Chapter Three:

Discomfiting Aggregations

Once he had returned to the upper levels of the space station, it took more than a little while for Aidan to round up all those unfortunate souls who had witnessed the duel between himself and the sinister black-cloaked man. And, of course, they were all quite shaken by the event, and curious about the whole affair, surrounding him on all sides and plying him with all sorts of anxious questions.

But Aidan Lysander was a diplomat, through and through—and a powerful authority figure, besides that. Explaining away the situation and calming the fears of all was a work of fifteen minutes for him.

Farewells and well-wishing was exchanged between the Tyrellian delegation and their Caraesthirian hosts, then; the Tyrellians boarded the Hyperion Ascendant and went about readying for their departure, and docking bay was cleared…and Aidan was left alone, once more.

But not quite alone.

Sensing a very familiar, icy blue gaze fixing itself on the back of his head, Aidan clenched his jaw, flexing his gloved fingers; the black leather made a noticeable squeaking sound as he dug his fingertips into his palms.

He didn't turn around when he spoke.

"One hundred and fifteen years—nearly twelve decades, and gods-know-how-many days, hours, and seconds—is that how long it's been? Do you even remember?"

There was nothing but silence behind him for a moment.

And then he heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like a very dry and almost caustic little chuckle. Aidan turned around, rather abruptly, reacting to his companion's apparent—and quite irrelevant, he thought—mirth with irritation.

The unmasked face of the man who looked back at him was indeed quite human in its general composition—though there was something about its pale, finely chiseled features that simply didn't seem quite right. And, as he had expected, there was indeed some mirth in his companion's expression.

But it was a kind of warped mirth: abnormal, a twisted and broken contortion of true amusement, more chilling and haunted than smiling.

The blue eyes glittered, as their owner looked up from studying the shining metallic inside of the mask that he had worn as his disguise—which he now held cradled carefully within his two gauntleted hands as if it was a sacred relic or trophy of some sort.

He shook his head.

"I'd hoped that you would have forgotten that by now, and lost count of the time," was the wry answer that he gave.

In response, Aidan's lips twisted into a grim parody of a smile.

"You never really forget anything..." he said, softly, almost more to himself than to the listening air or the other man.

Then his expression sobered a bit.

"I thought that I would never see you again," he said, without a further moment's policy or preamble.

The sinisterly perfect features of his cousin shifted into their cold little smirk again.

"Not many people do," Lucius Drake replied.

It had been a long time since Aidan Lysander and Lucius Drake—cousins through their fathers, Ragnar and Tristan, who had been brothers and were now long-deceased—had met, and they had parted on very much unpleasant terms.

And now, here they were: standing face to face on an intergalactic air station, on a planet of little imperial importance.

What were the odds...?

To say that they had both changed considerably since their last meeting would have been the most famous understatement of the millennium.

In the eyes of anyone who didn't know of their immortal bloodlines, one-hundred-thirty-two-year-old Aidan appeared to be halfway into his thirty-fifth year of life, and Lucius was a mere two years senior to him. Nevertheless, in age—and much more—they were no longer thoughtless young boys, fresh out of the academy. They were full-grown men, and battle-hardened…as their duel had so blatantly proved to both of them and their witnesses. They weren't young anymore, by any means.

Neither were they innocent, inexperienced, or naïve.

Lucius certainly wasn't very similar to the cousin that Aidan remembered as his comrade-in-crime, friend, and sometimes arch-nemesis.

When they had been growing up together, at the academy of magic and enchantment on Caraesthir, Lucius had remained thin and sallow, while Aidan had grown tall and muscular.

In those days of long before, Lucius Drake had been a slight figure with a mop of unruly jet black hair on his head, glaring blue-black eyes, and a perpetually pinched and sour expression on his rather gaunt face. He had always been slender as a rail, rather diminutive in stature, and prone to falling ill. He had been nothing short of absolutely brilliant, stunning every one of his professors and peers—though his attitudes, behavior, and study habits had been anything but exemplary.

