“To assassinate my sister, Alyssia Kierland, first princess of the Arkasian Empire,” Cassius said calmly, as if discussing the weather. Lukas looked at him incredulously, searching for any signs that this was another joke. He could see none.

“You… you are serious,” Lukas commented, sitting back in the booth.

“Unfortunately.”

“Why risk telling me this?”

“As I said, you were unlikely to be involved. And if you were, you were the best candidate to torture information out of,” Cassius remarked, politely sipping from his glass.

“Hmph,” Lukas huffed, perhaps not as upset as he felt he should have been over the admission that torturing him was on the table. The situation was too absurd to fully contemplate. “You want something from me. What is it?”

“Well originally, information. Unfortunately, even torture can’t make a mute man sing.”

“May we stop bringing up torture, now?”

“You may.”

“I wasn’t in the first place…”

Cassius smiled in amusement, and Lukas sighed.

“The Lichtenwalds are far from our prime suspects, don’t worry,” Cassius said, leaning over now to look out the tinted window to the room beyond. Lukas followed his gaze, realising with a start that he was practically beside the thrones, where the Emperor himself rested. Alyssia remained at his side, sitting upright in a near identical pose to when she had sat down. She could well have been a statue.

“Then you’re looking for help from my family, in some way,” Lukas remarked.

“Far from prime, I didn’t say you weren’t suspects. What kind of fool invites a suspect to help an investigation?” Cassius said, smiling still and with an amused glint to his dark eyes. “No, not for help, at least not from your family. Had my spell revealed you knew something, you’d be in the dungeon by now, but I suspected that even if your family were involved, you would know nothing of it. The perks of being the youngest, least important son, after all.”

With that Cassius raised his glass again, meeting Lukas’ eye. A flicker of annoyance and offence went through Lukas, before he remembered just who was sitting across from him, and saw the bitter expression underneath the Prince’s smile.

“One black sheep to another, eh?” Cassius offered.

Clink.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” Lukas said after he had finished his sip. “Youngest, perhaps.”

“Hm,” Cassius hummed, though whether it was in agreement or not, Lukas could not tell.

“So if not for help, and you hadn’t suspected me to know anything,” Lukas asked. “What motivated you to bring me here?”

Cassius snickered.

“An escape,” the black haired Prince scoffed, looking sourly at his now empty glass. “Perhaps it’s because Alyssia now is promised to another, but my father seems intent on finding a match for me this very night, as well.”

Lukas nodded. That would make sense, given their age. Even if it was customary for nobles to be married later than commoners in Arkasia, not until their early twenties, marriage contracts were normally settled years prior.

“Luckily for me, one of the most important families in the Empire happened to make a substantial journey here for this, and of course, our families are now to be tied through our siblings’ marriage. It would be quite rude not to spend time entertaining such honoured guests, wouldn’t it?” Cassius said.

“So I’m to keep you from having to be introduced to every noble’s daughter in this hall, then,” Lukas replied dryly.

“Indeed. Coming to know my brother-in-law-to-be is a nice bonus as well, wouldn’t you say?”

“I certainly hope your idea of ‘entertaining’ doesn’t involve continuing to casually mention torture for however long we shall be here.”

“Ha!” Cassius laughed. “Let’s move on to more interesting topics then, why don’t we?”

Lukas nodded.

“What do you know of the Blight?” Cassius asked with a grin, leaning forwards and putting his elbows on the table.

“The… plague?” Lukas asked, taken aback by the drastic shift.

“If that’s what it truly is,” Cassius replied. “Is that your guess? Or what you’ve heard?”

“Simply the rumours in Selerica,” Lukas said with a frown. “Why, is that not correct?”

“Hm, if you ask the nobles around Kasin,” Cassius said, his voice turning slightly musical, like a storyteller around a fire. “It’s no natural plague but a mighty curse, sent down by the mages of the Norlands to weaken us before an invasion.”

“We haven’t been at war with the Norlands for some three hundred years, no?” Lukas asked, wracking his brain for his old military history lessons.

“Indeed,” Cassius responded, his grin growing. “So it’s high time for one of us to start something, isn’t it?”

“If the mages of the far north had the power to evoke such a plague, would they not have used it long ago?”

“New spells are created quite regularly, you know,” Cassius teased.

“Forgive me, I’ve no inclination towards the arcane,” Lukas said with a shrug. He had, of course, been tested for any aptitude for magic as a child. Like with most, the results had been a resounding zero. “I was under the impression most magical arts had declined within the last millennium.”

