scones

20

[m1ckeyb3rry]

Series Synopsis: When the husband you’ve never met returns from the war you’ve never understood, he comes bearing a strange and inexplicable gift — a prince in chains who he refuses to kill.

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Mydei x F!Reader

Chapter Word Count: 9.9k

Content Warnings: pls check the masterlist there is. a lot. and i’m not retyping all of that LOL

A/N: UEUEUE I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S FINALLY DONE!! thank you so much to everyone who has been here and read this — whether you were here when i just had the masterlist up or if you only read part one/two five minutes ago, i appreciate all of you and your sweet comments + support more than you know!! this series was definitely an experiment for me so being met with so much positivity has been so 🥹💖 that said i hope you all enjoy how things wrap up here and maybe i will see you again on another story / shitpost of mine!!

Where once the sounds of the sea had sung you to sleep, now it was Mydeimos’s rattling breaths which were your lullaby. He never allowed you to protest, frowning and telling you that it was wrong to argue with the wishes of a dying man before extending his arms and pulling you against him, caging you there until you fell asleep with your cheek pressed to his heartbeat. His chest would rise and fall, unsteady with his lungs’ impending failure, but the promenade of his heart remained strong and true, for he was after all a warrior, and warriors were not so easily put down.

“It burns,” he whispered to you one day, when you were on that hazy brink of unconsciousness where you knew what he was saying but did not have the means to respond to it. “Y/N, it burns.”

“Hm,” you said, though in your mind you were frantic, clawing back to wakefulness. Your grip on him tightened; it would’ve been imperceptible to anyone else, the way the sling of your arms tensed around his waist, but he was always so keen, and keener still when it came to you, so he exhaled.

“Every time you leave, it is as though I am set alight,” he admitted. “I have never felt it before, this fire, which is not doused until you return to my side. I am mad from it — if your husband does not kill me first, I am sure it will spell my end. ”

“Then shall I never leave you?” you mumbled, your words barely coherent but insistent, pleading. 

“If I had my way,” he said, and then he chuckled. It was a sad, resigned sound, though you were sure he did not mean for it to be, and, as if in apology, he stroked the back of his hand along the column of your neck. “If this were Kremnos, you certainly wouldn’t.”

You still dreamt, but now, instead of those memories of the end of your existence as Y/N L/N playing on loop, you saw visions of a different life, the one you had been denied, the one where you were the princess of Kremnos instead of the lady of this empire. In these dreams, the sky was blue and your father sent you fond letters from the sea, tucked in green envelopes that smelled of salt when you opened them, so that you did not miss it too terribly. You played with Verax, who followed you around as faithfully as a puppy, nudging you with his trunk to gain your attention and then lifting his head, pretending like he had no idea what you were referring to when you chided him through your laughter. You spoke your mind against anyone and everyone, teasing the great lords when their ideas were foolish and then suggesting better, kinder methods of approaching the spirited people, tempering the fire of their many victories with the sweetness of the sea’s peace.

In all of these scenes, there was one constant: Mydeimos, always Mydeimos. He remained at your side no matter how mundane the situation, and yet you never really grew accustomed to the quality of his presence, so that every time your gaze flicked to him, you lost your voice — but you did not hate it so much when it was him, when it was done of your own volition.

He was so beautiful, his leg unmarred from the chains which crossed over it, his voice steady and painless, his hair lively in the wind, his face smooth and free of shadows. He smiled more, too, finding great amusement in everything you said, and each time was like a sunrise, just as bright, just as warm. You loved him, the Mydeimos of your dreams, who would, on the rarest occasions, touch his lips to yours and then hold you in a different way, a way you could not ask the prince himself to in your waking moments.

“Is there medicine I can bring you?” you asked him another night, one of the few where you had convinced him that he needed the rest far more desperately than you did. He lay between your legs, coughing and coughing until you became frightened that red would dribble from his lips and stain the hem of your nightgown. Petting up and down his back in a vain attempt to soothe him, you tried to focus on anything but how suddenly fragile he seemed, how delicate his sturdy frame was growing. 

“Only when I am free of this place will I be well,” he said, his voice hoarse as he caught his breath. “It is this darkness, this air. Medicine will alleviate it only momentarily, but nothing barring freedom will cure me, and that—”

He broke off into another fit of coughs, and you redoubled your efforts, massaging at his muscles, squeezing his hands, cradling his head. All he could do was groan, adjusting himself so that he was sitting up straight and could muffle it in his hands. His face and ears were pink; at first you thought it was from exertion, but then you realized he was ashamed, shying away from you.

“That is the only thing you cannot give me,” he completed. “I am sorry.”

“Why do you apologize?” you said. “Of all the people, why must you apologize?”

You wiped at the corners of his mouth with your thumb, and then you leaned your forehead against his, the most affection either of you permitted. How could you allow anything more to burst forth in the confines of this jail? This was the safest option, the only option, or at least the only one which might save you both from the spiral of grief your destinies seemed headed for.

“Perhaps it will come for me soon,” he said. “The death your husband hopes for.”

“Don’t say that,” you said.

“It will be easy,” he said. “I think that I will just go to sleep one day and never wake back up.”

“Mydeimos,” you said. “Please.”

“Can I ask one thing of you? You can deny me if you’d like, but please consider it to be my final request, and take that into account when you do,” he said.

“No,” you said. “No, you will make so many incessant demands of me that I will grow tired of them — but never of you, I will never grow tired of you—”

“Listen to me,” he said.

“Why do you speak as if you are already dead?” you said, your voice bordering on hysterical. “Why are you calling it your final request?”

“You can hear me,” he tried. “Isn’t it obvious?”

“You don’t know!” you said. “You don’t know that, so don’t act as if it’s certain!”

“Y/N,” he said, and then he was dabbing at your eyes, which was the most unfair part, because why between the two of you were you the one who wept? “It is certain. If I do not succumb to the conditions of this cellar, then do you really think your husband will simply ignore my existence? I am the prince of Kremnos. I am his greatest enemy. I cannot be allowed to live.”

“You are Mydeimos,” you said, nervous tremors wracking through your body. “You are mine. I want you to live. Tell me you’ll live.”

“I can’t,” he said. “Don’t ask me to lie to you.”

“Then I will make you,” you said. “You have to. I say you will, so you will.”

His breath was warm and sweet and heady, and he was so close, only a hair’s breadth away from you but still keeping that agreed-upon distance. For a while he allowed your words to hang in the air between you, and then he let out a sigh that made you dizzy and lightheaded with longing.

“This isn’t the Southern Sea,” he said. “You cannot command me, beloved princess. Nor is it Kremnos, where I could order you around; I recognize this, and so all I can do is beg you to take heed.”

“What is it, then?” you said, your teeth clenched in the hopes that the scratching in your throat would abate. “Your request.”

“If I should come to my end in this cellar—” You whimpered, and he shushed you, his index finger resting against the seam of your lips. “Y/N. If I should come to my end in this cellar, then I wish for you to be there. Let the last thing I see be so beautiful. Let there be light to guide me on my way. I know it is selfish of me to ask you to keep vigil over my corpse as it cools, just so that I may have one more moment of warmth, but that is all I can fathom wanting.”

You thought of rebuking him. You thought of telling him to never ask something like that of you again, but then you imagined him curling into himself the way Verax had, left alone in the dark, shuddering as death descended upon him as swift as nightfall, and all you could do was cling to him, stuttering out promises as your knuckles stamped divots into his shoulders: I will, I will, my dear Mydeimos, I will stay with you until the very last. You needn’t beg me anymore; I will stay with you. No matter when or how it must happen, I won’t let you leave this empire alone. 

There were times when neither of you could find sleep, and then you both would entertain one another with stories. He would tell you of his youth, of his love for the flush of dianthuses in the spring and the tart sweetness of pomegranates in autumn, how his people adored him for his unprecedented magnanimity, especially towards the children, who flocked towards him in droves when he strolled the streets of Castrum Kremnos.

“Such dear little things,” he said while you brushed his hair, the most care you could lavish upon him without a hint of dissent on his part. “How can anyone be cruel to them? I don’t understand it. They are so guileless.”

“Not everyone has your patience,” you said, for that was what it really was. How strange, how contrary you would’ve found it just one year ago, the mere thought of saying that. Mydeimos, the beast from Kremnos — who in their right mind would call him patient? Yet what other word was there for the boy who had slept every night in an elephant’s stable? What other word was there for the prince who knelt so that the children of the streets could tie flowers into his hair when he passed? It was patience, there was no doubt about it, pure and enduring as it was. “If only they did.”

You could not tell him of your past, not when you were so bound, so instead you made up fantastical tales and told them with great animation, waving your hands about for emphasis and to make up for the fact that you could not show your heart to him the way he had to you. He did not complain, and after every story he would cock his head before nodding, always too clever for his own good.

“So,” he said. “This jellyfish princess, who nobody loved because of their fear…what became of her?”

“She spent the rest of her life floating about in the depths of the sea,” you said. “She thought she might be lost for good, but then she met the prince of dolphins, and instead of shying away from her, he smiled and told her that she was beautiful, that he knew who she was beneath those stinging moon-tendrils. And you know what the strangest thing is, Mydeimos?”

“What is it?” he said. You traced the mark underneath his right eye, the one which meant clarity — of vision, of mind, of heart. He blinked but did not cower away, instead remaining very, very still.

“She was never venomous in the first place,” you said. “They were frightened because they thought she might kill them, but she didn’t even have that capability, let alone the desire.”

“I see,” he said. “How horrible it is, to be thought of as a monster when you are anything but.

“Yes,” you said. “I should hope that anyone who is in such a predicament may find at least one person who looks at them as if they are something beautiful. Something more than what they are called by the rest of the world.”

“Well, my lady of dolphins,” he said, covering your hand with his own, keeping it held against his face. “At least I am so lucky.”

As rumors of a Kremnoan counterattack solidified into genuine intelligence, your husband and his cousin both grew more and more involved with their generals and their advisors, leaving you alone more often than you were not. You did not dare visit Mydeimos in the daytime, for his warning that the army-men often came to mock him rang in the back of your mind, but now you did not wait for midnight, instead fleeing to the cellar at dusk, as soon as your obligations to appear at dinner were fulfilled. He welcomed you, of course he did, though he was always more careful than you were, telling you that you had to return before the bakers awoke to make the day’s bread.

The days stretched on, and your will to return to the world of the palace faded until it was nothing but a weak, flickering candle-flame, wont to be extinguished at the slightest breeze. Let me die here, too. If I can be with you for a little longer, then I will gladly accept it. You never said it to him, but you thought it, every time he ushered you out of the cellar with the reminder that you might be caught. Let them find me, Mydeimos. Let them kill me if they will, but let them know that I was never their perfect empress. Even in the throes of docility, I was still Y/N L/N, the princess of the Southern Sea, who lay with the prince she was meant to hate.

“Dear lady!” 

The banging on your door at such an hour was out of the ordinary, but even more alarming was your husband’s cousin’s voice, frantic yet shot through with something like ecstasy. Outside, the sun had not yet risen, though there was a watery gathering of light on the horizon that said there were only a couple more hours until dawn, and although you had already had slept as much as you would, back in the cellar you had just returned from, you were still confounded for a moment by the repetitive knocking, your voice coming out groggy and dazed.

“Whatever is the matter?” you said with a yawn, rubbing your eyes and flinging the door open with no small amount of irritation. “Why have you — ah!”

He grabbed your wrist, pulling you after him with a cackle of glee. “My dear lady, the time has finally come!”

“What are you talking about?” you said, almost tripping as you attempted to keep up with his sprint. He paused, whirling to face you, and you furrowed your brow when you saw that his eyes were glittering. “Why do you keep calling me that? ‘Dear lady,’ I mean. What mood are you in?”

“The Southern Sea has refused to cooperate,” he said. “The king says that they will not join in the war against Kremnos until the ruler of this empire is of the blood of the tides. That is after all what was promised in the treaty of our alliance, though I believe we all imagined he would not be so stubborn as to genuinely withhold aid from us when his own daughter is the empress.”

“Why are you happy about this?” you said, despite your own joy, which flowered with abandon at the news of your father remaining as stubborn as ever, uncompromising through sadness and sickness alike.

“Wars are costly, and without the aid of the Southern Sea, our empire will surely feel the effects of another conflict,” he said. “But the Kremnoans are coming to us, whether we want them to or not, and with my brother’s latest actions, they will only come sooner. We will lose…or, that is, he will lose. All that our family has built will crumble to nothingness at the hands of those barbaric, uncivilized warriors. It is known — by delaying the execution for as long as he has, he essentially set his fate in stone — but his fate needn’t be mine. No, indeed. Once I deliver the Southern Sea to the people of this empire, I will depose my dear brother, and then, with the combined might of both kingdoms behind me, I will defeat the Kremnoans for good.”

“You mean to overthrow my husband?” you said, and you should’ve felt surprised, but it made so much sense that it was more of a relief than anything, an explanation for every bewildering move he had made thus far.

“The life of a second son is spent ever waiting, ever watching, pliant until the moment to strike becomes evident,” he said. “You must know it’s not a coincidence that I have ingratiated myself with the soldiers and the councilmen alike — I am sure if it comes to it, they will support me over him, who they all but detest for his peacocking, his pointlessly grandiose gestures. They would follow me anywhere, and those who might protest, who might cling to the old regime, will fall in line when faced with the wealth of the Southern Sea, which is so vast as to be incomprehensible to those of us who have lived our entire lives here.”

“You speak of the sea, but how do you expect to win it when even my husband could not? You are gambling so much on something that is not even assured,” you said. “The king is not so easily swayed, this I can promise. If he has refused this empire once, he will surely do it again and again, for what does it matter who is asking? Why should he give you any different of an answer than he would my husband?”

“For a while, my plan was longer, more gradual,” he said, and then the two of you were walking again, although this time with consideration for your pace, which was about half of his, and with his arm heavy over your shoulders, companionable and careless, like you both were old friends out for a stroll. “The first thing I had to do was arrange for the course of your thoughts to turn my way. I thought this would be the most difficult, for my brother is after all such a charming, handsome man, but he neglected you to the point that it was an invitation, really! He made it so you would have loved anyone who showed your desperate, starving self any shreds of affection, and from there it was simple on my part. The seeds of infidelity were sown by my brother himself; all I did was water them, and is that such a sin? 

“You would’ve taken me into your bed eventually. It is why I made such a crude suggestion all those days ago, though of course I never meant for you to genuinely allow a stableboy to father your heirs. All along I spoke of myself, who you — and therefore the Southern Sea — would then be bound to, even after the death of your husband rendered you free of your obligations to this empire,” he said.

“Why are you telling me this?” you said, for you were unsure of what else to say, unsure of what else to feel besides a discomfort at the fact that he had been toying with you. Even this, however, was mild, because who in this empire was not playing with your life? Since the day you had come here and sworn yourself to that statue, the people in this palace had treated you as little more than a vapid, sickly woman who brought nothing with her but senseless tears and parsimonious promises from a family that had sold her to save themselves. For your husband’s cousin to reveal himself in such a way was a foregone conclusion, and perhaps it should’ve hurt you, but all you could muster was a detached sort of acceptance. 

“Things have changed,” he said. “He is distracted at present, and so, in this brief moment while the world’s eyes are averted, I can tell you this: today, your husband is signing the order for his own death. The palace will be thrown into turmoil, and without the protection of your marriage to him, you will find that once the Kremnoans come, you will be the first to fall. Who would defend the princess of a kingdom that refused to come to our assistance? But it needn’t be that way. Escape this fate with me, dear lady. Promise you will marry me, and when all is said and done, I will even let you go home.”

