The Grand Salon, a veritable aviary of preening birds, hushed and restless. Thirty souls, each a captive in the gilded cage of court, navigated its polished expanse. For Elias, this was the same, suffocating chamber he’d endured for eighteen years of his life, a stage upon which his every breath felt drawn taut, like a string pulled to its snapping point. Survival here was a performance, a constant, delicate dance of smiles and veiled daggers.
His own struggle, this daily balancing act, began when he first understood the art of grouping, of finding one’s place in the serpentine hierarchy. A cubic jungle, this court, concealing a brutal, unyielding pyramid.
Elias flexed his left hand, the bruised knuckles a faint throb against his glove. The lingering phantom ache in his ribs tightened his stomach, drawing a weak, shallow breath. He scanned the bowing backs, the rustling silks, the powdered wigs of his fellow courtiers. At the Ducal dais, Lord Antoine, the Duchy’s Master of Ceremonies, droned on, his pronouncements lost to Elias as his gaze drifted. Two empty seats in the second row, usually occupied by figures of particular note, snagged his attention.
Valerius and Lysander. Absent. As expected. They had not graced the court with their presence since the incident, nor were they likely to appear tomorrow. Not unless Valerius succumbed to one of his unpredictable shifts in temper, or something further had transpired between the two of them, something Elias was not yet privy to.
He lowered his gaze to the intricate embroidery on his sleeve cuff, the threads a labyrinth of silver and blue. There had been a time, not so long ago, when he believed he understood Valerius completely. He’d convinced himself he was the one who knew the Baron best in the entire Duchy, even surpassing Silas, who shared a closer, more public intimacy with Valerius. Elias had taken a perverse pride in that secret knowledge, a quiet boast he relished. It had, in a way, helped him endure watching Valerius and Silas move through the court with such effortless synchronicity.
Now, his chin propped in his hand, a wave of self-loathing washed over him. The very notion that he’d harbored such an insidious thought, such a petty, grasping pride, disgusted him. What would the court think, if they knew the tangled desires that coiled beneath his composed facade? The answer was chillingly clear: he would be cast down, pushed to the very bottom of the pyramid, its widest, most despised plane.
This kind of treacherous ambition, unique to a man of the court, had to remain buried. Deep. So deep that not even its object, Valerius, could sense it. So deep that, in time, Elias himself might forget it existed.
But Valerius had not hidden his desires. Everyone in court, by now, spoke of them in hushed, scandalized tones.
Elias shifted, his eyes darting around the chamber. Heads remained bowed, conversations murmured behind gloved hands. He pressed his lips into a tight line, looking straight ahead. On a low velvet stool, where a servant often rested a satchel of documents, lay a discarded missive, its wax seal broken, the parchment bearing the faint scuffs of a carelessly placed boot.
Instinctively, as if someone might have caught him staring, Elias lowered his head, feigning interest in the Ducal pronouncements like the others.
Then he turned his neck, a subtle shift, towards the far corner. There, partially obscured by a heavy curtain, stood Silas. His face, usually a mask of aristocratic indifference, seemed drawn, shadowed. A delicate, almost sorrowful cast. It was as if he’d been carved from cold marble, touched by a melancholy Elias rarely associated with him.
Silas’s uniform, though impeccable, seemed to hang a little looser. The velvet of his doublet, cut perfectly at the start of the season, now left his wrists, surprisingly slender, fully exposed. Around one of those wrists, a heavy, unadorned silver bracelet glinted — not a fashionable trinket, but a severe, almost ascetic piece, a symbol of some personal adherence, an integral part of Silas’s stark identity.
Before knowing him, Elias had assumed Silas, with his ancient family name, hailed from the sun-drenched coastal estates, like Valerius. Yet despite his intimidating aura, Silas projected no overt wealth. His eyes, deep-set, perpetually held a shadow beneath their lids, and his pale irises gave him a perpetually haunted look. The sliver of his thin sclera showing beneath his pupils only heightened his sharp, almost gaunt appearance.