The man who stood across from him now had a similar appearance to the cousin that Aidan remembered, but nothing more.

He was almost entirely different.

If they had been standing shoulder-to-shoulder, Aidan was certain that they would have been of identical height and build. It was in the fate of their family line, it seemed, for the men to be inherently tall and intimidating in stature. His father had been that way. Lucius' father had been that way. It was in the Drake bloodline. It felt indescribably odd to him, seeing his cousin's eyes at his own level. It hadn't been that way before.

Time, the avenger, had sprung its traps.

Underneath the heavy cloak that he wore, Lucius' garb was extravagant and old-fashioned: fashioned entirely out of jet-black velvet, with tall leather boots of the same shade. Quite obviously, his cousin had fared well, during their time apart.

Which begs the question…

"Where have you been?" Aidan bit off, frigidly.

Lucius raised one perfectly curved eyebrow, and regarded him with a coolly appraising air for a moment. Then, with a blasé gesture of his gloved hands—

"Everywhere. Nowhere."

Aidan snorted, only half-derisively.

"Only you could get away with saying that so nonchalantly, and expect to have people accept such words as their answer, Lucius Drake. How stupid of me to even think of asking you such a question."

But he didn't really feel anger towards his cousin.

How odd.

Quite obviously, Lucius didn't feel like expounding on his life's expeditions since their last meeting, and—with events being such as they were—Aidan was content to let things remain that way. The past was painful, dark, and twisted. It was better to leave the skeletons in the Drake family's rather large closet to rest. He certainly had enough questions to ask Lucius; but he wouldn't voice them. It was simply easier this way.

Still, the matter of the attack remained…

"Then perhaps you will tell me why you're here? Why…"

And Aidan waved his hand at their surroundings: the waiting Hyperion Ascendant, the now-darkened Caraesthirian sky, and the space station where their duel had taken place. He couldn't find words to fit the why.

"Why this?"

Lucius didn't reply immediately; instead, he took a few steps off to the side, strolling casually towards the enormous bulk of the Tyrellian royal flagship.

A beat passed, as he gazed up at it with inscrutable blue eyes, and then passed a hand over its sleek metallic underbelly, with an almost appreciative carefulness. Aidan felt his skin begin to prickle with irritation again; he wasn't accustomed to being ignored.

Then Lucius glanced at him, over his shoulder.

"I…had some business in the area…and I heard that you would be stopping by, on highly-classified imperial business."

A shrug.

"It seemed workable."

Aidan gritted his teeth.

"Attacking me wasn't necessary."

Lucius' eyes gleamed, as he gave a wickedly mirthful grin.

"Wasn't it?" he inquired.

And Aidan gave himself a mental kick in the gut for forgetting to recall his cousin's twisted sense of humor.

Just like him, to say what you think he absolutely wouldn't, under any circumstances, say… he seethed inwardly. Taking care to keep himself from showing too much of a reaction to the other man's words, he clasped his hands behind his back in a formally diplomatic stance, and replied—

"Well. Any law-abiding citizen of the Supreme Intergalactic Star Empire would agree that the unprovoked boarding of a royal flagship, the murder of imperial security-officers, the attack on a royal delegate, and the wanton destruction of public property, in such a situation as this, is…oh, highly unmerited."

A pointed look of his hazel eyes.

"I suppose you already knew that, however."

"—And just don't care."

Lucius completed the second half of the conjecture for him. Aidan allowed himself a bit of a dry smirk at that. Oh yes; even after all the time that had passed, he still knew his cousin's mind.

They stared at one another for a moment, and then Lucius looked away again; he rapped the knuckles of his left hand against the ship.

"Impressive vessel, really," he said, amiably enough. "She can't be…what? Any more than three years old?"

Not amused by the purposefully satirical jab, Aidan glared at him.

"Six, actually."

"Ah."

Aidan narrowed his eyes.

