Zier's pounding footsteps had died away, yet the stifling air still bristled with the tremors of the row. The witnesses remained rooted, staring at the door, reeling from the impact, too numbed by shock to think or feel just yet.

As expected, Coris was the first to recover. Or seemingly, at the least. He filled his lungs with a long draw of breath, which just as soon petered out in a labored sigh, then turned to the two present Greeneyes—half-breeds, as his brother had branded them.

"Meya. Heloise. I'm so sorry." He lingered equally on each pair of green eyes, one glowing and reproachful, the other dark and subdued. Trembling with tempered fury and shame, he steadied himself with a hand on the desk then bowed deeply,

"I'm sure he doesn't mean it. He's just in denial. He'd come around. And he'd give you both his most contrite apology. You have my word."

Lord Hadrian pledged fervently. Yet, even as her fury and hurt had abated with Coris's promise, Meya shot a worried glance at Heloise and the others; Coris had made no move to go after his brother.

Having settled back down on his chair, he conjured up a piece of linen parchment and scribbled away with his trusty hawk-feather quill, pausing for thought at intervals, before adding more bullets and intructions.

"Coris." Meya called. Ignoring her, Coris pushed himself to his feet and handed the paper, now folded thrice so it would fit snugly within a palm or stashed under a belt, to his father's two squires.

"Chris. Simon. We'd need preparations for our dragon training. Please see to this by tomorrow."

Simon took the proffered note with slack fingers, still staring in wide-eyed disbelief at Coris, along with Christopher. Coris turned next to Arinel, who remained shaken from Zier's denouncement. She seemed to be relying solely on Heloise's hands on her shoulders to keep her on her feet, while Fione gave her nervous pats on the back.

"Arinel." Lady Crosset looked up as if waking from a stupor. Coris gave her a slight bow. "I apologize for the short notice, but you have tonight and tomorrow to decide whether you'd like to travel on with us, or stay behind in Jaise with Bishop Riddell."

Arinel seized up in horror, eyes bulging from their swollen sockets. Coris dipped his head once more.

"Your mother's research could be crucial to retrieving The Axel. Naturally, you'd want to continue it, but there's also the matter of finding Klythe."

Arinel shivered. She seemed to have forgotten her missing brother in light of all that had been going on. At long last, she dipped a deep nod of resignation, then folded herself between her arms. Heloise tightened her embrace, then glanced around along with Fione at the next command directed to her.

"Fione. As maid-of-honor to the lawful Lady Hadrian, your post is with Arinel."

"What about Zier?" Fione narrowed her eyes as if to capture the barest flick of emotion from her perpetually equanimous master. If Coris was taken by surprise, his denial was honed to perfection.

"If he agreed to undergo the surgery, he'd need to be examined by Jaise's healers." He cocked his head. "He'd have to stay. If he doesn't, then he'd travel on with us to Everglen. He'd have to contribute in some way."

Silence fell. Even Fione seemed to have been robbed of her inherent ability to talk in any situation. Coris's calm leadership and eloquence, though soothing in the midst of a crisis, was unnerving when the crisis was that of his own. It seemed fitting—destined, even—that the Hadrian brothers would repeatedly clash; a being of selfish freedom without restraint, Zier was bound to be alienated by his inhumanly logical brother.

Meya shook her head in frustration. He seemed accepting alright, back then when they were talking on the pillow. Yet, once the opportunity arose for vindication, Coris hadn't heeded a word of her advice on how he should portray himself to Zier.

Coris surveyed each of his subjects spread out before him, impervious to their thinly veiled looks of apprehension and admonition. His signatory smile was glazed like syrup over the cracking, peeling skin of his lips.

"That would be all. I'm so sorry you have to witness such a scene. You've earned your rest. Goodnight."

⏳

Dinner stopped by to keep Meya and Coris company once the congregation of noblemen and women had departed. Though foreign and plain at first glance, even the fussiest eater need only muster up the courage to take the first bite, before he would become a devotee of the Hythean cuisine.

Roasted flat bread gleaming with droplets of olive oil, stuffed with deep-fried mashed chickpea patties, seasoned with tangy sesame cream; an assortment of scalded vegetables, to be dipped in a sauce of mashed eggplant; and, for dessert, tiny cakes made of a dozen delicate layers of peppery nuts and wafer-thin dough, drenched in gum syrup and garnished with cinnamon.

Yet, even with recipes designed to impress, with plenty of ingredient for surprise and awe, the meal was a subdued one. The caustic stench from the row between brothers lingered heavy in the air, like tendrils of nostril smoke from a foul-tempered dragon. Ventilating the room by gushing over food seemed laughable.

"I'm very sorry, Meya. About Zier."

Meya looked up from her trencher, three fingers inside her mouth. Her eyes met his fleetingly, then settled upon the stick of boiled carrot he had been stirring aimlessly in his pot of starchy eggplant paste. The poor thing looked two orbits away from snapping in half.

Sighing, Meya pulled her fingers free, scraping off the residue of gum syrup with her teeth.

"Tis no use sorry-ing me, Coris. You have to go talk to him." She polished the last remnants of gum off her fingers with a napkin, then answered his gaze.

"I know I shan't speak for Greeneyes and dragons in all the three lands, but I wouldn't want to risk your brother's life for our cause if there were any other way, either."

"He betrayed our family and stole a secret that could jeopardize all of Latakia, Meya!" Coris's eyes blazed, his voice harsh and biting as a winter gale. "It's high time he learned there would be consequences!"

"For Freda's sake, you're his big brother, Coris!" Meya slammed her fists on the table, sending carrot fingers jolting out of their trenchers and spoons out of their bowls, her eyes locked in a death match with Coris.