Silas’s overall atmosphere was one of grim intimidation, though it lacked the flamboyant refinement associated with the Duchy’s richest families. Instead, his face seemed marked by a profound sense of deprivation, exuding a kind of melancholic gravitas. Combined with his imposing height – he was undoubtedly one of the tallest men at court – it made him doubly formidable.
Fortunately, unlike Valerius, Silas’s sharp features possessed a classically handsome symmetry. Without that, Elias mused, people might have actively shunned him. Even so, Silas’s face was unsettling, intimidating, full of a nervous, watchful energy.
But Silas’s personality could not have been more different.
It was not just that he seemed indifferent to courtly machinations; it was as if he actively erased events from his memory, whether intentionally or not. He cultivated an air of “detached ownership of nothing,” a trait that ironically added to his mystique. Most notably, Silas cared little for material gain. He never paid attention to how much others spent or how much they vied for favors. If the mood struck him, he’d casually toss a purse of coin to a struggling squire without a second thought, as if the concept of currency held no meaning. Sometimes he’d lend a valuable riding mare and forget about it entirely. There were even stories of courtiers returning borrowed jewels only for Silas to ask, puzzled, why they were being presented to him.
Still, he didn’t indulge just anyone. He’d grant random requests when in a rare good mood but coldly refuse those who were truly desperate. Even with friends, Silas could be harsh. Elias once overheard how Baron Armand, upon seeing Silas’s prized hunting hawk – a bird he rarely showed off – eagerly tried to take it from its perch without permission. Silas struck the Baron’s hand on the spot, sending him reeling back, clutching his fingers.
At the pinnacle of the social hierarchy, men like Silas and Valerius shared one thing in common: a complete lack of concern for others’ opinions. This indifference, in its own way, was what allowed them to sit at the pyramid’s peak. Why do we, Elias wondered, with our own hands, hand over the keys to our world to these uncontrollable predators? No matter how much he thought about it, he still couldn’t understand.
And yet, Silas, for all his severity, prided himself on adhering to the Duchy’s strictest codes of honor and decorum. He was the type of nobleman who slept with ancient tomes of law beneath his pillow, yet claimed to follow every precept. He abstained from idle gossip, avoided excessive drink, and never engaged in petty courtly extortion. Yet the doctrine he followed seemed flawed – anyone could tell from the often-hypocritical rules of court alone. Elias had heard that true honor allowed for nuance, for mercy.
They said the court’s ancient codes viewed ‘unnatural predilections’ as a grave sin against one’s lineage. Is that why Valerius’s actions now repulsed Silas so much? Elias licked his dry lips. A strange sense of relief washed over him that he hadn’t been caught in the court’s condemning gaze. If he had been, he would have ended up like that discarded missive, trampled on the floor. And yet, even in that moment, he wondered – if Valerius and he had remained close, as they were just a few months ago, would Valerius have protected him?
The thought surfaced against his will, dragging with it memories he desperately wanted to forget. He took a deep breath, trying to suppress the wave of nausea that rose in his chest, as though the bitter coffee he’d consumed earlier were threatening to come back up. No. Of course not.
How laughable, that he had once been so arrogant as to think he would. To Valerius, Elias was nothing. Just a convenient friend, a useful tool to pass the time. He knew this now because of the way Valerius had looked at him when he’d struck him to the ground. His eyes had said everything. Elias hadn’t wanted to know the truth, but it had been staring him in the face.
Valerius sinned openly. Elias, too, was a sinner – a man of ambition and envy – but he hid it. And so, Valerius was punished by courtly censure, while Elias was spared.
A faint laugh escaped his lips, so soft it was only audible to himself. “...So, as long as I don’t get caught, that’s all that matters.” Perhaps the Duchy’s cruel, unforgiving ‘God’ had a personality like Silas’s.
