Everyone in this kingdom had a purpose.
Some were renowned magicians who helped the nation prosper and withstand adversities beyond mortal understanding. Some were poets and artisans who nourished the souls of the people and kept them merry. Some were as grand as the nobles themselves, men and women who ensured the next generations were raised from fine bloodlines, who protected the nation and carried its name forward with dignity and honour.
And some… were professional rakes.
Just like Fabian.
"Quick — before my father catches you!" The lady of a minor noble house rushed the young man in his twenties toward the high balcony of her bedchambers, her silk slippers sliding frantically against the floor.
The young lad was nothing extraordinary in his features, strictly speaking. Yet he had honed himself well over the years, and the result was something altogether more dangerous than mere handsomeness. His dark hair shone like the black silk of mourning widows and slightly tanned skin from the days spent under the warm sun. His green eyes reflected like the deep, secret depths of a forest at midnight. Fabian was a tall lad — lean of muscle and surprisingly agile of frame — and he carried himself with the easy confidence of a man who had never once, in his adult life, been anywhere he was not welcome.
His most remarkable feature, however, was something he had been born with rather than earned: the beauty mark beneath his left eye. The lover's kiss from another life, some legends would describe it, in the fanciful way of people who had far too much wine and far too little to occupy their evenings.
"If it is the cruel night that separates us, my lady," he purred, catching her hand and pressing a last, lingering kiss to her knuckles, "then let us meet again in the embrace of to-morrow's sun. Until then — farewell, my love."
She blushed like a virgin maid at her first Spring Festival. It was, Fabian reflected, a very satisfying exit.
Then the door burst open.
Three brothers. Angry ones.
"THAT RASCAL FABIAN — CATCH HIM!"
"YOU'RE DEAD!"
"Sister, get away from him — his tongue will poison your mind with impure thoughts!"
Oops. That had certainly not been in his plans.
However Fabian was not un-accustomed to the scene before him, albeit with minor variations. Three brothers. One balcony. The door behind him no longer a viable option. He turned to face them with the most innocent expression he could muster.
"Gentlemen, gentlemen," he said pleasantly, spreading his hands in a gesture of openness and goodwill. "If you wanted a piece of me, you needed only to ask." His gaze slid — quite deliberately, quite warmly — to the third brother, who was particularly the most handsome of the three. "My tongue, I assure you, can work for you as well." he finished seductively.
"Y-you—!" the young man sputtered.
But Fabian had already noted the sweet, treacherous crimson flush spreading up the lad's throat, climbing past his jaw, blooming all the way to the tips of his ears.
Cute, he thought.
Then a dagger landed squarely beside his head, quivering in the wooden railing.
The lady— whose name Fabian had already, regrettably, forgotten — stared at the blade and gasped. Fabian stared at the blade. A beat of collective silence fell upon the balcony.
His ear was bleeding.
"…Ah, fuck this," said Fabian., finally breaking his character.
He turned to the assembled family, pressed one hand to his heart, extended the other in a sweeping, theatrical farewell, and announced with great warmth: "Goodbye, handsome family."
Then he stepped off the railing and dropped into the night.
***
He left behind him a traumatised lady, a quivering dagger, and three brothers standing at a balcony railing staring down into the darkness below.
"He can't possibly have survived that fall," the second brother murmured at last. "…Right?"
"This is Fabian the Rake we're speaking of." The eldest pinched the bridge of his nose with the exhausted resignation of a man who suspected, despite everything, that this was not over. "I'm quite sure the wretched man has nine lives, like a damned street cat."
And thus Fabian La Lanza, once again remained uncaught, and disappeared into the night.