“Home?” you said, and he nodded, maneuvering you so that you were tucked away in an alcove where he could cup your face in his hands without fear of discovery.

“Yes,” he said. “Once this war is won and our heir is born, relations between the empire and the sea will be established. I will have no further use for you here, so why should I not allow you to return to where you came from? Certainly your father will not mind, sentimental old fool as he is.”

You swallowed back a lump in your throat before nodding, taking the insult to your father quietly, not wanting to upset him when this was the first glimpse at freedom you had been given. Home. He was promising to let you go home. You would marry anyone if they gave you that assurance, and something behind your eyes prickled the longer you thought about it.

They would welcome you so grandly, wouldn’t they? The palace would be covered in pearls, and the sea would be so blue, and the whales might even sing again in jubilation at your return. Your father would be there, his face lined and gaunt but alive and happy, so happy it’d carve a hole in your intestines, the kind of hole borne from an incapability to handle that much delight.

“Come with me, then,” he said. “We must run from this palace and make ourselves scarce for the moment, in order to gather our forces. This opportunity may not present itself once again, so we have to take advantage of it while we can.”

“Wait,” you said. “You have mentioned only vaguely what my husband is doing at present. What can possibly demand so much of his attention and also be such a fatal mistake?”

“Mydeimos,” he said. “Your husband has finally deemed it time for him to meet the lord of death, and so he is utterly preoccupied with that, but with the Kremnoans so close, this is nothing but folly. He is making a martyr out of the very man they adore so much; rather than cowing them, this will only fuel their efforts further. If we can escape during the execution, we can mobilize the army to cut them off, turning us into the indisputable heroes of the empire. It will be difficult, but it can be done, and with both him and the prince taken care of, there will be nothing standing in our way.”

“No,” you said immediately, ice shooting through your veins, the rest of his explanation blurring together as you elbowed him off of you with an unprecedented vigor, earning a yelp out of him. “No, Mydeimos is mine. He’s mine, he’s mine, he can’t die without my permission! He can’t, and I haven’t given it yet, so that means he won’t!”

“I was sent to fetch you for the event,” he said, dusting himself off and giving you an odd look. “Don’t throw a tantrum. They await us in the throne room, though you know he is impatient. I wouldn’t be surprised if he just kills him to end the waiting, which is all the better for — where are you going?”

You were already running in the direction of the throne room, smacking his hands away when he tried to reach for you. He hissed in dismay before yanking on your sleeve, holding you securely in place and scowling at you. The expression was so reminiscent of your husband that you actually recoiled, an nagging voice in the back of your mind reminding you of what you had sworn: duty, obedience, docility. 

“If you leave now, then everything will be lost. He will know by your presence what I plan to do, and I will be seized,” he warned as you fought back the instincts that demanded you go limp in his grasp. “Do you understand? You will die here, and for what? Your own possessiveness? Your childish greed? How spoiled you are! To think that you would throw away everything, all because someone touched your favorite toy! I had heard the whispers that you were such a brat in your home, allowed to run unchecked by your father as you were, but this is unprecedented. Think for once, won’t you? If you do this, you will never go home again.”

Never go home again. Never go home again. Never go home again.

“I don’t care,” you said, and near tears though you were, reluctant though you were, you pulled away from him. “How many times must I say it before all of you listen? He is mine. I will never, ever leave him.”

That was the last thing he had asked of you, the only thing he had ever asked of you. If I should come to my end in this cellar, then I wish for you to be there. And you had sworn you would be, so how could you break that promise? Not for anything. You would not break it for anything, not if it meant your husband’s ruin, not if it meant you could go home again, not if it meant your father would embrace you for the rest of your life. You would give up all of these things if you had to, but you would not leave him to die alone.

The throne room was as cavernous as the last time you had been in it, empty and hollow like the stomach of a titan. In the center, the statue of your husband loomed, as unfeeling as the day you had wed it, and in the back, upon his raised throne, was your husband himself, staring down at you imperiously.

“Where is he?” you said, your voice meek, yet somehow stronger for its trembling, for the proof that you could not ask such a thing and yet were doing it anyways. “My lord. Where is he? Where — is — Mydeimos?”

By the end of it, you were gasping the words out, and you glared at him as well as you could, the most rebellion you were allowed. He did not say anything about it, but you knew he saw, for the faintest hints of humor flickered in his cold eyes, as if you were a jester he had hired, a clown instead of a wife.

“Why are you so worried? Haven’t you been telling me to kill him since the day I brought him here?” he said before laughing in earnest. “I should be asking you where that treacherous cousin of mine is, but I know the answer to that all too well. Did he ask for you to come with him? He has always been so insatiable. Everything that is mine, he longs for. Such is the nature of second sons, though that’s not something I’d expect either of you to understand.”

There he was, chained to the base of the statue in the same fashion he had once been bound to the wall of the cellar, his left leg heavy with gold but the rest of his limbs free: Mydeimos, his tether shorter now, but still loose enough that he could shift to watch you as you took one step and another, trudging towards the inexorable pull of the throne, of your husband, who regarded you with a careful disdain.

“You can stop there,” he said. “I know you want to remain at his side, so you needn’t force yourself to go any further.”

You halted immediately, just close enough to Mydeimos that if you were to reach out, you could grasp at his arm, just close enough that you could almost feel the warmth he always emanated, like he was your very own furnace — but also far enough that there was still a sharp pang in your lungs with every breath you took, far enough that your heart still ached from the distance. You wanted to embrace him, to run your palms up and down his shoulders, to ask him if he was alright while you tended to every wound that had never been inflicted upon him but which he still stung from, anyways. Yet in front of your husband, the most you could do was hold your breath, keeping the scent of him in your lungs for safekeeping.

“The prince of Kremnos and the princess of the Southern Sea…what a collection of delegates I’ve gathered here,” your husband said. Both you and Mydeimos had to crane your necks to look up at him from the dais his throne rested upon, and you knew he found some satisfaction in that, in the simple reminder that he was above you in every way that mattered. What was a prince or a princess compared to an emperor? Your titles were more of mockeries than anything, reminders of what you had once been but what you never would be again, now that you were so soiled by this place — a prince-turned-prisoner and a princess-turned-wife.

“You can’t kill him,” you said, taking yourself aback with the boldness of it, the urgency of the request. “My lord, I will do anything, I will bear your children without complaint, I will beg my father to give you the Southern Sea, but please — please let him live, please — I will take responsibility for him, I will drag him around by his chains until we both die if that’s what I must, but don’t kill him today, please, I will have nothing to my name if you take him, too—”

“My pretty wife,” he interrupted you. “Your fretting is endearing, but it is unnecessary. I do not intend to execute him just yet. There is still something I need from him, and he can hardly accomplish it if he is dead, after all.”

“Is that why you have brought me here? Whatever it is, I won’t do it. I have no interest in being your accomplice,” Mydeimos said. His words were still thick with drowsiness, and you realized with a start that they must’ve poured a sleeping draught down his throat in order to bring him to the throne room from the cellar. You shivered, and once again you wished you could hold him against your breast, could defend him from the tribulations of this empire, of this place and these people that found such particular and cruel pleasure in beating him down, over and over and over until he was ground to nothing but dust.

“I think you’ll find that this is a mutually beneficial deal,” he said. “You see, I’m in a bit of a dilemma at the moment. My own cousin, set to betray me; my father-in-law, refusing to support me; the Kremnoan army, marching towards my city.”

“None of these are my problem,” Mydeimos replied. 

“No, of course not,” your husband said. “But your captivity is, right? You have been locked away in a cellar, kept from the sun until you have been reduced to this waifish state. Don’t you wish to be freed?”

“You mean to free him?” you said. Your husband raised a placating hand, silencing you immediately with the casual gesture.

“He must free himself. Even I cannot break thrice-blessed chains until their condition is fulfilled,” he said. “But you can say I have a...vested interest in the completion of this specific condition.”

“What is it?” Mydeimos said warily. All three of you knew that this was a trap being laid out for him; after all, this was your husband, who was known above all else for his tricks and cheats, for being a serpent instead of a lion, a man with nothing resembling honor to his name. Yet already the two of you were ensnared, and so your only choice was playing out his script until the end, following his plans until they came to fruition, no matter how unwillingly.

“You know already,” your husband said. “That’s the thing about thrice-blessed chains: as much as they long to bind their target, once they have accomplished that, they wish most avidly to be destroyed, and so they whisper to their prisoner the methods of their undoing. After all, such immortal power is not meant to remain on this earth for very long.”

“I haven’t the faintest clue what you refer to,” Mydeimos said. “Tell me plainly; I have no interest in these games of yours, snake-emperor. I have played one too many already, and I don’t have the patience for any more.”

“Indulge me this final time,” your husband said. “I am sure you have some idea as to what I’m talking about. The thing which you desire above all else, which quells that remarkable fire that has blazed within you since your capture…oh, you really are lost. What a comical surprise! The prince of Kremnos is an idiot!”

“My lord,” you said softly. “Don’t torture him like this. Haven’t you done enough already?”

Perhaps you should’ve been more careful, but you did not want to mind your words more than you already did, and anyways, you had a sense that hiding anything from him was futile at this point. He could see through you as certainly as if you were made from glass, and he did so with impunity, with the same beguiling set to his mouth as ever. His eyes, unclouded and bright, rested on you for a while, and then he snorted, nodding like he was indulging in the whims of a child making some impossible demand.

“Fine, then,” he said. “It’s not such a difficult thing, anyways. In fact, it’s simple, especially for a man such as he. Mydeimos, prince of Kremnos, heed my words: if you wish to be freed, you must kill your master.”

“Easy enough,” Mydeimos said immediately, any traces of lethargy long gone with this news, even the false sleep bolting in face of his vehemence. “I can feel it in my bindings that you are telling the truth. Well, come down here, then, coward! I have wished to destroy you from the moment I heard your name. Shall I tear out your throat? Your heart? Don’t just sit there and stare at me, emperor. If this is your wish, then challenge me as a man would —  as you refused to at our last meeting!”

“You can do that, if you’d like,” your husband said, his voice lilting and musical. “My heart and my throat, with your nails or with your teeth, whichever you prefer. I’m sure you’d even enjoy it, filthy brute as you are…but no matter how you go about it, it’s inconsequential. My death will not release you.”

“What?” Mydeimos said. “Why not?”

“Because,” your husband said, and then he glanced at you and you swore, you swore his pupils were slitted, his teeth sharp like fangs, the corners of his mouth blue with venom, “I am not your master. She is.”

“I’ll kill you,” Mydeimos said, baring his teeth, a snarl in his voice when he shoved you behind him, standing between you and the throne. “You lying mongrel, I’ll kill you—”

“I’m not lying,” your husband said. “What, did you think I just gave you to her for no reason? As soon as I summoned the chains and became aware of the condition, my plan began, and her stewardship over you was only one of my contingencies. You can tell I’m being truthful, can’t you? The chains are affirming it. You’re drawn to her. You want to be near her. You want to kill her.”

“That’s not why,” Mydeimos said, and then he was turning to you, his eyes wild with pleading. “Y/N, that’s not why, that’s not—”

“Don’t tell me,” your husband said with a chuckle. “All this time…you actually thought you loved her? No, you don’t. You don’t even have that capacity, prince of terrors. It’s the chains. It has always been the chains.”

“Why?” you said, and it came out as it always did: demure, gentle, when all you wanted to do was scream and throttle him. “Why are you doing this? I don’t understand it. Why do you want me to die?”

“In truth, this confrontation is the most desperate option,” he said. “I was hoping he would’ve killed you long ago. That’s why I had you go to the cellar, after all.”

“You…?” you said.

“The prince of Kremnos,” he said, and your stomach dropped. “He calls for you. With the blessings of the messenger lord, it was not so difficult to fool you, dear lady, especially when you have the kind of sweetness that all but begs to be manipulated.”

“You made her this way,” Mydeimos said. “Don’t you dare put her down for something you did to her. It is your fault.”

“You may be right, at that,” your husband said. “Well, anyways, does it matter who did it? Regardless, she is such an amenable woman, so easily led astray, straight to the cellar which should’ve spelled her doom. What a story to tell your father, don’t you think? His most beloved daughter, slaughtered by the savage prince Mydeimos. The Southern Sea and Kremnos would bleed one another dry in their fury, and thus there would be no resistance left to oppose us when we came en masse to conquer them both.”

“But he didn’t kill me,” you said. “He never even tried to.”

“Yes,” your husband said. “This has always confounded me. That morning, when I came to see the state of you, to raise the alarms that my wife had been murdered in cold blood, I found you sleeping peacefully in your bed, without a trace of worry in your lovely expression. Then I thought you might awaken and bawl to me of your near-escape from death, but to my everlasting shock, you were entirely unaffected; furthermore, that night, you returned to his side, and with food in your hands, to boot!”

“Y/N,” Mydeimos whispered fervently. “Y/N, you must believe me, I would never — I know I said I considered it, but I would never hurt you, I would not, I love—”

“Oh, but you will,” your husband said, cutting him off. “Or else you will spend the rest of your short, miserable life as a prisoner of this empire. Kill her, and then kill me if you want. My cousin is far from this place, thinking that he is taking advantage of me, and through him, my blood will remain on the throne; it is the only reason I have not dissuaded his attempts at a coup, which were so clumsy that even a child could see through them. Forever and always, he will remain my heir, and I suppose there is some irony in that.”

“This will not work the way you think it will,” Mydeimos said. “I will tell the king of the sea what you did to her. With the support of the Southern Sea, Kremnos will demolish you. Perhaps we are not so wealthy, but our army is infinitely stronger, and with the south at our side, you will never be able to defeat us.”

“Who will he believe, I wonder? The one who married his daughter, or the one who killed her?” your husband said. “Because you will not be able to lie about that, Mydeimos, and you do not know the old king as I do. The circumstances are irrelevant — the mere fact that you killed his darling will be enough to turn his mind to darkness. He will never stand with Kremnos, and the sea itself will never welcome the rabid prince that murdered its most beloved.”

“What if I give him to you?” you said, interrupting their argument, which strangely enough was being held over your fate. “If he is yours, then you will be his master. He will kill you, and then he will be free.”

Your husband did not falter. “Yes.”

“You are not frightened of this outcome, although it is contrary to everything you have planned for,” you said. “Why is that?”

“Did you think I would not account for such a simple escape?” he said. “Oh, my dear lady. Come here.”

You were moving before you knew it, moving until you stood at the foot of his throne in wait. He did not say anything for a while, and you realized he was looking at Mydeimos, who was staring at you in abject horror. This was the first time he was seeing the extent of it, the first time even you yourself were experiencing the full strength of your devotion, and the expression on his face clawed at your throat even as your husband caressed your hair. He was grieving you already, you thought, that wise, tender prince — he knew what your husband did not, he knew that you were little more than a marionette, already killed long ago by the very man who pet you now as if you were his lapdog.

“Duty, obedience, docility,” he recited. “Go on, then, my wife. Try and give him to me. Your prince, your prisoner…give him to me.”

“Mydeimos,” you said. “I—I—”

Your words dissolved into a flurry of coughs, and you hunched over from the violence of it, pressing your forehead against your husband’s knees as the entirety of your chest collapsed in on itself. There was an invisible fist barging past your lips, imaginary ropes binding your tongue to the roof of your mouth, and so every time you tried to form those words, you were left with nothing but a weak series of inhales and exhales, body rejecting the mere thought of such a betrayal.

