If Lucius wasn't wrong, his eyes had not been that pale before.

He gently touched the side of his eye as he looked in the hand mirror, tracing the veins that had not only reached their way to his temples by now, but had also shifted in colour to a faintly glowing, pulsating white. They were the source of his eye situation for certain, but why?

Lucius wasn't sure he cared anymore. It was too much already. He didn't feel different and some alterations to his already messed up supernatural features was the least of his worries.

There was a knock on the makeshift door to the still under maintenance sick bay and Lucius considered turning towards the wall, but with his luck the hammock would probably flip over and send him head first to the floor. It was a miracle it hadn't happened already.

"Just thought you should know the others are ready," Ethan said with a low, careful voice as he stepped inside. "I know things aren't... Great, right now, but I would have thought you'd be the first one off this ship. Not to mention Abram wants to set sail again before nightfall, and the others are already packed."

Lucius didn't reply.

"You know, it's not so bad." Ethan sat down on a chair next to Lucius' hammock and gestured at the mirror. "The glowing is a little strange, but if you ask me the white suits you better."

He received an empty stare in response, and he grimaced.

"I... Really think we should talk about it, Lucius."

Lucius slowly shook his head.

"I have a lot on my mind right now."

"Exactly," Ethan agreed. "So let it out. Let us help you untangle things."

"I'm not involving you in this anymore," Lucius whispered. "As soon as we get to wherever we're going, I want you all to stay away."

Ethan sighed.

"Abram told me what he said to you, and you should know he wants to apologise. He should not have insinuated you're manipulating people in any way."

Lucius closed his eyes.

"But he's right. I've been putting you all in danger without your knowledge— Without my knowledge."

Ethan let out a small laugh.

"And how could you have done that?"

"There's something..." Lucius placed a hand against the veins on his temple. "... Wrong with me. Has been for a while. It— It makes people care about me without reason, and put themselves in danger without even knowing me that well."

Ethan leaned forward to look Lucius in the eyes.

"I don't know if you missed it, but Richard tried to kill you a day ago."

"Well that's... Also part of that thing, but another part." Lucius scrunched up his face, realising the absurdity of his reasoning but he was not about to reveal the whole Scourge pact situation.

"And why would it be so strange of me to care?" Ethan raised an eyebrow. "I admit Abram is right and I should not have done what I did to Richard, but I was not acting cruelly for your sake. It was a moment of weakness on my part."

"You have more reason to not care," Lucius mumbled while looking away. "If it hadn't been for me Anthony would still be around, and while he absolutely still deserves it I doubt you actually wanted Damien to blow up."

"You fought for Anthony," Ethan said after a pause. "You tried to kill our father for his sake, and rightfully so. We both know who's responsible for Anthony being gone and it's not you."

Lucius clenched his jaw.

"Damien sent him away because of me."

"You're being dumb, and I'm not going to humour you," Ethan said dryly, looking thoroughly unimpressed. "But on the topic of my father, I think it's clear that he's not fond of you. Doesn't that negate your whole 'everyone likes me' theory?"

"I dunno, maybe that will happen sooner or later too." Lucius shrugged, and Ethan opened his mouth to protest but Lucius was quicker. "Regardless, people I don't care about can think whatever they want. I do want people in general to like me to a shallow degree so I can keep my position but... I want to know my friends are with me and putting themselves in potential danger because they care, not because of some supernatural influence."

Ethan gave him a long look before sighing.

"Well then, you're forcing my hand." He turned towards the door to yell. "Abram, go get him."

Lucius blinked, finally lifting his head to look at his surroundings.

"Much like before, I apologise for this as well," Abram said to Lucius with a strained smile before showing a sceptical Frey through the door.

"No," Lucius groaned at the cheerful menace's presence. "Not now."

"I think it's precisely now," Ethan said before getting up from his chair to walk out. "Have fun."

"I'm sure we will," Frey replied with a breezy handwave as Ethan closed the door, and then he immediately let his hand drop, turning to Lucius with a look of indifference.

Lucius wanted to hide.

"I'm really not in the mood for you, Frey."

"They're telling me you're sulking because people might like you." Frey ignored Lucius' plea. "I suppose I should have figured that out before. Your insistence on being a social disaster is more understandable now."

"Really not in the mood, Frey."

"So they probably sent me here to assure you that I do not, in any way, like you or respect you or even care about your safety further than needing you alive enough to remain town chief and not let Lord Hargreaves win."

"Yet you're here despite me almost letting you die before." Lucius shook his head. "And you've begun insisting that I call you by your first name."

"I didn't get a say. I was kidnapped," Frey reminded him coldly. "And I ask you to call me Frey because it's one syllable instead of the four in Young Lord Clausson, which means less time I need to waste listening to you."

Lucius gave him an empty stare before turning to look at the ceiling.

"Maybe it doesn't work on emotionless brats who don't like anyone."

"You know, you keep insisting that I don't have emotions, but from what I've seen it appears to me like I have more of them than any of you do." Frey folded his arms. "The difference is I've learned to hide them, but with your reluctance to be liked I understand you don't find the need to."

"It's not that I don't want to be liked," Lucius hissed. "I don't want to be liked for the wrong reasons."

"But that's how it works." Frey shrugged, even scoffing as if Lucius' concerns were amusing somehow. "No one's being 'themselves' in our social class. That's a one way ticket to mediocrity or worse."

"Those scourgefucking anglers can be manipulated however way they like for all I care." Lucius rolled his eyes. "I don't want my friends to like me for the wrong reasons. Even you shouldn't be heartless enough to deceive your friends, right?"

This created an unsettling pause in the room, and Lucius' gaze flickered to see Frey ever so slightly frowning before performing a nonchalant shrug.

