Aethelred’s face bore the familiar signs of a night spent in revelry – smudges of charcoal on his cheek, a faint sheen of sweat despite the cool morning, eyes alight with a restless energy that belied the dark circles beneath them. He leaned back on his carver’s stool, a half-finished sculpture of a defiant griffin clutched in one hand. Lysander, feigning irritation, tossed a chilled flask of spiced water onto Aethelred’s workbench. He always brought Aethelred a cooling draught on mornings such as these, the only reliable antidote to the lingering heat of Veritas’s late-night gatherings.
“Wipe that lecherous grin from your face, Aethelred,” Lysander murmured, his voice softer than he intended. “The Master Sculptor will have your hide for appearing so dishevelled.”
“Yours is safe, thanks to your diligent alibis.” Aethelred’s laugh was a low rumble, easy and unburdened. He took a long swallow from the flask, eyes glinting with amusement. Lysander merely offered a faint, thin smile in return.
Turning to his own easel, Lysander’s gaze drifted past Aethelred’s, settling on a discarded architectural blueprint sprawled across the adjacent drafting table. Darian’s, of course. Darian, whose broad shoulders and effortless charm positioned him always a handspan closer to Aethelred’s orbit. Lysander, in contrast, felt perennially just out of reach, eternally relegated to a lesser, more cautious distance. A flicker of something cold, unnameable, pricked at him. He buried the feeling, pressing it deep beneath the polished surface of his composure.
He glanced towards the blueprint, a casual gesture. “When did he arrive?”
“No idea,” Aethelred replied, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Was here when I drifted in.”
“One who departed early last night should not be slouched so listlessly.” Lysander’s words carried a faint edge.
As he spoke, a rustle of parchment. The blueprint slipped from Darian’s face, revealing half-lidded eyes. Darian’s narrow gaze swept over Lysander and Aethelred before a wide, unrestrained yawn escaped him.
“…Told myself ‘just a moment longer with the constellations,’ you know how it is.”
Indeed, yawns were a plague. Aethelred stretched his own mouth wide, then scrunched his face into a smug grin.
“This wastrel. Looks the part of a street brawler, yet pores over celestial charts like a cloistered monk.”
“A pox on your house, Aethelred.”
“Received, you oaf.”
Whether Darian understood Aethelred’s mockery, he simply leaned back, a hearty laugh echoing through the nascent morning light. Lysander watched him, their eyes meeting for a brief, unsettling moment. Darian shifted his gaze to the tall, arched window overlooking the Grand Courtyard, then back to Lysander. A strange prickle ran beneath Lysander’s skin. He scratched his shoulder, subtly, and turned his attention back to Aethelred.
The early hour in the Grand Atelier often held a deceptive peace. Such easy banter set the day’s rhythm. Soon, other favoured apprentices – Theon, Marcus – would gather, drawn by Aethelred’s magnetic presence, eager to hear tales of his exploits. The usual charade would unfold: chatter, laughter, and eventually, the arrival of Master Cosimo to commence the day’s arduous critiques.
For those deemed the most promising, the morning felt surprisingly wholesome, a prelude to the daily grind. But underneath, a bitter truth lingered. Lysander knew the stories of wild, messy dalliances from the previous night, especially when Aethelred was involved, left a foul taste. Still, he played along, feigning amusement, a well-practiced deception.
He thought these mornings, for all their falsity, were tolerable. Everything shifted a moon and a half ago. The reason, in truth, lay entirely with Elara.
“Elara approaches,” a whisper carried from the entrance.
“Gods above. Hideous.”
“Does that witless wretch not possess the sense to absent himself after such a public humiliation?” Theon openly scoffed, pointing with exaggerated disdain.
At Theon’s outstretched finger, Elara shuffled into the studio, hunched, thin shoulders almost touching his ears. He hid his face behind a curtain of lank hair, moving awkwardly toward a solitary carving bench in the furthest corner. He placed his worn satchel upon it, then immediately slumped over. Watching his cowering figure, Lysander exhaled a sigh laden with irritation.