“You swore to me, too,” you choked out. “Didn’t you? How can you do this to me when you swore you wouldn’t?”

“Trust,” he said. “And so I trust that your death will bring me what I need. Favor; and so I am favoring you with the honor of sacrificing for the empire. Companionship; and so I will not leave you to die alone. Surely I will chase you into the afterlife, and then we can be together for the rest of eternity.”

“Let go of her,” Mydeimos said. “If it is promises that we speak of, then let me make one to you as well, you asinine half-wit: whatever becomes of you, I promise you that today will be the last time you ever place your hands on her. Don’t you presume that you will get to touch her again. Don’t even think that you will get to lay eyes on her.”

“How passionate, prince of terrors,” your husband said. “But you would do well to remember that she is my wife. You can make no declarations as to her outcome — the only claim you have regarding her is your persistent desire to kill her, and even that is borne from your bindings. If not for the condition of the chains, you would not think of her.”

“And if it weren’t for the Southern Sea, you wouldn’t think of her, either,” Mydeimos said. “But I would. I don’t care for her father’s wealth or the fact that she can free me. I don’t care for the food she gave me or the sleep she brought me. I don’t care for any of it. I would love her if she were nothing more than the princess of seals and whale-song, because she is mine. Yes, it is so; I may belong to her, but she is mine in a way you can never understand.”

“Then take her,” your husband said, nudging you, which was all the permission you needed to scrabble backwards, stumbling over your feet as you retreated to the safety of the shadow cast over Mydeimos by the statue. “Take her and kill her and desecrate your body when you are done with it, if that is what you please.”

“You—”

“Mydeimos,” you said, cutting him off before he could hurl back some insult at your husband. “He’s telling the truth, right?”

His eyes were beseeching when he took your hands in his own, holding them against his heart so you could feel in the vascular pounding the reluctant and yet unquestionable verity of it. Your husband was many things, but this time, he was not a liar. This time, when you wanted him most to be baiting you, he was whole in his honesty. Mydeimos, if he ever wished to be free again, would have to kill you.

“I won’t do it,” he said. “I won’t. I don’t care what he says or what he plots or if it’s the truth. I won’t kill you.”

He was being earnest. He who was so abrasive and harsh, the hostile man you had found in the cellar and come to love, the man who had not killed you yet despite everything which told him to — even now he would not. He would remain in chains for the rest of his days, but he would not kill you. It was your father all over again, your father who would’ve lost the sea if you bade it, who would’ve fought such a pointless fight to save you from the empire, and so you found yourself shaking your head. Just as then, you would not allow yourself to be saved. Just as then, you would not be the reason why he fell.

“You must,” you said, your fingers soothing over the red designs running up his neck and over his shoulders. “Mydeimos, you cannot allow yourself to be swayed by something which doesn’t exist. You heard him. You don’t care for me; it is the chains which cause you to feel this way. How can you give up your life for a falsehood? You must kill me. Kill me and be free, my prince, kill me and run to my home as fast you can. Ignore the words of others, who know nothing of our ways; I swear the sea will welcome you, it will welcome you and love you as surely as I did. Run to my home and tell my father everything, tell him that I sent you — I by my name, I by the title you bestowed upon me. He will believe you. The whales will sing at your arrival, and he will believe you.”

“What is my life?” he said. “What is my freedom? I cannot have either if they must be tainted by your death, brought about by my own hands. I can hardly bear to kill my enemies. Don’t beg of me to do such a thing to you, to you who I have loved so well since I heard your name for the very first time…”

“Do you think that you will be the one to kill me?” you said. “I have been dead for so long. You are not slaying me in some vicious or cruel manner; you are only dealing the final blow and freeing us both from this torment.”

“No,” he said. “I am not one for eloquence, so I cannot say it more elegantly, but I refuse, I refuse, I won’t be the victim of his schemes again, and I won’t let you be, either. Take my chains in your hands and walk me as if I am your hound, jerk me when I am disobedient and allow me enough slack to kill those who stand before us, but do not die.”

“Think of your kingdom,” you entreated. “What will Kremnos do without you? What will become of them if they fall to the empire? And what of my home? My people? I have died one death for them, when I swore fealty to that husband of mine. I cannot bear their suffering, I will die so many times if I can relieve them of it, and do you not remember what I said to my father all those many days ago? I will find love in it. I will find happiness. Even in this loveless place, I found you; so, too, in death will I find escape. Kill me now — if it is you, I should not mind so much, I think.”

“Why must you be so trapped?” he said. “Why can I not free you in any other way? Why is death the only end to your bondage?”

“That is the nature of it,” you said. “Only by his death or mine will this marriage end. Only by his death or mine will I be saved. But he knows this, and so he remains ever out of your reach. Mark my words, he will not allow you to kill him until it is convenient for him. There is no way to outsmart a man whose power we do not even understand, a man who is so loved by divinity itself.”

Your husband was silent, observing the argument with the self-satisfaction of one whose prey was within the reach of his jaws. All three of you knew that Mydeimos could not win; the desires set upon him by the chains combined with your persistent appeals would sway his convictions until he turned his mouth upon your heart and tore it out with his canines, sinking his incisors into your chest for lack of a better weapon with which to do the deed, lapping at the rivulets of blood until your own body resembled his own, covered in streaks of irate crimson that wrote out your accursed predestination.

“The next time we meet,” Mydeimos said, closing his eyes and thumping his forehead against yours in resignation. “The next time I find you, I will steal you from him. I will come to your wedding before you can swear your vows, and I will take you away. Such a beast, they will say, such a brute, snatching a bride from her groom, who awaits her most eagerly upon the altar. But then again, to the world, that is just the way of Kremnos, and next time, I will prove them right. Next time, I will make you the queen of my horrible kingdom, and you can scream and slap at me if you’d like, but you will be mine in full, mine and not at all his, so even if you hate me, I will accept it.”

“The altar,” you repeated, and then, in the back of your mind, you thought of such a faint, silly thing that it almost did not bear vocalizing. Yet what other choice did you have but to say it? Even if it was imprudent and rash, even if it would come to nothing, you had to tell him, in whatever way you could manage. “Mydeimos, listen to me.”

“Hm?” he said as you grabbed his jaw, holding it firmly so that he could not flinch away, keeping him steady and facing you. “Y/N?”

“Everything I have ever wanted to say to you, you have heard. You told me that, once,” you said. 

“Yes,” he said, his brow furrowing. You brushed his hair back, pushing it off of his forehead, marveling at how his wellbeing was already so improved. You doubted he had been back in the sun for more than an hour or so, but the color was returning to his skin, and there was genuine vitality to him. His breaths came steadily, evenly, and his eyes were like gemstones set in his strong, handsome face, which was flushed with a despondent sort of verve.

“My marriage,” you said. “Do you remember what I said of it? I cannot repeat it now, I am not able, but you must recall what I told you. The day of my wedding, everything I said…it is desperate and slim, but there is a chance. You must remember, please, you can forget everything else, but remember that. What did I tell you?”

“What are you talking about?” your husband said, and for the first time, he stood, alarm creeping into his tone. “Dear lady, what lies are you espousing? Kill her now, prince of terrors, before she can deceive you further! Kill her and free yourself!”

Staring into the churning gold of Mydeimos’s irises, praying to the sea that your own spoke everything you could not, you ignored your husband. There was not much time, and so much was left unsaid; all you could do was trust in the prince, trust that he knew you and thus knew what you were trying to convey.

“The gods of this empire are not on your side, but I am,” you said, and as his eyes widened, you tilted his chin towards the statue. “No matter what, I always will be.”

Ramming his shoulder into you, knocking you to the ground by the foot of the throne, Mydeimos gathered the drooping chains that lay on the ground. Pushing yourself up, you clambered backwards, away from the vengeful figure who, in that moment, was a god unto himself, one who did not request the help of any other deities but commanded it, who ordered their assistance as easily as a general might.

“What is he doing?” your husband said, the collar of your dress tearing as he used it to haul you to your feet. “Kill her, you idiot, what business do you have with that statue?”

“He is not the idiot,” you murmured. “You are, my lord.”

Mydeimos swung the chains around the neck of the statue, and then, with the strength of three squadrons of soldiers, his braid gleaming bright with the unwilling blessings of the gods you had invoked that day in the cellar, he yanked it taut, causing dark cracks to form in the marble.

“Mydeimos!” your husband roared, but Mydeimos did not stall, the muscles in his arms straining, sweat pouring off his forehead as he continued to tug on the metal, slicing into the stone with his own effort, the unbreakable chains digging into the white expanse. “Cease your actions immediately!”

With a great crash, the head of the statue shattered against the ground, bursting into a thousand pieces that sprayed into the air, forming clouds of dust and debris that filled the throne room. As the one you had sworn your vows to died a miserable death, its weight lifted from your shoulders, and so, gasping for breath — not from the muddied air but from your regained sovereignty — you seized your husband by the front of his shirt.

“Imbecile,” you hissed, ignoring the wounds he clawed into your forearms as he fought off your grip. “I never did give you a wedding gift, did I? My apologies for the delay, but you’ll find that this present is entirely worth the wait. The finest of plunders for the finest of husbands: the prince of Kremnos himself!"

“You can’t,” he said.

“I can,” you said. “And know this, you foul worm: you cannot give back a gift once it has been freely given. You cannot refuse him. Perhaps that is how affairs are conducted in your backwards empire, but where I am from, it is not so.”

You pushed him towards the waiting Mydeimos with all the strength you had. The prince descended with a swiftness, not even allowing him to stand before catching him, snapping his neck as easily as a butcher might snap a pig’s, tossing him aside and then lifting his gaze towards you, both of you frozen with anticipation.

The chains melted into sunbeams, sparkling against him for a moment longer before vanishing entirely, the braid in his hair coming undone as he raced towards you on unsteady feet. You met him halfway, and when his legs gave way, you were there to catch him, kissing the crown of his head over and over as he sank into your arms.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I had some ideas of coming to greet you so bravely, and here I am, in such a state.”

“Don’t say sorry,” you said. “Don’t say sorry to me, Mydeimos, you have done something that ought to be impossible, and with it you have freed me. There is no one braver. You must never say sorry.”

“I killed him,” he said, like he could not quite believe it himself.

“Yes,” you said, and then you were crying into his hair, shuddering with the ache and exhaustion of everything that had just transpired, the scratches gouged into you by your late husband’s dying efforts biting from the touch of the open air. “You killed him. That putrid, dastardly coward…you killed him.”

“We mustn’t delay,” Mydeimos said. “They will come looking for the emperor soon, and at present, we cannot fight off an entire army. We have to flee while we still have the chance and that cousin of his is still too focused on saving himself to realize that there is nothing left for him to be safe from — or nothing of this empire, anyways.”

“Where should we go? Kremnos?” you said.

“No,” he said, using your bicep to balance himself as he drew himself back to his full height. “The Southern Sea.”

“The Southern Sea?” you said, your voice catching. He smiled at you slightly.

“The wars and the fighting can wait. The empire has been weakened enough that they will bide their time before making any decisive moves, and the Kremnoans have survived thus far, so what is a little longer? Before I return to the strife and violence of battle, I will take you home. After everything, that is the least you deserve,” he said, taking your arm and dabbing at the droplets of blood which welled where the skin had broken, a frown etched on his features at the sight. “Come. A few elephant keepers will pose no difficulty to me, even like this; let us fetch Verax and use his might to escape this empire.”

“Wait,” you said. “There is something I must do first.”

As Mydeimos watched, you strode over to your husband’s limp, cold body. Drawing your leg back, you kicked it, over and over until his features were all but unrecognizable, mangled and swollen as they were. Then, gathering saliva in your mouth, delighting in the barbarism, which felt sickeningly appropriate despite how uncharacteristic it was of your typical refinement, you spat on him.

It splashed against its cheek, the frothing bubbles washing away the salty tracks of his dried tears, and only then did you turn, rejoining Mydeimos so that the two of you could leave the empire behind for good.

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[m1ckeyb3rry]

Series Synopsis: When the husband you’ve never met returns from the war you’ve never understood, he comes bearing a strange and inexplicable gift — a prince in chains who he refuses to kill.

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Mydei x F!Reader

Chapter Word Count: 17.0k

Content Warnings: pls check the masterlist there is. a lot. and i’m not retyping all of that LOL

A/N: okay so two things a) sorry for the wait (i thought i would get this out quicker but then my professors decided to kin reader's husband and trapped me with a multitude of exams...) and b) i am. truly shocked by how many people ended up reading/enjoying part one?? like it's crazy to me SLKJFH i hope you guys don't hate where i go with this 😭 and like ik i gave a ton of ooc warnings in the main warning section but they bear repeating LOL so. PLEASE DON'T HATE ME IF BRO IS OOC IDEK HIM LIKE THAT 😓💔

The Southern Sea was unsettled again, thrashing against the shore like a bird tangled in netting, beating itself into such a frenzy that the waves broke silver on the sand. This was atypical of the cerulean waters, and you crouched, fragments of seashells digging into your bare heels as you ran your fingers through the tide. Expecting your father to reprimand you for putting yourself in unnecessary danger, you glanced up, but his mind was clearly preoccupied, as distant as his soft gaze.

“Father,” you said, standing and taking a step back, clutching his arm to steady yourself against the wind. “The sea is strange as of late, isn’t it?”

“They say it knows more than we do,” he said, staring at the horizon, where ships gathered like thunderheads. “Perhaps this is its way of protecting us.”

“I thought the empire was friendly,” you said, narrowing your eyes at the crest painted on the coming boats. “Do we not have some understanding with them?”

“I wonder,” he said. “My darling…you know, sometimes, I wonder.”

 You lay in your bed, a sheen of sweat glistening on your skin as you stared at the ceiling. The blankets covering you were suddenly overwarm, though you could not bear to cast them aside, and your eyes welled with scalding tears that threatened to spill out of their corners. Swallowing and turning over, you used the edges of your pillow to blot at them before they could fall, burrowing further and further into the confines of the tangled furs which padded your bedding. 

Your vision often swam nowadays, for you were dizzy with exhaustion, but you could not bring yourself to sleep, not when your mind had taken up this new form of torment for you. As if it were not enough that you were imprisoned here in your waking hours, as well! Over and over, it would replay that same scene, everything clearer in recall than it had been when it had actually occurred, the colors brighter, the details sharper, stabbing into you with their cruel poignance. 

There were some things, however, which were blurred, the image fading at the edges with time, and this was worse than the remembering, because these were the only things you wished to recall, and this thieving empire would not even let you have that. Even your memories were not safe from their pillaging and their curses, and so their crest was burned into your mind while the rest of it slipped away like river-water through reeds.

You had known as soon as you had awoken that you would not be able to fall asleep again, but that did not stop you from yet another futile attempt. Your lower lip trembled as you waited, fisting your sheets and holding them to your heart as you tried in vain to ease its panicked thumping, which kept time with the furious crash of waves on a far-off shore.

You wanted your home. You wanted to sleep. You wanted your father. You wanted the sea. You wanted to go back. You wanted to have never left in the first place. You wanted, wanted, wanted, but only that which you could never get. Your husband, who was so wealthy in so many ways, who had given you the prince of Kremnos himself, wrapped in chains and delivered at your feet, would never grant you those few wishes which you truly desired, had neither the fancy nor the ability to do so.

