The iron-wrought gates of Thornleigh's palace loomed beneath the moonlight, their gilded crests glimmering faintly as the carriage at last rattled to a halt. The wheels groaned upon the cobblestones, the horses steaming from the long and fevered flight through shadowed streets. Upon the driver's seat, the masked servant—his countenance hidden in ivory and black—drew the reins with measured precision, bringing the carriage into stillness. His silence was absolute, as though he himself were carved from marble, a living statue in the employ of power.
The palace guards, Their hands reached for weapons instinctively, but hesitation tempered them when the servant, tall and forbidding, stepped down with a grace too deliberate to be ordinary. The lacquered mask caught the torchlight, casting no hint of emotion. With one gloved hand thrust open the carriage door, and the soldiers beheld the grievous sight within.
Cedric Montrose, his golden hair tousled and darkened with sweat, leaned heavily forward, olive-green eyes alight with fever and rage unspent. His garments were torn, and through the rents fresh blood shone; yet still his jaw was set with the proud defiance of a man unwilling to bend. Against his chest he held Stellan Grimshaw—his black-haired beloved—whose violet eyes fluttered weakly beneath heavy lids. The pallor of Stellan's face was stark in the torchlight, lips faintly parted as though he murmured in dreams too cruel for waking ears.
A murmur of alarm rippled through the soldiers. They were men accustomed to violence, yet the sight of these two—scions of renown, spies whispered of in corridors—stirred something close to reverence. Without command, they bowed their heads slightly, recognizing that they were not of a rank to question such figures."
The masked servant bent, his movements precise, and offered his arm. Cedric resisted, his olive gaze flashing with pride, but his trembling frame betrayed the wounds Samuel had carved into him.
"What Happened,"
the soldiers whispered among themselves, but none dared move closer, for the servant's authority was a wall they could not breach. With a strength belied by his silence, he steadied Cedric, lifting him as though pain itself should yield to his command, and then turned to draw Stellan gently from his arms.
Thus, in hushed awe, the gates of Thornleigh opened, and the wounded were born within—into halls of marble and secrecy—while the moon bore witness to the price of Samuel's cruelty.
The night, some thirty minutes before the clash that had since drenched the streets with blood, was shrouded in the kind of silence that deceived the ear into believing all was calm. The carriage of Caldris Rheyne moved along a winding avenue, its wheels whispering across the cobblestones, its lanterns glimmering like watchful eyes against the velvet dark. Within its lacquered frame sat the master of Khyronia himself, his frame wrapped in a mantle of midnight hue, his gaze fixed upon the floorboards as though deep within a labyrinth of thought. His mind wandered, far from the world of rattling wheels and neighing horses, into the weight of matters that seldom left him.
At his side, though apart, sat his servant—an austere figure whose face was concealed by the black-and-white mask that had long become his unyielding countenance. To most, he was a shadow given human shape, a mute extension of Caldris's will. Yet even shadows possessed ears keener than mortal men, and it was he, not his master, who first caught the disruption in the night's stillness.
It came faintly at first—a thread of sound almost devoured by distance—but to him it was unmistakable: a scream, raw and unguarded, tearing through the otherwise tranquil air. His masked visage did not move, but within the twin glints of his eyes there stirred an unmistakable flicker. His spine straightened, and he turned ever so slightly toward his master.
"Master," he said at last, his tone subdued but carrying an urgency sharpened like steel drawn from its sheath.
Caldris did not stir. His thoughts had carried him far, into the marrow of strategies, into the abyss of enemies unnamed yet ever near. The words did not pierce him at first. But when he lifted his head, the narrowed weight of his gaze fell upon his servant, and he read in the man's posture the tremor of a thing amiss.
"What is it?" Caldris's voice was low, but it bore the kind of authority that could summon truth from silence.
"The servant inclined his head, the black-and-white mask dipping low, yet his voice emerged steady and unflinching. 'Master, I discerned a cry of distress.'"
