The study had not changed.
Books still stood like sentinels on the high shelves,
the hearth slept cold in its marble mouth,
and the windows bore the soft blue hush of a manor mid-recovery—
quiet, but not yet safe. Not yet.
Giles stood there again,
beneath the carved ribs of the ceiling and the withering gaze of old portraits,
as if Time itself had drawn a trembling breath and left him hanging in the middle of it.
The letter in his hands—creased now from revisits, thumbed at the corner with a nervous rhythm—
lay not still, but pulsed like a small, terrible heart.
He dared lift it once more.
The wax had long since been broken.
It wasn't the seal that terrified him now—it was the script.
Ink that bled from a distant hand,
each word a curse laced in formality,
each line a thread that, once pulled, might unravel everything.
He read again—only the first line.
And the weight of it pressed into his bones.
Like winter that seeps into the joints of old soldiers.
Like confession waiting behind cathedral doors.
He should not tell August.
Not in this state. Not with death's shadow still coiling about his breath like a serpent too patient to strike.
Not when the boy—no, the man, brittle and bright as blown glass—lay upstairs,
swimming between agony and fever-dream,
his very blood thickened by poison, his body a battlefield he never chose.
But the truth was a wick.
And once lit, it would burn everything—whether spoken or swallowed.
Still he stood. Alone, though not quite.
For silence had a thousand ears.
And even unread, the letter howled.
And there it lay—the horror Giles dared not bring to tongue.
The truth behind the sealed envelope was not merely words, but carnage written in unseen ink.
Two men—crowned not with laurels, but with titles forged in the furnace of politics—had fallen,
slain not on battlefields nor in riotous streets,
but in the sanctity of their own halls.
Within walls where law was scribed and alliances whispered,
death had come with gloves on—silent, uninvited, and wholly untraceable.
The first: Baron Thorne Blackmere,
a man with silver at his temples and arrogance for breath.
His demise had come sudden and clean,
his throat opened like the pages of a cursed manuscript
while he stood mid-sentence,
debating trade tariffs with an envoy from across the sea.
No one heard him fall.
They only saw the pool beneath his desk darken and spread
until even the parchment recoiled from it.
The second: Sir Septimus Drellwyn
younger, quieter, less gilded by ambition and far more beloved for it.
He had been found in his study,
hands still clutched to the ink-washed arms of his chair,
eyes wide in that final, bewildered stare toward the books he would never finish.
His death was no slash—no, it was slower.
The bruises across his throat bespoke strangulation,
a murder of such closeness it reeked of either betrayal or madness.
Both within the same night.
Both under the same roof of Crowned Order.
And neither left a trace behind.
The court had erupted—
not with weeping, but with the clamor of paranoia.
Footsteps doubled. Curtains torn aside.
Servants questioned till their lips trembled and their knees gave.
Guards doubled and tripled till the palace gleamed with sabres and suspicion.
No one spoke aloud the word assassins.
But it hung in every corridor.
It curled in every corner.
And it burned in Giles's hands—this letter, this dreadful script confirming what his spine already knew.
He stared now at August's chair—empty, though still shaped like him.
Giles could not, would not place this weight on the shoulders of a man still battling the poison in his blood.
Not yet.
Two men of rank. Two faithful pillars.
Both extinguished beneath the same storm-wracked roof of empire.
The letter trembled faintly in Giles hand—sealed in wax, its weight heavier than parchment should bear. He laid it upon August's desk with the reverence one might grant a sacred relic, as though the message within could shift the course of fate itself.
And then, with all the weariness of a man who had outlived too many good souls, he stepped back.
His lips moved in a silent prayer—not to the gods of court or crown, but to the older, quieter one who dwells behind candlelight and chapel stone.
"Spare him," Giles thought.
"Spare the boy. Just this once. Why must it always be him?"
For hadn't the sorrow begun early—long before August wore long ivory gowns and held those thick books?
At four years old, the child had found their bodies. His mother—gentle, laughter-laced, and all things warm. His father
with ink-stained hands and iron in his voice.
Gone. Both gone.
And the child—so small, so pale—had not wept. Not once.
Not even at the funeral, when the sky bled grey and the mourners' veils fluttered like broken wings.
Now, in the lamplit hush of the drawing room, August clutched Katherine, burying his face in the crook of her slender neck. Her perfume, once a comfort, now only stung his eyes. She stood unmoving, her body frozen as if her bones had turned to ice, and her soul refused to unthaw.
Katherine—once radiant with laughter and clever wit—stood like marble.
Her brother had been murdered.
Her sister-in-law, that woman of golden curls and honeyed laughter, whose voice once trailed through the halls like sunlight,
now lay beneath the earth.
Buried.
Silenced.
And all that remained of them—of that world—was the boy.
August.
Pale, watchful, and distant. The last drop of her brother's blood.
The final flame in a lineage now swallowed by shadow.
She clutched him—no, clung to him—her arms forming a fragile barrier against the yawning void of fate.
He must not fall into cruel hands.
He must not be taken.
Not while she drew breath.
Not while her heart still dared to beat.
"I will protect you my child," she whispered at last, the words brittle as frost on glass. "No matter what the night sends… I must protect you at all cost."
And outside, the wind wailed through the garden hedges like some mourning specter, and the candle in the corner flickered as if shivering from the memory of blood already spilled.
A soft knock trembled against the chamber door—like a breath of hesitation wrought from trembling bone—and Lirael, ever the vigilant shadow beside the flame, moved to answer. The latch turned with a gentle sound, and there stood Giles upon the threshold: shoulders bent beneath the invisible weight of dread, eyes hollow as a man who has watched too many graves be filled.
