Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They had pushed all the curtains back, and the library—which usually has a warm, autumnal energy about it—is practically glowing gold this afternoon. Despite this, Wylan manages to keep his eyes shut, although Jesper supposes he might be getting less light from where his head lies on his lap. 

Jesper doesn’t mind the light himself. The air around them has the slow, peaceful quality of the best sleepy afternoons, but he feels no inclination to sleep. He had been able to entertain himself by playing with Wylan’s hair and talking to him, when Wylan’s rest had been more of a lazy lounge than a nap. Now, though he’s trying to keep himself quiet, he still enjoys twining Wylan’s hair around his fingers, absentmindedly following the pattern of his curls.

“Jes,” Wylan murmurs. Jesper glances down, and then, realizing—stills his rapid-bouncing leg. Wylan, whose head had been resting on said leg, raises an eyebrow in chastising amusement. “Do you want me to get up?”

“No, of course not,” Jesper says hastily. “Sleep, love.”

“I would, but my pillow keeps moving,” Wylan says, voice dry. He sits up anyways, even as Jesper protests otherwise, casting him a knowing smile. “There’s that metal chair somewhere in the back, if you want something to fiddle with.”

Jesper grins sheepishly, scratching the back of his ear as he follows Wylan’s gaze. He is a bit restless—nothing overly unpleasant yet, and nothing to prompt it either, it’s just that urge he often feels that keeps him from sitting still—and he’s both grateful and embarrassed that Wylan picked up on it before he did. “I think it’s because of all the pastries,” Jesper says regardless, hoping to fill in a reason. Admittedly, the tray-full of pastries he and Wylan had eaten probably didn’t help the matter. “I’ve got a sugar high now. I could do anything, you know?” 

Wylan rubs his eyes. “We still have to respond to those letters about the trade–”

“I’ll go to the chair,” Jesper says quickly, and Wylan laughs. Jesper stands and points an accusing finger at him. “If I come back and I see a ledger here, I’ll never kiss you again.”

Wylan gives him a mortally wounded look, and Jesper relents instantaneously, crouching back down over the couch to give him a kiss. Despite all his energy, it’s a gentle kiss that they share, the ones exchanged on warm weekends like this, when they accidentally wake up earlier than they needed to, too satisfied and tired to go any further. 

When they pull apart, Jesper gives Wylan another peck on the cheek, before murmuring, “Stay here—sleep. I’ll be two minutes.” 

“Shouldn’t be so idle,” Wylan mutters to himself, a reprimand. Still, he makes no move to leave the sunny spot on the couch, languidly stretching his spine instead, in such a manner that Jesper is reminded of a content, sleepy cat. 

He voices as much. “You’re like a cat.” Wylan looks at him warily, sensing oncoming teasing, and Jesper’s grin widens. It’s true—the opportunity to needle Wylan can never be missed, in his books. “Like a little kitten, actually. Don’t you think it suits you, Kitten?” 

Wylan huffs. “If I was a cat, I’d scratch you.” 

“You wouldn’t! All cats love me!” Jesper exclaims. “We once had this barn cat—so pretty, she had the biggest eyes in the world—and when I was like, 12 or so, she got pregnant—never found out who the father was–”

“How scandalous.”

“Tell me about it. I bet she was the talk of the cat-ton. But anyways, she was like, half-feral so she kept to herself, but you know where she chose to give birth? The bushes closest to my bedroom window. She loved me." 

A smile tugs at Wylan’s lips. “How many kittens were there?” 

“Five. And they all loved me too.” 

“Is this the only evidence you have of all cats loving you?” 

Jesper gasps. “Are you trying to tell me you wouldn’t love me if you were a cat?” 

Wylan settles his head on the arm of the sofa, closing his eyes. “Call me ‘kitten’ again, and I wouldn’t.” 

“Damn. I thought you hadn’t noticed.”

Wylan makes a disgruntled noise, and Jesper laughs as he goes off between the shelves to find his chair project. Wylan had found some old, heirloom chair frame, and Jesper’s made it his own personal goal to figure out how thin he can make the legs of this large metal chair by shaving scraps of metal away from it with his powers bit by bit, for it to still balance. If he overshoots, the chair practically disintegrates into a thousand parts, and then he has to build it back again. For whatever reason, it’s highly entertaining. It’s a very Wylan-like project to assign himself, and not something he would’ve even considered before, let alone find fun; he likes to think of it as some of his boyfriend’s brilliance rubbing off on him after all these years. 

Unfortunately, when he gets to it, today doesn’t seem to be one of those days where it’s registering in his brain as satisfying. He makes one of the back legs too thin, and the chair topples with loud clangs and crashes, and it just feels too arduous to face on such a slow, quiet afternoon. All the same, he can’t stand the silence, so he decides a little wander to the dustier sections of the library will be fine. 

Wylan hadn’t gone near the library for practically the whole first year that they lived together. They had been doing a fair job of refreshing the Van Eck mansion, making it feel like theirs—there wasn’t a corner of the first floor that they hadn’t made out in, Jesper can confirm that much—but for a long while, the library had gone untouched. Jesper hadn’t minded. The books he read aloud for him and Wylan were hardly the decades old economics papers the library was filled with. They’ve managed now, at least, to sort out the main portion of the room; make it the sort of sunny lounge spot that they can laze about in. 

The rest of the library remains, more or less, a mystery. 

Jesper is in one of the corners of the room when he comes across a cabinet, built into the wall. There’s a keyhole on the door, and when he tugs it, it remains locked. An excellent mystery to solve. 

He digs in his pockets for a coin, imagining the key needed to fit into the old lock. His mind quiets as he makes and tests different keys. The first one he makes is too short, and doesn’t click into anything. The second, and third, and fifth are too thin—the fourth was too thick. Finally, after far longer than two minutes, he manages to shape the metal just enough for it to fit into the keyhole perfectly, and unlock the little cabinet. 

He opens it eagerly, though that’s more from the thrill of discovery than anticipation for the discovery. All that’s likely to be in the cabinet is more books, or maybe a few more dated Van Eck candlestick holders that Kaz can steal the next time he visits. 

The first thing Jesper is hit with is a barrage of dust. He sneezes. But then, he sees a box, with stacks of notebooks and journals, several bundles of papers, and, curiously, a teddy bear that, apart from the dust, is in pristine condition. 

The belongings don’t look too old, and they clearly must have belonged to a recent child in the Van Eck household. Tentatively, Jesper picks up one of the notebooks and opens the page. He already has a suspicion of who it belongs to—there can only be so many options—but then the scrawling doodles on the first page of the sketchbook, in its particular organized clutter, are too immediately recognizable for Jesper to have any other doubts.  

“Wylan! Come here!” he calls over his shoulder. Gingerly, he picks another one of the notebooks out from the pile, blowing dust off the cover. “Wy!”

Wylan’s voice is a shout from the other side of the library. “Is everything alright?” 

“Yes! Unless you count dust. I’m literally being eaten alive by dust, like I’m actually dying—they’re attacking me! I’ve been stabbed! Come quick! The dust bunnies are chasing after m—oh, you’re here.” Wylan raises an amused, but unimpressed eyebrow at Jesper, having approached from between the shelves with an Inej-like speed and silence. It’s also possible that Jesper hadn’t heard him, thoroughly amusing himself with his newly imagined tale of evil dust bunnies instead. “How’d you find me? Echolocation?”

“I’m not a whale or bat, so no.” 

“Hey, not all bats use echolocation,” Jesper supplies. Wylan pauses, and then nods, accepting this fact and visibly storing it away in his mind. As he does so, his head tilts rather sweetly, and he spots the open cabinet door. Jesper remembers his goal. “I got bored of the chair, sorry. Look what I found!” 

“Everything’s an adventure with you,” Wylan complains, but there’s too much entertained curiosity in his voice for Jesper to take it seriously. He grins at him, and Wylan shakes his head fondly. 

Jesper sits on the floor, pulling the box out of the cabinet. “All this stuff—is it yours?”

Wylan frowns, doubtful. But as soon as he peers into the box, his eyes widen. He lets out a little gasp, a precious one that stitches itself right into Jesper’s heart, and he rushes down to the floor alongside him. Wylan wastes no time in grabbing the teddy bear from the box with his left hand; with his right hand, he grasps onto the side of Jesper’s shirt. Jesper doubts he’s even aware he’s doing it. 

The combination of it all, Wylan’s blue eyes wide with wonder, the gasp, the teddy bear, the way he wants Jesper, of all people, near him—an ocean of affection doesn’t have nearly enough depth to capture all the love Jesper feels, exactly now. He turns his head, enough that he can leave a gentle kiss at Wylan’s brow. 

“It is!” Wylan answers the question eagerly, as though his reaction couldn’t have predicted the answer. “From ages ago, I would’ve thought my—How in Ghezen’s name did you find this?”

Jesper shrugs, but he’s bouncing with excitement himself. “It was just in this cabinet. It was locked, but I…” 

Wylan’s smile grows wider. “You fabrikated the lock off?” 

“I fabrikated another key.” Jesper grimaces slightly. “Although now that you say it, that probably would’ve been loads simpler than making this weird key.”

“Oh, let me see?” Wylan looks at him encouragingly, but Jesper catches the way his eyes flit back to the box. He has the same look about him that he had when they went to the Novyi Zem National Gallery on one visit to Colm’s: sweetly impatient and adorably overwhelmed, unsure of where to start. 

“Later, love,” Jesper says easily. “I wanna see what’s in the box.”

Wylan beams, and carefully pulls out a notebook. He dusts it off, the lightest of fingertip touches. Jesper understands the care. There are so few relics from Wylan’s childhood—none, actually—that the sight of these notebooks and sketchpads warrants that sort of reverent, archival touch, as though they were in a museum. 

“Oh.” Wylan’s voice is soft as he turns the pages of drawings and doodles. There’s lots of sketches of very tasteful floral arrangements and fruit bowls, which Jesper could expect from a baby merchling, but also a surprising number of detailed drawings of insects and spiders. Wylan pauses on a drawing that combines both, a bouquet of flowers, colored in with soft, pastel pencils, with a beetle tucked onto one of the petals. The perspective is a bit off, and the shading for the shadows is somewhat patchy all throughout, but the eye behind it is unmistakably Wylan’s. 

Wylan says, “Oh. I really was awful, wasn’t I?”

Jesper elbows him playfully. “Shut up. It’s gorgeous.”

“It’s hideous,” Wylan emphasizes, but the smile on his lips is teasing. But his expression falters when a thicker sheet of paper falls out of the pages, eyes frozen on the painting. 

Jesper can recognize the painting style easily, which is a type of familiarity he never could have predicted for himself. The painting is a small, watercolor sketch, done by Marya’s hand. In the drawing, there’s a large, sprawling green field ahead under a bright, sunny blue sky, though the landscape is not the focal point of the piece. Jesper’s attention, at one glance, is diverted to the little boy with red curls, clutching the hand of a man—a tall, thin, blonde-haired man, wearing a casual, country-appropriate merchers’ neutrals. Both of them face the field, faces obscured, but the warm affection between the two is clear; the way the little boy’s hand is stretched upward to hold onto the man’s, his head angled in a way that suggests rapt attention to whatever the man is saying. And the man stands with a slight bend to his knees, as though he’s about to crouch down and point something out to the child, or perhaps just stood up from the very action. 

It is, unmistakably, a painting of Wylan and Jan Van Eck. 

Wylan stares at it for a long, hard second, and then clears his throat. “My mother must have painted that. At the country house. I must’ve been… two or three, probably?”

“Oh, the one near Zierfoort?” Jesper asks, faux-casually. He’s painfully aware of the elephant in the room, and hasn’t the faintest clue how to address it, or even if he should. Avoidance tends to be the go-to strategy for both of them, but, hypocritically, Jesper doesn’t want Wylan to feel that he should avoid the topic. 

“We should visit before it gets too cold again,” Wylan says distractedly, setting the painting down and quickly drawing a new notebook from the box. He hesitates before opening it, likely imagining whatever other surprises might be hiding inside. 

Jesper feels the surge of some protective instinct rush through him. “May I?” he asks, gesturing to the journal. Wylan nods; for a second, he looks almost shy, but that fades away. The blush is ever-present on his face, and Jesper leaves a kiss where it dusts the highest point of his cheek. He thumbs through a few pages. This sketchbook seemed to be more of a catch-all, with doodles and the occasional math equation penciled in. The filled-in pages end abruptly, about half-way through the book. “How old were you when you–”

“Nine,” Wylan answers automatically. “Almost ten.” 

