Now and then—usually in the lull between interrogations or during the rare mercy of an unscheduled month—Dorian let himself wonder how, exactly, he'd been made. He remembered fragments—enough to know he'd once helped design the body, offering preferences like a man ordering a bespoke coffin. But he wasn't a thaumaturge. Not a scientist. He was what came after: a puzzle pieced together from memory, machinery, and just enough soul to mourn what had been taken.
Some of it—though never quite enough—had been explained to him by Lysander. Other pieces he'd puzzled out on his own, in the sleepless dark between duties. But there were parts of his making that would remain unanswered by design, wrapped in silence like a wound that would never close. Some truths, he suspected, were not meant to be understood. Not by him. Not ever.
The First Healer—Lysander said —had not built Dorian from cold alloys or soulless circuitry, but from the planet's own veined heart. The materials were drawn from the sacred Sepal Basin where the crust sang in frequencies no sensor could quite register. These were not ordinary metals—they pulsed with a strange, low vitality, laced with what the scholars called planetary resonance. Some whispered that the sepals held memory. Others called it judgment.
Because sepals didn't take to just anyone.
They were not merely conductive—they were discerning. Artificial life, no matter how carefully calibrated, was often cast off by the ore. Too synthetic. Too hollow. The sepals rejected what felt false.
But not Dorian.
He had bled for Seraphs. Died in its name. Even in betrayal, he'd acted out of loyalty—to the crown, to the heir he had tried to save. What remained of his heart still beat in time with the planet's pulse. Serathis recognized that rhythm. Not as an intruder. But as kin.
They did not simply accept him. They welcomed him.
His resurrection, then, wasn't born of engineering alone. It was a rite—a compact. His soul, tethered by memory to Jasper's own fragile thread of life, was bound into the body not just through design but through planetary assent. The ritual etched unseen sigils into every forged sinew, every circuit—a living agreement between the Healer's hands and Seraphs itself.
But such mercy demanded a cost.
Dorian could no longer step beyond the reach of Serathis without losing integrity. Without beginning to unravel, bone by blessed bone. He was no longer merely on the planet—he was of it.
The planet had chosen him—shaped him into what he was now, for better or worse. Not out of mercy, but necessity. And just as it had once called him to rise from ruin, it was choosing again. Choosing Jasper. Dorian saw it now, as plainly as breath in winter air. Serathis was reaching for him—naming him its next sovereign, whether he wanted the crown or not.
These were the thoughts that drifted through Dorian's mind as he watched Jasper move, fluid and furious, beneath the arena lights. The crowd roared for him: cutthroats, pickpockets, drunks, and ghosts in borrowed flesh. The unwanted. The unloved. Survivors clinging to another breath not because they believed in tomorrow, but because tomorrow hadn't managed to kill them yet.
Once, they had been his people.
No—more truthfully, he had been one of them.
Before Lysander plucked him from the gutter like a rusted coin with just enough shine left to gamble, before he'd stormed the palace with righteous fury blazing in his chest and a martyr's fire in his eyes, convinced he could burn the old world down and forge something better from its ashes.
Before he met Jasper—and everything he thought he understood about loyalty, rebellion, and sacrifice began to unravel thread by thread.
"He's going to win this one, Grand Justiciar."
The voice came from Dorian's left—a young man, broad-shouldered and bright-eyed, not more than twenty, if that. The kind of youth who hadn't yet learned the weight of consequence, whose strength still felt like promise instead of burden. He reminded Dorian, uncomfortably, of himself—back when he believed fury could change the world, before he learned how often it merely burned through the one who carried it.
"Has he ever lost?" Dorian asked, voice calm, dry as old paper. But his gaze lingered—not on the fight, but on the boy's clenched fists and flickering eyes. There was more than casual curiosity in him. More than a wager riding on the outcome.
He knew that look. He'd worn it once. Before he died.
"No," the youth said, cool as cut stone. He looked Dorian straight in the eye, no tremor, no twitch—none of the instinctive flinch that usually came from locking eyes with someone who could end you with a gesture. He had either never learned the cost of defiance—or had already paid it in full. "He never did. I could live with a King like that, could not you?"
So Dorian hadn't been wrong. The rebellion had bloomed right here in the slums—slow and silent as mold beneath damp stone, years in the making. It had rooted itself in the same streets he once prowled, whispering in the breath of beggars and thieves, stirring in the silence he mistook for surrender. He'd just never thought to bend low enough to listen.
The clash of blades pulled his gaze back. Jasper—of course—wore no armor. Nothing to shield the pale, scarred map of his body. Nothing but defiance stitched into muscle and breath. And now, stripped of pretense, Dorian could see what the boy had become. Power honed not for spectacle, but for survival. A quiet, terrible strength that had been hidden behind lowered eyes and false compliance—month after month of careful restraint at every interrogation.
But here, in the open, Jasper was no longer hiding.
His strength was not only in sinew or speed. It was the cold clarity of his mind. The elegance of forethought. He moved not in response but in revelation, blade flashing with the surety of prophecy. Every strike he met had already been seen. Every blow answered before it landed. He was not reacting—he was orchestrating.