Elara was utterly pathetic. His voice was reedy, his frame small – a pitiful excuse for a scholar. As the murmurs of the apprentices swelled, Aethelred glared daggers at Elara’s bowed back, muttering curses under his breath. Lysander hated it. Aethelred’s cruel sensitivity – it chafed against him.
Snatching a discarded, crumpled sketch of a grotesque gargoyle that had previously lay near Darian’s blueprint, Aethelred balled it up in one hand. Then, with a light toss, he hurled it at Elara’s head. A soft thud. Elara’s head slumped further onto his bench.
“For Veritas’s sake. Do not parade that wretched visage first thing in the morning.”
Elara placed his arms on the bench and buried his face deeper, doing exactly as Aethelred had commanded. Yet, Aethelred watched this with cold disdain, then kicked his own stool. The sharp clang made several apprentices jump.
“Hey! Will you not answer me?”
When Aethelred abruptly stood and yelled, Elara, still hunched, stammered in a trembling voice.
“Y-yes.”
“Lift your head, meet my gaze, and speak properly.”
Did Aethelred even comprehend the monstrous absurdity of his demands? Lysander let out a bitter, silent laugh. The sound scraped at his throat.
Whether or not Aethelred noticed, he rose and approached Elara’s bench. With every deliberate step he took, the unpleasant feelings inside Lysander grew more vivid, more raw. A cold dread seeped into his bones.
Aethelred closed the distance between himself and Elara. Just that alone made Lysander feel as if he were losing control over emotions he’d worked so diligently to suppress. This wasn’t the same kind of jealousy he felt when Aethelred grew close to Darian. Instinctively, Lysander knew. Deep down, he harboured something just as sinister as Aethelred did. That’s why watching Aethelred with Darian eventually became bearable, but his interactions with Elara unsettled him more and more. His hands began to tremble. Lysander clenched them tightly beneath his smock, hiding the tell-tale sign of his unraveling.
Aethelred kicked Elara’s bench hard. The wooden frame shook violently, almost toppling, and Elara jolted upright in alarm, his voice still unsteady.
“F-forgive me.”
Aethelred stood there, silently looking down at Elara’s face. Elara’s eyes glistened with unshed tears, on the verge of breaking. Yet, in that moment, Lysander felt his own throat tightening, felt like he was the one who might burst into tears.
Aethelred never made Elara run pointless errands, but he always kept his eyes on him. If Elara went to the latrines during a break, Aethelred’s gaze would still follow his retreating figure, even while conversing with them. Lysander knew this because he never stopped watching Aethelred.
To be honest, Lysander’s first impression of Elara had been unremarkable. His complexion wasn’t the clearest, but his youthful features gave him a face that was easy to overlook. When he smiled, it felt genuinely happy, and even his neutral expression carried a certain quiet brightness. Before Aethelred started tormenting him, no one truly disliked Elara. He seemed like a student who had grown up in a warm, loving household. While not particularly gregarious, preferring to spend his time alone with his pigments or carving tools, there was no trace of worry or discomfort in his demeanor.
Most considered Elara a decent enough sort. Since he never flaunted the affection he’d received growing up, he earned even more quiet praise. Humble, quiet, bright, and inexplicably pleasant to be near – that was Elara. But Lysander hadn’t particularly liked him from the start. He didn’t hate him either – he simply didn’t care. To say Elara wasn’t even on his radar would be more accurate. Yet, whenever he was conversing with his friends, Aethelred, or Darian’s clique, and Elara’s name came up, Lysander found himself casually lying, offering, “Oh, him? He’s alright. Mild-mannered enough.”
Aethelred, like Lysander, hadn’t paid much mind to Elara at first. Aethelred was never the type to care about the smaller currents of atelier affairs. After Elara had transferred in during the late spring, he and Aethelred hadn’t exchanged a single word until early summer. That was how things originally stood.
But one day, something changed. A small, sharp deviation formed in the mundane flow of events. It happened right after the mid-day meal. Looking back, Lysander didn’t think he’d ever regretted something he did as much as he regretted what transpired that day.
Elara, as was his custom, had taken a corner bench during the afternoon break to read. He was the kind of person who loved burying himself in rare folios. On the other hand, Lysander had a habit of being overly solicitous toward people with good reputations, especially those whose quiet scholarly pursuits might reflect well on him.