Jesper glances sideways at him. The flatness of his tone and the sureness of the response could be odd, but it could also be that Wylan’s crazy brilliant memory warrants him remembering precisely how old he was when he possessed and used all these items. 

He shakes the worry out of his mind when he opens another book to see pages to see several drawings of an upsettingly gorgeous Kaelish man. 

Jesper whistles. “Oh, and who’s this? A first love?” 

Wylan catches sight of the drawing and flushes. “He was my art tutor. Not my first love.” 

“Uh-huh. You just doodled his face a thousand times because you were bored in class, was it?”

“It was practice!” Wylan protests. Drawing himself up, he slyly adds, “And those drawings don’t do him justice. He was very handsome.” 

Jesper sighs mournfully. “He looks nothing like me.”

“He had grey eyes,” Wylan points out. 

“Is he still in Ketterdam? Should I be threatened?”

“Ghezen’s hand,” Wylan mutters, but he’s biting his lip to hold back laughter. 

Jesper is more than pleased to see the expression. He presses another few kisses into Wylan’s hair, and then a curiosity comes back to mind. “How come these books were–”

“Oh!” Wylan grabs something else from the box; a bundle of sheet music, which he quickly pours over. “These are all from my piano lessons! See, look at all the mistakes, Ghezen—”

Jesper leans over, immediately noticing the annotations done in a harsh red pen, isolating certain bars, a time signature circled several times over, a few notes going above the staff with arrows pointing overhead. 

“My tutor, Miss Albertine,” Wylan explains, both giddy and wistful. “I had forgotten her! She was terrifying—I mean, she was an excellent teacher, and I loved her, but if I didn’t practice before my lessons…” He shudders dramatically, miming his fear. The curls at the front of his face bounce into his eyes, and Jesper brushes them aside for him. Wylan’s expression becomes thoughtful. “Now that I think of it, she must’ve been only in her 20s? She was still in the university—that’s so strange. In my memory, she feels like such an adult.” 

Jesper shrugs. “When you’re 9, anyone older than 20 might as well be 50.”

Wylan hums his assent, watching Jesper carefully. And then, without warning, he flings his arms around Jesper, almost knocking him to the ground in an embrace. The sketchbook Jesper is holding nearly flies out of his hand, and he barely manages to catch it before Wylan is on his lap, kissing him, silencing his muffled noise of panic. Jesper wraps his free arm around Wylan’s waist, and uses his empty hand to gently set the notebook down.  

They’re only notebooks, fairly durable and apparently only a decade or so old, but still, Jesper wants to treat them with the utmost caution and love. Again, the question he didn’t get to ask pops into his mind. He wonders why these objects, alone out of everything Wylan once possessed in childhood, were isolated and locked away—presumably by Van Eck. 

“Thank you,” Wylan whispers against his ear. He squeezes Jesper tighter. “I love you so, so much. Thank you.”

“What are you thanking me for? I didn’t do anything,” Jesper replies, bemused. With another kiss, he adds, “And I love you too.” 

Wylan’s voice is muffled, buried in Jesper’s shoulder. “You found them.” 

“Don’t thank me for being sugar-high and nosy, Wy, you’ll set a bad precedent.” 

“Would you stop?” Wylan complains. He pulls back, firmly cupping Jesper’s face between his palms. “I love you, especially for being sugar-high and nosy.” 

Jesper grins, cupping Wylan’s neck to bring him in for a kiss. Wylan sighs, a little contented noise, shifting himself to better rest on Jesper’s lap. Kissing Wylan is always a wonderful way to target his energy, more than self-assigned chair projects or snooping-sleuthing—and yet, he still feels scattered. He can’t help but think of the little boy getting his belongings taken from him, separated from his sheet music and art—his teddy bear, for Saints sake. It’s the sort of cruelty that has Van Eck’s name written all over it. 

Wylan is the one to pull away first; he gets off Jesper’s lap very suddenly, and Jesper almost panics and asks what’s wrong, when Wylan sneezes. 

Jesper laughs, relaxed again. “I told you, the dust was attacking me.”

“You weren’t kidding,” Wylan says, sniffling. He’s still beaming though, which is what Jesper likes to see. “Let’s move the box out of here. Or should we empty it first so it weighs less?”

“It’s not that heavy,” Jesper remarks, taking the notebook on the floor and gently setting it back inside. The question in his mind comes back, at full force, and he can’t stop to think about it any longer. “Hey, so why was your stuff here in the first place?” 

At an instant, Wylan’s bright smile turns precarious. It’s not so much anything to do with his expression as it is the sudden tense in posture, the way he so obviously tries to look unbothered. 

Jesper grimaces, just as instantly. “You don’t have to–” 

“It’s nothing. It was part of a treatment this ‘doctor’ my father called had, for my reading…” Wylan makes a small, unspecific gesture with an awkward smile. The silence that hangs is thick. 

It’s not as anxiety-inducing for Wylan to talk about reading now, but recalling memories of Van Eck, particularly in the context of reading, never comes easily. With a twinge of guilt, Jesper also knew he was part of the problem there as well. It was hard to hear Wylan mention anything his father did without wanting to march up to Hellgate and murder the bastard in the most imaginative ways possible, and that sentiment tended to show visibly.

Even now, Jesper cannot help but feel his mood darken. He supposed he shouldn’t be so surprised, knowing what he does about how awful Van Eck was, but it still always shocks him how much Wylan had to endure. To himself, with disgust, he mutters, “What sort of medical treatment requires taking toys away from a child?”

“A useless one,” Wylan answers, too sharp to be casual. He gives himself a little shake, as if to clear the accidental severity in his tone. He shrugs. “And I was 10.”

Jesper thinks those words through for a moment. Slowly, he says, “So, a child.” 

Wylan makes another vague gesture. “Yes, but—but it wasn’t as though I was helpless or something.”

“Ten years old seems pretty helpless to me.” Jesper doesn’t mean for his voice to get sharper too. He knows, in the rational part of his brain, that this is Wylan not using the rational part of his own; his faulty logic that makes him as the exception to otherwise unquestioned beliefs, the only 10 year-old in the world responsible for his own misery. But Jesper cannot picture Wylan at ten, at nine—closer in age to the toddler in Marya’s watercolor holding his father’s hand than his age now—and feel anything but an ache of protective anger. Lowly, he asks, “What did he do to you?” 

“I told you.” Wylan’s voice isn’t cold, precisely, but the tension in his posture chills it. “It was part of a treatment.”

“But what was it?” Jesper insists. 

He has a bad habit of saying the first thing that rises in his mind, and in truth, that is the first thing on his mind. He would do anything that could give Wylan more comfort—holding his hand, talking something through, offering to go murder his father, actually murdering his father—though Wylan has never been the sort to talk through his childhood in any real detail unprompted. 

“Does it matter?” Wylan shoots back. He stands up, very abruptly, and Jesper realizes he’s made a mistake. “It didn’t work, obviously, and it was—it was pseudoscience, at best.”

“Hey, hey,” Jesper says, backtracking only a little. He goes to Wylan, and rubs his thumb back and forth over Wylan’s arm. Wylan doesn’t brush him off, but his neutral, mild expression seems to only be in place due to extra effort. “I didn’t mean—I only meant if you wanted to talk about it–”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” Wylan says shortly. He shrugs with a deliberate nonchalance. “I didn’t even remember that treatment until now. It barely lasted more than a month, too, and—it was nothing, really. It was fine.”    

Jesper gives Wylan a look, tipping his head down and raising his eyebrows. “C’mon, Wy. I know that’s not true.” 

He should’ve known that this would be the wrong thing to say. Wylan, at his sweetest, was quick to grow irate when faced with what he considered to be a patronizing look or tone. And in the face of memories of his father, old tutors, treatments—it would take much less for Wylan to hear everything as condescension, for his eyes to widen with that simultaneous offense and defense, for him to say sharp words that, without fail, emerge from his lips like his tongue had been sitting on them for ages. 

Sure enough, Wylan bristles like an angry, hissy cat, shoulders curling up. “They’re my memories,” he snaps. “I think I would know what’s true or not.”

Jesper sighs. “You know what I meant.” 

Wylan crosses his arms, glaring. “And you know what I meant. Obviously it wasn’t…” He falters for a second, searching for words, but then his frosty demeanor is back. “It wasn’t something I’d want to repeat, obviously, but it’s fine. Turning it into some grand tragic story with half-a-dozen subplots won’t help anything.”

That feels targeted, considering Jesper’s stories tend to contain at least a solid dozen subplots. He feels himself tense. “Alright. Fine. You don’t have to tell me anything, I was just trying to help.” 

He can tell from the sharpness of Wylan’s tone that this also wasn’t the right thing to say, though Jesper can’t place why. “There’s nothing to tell. And I don’t see how it’d be any of your business either way, since they’re my memories. Stick your nose somewhere else if you’re bored.”

Jesper scoffs, giving Wylan an incredulous look as if to say You’re trying to pick a fight now, aren’t you? Wylan lifts his chin, a cool, nearly unperturbed look in his eyes, silently replying Who, me? No, of course not, I would never! 

“Yeah,” Jesper settles on finally. Never let it be said that he backed down from a fight. “You would say that.”

Wylan’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?” he asks, most certainly a challenge to see if Jesper is stupid enough to double-down on the statement.  

Luckily, Jesper’s hackles have officially been raised, and now he’s not about to lose the last word, even if it means pulling out an argument from non-issues. “I mean, what have it your way and we’d just be toiling in silence like monks, right? Oh, the horrors of a Kerchman not working for ten minutes!” 

Wylan rolls his eyes with such an intensity that Jesper thinks he probably actually sees the inside of his skull. “Ten minutes? As if you could last 30 seconds like that.”

“Sure, I’ll take that bet,” Jesper goads. “Start the timer, I won’t say another word. We’ll play silent contests all day long, and then whatever other nursery school games you want, since you’re acting like a baby being told to share crayons–”  

“You’re ridiculous!” Wylan bursts, and since he’s the first one to raise his voice, Jesper counts that as a point for him. “Calling me a baby? Are you five?” 

“Because you’re acting so mature now.”

“You’re one to talk,” Wylan snaps. “You don’t get to tell me about maturity.”

“I don’t get to tell you anything, apparently!” Jesper shoots back. “Since your life is ‘none of my business at all’ and I’m evil for even asking–”

“That’s not what I said–”

“Oh, sorry, I thought that since you said it’s none of my business, that meant it’s none of my business–”

“Don’t patronize me! You just want me to perform an opera of my childhood–”

“I want you to not lie and pretend things were fine when they obviously weren’t, and—and be able to share things with me, Wy!” Jesper says this a bit desperately, hoping that’ll speak to the rationality in Wylan’s brain. 

It does not. His blue eyes narrow again, and without pause, Wylan continues, “And while we’re on the topic, I’m glad you think that me not sharing decades old memories is the same as a kid not wanting to share crayons–”

Jesper groans. “You know that’s not–”

“–no, sorry, a baby not sharing crayons–”

“Okay, fine, sue me for caring about your childhood–”

Wylan scoffs. “Well, it wasn’t anything spectacular, so I don’t see why you’d need to care about that.” 

“Because I’m your boyfriend!” Jesper shouts, half-spluttering. He rarely finds it in himself to yell at Wylan, but his frustration boils over very suddenly, incredulous that this is something he even has to say. He runs a hand through his hair. “Because I care about you!”

“So what do you want from me?” Wylan yells back, not backing down, arms folded tightly across his chest. “You want me to—to list out every memory I have, tell you every word my father said, chart out my feelings so you can–”

“I just want to help you!” 

“Help me?” Wylan repeats, his voice going shrill. He’s all wound up now, glaring at Jesper with wide eyes. “Help me with what? What is it that you think you need to fix, exactly?”

There’s enough of a pause for them to both catch their breaths; lower their voices. It’s not long enough for the anger to dissipate.  

“I wouldn’t know, would I? It’s all your memories,” Jesper says sardonically, making a show of putting his palms up to push Wylan’s words back at him. “And that’s all your business.” 

There’s a long enough silence that Jesper foolishly thinks he’s actually won the argument, and gotten the last word. But then, Wylan draws himself up, spine stiffening, gaze going dispassionate. 

“They are,” he says coolly. “And you don’t get to pry just because you’re sugar-high and bored.” 

