Chapter 12
WYLAN
There was an envelope on his desk.
Wylan rolled his shoulder, squinting at it.
From ship to horseback, the journey from Pine Island to Tawney had taken a full day, and he’d gotten in so late last night that he hadn’t bothered to stop in his office.
Ralund had opened the door in night attire with a single candle for light, said, “Welcome home, my lord,” and then they’d mutually parted for some well-deserved rest.
It was late morning before Wylan had finished breakfast and a hot cup of tea, and felt awake enough to venture into his study.
And then he saw the envelope.
It was yellowed parchment, sealed with a simple seal of red wax.
No insignia, no writing. Red was the color of Queendom royalty, so Wylan would assume it was from Reyna—except that Reyna lived a short walk away, and wouldn’t bother leaving a letter when she could have just slipped into his study this morning and spent her time enjoying a cup of tea while he awoke.
Another lord, perhaps? Panic gripped Wylan’s chest, and he wondered if Lord Dren had arranged for this… except they’d left on amicable terms, and Dren surely would have mentioned if he’d sent a letter to the contrary.
“Ralund—” Wylan called, before remembering that it was his servant’s day off, and well-deserved at that.
The letter stared at him.
Well, letters couldn’t stare, but it felt like that.
He approached, glancing around once more in case someone leapt out. Quinn was asking about spywork at the bonfire—maybe this was her doing? But the sealing wax was a near-perfect circle, and a five-year-old probably couldn’t manage that.
Or maybe she could. Wylan had no idea how children aged. His lack of a continuing lineage was actually a concerning topic, and one he’d have to address in the next few years.
He was procrastinating, he knew, and that was almost embarrassing.
Best to tear open the envelope now and satiate his nervous curiosity.
The drapes on the windows surrounding his office were wide open, and the early summer sunshine offered plenty of light as he picked up the envelope and turned it over in his hands.
No note on the back, either.
Hmm.
He fed a finger underneath the flap, and gently tugged the seal off. Inside were several incredibly thin sheets of… paper? Except it wasn’t like any paper he’d ever seen—they were nearly translucent and had been covered in a light dusting of charcoal.
Wylan recognized Feo’s handwriting immediately.
A wash of heat slid over his body, and he set down the pages, staring at them from a safe distance. Now it didn’t feel like they were burning a hole in his mind. Now it felt like they’d burn his skin if he touched them.
These were copies of journal pages. Feo’s journal, dated in recent months, with several pages going back years.
Wylan knew Feo kept meticulous records—for future biographers, they’d always said, even as Wylan rolled his eyes—but seeing them in his study, clearly left to be found, was unnerving at best.
“Reyna? Is this you? It’s not funny,” Wylan said, taking a step back to investigate the study. He did a sweep, just in case the former Queensguard was hiding somewhere. But that wasn’t really Reyna’s style anymore—not in one of her lords’ manors, not as his sovereign.
The study was, predictably, empty. So were the hallways nearby. The only indication Wylan found that hinted at something amiss was one window latch left undone. But that could have been Ralund—airing out the study and forgetting to lock it—just as easily as it could have been a spy.
Wylan pressed his lips together. It likely didn’t matter how the letters got here. The question now was, should he read them?
Someone clearly wanted him to.
A forbidden thought entered his mind: maybe it wasn’t Reyna, or Ralund, or Quinn. Maybe it was the most obvious answer. Maybe Feo themselves had left this for him to find—to communicate something Feo hadn’t been able to say in person.
That seemed like the most reasonable response.
Wylan hesitated, returning to the pages.
He spread them out, counting them. Twelve in total.
They jumped dates, and over half of them mentioned Wylan’s name.
They must have been left by Feo—their old partner clearly didn’t want him reading the entire journal, but rather gaining insight into a few specific events.
That had to be it.
Wylan still felt odd reading them, but… if Feo wanted him to, he would oblige.
He owed them that much. He leaned over the desk, starting with the most recent page.
Most of it was meticulous, firsthand accounts of goings-on at the Academy of Alchemical Arts—but every once in a while, Wylan would seep into the pages.
“The flowers by the Arcanium are beginning to bloom. Bluebells, snow dollops, and white saffolds. The bulbs have to be planted in the fall for a proper bloom. I originally planted them for Wylan, but that was right before—Well, he likely would have loved them.”
