The palace at night was a creature transformed—its gilded walls dimmed, its laughter hollowed out by absence. Footsteps echoed differently in the dark, more like questions than declarations. Hadrian moved like a shadow through those gilded bones, eyes fixed on a door that should never have been ajar.
Luceris' private study. Always sealed. Always guarded with quiet layers of subtle enchantment—wards crafted by careful, ancient hands. Tonight, though, the enchantment was broken, the air oddly stale.
He pushed the door open with gloved fingers. No resistance. No light.
Inside, the study bore no signs of struggle at first glance. The books were aligned. The ink bottles capped. But then Hadrian caught it—the chair overturned, the edge of the rug askew, and a coppery scent clinging to the air like memory.
Blood.
Not enough for death. Just enough for silence.
He moved carefully, gaze sweeping the shelves. Luceris had always kept certain texts out of sight, tucked not in titles but in margins, in footnotes. It took him a few moments to find it—an older codex, battered at the spine, and within it: a folded scrap of parchment.
A symbol. Etched in ash.
Three spires. A broken circle. A flame beneath.
His brows knit. He had seen this once before—scrawled on the walls of a ruined Ashen Coil observatory, long since buried under snow and sanctioned silence.
House Aestis.
Hadrian pocketed the paper and looked around one last time. No body. No answers. Just that gnawing knowing in his gut—the kind that settled in when the game had tilted beneath your feet.
Luceris hadn't run. He had vanished, pulled into something older and darker than politics.
And someone had made sure no one would ask.
---
The room was not grand, but it had the echo of consequence.
Crown-moulded ceilings arched above a round obsidian table, its surface smooth and reflective like still water. Tall windows let in the sun, gilding the cold stone floor with warmth that felt false—more performance than blessing. Cassian stood at the periphery, hands clasped behind his back, posture straight though his heart beat unevenly.
He watched them. One by one.
Lady Colienne Draewyn, of the north—her gown was the color of pine frost, her shoulders clad in pauldrons chased with runes. Her hair was bound in a severe braid, and her eyes—ice-pale—held the precision of a blade. Cassian had heard she once held a fortress for a month without sleep, relying only on scrying to outmaneuver her enemy's movements. She did not look like a woman who ever allowed herself uncertainty.
Sir Lysander Meroveil, once the Eastern Commander, now half a specter of his former self. His beard was neatly combed, and he leaned heavily on a cane shaped like a trident's haft. His gaze, however, was sharp. Not dulled by age, but refined by it. Rumor said he'd refused to take healing for the wound that ended his active command—he considered it a deserved cost. There was something sacrificial in how he moved. A penitent knight.
And then, Lady Nyra Vance, standing where Lord Thesan Viremont should have. Her dress was dark wine with glints of gold—mourning and majesty stitched into one. She bowed her head when spoken to, lips shaped into obedient modesty, but her eyes were calculating. Her presence unsettled Cassian most of all—not because she was overtly threatening, but because she seemed like someone who had practiced every breath she took.
She didn't replace Lord Thesan. She outmaneuvered him.
And yet her presence meant only one thing: Viremont's silence. That silence had always stretched over the western border like a veil, but now it had teeth.
Cassian swallowed. He stood beside his father, Lord Rhain Caerwyn, whose strength, though waning, still burned quietly beside him. His father's magic was held close today—no arcane shimmer in the air—but the weight of it pulsed beneath his skin. Enchantment was his gift. Control, secrecy, endurance. There was no man better suited to play a long game against rot.
But even so, Cassian could feel the fatigue in him. The fight to remain standing in every way.
The steward's voice had long faded into background noise, reading off patrol records, regional unrest, and vague threats near the Hollow Ranges. It wasn't until Lady Colienne spoke that the weight in the room reformed.
"This silence is costing lives," she said, her voice as still and cold as the rivers she hailed from. "Our reports are clear. Yet the court dances around shadows. We demand direct counsel with His Majesty."
Sir Lysander, from where he stood, added softly, "Or with the heir, if His Majesty remains… withdrawn."
Cassian's throat tightened. A breath caught in his chest.
There it was. The absence laid bare.
Luceris.
Three days and no appearance. No messages. No summons.
And the court had already begun turning.
Nyra's voice, velvet smooth, rippled out. "The Prince is likely preoccupied. These are delicate matters."
"More delicate than defending the realm?" Rhain Caerwyn's tone was not loud, but it drew the room like a blade being drawn across glass.
Cassian felt pride pulse low in his chest. And fear.
Nyra smiled, and the way she looked at Cassian—through him—made his skin crawl.
"We each have our duties, Lord Caerwyn," she said. "The heir's… interests… may lie elsewhere."
That look. That tone.
She knew something.
And for the first time, Cassian realized that Luceris' silence was not merely absence—it was intentional. Or enforced.
He dared not glance across the room toward Hadrian. He already knew what he would find there: tension, stillness, a shadow of rage barely contained.
The Hollowborn weren't the only threat anymore.
---
The sun had already fallen by the time Hadrian slipped into the restricted levels of the Imperial Archives.
He moved like a shadow between columns of ancient stone and ink-stained air, his presence veiled by the magic braided into his breath. Few remembered the old passageways beneath the Court's scholar wing—fewer still dared breach them without permission. But Hadrian didn't ask. He knew the right doors. He remembered too much to forget them.
Luceris' absence had meant more than the others realized. It wasn't just a disappearance. It was a thread—tugged, cut, vanished.
And Hadrian had seen enough games to know when a prince was removed.