That stings, more than it needed to, and it lingers long enough in the air that Jesper can’t think of anything to say in response. He can barely process the last—was it even five minutes ago, that this argument started? 

Wylan turns on his heel and leaves, and Jesper lets him. He also wants to storm away, but he doesn’t want to chase after Wylan and continue their squabble. And, pettily—he doesn’t want to chase after Wylan and apologize first. He sighs, sitting back on the floor with the dust and silence in his company. 

Chapter Text

It’s a sign of how angry he is that Wylan can’t even be satisfied that he got the last word. Anger isn’t really the right word to describe it though, because he can’t make sense of anything he feels. There's a strange sort of rageful, fearful numbness in him, making him move out of the library and down the stairs almost unconsciously until he ducks into the first inconspicuous door he can find. 

There’s a brief, rational thought that he could go for a walk and cool off. Or better yet, go back upstairs and face Jesper, but neither of those options permeate through the stronger desire he has to hide. It’s a childish instinct, and one he had not realized he still had. There had been so few reasons to hide as of late. 

The realization of that slows him, but he’s already tucked himself away against a shelf in the mansion’s cellar. Absently, he runs a finger over a jar and notices that his hand is shaking. This irritates Wylan even more. What is there to be scared of? He hadn’t lied when he said losing a few sketchbooks and a teddy bear weren’t the worst things that had happened to him. Much worse had happened to him, and he’d survived, he’d gotten better. He knows he has, so why can’t he act it now? 

It’s not like he’s frightened of the cellar, either. Of all the punishments his father had given him in his childhood, being locked in here had never been one of them. Jan Van Eck, for better or for worse, had been a practical man. More efficient to lock away his things, or lock him in to try and force him to read—industrious effort was always a must. 

Wylan digs his nails into his palm. He doesn’t want to think of his punishments, or the tutors, or his father, or an effective decade’s worth of memories—he doesn’t want to think about them at all, ever, which sparks him with enough raw feeling that he wants to march back upstairs to both continue his fight with Jesper, and seek comfort from him. 

All of those memories are already at his surface, though, all because of that dreaded box. He’s not surprised that he still recalls everything, but he is shocked by how vivid it plays in his mind. He’s furious at himself for wasting space in his brain for them, because what is the point, truly? They render him utterly useless, though he really has tried not to think that of himself anymore, not with Jesper’s warm voice in his ear telling him otherwise. But what else describes him now? He is hiding in a cellar, immobile and terrified over something that can’t impact him anymore, shouldn’t impact him anymore—it sends another surge of frustration through him, angry enough that it makes him hot. 

It takes little less than a few minutes for it to just feel cold instead. Cold, like he was then, with the treatment—because he remembers all of it, and he can’t stop himself from remembering. 

He knows it had all started because of his anger at a tutor, and he knows it had been his fault. Jesper’s voice in his ear again, a faint echo that no, it hadn’t been, he had been a child—

It had been his fault. 

“If you just stopped moving,” the tutor had said through gritted teeth, “you’d see the words clearly. That’s the problem–”

“It’s not,” Wylan had insisted. He should’ve given in, just obeyed and let the tutor come to her conclusions when she realized it made no difference. But he had squirmed again, deeply regretting his decision to try and explain what he saw on the page, the way the words danced in front of him. But because he had been so stubborn, perhaps uniquely stubborn back then, he wouldn’t take it back now. “It’s the words. It doesn’t matter how I sit–”

Wylan’s words were cut off by a gasp, first a response to his tutor lunging towards him, and then as a response to the sharp pain on his scalp. She had lost her patience, evidently, and grabbed a handful of Wylan’s hair, wrenching his head back. His spine hit the back of the chair, and stayed there. 

“Sit. Still,” the tutor snarled. 

“Stop it! That hurts!” Wylan cried out. He glowered, with all his childish might, but it didn’t seem to do much. He had one other trick up his sleeve, though he knew from experience that it was a lie. “I’ll tell my father, and he’ll fire you!” 

There was hardly a greater sin than being fired in Kerch—not partaking in honest work, perhaps, being the only thing worse. Wylan tried not to think about that, and instead noted with triumph how the tutor hissed a curse word under her breath. Her grip on his hair loosened, just enough for Wylan to wrench himself free, jolting forwards into the table and knocking the inkwell over. He watched as the blue ink spilt over the desk, staining the edges of his book navy.  

The tutor swore loudly this time, scrambling to pick it up. Wylan felt a savage thrill at knowing she had sworn in front of him twice. How unprofessional. It had been a very long day, and Wylan had had very few wins within the lessons themselves, so this—the opportunity to widen his eyes, appear scandalized, and get a single apology out of this instructor for using such foul language in front of the young, innocent, Van Eck heir—was what Wylan would take as a win.

He was not a very good winner. 

“You said a bad wo–rd,” Wylan sing-songed under his breath. The tutor’s face paled, and Wylan lifted his chin, preparing to negotiate. “That’s not al–lowed.” 

“I did no such thing,” she said stiffly. 

Wylan leaned forwards. He tried to make his voice sound like his father’s during a meeting, sharp and crisp, to the point yet polite. What came out was, a bit too vindicatively: “If you read the next page to me, I promise I won’t tell my father–”

The tutor let out a horrible noise, something like a choked screech of frustration and fury all at once. Wylan flinched back, but her flailing arms didn’t hit him. Instead, she barrelled out the library door, and it took Wylan too long to un-freeze himself as he realized where she was going. 

He sprinted after her out to the hall. He tried grabbing onto her skirt and digging his heels into the floor when he saw how near they were to that door. “Please,” he begged, whispering urgently. “Please, wait, I’m sorry–”

The pleading was to no avail. The tutor knocked twice on his father’s office door, and let herself in with Wylan at her heels. Van Eck was still seated at his desk, but did not look surprised, perhaps having heard the commotion from outside. His eyes flashed when he saw Wylan in tow before turning his face towards the tutor. 

Wylan fought the instinct to shrink behind the woman since it was obvious, even to an idiot like him, that she would be no help. He looked beseechingly at his father instead, but his father’s gaze rested, unflinchingly, on the tutor. It was such a direct gaze, so purposeful in its efforts to ignore Wylan, that Wylan felt completely trapped, hammered into place with a nail. 

With careful precision, Van Eck set his pen down, back into its stand so the ink would not create a spot on his ledger. Wylan became poignantly aware of the dark blue stain on his shirt sleeve. Lightly, his father said, “I take it there’s been a problem.”

The tutor let out a shaky breath. “Yes, I—I, we… We could not—The lessons your—that–”

Van Eck stood up. The tutor fell silent, and Wylan shrank back. His father’s expression was calm, pleasant if anything, but Wylan could not imagine anyone more intimidating. He knew too well how easily his father’s methodical movements could turn into rage, how his mild-mannered words could turn into spitten insults and taunts. 

And he supposed, for the tutor, she was scared she would get fired before she could quit. 

His father smiled politely. “Please, speak candidly. What has Wylan done?” 

And so, the tirade began. Wylan knew better than to try and defend himself—this was not the first time this had happened—and so the tutor had his father’s undivided attention. She explained how she had started tutoring Wylan with every best intention, that she had taught difficult students before, and always had succeeded. How she tried, she tried her very hardest, but Wylan simply refused to be taught. How Wylan fought against her every instruction, tried to cheat his way to the answers, damaged her books, how he had drove her—a reputable governess, one who has taught dozens of children how to read no matter how ill-mannered, who even volunteered once at a horrid school in the Barrel of all places, her—to quit, her first ever failure of teaching. 

By the end of it, she was in tears. Wylan, though he had been studiously staring at the floor so no one could tell, was as well.

It came as no surprise when the very next day, still feeling wounded by the way his father shouted at him and sent him to his room after she had left, Wylan was summoned to meet yet another tutor in his room. This was a routine now, more or less. Wylan didn’t know how his father could find so many tutors—and he was more loath to think how much his father was paying for all of them, as this was always a constant yelling point in his father’s angry lectures to him after they quit. 

This new tutor did not look promising. He looked a bit older than his father, with light Kerch coloring and a very obviously fake smile plastered on his face. He would probably be strict and pedantic, and probably completely useless too.

“Hello, Wylan,” the man greeted, leaning down to meet his gaze. He had a wet voice, like he had been chewing on his spit. “I’m Dr. Vetter.”

Wylan tried not to be too sulky, aware that his father was also in the room and overseeing this. Maybe he was being cruel. Vetter couldn’t be more strict than any of the old teachers he’s had, and if anyone should be pedantic, Wylan supposed it should be a tutor. And if Vetter proved to be useless, it only meant that Wylan had been more useless, first. 

“Hello,” Wylan said, looking to his father for guidance and finding none. He rocked back and forth, and cleared his throat. “It’s nice to meet you.” 

Vetter was observing him carefully. Wylan didn’t like it, and perhaps the discomfort showed on his face, because Vetter started smiling again. “Here, come sit,” he said. “I’m just going to do a quick check-up.” 

Wylan blinked, feeling thrown off balance. When Vetter had said he was a doctor, Wylan hadn’t thought he was a medical doctor. Although, in fairness, his conception of doctors had become muddled over the years; there had been the optometrist he had been taken to several times when he was younger, her kind but bemused face as she explained his vision was just fine, despite his father’s worries. And then, there was his imagination of the doctors at a hospital, who were akin to funeral directors, because it was impossible to think of hospital without thinking of the place his mother had disappeared to and died in, buried at their discretion. Doctors now brought to mind some odd image of grim reapers wearing large, colorful glasses like a mask.   

Wylan was guided to a desk chair, and then Vetter felt his forehead, neck, chest, and shoulders with the back of his palm, as if to check him for a fever. His father continued to ignore him, but didn’t ignore Vetter; the two of them made small talk while he carried out his checkup about farmland in the west of Kerch. If being left to sit in his own thoughts was intended to be soothing, it did not work. Wylan’s heart pounded in his chest, unable to shake the feeling that any minute now, irrational as it was, something horrible would happen. 

“Now, how old are you, Wylan?” Vetter asked, after completing whatever check-up he had been doing. His tone was sugary and patronizing, as though he were asking a toddler to show their age on their fingers, ready to coo regardless of the accuracy of the action.  

Wylan bristled, ever the slightest, at this. He did not like being spoken to as a child, let alone a baby. He had graduated to wearing long trousers to all his lessons. At dinner parties, he no longer was excluded to the nursery for meals—he sat with the other adults, and he knew all his table etiquette. He would be turning ten—double digits!—in a month, and was very, very proud of this fact. 

So, after glancing back at his father, whose continuing impassive silence suggested that Wylan was allowed to answer for himself, Wylan looked Vetter in the eye, as an adult would. “I’m turning ten, sir.” 

Vetter smiled; it was nearly, nearly the indulging smile of some of the cooks or maids, when they snuck Wylan an extra sweet after he asked. But there was something sharp that glinted in his eye that rendered the expression unamused. It was a look of discovery, a look of capture, a falcon spotting a little rabbit alone in the grass. Vetter would, with whatever means necessary, stop whatever plot Wylan was concocting. 

But Wylan wasn’t concocting any plot. He had only answered the question—maturely, answered the question—and now was being met with this strange smile and silence. 

Wylan lifted his chin, prompting Vetter to say more. 

Vetter chuckled lowly. He spoke casually, throwing the words over his shoulder to Van Eck. “He is quite the rebel, isn’t he?”

Wylan felt scandalized. He was no such thing. “I’m not–”

“I asked you, very simply, how old you were, not how old you would be turning,” Vetter continued, ignoring Wylan’s protests. Again, he glanced over his shoulder and asked Van Eck, “Is this how he normally goes about breaking the rules? This… circumventing?” 

Wylan turned to his father too, a little aghast. But his father nodded solemnly instead, and Wylan wasn’t sure why he felt so betrayed. 

Vetter clicked his tongue, shaking his head in understanding. “I can see the problem here. It’s an excess of bile, just as I thought.”

Wylan’s eyebrows shot up. “Bile?”

“Bile,” Vetter repeated, sounding the word out for him. “It’s inside your stomach.” 

Wylan narrowed his eyes, uncaring whether this made Vetter think of him as a rebel or not. Vetter was patronizing and irritating, and Wylan hated him. “It’s in your gallbladder,” Wylan corrected with the same emphasis, recalling the diagrams of the human body his science tutor once showed him. “Or your liver, since that’s where it’s produced.”