Taking one of the lighter blankets and swaddling it around yourself like a shroud, you slid from your bed and fumbled around in the dark for a lantern, which you lit with the embers of the kept hearth. Holding it close to yourself, for luminance and for warmth, you tiptoed through the hallways, your previous flush fading in favor of shivers, which ran up and down your spine the farther you got from your chambers.

There was some invisible force which tethered you to the prince. Certainly there must’ve been, for you could not fathom any other reason why your feet were tracing that familiar path down to the cellar, the blanket still tossed over your shoulders, your stomach wringing itself out from the weight — both of the palace above you and the prince before you.

You thought he might be asleep when you came, but he was as he typically was, as much of a statue as the one you had stood across from on your wedding day. His eyebrows knit together when he saw you, and it was such a sweet, dear expression that you were taken aback, for you had in truth believed him incapable of anything but that dark, glowering scowl which he maintained as if it were the sole representation of the few shreds of self-regard he had left to his name.

“You’re back,” he said carefully. You set the lantern down in between the two of you and, as he always did, he crept closer to its meager incandescence. You pretended not to notice, affording him the grace of ignorance to his innate instinct, and then you nodded.

“Yes,” you said. “I’m sorry, I don’t have anything. It’s still late at night.”

“I thought as much,” he said, nodding at your empty hands. “Time is different here, but even then, I think that I know the difference between a few hours and an entire day. Has there been some development, then? Is your rotten husband finally freeing me?”

“No,” you said, and though he disguised it with a blank frown, you noticed how his face fell. “I don’t have news in any way, for better or worse. Sometimes, I think my  husband is entirely determined to forget that you exist at all.”

“If I were to guess, he means to deprive me to death,” Mydeimos said dispassionately, as if he were talking about someone else, a distantly historical figure whose fate had no bearing on his own. “Should I face a proper execution, I will haunt him from beyond the grave as a banner for Kremnos to rally behind. As it is, he must be hoping that I will fade quietly from the annals of history — the last in another line of princes subsumed by his empire.”

You folded your arms over your chest, a shield against his blunt line of thought. “He is prone to it, I suppose.”

“Is he?” Mydeimos said, like you both were sharing some private joke. He spoke daringly, slyly, as if he were attempting to nudge you into honesty, and you imagined that if you were somewhere else, in a place where the sun shone and the tides eddied about your feet, you would’ve found his manner a temptation. Yet you were here, in this dark cellar, and so all you could muster was a kind of mournful heartache at the impossibility of it all.

“I am sure it is what he intends for the kingdom from whence I hail. Though neither death nor deprivation are required there; the princes are still young, and so if it comes to it, they will…” you trailed off, overcome, before you steeled yourself to continue once more, though a bitter resentment crept into your tone like poison when you did so. “Anyways, the eldest child of the kingdom is a daughter, and she is a spoiled, brattish thing who cares for little but her jewels and her dresses. She will pose no trouble to such an empire as my husband’s.”

“I see,” he said. 

“Ah, but regardless,” you said. “It matters little. I shan’t allow him to kill you in such a way.”

“And your word, of course, is law,” he said, and you wondered at his constitution, which allowed him to scorn you even when he was, in a sense, nothing more than a corpse, a vessel bound for funeral and finality. Was he like this with the others, too? The many men who came to gouge at him with their glares and their abuse, did he strike them with his whip-sharp tongue? Or was it that you were the only one — the only one who deserved it, or the only one who took it with your tail tucked and your head bowed?

“Do you ever sleep?” you said, for if it was the case and you were the sole person he dared to rail against, then how could you take it from him? When it had been taken from you, how could you turn around and do the same to another? “You are always awake when I come to see you.”

He stared at you incredulously, as if you were quite mad. You waited, thinking that he must be choosing his words carefully, but when he finally did speak, it was with a breathy laugh, like he could not quite believe that he had to say it aloud.

“Do I ever sleep?” he parroted. “If I sleep, dear lady, I am certain that I will never wake again. How many men would happen upon me and not dare to slit my throat in such a state, when they can be assured that I will not be able to retaliate? Do I ever sleep, indeed!”

You wished you could tell him that it was the same for you — different, because that which spelled your end came to you only in your dreams, and so you were chased from repose as surely as he ran from it, but the same nonetheless. The bruises carved into the hollows of his cheeks and painted under his dark lash-line were identically replicated on your face, although you were better about hiding it, staining your skin with all manners of concoctions so that your husband did not question what ailed you.

“It will kill you regardless, won’t it?” you said, furrowing your brow. He shrugged, and despite the atrophy of his mind and body alike, it was a powerful gesture, all the more intimidating for its halfheartedness.

“Who will weep if it does?” he said.

“Every manner of thing in this place is meant to kill you, in fact,” you continued. “It is as you said, then: they mean for you to meet death by deprivation, to suffer until your very end. You cannot sleep, nor can you eat…but as I have brought you food, so, too, shall I bring you rest.”

“And how do you imagine you’ll do that?” he said.

“I will stay here,” you said, the strength of your conviction shocking yourself. You hadn’t known until you had said it that you would, but as it left your mouth, you became utterly sure that it was the right decision. “I will watch over you, prince of Kremnos, and should — should someone else come, then I will wake you before I flee, so that you may defend yourself.”

“Why would you do that?” he said. “What good does it do for you to protect me when my end is decided?”

He said it with curiosity, not deprecation, although there was an edge of despairing anger to it. Why? Why do you extend your hand to a doomed man? If I must die, then let me die now instead of later. If he were more honest, then perhaps he would’ve said something like that, but instead he only gazed at you levelly and waited for your response.

“If we both are to meet our deaths in this palace, then let at least one of us meet that demise with a head held high,” you said.

For a moment, it seemed like he might question you. You prepared rebuttals that you could never make but which would swish around in your mind like an impenetrable defense — a death of the body is not the only way to die, after all — but then, miraculously, he only hummed

“You think that it must be me?” he said.

“The Kremnoans are known for their pride, aren’t they? It isn’t the same for my people, who roll over and show their stomachs at the slightest incitement,” you said, taking the blanket off of your shoulders and holding it out to him. “I have made my vows already. What can I do but accept this fate? Yet it needn’t be the same for you.”

He peered at you with eyes that saw far more than they should, far more than you had allowed him or anyone else to, and then he nodded. Shortly, curtly, but he did it, taking the blanket and unfurling it like a war-banner in the meantime.

“I understand,” he said.

“Do you?” you said, for you could not tell what, exactly, it was that he understood. He did not elaborate, however, tucking himself away in the corner, draping the blanket over himself like a mantle and resting his head on his arms. Although he did not close his eyes, watching you even still, you could see them fluttering against his will, and you knew it would not be long before he succumbed, whether he wanted to or not. There was only so long he could survive without sleep for, after all — at the end of the day, he was still a man, and thus prone to humanity’s shortcomings.

“Turn around,” he said gruffly. “Watch the stairs, not me. I will not be the one to bring you harm.”

You apologized, sitting with your legs crossed and your back to him, watching the shadows cast by the lantern as they flickered and danced, waltzing about to the soundtrack of his breaths, which slowly evened into a soft rhythm of inhales and exhales as the time dragged on.

Minutes or seconds or hours passed, you could not be sure, but when your legs grew numb from inactivity, you shifted so that you were hugging your knees to your chest, muffling your face in the fabric of your nightgown.

“Are you asleep?” you whispered.

He did not respond, and when you glanced over your shoulder, you saw that his eyes were closed, his face smooth with innocence as his chest rose and fell under the thin blanket. It was as if he were another person entirely, a more forgiving person, a kinder one, the sort of gentle prince that stories were written about instead of the violent beast who killed as many men as were thrown at him.

“That’s good, then,” you said, a weight on your tongue dissipating now that you were, in effect, alone. “Huh? I didn’t realize…”

Even your vows could not police your thoughts, or, if they could, they had not yet attempted to. Your stream of consciousness was still unfettered, and now that Mydeimos was asleep, you could say what you pleased, could tell him everything you wanted without fear of reproach. It nearly brought you to tears, the mere thought of it, and you had to take a deep breath to steady yourself.

“I understand you more than you think,” you admitted. “You know, just as they’ve taken the sun from you, they’ve taken something precious from me as well. I speak of the sea — oh, but I never told you that, right? Nobody here knows, or at least they pretend that they don’t, but it’s true that I am from the shores of the Southern Sea, where the sky is always clear and the people are as beautiful as the tides.”

You half-expected him to startle awake and snap at you, or for your voice to suddenly die away in protest at your rebellion, but when neither of these things happened, you slumped down in relief.

“It’s often said that the Southern Sea is beyond compare, the closest to paradise that can be found on the living earth. Perhaps I’m biased in agreeing, but I really think it’s the case. I love it, I love it as much as you love the sun — and how you miss the sun, so, too, do I miss the sea. Daily anew I ask myself how it is that I am still alive when I have been so far from it for so long, but somehow I persist, though there are times…ah, but I digress. It isn’t your concern,” you said.

If he were awake, he would’ve jeered at you. How dare you, who were the empress of this entire place, speak of struggle? When he was locked away like this and you were left to your own devices, how dare you pretend as though you understood him? You were suddenly grateful that he could not hear you, or else whatever opinion he had of you would be irrevocably lowered.

“You would find it strange and inexplicable, as Kremnos is entirely inland, but for me, the sea is parent and friend and confidante alike,” you said. “You see, I was my mother’s first child, and so my birth was rife with difficulties. For two days and two nights she labored, until a wisewoman recommended she be taken to the Southern Sea.

“Of course, my father was frightened, for who would trust a wife and a babe to the treachery of the currents? But it’s an odd thing…the waters have never been calmer than they were that day, when my mother was taken to a cove where the seaweed held her hands and the monk-seals played as her midwives. You know, the whales sang when I was finally born, a clear-eyed slip of a child cradled in my father’s arms.”

The mention of your father made you pause, for you had not said that word in so long that it was all but foreign. Father. Your father, your father, you would tell the sleeping Mydeimos all about your father if you had the time and the energy for it. But where would you start, and where would you end? 

“I miss the Southern Sea in the way a bride must miss her mother,” you said. “My actual mother never had much time for me, far too preoccupied with the rearing of the younger ones, and so I was left to the waters and my father, both who cared for me with great consideration, and both who I — who I miss most ardently.”

Your chest felt near to caving in, and you tightened your grip around your knees, as if by holding onto yourself, you could prevent the further spread of the burrowing sensation emanating from your heart, which would dig and dig until there was nothing left of you but blackened, gangrenous innards that rattled around in an empty carapace. 

Mydeimos awoke some time later, though you only knew because he cleared his throat, prompting you to turn and find that he was crouched on the ground, folding the blanket with a neat precision, matching the corners with mathematical accuracy. You watched him in bewilderment, the exactness and nigh-domesticity all but jarring, and in turn he ignored you, fascinating himself with the work so that he could avoid your gaze.

“You stayed,” he said when he could no longer pretend like the blanket required his attention. Dropping it in your lap, he looked down at you with arms crossed, a silent and clear refusal to offer you his hand in the way of a nobleman. You did not insist, taking the blanket and scrambling to your feet on your own.

“Yes, I told you that I would,” you said. “Did you sleep well?”

“‘Well’ is a stretch,” he said. You averted your eyes, lips tugging into an involuntary frown, and he sighed. “But at least I slept. For that, I am…grateful.”

“I didn’t really do anything,” you said, in an attempt to disguise the disproportionate pleasure the simple acknowledgment brought you. “But since you found it to be of some help, I will come back tomorrow.”

“If that is what you will,” he said, albeit lacking his typical sardonic bite. “By the way, you referenced your home.”

“I did?” you said, trying to think back to what you had said before he had fallen asleep. It felt as though you had lived very many lifetimes since then, and everything jumbled together in your mind, so you only blinked at him expectantly, waiting for him to elaborate.

“You said that the people of your home are known for their yellow-bellied cowardice,” he reminded you, and dimly you recalled saying such a thing, though you hadn’t expected him to latch onto such a random, stray line. 

“That’s right,” you said. “Why do you mention it?”

“Where are you from? I haven’t heard of a place so opposite to Kremnos. It’s unfathomable, the thought of somewhere with people who do not burn for the glory of their egos and esteems. What — what is it like?” he said, attempting to sound entirely unaffected but incapable of camouflaging the sheen of curiosity glazing over his irises, childish inquisition melding with a more mature, scholarly interest. 

“It is an ordinary and unremarkable place,” you said, pursing your lips and turning away from him again, your blanket over your back in the way of a shield, a barrier in between yourself and the kindly prying that you might’ve called uncharacteristic of the prince, if you were someone could claim to know anything about him and his character. “That’s all I can say.”

You lingered for a moment longer, thinking — or perhaps just hoping — that he would say something, that he would poke and poke at your dull, wounded answer, that somewhere deep in his beastly heart, he would understand what you really meant. But he only exhaled, bidding you farewell with the same inflamed terseness that he typically infused into his every word, and the moment was lost.

In the daytime, your husband’s voice had this quality of cheerfulness that, at least to you, seemed specifically designed to grate at your nerves. This was an especial cruelty, as the mornings were the worst for you, worn from the toils of the night as you were, but your husband remained blissful in his unawareness and so continued to chatter on without heed. 

You sat curled into your chair, the sun bright in your vision and his voice bright in your ears and everything all so bright, bright, bright. You considered gouging your nails into your eye sockets for the slightest bit of alleviation, or maybe scratching your fingers into your ears deep enough to bleed and drown out the speech he was giving about his plans for securing the Kremnoan border.

“...they have been severely weakened without Mydeimos, of course, but naturally that doesn’t mean they are entirely defeated; stubborn bastards, those Kremnoans, never know when to quit—”

“My lord, have you decided what you will do about him?” you said, your voice dragging on the vowels as you muffled a yawn. “The prince, I mean. Mydeimos.”

The name dallied on your tongue, sweet as the fruit you chewed on, syrupy like the juice of it on your lips. Your husband raised a brow at you, and you cursed him in your mind, cursed him for being so oblivious to so many things but this familiarity, this delicacy, this one thing you had left to savor.

“How flattered he would be, to know that you are so concerned for him!” he said. “I doubt he has ever had such a beautiful woman fawning over him so devotedly. I am sure his face would be as red as those crude markings of his if he heard of it.”

“Don’t be a boor,” his cousin interjected, the quiet control of his voice a welcome reprieve from the variances in your husband’s tone. “She’s only wondering, right, lady? He is her prisoner, after all. Why should she not ask?”

“Her prisoner,” your husband said, with a particular and unprecedented emphasis on the possessive nature of the word. “Yes, he is, at that. Fear not, dear lady; as I have said before, and so I will say again, I shall execute him when the time comes, but that time is not yet. Believe me, you will be the first to be told when it comes to it.”

“Very well,” you said, for there was no merit in further discussion of the topic. You understood when to back off as well as anything, and anyways, as you had told the prince, the people of the Southern Sea weren’t the confrontational sort. You were the worst of them, once, a barbarous lionfish in a sea of picarels, but now, by virtue of your vows, you were just like the rest, as pliant as a clamped oyster buried in the sand.

“Anyways, brother,” your husband’s cousin said when there was an awkward lull in the one-sided conversation, which was really more of a monologue on your husband’s part than anything but was still uncomfortable in its absence, “I was thinking.”

“Were you, now? And was it incredibly difficult?” your husband said. His cousin, who was one of the great military minds of the empire, smiled politely, well-used to the jabs that your husband doled out with a fraternal frequency. 

