The False Star

Lucian Clegane clutched his left cheek, already swelling, and stared at me wide-eyed, disbelief written all over his face.

"You... you hit me?"

I figured he hadn't been hit enough, and that it would look better if both sides matched.

So I backhanded him again, hard, across the other cheek.

Smack.

There. Perfect symmetry.

Lucian finally seemed to come out of his shock. His handsome face crumpled, and his eyes reddened on the spot.

He clenched his teeth and, trembling, drew a long ebony flute from his belt and blew it with all his strength.

A low note split the air, carrying a strange ripple of magic.

I raised an eyebrow. That flute was actually a low-grade sending-charm—an enchanted relic for carrying messages.

It wasn't powerful, but from the material and the workmanship, someone had clearly poured real effort into it.

How did a relic like that end up on a boy who hadn't even crossed the First Circle?

Before long, the flute's call drew an answer.

Several streaks of blade-light came racing out of the distance and settled smoothly in front of us.

A handful of young women in the robes of the Order's high adepts took one look at the handprints on Lucian's face and instantly closed ranks around him, shielding him behind their bodies as they glared at me.

"How dare you! Who are you, to lay hands on our youngest?"

Lucian hid behind them, poked half his head out with a pitiful look, and pointed at me as he whined.

"I only saw that this new apprentice was carrying far too many treasures—things that don't suit where he is in his training. I was afraid he'd lose his way, so I kindly offered to hold on to them for him.

"And then... and then he not only threw my kindness back in my face, he... he actually struck me..."

His air of having suffered some towering injustice only made the women angrier. One after another, they laid into me.

"The nerve of him!"

"Lucian meant nothing but kindness, and you treated it like poison!"

"Arrogant the moment he sets foot here. What's he going to be like later?"

I folded my arms and looked at them as if I'd wandered into a madhouse, then asked coldly, "Then let me ask you something. Is the Ashveil Order's welcome for newcomers now to rob them in broad daylight?"

The woman Lucian had called his senior gave a cold snort and looked down her nose at me.

"What would a brand-new apprentice like you understand? Lucian is the treasure of this whole Order. He's handsome, he's kind, and his gift outshines everyone his age.

"He saw that you'd only just begun, and he feared you'd let trinkets cloud your head and lead you astray, so he stepped in to help. Someone like you bites the hand that feeds him. You wouldn't know goodwill if it slapped you."

Listening to this pile of brazen nonsense, twisting black into white, I felt my head start to pound.

A single century away in seclusion, and the Order I'd founded with my own hands had already rotted into this den of filth?

It seemed a proper housecleaning was overdue.

For now, I decided to lie low and see just how far the rot had spread.