Kaden cleared his throat, turning back to the painting, but the eyes that were looking at him remained steady, unfaltering. "I didn't think dragons were artistic creatures."

Annoyance flickered over himself at his own words of discrimination.

Judgment was far too common, and humans made an assumption about things they didn't know.

Things they didn't want to know, because once they realized their false intelligence on the subject was lies, they'd also realize how terrible they were to make such cruel insights.

Noah studied him. "I enjoy art."

"Really? What sort of art do you do?"

"Write."

"Is that classified under the art department?" wondered Kaden genuinely.

He supposed writers were creators making something out of nothing. That's what an artist was—a creator. And really, anything could be called art so long as the person who made it thought of it as such.

A soft breath released beside him, Noah's voice a low timber that bristled with passion.

"I am an artist, and my medium is words."

Kaden stared at him, blinked, and then chuckled under his breath, eyes curving warmly in amusement.

He figured, that was a rather eloquent way of wording it, and that speaking to this man really wasn't bad at all. But as soon as that thought entered his mind, he chased it away, digging rounded nails harshly into his palm.

"What sort of things do you write?" He was losing himself in conversation, and he needed to return to reality. Yet he couldn't help asking, couldn't help his interest.

"What I see, what I don't. I write what my eyes witness, and what my ears overhear."

It certainly didn't help that Noah was indulging his questions with carefully thought answers.

"You're rather poetic."

"Hm."

The man searched for another topic to bring up. Technically, befriending Noah, or at least putting on the pretense of it, would get Reed off his back.

He didn't know when or where his 'brother' was watching.

Therefore, he put on a flirtatious smile—the sort that would irritate a straight-laced person like Noah. "I do like poetic people."

"....."

Kaden closed his eyes briefly, taking a dragging blink as he tugged at his gloves that enveloped his hands, disguising the hideous scars that decorated his body.

Whatever he thought didn't matter.

Noah's opinion of him was likely devastatingly horrible, and would only to continue to worsen. Blood already stained his hands, and he was certain more would pool until he was drowning in it. Suffocating in the mess of his own sins.

"And you?"

Kaden snapped his eyes up to Noah, a haunted swirl in the pale emerald gaze before he scoffed, shoving his hands into his pants. "Why would I waste my time on something like that?"

A bitter laugh. "Perhaps I'll join one of the classes if there's somebody of interest, but I see no other reason to mingle with commoners."

"Commoners." repeated Noah darkly, seeming to roll the word with his tongue, making it seem almost like a curse. "You speak as if you weren't one of them, once."

The orphan tensed his shoulders—his birthright wasn't a secret, having him suddenly appear one day. Although most didn't dare to point it out, so long as he carried the Chauvet's name.

And in truth, he never truly belonged to the Chauvet's family, so it wasn't as if he'd suddenly gained a family over the years. He was still alone.

He would remain alone, even surrounded by people.

"I am not anymore."

"That doesn't change your past, Kaden Chauvet." Noah's frown deepened as he stepped closer, lowering his eyes. Kaden realized that the dragon had incredibly long lashes, framing their eyes and adding a somewhat more ethereal feeling. "It was my mistake trying to reason with a fool."

Kaden smiled, laughing sarcastically. "You're right. It was your mistake to even try."

"You're playing a ridiculous act."

"And what if I told you, Bellamy, that it isn't a farce, that this is who I am?"

The air was chilling, nibbling away at their flesh and drumming against their ears. Both stubborn fools refused to look away, unwilling to back down from their claims. It was Noah who broke the silence.

"I don't know who you are, Chauvet." He began in a murmur, a passing thought. "And if this is truly all that you can be, then I am throughly disappointed."

The next questioned slipped out of Kaden's lips before he could think twice, lost in the dark canvas of Noah's gaze. "If I took it a step too far, would you stop me?"

The man shifted back in surprise, scowling. "I would stop you before it reached that point."

"I'm looking forward to it then, Bellamy."

"...do you intend to—"

"I can't ruin the surprise." Kaden raised a gloved finger to his dry lips, inked in a sly smile that promised only mischief. "But I guarantee that it'll exceed your expectations."

Noah shook his head with irritation and contempt before turning on his heel, walking away without another word.

Kaden didn't watch, remaining faced toward the painting and the strange, despairing man whose expression couldn't be seen.

He reached out a finger to run it along the crazed words, unable to make out the tangles of incoherent sentences.

He stretched out a finger, running it along the streams of dark metal chains until somewhere in the image, it broke, splintered into pieces. Big letters, small letters, long lines and short phrases all entangled together.

But in the mess that they sat in, how could anybody read them?

Hear the secrets that desperately screamed out?

"Are you looking to escape?" wondered Kaden, closing his eyes to feel the rush of wind brush his cheeks. "Wanting to run away?"

He made out several letters—H, E, L, P.

Help.

S, A, V, E, M, E.

Save me.

Or was it his own delusion searching for his own thoughts, mixed in with the scribbles? He couldn't tell. He always had been prone to hallucinations, however.

" Are you trapped in the madness of your own creation, surrounded by thoughts that scream in your ear?"

He had the invisible noise of that darkness, in the Room where he often found himself locked in, and the castle which he was rarely allowed to leave. The luxurious building was not a place of admiration, but a prison.

The Academy had been a blessing, really, had it not been tainted by the King's mission and Reed's sorry looking personality.

He rested his forehead against the dry paint, chest rising slowly.

'Do you regret it?'

The low hum of thought from his dying days in his first life echoed again in his mind. It'd taken him isolation to regret, to gain the strength to make a stand.

Then the voice that spoke to him in his second life, 'Are you happy?'

Was he allowed to be?

He understood what the man in the painting felt, standing so close and yet so far away from the light he yearned for. A person that had accepted his fate, stuck in his own words.

Despite that, a part of him pleaded for something new. To be dragged out into the brightness that they could only dream of.

Kaden laughed wryly to himself, turning away. "I must be going mad. Talking to myself like this. Hallucinating voices, again."

Yet in the back of his mind, that same, unknown voice called out regretfully.

'I only wanted to save you.'