“I perfected the circle today—one that can alert a chosen individual to my thoughts. It’s a more refined version of Kianthe and Reyna’s moonstones. My intent was to utilize it with Wylan, to communicate when he’s in Tawney and I’m here, but I will need to find someone else to experiment with.”
“Today was fine. In a shocking turn of events, I miss him.”
“In the late evenings, it is impossible to ignore the emptiness of my cottage. What could I have done differently…?”
On and on, they went. The final pages were ones dated years ago, and had nothing to do with Wylan at all—and yet, those were the pages Wylan spent the most time reading.
Because at that time, Feo had visited the Magicary after over a decade exiled, intending to reclaim relations between elemental mages and alchemists.
“Over a decade,” Feo had written, “I have wondered what it would be like, to revisit this place as someone.
Not the child who failed at elemental magic and was forced into alchemy.
Not the teenager who questioned scripture and was abandoned for being an inconvenience.
Today, I returned as the Alchemicor, the Alchemist of Eras, and the students received me as an icon.
I have become more than anyone imagined.
“It’s lonelier than expected.”
That page made Wylan choke. He sunk into a chair, staring at those last four words.
It’s lonelier than expected.
It had been easy to forget, feeling disgruntled about their day-to-day, why Wylan was attracted to Feo in the first place. Feo might think it was the thrill of the forbidden—but Wylan knew it was more than that.
Wylan, an orphaned lord.
Feo, an abandoned mage.
Both of them, barely older than teenagers.
Wylan remembered the years after his mother passed, after his father was long gone, when it was just Ralund coaxing him through his lordly duties—lest Queen Tilaine notice and execute him for failing.
He’d collected taxes. Coordinated maintenance of the public spaces.
Signed off on new trade routes. All of it, flat, dull, dark.
The manor was always empty at the end of the day. Even Ralund would return to his small cottage on the corner of the property for dinner with his wife.
Wylan would sleep in the manor’s tower, alone, knowing a cold, empty house awaited him every day.
It’s lonelier than expected.
The moment Feo appeared in his life was the moment color arrived. Huge splashes of it, bright blue and red clashing as an alchemist arrived and confidently stated they were the new diarn, reclaiming Tawney for Shepara.
Wylan could have sent word to Queen Tilaine, could have double-checked with the Council, but he worried that kind of territory dispute might start a proper war.
And so, he sat with it, watching as color infused elsewhere.
Beige and green at Feo’s compound when Wylan arrived for a tense cup of tea.
Yellow, in Feo’s predatory smile as they promised Wylan a challenge.
A queen’s maroon, back in Wylan’s study, poring over ancient journals with Ralund to see the history of diarns in Tawney.
One day, Wylan looked up and realized what a beautiful, vibrant town they had. Wylan hadn’t seen it that way since he was a child.
Feo did that.
That was why Wylan fell for them.
Even after Feo moved into the position of Alchemicor, there had been talk by the Councilmembers of putting a new diarn in Tawney. A few Councilmembers met Feo, Wylan, Kianthe, and Reyna here to discuss options—and Feo stopped their old cohorts before the debate could begin.
“We don’t need another diarn. After years here, I can confirm that Wylan has our citizens’ best interests at heart. It doesn’t matter if they’re Queendom or Sheparan citizens… we can trust him to care for them, and coordinate with Shepara when necessary.”
Feo’s support was all they needed, and the Councilmembers returned to Wellia without appointing anyone to replace Feo’s vacant position.
Wylan remembered taking Feo’s hand after that meeting, in the empty silence of the study, and saying, “You said some nice things about me today.”
“Yeah, well,” Feo had replied, obviously embarrassed, “I only came here because I thought Tawney needed me. But after watching you govern, I’m not convinced that’s true anymore.”
“Well, don’t get too confident. I need you,” Wylan had said, softly.
Feo had rolled their eyes and pushed Wylan’s shoulder, and Wylan had laughed, and they’d kissed in the flickering light of the dying hearth.
Wylan had been happy when Feo was around. Yes, that shine had worn off, and they’d been left with nothing to sustain a true relationship—but maybe that was both their faults. And maybe that baseline of respect and joy was all love needed to thrive.
No one was meant to be alone.
Someone banged on the front door. Insistent, loud, but from this deep in the manor, Wylan still barely heard it. How Ralund had a sixth sense for this kind of thing blew Wylan’s mind—he never knew when someone was waiting in the front courtyard.