For the span of a breath, Caldris's brows drew together in disbelief. He had heard nothing—no echo had reached him through his inward reflections. Yet when he saw the glimmer in his servant's eyes, the kind of glint that even the mask could not conceal, a current of certainty stole through him. The servant was never mistaken in matters such as these; his senses were honed to the keenness of a hawk poised upon high winds.
Caldris frowned, the realization cutting through the fog of his thoughts. He leaned back against the carriage seat, his gloved fingers drumming once against his knee, before uttering words that hung in the confined air like a judgment.
"It must be them."
The servant tilted his head, as if awaiting further command.
"Caldris's voice deepened, measured and absolute. 'Go. Whosoever it may be, seek them out. I shall follow upon your lead thereafter.'"
Without hesitation, the servant bowed in compliance. His movements, though precise and respectful, carried within them a latent power—like the coiled readiness of a predator who required no more than a gesture to strike. He reached for the carriage door, pushed it open, and the moment the night air surged in, he was gone. His form seemed to dissolve into the darkness with such silent swiftness that it was less an exit than an unbinding of shadow.
The carriage rocked gently in his absence, its wheels carrying on, but within it Caldris sat alone, his eyes narrowed, his mind recalibrating with sharpened awareness. If his servant's ears had caught such a sound, then danger was nearer than his own thoughts had permitted.
Above the rooftops, the servant had already taken to his pursuit. His boots touched stone and slate as though they were feathers against air, his form a streak of black and white slipping over the slumbering city. The scream had been close, unmistakably close—perhaps only a few streets away. He did not waste breath in conjecture; his instincts were honed for the hunt.
He pressed forward, his mask gleaming faintly beneath the moon, his cloak catching the wind like a trailing shadow. Every sound, every stir of the city spoke to him. And then, with the keenness of one trained to read silence itself, he heard it—the clash of steel upon steel.
The ring of blades carried differently than common noise; it was sharper, heavier, born of both desperation and mastery. He paused but an instant, turning his masked face toward the direction from which it came. The echoes reverberated through the narrow veins of alleyways, guiding him unerringly as a hound follows scent.
A certainty settled upon him then. The scream he had heard, the blades that now rang like church-bells of violence—they belonged to the same fate-tangled moment.
The servant moved with renewed swiftness, his figure vanishing into the weave of night as he closed in upon the unseen struggle. Somewhere beyond those winding streets, lives were being tested, and blood was already writing its tale upon the stones.
And behind him, far slower in movement but unbending in will, Caldris Rheyne had risen from the velvet seat of his carriage. He stepped into the night with a countenance as cold and unyielding as the moon above. For where his servant led, he would follow—not as a man caught in chance, but as one who had long known that the shadows would never keep silent for long.
The storm had already begun.
"Therefore, in the immediacy of the present."
The chamber of Thornleigh was hushed, its tapestries drawn against the night, the air heavy with the scent of salves and tinctures. Upon the great bed lay Stellan Grimshaw, his dark hair fanned carelessly across the pillows, his violet eyes half-lidded, glimmering with the haze of exhaustion. Though conscious, he murmured fragments of words—broken syllables, half-formed thoughts—that betrayed the force of the blow he had endured. His forehead, pale save for the crimson line of his wound, was being tended with the utmost care.
At his side bent a man of proud bearing—Theophilus Thompson, physician of the royal court. His hands, steady and deliberate, pressed a dampened cloth with elegant precision, as though the tending of beauty were not duty but art. The light fell upon his face, illuminating the peach-hued eyes that gleamed with satisfaction. Strands of grey-green hair tumbled across his brow, and with a practiced gesture he brushed them back, never losing the small, composed smile that graced his lips. He worked as though he were sculpting rather than healing, a craftsman intoxicated by the rare privilege of touching such a figure as Stellan Grimshaw.
Yet not all in the chamber looked upon him kindly.
Cedric Montrose sat at Stellan's side, his golden hair tousled and his olive eyes burning with a fire far removed from weakness. His own garments had been stripped, replaced by fresh linens, though his chest and shoulders lay bare beneath the weight of binding bandages. The stark whiteness of the wrappings encircled his arms and torso, a testament to the brutality he had endured, but his posture betrayed no surrender. He bore the searing ache of every wound in silence, gritting his teeth—not at the pain, but at the sight before him.
