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Crius still doesn’t know a lot of things about Tyril and Zenn. It’s not as if he hasn’t run a background check beforehand—he understands why Zenn’s is empty, but Tyril is a completely different matter. Tyril’s records are seamless and solid, also too normal for someone like him, although Crius knows better than to ask questions about his past. Their camaraderie isn’t the kind where they need to know every detail about each other’s personal lives, and Crius has his own secrets to keep.
But here’s what Crius doesn’t expect: Zenn’s wounds don’t disappear in an instant, and Tyril can handle himself in fights just as well as Crius does, despite having no history of cadet training.
“None of your vitals took a hit, it’s just a deep flesh wound. Cas, stay still.” Tyril’s tone is clipped as he starts to clean his wounds.
Crius glances at Zenn. He sustained far more wounds than Crius did and he bled to an impossible death. If Tyril didn’t know Zenn, he would’ve treated him first. Instead Zenn was left in his own devices, blood soaking into his clothes as he spent a few agonising minutes writhing in pain. Zenn is now perfectly calm as if they haven’t taken down an underground organisation just before this.
Crius almost wants to ask Zenn what it’s like. Crius didn’t even notice he was also heavily bleeding. All he feels is a dull itch he cannot scratch.
Just as Crius is staring for too long, Zenn turns to him. “What.”
Zenn probably knows what Crius is thinking, but Crius contemplates on telling the truth. “Sorry, it’s nothing,” he ends up saying instead. “I’m just thinking of writing a romance novel.”
Zenn’s expression flickers from surprise to confusion. It looks like Tyril is about to say something off-handed, but he is too focused on making sure Crius doesn’t die of gangrene at the age of twenty-two.
After a few moments of baffled silence, Zenn says, slowly, “Sometimes I can’t tell if you’re joking.”
Crius chuckles. Maybe he is, but he’s also willing to do something that’s not like him if it’s for the Wings. Attending parties and wooing noble women into providing more funds for the Wings isn’t enough to make up for the budget cuts issued by the royal family, and hearing those women talk about their newfound hobby is giving him ideas. “At the very least, help me come up with a pen name.”
“No,” Tyril replies unhelpfully as he pours a cleaning agent on a particularly nasty wound.
“Can’t you just use your name?” Zenn asks. “Doesn’t matter if your book is shit, if people know it’s you they’re going to like it.”
But Crius doesn’t have to do that. He’s read enough to notice a pattern; at the very core they’re all the same stories. If he follows the same formula it doesn’t matter if it’s his name engraved on the book cover. People tend to lean into what’s predictable and take comfort with familiarity.
He will still take Zenn’s suggestion into consideration, though. He can butcher his name, probably even jumble it. Noble women don’t care about the real identity behind pen names, they enjoy the mystery far more than the truth.
On the way back to Crius’s office, Zenn tells Crius exactly what’s been on his mind: “I read too many romance novels. They’re all the same. You can play safe and you can still earn a crapton out of it.” Zenn reaches into his back pocket to pull a lighter and a box of cigarettes. He wordlessly offers the box to Crius and Tyril even though they don’t smoke. Force of habit. “But if you want to be different, try writing a strong female lead. It sells if you write it well.”
That, he can manage. And he’s confident he can do it right, because he knows her. Just enough to see right through her, but not enough to see the full picture.
And that’s the problem.
He thinks of her, more often than he should, when he loses grasp on his unconscious mind. He thinks of what could’ve been if he continued living without his condition weighing him down. He thinks of what could’ve been if her eyes didn’t burn with hatred.
Zenn’s eyes burn the same way as hers whenever Crius brings her up.
(He’s not sure how Zenn and Anastasia met. Crius knows Zenn well enough to sense he’s lying when he says he never met her. Anastasia is far easier to read, and she seems confused when Crius asks her about Zenn. Nobody else’s name except hers fills Zenn with gratitude and regret and anger all at once. Crius will probably never know what’s going on between them, but Crius still wants to know what it is about Anastasia that makes Zenn feel so intensely, because Crius thinks he’s also beginning to understand what it feels like.)
