The study lay in a hush that could only be described as devotional — a cathedral of ink and vellum, where candlelight whispered against walls heavy with tomes bound in bruised leather. The scent of beeswax polish mingled with the ghost of rosewood, and the sunlight, shy as a penitent, cast amber fingers across the marble floor, not entering so much as kneeling before the solemnity of the room.
August sat at his desk, a figure sculpted from silence. His posture was straight-backed and austere, the cut of his coat sharp. His hand moved with precision, his quill gliding over parchment like a raven across frostbitten snow. But the words he inked no longer felt like his own — they belonged to a lineage of grief, of duty twisted into a crown, of truths buried in ancestral soil.
When his signature looped too wide, he noticed, for the first time, the tremble in his fingers. He exhaled sharply — the sound swallowed by the room's reverent stillness — and said, without turning his head:
"Giles."
The name was spoken with neither heat nor haste — it came like a knife drawn an inch from velvet. And yet, despite the thickness of doors and the distance of halls, it was heard.
Footsteps approached — clipped, firm, unquestioning.
The door opened with reluctant grace, and Giles stepped inside.
He was a man carved by winter and war, tall and grave, his hair silvered like candlewax left to drip and dry. He bore the look of oaken strength softened only by time and duty — a sentry of memories too loyal to sleep.
"You summoned me, my lord," he said, bowing low.
August did not look up at once. He signed the final document, set the quill down with surgical grace, and then fixed his gaze upon the man who had once taught him how to knot his cravat the morning after his parents' murder.
"I did," he said.
The silence that followed was not empty. It was thick with foreboding — like the pause before a storm takes its first breath.
August steepled his fingers.
"Tell me, Giles," he said softly, "why have I never been told of the Althérian Dominion?"
Giles's breath caught — not audibly, not quite — but August saw it. The flicker of something old and buried behind the man's eyes.
"My lord…" Giles began, careful.
"Do not lie to me," August cut in — not with cruelty, but with precision. "You knew. And you kept it from me."
Giles lowered his gaze, shame stitched into the corners of his mouth. "I am… constrained, my lord."
"By whom?" August demanded, rising now. That cursed "kingdom? The council?"
There was a pause.
And then the truth fell like lead:
"By your aunt, my Lord Lady Katherine."
August stilled — as though struck not physically, but ideologically.
"How," he said, each syllable etched in ice.
"She grows uneasy," Giles said, voice low. "She sees the questions piling upon your desk — questions you are far too young to ask. She believes the truth… unkind. That it will unravel you, thread by golden thread."
August gave a small, bitter smile — not with mirth, but exhaustion.
"She always did prefer her angels wingless."
He turned, walking toward the window. The light there fractured against the glass, spilling across his face like something holy and broken.
"Giles," he said without turning, "so what was the name of the ruler again?"
Giles hesitated, then bowed his head.
"Morvane Eldrith."
The name tasted like ash and ancient oaths.
"The king of the Althérian Dominion," August whispered, his breath fogging the pane.
"And yet," he murmured, "not a map bears that name. No history book in this house holds record. As though the kingdom itself were carved from fog."
Giles stepped forward, cautiously.
"It was your mother who banished its mention," he said. "And your aunt… merely upheld the wish."
August's jaw tightened.
"Then my entire childhood," he breathed, "was curated to keep me stupid."
"Protected," Giles corrected gently.
"Poisoned," August said coldly.
He turned away from the window and returned to his desk, where the emblem still lay — a crest of bronze and tarnished silver: an eagle, wings outstretched, a sword cleaving through its breast.
"I found this in the chest box," he said. "A keepsake, or a curse. You tell me."
Giles said nothing.
August stared at the emblem, tracing its jagged edges with his ivory thumb.
Giles remained still. The firelight caught on his silvered temples, but his eyes held the frost of refusal.
"My lord," he said at last, voice clipped and quiet, "it would be wise to leave that matter where it lies."
August didn't look up. His thumb pressed harder against the emblem's ridged surface — not enough to draw blood, but enough to feel the weight of it.
"You mean buried."
"I mean forgotten," Giles said. "For your sake."
August raised his head then, slowly. "You would have me wear the mask a little longer, then? Smile at the guests. Play heir. Pretend the tapestry behind my name isn't soaked in rot."
Giles's jaw tightened, but his stance did not shift.
"There are threads you should not pull, my lord. The Dominion—"
"Does exist," August cut in, low and cold. "And I intend to know why we were made to forget it."
Giles took one step forward, voice dropping. "You are not ready."
A silence bloomed — not heavy like before, but sharp. Brittle.
August laughed — just once — a sound like glass cracking.
"They buried my parents before I Even know how to Live," he said. "I signed a trade accord in ink and blood by Fourteen. But now, suddenly, I am too tender for history?"
He stood, slowly, with that same disciplined grace he was known for. His hands remained at his sides, but there was something volcanic beneath his composure — a tremor behind the eyes.
Giles's gaze flickered. "There are forces older than you understand. And if you dig into them—"
"Then let them feel me coming."