Torchlight flickered against rows of locked tomes. He passed relic vaults, engraved vaults that still pulsed with wards older than most noble bloodlines. Every step he took down the spiral staircase brought him deeper into the bones of the palace—into rooms left sealed since the founding.
He stopped before a wall engraved with seven sigils—one for each noble House at the Empire's founding. Six still gleamed. One, long since scraped away, left only a scar.
Hadrian pressed his palm to the blank space.
The wall trembled, then groaned open.
Inside was a chamber of dead air and forbidden parchment.
He scanned the names. Not with eyes—eyes could be tricked. With silence, memory, and the subtle magic that lived in bone.
There.
A sigil. A lineage. Buried in an abandoned document beneath the scrolls.
House Aestis.
Their origin had been rewritten. Sanitized.
But the document was older than the archives themselves. Older than the Empire's first formal census. And in the seal that marked the name, Hadrian saw what he feared.
Blood not born of this realm.
No wonder Luceris had vanished.
He stepped back, tucking the scroll into a protected ward of his own—a fold of magic only he could access. His face was unreadable. But his mind burned.
He couldn't tell Cassian.
Not yet.
Not until he knew if this was a key—or a curse.
---
The room was dim, lit only by the flickering flame of a single lantern. Shadows clung to the corners like half-heard secrets. Cassian stood by the tall arched window, one hand resting on the frame, the other loosely curled at his side. Moonlight spilled across his face, catching the slight quiver in his jaw. His reflection in the glass looked more like a ghost than a man—a version of himself stretched thin by silence and sleepless nights.
Behind him, the door clicked shut.
He didn't turn. He didn't have to.
"Where were you?" The question was too soft to be casual.
Hadrian didn't answer immediately. His steps were quiet, but his presence filled the room like a storm waiting to break. His coat carried the scent of dusk and distance. His deep black hair was damp with sweat or fog, curling slightly at the ends, clinging to his temples. His piercing silver eyes shimmered under the lantern-light—glinting like blades dulled by sorrow.
"I needed air," he said at last.
Cassian let out a bitter, low laugh. "Air," he repeated. "You lie too smoothly."
Hadrian's voice came steadier this time, clipped. "Not to you."
That made Cassian turn.
Hadrian's face was shadowed, but even in the half-light, Cassian could see it—the subtle tenseness of his jaw, the way his eyes didn't meet his. There was something buried there. Something breaking.
"You didn't tell me you were leaving," Cassian said. "You were just gone. You always disappear when it matters most."
"I was protecting you."
Cassian's voice cracked: "From what?"
Hadrian hesitated—and that was the answer.
Cassian stepped closer, voice low. "You said we'd face this together."
"We are."
"Then stop treating me like I'll shatter."
Hadrian didn't speak. His gaze finally met Cassian's—and it struck like a blow. There was no distance in those silver eyes, only torment. A storm suppressed behind still water.
"I saw something tonight," Hadrian said quietly. "And if I told you what it was, you'd run toward it. You always do."
Cassian's breath caught.
"You burn too easily for causes that don't deserve you," Hadrian whispered. "I won't let you burn again."
Cassian clenched his fists. "Then stand with me. Don't smother the fire."
Hadrian stepped close—too close. The space between them vibrated with words unsaid, with touches never given and fears never voiced. Cassian could see the way Hadrian's hands twitched at his sides, like he wanted to reach out but wouldn't.
"Do you trust me?" Cassian asked, voice barely above a breath.
Hadrian's answer came without pause. "Yes."
Cassian's throat tightened. "Then when the time comes… you'll tell me everything?"
A beat.
"When the time comes," Hadrian repeated. And though he tried to sound certain, something in his eyes said otherwise.
Cassian nodded, barely.
Silence. Not peace—just the fragile hush before something cruel.
Then Hadrian stepped back.
"I have to go," Hadrian said softly, and though he tried to keep it clinical, the words frayed at the edges. "Something's... stirring. It's further north. If I don't leave now, I might miss the trail."
Cassian instinctively moved forward," Now?". He sighed.
The words were like iron.
Hadrian's jaw clenched. "If I stay, I'll say too much."
"A trail," Cassian echoed. "You mean ghosts."
Hadrian flinched at the word. "I mean truth. The kind that can't be followed from safety."
There was a pause. Cassian's gaze had gone cold — not cruel, but watchful, withdrawn. The way one studies a storm on the horizon and knows it's coming for them anyway.
"And you weren't going to tell me?"
"If I told you—" Hadrian's voice cracked. He forced calm. "You would have tried to stop me."
Cassian took a breath, then looked away. "Maybe I still would."
Silence curled between them. Heavy, like dusk before war.
Hadrian stepped forward, halting just within reach. "I'll come back. I always do."
"No," Cassian said, and his voice was soft but resolute. "Not always. And not as the same person."
That struck deeper than Hadrian expected. He looked at Cassian like he wanted to memorize him: the way his hair caught the fading light, the frost in his eyes now that warmth had receded. The lines of command in his posture, as if he were already preparing to carry something alone again.
Cassian didn't move when Hadrian reached for him. Their kiss was slower — not gentle, but bruised. Like they were trying to carve the memory of it into the bone.
When they broke apart, Hadrian rested his forehead against Cassian's, and for a breathless moment, they simply existed.
"I'm sorry," Hadrian whispered. "For what I won't be able to explain."
Cassian didn't ask what he meant. His voice, when it came, was almost a vow.
"You'd better live."
Hadrian gave a shadow of a smile, then turned — quickly, before the resolve could break.
And Cassian watched him walk into the dark, his arms folded and eyes colder still. He did not call after him. But his fingers curled inward, like he'd just let go of something sacred.
-