly. Lysander’s hands clenched and unclenched at his sides.
Beneath Alistair’s practiced composure, his insides churned with a sickening dread. After a long, agonizing pause, Lysander’s eyes finally settled on Alistair. His gaze was unbearable.
“What the hell is this, Alistair Finch?”
*Please, please, don’t look at me like that.* Blame Lorien, Alistair thought wildly. He was the one who summoned me. Why accuse me, your supposed peer, with such venom? I was merely dragged into this unseemly drama.
Lysander’s burning eyes remained locked. Alistair knew those eyes. They weren’t the eyes of passion or fervent camaraderie. They were the eyes of raw rage, of consuming jealousy, of madness. The face of a man deranged by an unwelcome, possessive love—a face Alistair found both pitiable and utterly despicable.
“Why are you here with him!”
*You are pathetic, Lysander Valerius. So utterly pathetic.* Alistair glared back, a defiant spark in his eyes. And yet, somehow, he felt the true pity resided not with Lysander, but with himself.
Before Alistair could react, Lysander’s long strides closed the distance. The world spun. A sharp, blinding pain erupted across his cheek.
“...!”
He couldn’t process it. His body toppled, striking the hard floorboards with a dull thud. Only then did his mind replay the image, stark and unbelievable.
*No…*
Lysander had struck him.
Lysander Valerius had struck him.
Lying on the ground, Alistair’s trembling fingers traced the searing warmth on his cheek. He couldn’t comprehend it. *How could you… How could you do this to me?*
“A-Alistair!”
“You craven fool! I told you to address me by my full title! No, don’t even utter my name—don’t speak at all, you mewling pup!” Lysander screamed, his voice raw. Lorien, horrified, scrambled towards Alistair, but Lysander’s furious countenance sent him recoiling, his face paling.
“I-I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“You pledged yourself! You swore allegiance! Damn you!”
Lorien took another step back, his eyes brimming with unshed tears. *No, he’s not the one who should be weeping,* Alistair thought, a bitter ache in his throat. *It should be me.* Tears welled, hot and stinging, threatening to spill.
Mercifully, before Alistair’s composure could utterly shatter, Lysander let out a violent curse. He seized Lorien by the arm, dragging him from the Armory Annex with a furious strength. It all happened so swiftly, so brutally.
Left sitting alone on the cold floor, Alistair stared at the half-open door. A shaft of weak sunlight pierced the gap, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. Something inside him finally gave way. The dam holding back his humiliation and pain burst, and silent tears streamed down his face.
He hated everything. Lorien, who had pulled him into this public, utterly debasing spectacle. Lysander, who had dared to lay a hand on him. He wished them both to simply vanish. He felt utterly miserable, reduced to a mere prop in their wretched drama.
He forced himself up, skipped Tactical Maneuvers, and went directly to the Prefect’s Chambers. His swollen, reddened face made his excuse—a clumsy fall during practice—utterly believable. The Prefect, a man of few words, simply nodded, offering a rare, curt dismissal.
---
At his family’s smaller town residence, Alistair collapsed onto his bed and slept. He woke hours later, his face puffy and bruised, the ache a dull throb beneath his skin. Out of habit, he retrieved his comm-slate. A message from Caius Volkov, Lysander’s second-in-command and a formidable duelist, glowed on the screen. He rarely exchanged missives with Caius, their only common link being Lysander.
*Damn it all.* If it were anyone else, he would have ignored it. But Caius Volkov held considerable sway among the academy’s elite cliques. Alistair couldn’t afford to slight him.
“*Alistair, did you simply vanish from the drills?*”
He clicked his tongue. The message was three hours old, a scolding in disguise. He crafted a belated, carefully nonchalant reply.
“*Haha, a touch unwell, I’m afraid.*”
He deliberately kept it light. He wouldn’t, *couldn’t*, allow anyone to know the truth of his predicament. The thought of whispers circulating, of the humiliation of being struck by Lysander, was unbearable. And all because of Lorien, a junior scholar not even worth the dust on his boots.
“*Are you well enough?*”
Caius, showing genuine concern? Alistair frowned. The strangeness of it, the unexpected solicitude, made him switch off his comm-slate.
Hours later, a fresh wave of despair washed over him. Even Caius’s message, however well-meaning, felt stifling. Other students, those with whom he shared scholarly pursuits, had sent polite inquiries, but none offered the solace he craved.
No one seeking him out included Lysander Valerius. Alistair must be losing his mind. Yet, he consoled himself with a bitter thought: *this is the burden of a man consumed by a maddening love.* Even knowing the truth, he lay there like an imbecile, doing what he did best—closing his eyes, turning a blind eye to the bitter reality.
*“…I’m not the only one,”* he whispered to the vaulted ceiling. Perhaps Lorien and he were caught in the same twisted web. A strange, grotesque thought, selfish and childish, intertwined with a wicked hope. As he lay staring upwards, another message arrived. An unknown number.