His gaze dropped instinctively to Lirael's hands—stained faintly green from herbs and tinctures, yet steady as ever. Within the chamber, time moved like slow smoke in still air. August lay motionless upon the bed of ivory sheets, his frame ghost-pale against the darkness of the pillows. Elias sat behind him, arms firm but trembling, supporting August's slender form against his own broad chest as Lirael guided the remedy past parted lips.
Though unconscious, August's throat moved faintly, accepting the warm draught like a soul clinging to the last candle of life before the wind takes it. The remedy was bitter, thick with earth-born alchemy, a desperate brew of roots and feverleaf, crushed under moonlight and boiled over flame until the tincture caught the scent of salvation.
"It is done," Giles said quietly, his voice a calm blade of glass, now Lirael spoke smooth yet unsparing. "He has taken it. The bowl is drained."
Giles exhaled, slow and shaking, as if each breath were purchased dearly. "And… how is he now?"
Lirael turned, his eyes reflecting a gleam of lanternlight—unreadable, fathomless. "His body is too fragile to be tormented thus. The poison was sharp, like a blade dipped in frost. But as long as the remedy remains in him… he may yet prevail."
From the other side of the bed, Elias's voice broke the hush. It was not loud, but it was raw—worn and exposed, like a violin string too tightly strung.
"When will he awake?" he asked, not meeting anyone's gaze.
Lirael offered him a quiet nod, a gesture that was more promise than certainty. "Soon. Do not worry."
But Elias did worry. Worry did not even begin to name the tempest that raged behind his furrowed brow. It was not urgency that gnawed at him, nor duty—but a strange, relentless ache. His chest tightened every time August stirred even slightly, every time his lashes quivered against pale cheeks but did not lift. He did not understand why it hurt like this—why he longed so fiercely, so foolishly, for August's eyes to open and find him.
He didn't wish to speak. He didn't wish to confess. He only wanted to be seen.
And still, August slept on, fevered and pale—his breath like fog on a cold glass pane.
The maids came and went like drifting petals. One brought fresh cloth and silks to not dress the wound but to clean the blood. Another took away the empty bowls, the soiled linens. A third gently replaced the lavender sachets near the pillows, whispering a prayer under her breath. The chamber smelled of herbs and rain and something faintly metallic—death had not arrived, but its shadow sat quietly at the corner, waiting.
No one dared speak too loud. In that room, hope was a candle lit in the wind—shivering, small, and sacred.
And still, Elias sat with him, unmoving. As if by sheer force of will, he could keep the reaper from crossing the threshold.
As if love, though unnamed, could guard a life better than steel.
Lirael gave one final glance toward the chamber where moonlight lay draped across August's sleeping form like a ghost's caress, then turned, his coat whispering as he moved. Giles followed in silence, the hush between them weighted with unspoken trust.
The chamber door creaked softly upon its hinges—a reluctant parting—before it was drawn to a close, sealing within it the quiet ache of devotion and the scent of laudanum, ink, and damp linen.
They said nothing as they descended the corridor. The torches lining the hall sputtered low, their flames bowing to the breath of passing shadows. Outside, the wind clawed at the panes, but neither man flinched.
Giles, ever the sentinel, cast a glance over his shoulder—but not in doubt. In that room, beside the fragile boy whom fate had never spared, stood Elias—still and stern as a sentinel cast in marble. He had lost much, even the compass of his memories, yet something unnameable within him endured. The gentleness had not withered. The storm had not made him cruel. If anything, it had made him immovable.
And Giles, seeing that, let go a silent prayer.
Not to heaven—but to loyalty itself.
Let him guard him now, he thought. Let that young man, bound by something older than memory, hold back the world until August wakes once more.
The corridor faded behind them, swallowed by silence and stone.
Lirael, upon reaching the sanctum of his modest chamber, moved as though each step bore the weight of centuries. The door shut behind him with a weary sigh of old hinges, and he sank into the high-backed chair near the hearth—a relic carved with ivy and time. There he sat, not like a physician, but like a man who had pulled another from the mouth of death and left a portion of his own soul behind in the effort.
He bowed his head, one elegant hand resting against his brow as though to steady the storm of thought that raged behind his temples. Long strands of his golden hair cascaded over his shoulder, catching the moonlight in restless ripples—like sunlight tangled in silk, refusing to lie still.
His eyes—those curious, burning irises of pink fire and magenta frost—flickered upward, and in their sheen lingered exhaustion, restraint, and something dangerously close to grief.
Giles stood nearby, unmoving. The quiet stretched between them, heavy with what neither dared speak aloud. Yet it was Lirael who shattered the silence, voice low, frayed at the edges like parchment burned at the corners.
"How did that even happen?" he asked—though not accusingly, only as one reaching for clarity in the aftermath of chaos.
Giles dropped his gaze to the floor. His shadow pooled beneath him like guilt, and his broad shoulders seemed to bear the architecture of his remorse. For a moment, he looked less like a man and more like a cathedral too long standing in the rain.
But Lirael, still seated, gave a bitter-sweet exhale, his hand falling from his brow to his lap. "This isn't your fault," he murmured, voice softer than silk but lined with iron. "Why are you apologizing, Giles?"
At that, Giles lifted his head.
And though he said nothing yet, his eyes—dark as old oak bark and worn as the sea—spoke of duties unmet, of fears not voiced, and of a loyalty so absolute it had begun to eat him from the inside.