“On the contrary, your lady eases my mind. There is no difficulty when she is the one my thoughts tarry upon,” he said coolly, just serious enough that he was almost definitely in jest. “I thought she might find some amusement in visiting the elephants from Kremnos; they do not have those where she is from, I am sure, and seeing such rarities might be of some benefit to her health. Certainly the air will be.”

“You speak with wisdom…but I do not have the time to supervise such an excursion,” your husband said. “I have war-councils to attend, and an empire to manage besides.”

“Isn’t that what I was born for?” his cousin said. “I am your second, brother, and at your disposal entirely. If you cannot accompany her, then I will surely do it in your stead.”

Your husband’s eyes narrowed, so imperceptibly that it could easily be dismissed as a trick of the light or a defense against the sun. You ran your tongue along the back of the teeth as you waited for his response, a natural symptom of fretting that you could not help, but it came to nothing, as he only reclined back in his chair with an imperious nod.

“Who else can I rely on but you, hm? Thank you, then,” he said. “Dear lady, I hope you are not opposed.”

He phrased it as a question but meant it as a command; you were not so stupid as to think otherwise. Anyways, it might not be so horrible, so you only hummed in agreement and pretended like the berries in your mouth were the reason you did not say anything aloud.

The path to the stables where the elephants were kept was made of packed dirt, looping through the gardens in a meandering route far from the palace and any onlookers. For a while neither you nor your husband’s cousin spoke — he was lost in thought, and you busied yourself with admiring the scenery you had thus far only seen through the windows of your room. It was not the Southern Sea, could not be further from it, but there was a pastoral, picturesque charm to the blooming bushes regardless. Honeysuckle climbed over wrought-iron trellises, the slender vines curling in between the twisting leaf motifs of the metal, and the blush-white flowers perfumed the air with a melancholic sweetness.

How lovely you would’ve found it, if it did not all belong to you. If you were a visiting dignitary, a guest of the empire’s…if you walked alongside your husband’s cousin as a companion or friend instead of a sister-in-law…how lovely it might’ve all been. 

The sun beat down on your back nearly to the point of discomfort, but instead of complaints, all that came to your mind was Mydeimos, who you thought might’ve luxuriated in these things that you were irked by. So you bore it in his stead, the suffering, the burning, drinking it in with zeal, imprinting the sensation into your skin instead of shrinking away from it, a punishment to yourself as much as a favor to the prince that might never again wear the crown of day upon his handsome brow.

“I remember that first letter my brother’s advisor wrote to us about you,” your husband’s cousin said, ripping you from your reverie. There was a hint of shrewdness to his voice, one that you had never heard from him before, and it made you instantly wary, though he had never given you reason to doubt him before.

“Pardon?” you said.

“It was all such a surprise,” he said, though of course it had not been anything of the sort. “To think that you were to marry him. What a solution to the problem at hand.”

“Yes,” you said, picking at the frayed skin of your cuticles absentmindedly, ripping at them until they stung. “And here I am, having done just that.”

“Indeed,” he said. “It was about time he found a wife, anyways. Heirs are not born overnight; as of right now, all he has in the way of succession is me, but of course that’s not sustainable, is it? He needed a wife to beget a son most of all; everything else you have brought us is a perquisite.”

“Yet it was those very perquisites that made it all so much easier, I am certain,” you said.

“Who would not marry for as many advantages as they can come by?” he said. “You cannot blame us for that.”

“Perhaps,” you said noncommittally before shifting so that your shoulders did not face him. “But these are old things, which have long since happened. The elephants. Tell me about them.”

He wasn’t the last person you wished to discuss your past with, but if there were a list, then he was definitely near the bottom. It was conflicting in a way, nonsensical, almost, but you were sure that even if you could talk about it, you would not, for as much as you longed to, you also could not stand the notion. There was a sort of fortitude in your isolation, in your knowledge that in this place, the Southern Sea belonged solely to you. Not your husband nor his cousin nor their armies and their advisors; you, you, you and only you. So even if you had the means to speak of it with a loose tongue and ready words, you would not —  you would guard it instead, guard it and its people, keep them close to your chest, folded into your swooping collarbones where the empire could not cast its filthy gaze upon them. 

“There are three,” he began, holding up three fingers for emphasis. “The cows, Dromas and Lucabos, who were used only for the transport of goods and have taken well to their new keepers.”

You had reached the elephants’ temporary stabling by this point, and he pointed at the twin elephants in turn. Their tusks were short and blunted, and their trunks waved in the air as they reached for feed from their troughs; keepers milled around their feet, but neither Dromas nor Lucabos paid them any mind. There was an enduring temperateness to the depths of their dark gazes, and even to you, who knew nothing of elephants, it was obvious that these were not creatures of war but benevolent pack-animals in the way of your homeland’s donkeys.

Separated from the cows, the third elephant stood alone, sullen and unmoving. If the keepers dared to so much as look at him, he would rumble out a feral challenge, and unlike Dromas and Lucabos, he was tethered to the ground by ropes braided around his legs and torso. Faded red paint swirled on his forehead, a universal symbol of protection which was flaking off but had not yet turned illegible, and there was a mean slant to his eyes, his ivory tusks honed into swordpoints that he brandished before him.

“Verax,” your husband’s cousin said when he noticed that your stare had not budged from the savage bull. “The war-elephant of the prince himself. After we captured Mydeimos, he fell to his knees from grief and was easily corralled, despite his inordinate strength in battle. A loyal creature, to be sure, albeit a foolish one — you’d think he’d have ceased his struggling by now, when it so clearly will come to nothing! But still he fights, though I know not what he hopes to achieve. Even if he does somehow free himself…he must know that the one he loves has gone to a place he can never reach.”

“Perhaps he seek comfort in refusal,” you said. “There is courage and heart to be found in intransigence, after all.”

“Would you know very much about that?” he said, leaning with his back to the fence surrounding Verax, who stared at you with barely-concealed hatred, the expression so utterly human it made you shiver. 

“Should we stand so close to him?” you said, neatly avoiding the question by posing one of your own, batting your eyelashes in an attempt at naivete. For a second you thought he might not fall for it, that he might be possessed with a keen enough intellect to see through the farce, but if he was, then he did not display it, only waving you off dismissively.

“He may charge at us, but he will trip on his restraints before he reaches,” he said, and then he extended his hand towards Verax, waving his fingers at him teasingly. “See? They’ve taken every precaution; I wouldn’t have been permitted to bring you if they hadn’t. Nothing can happen to my beloved brother’s wife.”

“Let us go,” you said, tugging his arm with far more familiarity than was earned. He raised his eyebrows but did not reprimand you, allowing himself to be pulled along as you set course for the palace proper once more. “This is doing nothing for my health. I don’t wish to stay here any longer.”

“I know that Verax is frightening, but Dromas and Lucabos are as meek as horses,” he reassured you. “You needn’t fear when it comes to them. Don’t you wish to pet them?.”

“No,” you said. “No, I don’t. I am spent, and I think it’d be best if I retire until dinner. Thank you for accompanying me; I appreciate that you thought of me and my wellbeing, even though nothing much came of your attempts.”

“I will keep searching,” he said, a smile playing on his lips, taunting you as he had taunted Verax, waving the feigned gravitas he afforded the situation in your face as boyishly as he had waved his fingers at the elephant. “Until I may find what cures you, I will keep searching.”

“I wish you luck in your endeavors,” you said. “You will need it, I am sure. I do not think this ailment is one which will easily be alleviated.”

“Were you so feeble before you came here?” he said.

“On the contrary, I was healthy and strong,” you said as you passed Dromas and Lucabos’s enclosure again. Neither elephant took note of you, and you found they were easy to ignore, melding into the background like mountains on the horizon. They did not have the same demanding quality of presence as Verax, who commanded one’s attention as surely as his counterpart, Mydeimos, did.

“Perhaps there is some clue to be found there,” he mused. “I will earnestly reflect on it, and if I happen upon some answer, I will surely tell you.”

“Very well,” you said. “Though I—”

Before you could tell him that he would not find much if anything in his reflections, a fact which he most certainly already knew but was pretending to be ignorant to, a commotion broke out. Men’s voices layered over one another while Verax trumpeted and swung his great head about in a panic before lowering it, his ears flat against his neck as he strained against his constraints, his eyes focused on you and your husband’s cousin as he dug his feet, each the size of a chariot-wheel, into the muddy, rutted ground.

“Stay back, lady,” your husband’s cousin said, his arm barring your path forward and his brow knitting together in alarm.

“I thought you said he couldn’t do anything,” you said as the keepers swarmed about Verax, waving bullhooks and bindings at the elephant, who took no head of their warnings, his frenzied stomping causing the ground to shake and his bellows rending through the sky itself. 

“Would you like to find out if that’s the case?” he said. “He’s never been so belligerent before, at least not to my knowledge. I know not what he is capable of, not in such a state, and it seems as though we are his targets at present, so we must make haste and return to the palace at once. Allow the keepers to manage him, for they have been trained in the art and are doubly qualified for it!”

Was this what Mydeimos’s enemies had seen? When he took to the battlefield, had they recognized him as a harbinger of their destruction? For Verax must’ve shaken the earth then, too, the very world itself bowing to the combined might of their arrivals, to the power which was rumored even as far as the Southern Sea.

They say he is more of a god than a man, the prince who sits upon the throne of Kremnos, people would whisper in the streets. All we can do against that strength is pray that he does not turn it towards our shores.

Verax shrieked, and you paused, a terrible thought crossing your mind, unsolicited and unwelcome yet more and more appealing as the seconds mounted. How horrible would it be? You might die quickly, at any rate. One more burst of suffering, as acute as the final glimpse of your home when it vanished over the sunset, and then you would be reunited with the tides, turned to seafoam and silt by the elephant. Whether your end came at his tusks or his tread, wouldn’t it be better this way? 

“Lady?” your husband’s cousin said, and he reached for your hand, but you continued as if you were in a dream, a fog creeping over your mind as you took one step and then another towards the staggering Verax. “Lady, don’t—!”

The pulsing march of your heartbeat resounded in your ears like a wardrum, and as you grew nearer and nearer to the fearsome beast, whose tusks were already stained with crimson at their tips, a fist clamped around your stomach, squeezing and squeezing, yanking on your spine in a desperate attempt to halt your momentum. Fear, that must’ve been its name; you were no battle-hardened general, to be able to face your death without such a steadfast companion. You were only a girl, and you were afraid, but more than afraid you were weary, the kind of weary which seeped into your bones and resigned you to your fate.

“He recognizes scents!” one of the keepers shouted at you. You were aware of it in the way that a drowning man was aware of that which occurred above the surface; thickly, faintly, muddily. “He recognizes scents, lady — if he smells his majesty the emperor on you, he will — you must leave at once, or you will surely die!”

Verax stood with the sun behind him, his sides heaving as he regarded you with an imperious animosity. You stood and waited for his verdict, finding the anticipation to be more excruciating than the action itself but trusting his deliberations, trusting that whatever decision he arrived at would certainly be the right one. They were wise creatures, elephants, even the ones like him who were trained only for war.

He swung his trunk towards you like he meant to knock you down, and you did not flinch away from it, closing your eyes, wringing your hands to stop yourself from shying away, from running to the safety of your husband’s cousin and the elephant keepers. You could not let such a basic impulse impede your freedom, the freedom that you could only win through this agony, this tribulation, this death.

Yet instead of a crushing, bruising impact, he brushed it against you delicately, fondly, a featherlight kiss of a touch. You held your breath, but when nothing else happened, you cracked your eyes open, your brow pinching together as you looked at the elephant.

Verax exhaled out a rumbling whine of a breath, and then he fell to his knees, his trunk winding around you in what you could only describe as an embrace and was surely the tenderest affection you had received since coming to this bleak, cheerless empire. For a moment you did not understand it, and then, as surely as anything, it came to you, and you stroked your hand along his rough grey mouth.

“Does it cling to me even now, the spoor of that cellar, that prince?” you whispered in amazement. “No, you are not mistaken, Verax, it is him. Even now, Mydeimos lives; I swear to you that he does.”

“Lady!” your husband’s cousin said, wrenching you from Verax, his nails carving half-moons into your upper arms. “What foolishness is this? Have you a death wish? What would become of me, if something were to happen to you while you were under my care?” 

“It’s irrelevant, isn’t it? I’m unharmed,” you said.

“A small miracle,” he said, clicking his tongue. “You and my brother were right. It is for the best that you remain in the palace until you are in your right mind. Do forgive me for assuming to know you better than you knew yourself.”

“What will they do to him?” you said as he guided you away, his arm hard, unyielding against your waist. The keepers had set upon Verax, who, in the reverse of his earlier demeanor, only lay there and took it, as if the faintest traces of Mydeimos which he had picked up from you had been enough to soothe him into yielding. 

“To Verax?” he said. “I hardly know. You shouldn’t concern yourself with it; likely he will end up in the same way as his former master.”

“In the way of Mydeimos?” you said. “What do you mean by that?”

“Dead, of course,” he said. “What else?”

You turned for one final glance at Verax. He had nestled into himself, his cheek in the dirt and his legs tucked neatly against his enormous body. His ears fluttered weakly against the clangor of the many rebukes, but this was all the resistance he showed. The fight had left his eyes; they were now glassy and torpid, twin whelk-shells which sparkled at the corners with something that, if you were not more learned, you would call tears. But who had ever heard of an animal that cried? Still, as you left him behind, you could not shake the feeling that, whether from sorrow or jubilation, he was most assuredly weeping.

That night, you did not bother with ceremony or announcement when you returned to the cellar. You collapsed to the ground with a huff and slid the plate over to Mydeimos’s feet. Unlike the first few times you had done such a thing, he did not hesitate to sit across from you, using the silver cutlery you offered him to cut the meat into small pieces that he nibbled on with a daintiness which was almost pretty to watch.

“I saw the elephants today,” you said. He froze mid-chew before increasing his pace, swallowing it down in a gulp and canting forward, his expression feline, intrigued. It pinned you in place, staying your tongue and any retorts that might come to life by the sheer force of it. 

“The elephants? Then Verax—?” he said, so hopefully that all you could do was nod.

“Yes, him. Dromas and Lucabos, too,” you said. 

“Is he…alright?” he said. “Verax, I mean, though of course I worry for the others, too. But Verax is special.”

“Because he is yours?” you said. “You rode him into battle, did you not?”

He cocked his head at you, and for a long time he was silent, measuring the length and breadth of your mettle with his sweeping scrutiny. You did not move, afraid of what would happen if you failed this test, although he had proven so many times over that he had no intentions of harming you — just as you could not brave Verax without that old friend, however, so, too, could you not brave the searching, seeking Mydeimos.

“It is not customary for princes in Kremnos to ride elephants,” he said finally, evidently judging you worthy, though you knew not what you had done to deserve such a designation. He continued to eat in between sentences, every phrase constructed with a painstaking accuracy that he mulled over as he chewed. “We have cavalrymen for that. An elephant is a grand mount, but for a nation that thrives on bloodshed and conflict, such grandness is an extravagance that is frowned upon for those of us who are meant to be the ideal of that very turmoil.”

“Ah,” you said. “So it is that sort of place, then. I see.”

“Verax’s mother died as he was born,” he said. “So he was meant to be culled, for there wasn’t a soul in Castrum Kremnos, our fair capital, that had the time or the temperament for such an involved undertaking as raising him from infancy.”

“Culled!” you said, your hands flying to your mouth in surprise. “Such a small, darling creature, having just lost its mother, and they could only think to cull it?”