His gaze shifted towards the empty seat near the Ducal dais. This was unusual, but today, Elias felt a pang of pity for Lysander. Poor soul, caught in the clutches of a devil. He lacked the strength to resist that monstrous, seductive power. Fragile, helpless Lysander, so unlike his family’s towering reputation. He should have fled the moment Elias had, subtly, warned him, fool.
Elias knew he was not a good man. He was selfish and self-serving, and that’s why he’d been punished. Sometimes, he even thought this: If you’re going to desire men, why not pick someone sly and deceitful like me? At least then life would be simpler. Why fall for someone so innocent and earnest, only to end up suffering for it?
These days, Elias thought differently. Yeah. Of course no one could ever truly love someone like him. He knew himself too well to believe otherwise. There was a time when he thought he could have it all. Arrogant, conceited Elias Renard. Elias Renard, who thought he understood the world at eighteen. Wicked, vile Elias Renard. Pitiful Elias Renard, who had no one to comfort him, so he endured everything alone.
That day, Elias found himself unable to focus on the Ducal pronouncements. He used the lingering ache in his ribs as an excuse to slump slightly in his seat, thinking to himself: Well, at least I’m not as ruined as Valerius or Lysander.
Whispers about Valerius and Lysander spread like wildfire through the court. Whether they were exaggerated or grounded in truth, no one could say for certain. There was no way to find out either. Valerius’s former circle of allies had vanished from court, as if ripped out by the roots. The few who remained were too preoccupied with forming new alliances to worry about anything else, inadvertently fueling the rumors even further.
---
“Master Renard, forgive me, but who was closest to Baron Valerius?”
“Baron… no, Lord Silas.”
Elias overheard this as he passed by the retiring room, on his way back to his own chambers after the assembly. A senior chamberlain had asked, and a junior aide had answered, too quickly. Pretending he hadn’t heard, Elias walked into the antechamber. The chamberlain glanced nervously between Elias and the empty seats, drumming his fingers against a polished console. Then, as if giving up on some unspoken thought, he announced, “The assembly is concluded.”
The moment dismissal ended, Elias reached for his dispatch case. As he swung it over his shoulder, a hand landed lightly on his back. Silas. “Master Renard. May I walk with you?”
Elias looked at his face. He knew. He had always watched Valerius and Silas’s every move, so he knew that the person Silas most frequently sought out after court was always Valerius. After a brief pause, Elias offered a vague gesture. “I have correspondence to attend to.”
“Later, then?”
“More correspondence. Duties.”
“No.” Silas’s voice was flat, final.
“Why not?”
“Getting too close to a losing hand only drags one down.”
“Ha.” Elias let out a short, hollow laugh at the stark absurdity of it.
Right. This was why he’d been able to get along with Silas better than expected. Their twisted values seemed to align in strange, unsettling ways.
“So, Baron Armand, Lord Alaric—they’re losing hands? Even your cousin, Sir Gareth?”
“If you put it like that, then yes, precisely. But you are different, Master Renard.” The backhanded compliment left Elias feeling colder than before.
“What’s that supposed to mean? You are quite awful, Lord Silas.”
“No, I am not.”
“You are so awful.”
“Hmm. It is in the ancient codes: ‘Thou shalt not deceive.’ I am merely being honest, Master Renard.” Honestly, Silas was worse than Elias. At least Elias didn’t so blatantly treat his former friends as expendable.
“That is why I am a good man.”
“...Indeed.”
“Since I am such a good man, may I call upon you at your residence later this evening?” Silas blinked twice. Elias looked at his face for a moment, then, after a subtle calculation, nodded.
“Of course. My door is always open.” As long as Silas did not interfere with Elias’s own delicate ascent, there was no reason to refuse. To secure one’s place in the court’s cruel hierarchy, one often had to sup with devils. And Silas, in his own austere way, was precisely that.