The fact that the masked man had turned out to be his own previously-estranged cousin hadn't changed anything at all; his suspicions from earlier remained intact as ever. Lucius had confronted him for a reason—and Aidan was not about to be fooled into thinking that a family reunion of sorts was numbered among his intentions. He had already wasted enough time this day. The Chancellor would be displeased enough by the delay of their return.

He clenched his jaw, and replied through his teeth—

"She hasn't seen very much conflict. What are you doing here, Lucius? What do you want from us? You couldn't possibly—"

"Perhaps you ought to offer me a look on-board your ship," the sardonic, black-cloaked figure suddenly suggested. "I think you may find it most helpful."

Aidan bristled at that.

"NO, you are not going to set foot on board my ship!" he hissed furiously, lunging forward to snatch hold of the full-cut, black velvet sleeve of Lucius' outer robe as the other man moved to take a single, maddening step towards the lowered gang-plank of the ship. "The Hyperion Ascendant is royal property of Tyrellia, and you, Lucius Drake—blood-relative of mine, as you might claim to be—are a certifiable pirate and rogue magic-user, and you absolutely cannot be permitted to—"

"Shh-shh-shh!"

And then Lucius was rounding on him suddenly, holding up a gloved finger in caution. The gesture might have frightened a lesser being into submission—

As it was, Aidan crammed his protests back into his throat, and held his tongue, purely because he wasn't appreciative of being shushed by anyone, especially Lucius Drake. With deliberate obliviousness to Aidan's irritation, Lucius quirked his head to one side, pretending to listen carefully to the silent air around them.

When a few silent moments had passed, he spoke in a soft, almost singsong tone, eyes gleaming with a sharp malignant glee—

"No one else knows anything about that—about me, Consulate Lysander. And I'd like to try and keep it that way, at least for the moment. Do try to oblige me, for just once."

"Give me one good reason…" Aidan growled.

"Do you enjoy your position as Consulate to Chancellor Valdorian? Is life on that planet of yours—Tyrellia, was that the name I heard?—is it vastly intriguing?" Lucius inquired, with seeming offhanded flippancy.

But Aidan caught the subtext, and scowled thunderously.

If Lucius wasn't above making pointed jibes at his occupation, Aidan had certainly even less responsibility to demonstrate kindness in their current circumstances.

"Well, we can't all be wandering bards," he quipped back at his cousin, with perfect honeyed ease. This earned him an approving chuckle.

"Touché, my friend." Lucius said, lightly. "I shall concede to that."

He glanced off to one side then, turning his glacial eyes away from his severely-uniformed and glaring cousin to the spiraling towers of the Caraesthirian space port, which seemed to sparkle now in the darkness: lit from within their myriads of windows by thousands of coloured lights.

It was all part of one great testimony to the decadence of the Supreme Intergalactic Star Empire's current wealth and prosperity. In the estimation of some souls, it was a senseless and profligate waste; in the sharply-analytical and even more forwardly acquisitive eyes of a pirate, it was a glittering gem, dangling on a very thin ribbon above an abyss.

But the hand of Fate would come to take all of that away, sometime or another, with one swift tip of the galaxy's balance scales. It was imminent, as were all things.

He inched his head to the side, and eyed Aidan again.

"It's getting late…"

Aidan had also looked away—if only to glance out of the corner of his eye at some invisible nemesis, the embodiment of his current thoughts—and that was all it took. He heard Lucius' comment, and inhaled abruptly, opening his mouth to speak—then he realized that his slippery cousin was no longer within sight.

Lucius Drake had disappeared again.

A strangled exclamation emitted from his tightening vocal-cords.

"Lucius—"

And then he saw an ominous, bat-like shadow flickering in the yellow silhouette of the Hyperion Ascendant's open boarding-hatch: the edge of a cloak billowing with the swift movement of its Machiavellian wearer. Lucius was now on board his ship.

Aidan felt his insides turn over.

Then he cursed.

"No! Get back here—!"