“They are without mercy,” he said, and unexpectedly he did not chide you for interrupting him as you thought he might’ve. In fact, he seemed to welcome it, your interest spurring him to continue instead of faltering into surliness as he often did. “Only those with the wherewithal to grasp at survival with both hands are deserving of this life, or so it is said; oh, don’t make such an expression, of course I don’t believe in the school of thought myself. Who do you think raised Verax? To my father’s eternal dismay, it was me.”

“You raised Verax?” you said, trying to envision it and finding you were unable. Was he capable of such parental warmth, this menacing, hulking figure sitting across from you? Had he handled the young calf with the hands of a warrior, coarse and unsympathetic, or had he managed to palliate them, so that they might resemble the compassion of the mother that the elephant had lost? Was that the extent of the love Verax knew, and was that why he mourned the prince so deeply, so consumingly? 

“Every night for a year, I slept in his stable,” he said, his eyes faraway, a small smile hovering at his lips — not entirely there, his frown still resolute in its position, but threatening to manifest at some point in the future. “He would follow me around in the daytime, a toddling, awkward mess of limbs that attended my lessons and watched my sparring matches with a sagacity that even most men can never hope to attain in their lifetimes. We were young together, Verax and I, and when the both of us ventured forth to the battlefields beyond Kremnos, we became men together, too. He is my child and my brother alike; thus, he is my particular concern. Tell me anything. Do they treat him well? Is he agreeable in his new situation? He is difficult, I have always scolded him for it — well, he is an elephant at the end of the day, so there is only so much he can understand, but I like to think he knows what I am saying more often than he doesn’t. They aren’t riding him, are they? His back is sensitive, in truth; I would not take to it for more than a few minutes at a time even if I were a simple cavalryman, for despite his size and strength, he does not have the necessary muscular development to carry a man for much longer than that. I could not bear to train him, you see, as I always found the methods of breaking too harsh to inflict on another in good conscience.”

“He…” You bit your lower lip. Would it be better to give him the truth, or would it be worse? How could you tell him that death, too, he would meet with Verax at his side? Yet how could you lie and say that he was alright? Because that false hope also seemed like a cruelty. When he had bared himself to you in this small way, when he had drawn back just one corner of his past in exchange for nothing of your own, how could you repay him with blithe misdirection? “I think that he longs for you.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners. “Then he is as he always is. Thank you, dear lady. I am relieved to hear it.”

This time, you had brought him a better blanket, the heaviest you owned that was not overly unwieldy as you dragged it down the stairs behind you. It was large and quilted, scenes from a hunt embroidered into it, the vibrant threads dipped in woad and madder, a pack of hounds chasing after a saffron-stained lion as he lay down and pulled the swath of dark wool over his shoulders. Tonight he did not stall or argue, only giving you a halfhearted reminder that you had sworn to be vigilant before rolling over without waiting for your response.

“You sleep so quickly,” you said. “I am almost envious, though of course for me to say I envy you in any sense is…in poor taste, as the case may be.”

He had left a little bit of food untouched, as tidily cut as what he had eaten but portioned and kept away from the rest. You didn’t want to be presumptuous, but skipping dinner every night was taking its toll, and so the pangs of your stomach insisted that he had left it for you, that he pitied or sympathized with you and so had given you this unsaid gift. You had no reason to think that he would do such a thing, of course, but eventually you could not deny yourself any longer, not when it was so tantalizing, so fetchingly plated.

“I wonder if I will ever understand you,” you said, chewing on the cold, pearly rice, rolling the white grains around on your tongue and squinting at his motionless form. “How many strange habits you have. What would the people of this empire say, if they knew that the prince of terrors was also the mother of elephants?”

You laughed under your breath for the both of you, finding refuge in the brief, catty amusement you had allowed yourself. You had no idea if Mydeimos would find it entertaining; likely he would not, considering the joke was at his expense, but you comforted yourself with the image of him sharing your humor, of one other person in this entire desolate place finding some value in straightforward repartee instead of conniving witticisms.

“But speaking of elephants…” you said, sobering immediately, all traces of levity leaving your body. Now that he was asleep, you could tell him the truth, could allow the burden of your earlier reticence to be alleviated by confessional honesty to his body, if not his waking mind. “Oh, Mydeimos, the situation is so horrible I could not stand to say it aloud to you, not when you were so — so sincere in your anxious querying, but Verax’s fate is not so dissimilar to yours.”

You pushed the plate, now empty, away from you, turning your attention to the stairs, both so that you could fulfill your promise to him and so that you did not have to acknowledge his presence when you spoke. Even his sleeping frame held a sort of judgment to it, an accusation to his silence, as if he were blaming you for everything that had yet occurred to him. You supposed he wasn’t wrong to do it, but you ran from that blame regardless, unable to take it, your back as unused to the task as Verax’s.

“They might put him down soon. They thought he was going to kill me, after all,” you said, tracing circles in the dust on the ground, coughing when it plumed into the air, blinking rapidly to clear your irises from the irritation. “I thought he was going to kill me…but, you know, I think that I wanted him to, a little bit. Or maybe a lot. I don’t know, I don’t — I don’t want to be here anymore, I never wanted to come at all, and if death is the only way I can go home, then—!”

You broke off, shame enveloping you, unable to fathom what you had just blurted out. Weren’t you self-absorbed for it? Weren’t you miserly for seeking out something that had been thrust upon him unwillingly? Something he would surely meet if it were not for you? His life, his existence, it was all tethered to yours, and yet you had tried to throw it away for your own brief deliverance.

“It was the worst season of my life, Mydeimos,” you recalled. “And, also, the last. I speak, naturally, of the one with the storms, when the empire’s ships first cast anchor in the Southern Sea.

“Once, my husband’s empire was a genuine ally of my home. We were friendly enough, or maybe a better way to describe it would be that we had an understanding with them: as long as we continued to trade with them, to bow to their whims and their prices, they would protect us from the abominable — ah, well, it was your people we feared most of all. I am sure you are not surprised by it? Maybe you are even glad that stories of your deeds precede you so far…but I should not continue to assign such reactions to you. I don’t know you any more than you know me, after all, so for all I know you find this offensive.

“Anyways. The empire was always a foreign, distant consideration, especially for me, who was always so sheltered, so guarded. I knew of them — who does not? — but they were not an immediate concern.

“My father was always suspicious of them, however. He was always suspicious of everyone, in fairness, it’s a characteristic of men like that, but against such an enormous entity, what could he do about it? For as wealthy as we are, the Southern Sea has little in the way of an army. Our men are either too young or too old or not brave enough for fighting, and that is our greatest secret, which even my husband does not know for certain but, I believe, has long since guessed at. 

“You know how covetous he is. When he came to conjecture that we were so defenseless, he sank his teeth into our underbelly, unflinching as he throttled us in the coils of his strength. It was wealth he wanted, my father’s vast stores of gold and jewels that he eyed with a feasting hunger. I do not doubt that he was fully prepared to bleed us of it, and indeed as the ships grew closer and closer they sent us a messenger on a small wooden boat.

“‘Each ship contains five hundred men, all ready to die for their empire. Surrender your greatest treasure to us, and we will spare you.’ That was what we were told. My father had no choice; he would rather give up all the gold in the world than let anyone suffer for a moment longer than they needed to.”

You bit the inside of your cheek until you tasted salt, so similar and yet so different from the sprays of brine that had infused the air by the beach on the day the messenger had come. You could recall even now what a sinewy, aquiline man he had been, his flat blue stare affixed on your damp features as he recited the emperor’s words in his stead. He is busy in Kremnos, the messenger had explained. A bloody crusade to defend you from that loutish prince of theirs. Yes, yes, I am speaking to you, lady — pray that that brute never lays eyes on you. Such a pretty little bird, so beautiful…he will most assuredly hunt you down and tear into you with rapturous vehemence.

“My father scrambled about, offering them as much as he could. Chalices of gold coins; jewels from my mother’s dowry; a hundred of the finest Eastern horses; spices that only grow in one place, for one week; yet all of these were refused. ‘You think the emperor will be satisfied with something so paltry?’ We were at a loss. It seemed as though nothing short of the entire kingdom would be enough to please them, and despite how generous my father is, he could not give them that.

“I was the one who understood first. At least, I accepted before the rest what it was that the empire truly sought out. The tides, the kingdom, these were all unreachable — even if they conquered us, we would never do their bidding, not in any way that lasted. Thus, they needed a more concrete claim, a child born of sand and sea. My child, which, upon its conception, will have a right to the empire and the ocean alike, uniting both under my husband’s name for good.”

You wrapped your arms around yourself in a facsimile of a hug, pretending like your father was there, clinging to you as he had on that final night. The wind had howled and he had cried and you had sat there, stoic, your expression motionless but for the faintest sheen in your eyes. You had refused to let yourself waver, knowing that if you showed any hints of hesitation, your father would never release you from his arms, and so the Southern Sea would fall to the fire and brimstone of the ceaseless empire.

“He didn’t want me to leave anymore than I wanted to go,” you said. “My poor father. He would’ve given up the world to keep me by his side, so I made the decision for us both and insisted upon it. I promised him that I would find love here, even in this loveless place, and whether he truly believed me or if it only soothed him to do so, I do not know, but regardless he eventually allowed it. So I boarded that wooden boat with that wooden messenger, and as the sea tossed about in lament, I came to the ship which would take me to my new home, to the statue I would wed the moment my feet touched the ground.”

You laughed again, but it was resentful and acrid, scalding the back of your throat in the way of vomit. Flexing your fingers and digging them into the gaps between your ribs, you waited until you could feel your pulse, feel the proof that you, too, had not turned to stone in the time since you had come here.

“Yes, a statue,” you said. “A real-and-true block of marble. That is what I wed, and that is what I swore to my father I would come to love. What he would think, if he could see me now…”

You yawned, your eyelids heavy, spots painting your vision as it blackened at the corners. Eventually your body would repay you for your weeks of insomnia, for the massive debt which you had incurred and kept increasing day by day, but pinching yourself, you sat up straighter, for if it was here that you conceded, you would never forgive yourself, and neither would Mydeimos.

“Lady.” The firm address cut through your daze, and you shifted to see Mydeimos at the end of his tether, holding the blanket out to you, his forehead creased into something a little kinder than a grimace but still expressing that same distaste. “Will you be able to survive for much longer in this way?”

You shook your head to clear it, swaying a bit from the effort you put into the gesture, taking a hold of the blanket to disguise your momentary lack of balance. He did not let go of it, watching your charily, as if you were wont to spook or collapse, and you would’ve protested, but what he did not know was that you really might’ve fallen if it weren’t for his stolid grip on it and, by extension, on you.

“I will be alright,” you said. “Do not fuss. If you can endure such conditions without becoming disconsolate, then should I not do the same?”

“I am hardened to it from years of campaigning on the battlefield,” he said. “I will not grouse until the last.”

“You are…” What was he? Estimable? Laudable? There were not words enough in this language for you to describe it, and you did not think that he would appreciate them, anyways, so you merely held him by the shoulders, your fingertips stressing to him all that you could not say aloud. “If it were you instead of the princess, perhaps things would not be so dire for my home. You would not have absconded as she did, would not have forsaken your people for wealth and wedding. If it were you…if it were you…”

“Do you have some vendetta against her?” he said. “This is not the first time you have spoken ill of her.”

“She had everything I could ever want,” you said. “Yet she threw it away at the slightest provocation, prancing off to her new husband without care for all that she was leaving behind. I hate her for it, in truth. What if she had had a stronger will, a prouder spirit? If she had been from Kremnos, as you are, then instead of capitulating immediately, might she have fought?”

His eyes widened slightly, and then, inscrutably, enigmatically, they softened, twin suns on a summer evening settling into a comfortable, radiant twilight. You were enthralled by them, by their vast, golden tranquility, and for the briefest moment, entirely unbidden and illicit though it was, the notion of taking him into your arms crossed your mind.

“There is honor in concession, too,” he said, lifting your hands from his shoulders and setting the blanket in them before turning away. “Sometimes it is more difficult to live than it is to die; is persisting regardless, then, not bravery? At any rate, it’s a lesson the Kremnoans, many of whom do not live until they are dying, could stand to learn. Perhaps that princess of yours has more tenacity than you give her credit for after all.”

You held the blanket to your chest; it was still warm, the heat of his skin lingering in the wool even now, transforming it into a cinder which flickered against the hearth of your breast, coaxing a smoldering, dormant fire back into feeble life even as you attempted to outrun the effect. You stumbled up the stairs with the poise of a drunkard, like the proximity to him was what mattered, like there was some distance you could put between yourself and Mydeimos which would cure you of this new revelation, which you had not experienced before but could nevertheless recognize to be unwanted, dangerous, despicable.

What was its name, this clawing, rending sensation that took root in your stomach and fought desperately to tear out? Was it another version of consternation, made delicious and tangible from its immediacy, its familiarity? Had you grown so used to him that your fear had matured into something else, something that you sought out for its nigh-pleasurable thrill? Or was there another explanation, an aspect that you were missing in your callowness?

“Lady, were you listening to me, or shall I repeat myself?”

You startled at the voice that yanked you from your contemplations, which even so late into the next afternoon had not come to a satisfactory conclusion. Your husband’s cousin was staring at your expectantly, wisps of steam from his teacup billowing in his serene face, and when he realized you were blinking at him, he set it down and folded his hands in his lap. Your face growing hot with shame, you placed your own across from his and nodded to indicate he could continue.

“Are you still perturbed by what happened yesterday, such that it even disturbed your sleep?” he said. “Rest assured, if you are so troubled, then I can command them to halt their efforts at domesticating the recalcitrant animal and slay it for its crimes posthaste.”

“Verax?” you said. “No, no — it was my own — it was my own mistake, it definitely was, and I would hate to see such a valuable treasure destroyed for my foolishness. Please ensure that he is kept soundly and well; an elephant is not easily obtained, especially one such as Verax, who is worth ten each of those pack-types like Lucabos and Dromas. We mustn’t let him go to waste.”

“How forward-thinking,” he said. “Is this how your family’s wealth has accumulated? Perhaps we ought to learn from you, if you have the mind for investments and returns.”

“No, my father was the one who managed those things,” you said, swallowing back a yawn. “I was not privy to it, nor did I have much interest. I think that this is just an example of what my people call common sense.”

As soon as you said it, you realized how rudely it had come across, and indeed you were surprised that you had been able to do it at all. Of course, it was easier with others who were not your husband, the easiest of all when it was Mydeimos, but he was not Mydeimos, and was the closest person to your husband besides he himself, so you were in truth taken aback that you could speak as you willed. Perhaps it was the intention, or perhaps it came down to the fact that no matter what, he was not your husband, and so as long as you kept that basic little decorum, you were free to do what you liked.

“There is also that explanation,” he allowed. “But the fate of that elephant is not what I wish to discuss with you.”

“Then?” you said. 

“I am speaking to you, of course, as a family member — a relative of your husband’s, with a natural concern for the fate of his line and his empire,” he began. “You know that my brother is ever-busy with his celebrations and his councils, so the task of broaching this sensitivity falls to me.”

“You are his second, are you not? Who else would it be?” you said, raising your glass to your lips and peeking at him over the rim.

“That is exactly what we must discuss,” he said. You cocked your head at him; he cleared his throat, picking up his teacup, stirring in a lump of sugar and putting it back down without taking even a sip. Steepling his fingers, he pursed his lips at you. “He has been home for long enough that there should be news of an heir’s impending arrival by now.”