"He expects you to protect him. Not serve him up on a platter to be dissected by egghead healers while drugged by egghead alchemists. For something he did as a child!"

Coris simply glowered back, his expression impassive, his jaws clenched. Meya deflated with a huffing sigh, settling back down on the carpeted flagstones,

"Look, I'm as frustrated with him as I am with you, and as you are with him. And I'm tempted to blame it all on him just as much as you are. But you gotta think like us selfish common folk for once, Lexi. Not a leader."

Coris averted his eyes and scanned the tabletop, a wordless show of defiance. Swallowing the urge to roll her eyes, Meya leaned across and grasped his fleshless arm.

"You're asking a lad of sixteen to offer his life to be used in an experiment. A banned experiment that's already killed many people. And you and Arinel are pressuring him into it."

Coris looked up, silvery eyes peering out from sunken sockets, lost and melancholic.

"He's cornered. He feels betrayed. He's alone, and he's scared. So he lashes out."

At long last, the whirling tempest dissipated. His defensive arms of blade-like winds died away, revealing his true battered self alone at the eye of the storm. Coris hung his head, covering his face in shame and anguish. Meya stood up on her knees and circled the table to his side, gathering him into her arms,

"He thinks you don't love him." She murmured into his trembling shoulder, closing her eyes as the warmth of her breath reverberated to engulf her cheeks, "He thinks you couldn't be bothered to do everything in your power to protect him before considering the last resort. You have to talk to him, Lexi."

One by one, she peeled his resisting fingers from his face. She pried his chin from his chest and tipped his face up with a tender finger, then understood his reluctance to face her. Coris's complexion had drained to ashen, and his overbright eyes were rimmed with red.

Knowing enough not to comment, Meya smoothed his hair, then helped him to his feet and to their bed.

"If you're not ready to face him, then sleep on it for a night, alright?" She coaxed him down, smoothing the silken blanket over him, "I'll get a head start on Axel's memoir for tonight's reading practice."

"Nightcap." Coris mumbled. Meya cocked her head, acknowledging her defeat, then shuffled away to their dinner table to cobble up a drink. She traipsed back to an impatient Coris with her green Jaise bowl, filled to the brim with cold chamomile tea, then tapped the laudanum vial four times over it.

"Four drops." She pushed the bowl into his eager hands, adding with a blush on her cheeks, "That'd be six kisses tomorrow."

"Told you, I need far more than that to carry me through the night." Coris held the bowl before his lips, inhaling deeply to feed his nostrils with the faded aroma of blissful slumber. Meya's cheeks deepened in color as she unfurled an affectionate, mischievous smile.

"I just said kisses. I didn't say where."

Coris was left blinking for a mere breath. Yet, it was more than ample time for Meya to snatch Axel's memoir from the bedside table and scamper out of his reach.

Coris's covert grin of giddy anticipation morphed into one of guilt and apprehension in the span of a heartbeat. Keeping an eye on Meya as she undressed for a bath, he downed the rest of his tea in one hearty swig, slammed the bowl onto the table, then plummeted into the bed's supple embrace, praying—yet not expecting—for sleep to claim him swiftly and linger until morn.

⏳

Coris woke again well before the end of first sleep, drenched in cold sweat and feverish enough that for once, he couldn't discern the heat radiating from the nearby Meya.

For a while, he simply laid there; unable to decide which was more bearable of two evils; slumber plagued with nightmares, or lucidity dogged by withdrawal.

After what could have been a whole minute, the poor lad came to the disheartening conclusion that sleep was not an available option. Coris grudgingly forced himself upright, cradling his throbbing head in his hands, as Zier's words beat a tattoo onto his skull with every pounding pulse.

You don't know love. You don't know fear. You don't know mercy. You're a coldblooded monster.

Monster. Coris was no stranger to the word, having been surrounded by its whispered form and its countless variants from childhood. Especially after his victory in the War of Cristoria.

Fat, short and unathletic, he leaned on his sharp mind to excel in his studies, to manipulate those who would otherwise ridicule him—Simon and Christopher, namely—into being his underlings. Committing atrocities no child should be capable of in the name of duty, in the hopes of a shred of his reluctant parents' affection.

For his beleaguered Father had only sired him to continue the line. For his unready Mother had been caught in the act, trying to end him as she did his three predecessors. For he had a little brother who was handsome—and innocent—and tall—and strong—

He bred envy, resentment, disgust, and fear wherever he went. And he reveled in it. There might have been times when he doubted this caricature he had molded around his empty, long forgotten true self, but he would just as soon decide it was the only way for him to be.

He was Lord Hadrian, future Baron Hadrian. From the moment he was conceived, there was no other path, and nothing else upon this path. He committed himself to his role. He embraced his duty to The Axel. Without it, he was nothing.

It was such that Coris wondered if his efforts to liberate dragons was because he actually cared for Meya and her kind, or because it would further cement his wise, benevolent Lord Hadrian persona in the eyes of the world, and Mother and Father.

Even as he knew, as Zier knew; a monster could not love, and a monster did not deserve love.

Normally, Coris would not have to dwell on these torturous ruminations, as whenever they surfaced, he would promptly drown them back to the bowels of his consciousness with the oblivion laudanum brings. And now, more than ever before, he craved that blessed emptiness. Just a couple of drops—A few more swigs, then—Now, one last lick might just do it—Until the Mist of Nightmares was kept at bay...

Meya did not stir at the sound of Coris falling like stone, spread-eagled, his face bone-white and cold as moonlight. From his slack hand the empty laudanum vial rolled. Its last dredge of poison seeped into the white sheets as it lolled lazily back and forth, echoing the dying throes of its drinker, before finally going still.

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