Crius sees it in Tyril when he thinks nobody is looking.
(On some days, Tyril seems out of it, as if he’s looking back on his past actions. He’s done enough and far beyond as the head of the Inquisitorial Order, and even though he often has his head on his shoulders, there are times when it seems like he has regrets. Crius knows too little about Tyril, and his records are too clean. Crius is more than capable of digging into Tyril’s past to figure out who he really is, but Crius trusts Tyril enough to even think of doing it. The world revolves around the perpetual imbalance of truth and deception, and they’re just a part of it.)
And Crius wonders if Anastasia will ever experience youth as bright as the flames beneath her eyes and just as burning hot.
(Whenever he looks at her, it feels like he’s looking at the person he could’ve been after his sister’s death. Stubborn and headstrong, running solely on bitter spite and sheer willpower. He’s quick to give up because he’s already made an enemy out of the Church. The Cardinals will always hold authority over him so there’s no hope for him to win. But there’s still hope for her. Anastasia is far too young and far stronger than he will ever be, infinite with possibility. He tries to put some distance from her in hopes that she doesn’t turn out like him.)
And yet.
There’s this look she gives him sometimes, on the rare moments she isn’t weighed down by what troubles her. I’ll strive to be as good as you, she tells him once, eyes full of admiration and trust and wonder that’s so intense it hurts to just look at her.
Because that’s exactly what he is avoiding.
Because once she knows what he has given up on, she will learn to hate him.
But that doesn’t have to be now. She’ll probably learn that part of him sooner or later. Maybe never. And that’s fine by him, as long as she grows up to be her own person, nothing like the one he is right now.
No, Anastasia, he replies. You’re going to be better than I will ever be.
—
The last tinge of sunset descends the horizon as Crius heads to a party hosted by a noble family. They’re close friends of our parents, he remembers his sister whispering to his ear all those years ago, back when she’s still alive and he attended parties not out of obligation but out of a sense of duty to protect her. It’s a time before he took a vow of knighthood in the royal palace, maybe even before his sister left home to dedicate herself to the Church. To this day, he can’t tell if it’s a time he still wants to remember. Let’s treat them well.
Maintaining relations with family friends is the least he could do for his sister. There’s nothing to lose and everything to gain with keeping connections that will keep his influence strong in a place that’s never his. But he may as well belong there, considering how everyone approaches him wherever he goes, and how nobody can deny him of his whims. He approaches a noble woman and exchanges pleasantries with her, leading to a conversation about his position and her feigned interest in the Wings.
He tries not to think of her. He tries not to think of the oath taking ceremony just this morning. He tries not to think of the welcome party earlier, where every cadet is new except for her.
He tries not to think of the way she asked him what else she can do to enter knighthood. Her words are desperate, and it stings and it hurts and all the worse because she genuinely believes she’s still lacking when that’s far from the truth.
Crius cannot tell her he doesn’t intend to make her a knight. Not at least she lets go of the part of her that burns with hatred towards something far beyond her reach and his understanding, far beyond what someone at her age could handle.
This is all for the Wings, he reminds himself. It was only supposed to be for his self-gain, but he is now too deeply involved to even think of giving up. There’s a file of handwritten instructions stored in the locked drawer of his office desk, reserved for the future Grand Commander taking over after he exposes Kyle’s involvement in embezzlement of funds, and after he is done executing his plans. Crius finishes what he started, and he will do it perfectly.
If something happens to the Wings after he’s gone, that’s no longer his problem. He has done everything he can.
Crius says goodbye to the noble woman and makes his way to another, and leads the conversation yet again with practised ease. It’s something he has done a hundred times and he has to do it a thousand times more. With the monthly quota of donations to the Wings met, accompanied with the promise of afternoon tea with the ladies, he brings up an upcoming new romance novel from his acquaintance SICUR, and pushes back the small part of him that wonders if Anastasia would fancy a story with a protagonist just like her.