Fragments of crystal flew into the air with a crash of protest, scattering and embedding into the rich weave of the carpet below your feet, the stain of tea spreading dark and bloody over the cheery floral motifs. You immediately dropped to your knees, pressing the ends of your dress to it in a desperate attempt to soak it away before the damage was permanent, but all your efforts awarded you were cuts littering your hands and knees, translucent shards digging into your palms and slicing thin, stinging streaks which might, if they scarred, change the read of your fate-lines permanently.

“I am sorry,” you said. “My hand slipped — I didn’t think it would break — and now I have ruined it! I have ruined it, I did not mean to, please forgive me, I am so very sorry—”

“Why do you apologize so incessantly?” he said, helping you stand and picking the glass out of your hands with academic precision. “This carpet is yours. You can do what you want with it.”

“It is my husband’s,” you corrected. “As with everything in this empire, it belongs to him. By destroying it, I am destroying a small piece of him, and I do not want to do that. I am not permitted to do that.”

“Ah,” he said. “Well, if you are apprehensive about learning his reaction, don’t be. He will forgive you. He has finer carpets than this one, and needs more excuses to use them. Anyways, he won’t know of it unless you or I tell him, and I shall keep my silence if you swear to as well. Does that pacify you? Then let us continue with the earlier subject.”

“Yes,” you said. “You are commanding me to fulfill my obligations to him. I know I must, but…”

“Allow me to finish,” he said. “I understand that you have no desire for my brother. You needn’t affirm it, I know you cannot, but I am sure when I say that you cannot deny it, either, not if you are being honest with yourself. You hold neither love nor lust for him, and so any children born of your union will be puny, perhaps not even surviving past infancy.”

“How can you be so certain of that?” you said.

“It is enough of a trend in our family that some wonder if it is a genuine curse,” he said. “Those kings who are born of joy are robust, vigorous men, while those of withering wombs are invalid and infirm from the start.”

“I see,” you said. 

“You will not come to love him,” he predicted. “He pays no special attention to you, and the only gift he has ever given you is a ghastly prince you are forbidden from so much as seeing. What basis is there for love? So there is only one thing which can be done: you must find someone else, someone who will lie with you knowing that they will lose their life for it, and then you must pretend as though the ensuing child belongs to my brother alone.”

“You mean for me to commit such a sin?” you said incredulously. “You would endanger three lives for the sake of one? For you must know that my husband would not spare any of us — myself, the father, or the son — if he were to discover that he had been deceived in such a way.”

“He will never discover it,” he promised you. “I personally ensure that he won’t. Choose someone beneath notice, or someone who you trust with your entire being, and he will never come to know of it.”

“There is no one like that,” you said.

He smiled at you, dropping your hands and calling for a servant to fetch a broom. You eyed him, taking a skittish step backwards, but he did not match it, did not chase after you with an insistence that you listen to his idea, which was so far-fetched as to be closer to genuine fiction than probability.

“Don’t be so sure,” he said amiably. “You might be surprised at what suitors you will find, if you only think to ask.”

How was it, that in this entire palace, this entire empire, so filled with noble, genteel lords and refined, elegant ladies, you could only find sanity and solace in the cellar? How was it that until the sun set and you ran down those stairs, the stone slick and dense beneath your racing feet, you found yourself living in the type of delirious dream characteristic of fevers, and it was only there, in that dark, contained world consisting of nothing but yourself and Mydeimos and the chains which bound him, you could, for even a second, wake up?

“You wish to ask me something,” he said when he was about halfway finished with the food you had brought him. You were sitting on the blanket, the one with the lions and the hounds, and although you were pretending to be engrossed with flipping the corners up and down like a child with a new game, you had indeed been observing him from beneath your lowered lashes. “If it is so, then you should just ask. I will answer as best as I can.”

“Do you have a wife?” you said, deciding that if it had plagued you for this long, there was nothing to be lost in asking, especially as he had given you the permission for it.

He choked on the piece of fish he had just bitten into, thumping on his chest and coughing to dislodge it.

“What?” he said.

“A wife,” you said. “Do you have one? I mean, are you married? 

“No,” he said. 

“Really? But you are a prince,” you said.

“So?” he said, sneering as he regained his composure. “That doesn’t mean anything. I have spent my entire life far too busy with the care of my people to pay any mind to such a trivial construct as marriage.”

“Then you will not be able to understand my dilemma quite as well,” you said, both because it was the truth and because you wished to hide that you were, for some reason, relieved by this development. “But I will tell you anyway.”

“Your dil—you intend to seek my counsel regarding your marriage?” he said. “Surely you jest.”

“If you did have a wife,” you said, ignoring the scoff he let out at that. “If you did, and she bore a son by another man, what would you do to him?”

“I suppose I would put him to death, as would be expected of me,” he said.

“What if it was not his fault? What if your wife was the one who begged him to do it?” you said. “Would you kill them both?”

“No,” he said, sliding the still half-filled plate over to you and wrinkling his nose when you tried to give it back. “I would not kill her. Even if she were entirely to blame, I would not. It is easy to give the order for a nameless, faceless man’s death, but when it is someone you love, it is difficult.”

“Say you do not love her,” you urged, giving in to his unspoken behest and spearing a cooked vegetable through with the silver fork he had left atop the plate.

“Then I would not have wed her, and so she would not be my wife, in which case this entire situation would never occur in the first place,” he said, and rather smugly at that. “There you have it. Is that all, or must we continue this game? I thought that you were in some genuine trouble and required proper advice.”

“I…” you trailed off into a sighing exhale, suddenly finding yourself entirely foolish for expecting something like condolence from him. “Never mind.”

“Fatigue can drive someone to the brink of madness,” he said, and behind the gruffness was a note of solicitude. “Why don’t you sleep?”

“I can’t,” you told him. “I try, every night for a few hours after I have returned to my chambers, but inevitably it ends the same: I am caught in the throes of a nightmare which leaves me more debilitated than before. I cannot escape anguish, it seems.”

“Sleep here,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and sticking his sharp nose in the air — an affected show of haughtiness that even a child would not fall for. “You have given me much, so in return, for just this one night, I will guard your dreams and defend you from that which troubles you.”

“Here? You mean the floor? What sort of proposition—” you broke off, wilting at the dull look he gave you. “Er, my apologies. I meant no offense, and really, I am appreciative that you would offer to do such a thing, but I am sure it will come to nothing, so let us not waste any time with an attempt. My woes are self-inflicted, after all, and thus undeserving of pity, of your pity especially.”

There were many mysteries contained within this prince — of terrors, of victory, of sacrifice and of subjugation — you knew this well, so well that by now it should have ceased to surprise you when he did something odd, when he proved himself to be so opposite to the philistine warrior everyone claimed he was. Yet that did not stop perplexity from washing over you when he exhaled heavily, extending his legs and leaning his head against the wall.

“Come,” he said. You narrowed your eyes at him, not from anger but out of a genuine desire to understand his method.

“Where shall I go?” you said patiently. “I am already here with you.”

“You will not sleep on the floor,” he said. “I do not know — well, I mean, one of my legs has this infernal chain about it, so it’ll hardly be any better, but perhaps it will be enough of an improvement?”

“Pardon?” you said. “I must confess I am still confused.”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and when he elaborated, it was through gritted teeth, each word bullied out with a diffidence so at odds with his imposing posture and broad physique.

“You may use me for your own measures,” he said. “You will meet your end if you do not, and then what? So let us make this one attempt. Lay your head in my lap if you cannot accept the floor, and, even if it is fleeting and fraught, come to sleep.”

Your mouth opened and closed soundlessly, and then you were laughing, burying your face in your hands as you giggled helplessly, because wasn’t it such a joke? All the vows and magic that your husband had needed in order to tie your tongue, and yet here was Mydeimos, his greatest enemy, who had managed to steal your voice with merely the offer of his lap for you to lay your head upon.

His thigh was hard, muscular against your cheek, and although he was abnormally hot, it was not in the way of a fever; rather, it seemed natural, as if he were born to run at this temperature, a streak of fire that had deigned to coalesce into the shape of a man for some time. In comparison, the links of the thrice-blessed chains were freezing, and you shifted so that they did not push into your forehead, wanting nothing of the empire to touch you, wishing that nothing of this place would touch him, either, even if that could never be the case.

“Why do you trust me so much?” he said after a while. “You have from the beginning. I could have killed you so many times, dear lady, in so many ways — I even told you that, and yet you have not faltered.”

“Hm,” you said, rolling over so that you were on your back and could peer up at him. “I don’t know.”

His palm met your stomach with the lightness of a butterfly, splaying over it as he used his other hand to cover your eyes so that you had no choice but to close them. Your breaths grew shallow from that same ache as the other night, that ache which you were beginning to think did not originate from fear but another source entirely.

“The fork you give me to eat,” he said. “I could tear you asunder with it. It’s good silver, and sturdy — of course, it’s no spear, and I am nowhere near my full strength, but against you it would be more than sufficient as a weapon.”

He traced a path up your sternum, and then he encircled your neck with his fingers, placing no pressure upon it, only rubbing up and down along the furrows between your tendons.

“There is enough slack in my chains,” he said. “I could draw you close, throw them around your neck, and pull them taut until your throat is crushed.”

He hummed, and then his hand slid to your heart, which pounded and pounded until you thought it really was a puzzle that it did not burst forth and make its home in his fist.

“But all of these accoutrements are superfluous,” he said. “If I want, I can tear your heart out with only my hands — or, if your husband is to be believed, my teeth. I can do it now, and all too easily.”

“Yes,” you said. “You could.”

“You are frightened,” he said rhetorically.

“I’m not,” you said.

“Your heart is beating so fast,” he said. “And I have just explained to you how simply I could kill you, as well as how frequently I have considered it. Surely you are.”

“That isn’t why it’s beating,” you said. 

“Then?” he said.

“It’s because you’re here,” you said. “I can’t explain much beyond that, but I do not think — I do not think it would beat like this for anyone else.”

“No one has ever said that to me,” he said. “I am the one who silences hearts. Never have I been accused of accomplishing the inverse.”

“That is the reason,” you repeated. “I feel that it must be.”

He lifted his hand from your chest and patted your cheek, refusing to move the other from where it still soothed over your sore eyes.

“Well, no good will come of pondering it any longer,” he said, and if you strained, you could hear the faintest traces of a smile in his words. “Sleep now, and do not worry about your nightmares; the savage prince of a savage land is far more frightening than any visions your mind can come up with, and as you have conquered me, so, too, can you conquer them.”

You did not even have the wherewithal to ask him what he meant by that before the darkness and the warmth he afforded you lured you into the deepest pits of unconsciousness, where you had not been since you had come to this empire. And whether it was his presence or his reassurance or some magic — well, likely not the latter, the gods of this empire held no love for either of you — you really did not wake for many hours, sleeping, for the first time in months, without a single dream to haunt you.

“I apologize, brother, but it really is impossible to secure the south from the sea,” your husband’s cousin said from position at your husband’s right. “I have consulted with the best naval captains this empire has to offer, and they all give the same answer.”

“Consult them again, then, or find some better advisors. How is it that the kingdoms by the Southern Sea have flourished for as long as they have, and yet we cannot so much as make a foothold without it being swept away?” your husband snapped.

They had been going back-and-forth in this way for some time now, running in circles and saying the same thing over and over, neither satisfied with the other’s perspective. Ordinarily, you would’ve been brought to tears by the grating, cyclical nature of the discussion, as well as the rapidly rising volume, but today you were far too content with the bliss that a proper night’s rest brought to let them sully your happiness.

“Perhaps we should ask your darling wife,” his cousin suggested. “How about it, lady? Any maritime wisdom or common sense you’d like to share?”

“They say the sea knows more than we do,” you said, alarmed by the sudden address but disguising it well. “Perhaps it’s sending a message.”

“A message?” your husband said. “About what, exactly?”

Leave this place. Never return. The sea is not yours. The sun is not yours. I am not yours. He is not yours. Leave, leave, leave, you damnable man, leave these waters at once, leave me at once, leave and rot in the eternal winter of your solitary empire. The sea is not yours. The sun is not yours. I am not yours. He is not yours. Mydeimos is not yours, he’s not, he’s not. Leave while you still can. Leave while I still allow it. You thought it might be something like that.

“I cannot say, my lord,” you said, bowing your head so he did not notice that your eyes smarted when you were, once again, rendered mute and dumb before him. “But might I recommend that you turn your attention elsewhere for the time being? The season of the storms approaches rapidly once more, and the waters will only grow more and more treacherous. It may be better if you wait until it is over.”

“Let us concentrate our efforts on Kremnos and leave the south for now,” his cousin said. “We will be all the better for it.”

“Kremnos,” your husband repeated, his countenance unreadable, everything about him carefully neutral. “I do not foresee them being a problem for much longer, but if you both think that we should withdraw from the sea for the time being, then who am I to continue in my mulish refusals?”

“Have you come up with some new strategy?” his cousin said. “I thought that we were at somewhat of an impasse with the Kremnoans, our last victory being the capture of Mydeimos.”

“It is not new, necessarily, but finally nearing fruition,” your husband said. “Patience, brother; as I tell you and my dear lady so constantly, all will be revealed in time.”

“You preach patience far more than any man endowed with so little of it ought to,” his cousin said, although he said it more to you, flashing an innocent grin that you did not reciprocate in the slightest. 

Ever since he had recommended you find another to father the first of your sons, you had begun to see your husband’s cousin in a new light. Your husband was the more obvious of the two, so charming that he could not be anything but false, his comeliness in the way of a brightly-petaled flower, warning those who knew the signs that he was a peril, something to be avoided or, if touch was inevitable, then treated carefully, with the utmost of prudence. His cousin, on the other hand, did not have that same showmanship, that flair — he didn’t need to, not when he could somehow wheedle out one’s greatest secrets without ever divulging any of his own. 

He did everything with the sort of deliberate scrupulousness that only a second son would, and the more you thought about it, the uneasier you grew that you were an object of some contention between the two of them. Neither your husband nor his cousin would ever say it, but you could tell from their wily, duplicitous exchanges that they both wanted something out of you, and furthermore that whatever it was each wanted was different, at odds with his counterpart’s desires, setting them against one another even as they continued to behave as though they were true-born brothers of blood and body and mind alike.

“There’s news from the Southern Sea, by the way,” your husband said, his hand on the small of your back as he walked with you to your chambers, where you would spend the day as you always did, with idle amusements that did little to occupy your mind but would at least pass the time until you could go to the cellar once again. “About the king. Do you wish to hear?”

“The king?” you said. “Yes, yes, what is it? Of course I wish to hear. Is he alright?”

“They say he is gravely ill,” your husband said.

You thought you had known despair. You thought you had known anguish. You thought that pain and suffering were things that you were deadened to, that you had learnt how to live with, but everything you had ever experienced paled in comparison to this. It was as if a million needles drove into you at once, the tips a scorching white, melting away at every carefully constructed layer of armor you had drawn over yourself, boring into the veneer of magic that prevented you from screaming and wailing and shaking your husband until he let you go home.

“What is it?” you said. “What has beset him?”

“The southerners are such silly, high-strung folks,” he said, shaking his head in amusement. “Believe it or not, but apparently, his physicians say that his affliction is none other than grief.”

“Grief?” you repeated, and then you were grabbing his arm and you hated yourself for it, but if you did not hold onto something you would crumple to the ground, you would crumple and never get up and you couldn’t — you couldn’t — “Grief? What do you mean?”

“His eldest daughter,” he said. “She has left him, and now he is dying of his longing for her.”