“Wylan.” His father’s voice was a recognizable warning. Wylan bit his lip.

Vetter only smiled, humoring him. “If you say so. This excess of bile occurs when your blood becomes too hot. All your blood travels to your heart where, based on what activities you do, the type of food you eat, all the little habits you keep—your blood will get heated up.” 

This all sounded wildly incorrect to Wylan. Blood does travel to the heart, but… The heart pumps blood, he’s quite sure, not heat it. And he doesn’t see how bile comes into the picture at all. 

“That is why we are called warm-blooded beings, as you might know,” Vetter continued. “The faster your heart beats, the more your blood is heating up. This is not a bad thing—in moderation, naturally. But an excess of heat in your blood often presents itself as this—” he gestured towards Wylan, with a knowing nod to Van Eck, “and must be fixed, immediately. At this age, it makes the boy overly emotional, and prone to outbursts of anger, perhaps. But the more the heart continues to heat the blood–”

“But it doesn’t do that?” Wylan burst, already unable to hold himself to silence for any longer. All the science Vetter claimed to purport was wrong. “The heart doesn’t–”

“Enough!” Van Eck said, steely and cold to silence the dissent. Wylan would wager, had this man not been here talking about outbursts of anger, his father would’ve yelled at him. “This insolence is unacceptable. Apologize, now.”

Vetter shook his head mournfully, as though he had expected this and only felt sorry for them. It saved Wylan from making a false apology, so he didn’t mind it. Vetter abandoned his chair in front of Wylan, going up to stand with his father. 

Van Eck murmured an apology, on behalf of his reckless son. Their words were hushed, but Wylan could still hear them clearly. 

“I don’t know where I’ve gone wrong with him,” his father said quietly. 

The guilt rose up in Wylan like his apparent excess of bile, then, catching at the back of his mouth. At words like these, the residual anger he felt from all the tutors, the specialists, the cruel words his father sneered, the occasional slap—it all escaped him. His father was only doing his best. His father loved him, and wanted him to be worthy of the Van Eck name. How could Wylan resent him for that, when it was solely his own inabilities that led them here? 

“It’s not your fault at all, Councilman,” Vetter reassured, sympathetic to sycophantic in seconds to Wylan’s ears. “The structure of his blood—inherited from you—is very, very strong. And after all your family has done for this country, Ghezen will surely provide.” 

Wylan imagined his father’s chest puffing with pride, though he did not witness it himself. He was already staring out the window, wondering if it would be possible to tune out the conversation entirely. 

“Are you a man of faith, Dr. Vetter?” his father asked, sounding impressed. 

“Of course, of course,” Vetter said immediately. “It was Ghezen’s Hand that guided me to this calling. I’ve seen all too many times what happens when this sort of temperament is allowed to form. These men will lie, cheat, steal. They are lazy creatures, who cannot hold honest work, for their only occupation is with their base instincts—breaking even the most rudimentary of contracts, everything out of balance–” 

Wylan picked at the skin around his nails. In a small daydream, he envisioned himself running out the door and into the music room. He would play the flute for hours, maybe alternating to the piano when lips started to hurt, and when his father and Vetter came to fetch him, he would hide underneath the piano bench. In this dream, they would never find him. He would never dream of stealing or being a thief, of course, but maybe he could be some sort of musical thief: stealing music for himself by playing quietly, only at night. Escaping out the window like a daring pirate to hide on the balconies of theatres, for a change of scenery. He would never have an audience, but maybe, someone would still manage to hear him. Someone would hear him, and they’d rescue him. 

Which was a ridiculous thought, he quickly reminded himself. He didn’t need rescuing, not truly. There were such children, Wylan knew, from the fairytales his father used to read to him, that really did need to be saved from their parents. Those children with wicked stepmothers, tricked into eating poisoned food or banished to the woods—those were the children that needed rescuing. 

All the same, Wylan couldn’t help but imagine it.   

Vetter continued on. “–I apologize if I sound overly morose–”

“No, no,” Van Eck brushed aside. “I know exactly what you speak of. Blasphemous men in the city, living in sin and vice—”

There was a song that sounded like bells, Wylan recalled, that his piano tutor played for him. He listened to it now, in his mind, to drown out his father’s rant. He thought of the piece’s unresolved leading tones and floating melody, those musical qualities that gave him a soothing sense of anticipation, as opposed to his usual, and current, anxiety. Wylan wanted to play it for himself—he had tried, but couldn’t keep tempo, nor could he quite capture the timing of the harmonies that gave it its particular mood, and yes, these failures had sent him into a small state of despair. But it was a temporary misery, the same sort he felt when a high note was sharp on the flute, or when his still lifes came out looking flat and shadowless. These failures were not the result of a defect in him, as his failure to read was. His father would never hire a specialist because he played the wrong note. 

“—it’s a lack of focus caused by the bile, certainly, certainly. This is what plagues Wylan, I’m sure.” Wylan jolted back to the conversation at the sound of his name from Vetter’s mouth. Vetter noticed this and smiled unpleasantly. “And this, ah… deficiency, the boy has in regards to his literacy…”

Wylan’s shoulders tensed. He had known this was coming—obviously, this was why the man was here—but now there was nothing to do but wait. What would this man’s miracle cure be, based on incorrect science and religion? And why, despite his better logic, did Wylan want to believe in it too? There would be no one happier than him, Wylan thought, if he was suddenly able to read—except maybe, his father. 

“That will clear up quickly too,” Vetter carried on smoothly, “once his blood is at a reasonable temperature and his body humors are balanced, his mind will be clear and fully capable.” 

“I’m sure it will,” Van Eck said coolly. “Ghezen would not curse me with a moron for a son.”

Wylan turned his head away, so the two of them wouldn’t see him press his eyes shut. A trapped, panicked bird was battering itself around in the confines of his mind trying to escape, it’s birdsong an anxious refrain of, But what if He has? What happens then? What if I never learn to read, and I’m just as stupid as you fear? What will you do to me? 

“As it happens, I have a treatment plan prepared…” Vetter pulled out some papers from his bag before returning to rifling through it. Wylan heard the gentle clink of glass bottles, and the dread arose even before Vetter even revealed a small, flask-like bottle and passed it to Van Eck. “Here we are—just this tincture, every morning.”

His father studied the bottle carefully, which brought Wylan some comfort. He wouldn’t give Wylan something that would knowingly hurt him; at least his father could be trusted to have his best interests in mind.

“This is the regiment I’d suggest.” Vetter handed his papers to both father and son. Wylan peered at the paper, met with the familiar blur of crawling insects that was somehow meant to be letters. He was only able to glance at it once before Vetter snatched it away, making him jump. “Ah, but you can’t read it, can you? Let me explain,” he said with pity. 

Wylan’s cheeks flooded with color. Van Eck’s head snapped up and he set the tincture aside, listening to Vetter intently. 

“Since the blood’s temperature is responsible for the bile excess,” Vetter (incorrectly) explained, “addressing this with his nutrition and habits will be the first step. He should only have cold foods—uncooked, where possible—and clear, room temperature broths for dinners, for the medicine to be its most effective. Nothing spiced, or exotically seasoned. He can have fruits around noon, when the sun is at the highest point in the sky. Conversely, if he is to have any dairy products, that should only be given after the sun has set, but before dinner. As for beverages, no tea or coffee, certainly, even when chilled, or anything else with too much sugar like juice. Nothing baked—avoid oven-cooked meals at all cost…”

His father took a pen from his jacket pocket and jotted down notes on the paper. Wylan mentally tallied the amount of food he was still allowed to eat. 

“He should be kept only in the house throughout the day,” Vetter continued. “One walk in the evenings, perhaps, after the sun has set, but nothing too taxing. He should bathe in cold water, remove the blanket from his bed, and—as he’ll be kept only at home—try to wear as few layers, presuming you have no guests, naturally.” 

What about in winter? Wylan wanted to ask, incredulous. But he had the answer for himself, didn’t he? He should be cured by winter. And if he still couldn’t read by then, another tutor or doctor would be summoned, and this would all start again. 

“Now, as for other atmospheric influences—it’s vital that he doesn’t become overly excited or emotional, as the faster his heart beats, the hotter his blood will become. There will be no rough-housing with other boys.” 

Wylan nearly laughed at this easy victory. Not even once in his life had he ever rough-housed with other boys. He’s never even had any friends to do it with. 

“To concentrate his efforts, I would also suggest temporarily halting all the lessons and activities he has that divide his attention, at your discretion.” 

“That’ll be reasonable.” With a note of sourness, Van Eck added, “I need time to find another reading tutor for him, anyways.” 

Wylan’s heart began to pound in his chest. “But—But what about my other–”

“Did you not just listen to the doctor?” his father said, now directing that sourness fully towards Wylan. “I’m sure you’ll manage without dissecting owl pellets or painting fruit, or whatever other nonsense I pay for you to do for a season.” 

Wylan wasn’t sure what else he was supposed to do then, during this time, and the idea of spending his days attempting to read exhausted him already. But he didn’t feel heartbroken over it, somehow; he supposed, rationally, that he could still paint and draw on his own, and he would have his flute and music room to happily occupy his time. 

But really, any potential devastation he could’ve felt was distracted by the shock that his father’s remark on his activities had been based in truth—he had dissected an owl pellet with his science tutor, and his sketchbook was filled with drawings of the fruit bowls that his tutor carefully arranged for him. That his father actually knew what he was doing in his lessons meant that he cared enough about him to check with his tutors, even though those lessons were not as essential and productive as his reading lessons were—which meant Wylan had to still be worth something in his eyes. It was the closest to feeling cherished that Wylan had felt in a long time. He did not argue back. 

“Very apt. I would suggest that all of this be addressed as well,” Vetter said, eyes drifting to the side as he gestured to the room. “I cannot in good faith recommend he keep any of this.”

Wylan followed his gaze and felt his stomach drop. His flute, packed away in his case on his desk, was the object in Vetter’s eyes. Or was he talking about the bundles of sheet music underneath it? Surely it wasn’t the paints and sketchbooks he had, one of them still open on his desk?

“No,” Wylan blurted. Without his lessons, or his things—it would be too much to bear. He looked at his father, pleading. “No, it doesn’t—they won’t–”

“It will be an adjustment, but it will make a difference—all these things add up, even the little things like these.” Vetter seemed nearly gleeful then, going about his room and pointing out all the apparent problems with it: the white curtains that could let in too much light, his foldable metal music stand for its potential to injure him, a traditional Kerch painting of stormy seas for its aggression, and the teddy bear that he kept on his dresser to overlook his bed, somehow, for the same reason. 

Van Eck made his way to the dresser. He picked up the teddy bear, observing it with the same intent that he had given the tincture. Wylan rushed to his side, but his father ignored him.

“Please don’t take them,” Wylan begged, blocking Vetter out of his view. “Please, I promise I won’t—they won’t do anything to me, I promise they won’t.” His father made no sign of acknowledging this, still holding onto the bear. Panicked, feeling his opportunity for persuasion waning, Wylan urgently whispered, “I don’t even play with it anymore. I just—It won’t make me more aggressive, or—do anything to my blood. I promise they won’t.”  

Finally, his father met his gaze. Wylan couldn’t read his expression, couldn’t fathom what he would do next. He knew his father wanted to help fix him, but he was also a rational, logical man. He had to see that a few sketchbooks and toys would do nothing. 

You know me, Wylan wanted to plead, if his father needed reminding. You love me. 

“It’s completely up to your judgement,” Vetter interrupted, almost cloyingly. “But these measures will ensure that the bile imbalance in his body corrects itself.”

His father hummed. He turned back to Vetter, taking a step forward, wearing a politely neutral expression. 

The bear was set back down on the dresser. 

Smoothly, his father said, “That seems unnecessary. I would think that the tincture I’m buying from you would ensure that. Unless there’s something wrong with it?” 

Wylan could’ve wept with joy, and he was compelled with the absurd desire to give his father a big hug, like he was still a little kid. Standing behind his father, he had to admit that he did feel quite young. It was like when their whole family had gone to the Ice Court, and Wylan had spent half the trip feeling miniscule because of the towering magnificence of the architecture, and the other half feeling too shy to do anything but hide his face in either his mother’s skirts or his father’s leg, miniscule in a different, comforting, way.

As Vetter spluttered out assurances to his unamused father, Wylan almost felt happy. It felt nice to be on the same side as his father, like they had been before. The more he thought about it, under those circumstances, what his father was demanding really wasn’t that bad. Some weeks of different meals and no blankets, and whatever that tincture was. Wylan doubted that it would work, but maybe things would get better. Surely, things would get better.