Five hasty strides across the landing bay had him at the ship's boarding ramp, and then he was running aboard: his heart pounding as angry adrenaline chugged its way through his veins, his eyes darting back and forth in an infuriated search for his prey. He caught sight of the sinister shadow again and stalked after it, fuming.

This was unacceptable!

He rounded the bend in the hallway, and found himself standing at a junction in the ship's floor-plan. Two more corridors split off in opposite directions, angled at his left and right—and a stairway directly in front of him led upwards—

To the helm.

"Ohhh no," he said, shaking his head.

It wasn't that he couldn't believe that Lucius would do something so blatantly ill-advised as breezing straight onto the command bridge of a royal ship—he had been reckless when they were children, after all; why should he be different now that he was a full-grown pirate?—but he, himself, did not have a wish to be seeing this. Having the pirate who had killed imperial guardsmen and menaced countless others and endangered imperial business aboard the ship that he, as Consulate, was sworn to safeguard for its true master, the Chancellor…

He felt his migraine begin to reassert itself.

Wishing that he wasn't about to see what he knew he was going to see in another moment, Aidan wearily climbed the stairs, gripping the railing with a hand of iron. He didn't look up as he approached the doorway—he wouldn't look—perhaps if he just closed his eyes and told himself that none of this had ever happened, if he simply willed it all to go away, perhaps he wouldn't—

But, of course, no. If that was possible, life would be easy.

And if life was easy, then it would be easy.

And that just wouldn't make sense.

He founded Lucius standing nearby the primary controls, nearly blending into the shadows himself; the pale skin on his face was all that gave him away. He had placed the silver mask on the console at his side, and was brushing two gentle fingertips along the long column of buttons and switches: stroking them like a very sensitive cat.

"Coming from somewhere interesting? I hadn't thought you to be the tourist-type, cousin. I suppose I might be glad for you."

Aidan stood in the doorway, fists clenched.

"Get. Out," he bit off.

Lucius chuckled, and stood away from the console, picking up the mask. With a flash of his fingertips, it vanished into the draping folds of his cloak.

"Don't be so unsociable. I haven't done anything yet."

The words were—again—spoken in a tone that was light and innocent enough, as if Lucius was truly honestly surprised that Aidan was so upset with him…but they held a razor-sharp undercurrent of warning.

Aidan ignored it.

"'Haven't done anything'?" he echoed, incredulously.

Then he scoffed, harshly.

"You've caused trouble—you are causing trouble now. Lucius, for the love of all that is good and holy, listen to me! I don't know where you've been or what you've been doing all this time, and much as I would like to order you to tell me, I can't, and won't. And you cannot be here. If they find you—"

Lucius waved a hand, brushing off his next words.

"Haven't you noticed how conspicuously empty your ship seems to be, at the moment? You sent everyone who wasn't part of your crew away; they will not be returning under these circumstances. Your crew…"

He turned his head, and looked pointedly towards the door. Realizing his error, Aidan stiffened, listening to the suddenly horrific silence—

Gunshots echoed from deep within the ship. He snapped his head around, to gape in incredulous anger at his cousin.

"You unbelievable—!"

"Ah, please don't finish that sentence."

His cousin raised one hand, his index finger pointed up in a silencing gesture. Then he smirked, condescendingly, and continued.

"I am the very least of your problems right at this very moment, Aidan Lysander—now, you might want to go see what your men are up to sub-level. These enclosed gunfights can be so risky…"

Aidan sent him a murderous glare, then whirled and tore back down the stairway, breaking into a run as soon as his feet had touched the floor again. He didn't have to think about leaving his cousin behind, unguarded; Lucius would follow, he knew.

It was in his interests, it seemed.

Within half a minute, they'd reached the third sub-level deck of the ship, and only the use of his very fastest reflexes saved Aidan from having his face seared off by the white-hot barrage of laser-bolt fire that had erupted from both sides of the corridor that they now stood in. Aidan lurched backwards, recoiling from the sudden loud noise that the firing guns made—then he whipped his head around to glare at Lucius.

"Those were yours, I presume?" he snapped.