Mind spinning with the implications of the pages inside that envelope, Wylan walked to the foyer. It must be a citizen. Maybe there was some kind of emergency—Wylan would absolutely take handling an emergency over sitting here, thinking about all the ways he and Feo had failed.
But when he opened the door, it was Feo on the stone landing.
Wylan almost dropped the pages in his hands. Feo looked out-of-breath, windswept, with their fancy embroidered cloak hanging half off one shoulder. In the courtyard, Feo’s griffon, Kappenicus, was watching Wylan with an unnerving, eagle-eyed gaze, clenching razor-sharp talons on the flagstones.
Feo lowered their fist, eyes widening. “Wylan.”
“Um… yes,” Wylan replied, suddenly at a loss for words.
“Reyna said—” Feo drew a deep breath, pressing a hand to their chest. “Well, she set something in motion, but—” their eyes drifted down, down, and finally saw the translucent charcoal pages in Wylan’s hand.
Reyna set something in motion.
Then Feo hadn’t sent these pages at all.
Wylan suddenly felt like a child with his hand in the sweet jar. He shoved the pages behind his back, hoping Feo couldn’t tell what they were. “Ah! Erm. N-Nothing here. Reyna hasn’t been by.” Not that I’ve seen, at least. Technically not a lie.
Feo was still staring at Wylan’s arm. “What are those?”
Not a lie… But Wylan didn’t want to lie to Feo. He never wanted to, even though it had seemed necessary towards the end.
No, Feo, I didn’t mind that you skipped dinner.
Don’t worry, I understand you’re busy.
It’s okay.
It hadn’t been okay, and maybe if Wylan had said something sooner, voiced an actual fucking opinion, they might not have ended like they had.
So, Wylan drew a deep breath and said, “They’re pages from your journal.
Reyna must have left them in my study. But Feo, I only read them because I thought you had left them—” Wylan cut himself off, grimacing.
“It sounds so ridiculous now that I’m saying it aloud. I’m incredibly sorry.”
Feo’s eyes had drifted back to Wylan’s, and they suddenly looked unsure. “What—which pages?”
“Mostly ones that mention me.” Wylan had only brought the most recent page—the Magicary visit—with him to the door, but he offered it to Feo now. The Alchemicor took it, reading it like one might their own obituary. Wylan rubbed his arm. “I’m sorry,” he said again, helplessly.
Feo sighed, pinching their brow. “Can I see the others?”
Wylan beckoned them inside the manor. Feo waved at Kappenicus, who was suddenly not watching them anymore—but had turned to the sky instead. Except when Wylan followed the griffon’s calculating gaze, he didn’t see anything abnormal on the roof.
Huh.
Instead of following that curiosity, Wylan led Feo to the study, where the other pages were spread out on his desk. Feo was silent as they browsed the copied pages, which made Wylan feel more and more awkward.
“We may need to have a talk with Reyna about boundaries.” Wylan aimed for a lighthearted tone, hoping to diffuse this situation.
Feo dropped the Magicary page on the table, overtop the others. They stared for another moment, unseeing, and then drew a slow breath and pivoted towards Wylan. “How was Pine Island? Is… is Lord Dren settling in?”
It was such an awkward turn of conversation that Wylan floundered again. “Um. Yes, he’s settling in. He appreciated your help, and may need you back again in a few months, once they’re more established.”
None of this was a conversation Wylan wanted to have.
What he wanted to say was—
“Are you two still dating?” Feo asked abruptly.
Yes. That.
“No. We agreed it was best not to continue anything once I left.” Wylan pushed all of the conviction of an ending into that sentence. It’s over. It’s done. Dren doesn’t mean anything to me, not like you—not like you.
Feo lifted their chin, mulling that over. Their eyes cut to the journal entries. “Well… then I can say it. You probably figured it out anyway, with these entries.”
Wylan’s heart skipped a beat. “Feo, you don’t have to—”
“No, no. I very much do.” The Alchemicor, the Alchemist of Eras, Wylan’s old lover and best friend, stepped closer, holding Wylan’s gaze. Wylan’s entire body felt tense in anticipation, and he held his breath as Feo added, “Lord Wylan, I still have feelings for you, even after all this time.”
A pause, and Feo’s voice became determined and so, so earnest.
“In fact, it would seem that I am very much in love with you.”