Sitting against the cellar wall now, Wylan shivers. He needs to go upstairs again, shake himself out of his head—he needs to swallow his pride and apologize to Jesper for snapping at him. 

But he can’t do it like this, not now. He’ll only end up doing something embarrassing like bursting into tears, and then Jesper will forgive him out of guilt and not because Wylan’s done anything to earn it. If he had learned anything from the treatment—because reading certainly wasn’t one—it was that nothing was given freely. Not forgiveness, not care, not love. A part of his mind protests otherwise, but Wylan, willingly or not, silences it. 

He needs to stay down here, just for a bit longer. Keep in the cold until his mind clears.

Chapter Text

The weeks that had followed on Vetter’s regiment had also been very cold, but not initially. 

The lack of blankets and jackets hadn’t been a problem at first—it was still warm enough outside that it was an easy sacrifice to make. The food was more irksome of a problem, dinners especially; his father still ate whatever the cooks had prepared for him, while Wylan ate the same, flavorless lukewarm broth every night. It tasted like nothing, and he never felt full afterwards, and as practically everything cooked was banned, he went to bed each night feeling hungry and annoyed. 

After long enough of that, then sleep had become a problem. He couldn’t stop thinking of warm, hot meals, and he craved the honey cake that the cooks usually prepared at least once a week, and even though he wasn’t that cold yet, he needed to untuck his bedsheets to slip underneath them every night for that bit of warmth. When he woke from however few hours he had managed to sleep, it was always with a dull pain in his head, feeling entirely exhausted—and then, he had to take the tincture. 

Still, Wylan maintained that the tincture, though he loathed it, was not even the worst part. It was a sour and bitter medicine, and the first time he tried it, he had gagged and thrown up all over himself. The second time, he couldn’t stop himself from having the same reaction. By the third morning, the maid who was instructed to watch him drink it had the sense to keep a wastebin with her, so that when Wylan gagged, she at least would have less laundry to do. 

By the fourth time, Wylan realized that this was the point of the tincture; to get the ‘excess bile’ out of him, to make him throw up every morning on an empty stomach. Wylan didn’t feel like he had an excess of anything in him after a week; his throat burned and ached, he was hungry, he was cold, and—the worst of it all—it hadn’t amounted to anything. 

He still could not read. 

His father was irritated by the lack of results, which Wylan would have been able to predict even without seeing it so visibly. His father carried all the same mannerisms that he had when a Council meeting had gone poorly, or when one of their ships had sunk, which was generally Wylan’s sign to steer clear away. He had learned early on how to distinguish his father’s moods—frustrated footsteps versus hurried ones, the angered turn of a door knob versus the less-angered but still annoyed knock on the door—but it was hard to predict how these moods would truly play out.

Some days, his father would be irritated by Wylan’s lack of progress, ranting under his breath over how much this was costing for no payoff, watching Wylan dip his spoon into cold broth over dinner with a sort of bored amusement, taking in whatever satisfaction he could from an otherwise rewardless process. 

Sometimes, his father’s chilly demeanor wasn’t directed towards Wylan at all, which was better, but still left him feeling skittish. Early on into the treatment, his father had directed an unprecedented amount of cold ire towards Dr. Vetter when he came to check on the treatment’s progress. At that point, though the tonic had stopped making him always throw up—his body must have acclimatized after some point, when his throat and abdomen ached too much to consider gagging—it still made food feel unpalatable, and despite his hunger, he couldn’t stomach very much. Wylan supposed the tipping point came after he had fainted on one of his evening, temperate walks. The tonic was reduced to only every three days, which was what his father had negotiated for, and what Wylan was grateful for, though none of the parties involved seemed particularly happy over the fact. 

And maybe that’s because there were the other times—the best times, Wylan thought—when his father seemed almost impressed with him. Wylan couldn’t predict when or how or why these occurrences would happen, but he saw it. His father was more patient with him, more generous; he would talk to Wylan during dinner, let Wylan ask questions, speak with him rather than lecture him. Sometimes, he would remark on how good it was to see Wylan work so hard, and Wylan desperately wished he could find the correlation between his efforts and his father’s praise, if there was one, because he would do anything to stay there. Approval from his father was his sunlight on crisp autumn mornings, those days when the sun felt all the more warm because of the chill hanging in the air. Without it, all Wylan was only reminded of how cold, hungry, and bored he was. 

Boredom came and went through the day, but in the mornings, it was usually peaceful. That day, Wylan had absentmindedly been sketching in his book, deliberating what to do in the day. He wanted to go to the music room and hide away there, but he knew that every hour he spent not reading was a card played from his hand. It had to be timed correctly, or else it would give his father too much ammunition to use against him. 

There was a gentle knock on the door, and one of the maids walked in. 

“Good morning,” Wylan greeted. The maid smiled back, but it was half of a grimace. Wylan sat up straighter. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no,” she said, brushing her skirt pockets. She sighed, and then withdrew the vial of tonic. Wylan had already begun shaking his head, as she instructed, “I’ve been told to watch you drink this.” 

Wylan frowned. “No, it’s the wrong day. I’m not supposed to take it today, I took it yesterday.” 

“Your father just told me–”

“My father said I only had to take it every three days,” Wylan protested. “That’s his rule, not–”

“I’ve been told to give you it this morning, by your father,” the maid interrupted, looking weary. “Come, it won’t be so bad.” 

She approached him with the tincture in hand, and though there was nothing threatening about her—she usually always spared him a smile when he greeted her—Wylan recoiled. He darted off the bed to the opposite corner of the room, in front of his dresser. He looked at his toy bear, pathetically and irrationally wishing it could come to life and protect him. 

The maid sighed. “If you don’t, I’ll have to call your father.” 

“Don’t,” Wylan pleaded. He wracked his mind for a way out, back pressed against the dresser. “What if—if you leave it here, and I take it on my own, later?”

She gave him an exasperated look. She didn’t humor him with a response to this obvious deception, and moved towards him once more. 

He was cornered, now. And like an animal cornered, rational thinking failed him. He sprinted away before she could reach him, because if she couldn’t reach him, he wouldn’t have to drink it, and he could delay not just the physical pain, but the inevitable disappointment that would arise when it was all for nothing. 

For a brief second, as he ran out of his room and into the hall, he imagined running out the doors of the house, far away from the tonics and cold days in the library. But he quickly snapped himself out of it, rational enough for just that. He knew it wouldn’t work. He didn’t feel fast, and already sprinting out the door made him feel a little lightheaded. No, he could never run away—but he could hide. He was good at that. 

He moved practically unconsciously, escaping with only instinct. He tucked himself behind a curtain in a guest room, hardly two hallways away from the commotion of the maid trying to find him. There was no real trick to hiding, only he knew that the faster he could disappear, the better. 

It would only be a matter of time before hands pulled the curtains back, snatching his wrist to pull him into his father’s office. He knew he was being stupid; that he was making things worse for himself. 

But was it so hard to lose himself to a daydream where, miraculously, he could disappear? He had felt for some time now, well before the treatment started, that he was getting very tired. Perhaps tired wasn’t the right word, but he was nine, and his vocabulary failed him. 

It was a physical kind of exhaustion, the kind he’d feel after swimming all day at the lakehouse, but without the cozy sleep that came afterwards. He felt as though he had been swimming for a very long time, through a murky river of everything he felt—the anger, the confusion, the guilt, the shame, the resentment, the fear, the fact that no one in the world knew him better than his father, and yet, Wylan struggled to recognize the very man half the time—and there was no shore in sight. 

He let himself disappear into this thought, pressing his forehead against the window pane. Around him, the staff were scampering to find him, but he was watching himself swim, tired, but far away from it all. It was better this way. 

He barely registered the curtain being pulled away, however much later. He only came to awareness when he saw his father’s office door, only regaining his voice and body when the tentative plea struggled to emerge from his throat, uselessly digging his heels into the ground. 

His father didn’t look up from his desk when Wylan was guided in. He thanked the maid in a clipped voice, and as she left, depositing Wylan, his father stood up. He promptly handed Wylan the same tonic from the morning before the door could even close. 

“Drink it.”

Wylan drank. There was no use in arguing otherwise. 

He wretched the second the bitter, rotten tasting tincture touched his tongue, body shaking and throat burning—but nothing came out. Shouldn’t logic dictate that this was a sign the treatment should end, that if he had no bile left to throw up, he could not possibly have an excess of bile? But the treatment wasn’t designed to cure his ‘bile excess,’ not really. It was for his illiteracy, and Wylan knew his father would not stop until he was cured. 

His father’s eyes were frozen. “Was that so difficult?” 

Wylan coughed, gasping for a clean swallow of air. “I’m sor–”

“I want you to explain to me,” Van Eck interrupted coolly, “why you thought that was a good idea.”

“I didn’t–”

“‘You didn’t,’ what? You didn’t think it was a good idea, and still did it regardless? You didn’t think it would delay all the work of the staff, put them off their schedule? Didn’t think you would get caught?” 

Wylan said nothing, looking down and grasping at his elbows.  

“Or,” Van Eck’s eyes flashed. “Was it that you thought you knew better than me?”

“No!” Wylan said, eyes wide. “I didn’t–”

“‘I didn’t,’” his father copied, putting on a warbly, shaky voice that made Wylan’s face go red. “Then why did you do it?”  

“I–I took it yesterday,” Wylan said cautiously. His words inflected upwards unwillingly, like his voice knew he did not know how to proceed. “And… And you said I should only should take it every three days, so–”

Van Eck stared at him, unmoved. “And did the maid explain to you that I had changed my mind? That you were to take it today?” 

Wylan shrunk. “Y-yes, but–”

“But you still chose to disobey?” 

Wylan wracked his mind for an excuse, anything remotely plausible. The truth was that there was no logic, nothing rational he could say. He had been scared, and acted upon it. “I only… I thought…”

“Because you know better than me, is it?” 

“No! No, I don’t—but I–”

“But you what? Decided for yourself that you no longer need Dr. Vetter’s treatment?” 

Wylan looked down at his feet, saying nothing. He had no answers to his father’s questions, none that his father would accept at the least. 

Van Eck made a derisive noise. “All of this, and I still haven’t heard an apology from you.”

“I’m sorry,” Wylan said immediately. “I didn’t mean to–”

“Do you have any idea how much time you’ve wasted? Not just your own, but the staff’s, my own—”

Wylan drowned out the sound of his father’s rant, knowing by now that there was nothing he could do or say that would appease him. It just had to run its course. He thought of slow, serene sounding flute melodies, something that would break the harsh tone and rapid rhythm of his father’s words. 

“Stand there,” his father commanded, gesturing to the side of the room. 

Wylan jerked, summoning his attention back. He followed his father’s gaze. There, a little table and chair was tucked away next to the fireplace. Wylan had seen clerks and secretaries sit in the seat to take notes on meetings, back from when he was still adored enough to peek into his father’s office during a meeting and be ushered in and fawned over. 

He hurried over to the table. 

His father raised his eyebrows. “On the chair.” As Wylan began to sit down, his father gave an irritated huff. “Stand on the chair. Do I have to explain everything to you twice?” 

Wylan flushed, biting his tongue, knowing better than to ask why would I ever stand on a chair? Cautiously, he climbed on the chair and stood. The chair had no arms, only a back, and he felt off-balance on it almost immediately. Like this, he was just about eye-level with his father, but he took no power or pride from it. He felt the wrongness of it, that he should dare to look in his father’s eyes directly when he wasn’t smart or capable enough to. He certainly wasn’t brave enough. 

Staring at his feet, he watched his father’s shoes move from the desk and head towards him. 

“Hold this,” Van Eck said, and Wylan barely had the time to hold out his hands before the thud of a thick ledger landing in his extended palms sent a punch of air through him. His body swayed on the small chair, which suddenly felt all the more tall.  

“Since you’re so capable,” Van Eck said, “you can look through my contracts and find our agreement with Dr. Vetter. Tell me the terms to end the treatment, and that’s what we’ll do.”

“Father–”

“I don’t want to hear another word from you.” Van Eck moved back to his desk, acting with an intentional ease. “Stay there, and read.” 

Wylan remained standing on the chair, the ledger opened to its first page, waiting for his father to say anything else. He glanced at the ground, wiggling his feet. When he thought enough time had passed for his father to not remember he had said not another word, Wylan tentatively asked, “Should I keep standing?” 