"It seems to me Prince Jasper knows exactly what he's doing," Dorian said, mostly to himself.
The crowd roared, but he barely heard it. His thoughts had turned inward, down old, half-forgotten paths. What had his purpose been all along? To protect Jasper? To betray him? Or to die for him?
The idea wasn't new. Jasper's face had been with him since childhood, long before they met. Long before he'd been rebuilt and named Grand Justiciar. Just a nameless boy, left behind on a planet that never asked for him, dreaming of someone he didn't yet know.
And now—here they were. The dream made flesh. The Prince standing in the dust and blood of the ring. And Dorian—watching, wondering if this had always been the shape of his fate.
Jasper had won. The crowd roared, but the sound barely reached Dorian over the sudden stillness that gripped him.
At the center of the arena, Jasper stood tall, blood on his blade and mercy granted with a single nod. His opponent knelt, trembling but spared. The fight was finished—at least, on the surface.
Then Jasper's gaze swept the crowd and found him.
Dorian felt the hitch in his chest before he understood it—a sharp faltering in the rhythm of borrowed breath and synthetic sinew. His body, finely tuned, stuttered around the one piece of him that remained unmechanized. The heart. His real heart. The one thing left untouched by science or spellcraft, still human enough to betray him.
It didn't know what to do with Jasper's eyes on him. It didn't know whether to race or recoil. To keep that moment—or cast it off.
Neither did he.
"Told you not to worry, Grand Justiciar. He always wins."
Dorian didn't bother to look at the kid.
"He used to lose. Pretty regularly."
That earned a moment of silence—brief, but noticeable.
"He learned the hard way," Dorian added. "Most of us do."
And that was all he had to say about it. The rest wasn't the boy's business.
Jasper, victorious, started toward him, pausing only to nod at the cheering crowd, clearly impatient to get through, his blond hair matted with sweat and dirt. He was still shirtless, his skin streaked with blood and ink, a long gash darkening his arm.
"We don't hate you here, you know. You don't need to be afraid."
The boy's voice cut through the noise, low, even. He was watching Jasper too, eyes following him as he moved through the crowd.
"My name's Andreas," he added. "I've known Prince Jasper for five years."
There was no reverence in his tone—just fact. Memory. Maybe something like pride.
"He saved my life. And not just mine. If anyone can change the way things are—really change them—it's him."
He glanced sideways at Dorian.
"He's the people's Prince. Whether the palace admits it or not."
Dorian didn't let the words settle. He couldn't. There were truths that invited ruin just by being acknowledged. So, he turned his gaze to Jasper instead. Jasper, wreathed in blood and dust and something dangerously close to joy, eyes alight with the kind of radiance no crown could grant. He was looking at Dorian like there was no one else left in the world.
"Congratulations," Dorian said, voice even—too even.
He held himself still, resisting the impulse to reach out, to wipe the blood from Jasper's arm, to demand that he cover himself before the crowd could drink in any more of him.
"Are you hurt?" he asked, as if the answer might anchor something unraveling inside him.
"It's nothing," Jasper replied—and he meant it. To him, it truly was not.
When had everything changed?
Dorian had seen him once a month under the cold light of interrogation. He knew Jasper's tone, his deflections, the tilt of his head when he lied—but he knew almost nothing of the life he lived outside that room. The boy had survived—thrived, even—under Lysander's regime, passing each evaluation without fail. That wasn't luck. That was precision. And help, likely from someone other than Dorian.
Jasper had built a life in the cracks. That much was clear now.
He had earned something more than survival in the slums: respect. Adoration. The kind of loyalty that couldn't be bought or beaten into people. If he gave even the faintest signal, the crowd would rise. They were waiting. Watching.
A phoenix born of ruin. Not just a boy anymore. A monarch in the making.
"Thank you," Jasper said at last—though it was visible it what he meant, not really. There were other words pressing behind his teeth, more honest ones, but they wouldn't come. Not here. Not with the crowd watching. "For coming," he added, softer now. "I know you hate watching me fight."
Dorian didn't answer right away. His gaze flicked past Jasper to the restless sea of faces still murmuring in the arena's gloom, then returned steadier, wearier.
"You're welcome," he said, and the words carried the weight of every promise that had outlived its usefulness. "And I do still hate it."
He hesitated, just long enough for Jasper to feel it.
"But I gave you my word. And I haven't broken a promise to you yet."
His voice didn't rise or waver. If anything, it sounded like surrender—one made long ago.
"Enjoy the celebration."
Walking back to the palace, Dorian lit another cigarette. The smoke barely masked the taste of regret.
And the memory pressed in—sharp, unwelcome, and far too close.
"If you are so concerned about my well-being, Dorian - tug along," Jasper said.
Dorian hesitated—just for a second—but that was all Jasper gave him before turning toward the tunnel that led out through the palace gates. No fear. Not even a flicker. The boy walked like he had nothing to lose, like the world owed him safe passage. He'd learn otherwise. Sooner or later. Assuming he lived long enough to find the lesson useful.
