Every step Cassian took made him feel more tired. He wanted nothing more than to collapse into his bed and never wake, but he knew the butler would soon arrive with the documents from the palace archives. He couldn't afford rest. Not now.
He opened the door to his guest chambers and shut it quietly behind him, his back pressing against the wood as though it might hold him upright a little longer. The silence inside wrapped around him like a shroud. His breath came shallow, his pulse steady but heavy, thudding behind his eyes.
He crossed the room and lowered himself into the chair at his desk with a slow, deliberate motion. The act of sitting sent a dull ache through his limbs. His body didn't feel like his own—too heavy, too distant, as if it were rebelling against the truths he had begun to uncover.
The knock at the door was soft.
He didn't look up as the butler stepped inside, carrying a stack of sealed documents with imperial wax still intact.
"The librarian requested I bring them to you as per His Majesty's order," the butler said, his voice formal but not unkind.
Cassian resisted the urge to sigh. "Place them on my desk. Thank you."
The butler nodded and obeyed, setting the weighty bundle beside him before withdrawing as quietly as he'd entered. The door clicked shut, and Cassian was alone again with nothing but parchment and memory.
He leaned back, pressing a hand to his temple. Even the two hours he'd collapsed earlier had done little to ease the toll. The texts he had requested from the restricted archives had come too easily. The librarian hadn't even asked questions.
Something was wrong. Or perhaps—something had been wrong for a very long time, and now the Empire was only beginning to notice.
He didn't hear Hadrian enter. He rarely did.
The shadow moved into the edge of his vision first, followed by the familiar quiet presence—the absence of noise, of judgment, of unnecessary questions. Only Hadrian could make silence feel so full.
"You look like hell," Hadrian murmured at last.
Cassian almost smiled at that, but the fatigue hollowing out his bones wouldn't allow it. "I've felt better."
Hadrian crossed the room, stopping just short of his desk. He studied him, gaze unreadable but sharper than usual.
Cassian didn't look up. "There's something I need to tell you."
Hadrian said nothing, but Cassian could feel the way his presence settled in—alert, attentive, ready.
"Lord Thesan Viremont," Cassian said slowly, each word tasting of something bitter, "can't be trusted. Especially when it comes to the zealotry."
He felt Hadrian go still.
The silence stretched again, but not in disbelief. Hadrian didn't ask how he knew, nor where he'd gotten the information. His stillness was enough—his quiet acceptance told Cassian he understood the weight of what was being said.
Hadrian finally spoke. "You're certain?"
Cassian nodded once, finally lifting his gaze. His face was too pale. His eyes too bright with exhaustion. "I'm certain. And if I'm right… the Viremonts aren't just religious defenders. They're hiding something far worse."
Hadrian's jaw tensed, but he gave no other sign. He didn't doubt him. That made it both easier—and harder.
---
Hadrian moved before Cassian could protest, kneeling beside the chair with a grace that felt too gentle for someone trained to kill. He reached up and touched Cassian's wrist—lightly at first, then more firmly when Cassian didn't pull away.
"You're shaking," he murmured.
"I'm fine," Cassian lied, barely above a whisper.
"You're not," Hadrian said, quiet but unyielding.
With surprising care, he guided Cassian to stand. Cassian didn't resist, though his knees trembled slightly. Hadrian said nothing about that either. He simply steadied him with a hand at the back and the other just beneath his arm, leading him to the bed as if it were a battlefield retreat rather than a mercy.
Cassian let himself be lowered onto the edge of the mattress. He exhaled slowly, as though just breathing through the pain and the heat curling under his skin took effort. He hated how much his body betrayed him—how the onset of heat made his senses hum and dragged memories he had no control over to the surface.
The silence between them stretched. Hadrian remained beside him, crouched slightly, eyes dark and unreadable.
Cassian stared past him for a long moment. Then—
Blood.
The scent of burned flesh.
Chains dragging across stone.
A flash of parchment. A name scratched out in red. A seal that should have never been opened.
He wasn't in the room anymore.
His breath caught, shallow and fast. His vision tunneled. He could feel his heart racing, hear the sound of fire—
"Cassian."
Hadrian's voice, low and steady, broke through the haze.