Van Eck’s gaze snapped up again. There was an expression of pure distaste on his face. “Do you deliberately try to ask stupid questions to spite me?” he demanded. “Or are you actually that much of an idiot?” 

Wylan’s cheeks colored. He remained standing. 

The rest of the morning passed like this. Wylan remained on the first page, and his father studiously ignored him. Every so often, a member of the staff would walk in to refill his father’s coffee or provide a new carafe for him. Though none of them said anything about Wylan, he couldn’t help but flush bright red each time. He dreaded imagining what all they must think of him, and with each unacknowledged acceptance of his punishment from them, it became clear to him that they must think he deserved it too. He had made a fuss for them today, and that alone would be reason enough; but Wylan knew it was worse than that. There was something horrible and wrong in him, running deeper than that all. They must hate him, and he must deserve it. 

“It’s lunch time,” his father announced some time later. “Have you made any progress?” 

Wylan’s arms trembled. The book was heavy, but not an impossible weight; still, it felt like nothing less than a pile of bricks, looking at his father like this. 

“No,” Wylan whispered. He moved his weight from one foot to another, trying to relieve the pressure. “I–I haven’t yet.” 

“Very well. Then you’ll stay here.” 

Wylan had seen that coming. In some way, he wasn’t upset about it; his mouth had a coppery taste to it, and the bland food he would eat wouldn’t help that. 

“You are to keep standing,” Van Eck continued, moving back to the desk to pack away a few papers. “And if I find out you’ve tried to evade my orders for even a moment, I will keep you here until you can read and write each and every contract in this office. Is that understood?” 

Wylan nodded. He would be kept here forever, then, he thought miserably. He would not disobey, but his heart still raced wildly. He clutched the ledger tightly, as if he could obtain any comfort from it. 

His father was watching him carefully. Wylan froze, unwinding his hands against their will. 

“I will return in an hour,” Van Eck said, moving back towards Wylan. 

Wylan began to nod again, but froze once more when he felt a small pressure on his foot. He glanced down, half expecting an anvil to be hovering over his toes, ready to break them into pieces if he moved. 

Somehow, it was worse than that—his father’s inkwell rested on his right shoe, carefully set in place and balanced by his father. 

With horror, Wylan realized that the pot was open; only one movement separated it from resting on his foot and covering the carpet with ink. 

“I cannot trust you,” Van Eck said simply. “You’ve given me no choice. If I come back and see any of this ink spilt, I’ll know that you tried to sit down.” 

Wylan watched with wide eyes as his father left the room, not looking back once. There was no time to protest, nothing he could say or do that would change his father’s decision. He stood frozen, and could only pray for the ink to not fall. 

If he was clever, he knew there were ways to skirt around the order. He could bend at the knee very slowly, keep the inkwell in his hand until the hour was up, although he would have to be very careful about balancing the ledger in one hand. Or he could let the ledger fall to the side, hope it didn’t make too much noise, and then pick the inkwell up—

But this was a test, it had to be. He had behaved stupidly in the morning, not listening to his father for no good reason, and now he was testing him. He had to prove to his father that he was capable of listening and earn back his trust. He had to stay still. There was simply no other option. 

Time passed excruciatingly slowly, and every minute he stood was another minute for his anxiety and dread to grow. There was so much time between now and his father returning, so much time for him to mess up, for his legs to shake, for him to lose balance, for the ink to fall. Too many opportunities to make his father hate him. 

And his body hurt. His arms were growing tired of the weight of the ledger, and he was hungry, though that wasn’t new. He felt nervous, and dizzy, and like there was not enough oxygen in the room for him to take a comfortable breath. Standing in one place, with the height of the chair, his legs felt very breakable, like one gust of wind would splice them in two. Wylan nearly flinched, when the image came to mind. 

He imagined himself in a mirror, then, looking out at himself; he was only the reflection, not the real boy. The body would be still, and so the reflection would have to do the same. A different mind controlling his body, one that was too far away from him to ever meet—he was only a scatter of light energy, so it wouldn’t matter to him. Like this, it would be manageable. Like this, he wouldn’t have to exist. 

But he nearly flinched again when his father opened the door, coming back into his periphery. Luckily, or alarmingly, his reflexes were slow, still frozen over, so he felt the jolt first in his heartbeat, then in his hands, and he could keep it away from his feet. 

“Any progress?” Van Eck asked.  

Wylan couldn’t speak. He wasn’t even sure if he was breathing. 

His father walked to him slowly, measured, relaxed steps. It was a few minutes short of a complete hour, and Wylan chose to think that this was his father coming early to check on his wellbeing, rather than coming early to check that Wylan hadn’t broken the rules. 

Wylan watched his father’s eyes flit down to the inkwell. His eyebrows shot up. 

Impressed, Wylan thought, trying to cheer himself up instead of feeling frightened. He felt wrought with too many emotions then, but he couldn’t breathe just quite yet. He’s impressed with me. Stay still, don’t disappoint him. 

Wylan held his breath. 

His father plucked the inkwell off his foot. 

Wylan’s leg spasmed in the next second, as though trying to regain the past hour’s worth of movement all at once. Wylan cried out as he lost his balance, only managing to catch himself because of his father’s arm. He clung onto him, and then quickly removed himself, unable to bear the thought of his father pushing him away. 

Van Eck only looked bored. “Honestly, Wylan. This is dramatic, even for you.” 

“Can I come down now?” Wylan begged, all his words tumbling out of his mouth in one breath. He felt fragile, like the fall would shatter him. “Please, I–”

“Have you found the contract?”

Wylan squeezed his eyes shut. As if at any point in the last hour, he had had the wherewithal to look through the book. “N–no, but I don’t—You were right. I’ll keep taking the tonic, I–”

“But I thought you knew what was best?” Van Eck said, a note of goading, mild amusement in his tone. 

“I don’t,” Wylan said quickly. “I don’t, I don’t know–”

“I’m glad you can understand that much.” His father moved back to his desk, reassembling his piles of papers and pens. It was, Wylan could recognize, the end of the discussion. 

Wylan rocked back and forth again, rolling his ankle carefully so that it would feel less stiff and breakable. He hadn’t been aware of how much his legs were aching, but the longer he stayed standing, the more sore they felt. 

He tried to keep his voice from shaking, but when he spoke, it came out childish and trembling. “W-when can I come down?” 

Van Eck’s eyes met his. “When I say you can,” he responded tersely. “Do try and find the contract in the meantime. It’d be nice to see you apply yourself instead of whining for once.” 

Wylan felt too tired to fight back. All these hours later, and he was still on the first page, and he knew he would remain on the first page because he would never be able to read it. 

But as his father’s words turned in his mind, he realized—he could find the contract. That would still be what his father asked. 

Slowly, Wylan turned the page. It was difficult to do so, balancing the weight of the ledger in one hand, although he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to find it this exhausting to do a simple motion. Repeating the process scanning through the next page was just as hard, as was the next. 

But if he had to just find the contract, it was worth it, because he could do that. All the contracts were dated, and he could eliminate several of the thick pages based on the year alone. And then, there were more context clues; the contract with the Dryden family’s ostentatious house crest could not possibly be the contract with Vetter, nor could any contract that had several signatories. 

It still took him hours, completing such a puzzle with each page. His legs ached, and he was terrified that because of how much his arms were shaking, he would drop the ledger and his father would never forgive him. He was scared he would fall off the chair too, but somehow, he didn’t mind this so much; he imagined if he fell and injured himself badly enough, his father would feel obliged to care for him again. With hindsight, he had been so stupid to feel miserable when he had gotten lung fever as a child. He should’ve savoured his father’s care, the soft blanket, the warm honeyed tea—

Wylan swayed on the chair again. With the afternoon sun coming to its end, the contract was still nowhere to be found, but he was quite sure that it never would be now. First, the majority of the contracts here seemed to be from the winter time, the last quarter of the previous year into the new one. Even the ones from more recent days, he kept seeing the 3rd harbor mentioned throughout the pages, renewals and responses to something that had happened previously. And vividly, Wylan could recall his father’s poor mood those months ago when more security was needed by the harbors due to an incident at one of the embassies—that would explain the Lantsov crest in several of the letterheads, and the Staadwatch logo stamped by some of the signatures—

Wylan closed the ledger. “Father?” he called tentatively. His voice was hoarse from disuse, and weak even to his own ears. 

Van Eck kept writing his notes. “What is it now?” 

“It’s not here,” Wylan said, summoning up his courage to speak with confidence. Van Eck’s eyes snapped up at that. “The contract with Dr. Vetter. It’s not in this.”

Something burned in his father’s eyes—eagerness, of a kind. Hope. “You read them?” 

Wylan hesitated. He had learned, from hiding his illiteracy when he was even younger, that lies would catch up to him. He had managed for himself for some time, memorizing children’s books and learning which words were supposed to be simple or difficult for him to say, when to turn the pages, when to pause—it was a sort of musical score, and like that, Wylan found reading to be nice.    

Of course, his father made it clear that this was not reading in his eyes after he found out. He had been furious, and Wylan still wasn’t sure if it was because he saw Wylan as an idiot, or as a liar. Probably both. 

Weighing those options, Wylan bites his lip. “I–I saw… read, some of the words. And names. But—the dates–”

“The dates?” his father repeated distantly. 

“Of the contracts.” Wylan could hear his voice growing quieter, the more his father drew himself up. His hand began to shake. “T–the dates couldn’t be the contracts with Dr. Vetter—”

“Some of the contracts in there are from the last month,” Van Eck pointed out. 

Wylan resisted the urge to bite at his nail. “Yes, but… But the crests on the letterheads–”

Van Eck did not hear his response, and stood up fully now. Making his way over to Wylan, the air suddenly felt hot, a fever come to life. “So,” he said, voice low in anger. “You lied to me.”

“It wasn’t a lie!” Wylan said, feeling wounded and sick. Folding his arms tightly around himself, as if to physically restrict his heart from pounding out of his chest, he whispered, “I did what you asked.” 

He said it too petulantly for his own good. He understood that immediately, as Van Eck’s eyes flashed and froze over all at once.  

“What I asked,” Van Eck repeated. “That was what I asked of you?”

Wylan trembled. “I–I looked at the contracts–”

Van Eck’s hand shot out, snatching Wylan’s arm with all the sting and venom of a snake bite. He gasped as he was yanked off of the chair, the hard surface of the ground suddenly feeling like an impossible distance to reach without falling. He managed to catch himself, or at least his father had kept him upright with his grip; Wylan’s muffled sound of pain went unheard as he dragged Wylan to the desk, slamming the heavy ledger onto it. 

“You looked at them—well done, Wylan, how clever,” Van Eck mocked. “A toddler could do just as much. Can you read them? Anyone of them, take your pick. Can you do one simple thing, or are you truly that incapable?” 

“Father—” 

“Read it,” Van Eck demanded; his voice had a sudden easy, almost light tone to it, though Wylan could feel the energy of the anger held back. He opened the contracts to one that kept repeating 800 kruge—the number, Wylan could see clearly, read clearly. “Go on. Read me the passage, and we’ll stop with Dr. Vetter’s treatment.” 

Wylan stared at the page helplessly. The words, crawling around on the page as they always did, felt even shakier than usual. He thought, maybe if he could string together a sentence, recognize just a syllable, trace the letters with his finger like a kind tutor had once taught him, he could satisfy his father. But all he could manage, it seemed, was to take gasping lungfuls of air, inhaling and exhaling as fast as his rapid heartbeat.  

“Try!” Van Eck burst, smacking his hand down on the table besides the book, making Wylan jump. “You’re not even trying!” 

Wylan’s eyes filled with tears. “I am, I promise I’m trying–”   

“Read it,” his father demanded again. 

“I—I…” Wylan looked at the book, and now, he couldn’t even see the numbers anymore; his tears had blurred everything over. “I—”

“I, I, I,” Van Eck mimicked mercilessly, and Wylan clenched his eyes shut. “Is that what the book says? Tell me, is that what’s written on the page?” 

“I don’t know,” Wylan sobbed. “I–I c–can’t—” 

“Then why should I stop?” Van Eck snarled, so suddenly that, had Wylan not seen his father act like this before, he might’ve thought his father had morphed into some kind of creature, those drawings in picture books of monsters hiding in dark forests, eyes glowing and claws bloody. “What other choice do you give me, you useless boy?”   