“*Alistair, do you feel very ill?*”
He frowned. Who among his peers would address him so informally, so intimately? Caius? But the number was unfamiliar. Before he could ponder, a follow-up arrived, relentless and infuriating.
“*I am so sorry. Truly, deeply sorry. It is all my fault.*”
“*Forgive me.*”
“*Please, forgive me.*”
Whether three words or four, each one made him want to scream. He hurled the comm-slate onto the plush rug in frustration. How had that impudent junior scholar obtained his number? And how was someone who purportedly didn’t even possess a personal comm-slate sending him messages?
Then it hit him. *Oh.* He had called Lorien once, hadn’t he? A calculated act of kindness, of mentoring, after a particularly public academic failure on Lorien’s part. A gesture to subtly elevate Alistair’s own reputation for magnanimity.
He cursed his idiotic brain and let out an angry sigh. He pounded his fists against the soft mattress for a while, until exhaustion finally claimed him. Just before his thoughts completely faded into sleep, one last message lingered in his mind, unread but somehow understood.
*“Please, do not despise me.”*
*Funny,* Alistair thought, drifting. *I have despised you for months.* The next morning, when he woke, his face was swollen like a poorly kneaded dough.
---
He skipped academy. No matter how diligently he pursued his studies, he wasn’t so zealous as to appear in the Grand Hall with such a disfigurement. His majordomo prepared a simple luncheon. As Alistair ate, the stern-faced servant couldn’t resist a gentle scolding, urging more caution in his movements. The meal itself was unremarkable—a bland, savory porridge with seasoned greens. He swallowed it quickly, barely chewing.
As he set down his spoon and reached for a goblet of spiced water, the majordomo returned to clear the dishes. With a porcelain plate in one hand, he announced, his voice clipped, “Alistair, a friend has called.”
“What?” Alistair’s hand paused mid-air.
“Shall I admit them?”
A friend. His heart fluttered, a tremor he could not quite quell. Before he could even identify the emotion, his mind began to conjure images of who might be standing at the polished oak door.
Could it be… Lysander Valerius?
The thought seemed a ludicrous fantasy, yet it wasn’t entirely impossible. Few from Solstice Academy ever visited his family’s private residence. Only a select handful even knew its location. If it were Lysander, then he must have finally come to apologize, a pang of guilt finally striking him after such an unprecedented act of violence. Lysander had never struck him before, not once. Yes, he must be worried, upset, wracked with regret.
“Yes,” Alistair said, his voice a little too eager, “Please, admit them.”
The fantasy solidified into a certainty. Even as he silently chastised himself for such childish naivety, he couldn’t help but feel a small, inexplicable sense of satisfaction. Despite everything, despite the blow, he was still important to Lysander in some way. That thought, treacherous as it was, filled him with an unexpected warmth. He turned quickly toward the front door, his pace quickening with a surge of misguided hope.
But the figure waiting in the vestibule was not who he had envisioned.
“Yo, what’s the calamity?”
Caius Volkov, his sharp features set in a familiar, playful smirk, held up a small leather satchel of candied fruits. Yet, as soon as his eyes landed on Alistair’s bruised face, his expression hardened, his tone unusually serious.
“What in the blazes happened to your face?”
Alistair’s knees almost buckled from the sudden, crushing disappointment. *How did Caius even know where he resided?*
“...I fell,” Alistair replied, his voice flat, devoid of inflection.
Caius frowned, twisting his lips in that characteristic way he did before delivering a cutting remark. “You really are an oaf sometimes, aren’t you?”
Alistair didn’t bother to argue. He simply rubbed his swollen cheek, a dull ache reverberating through the bone. Embarrassment surged, a hot wave of shame. He recalled his earlier anticipation. He truly was an idiot. Lysander Valerius didn’t consider him important. And here Alistair was, wagging his tail like a hopeful cur—a complete imbecile.
“Here, take this.” Caius extended a small, chilled ceramic pot. Alistair accepted it, prying open the lid to inspect its contents.
“…It’s ice-fluff. Green tea infused.”
“Is it? Didn’t notice the flavor.”
“Figures. Why would you care?”
“Damn, that’s quite harsh, Finch.”
“What are you even doing here, Volkov?”
“What do you imagine? Came to check on you. Mind if I enter?”
“Hey, wait!”
Without hesitation, Caius’s long legs carried him past Alistair and further into the residence.
“Where’s your study?”
“Hey, where are you going?”
“Where else? There’s nowhere else of interest in your modest dwelling.”
“…”
Alistair had no retort. Caius was, annoyingly, correct. Homes, despite their grandeur, were ultimately all much the same. Feeling awkward and thoroughly discomfited, Alistair followed Caius, who seemed strangely intent on inspecting the interior of his private residence.