"You're allowed to leave the palace?"
Dorian kept his tone even, but the question slipped out sharper than intended. Jasper only nodded to the guards as they swung the gates open.
"I'm not a prisoner," the golden-haired youth replied, a flicker of irritation tightening his jaw. He turned to face Dorian. "I can leave if I want. I'm just not supposed to go anywhere... dangerous."
Dorian's eyes narrowed. His mouth twitched, caught between sarcasm and restraint. He bit back the retort, barely. No need to remind the boy that in Serathis, everywhere was dangerous.
He didn't even know why he cared. Lysander would probably celebrate if Jasper bled out in some alley—knifed by a man too hungry to care he'd just murdered a royal. The thought alone made Dorian recoil. The idea of Jasper hurt—truly hurt—didn't sit right with him. Jasper wasn't supposed to be part of the cost.
But what would happen to him if they succeeded with their plan? What would Lysander do?
Dorian didn't know. He only knew one thing: whatever it was, he wouldn't—couldn't—let it happen.
That wasn't part of the deal. And if it were… he never would've agreed to it.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Dorian's voice cut low, sharp as a drawn blade, as he closed the distance between them.
"Fisherman's Quarters," Jasper said, not bothering to turn around. "Only place left in the city where a man can pick a sword fight without having to wear an armor.
"There is a faster route," Dorian muttered, gesturing for Jasper to follow. They slipped into a narrow alley, half-choked with shadows and damp stone. Dorian moved without hesitation—these streets were etched into him, muscle memory from a lifelong before courtrooms and steel. "This way."
"I forgot," Jasper said, almost to himself. "You're from here."
People on the street gave them space—two figures no one expected to see side by side. No one greeted them. No one stopped. Just the wary glance of those who knew when to look away.
"Kind of," Dorian said flatly. Then he caught Jasper by the wrist and pulled him along, impatient to get out of sight. Into the underlayers of the city, where curiosity was dangerous, and people kept their heads down.
"Hurry up.
Jasper's hand slipped into his, fingers threading through with quiet purpose, like a key sliding into the lock it was made for.
Dorian's breath caught. His heart stilled. But then Jasper's grip tightened—barely. Not a demand. Not a plea. A vow. Silent. Steady. Permission given. He hesitated, held in that fragile moment where everything could tilt one way or another. Then he pulled his hand free—sharply, with more force than necessary. The contact broke, but the weight of it lingered. He didn't look back. Didn't speak. But something in him had shifted, and it left him more unsteady than he dared admit. Jasper had him. Had him from the moment they met. And this—whatever this was between them—wasn't just dangerous. It was fatal. The kind of pull that didn't just ruin men like Dorian.
It destroyed them completely.
"I'm not from here - actually," Dorian said, more to cover the catch in his breath than to offer the truth. "A starship landed here thirty years ago and left me behind. No records. No names."
He paused, gaze flicking to the alley walls as if they might hold pieces of the past he'd lost.
"I don't remember anything before the orphanage. Probably on purpose. Whoever brought me here didn't want me remembering. "He shrugged—light, offhand, but not quite convincing. "Fisherman's Quarters. Orphanage on Mourn Street. That's home, I suppose."
His gaze flicked back to Jasper. "You have a destination in mind, Prince Jasper?"
"The arena."
Jasper didn't look at him at first. Just walked, steps measured, deliberate. Then a glance sideways, sharp—cut toward Dorian's profile.
He was thinking. Weighing something.
"Did you ever try to find out where you're from?"
Dorian's reply came without hesitation.
"Some things are better left buried. I've always had the feeling this was one of them."
"It's not hard. I could help you. The records—"
"Jasper. "The name left Dorian's mouth before he could stop it—familiar, like something he'd said a thousand times in another life.
He turned, eyes hard. "No."
"Fine," Jasper agreed, far too easily to make it believable. "The choice is yours."
And somehow, it was the twenty-year-old boy—born into a palace of whispers and weaponized affection—who seemed to know what to do. Who held the reins of this dangerous thing between them with a steadier hand than Dorian could manage.
Despite his age Jasper understood the rules of desire in places where power and longing bled together. He had lived with it. Been raised on it. And Dorian—who had once thought himself above such entanglements—was beginning to realize he was already caught.
"We need to hurry. I'll be late for my fight. Walk faster."
Insolent brat.
Dorian gritted his teeth but obeyed, slipping through the tangle of dark alleys he'd known since childhood—every turn familiar, every shadow the same as it had been decades ago. He hadn't planned on returning here. Not like this.But Jasper, as ever, had a talent for disrupting carefully laid plans. Especially his.
He kept his thoughts to himself and kept walking, stepping over puddles, ducking beneath low archways, sidestepping holes in the ground that had been there longer than he'd been alive and would likely never be repaired.There was a faster way to reach the arena—he knew it.
But Dorian wasn't in as much of a hurry as Jasper.
Not for this.