Lucius gave an elegantly nonchalant shrug.

"And yours, I should think," he replied. "My pirates don't generally fire their weapons at one another—unless they're going for target practice. Even then—"

Aidan had had enough of his prevaricating.

"Be quiet—please! Gods! You are going to give me an aneurism!"

"They have medication for that, you know."

BAM!

Aidan slammed his gloved fist into the wall that they stood against, and the tan-coloured plasteen surface made a noise that sounded ominously similar to a crack.

Then, without a second glance to his cousin, he stood straight again—squared his shoulders—and stepped out from the sheltering bend of the wall.

Lucius pushed away from the wall as well, and followed—as the very determined Consulate, scowling and thin-lipped with displeasure, strode recklessly out into the precise middle of the battle between the Tyrellians and the invading pirates.

The Tyrellians instantly recognized the figure of their commander, and ceased fire, backing away from their opponents. The pirates—all eight of them that Aidan could see—glanced momentarily at him: the newcomer. Then they exchanged looks with one another, and shrugged.

Aidan glared at both groups.

"That is enough! Every single officer and crewmen belonging to the chancellorship is to return to his post immediately—and you gentlemen!"

He rounded on the pirates.

"—You will kindly accompany your master off this ship immediately, and seek to interfere with our business no longer!"

A collective chuckle went up from the pirates, and, in the pause, Aidan realized that he really didn't know why they had ceased their fire at all, in the first place. It wasn't because he had said or done anything to merit that—in truth, he should have been shot outright, upon walking out into the midst of such a fray—so then why—?

Then he looked more closely at the motley crew.

His skin started to prickle again.

…He could see through them, if he looked very hard…

"Only the magical and the undead can recognize magic, when it's set right in front of them," said Lucius' cool, uninflected voice, from behind him. Aidan didn't appreciate his cousin's seeming ease in reading his thoughts. "They won't fire on you because they know who you are. And because…"

A short, cold chuckle.

"Well, because I'm here—and they know I'd rather not have any more deaths added to our lists today. Gentlemen."

Aidan heard a swooping sound, which he could only presume was the noise of the sleeve of Lucius' robe moving as its wearer made a particularly expansive and sudden gesture with his arm.

"Kindly take yourselves elsewhere, and find trouble there."

That wasn't what Aidan wanted.

"Lucius—"

He turned around to face his cousin, who lifted an eyebrow and made a slight nodding gesture with his head, twitching his fingertips in a forward motion. As Aidan distrustfully turned to look—freezing momentarily when he saw that the pirates had vanished from sight, apparently having melted back into the darker recesses of the hallway—Lucius interrupted him, calmly.

"I solved your problem for you, cousin—proper etiquette would suggest that you thank me now, rather than continue to snipe at me."

He shrugged.

"But go your way…"

With a dismissive wave of one hand, Lucius stepped backwards, to lean against the wall again: arms folded with an urbane sort of reserve across his chest. His flippantly arrogant demeanor raised Aidan's hackles to a point that was almost unbearably irritating. After fixing his cousin with a look that would have withered the entire royal garden conservatory, Aidan rounded on the Tyrellians, who stood—mute and dumbly waiting—behind him, even after his first order and the pirates' mysterious disappearance.

"All of you, back to your stations now," he grated out.

Every last man quickly moved to obey.

"And I don't care what else occurs on this ship within the next fifteen minutes—whether it is a nova-bomb or furthering raiding from our guests—I want to see us on-schedule again, and en-route to home-base, IS THAT CLEAR!"

"Aye sir!"

Lucius put on a delicately impressed look—as if he was mildly amused by his cousin's authoritarian antics—then he turned on his heel and strode off, moving further down the corridor, much to Aidan's chagrin.

Aidan, of course, gave chase—

Yet again.

"Now listen to me! If you don't get yourself and your friends off this vessel within the next thirty seconds, gods help you—"

Aidan rounded the corner of the corridor, still ranting at his seemingly heedless dark-garbed cousin—and then he stopped short.