That’s why, when he stumbled upon Elara by chance, he struck up a conversation about the illuminated manuscript Elara was perusing. Lysander wasn’t much of a reader himself, beyond the required treatises; pretending to be cultured was more his style.
“You must truly admire such texts, yes?”
“Hmm? Oh, yes, I suppose.”
At the time, Elara and Lysander were still distant acquaintances. Perhaps that distance made approaching him easier.
“Have you reached its conclusion?”
“Almost, I believe.”
“Then merely set it aside. The ending will disappoint you. It is one of those tomes where the final revelation taints the entire journey.”
“You’ve read it before?” Elara’s eyes, soft and curious, met his.
“Yes, some time ago.” To satisfy his intellectual vanity, Lysander always sought out whispered critiques and scholarly pronouncements of obscure texts, ensuring he had something learned to utter in future conversations. Drawing on those memories, he offered a critique – not a genuine one, just enough to sound informed – and Elara smiled brightly, looking genuinely pleased. It caught Lysander off guard.
“You are the first soul I have met who has perused this manuscript besides myself.”
“Oh… truly?”
“Yes, but I shall finish it nonetheless. Pondering why the ending was conceived as it was is part of the enchantment.”
“Well, of course. All opinions differ.”
“Hearing you speak of it makes me anticipate it even more.”
That smile still lingered as an uncomfortable memory. Was it some instinctive unease Lysander felt back then, a premonition of the gilded deception he was spinning?
After that day, Elara began seeking Lysander out more frequently. Though Lysander found it a bit annoying and often wondered, *Why me?*, he didn’t outright reject him. Elara, with his untarnished reputation, wasn’t the worst sort to keep close. After all, books – outside of liturgical texts and academic tomes – were practically forbidden indulgences for most apprentices. Even if someone had the leisure, such rare manuscripts were little more than glorified doorstops to them. For Elara, Lysander was probably the only person within the Grand Atelier who could discuss such arcane matters.
That day was one of those routine encounters, but it also happened to be one of the most ill-fated days among them. Darian was to blame. To this day, Lysander couldn’t fathom why he acted the way he did. Why he, someone who never meddled in others’ affairs, chose to stick his nose where it didn’t belong. Why Darian, of all things, had left his preliminary architectural sketch for the new Court Gardens exposed for everyone passing by to see.
Lysander, someone who loathed having his own grades or critiques revealed, naturally assumed Darian wouldn’t want his exposed either. So, he flipped the heavy parchment sheet over to hide it. That’s when he saw it: the Master Engineer’s evaluation. An 81. A solid, if unremarkable, score, placing it just within the lower ranks of acceptable designs. Still, it was on the higher end of that tier.
Lysander blinked in disbelief and checked again. It was definitely an 81. It was the first time one of his preconceptions was shattered. It was a small shock to realize Darian wasn’t as much of a lost cause as he’d thought. Naturally, that made him think of Aethelred’s own volatile, unrefined genius. Now, Aethelred was the true enigma, a master of raw talent, but with little patience for the rigors of formal structure. Aethelred would mark every question with a flourish and sleep through the rest of the exam, never once managing a respectable, balanced design score.
Perhaps that’s why Lysander felt such a mix of emotions – like he’d found a discarded, yet salvageable, shard of beauty amidst the city’s opulent refuse. A rival he’d once disdained turned out to be more capable than the friend he admired. That strange realization must’ve thrown him off, because he did something he normally never would have done. It wasn’t anything grand. He just grabbed a nearby charcoal stick and scribbled a short note at the top of Darian’s blueprint.
“Focus on the structural integrity, not just aesthetic flourish. You’ll hit the 3rd tier of Master’s approval soon enough. Good work. – L.”
“P.S. Forgive my intrusion, merely adjusting the sheet.”
The arrogance of evaluating someone’s craft and offering unsolicited advice made Lysander feel a prickle of embarrassment, so he rambled to justify himself. He couldn’t say why he even wrote it in the first place. At the time, he must’ve been out of his mind. Looking back, it was clear this was the first mistake in what would become a series of entanglements. Every mess starts with a poorly fastened first button.
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