He didn't know when he'd started trembling. Or when his hands had curled tightly into the sheets beneath him. But Hadrian was there. Still close. A hand resting lightly over his own, grounding him.
"You're here," Hadrian said softly, a whisper meant only for him. "You're safe. Look at me."
Cassian's breath hitched—but he obeyed.
Their eyes met, and something unspoken passed between them—recognition, and perhaps something heavier. Hadrian didn't press. He didn't ask what Cassian had seen or what haunted him.
Instead, he moved to sit beside him. Close enough to offer warmth, but not so close as to provoke.
The silence shifted again, softer this time.
Cassian turned his head, just enough to murmur, "It's getting worse."
"The heat?" Hadrian asked, though his voice had already lowered, instinctively gentle.
Cassian nodded. "And everything else. It's all… starting to unravel."
Hadrian didn't move for a moment. Then, very slowly, he reached out and brushed a strand of hair away from Cassian's face. The touch was careful—so careful it made Cassian ache more than if Hadrian had kissed him outright.
"You don't have to hold it together for me," Hadrian said. "Not when we're alone."
Cassian's throat tightened. His next words came out before he could stop them.
"I'm scared."
There it was. The truth, laid bare in the darkened guest room, beneath a sky none of them could see. Cassian didn't cry—but the vulnerability in his voice carried more weight than tears ever could.
Hadrian let out a breath. Not sharp, not surprised. Just quiet.
Then, at last, he spoke.
"Tell me what you found in the archives."
---
Cassian didn't speak right away.
The words swam in his throat, heavy and oil-slick, as if to voice them would make them real—more than ink on parchment, more than fragmented symbols stitched into the archive's forbidden bindings. He stared at his hands instead, the pale tremble of them, the pulse flickering at his wrist.
Hadrian didn't rush him.
He sat still, silent beside him on the bed, body angled just slightly toward Cassian. Not pressing. Not prying. Just present.
"It's not that I don't want to tell you," Cassian said at last, his voice hoarse. "It's that I'm afraid… that saying it aloud will make it linger."
Hadrian turned his head. "The knowledge or the feeling?"
Cassian exhaled. "Both."
A pause, long and quiet. The hearth had burned low. Outside, the night wind moved through the stone corridors like a ghost not ready to rest.
Hadrian shifted, one knee pressing onto the mattress to half-face Cassian. "Then I'll hold the weight for now. Just give me what you can."
Cassian's lashes lowered, lips parting around a single, reluctant breath.
"There was a name I wasn't meant to see," he began softly, "a family sigil scratched out in ash rather than ink. Entire records altered. Bloodlines hidden, not lost. Removed."
Hadrian's brow furrowed slightly. "Removed… intentionally."
Cassian nodded. "They weren't erased by time or war. It was surgical. And worse than that—some of them weren't dead."
That drew Hadrian's full attention. He leaned forward, voice quiet but tense. "What do you mean?"
"Some were… bred into other lines. Hidden behind false marriages, lost records. Buried under different names. But what unnerved me—" Cassian's voice wavered. "Was that one of the seals I found matched a symbol I've seen before."
Hadrian stilled.
"Where?"
Cassian met his gaze. "On the robes of a priest. The day they brought the Emperor's blessing through Caerwyn lands. And again… today. One of Lord Thesan Viremont's advisors wears it—barely visible, embroidered beneath his cuffs."
Hadrian's eyes narrowed, not in suspicion toward Cassian but in the way a blade tenses in its sheath.
"And the seal?"
"It belongs to a branch once condemned for blood rituals," Cassian murmured. "Dark rites—human sacrifice. They claimed it was holy. That the bloodlines carried divine resonance. But even the older church records refused to speak of them directly. Just warnings. And purges."
The silence between them sharpened.
"You believe Lord Thesan is part of this," Hadrian said, more a statement than a question.
Cassian swallowed. "I know he is."
Hadrian didn't ask how. He didn't need to.
He looked at Cassian—pale, fever-sweating despite the cool air, eyes too bright with the pressure of truths he wasn't meant to carry—and he believed him.
But Hadrian's gaze turned toward the window, toward the shadowed spires of the Imperial chapel.
"And no one will listen to you," he said softly.
Cassian's shoulders sagged. "Not yet."