Before his eyes was a terrible shock, an inexplicable mystery, and nightmare about to come true, all in one. Lucius stood before a closed door—the only door in the isolated hallway—and his startling eyes were fixed on it with a kind of intense, rapt interest. Recognizing the expression, Aidan decided that he still didn't like it when Lucius had that kind of look on his face.

It never led to any sort of good circumstances.

Stop this before it's too late! a warning voice railed inside his head. He stepped forward, stretching out a futilely protesting hand.

"Lucius…"

Whether or not Lucius took notice of the enormous warning and barely restrained fear in his cousin's tone was not apparent.

The mage's eyes were focused solely on the door now—or, rather, not on the door, but what he could see floating about it. He made a circling motion with one hand, murmuring a few low words in the magical tongue, and looked satisfied when something invisible made itself known to his mind. Without looking back to Aidan, he commented, as if he thought Aidan didn't already know—

"This door is heavily magicked."

Bloody underworlds. Blood, pain, destruction. Kill kill KILL.

Aidan didn't voice those thoughts of his own mind; he knew Lucius wouldn't take hearing them very kindly. Instead, he cleared his throat, and replied, blandly—

"Yes…"

Lucius took a half step back, folding one arm across his chest and propping the other's elbow on top of it, so that the gloved fingers of his free hand could curl about his chin: one fingertip tapping idly against his thin lips. His unearthly eyes narrowed in thought, as his eyebrows took a sharp downward curve over them.

Aidan began to feel even more uneasy—if that was at all possible—and jerked his eyes to the side, waiting for the inevitable moment when someone else from the Tyrellian crew would come along and catch him standing there, conversing with the ruthless pirate as if it was normal. As if it was all right.

And nothing was anywhere close to 'all right'.

He scowled.

Lucius removed his hand from its place at his chin, and passed it over the side of the door, once, in a smooth arcing stroke: a tiny, inscrutable smirk embedding itself into the corners of his mouth.

"Don't be witty, Aidan. It doesn't suit your officious outlook."

He paused.

"Now I wonder…what are you keeping in there…?"

Oh NO.

Aidan lunged, putting himself in between the door and his alarmingly inquisitive cousin. Hazel eyes sparking with anger, he glared at the other man. Lucius looked marginally taken aback—and his eyes sparked with deep-seated amusement.

"Don't—you—dare." Aidan ground out, snarling through clenched teeth.

Lucius gave a breathy little chuckle.

"Oh, so it's important, then! I'd thought as much."

Aidan tried one last, desperate time to appeal to his cousin's better conscience.

"Lucius Drake," he started, in a very low, controlled tone. "Please. For once, please. Leave it alone. Turn around and walk away from this spot now, before it's too late. Raid, pillage, and plunder the rest of my ship if you absolutely must—but don't do this."

Lucius' expression turned slightly darker, and his eyes gleamed.

"Careful, cousin…" he said, in an equally conspiratorial tone. "You're in danger of looking as though you are hiding something from me."

"Protecting something, yes—I can't hide anything from you, if you already know very well that it's there," Aidan shot back, with great equanimity.

"…Very astute, cousin."

So saying, Lucius stood back, away from the door.

Then he whipped his head to one side. The dim report of a few scattered gunshots from the upper levels of the Hyperion Ascendant reverberated through the walls: the Tyrellian crew and Lucius' pirates were, perhaps, finally bringing an end to their battle. Aidan listened too, for a moment—

WHOOSH.

"Lucius, I said NO!"

Panicking, he threw himself forward—towards the now open doorway—in an attempt to snatch hold of his cousin before disaster befell them all. But Lucius was already standing beyond the doorway, and he quirked his head to one side, making a small waving gesture with his index finger: openly smirking at Aidan's dread.

SHWOOP.

The door whizzed shut.

KRR-CHUNK.

The locking mechanism slammed into place.

Aidan managed to stop himself just in time, watching the door close itself with a hissing of its hydraulic sockets—hearing it lock itself from the inside, he remained frozen where he was for precisely two seconds.