Wylan could only sob. His father made a disgusted noise, turning around and running a hand through his hair, grasping for patience. Wylan felt mortified and horribly ashamed to behave this way in front of his father and disappoint him even more, but he couldn’t stop it. 

“Where is your flute?” Van Eck demanded suddenly. 

Wylan tried to control his tears, scraping the back of his hand under his eyes quickly. “No,” he whispered. “Please don’t–”

“I’ve tolerated your behavior for long enough—despite my best efforts, you only laze about, waste your time, my time—do you think I have nothing better to be doing right now? That in between all my work, I choose to entertain your melodrama? You give me no choice–”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Wylan begged. It was nonsensical to even try bargaining, but stupidly, he still tried, “I won’t–”

Van Eck’s eyes flashed and he lunged towards him, snatching Wylan’s forearm in a bruising grip. “Where. Is. It?”

“I don’t know!” Wylan cried, like such an obvious lie would buy him any grace. 

It didn’t—Wylan cried out as his head followed the direction of his father’s slap, barely processing the sharp sting of pain before Van Eck snapped, “Ghezen’s hand!” He snatched Wylan by the wrist, using his other hand to clench Wylan’s face and turn it back to him, so he could not look away. “How dare you lie to me again?” 

Wylan could feel his father’s fingers digging into the thin bones of his wrist, and with any more pressure, they would break. His whole hand would snap off, he was sure, like a useless, broken lever. He whimpered, trying to squirm his hand outside his father’s grip, but it was pointless. He was trapped, and his hand would break, and it would be his own fault. 

Van Eck’s eyes glinted, like he could read Wylan’s mind. Maybe he could. The anger was still ever-present in his voice, but it was more controlled now; that didn’t make Wylan cry any less. “Tell me another lie, and I will break your hand and burn that infernal flute. Where is it?” 

Wylan’s tearful answer (“The music ro–”) was all his father needed to hear. Van Eck released him and Wylan’s back hit the desk with enough force that the sides of his vision darkened. Still, Wylan tried to follow, but there was nothing brave about it. He didn’t feel brave, at least. He was only determined to not let his father break his flute, whatever that took—it was the only thing left to lose. 

His father was making harried commands to the staff, sending them into a polite frenzy. Wylan couldn’t hear what the words were; there was a faint ringing sound in his ears, blurring everything he heard. 

“I’m sorry,” Wylan choked. “I’m sorry, please–”

“Go to your room,” his father snapped. It was such a simple punishment after the hours of standing with the ledger, Wylan felt the absurd urge to laugh. 

A maid ran forward, quickly passing a ring of keys over to Van Eck. Wylan cried out, watching his father lock the door—but then, there was a tinge of relief. He was only locking it, not destroying it. He was taking away the only room Wylan found solace in, but maybe not forever. Hopefully not forever. 

His vision was patchy now, dark and blurry around all the edges. He was moving, though to where he wasn’t sure—he never thought things through, didn’t think, wasn’t that his problem?—and he felt his legs give out. He grasped for his father’s arm to steady himself, but Van Eck shook him off. He collapsed on the ground, and let himself be carried into unconsciousness. 

**

His routine did not change through the week. He took the tonic three days later without protest, carried on sitting hollow-eyed at the library in front of books, continued feeling hungry, and tired, and cold, and useless. 

He didn’t feel any particular way about it anymore. It would end, or it would not, but that just seemed to be how things were. There was no pattern or math equation to understand this emptiness—certainly, no music. 

Wylan was summoned for his evening walk, which was another one of those patternless things, where some days he was permitted to do alone, and other days was not. It changed at the whim of his father, which meant it somehow always managed to be the opposite of what he wanted. His father had been ignoring him since locking the music room, though Wylan could not tell if it was incidental or purposeful. Whenever Wylan settled on one answer, this too always seemed to be the opposite of what he wanted. 

Today, he was alone. The sky was clear, or as clear as it ever could get in Ketterdam. Symptoms of rain lingered around him—patches of dirt turned mud, the scent of wet, fallen leaves—but Wylan couldn’t feel any of it. It was only cold now. He hated how humid it would get during the summers, but he almost wished for it back now as he went for his jacket-less walk. That sort of heat was tangible and real, something to weigh him down. 

A small worm was wriggling its way on the stone path, searching for the grass after having come out from the rain. Wylan’s eyes fixed on it, watching with fascination, and then he felt horrifically guilty and wholly evil for watching it instead of helping. An anguish then followed, seeing the worm’s suffering. He knelt down to pick it up with his fingers, carefully depositing it on the grass. He watched it for a long time, calm and at peace, until it burrowed its way back under the moist dirt and disappeared. He suddenly felt very lonely, a horrible sort of despair, wishing for it to come back. Then, he was guilty again, and the shame threatened to overwhelm him; patternless, silent things, his feelings were. He stood back up. 

The grounds of the Van Eck mansion were small compared to places outside the city, but these nights, it felt never-ending. Between the weather, all the bugs, the sounds of the river all the way by the dockhouse, everything was ever-moving and ever-changing. Wylan preferred that. Especially these days, compared to the tense silence and gloom of the house inside. 

Footsteps from behind him made him turn around at once, even though he knew it would only be one of the staff members telling him to come inside. When he saw his father approaching instead, his lips parted, unsure what that could mean. 

Van Eck caught up to him. “I’d like to join you,” he said. 

Wylan’s shoulders curled up. He opened his mouth to respond, but nothing came out, and nothing could come out. He did not want his father’s company, but at the same time, he longed for someone, even if just to hear another set of footsteps. The silence in the house, without the music room, without his lessons, with all the staff walking on eggshells, with his father ignoring him—it permeated through him, and made his chest physically hurt. 

So he nodded, looking down to the floor again. They walked together, in silence. 

A few steps in, Van Eck slowed his pace. Wylan sped his own, so they could cross each other surreptitiously, allowing Wylan to walk on the left, his father to the right. He always walked to his father’s left side, for no rhyme or reason except habit. Wylan had not even thought that he was walking on the wrong side until after they switched back to their familiar places, only then feeling the vague comfort that came from things returning back to their places, how they should be. How strange, to know that there was a person who had known him as a baby and now, someone who could recognize his habits and moods and see the three-year old behind them when he himself could not. How strange to understand that there was a person to whom Wylan could trace himself back to, and through every responsibility that tie might demand, all Wylan felt capable of doing was follow instinct, a habit ingrained in him when he still had to hold his father’s hand to walk on uneven paths. The same hand that, just a few days ago, had threatened to break his own. 

Wylan flinched, his steps stumbling, and then halting altogether. He dug his nails into his palm, trying to keep the strange, unnamable feeling he had in him from growing. 

His father stopped walking too. 

“Do you think I enjoy any of this, Wylan?” The softness of his voice caught Wylan’s ear, and he turned to look up at him. Van Eck’s gaze was solemn. “Do you think I want to take your jackets, your flute, keep you locked in the house like some animal? Do you think it brings me joy to treat my heir like this?”

Wylan turned away again. No, was the answer that his father wanted to hear, obviously, and no must be what the answer is. And yet, though the sincerity in Van Eck’s voice seemed true, Wylan couldn’t help but recall the glint in his father’s eyes as he snatched his wrists and threatened to break his hands. Wylan didn’t know what it meant. All he knew was that he was frightened, and he was so tired of feeling it. He didn’t want to feel anything anymore. 

A careful, guiding hand rested on Wylan’s shoulder. When he looked up at his father, his expression was almost pleading. 

“This all will be yours one day. Don’t you see?” His hand left Wylan’s shoulder, to sweep in a half-circle around them. “You are my heir. The empire that I built, that my father, his father before him—I’ll leave it all to you, Wylan. All I ask of you,” here, his father’s voice became steely once more, “is that you cease your stubbornness, and read. Is that so much to ask?”  

Wylan stared at the trees. As he thought of it, he didn’t want to be a merchant. He didn’t want to be human at all. His mind drifted to those fairytales, where princes and princesses were cursed by witches to turn into animals for their sins, broken later on by true love’s kiss when the moral was learned. Couldn’t the same thing happen to him? Wasn’t he wicked enough? He would be very happy to live as a creature in the forest. He wouldn’t be able to play the flute or piano, or ever paint again, but he couldn’t do any of that right now, either. At least as an animal, he wouldn’t miss it.

Anything sounded better than this life. Any mind was better than this mind, his mind, the one he had been cursed to have. He wanted to disappear. He was frightened that he would disappear.   

“Some stubbornness is not a bad thing,” Van Eck continued, his cadence slightly awkward in the face of unexpected silence. “It’s important for a merchant to be decisive, confident in his choices. But that must be developed over time. Right now… this treatment is what’s best for you. I’m not unsympathetic—I can see how some parts of this must be… taxing on you. But that’s what Ghezen calls for—Enjent, Voorhent, Almhent. Industrious effort, bettering oneself. There is nothing I can give you, Wylan. You must earn it.”

Industry, integrity, prosperity. Wylan knew those words well enough, though he could not read the scripture they came from. Anything less than his best effort would be blasphemy, he knew, but he found no solace in the work. Perhaps it was that even his best effort was worthless. No matter what he did—his advanced math tutorials, his piano and flute lessons, his paintings—his father still found him undeserving. 

But still, Wylan could remember a time, however vague, when love had felt free. His chest and throat felt tight, suddenly, as he remembered his mother, sitting next to him on a piano bench, gently explaining the story of a song. She hadn’t minded when he insisted on playing for himself, making mistakes, banging on the keys. She had loved him—but how had he earned that? 

How had he earned those moments as a child, playing underneath his father’s desk? When his father played little counting games with him, always letting Wylan win? When his father would return from a trip and pick Wylan up in his arms, shower him with gifts and new toys, let Wylan sit in his lap and babble, when his father used to enjoy spending time with him. His father used to love him. Perhaps this was Wylan’s debt to pay now. 

“I know you must think I’m strict. That I’m some sort of monster,” Van Eck said quietly. Wylan’s eyes widened, guilt coursing through him and overpowering the plethora of all the other emotions he felt. And for a second, quick as a flash, something like guilt twinged in his father’s eyes too, the identical blue he shared with his son. “But I treat you no more harshly than the rest of the world will. What happens when you’ll be asked to make a speech in front of the Council? When you are to sign off on an investment? It would break my heart to see them laugh at you, or watch you get cheated. Especially when I know I can protect you from it, so long as you make the effort as well.” 

A rapid trill from a bird made both father and son turn their heads. It wasn’t a bird song, but a warning chirp; a bird alerting the others amongst the trees that there were two humans walking by, and to be careful. Another bird responded, and then another, through the rustle of leaves. Quieter chirps, further away, now that the birds were all back together. 

It was more company than Wylan had ever known. He felt unbearably lonely, imagining them fly from tree to tree, and he willed himself once more to just disappear and be done with this all. He was completely alone, and had no one, absolutely no one who would care—only, that wasn’t true, was it? 

His father was here, a few steps apart. His father, issuing warnings and guiding him to some sort of eventual safety, protecting him from the derision of the outside world. His father, who could love Wylan again, as he once had done, if Wylan only did something to earn it. His father, who was trying his hardest to help him—who else did he have in this world who even cared about him enough to try?

Van Eck sighed when presented with Wylan’s continued silence. “Is it my fault?” he asked. “Am I such a bad father, for wanting the best for my child?”

That implacable feeling struck him then, all at once and entirely overwhelming him with all the guilt, and fear, and sorrow, and anger, and care, and hurt, and shame, and love. He loved his father, so very much, and he was terrified of him. He could not square these two truths together, let alone anything else; it was too much for him to think, too much for him to feel. He was drowning. 

A sob wracked through Wylan’s chest, sudden and uncontrolled. He wanted to hide, but there was nowhere he could disappear, nowhere that his father wouldn’t find him. He realized how much he wanted to hide as he had done as a child—in his father’s warm embrace. He couldn’t help it, then; he hid his face against his father’s side like he might’ve when he was a child, and cried. 

It was only another few seconds, though it felt like a lifetime, before Van Eck rested his hand on Wylan’s shoulder. His hand patted the spot rhythmically, like a soft heartbeat Wylan could follow. The gentleness of the gesture made Wylan cry even harder. It was the closest thing to a hug he had felt since his mother died. 

The realization of that was somewhat sobering. The pain didn’t subside, but it made him more aware of himself, of the hysterics that he was in while his father protected and loved him with little complaint. His father had endured so much—the death of his wife, and now his disappointment of a son—and yet, he still was trying, still only wanted the best for him. 