Hadrian reached across the space between them. His hand found Cassian's again—warmer now, more certain—and didn't let go.
"Then we'll make them."
---
Cassian's eyes fluttered shut. For the first time since the archives, he allowed himself to simply be—not a son of House Caerwyn, not an Imperial guest, not a bearer of unspeakable truths. Just Cassian. And Hadrian's fingers didn't let go.
Minutes passed. Maybe longer.
The silence between them was warm now, not fragile but protective.
Cassian shifted slightly, resting his head just barely against Hadrian's shoulder. "I didn't mean to fall apart," he whispered, almost ashamed.
"You didn't," Hadrian said. "You're still standing. That's something."
"Even if it doesn't feel like it?"
"Especially then."
They sat like that until a soft knock broke the stillness.
Hadrian rose first. Cassian blinked, not realizing how long they'd sat.
At the door, Hadrian accepted a sealed note from a silent attendant. The paper bore no name—just a pressed wax emblem of the Imperial lion, claw crossed subtly through the tail.
Hadrian's eyes narrowed. He glanced at Cassian. "Luceris."
Cassian stirred. "What does it say?"
Hadrian didn't answer immediately. He held the parchment to the firelight, reading it once, then again slower.
"It's a location," he said. "Just outside the palace walls. A garden ruin used during the older rites. Midnight ink. He didn't write it with common quill."
"A meeting?"
"No. A sign. A trace meant to be found only by someone trained to read it." His voice turned grim. "Which means he's being watched."
Cassian's gaze sharpened. "Go."
Hadrian hesitated, gaze flicking between the note and Cassian.
"I'll go once you sleep," Hadrian said, though his voice remained soft. "You said you'd hold the weight. Let me do the same."
Hadrian lingered a moment longer. "Stay inside your chambers. Don't trust anyone tonight—not even those in livery."he whispered knowing Cassian could somehow here him even as he was sleeping.
Cassian only stirred a little in recognition.
And then Hadrian slipped out the door with his usual silence, shadows embracing him as he vanished into the corridor.
---
The moment faded into night.
Cassian tried to rest, truly he did. But the words in his mind spun like blood in water—dark, shapeless, impossible to ignore.
He lit a candle, then another.
And he returned to the documents the butler had left.
There were more seals hidden in the margins, more lines that didn't add up. Some names had dates of death with no causes. Others were struck through in two kinds of ink—as if someone had come after the original scribe to change them further.
Cassian didn't stop until the window turned gray with morning and the candle had long since gone cold.
He didn't hear the door open.
"Cassian."
The voice—familiar, firm, but concerned—broke through his trance.
Cassian looked up, bleary-eyed.
Leontius stood in the doorway, brow furrowed as he took in the mess of papers, the half-written notes, the untouched water.
"You didn't sleep."
Cassian blinked. "I couldn't."
Leontius stepped inside, closing the door behind him. "You're burning yourself out."
"I have to understand what this means," Cassian murmured. "It's more than just erased names. They weren't lost—they were silenced. Hidden."
His brother walked closer, the slight tension in his movements betraying worry he didn't voice.
"And you're planning to uncover it alone?"
Cassian glanced down. "I'm not alone."
Leontius looked at him for a long moment, then finally sat across from him.
"Then let's find the truth. Together."
---
Cassian stared at Leontius for a moment too long, the words catching in his throat.
Together.
That word still felt foreign on his tongue when spoken between them. Not out of absence, but out of history—long years filled with a silence too carefully kept. Cassian remembered the last time Leontius had said something like that, back when their father's coffin had yet to cool, and promises meant everything and nothing all at once.
But now, with the candlelight turning Leontius' profile gold, it felt different.
Cassian looked down at the sealed record again—Lord Thesan's name scratched into margins where it did not belong. Notes that hinted at zealotry, blood rites, and the kind of devotion that left no survivors.
And still, Leontius had come. Unasked. Unarmed. Not to give orders, but to sit beside him.
Cassian allowed himself a breath.
"I never expected you to care," he said softly.
Leontius didn't flinch. "I always did. I just didn't know how to show it."
The silence that followed wasn't heavy—it healed.
Cassian nodded once, folding the page he'd been reading.
"Then let's begin," he whispered. "Before it's too late."