And then he attacked the door with his fist.

"Lucius! Get OUT! NOW! I swear, when I get to you—"

Meanwhile, a very calm and utterly unruffled Lucius Drake stood within the center of the very dark room, listening to the muffled protests and enraged threats that his cousin was snarling at him from beyond the magicked door. Letting his quick, satisfied grin to flash white in the darkness, he then turned to survey the chamber.

The door was indeed magicked—quite powerfully so, in fact—but only a severely advanced magic-user would be able to see or recognize that. The spell that had been placed upon the thick metal sheeting was intended to keep whatever was inside the room from getting out of it, not to keep whatever was outside from getting in.

Opening the door had been simple; a wave of his hand and an influx of his magic had seen to that. But now that he was in the place…he could see what it was that Consulate Aidan Lysander was so intent on protecting from the world.

It wasn't Aidan's magic on the door, though.

It was someone else's.

Lucius made a flickering gesture with one hand, and murmured—

"Vhaeris, alendii amare. Nharim."

All at once, light flooded into the room as the candles that rested in various candelabras and wall sconces burst into flame. Only slightly flinching at the abrupt deluge of warm amber light, Lucius then turned to let his eyes slowly rove around the silent chamber's entire circumference.

Oh, this was interesting.

This was very interesting.

It was as if he had stumbled upon the very sumptuous, very feminine salon of an enormously wealthy and privileged lady. The bare walls and Spartan floors of the Tyrellian royal ship had been transformed by throw rugs, chaise lounges, vanity tables and armoires, trunks, dresser's mannequins, and other such finery.

Everywhere around him, he saw evidence of affluent living: golden candelabras, jewelry boxes spilling over with gems of all kinds, silks and velvets nearly bursting out of the places where they were stored. There were flowers and baubles everywhere—along with a substantial number of finely-made, leather-bound books.

Lucius strolled over to one of the low tables, and took one of the books in his hand, bringing it up to eye level so that he could see it clearly in the wavering candlelight. He raised an eyebrow, reacting with placid surprise to the gold-embossed writing that he read on its cover.

"Death of a King, by Sir Tomas Mallor? What absolute drivel…"

He made a small sound of disgust, and replaced the book on the table, rubbing his hand along the trailing sleeve of his outer robe as if he was concerned that the book's germs of indolent entertainment would infect his skin even through the gloves that he wore. Then, he glanced back towards the door, where he knew Aidan still lurked—his cousin's raging protests might have ceased, but the man himself had not departed.

"Well, Aidan…if this is your mistress's room…"

A pause, and a small chuckle.

"…I'm quite overwhelmed."

With another soft laugh, he sidestepped the low table, and crossed to the other side of the room. There lay the wide vanity table—flanked by two sizeable wardrobes—and glittering on top of it was enough jewels to make any petty pocket-thief's eyes pop out. Lucius trailed a gentle fingertip over the numerous sapphires, diamonds, pearls, and garnets, walking alongside the table and examining all he saw with his sharp eyes.

But he didn't take anything.

That wasn't what he was here for.

All in all, the room did nothing to answer his questions—if anything, it caused more questions to crowd into his mind. The door was magicked to prevent its occupants' escape, and there was a veritable fortune placed within its four walls.

Who? Why?

Then something happened—and that something forcibly slammed him to a halt, and very nearly caused his heart to cease beating.

He heard a soft, sighing breath. There was a rustling sound.

From behind him.

The ruthless outlaw-mage felt his breath freeze in his lungs, and a shudder of presentiment ran up his spine, causing him to stiffen where he was: shoulders hunching as though he expected to be attacked.

A beat passed, and then another, and another—

Then he whirled around, black velvet cloaked billowing and snapping around him like the enormous wings of an angry bat. His eyes widened, and his lips parted of their own accord.

And he gaped, quite unashamedly, at the beauty that lay before him.

And introducing the newest addition to our cast list...

Lucius Drake: Johnny Depp