Wylan’s feelings were still too large to grasp, not helped by the memories of his mother and the grief that came with it. But when he pulled away, trying to control his tears, he knew what he needed to say. 

“I’m sorry,” Wylan gasped, looking up at his father. “I’m sorry, please forgive me–”

“Wylan,” Van Eck said gently. He crouched down slightly, and this close, Wylan could see the falter in his father’s eyes as he deliberated what to say. Finally, he nodded, and straightened his spine again. “I forgive you.” 

“Thank you,” Wylan whispered. 

There had been nothing left to say as they walked back to the house. He felt too tired to stammer out all the typical assurances he gave, the promises to try harder. On some level, he knew that this would be the opportunity—perhaps his last opportunity—to beg anything of his father. With his father’s forgiveness, while he seemed to be debating something with himself, this could be the time that Wylan asks for one, simple concession. A blanket. To have a cup of hot tea. To play his flute for an hour. Something, anything. 

But he had no energy to do so. He didn’t have the anger. The treatment hadn’t worked for his literacy, but it had worked in this regard. Whatever flame had been inside him, licking at the inside of his skin and blistering his bones, had burnt out. But something else had calcified; a fear or perpetual worry that made it clear that he was never doing quite enough. He would always have to try harder. 

So he would try harder. 

He slipped away with a box from the kitchen early the next day. No one else in the house was awake yet, and Wylan took the stillness as a reprieve. He could imagine, just for a second, that no one had any expectations of him, and he was simply existing. He wouldn’t mind staying like this, if not for wishing the sun to rise so he could feel a little warmth shining through the windows. 

Inside his room, Wylan was intentional. He knew the sketchbooks that Vetter had pointed out on his desk should be the first things to go. For good measure, he removed the completed notebooks that were languishing in the bottom of his drawer, and whatever papers and half-finished collages they have come to accidentally contain in the clutter. He packed his sheet music, though most of it was still locked in the music room. There was nothing to be done about the curtains, and the music stand did not fit in the box, so he kept it folded under his barren bed. 

Finally, he took the teddy bear off his dresser. It was a soft, well-kept toy, and Wylan could not remember a time where he didn’t possess it. He used to play with it, but now, he preferred it just to just keep him company. It was nicer on his dresser, overlooking the room like some protector, or friend. 

Childishly, Wylan hugged it to his chest. For a moment, as all his emotions came dwelling back up to the surface, he nearly felt brave and defiant enough to think: this is silly. It wasn’t fair, the science was all wrong, and even if it wasn’t, how could an innocent stuffed animal be responsible for any of the things wrong with him?

His bravery diminished quickly at that. He swallowed the lump in his throat. There was something wrong with him. It needed to be fixed. 

Later in the morning, when the maid came to give him the tincture, he drank it without complaint. 

“Can you please give this to my father?” Wylan asked her, still coughing.

She looked at the box for a moment, saying nothing. Slowly, she said, “I wasn’t told you needed to do this.”

“He won’t mind,” Wylan said, a little desperately. “I’m supposed to. I can’t carry it myself, it’s too heavy.” 

The maid still looked hesitant. But she nodded, eventually, gingerly picking up the box. “As you wish. Tell me when you want it back.”

Wylan did not argue the point, though he knew it would not be up to him to decide when he got it back. For now, he would commit himself to the treatment, swallow the tonic and his lingering doubts: his heart was beating too fast, warming his blood, creating too much bile, so he couldn’t focus, so he couldn’t read. It was true that his heart did beat very fast, often, and it was true that he couldn’t read. Maybe that did make the things in the middle true as well, even if he felt frozen and like there was nothing left in him to give. 

His 10th birthday came and went in the haze of this new determination. He was not allowed any cake or any leeway from this routine, nor would he have asked for it, but his father did give him a big bowl of fruits after lunch, even though at this point in the season, it must’ve been hard to find some of them. Wylan tried to appear grateful, but he did not have much of an appetite for them, nor an appetite for anything altogether. 

As a gift, his father gave him a new book. The hope shining in his eyes, as he waited for Wylan to read the title of it out loud, was unbearable. The collapse of it into disappointment, then cold anger, was even worse. 

Without his music or art, all the days blended together. He sometimes caught himself in childish, fantastical daydreams like he had before, but even that felt too painful now. He knew that it would never happen. It was getting harder to think. The best he could offer himself, curled up in his seat in front of a book he could not read, was simply to imagine himself disappearing. Let the world be unchanged and continue on, and let him fade away from it all. 

But the longer he went, the physical realities of his presence made it harder to do even that. His skin always had an angry flush to it, either from the exertion of walking from his room to the library, or from broken blood vessels under his skin from wretching so often. His lips were cracked and dry, and whenever he went to wet them, his tongue felt the texture of each snag of skin, jolting him back into an unpleasant reality of existence. Some days, he felt so tired he could barely lift his head, and the unbearable weight of his own skull felt measurable then, tangible and unavoidable.  

And he was cold. He was so cold, colder than anything he had ever known even though it was only late September. Or was it October? The ease at which he had accepted the rules of the treatment made him feel even more stupid, now without his blankets and jackets. He forced himself to rebel some nights and wear extra layers when the shivering was making his muscles ache, but then his heart would race so fast that sleep was impossible either way. When he woke up, he was always surprised by it—how had he ever managed to fall asleep? Or had he simply passed out? And how was it, every night without fail, that each morning would only be colder? It was the type of freezing that made him feel like he was wet; he was convinced that one of these days, he’d wake up and find himself sinking in a lake. 

He imagined ice water seeping through his ears and into his brain. At first, he didn’t think it was a bad thing. He could envision the parts of his brain getting frozen over, all the defective parts, turning dark and falling off like frostbitten noses do, and he thought, good. It would make him useful again. 

But then the water went deeper, and though he still remained cold, nothing else in him would fall off, so everything began to rot. He was nothing more than forgotten, spoiled fruit. The image of that—his organs, his heart, his blood molding over and swallowing him from the inside out with rot and ruin—frightened him in a childish way; if it hadn’t been coming from his own brain, he would squeeze his eyes shut and hide in the closet. But what petrified him and left him unable to sleep at night, barely able to speak on most days, was that he knew it was real. There was something rotten in him, and he knew it would never go away. 

It was one of these nights, feeling submerged in cold water but unable to drown, that Wylan got off the bed. It was late in the night, and he could’ve been sleepwalking, for all he knew. He wasn’t quite sure what his goal was, only that he was freezing, and that he had no evidence that he was even real. With a book clutched in hand, he moved in the dark to his father’s office. 

When he had been younger, he remembered how he would rush into his parent’s bed after a nightmare, cocooned in between them both, adored, and safe, and cherished, and warm. His mother would stroke his hair, quietly hum a song under her breath until it lulled Wylan to sleep. And his father, though he almost always had work the next morning, never seemed to mind—that struck Wylan as the most unbelievable, now. Wylan could even recall one memory where he went to his parent’s room and discovered his mother was sleeping somewhere else, though he hadn’t the faintest of clues as to where, or why. His father woke up to the door turning, and though it was not in his nature to cuddle and sing lullabies, he still ushered Wylan close. He lit a candle, and read a storybook aloud to Wylan. It was one of Wylan’s favorites, one that Wylan had memorized, although he’d never share that fact with his father. And besides, playing the story over in his head didn’t feel nearly as comforting as hearing his father recite it, with love and affection laced through the words. 

That was impossible to get back now. He had done nothing to earn it.  

Treading lightly through the dark hallway, Wylan could see light from underneath the office door. His father always worked late at this time of year. Seasonal changes brought about new weather patterns, complications to trade routes, more ships destroyed. It might make his father’s mood much worse. 

Still, Wylan knocked on the door. He heard no response, but turned the doorknob anyway. 

The fire was running at the far end of the office, and Van Eck had an oil lamp at his desk, illuminating the heavy ledgers piled open in front of him. He looked jarred to see Wylan standing in the doorway like some spectre of a sickly, forgotten child. 

“Do you have any idea what time it is?” his father demanded. “What could you–”

“May I have a candle please?” Wylan asked feebly. He brought the book to his chest like a shield. “I want to practice reading.” 

Van Eck stared at him for a moment. Stiffly, he said, “You should’ve done that in the morning.”

“I did,” Wylan said, pleading his case. “But I can’t sleep, and—and I don’t want to be idle, and I want to practice, but I don’t have a light, and I–I… I want to study.”

His father looked at him carefully. But he jerked his head to the side, gesturing to the small side table and chair. If his father suggested Wylan had to stand on the chair again, he would do it. The heat from the fire was already warming him up, making it easy to slip away and disappear. “Sit there. Don’t disturb me.”

“Thank you,” Wylan said sincerely. 

When he sat at the chair, he wondered if he should tell his father that this went against the rules. Being this close to a fire, having his blood warmed, was against the rules. He should tell his father. Maybe this was a test, to see if he would. He should say something. He shouldn’t lie. 

But he already was a liar. The book was only a cover, because though he knew he would never get the cozy warmth of his childhood back, sitting here and pretending to read was better than being alone. Even if after this, his father yelled at him, or sent him to another tutor, or broke his hands—it was all better than being so alone.   

It was no wonder then, with this semblance of comfort, that he fell asleep before even pretending to read a page. He only realized when he awoke to his father’s hand on his shoulder, startling him and making his head snap off of the pages he had been resting against. 

Wylan’s eyes widened. He flinched back, though his father had not said anything or moved at all. In fact, his father did not meet Wylan’s nervous gaze at all, turning instead to the book. Brows gently furrowed, his fingers traced an absent-minded line on the page. Quietly, his father asked, “Can you read it?” 

Wylan’s hands began to shake. The fire burning next to him was no longer comforting; he felt feverish and ill. All that would be left of him was a pool of wax, to be mopped up the next day. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.” 

Van Eck shut his eyes, hanging his head. When he lifted his head again, it was with a long exhale, and bitter, exhausted disappointment in his eyes. 

Tears arose in Wylan’s eyes at once. That he had done this—made his proud, strong father look so defeated, because of his own deficiencies—how could he ever forgive himself? It was the rot in him, it was there, he could feel it, he could feel it. He could understand clearly now that it would always be there and there was nothing redeemable about him, not until he made this better. 

“I’m sorry,” Wylan pleaded, willing himself not to sob. “I’m sorry, I–I promise I’ll–”

“Stop,” Van Eck said. Wylan stopped breathing. His father exhaled again. Then, to Wylan’s surprise, he gave him a small, tight smile. “I know. It’s okay. We’ll just try something else.” 

Wylan felt like he was drowning again. There was a part of him that wanted to beg his father to stop. He didn’t want his hands to be slapped with a ruler by yet another tutor, could not endure another doctor and their treatment—but what option was that? It was simple logic to follow. His father was only trying to help him because he loved him. If his father should give up on him entirely, wouldn’t that mean his father no longer loved him? And if his own father didn’t love him, then who else ever would? 

He nodded along, head feeling heavy and cloudy. But for the first time in a long time, he felt some level of happiness. There was a chance to make things better. 

“We’ll restart your normal lessons again in the meantime. All your science and math tutorials.” Van Eck cleared his throat. Wylan’s eyes went wide. “Your music lessons as well. It’ll be good to have a routine again, with your piano and flute.” 

Wylan’s heart soared, and he nearly started sobbing from the sheer happiness of the thought. He actually did start crying. His lessons, his flute—he tried his best to control himself, scrubbing his hands quickly under his eyes, but he couldn’t hide his smile. “T–Thank you, Papa.”  

A flurry of expressions crossed his father’s face in the span of a second, and Wylan couldn’t make out what a single one of them meant. He turned away before Wylan had a chance to worry over it. 

“Sleep in one of the guest rooms,” his father said, standing up. 

Wylan felt panicked again. What had he done wrong this time? Was his father taking his room away from him? What would he— 

“Or take the blanket from one of the rooms.” His father held out his hand, ushering him off the chair. “Come, it’s gotten cold.” 

Wylan didn’t flinch away from the hand, like he might’ve done—and would do—later in his life. He felt silly for panicking, stupid for needlessly worrying. Yes, his father would sometimes bruise him, or ignore him, or yell at him, but he would never truly harm him. And even if he did—it was only out of love. He only wanted to help. 

Wylan leaned into the touch, eyes fluttering shut.