“They most certainly have, in a sense,” Cassius with a nod. “The Old Ways of magic, practised by ‘mages’, are all but gone in Arkasia. Too dangerous, too likely to blow oneself up instead of one's enemies. That’s why we have ‘arcanists’ now.”

That much, Lukas was familiar with. Long ago, those with natural aptitude for magic had run rampant, bending the forces of nature to their will with the same ease a knight could wield a sword. Yet, for all their might, the art began to die. For every hundred apprentices taken under a mage, it was a miracle if a single one survived to become a mage themselves. The human body was never meant to wield such a power and it, more often than not, tore them apart from the inside out. The stories of mages Lukas had grown up on, Canund the Crooked, the sagas of Archmage Braithas, the Lich Queen’s Woe… not one of them had a happy ending. Typically, they ended in dismemberment, at the very least.

Arcanists, however, had become their replacement. A combination of the sciences, alchemy and light magic had created something nearly as effective, yet much safer. Now, entire colleges were dedicated to the training of Arcanists, with very few, if any, casualties.

Of course, no Arcanist could change the weather, or level a battlefield alone, but it was a much better alternative to self-combustion.

“But the Norlanders still practice the Old Ways,” Cassius finished.

“And what of you?” Lukas asked, keenly remembering the circles that had appeared in the air but minutes before. “You said you were a wizard… not an arcanist, or a mage. What does that mean?”

“Hm,” Cassius hummed, lightly smirking.

“Keep your secrets then,” Lukas sighed.

“So you truly believe the Blight to be a plague?” Cassius asked, leaning back casually again and looking out the window.

“Selerica is far enough south that we have been unaffected,” Lukas responded. “It hasn’t crossed my mind much.”

“Hm,” Cassius hummed once again.

“What of you?” Lukas pried. “Do you believe what you said, that it’s some sort of… spell, or curse? From the Norlanders? I’d heard wind that the Blight felled a city up there… Wulvenheim, was it? The entire population had to flee.”

“If you listen to some of the nobles here in the courts of Kasin, that was nothing but a rumour started by the Norlanders to disguise the truth,” Cassius said.

“So do you believe it or not?” Lukas asked once more.

Cassius met his eye with a glance that seemed to be trying to see straight through to Lukas’ thoughts. Lukas had the worrying realisation that maybe Cassius was doing just that, using some sort of spell to look into his mind… who knew what the prince was capable of?

“I should think that, of anyone, the ones who would know the truth around the Blight would be neither of us, in fact. Worryingly so, those who should know, either don’t, or are perhaps… hiding it.”

“And who would that be?”

“The Order of Alexandros, of course.”

“The monster hunters?” Lukas pondered.

“Who better to know the truth of a pandemic of beasts sweeping the land?” Cassius said, nodding to himself. “Of anyone, they should have the answer. Yet their tongues are sealed, and they refuse to meet with us nobles… they’ve even refused an audience with my father.”

Lukas raised his eyebrows in show, barely preventing his jaw from dropping. To refuse an audience with any noble was practically a death sentence, but the Emperor himself?

“What could they stand to gain from that?” Lukas asked, bewildered.

“Who knows?” Cassius said with a small sigh. “But I think to simply trust any story you hear around the Blight these days… is likely folly.”

“You seem to bear an interest in the subject,” Lukas commented. “Why does the Blight intrigue you so?”

“Curiosity,” Cassius replied easily. “And, of course, adherence to my own beliefs of self-preservation.”

“Self preservation?”

Cassius sighed, long and deep, relaxing further into his chair. It now no longer felt tense within the booth, but rather, like a meeting among, dare Lukas even think it, acquaintances.

“With most of my fellow nobility in Kasin so busy trying to pin blame for the Blight on someone or something, very little talk of what to actually do about it is happening,” Cassius said, a bit bitterly. “And father… has been mostly silent, as well.”

“Seems the courts of Kasin are not too different from Selerica, then,” Lukas said. “Father has complained of similar things at times, late at night and deep into the bottle.”

“Had I more than an empty glass, I would cheers to that,” Cassius said with another sigh. “Say, when do you leave for Selerica after this event is over?”

“I… had not actually been informed of that,” Lukas thought. Actually, he probably had been, during a conversation over supper at some point… and likely nodded along without paying attention. That being said, he didn’t need to say that to the prince.