For Cedric's gaze never left the physician. It was a stare sharpened to a blade's edge, so fierce that even the shadows in the chamber seemed to bend beneath its weight. Each delicate touch Theophilus bestowed upon Stellan's brow, each moment that smile lingered over features Cedric guarded as his own, fanned the quiet fury in his breast.
If his beloved required aid, Cedric would not deny it—yet the thought of that man's hands lingering, of his eyes shining with veiled admiration, carved into him a bitterness he scarcely contained. In his heart, the oath resounded like steel drawn from scabbard: He is mine to protect. Touch him too fondly, physician, and you shall find your art ended with blood.
Theophilus, however, seemed impervious to the storm that gathered in Cedric's olive gaze. With the serene confidence of one accustomed to royal halls and high-born tempers, he continued his task, pride never faltering, smile never dimming. If he felt the weight of Cedric Montrose's glare upon him, he gave no sign—for beauty in his hands was prize enough, and he would not relinquish the moment easily.
The quiet stirrings of cloth and the faint clink of glass upon silver. A single taper guttered in its sconce, its flame bowing and straightening in the draft, casting long shadows that crept across the carved oaken walls. It was in this dim half-light that Stellan stirred, breath catching as though roused from some abyssal dream. His lashes fluttered, and the first thing he felt was pain—sharp, searing—as a dampened cotton pressed against the tender wound upon his brow.
He hissed, the sound soft yet poignant, a broken thread of breath that betrayed his fragility. The physician, Theophilus Thompson, unflinching in his task, pressed the cloth with deliberate precision, his composure untroubled by the young man's discomfort. With a deft hand, he withdrew the stained linen and wound a fresh bandage about Stellan's head, his fingers moving as one accustomed not merely to medicine but to ceremony, as though even pain might be made stately beneath his touch.
At last, Stellan's violet eyes opened fully, gleaming faint beneath the pallor of his exhaustion. He beheld the figure bent over him, and recognition, mingled with surprise, escaped his lips in a fragile breath.
"Master Thompson…"
Theophilus's expression softened into a measured smile, one both courteous and faintly indulgent. With a steady palm he guided Stellan back against the pillows, his voice lowered into a tone of velvet command.
"You must not stir," he murmured. "The wound will reopen if you strain it. Be still, I entreat you."
But even as he yielded to the physician's insistence, unease coursed through Stellan. Thornleigh's palace—the name rose upon his thoughts with sudden clarity, and his chest tightened at the realization that he had been brought here. His gaze flickered restlessly about the chamber, searching, yearning, until it came to rest upon the one figure whose presence stilled the tremor of his heart.
Cedric Montrose lay near at hand, not in bed but upon a narrower couch placed beside him, his figure wrapped in clean linens that did little to conceal the raw truth of his wounds. His broad chest and arms, stripped of covering, were bound in stark white bandages that traversed his torso like the marks of some cruel rite. Yet though his body bore the agony of recent strife, his composure seemed carved of stone; his every movement carried the weight of a will unbroken.
Just then, Cedric raised a glass to his lips, the water catching the moonlight as it trembled faintly in his hand. The silver tray upon which it rested shone dully in the lamplight, attended by a quiet maid who, upon his gesture, bowed and withdrew, vanishing into the shadows. Cedric drank slowly, the line of his jaw—sharp as if wrought from marble—illuminated by the argent gleam of moonlight through the tall casement window.
When he lowered the glass and set it back with an unhurried hand, he lifted his gaze—and found Stellan watching him. For a breathless instant, violet eyes and olive met, and Stellan, caught in his own brazenness, turned his head away in sudden shame. Yet Cedric's gaze did not soften. It burned, but not toward Stellan.
The fire of his eyes was reserved for Theophilus.
The physician, still bending near, still smiling faintly as his hands lingered with unnecessary grace, did not seem to feel the storm gathering beside him. But Cedric saw it all—the prideful precision of the physician's touch, the too-fond gleam in his peach-colored eyes—and though he uttered not a word, his silence seethed like the drawing of steel.