"I don't get along with people my age. I will have to eventually when I need them but right now I focus on the people actually in power, and since I've studied them for a long time I know my actual self won't cut it. Not even close."

"I for one prefer this you before the sugary blight you pretend to be."

"But you're just one strange man compared to everyone else who matters way more, and they love the sugary blight," Frey retorted. "Besides, this me isn't the real me either. It's just another part of the same mask, except I use it towards people beneath me to emphasise the difference between me and them."

Lucius couldn't believe his ears.

"So this... Is you acting?"

Frey nodded, with a smile that did not fit the context.

"I've been working hard on unlearning my real self. No one wants it anyway, so why keep it?"

"Why keep—" Lucius gawked at this point. "Frey, did someone actually tell you to do that?"

"They don't have to anymore." Frey shrugged again while his inapplicable smile remained. "Like I said, I've learned to study people to know what they want from me."

Lucius' heart stung, though reluctantly. Were the two of them perhaps similar in a way? Yearning for people to love them but being denied unless they conform to what others want them to be?

"Don't give me that pitying look." Frey wrinkled his nose. "Just as I don't intend to like you I don't expect you to like me either, so turn your misplaced affection somewhere else."

Lucius readied himself to deny it just as Ethan poked his head through the door.

"Convinced yet?"

Despite the occasional insult Lucius wasn't so sure. Frey had been so much worse before and hadn't his speech, now matter how misguided, been intended to make Lucius feel better about people giving him unearned attention?

"I..." he therefore said, to which Frey looked deeply offended. "... I don't know."

Ethan raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise, but his lips soon curved into a smile.

"I see, well that's a pity then." He let his gaze wander to Frey before turning back to Lucius again. "Oh, by the way, did you tell Frey about your idea to repay his efforts with a horse?"

Lucius had no memory of that, but he'd heard worse. Frey seemed to love horses after all.

His theory was soon crushed however by a loud, condescending and perhaps for the first time genuine laugh from Frey.

"You think you could buy me a horse? Do you even know who I am? Who my family is? Do you know the first thing about horses to think you could even hope to find one that's up to my standards? To the standards of my other six horses? Where do you think you'd find one? Because I can assure you if there's a horse available that I would want, I would already own it."

Lucius sent Ethan a mortified stare, to which the vampire responded with a wink and a silent 'bye' before closing the door again.

"The Glowing Afternoon stud farm in West Kerilia is by far the best one in all of Kerilia," Frey continued on, very unprompted. "My family's known them for ages and not a foal would be born that we wouldn't hear of immediately. Teshome's farm outside Wyrmdon could maybe measure up, but that's still a maybe and with your lack of knowledge I wouldn't bother to try there."

Lucius drew a breath.

"So I—"

"Also, I doubt you'd understand my taste even if I told you." Frey rejected the interruption, hands beginning to open and close the more worked up he got. "And you'd have to meet my other horses to see what they look like so you could search for a horse that doesn't clash with them but will also work with the colour schemes of my clothes, which changes after trends so it needs to be as versatile as possible."

"For each—?"

"Of course I doubt you have even nearly enough experience with fashion— it's obvious, actually— to be able to predict what will be in style because the horses need to grow up by then so you can't just buy a horse that's suitable now."

It went on for ten minutes.

Lucius had given up on making it stop as Frey continued his rant. He didn't want to, because between the seemingly infinite knowledge and wild hand gestures there were insults thrown at him every other sentence, ridding him of any belief that Frey cared about him at all. Frey would never come to his rescue in a werewolf fight. Frey would most likely have shoved him forward into the werewolf instead. So Lucius just sat there in masochistic fascination as bullets of backhanded slights and scathing remarks hit him. It wasn't until Frey moved on from personal taste compared to quality and horse bloodlines to his own thoughts that took a surprisingly innocent turn into favourite breeds and coat colours and mane braids and sweet stories about his own horses that things finally calmed down.

And at that moment Frey abruptly ended his speech, seemingly catching his behaviour only then as he frowned at Lucius' blank expression, and he balled his fists hard enough to make Lucius think his nails had to be buried in his palms.

"Are you even listening anymore?" Frey turned his head away, voice lower and uncharacteristically flustered before he could shake it off as justified frustration. "I'm trying to be nice and teach you something here."

Lucius blinked, mouth opening and closing in an attempt to find words after having been silent for so long.

"Why would you even need six horses?" was all he could think of to ask.

"I told you, for colour options." Frey was still rebuilding his insufferable facade despite it famously only taking him less than a second at any other time. "And company."

It was a moment almost too good to be true to deliver a crushing comment on Frey's social life, but that very reason was also what made Lucius tone it down.

"You know what, that makes so much sense that I'm not even gonna laugh."

"I wouldn't be laughing either if I was less than half as charming as a horse." Frey finally returned to his callous self. "Which of course is me flattering you, because your charm is less than that."

Lucius couldn't help smiling. He didn't know whether it was out of amusement, or the confirmed fact that his influence had limitations, or having finally found that first glimpse of humanity in Frey, but it brought him a sense of relief regardless.

"Thank you, Young Lord Clausson," he said warmly, causing Frey's lip to curl accordingly.

"It's Frey, like I—"

"Thank you, Young Lord Frey Clausson," Lucius continued. "The revered, two-faced— nay, multiple-faced— Young Lord Frey Clausson from West Kerilia. Thank yo—"

"Stop it."

"Thank you, oh, almighty archon of spoiled heirs, Young Lord Frey Clau—"

"You do remember I'm the one supposed to translate things for you while we're here and I can abuse that as I wish?"

"... I'm remembering that right now, yes."

***
Author's note: A little shorter, a little calmer, but now they're finally getting off that ship. As always I'd love to hear your thoughts about the chapter and your expectations on what's to come!