“Should you find yourself here another day or two, you should come see me again. I promise to leave talk of torture behind next time,” Cassius said with a wink.

“Preferably, we could schedule it so as not to interrupt yet another dance of mine,” Lukas replied.

“Oh?” Cassius said with a mischievous grin growing on his face. “Your dance seemed well enough over to me, but perhaps you saw it from another angle.”

Lukas sighed.

“Fair enough, I had ended it before you addressed me. I’m still perhaps a bit sour that my dances were spoiled twice in one night.”

“What could she have possibly said to end a dance on such short notice?” Cassius questioned.

“I had been wondering for a time why I did not recognize her name,” Lukas said with distaste. “As the conversation would reveal, though… that was for good reason.”

“Oh?”

“She was a commoner,” Lukas sighed. “Her family holds no lands of their own, no lordship or fiefdom. What she’s even doing here is beyond me.”

“My father and his advisors personally invited all of the guests here, you know,” Cassius said with a teasing smile. “Am I going to have to start joking about torture again?”

“Ah, my apologies,” Lukas said, calmly this time. He was done falling for the prince’s jokes. “I was unaware of that. It is not my place to question who the Emperor invites to his palace.”

“A commoner though, hm,” Cassius responded. “Understandable then, why the son of an Archduke would turn aside a dance from her. Even if she were the daughter of a baron, it would be beneath one such as you.”

“Yet she had the gall to approach me,” Lukas said with a sigh.

“Did she now?” Cassius said with an amused chuckle. “What was her name? Perhaps I’ll have to speak to Father about this.”

“Aria Krystia,” Lukas said dryly.

“Aria Krystia? Krystia…” Cassius said, looking thoughtful for a moment.

“Does the name sound familiar to you?” Lukas asked.

“Ah, no,” Cassius replied smoothly. “As you said, there’s a reason you knew not her name. There are a number of those here tonight of common blood, wealthy merchants or servants of lords and ladies and their children, and the like. She could be anyone, really.”

Something about the Prince’s demeanour caught Lukas’ eye. He wasn’t sharing everything.

“None the matter, then,” Lukas said with a polite shrug. Best not to pry any deeper, lest the prince realise Lukas had caught onto something. No, better instead to dig deeper on his own… and if need be, pry more out subtly at a future date. Suddenly, Lukas was hoping that he would have a few more days in Kasin.

There was more going on here than met the eye, it seemed. Between the refugee camp, the thief who’d stolen his coin purse, Sarian’s betrothal, the oddity of his own brothers, an assassination plot against the crown princess, a still-not-present first prince and the intriguing second prince in front of him… Kasin had turned out to be far more interesting than he’d expected.

“With how interesting tonight has been,” Lukas commented. “I’m quite looking forward to a visit in the next few days.”

Cassius smiled, and opened his mouth to speak, only to be interrupted by a booming, magically enhanced voice.

“Lords and Ladies, Esteemed Guests of his Majesty the Emperor,” the same man called from earlier that night. Lukas started in surprise, instantly noting the puzzled look that crossed Cassius’ face as well. Both boys slid closer to the window, peeking out at the now silent band, motionless dancers… and empty thrones?

“While the night has been rich with food, music and dance, the time has come for the festivities to end. The Emperor bids you all a good night. If you may please allow yourselves to be escorted back to your carriages…” From there, the man called out simple instructions to the guests, directing them to the proper servants to collect overcoats or to have their carriages brought to the door. The crowd began to mumble and whisper, but none dared challenge the orders given in the direct name of the Emperor.

Lukas’ head was spinning, and a quick glance at the prince next to him revealed that Cassius was the same.

“Where… where was the announcement?” Cassius whispered.

“My thoughts exactly,” Lukas replied quietly, trying vainly to come up with a reason.

“They couldn’t have cancelled the marriage, could they?” Cassius wondered out loud, then shook his head. He turned from the window, and the boys made eye contact again, both wearing identical expressions of an iron-willed desire for answers.

“I shall see you in a few days then, shall I?” Cassius asked. It didn’t sound much like a question.

“Hopefully we’ll have answers to share by then,” Lukas replied honestly.

Cassius smiled, though the determination never left his eyes. Lukas could feel his own face mirroring the same look.

“It has been a pleasure, Lukas Von Lichtenwald,” Cassius said, standing from the booth and holding out a hand. Lukas rose with him.

“Likewise, Cassius Kierland,” Lukas said, grabbing his wrist in a handshake.

He had the feeling this would be only the first meeting of many.