August's voice was low, lethal.
He moved around the desk and stood before the old man who had once walked him to chapel with a hand on his shoulder and prayers on his breath. The memory felt distant now. Hollowed.
"I Never Hate you, Giles," he said, not cruelly — but like a confession pulled from the bone. "As much as I was capable of loving anyone after that day. But if you place yourself between me and the truth again…"
His voice dropped.
"I will walk through you."
Giles flinched — not visibly, but August saw it. The faint shadow behind the eyes. The weight of age pressing heavier now.
August stepped back.
"Leave."
Giles bowed — slow, pained, as if something inside him cracked — and turned.
When the door closed behind him, the hush returned. Not reverent, now — but vengeful.
August turned back to the window.
The emblem lay on the desk like a wound left open.
August did not move at once.
The echo of the door's close still hummed in the walls like the dying breath of some unspoken war, and in its wake — silence. Not peace, but the brittle hush of withheld things.
He exhaled, though he hadn't known he'd been holding his breath, and the sound came like the sigh of old drapery in a manor too long shut.
Then — a step.
And another.
Measured, deliberate, the way a man walks not to reach but to delay.
Yet before he could return to the desk — to the weight of symbols and secrets strewn like bones upon polished wood — his gaze drifted, almost unbidden, toward the wide window.
And there — sunlight. Unapologetic in its brightness. It cast the glass in a pale gold sheen, as if the world beyond it were wrapped in honeyed silk. The garden below swayed in mild breeze, untouched by the tempests within this manor. A lie in bloom.
But August did not see the hedgerows, nor the stone path, nor the slant of warm noon. What he saw instead was the silver silhouette of Elias — not the real Elias, not the one who bore blades and loyalty with equal sharpness — but the one conjured in fevered dreams. Bare skin. Breathless words. A kiss that seared rather than soothed. And heat — divine, damning heat that clung like a second skin.
A flicker.
He looked away at once.
But it was too late.
The memory, that traitorous phantom, had already breached its tomb.
A hand twitched at his side. His jaw tightened. A flush rose, faint but visible, to the pale architecture of his cheekbones. But even now, his expression remained composed — carved rather than felt.
How many times had he crushed that image beneath reason's heel? Now Elias's name cradled behind his teeth like a forbidden hymn?
And yet — it returned. Always. Like blood to the wound.
A curse he dared not speak aloud. A longing wrapped in shame, tethered to silence by years of discipline and grief.
He turned sharply from the window. As if the light itself had mocked him.
His boots clicked softly against the floor — but it sounded louder now, more human. Flawed.
When he reached the desk again, he did not sit.
He merely stood there, fingers brushing the edge as if touching reality might anchor him. But the wood was warm. Too warm.
Like skin.
He pulled his hand away.
The emblem still lay where he left it. But now, it looked different. Smaller. Like a relic from a life that was no longer entirely his.
He did not look back at the window again.
In the lower hall, the world felt heavier.
Light streamed in through the tall arched windows, soft and golden, yet Elias felt none of its warmth. It merely painted his skin in color while failing to reach the furnace beneath — a furnace of breath and bone, forged by duty, stoked now by uncertainty.
He sat at the edge of a high-backed chair, one forearm braced on his knee, the other holding a coarse cloth that he passed slowly across his brow. Sweat clung to him in beads — not the kind born of fear, but of effort, of focus — of rest denied.
Beside him, the sword.
Not sheathed, not hidden, just resting. Like a sleeping dog whose dreams were still sharp with teeth.
The hall was vast, but the air felt close. Stagnant. It bore no scent of flowers or dust, only the quiet weight of waiting. A marble bust across the chamber stared down with blind disapproval, as though judging him for sweating in such a house, in such stillness.
Elias paid it no mind.
He dabbed at his temple again, though the cloth was already damp. A thin line of sweat trickled along the ridge of his spine beneath his green shirt now creased and clinging in places where his muscles had tensed too long.
He sighed. Once. Quietly. The kind of sound a soldier makes when a war refuses to start.
When will he come down…?
The thought was not voiced aloud, but it lingered just behind his lips like a taste. August. He hadn't seen him since that brief, shadowed conversation, and now—now time ticked too slowly.
There was something he needed to say. Not out of sentiment, nor softhearted meanderings — no, this was not about fever or unspoken dreams.
It was about truth.
About names scratched beneath silence. About the weight of symbols, the scent of blood not yet spilled.
His hand flexed slightly, calloused fingers curling as if grasping a ghost.
But how do you begin a conversation with a man who never opens the doors inside himself?
He did not know.
But he intended to try.
Even if he had to break a few locks to do it.
The sword caught the light. A flicker of steel. A reminder.
Elias leaned back, just slightly, resting his head for a moment against the cool wood behind him. His eyes drifted upward — not to heaven, but to the ceiling, where painted angels floated in faded pigment. One of them looked almost sad. The other — amused.
He exhaled.
Then sat forward again.
Still he waited.
And upstairs, August was perhaps doing the same — in his own quiet, suffocating way.