“I—” Your hands came to your neck, and they felt so different from Mydeimos’s, which had claimed that very same place only hours before — a constraint instead of a consolation, a sentence instead of a supplication. 

“He never loved anyone the way he loved that girl, after all,” he said, his eyes sparkling, like he was daring you to say something and finding exorbitant glee in the way you couldn’t, in the way your throat closed whenever you tried to curse him. “It’s a sorry thing, really. Perhaps seeing her even once might be enough to cure him…but we both know that’s not going to happen, is it? Oh, we have arrived at your chambers! Good day, dear lady. I shall see you for dinner.”

The worst was that you could not bring yourself to shed even a tear. You lay in your bed on your back, staring blankly at the ceiling, numb to the world as the scene played over and over in your mind. The king. They say he has taken ill. At one point, your husband’s cousin knocked on your door and told you it was time for supper, but you ignored him, or maybe it was more accurate to say that you didn’t even hear him in the first place. Perhaps seeing her even once might be enough to cure him…but we both know that’s not going to happen, is it?

You couldn’t move. You couldn’t cry. You couldn’t breathe. The sun set and the moon rose and still you were immobile, because what did it matter? The Southern Sea was lost; it had been from the start, you supposed. Your marriage had only been a delay of the inevitable, but you had known from the start that things would end like this, had known that the empire would never settle for anything less than total suppression.

Yet if that was the case, if you would meet your end regardless, then why could you not at least meet it at your home, as yourself? Why instead were you here, metamorphosed into this soulless doll, removed from all you had ever loved? Maybe you deserved it. Maybe this was your punishment for taking the easy way, the simple route, for caving to the empire instead of staying true and fighting as your father had wanted to. Maybe you should not have been surprised, and maybe you might’ve tolerated it if you were the only one bearing the consequences — but it was not just you, it was everyone, and this was what hurt you the most, what felt like twenty consecutive blows to your stomach, to that vulnerable flesh which would so easily rupture, which you thought really might rupture the longer you spent ruminating on the throwaway conversation which had irrevocably changed the course of your day, of your life.

Where you found the strength to stand, you could not say. It was instinct at this point, the act of sliding out of your bed, gathering a blanket and whatever food you had stashed away for Mydeimos before trudging down to the cellar where he awaited you. This must’ve been the reason, then — you were so accustomed to the work that your body operated even in the absence of your mind, such that you were handing his plate to him before you even realized where you were.

“Thank you,” he said before tilting his head at you. “Would you like some?”

“What?” you said. He held up the plate, and a second later, you registered his question. “No, I don’t want to eat anything from here.”

He raised his eyebrows but did not comment on it further, and so the two of you sat in quietude. You had so much you might’ve told him but could not; as for him, you guessed it was the inverse, in that he could say whatever it was he pleased, but there was just so little he wanted to say that the effect was the same.

“This empire has such finicky gods,” you said finally, focusing on the red of his throat, the way it crested and then ebbed with every swallow. “They will grant you any wish, as long as it is done in some form of three. Creation, preservation, death — father, man, son — this world has a propensity for the number, it seems, so doesn’t it make sense? And what amazing things you can do when you understand that. Repeat a phrase thrice over and think of the messenger lord; he will afford you the ability for it to be heard anywhere in the world, as long as you have been there once. Make your wedding vows three times under a portrait of the lady of matrimony; you will be bound by them until death.”

“We don’t believe in these miracles in Kremnos,” he said. “They are explicable by coincidence and cunning.”

“Even where I am from, we only recognize one god, and it is less god, more entity,” you said, speaking, of course, of the sea. “One we do not worship, but who loves us regardless. It is a more sustainable approach in my mind.”

“That is how it is for us,” he said. “Our religion is found on the battlefield, and victory is our only prayer. Sometimes, I wish it were not the case, that our devotion was not so violent, so all-consuming…but that is how it is.”

“Perhaps it is violent, but at least it is fair,” you said. “Not like here. Not like these gods, who will enforce even cruelty if it is asked of them.”

“You resent them,” he said. “You cannot confirm it, I am sure, cannot speak ill of them any more than you can of your husband. But I have come to understand your ways, and so I am sure you resent them.”

“If only there were something I could do to them,” you said, reassured immeasurably by his comprehension. “Some way I could — some way I could —”

“Rebel?” he completed for you when you clearly could not. You nodded, and he pouted in thought, pushing his now-empty plate away and reclining back against the wall the way he always did when he was finished. “I am sorry. I am a heretic in these lands; I do not know their traditions well enough to blaspheme them.”

“Oh,” you said. “Oh, that’s it.”

“Hm?” he said, watching you as you shuffled over so that you were sitting beside him, the blanket covering you both, his arm all but scalding against yours. “What are you doing?”

“You are the antithesis of this empire,” you said. “You are everything my husband hates, everything he wishes to destroy. With your mere existence, you imprecate his gods, and so I shall force those deities to defend your every sacrilegious breath. Those celestial beings who bore silent witness to your capture, to my wedding…by my will, for how much they have cursed you, they will now be bound to defend you with threefold the vigor!”

Mydeimos was motionless as you combed your fingers through his hair, his expression reverent like you were not just channeling a divinity you had no claim to but in fact were that divinity yourself. Your movements were careless, your knuckles banging against his chin, your palm skimming along his neck, but he did not complain, only staring at you with that same gentle admiration that would’ve made you flush with heat if only you were not so terribly focused on remembering everything you had ever read on the religion of your husband’s empire.

Brushing the rest of his hair over his shoulder, you took a lock from near his nape, twirling it around your finger and then holding it to your lips, murmuring words from a language neither of you held claim to but which you had memorized before your wedding, words which opened the both of you to the surveillance of the gods that would fulfill your commands.

“Integrity,” you said, separating the tress of hair into three sections and pulling the leftmost taut. “May your causes be ever strong and true; may you always be just and forthright in your actions; may you never waver from the path of honor.”

You crossed it over the middle strand, and then you took the rightmost, which was like silk in your grasp, dancing like sunbeams in the lamplight. 

“Loyalty,” you said. “May your people never betray you; may your men follow you until the bitter end; may you always have the might of your kingdom at your back.”

This, too, you crossed over the middle, the careful weave of a braid beginning to form, the neat v’s that would mark him as forever blessed, forever watched over by gods, by you. 

“Love,” you said, swallowing as you took the final piece, finding that your mouth was dry from more than overuse. “May you alway be loved, prince of Kremnos.”

A knot in your stomach unraveled as you worked, your fingers remembering the motions despite how long it had been since you had played with the hair of a friend or cousin. It was the knot of repression, of every single thing you had shoved down in the name of propriety, in the name of all the vows you had sworn, and as the warmth radiating from him sank into your bones, warding away the cold of this place for the first time since you had come to it, your vision began to swim with tears.

“I wish it were you,” you said, tucking the braid back amongst the rest of his hair, mussing it up so that it was as wild as a lion's mane, allowing your hands to fall into your lap as you wept in earnest, the break of your voice as much a product of your compounded grief as it was a supernatural effect. “I wish it were you, oh, how I wish that you were the one who had — who had —”

Married me. That was what you wanted to say. How I wish that you were the one who had landed upon the shores that day, how I wish that you were the one I had met with the sea at my feet and the sun on your shoulders, how I wish that you were that one who had married me.

“Don’t cry,” he admonished, holding your jaw with the care one might afford to a sculpture made of glass, using his thumbs to wipe at your cheeks and eyes. “Y/N, Y/N, don’t cry. Please don’t.”

You froze, and then you were grabbing his wrists, holding them in place, holding onto him like he was the only thing keeping you in this realm. It must’ve bruised him, the weight of your fingertips against his veins, but he still gazed at you with that same mildness.

“What did you just call me?” you said.

“Y/N,” he said. “It is your name, is it not?”

“I never told you, so how…?” you said.

“Even in Kremnos, we have heard of the princess of the Southern Sea,” he said. “I was very young when news of your birth came, but I remember it as if it were yesterday, hiding behind my father’s throne so I could hear the announcement. Y/N L/N, they called you, a fine babe who will grow into the most beautiful girl the sea has ever whelped. I loved you then, I think; I loved you as soon as they said you were born to seals and whale-song.”

“Say it again,” you demanded. “My name, which no one else in this wretched place knows or cares to learn — say it again.”

“Y/N,” he said.

“Again,” you said, and then you were sobbing, viscerally and searingly and pathetically. “Say it again, please say it again, I miss it, I miss my father and all these things I cannot speak of, you do not know but I miss them so much I sometimes think I will be ruined by it—”

“I know,” he said, and then he was prying your hands off of him and gathering you in his arms, holding you to his chest and stroking your hair as you bawled. “Y/N. I do know. The sea, who is your mother; the king, who is your father; the home, which you left to protect. I do know.”

“How?” you choked out. He pressed his lips to the crown of your head.

“I am not such a sound sleeper,” he said. “Everything you have ever wanted to say to me, I have heard. I know you, Y/N L/N. Beloved princess of the Southern Sea, if nothing else, I swear to you this: I know you.”

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[m1ckeyb3rry]

Series Synopsis: When the husband you’ve never met returns from the war you’ve never understood, he comes bearing a strange and inexplicable gift — a prince in chains who he refuses to kill.

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Mydei x F!Reader

Chapter Word Count: 10.2k

Content Warnings: pls check the masterlist there is. a lot. and i’m not retyping all of that LOL

A/N: I AM SOO SCARED TO POST THIS NGL LMAOAO like i said in the warnings i literally. have not played amphoreus yet. idek anything about mydei SDKJH i am so worried i will disappoint everyone who's expressed interest in reading this HAHA i was also. not expecting anyone to do that tbh. BUT thank you all for your kind words on the masterlist and i hope this lives up to expectations at least a bit!!

You spent the day of your wedding with a man made of marble — a stand-in for your new husband, who was off fighting in a war of the kind which had neither cause nor, seemingly, end. The statue was carved in his image and sneered down at you as you whispered to it, swearing vows of duty and obedience and docility, but, in spite or maybe because of its detached lifelessness, you found its presence to be a kindness. What did it say of your husband, that you preferred the company of that dead stone to him? Perhaps very much, or perhaps very little. 

He is a generous man, the servants assured you, giggling amongst themselves, exchanging knowing looks as they dragged you into the foreign palace where you would spend the rest of your days. You will want for nothing.

It was draftier than your home, the wind bouncing off of the white walls and nipping at you skin. You spent your time buried under seven-and-twenty layers of furs and fabrics, lying in an unfamiliar bed and flinching away from the shadows upon the ceiling. This was an idle and dull way to waste away your existence, and yet you could not bring yourself to do anything else, trapped in the mire of waiting and waiting for your husband’s return.

He came back in the third month, which was as auspicious as anything. They loved that number here, you had come to find: three, the symbol of fortune and fate, of magic and mischief, of power and punishment. Three vows sworn; three blessings granted; three months passed before you finally met the man you had married.

There was much fanfare about his arrival. When you peered out of the window, you saw that the streets were stuffed to the bursting with throngs of people shoving one another around, hissing and biting as they craned their necks. At first it surprised you — was he truly so loved here, even when he was elsewhere despised? — but then you realized that it was not your husband upon his charger that they were all lined up to meet. Rather, it was the procession following him which captured their interests, the spoils of war which he displayed with a juvenile, worthless pride.

A triad of elephants covered in finely wrought armor, their heads hung low and resigned, their plodding walks spiritless and lame. A herd of sheep with silver wool, dotting the dark cobblestones like a cluster of stars, stumbling along at the prodding of a soldier-turned-shepherd. A wagon filled with spears and swords, ostensibly once neatly stacked, now a matted mess of steel and bronze. Vases carried in the arms of the younger men, overflowing with coins that trailed after them like breadcrumbs, snatched up by the most daring of the onlookers, who did not fear rebuke. And, finally, in a place so honorable it could only have been mocking—

“Lady,” a soft voice said. You drew your coat tighter around you, although today was, by all accounts, warm for the season, and pretended like you did not hear the girl. She sighed and then tugged on your arm insistently; perhaps it was improper, but there wasn’t anyone who would chide her for it. “You have been summoned by his majesty.”

Hadn’t you known this would happen eventually? Hadn’t you expected it? You had had your time to come to terms with it, which was more than most got, and so there was no excuse for the reluctance which choked your throat and stilled your footsteps. This was your duty, this was what you had sworn, and so — and so you could not hesitate.

“Lady…” the girl said with another sigh. You pretended to be all-consumed with the action of closing the curtains, your back to her as you struggled to force a smile onto your face. When you deemed your expression acceptable, you spun around and nodded at her.

“It will not do to keep him waiting,” you said, motioning for her to lead the way. She did so without complaint, perhaps relieved that you were not giving her further trouble; even now, the servants did not know what to think of you, could not quite fathom what category of being you were. Some were fond of you, but most treated you with a careful distrust that you could not blame them for, even though you sometimes wanted to.

The grand entrance hall of the palace opened to the mouth of the road, which swelled out into a sprawling courtyard. Its centerpiece was an enormous fountain which sprayed a fine, cool mist into the air no matter the time of year, and it was by this fountain that you waited, wringing your hands as your husband drew nearer and nearer. Belatedly, you thought that you should try to conceal your distress, but there was nothing to be done about it now. The best you could do was say, if you were asked, that it was simply the joy of a bride faced with the prospect of a reunion with her beloved. Nobody would question that, although then again, nobody questioned you very much in general, so it was doubtful that you’d even have to use the quick excuse.

Your husband’s warhorse was a sprightly, slender beast, its coat the dappled grey of royalty, its face pretty and dished in the way of the Eastern breeds. When it paused in front of you, it shoved its black muzzle into your shoulder, nearly knocking you down, and then it stomped its hoof when your husband tightened the reins, pulling it back before dismounting and handing it off to a waiting stableboy. 

“My apologies, dear lady,” he said, bowing before you with as much gallantry as you had been told he possessed. His voice was gentle and amused, his face even more handsome in flesh than it had been in stone; you should’ve, by all rights, felt pleased. You were married to this man. You belonged to him. How many women wished to be in your place? Yet all you could muster was fear, throttling and all-consuming. He was beautiful in the way of a snake, and you knew without knowing that he was poised, in some way, to strike.

“It is alright,” you said, disguising the tremble of your voice with a broad, false grin. “I am glad to finally make your acquaintance…my lord.”

The address was unfamiliar on your tongue. What would your younger self, that girl who had never known subservience nor strife, say if she saw you ducking your head in defeated compliance? How she would laugh! How she would pity you! My lord. But he was exactly that.

“The sentiment is returned in full,” he said, and then he extended his arms in a grand, sweeping motion. “Indeed, to celebrate this momentous occasion, I have arranged for you a gift!”

“A gift?” you repeated. Certainly, you had asked for no such thing, and you did not have the time to school your face into neutrality, naked surprise flashing across it. Your husband chuckled at the sight, nodding at you.

“I have brought the finest of plunders for you, dear lady,” he said, and your stomach twisted into knots at the familiarity with which he spoke to you, as if you were affable lovers instead of strangers. “Even your father’s treasures, vast and bountiful as they may be, cannot compare to this!”

The mention of your father stabbed at your heart, and hidden in the folds of your coat, you clenched your fists. Your father, the richest man in the world…and yet your husband dared compare his meager gift to that? You wanted to spit in his face that for your third birthday, your father had gifted you a villa made of gold, the walls inlaid with gemstones and painted with flowers. Indeed, you might’ve goaded him in such a way if you had the capabilities, but then you noticed what the army-men were bringing forth and your mouth suddenly refused to move.

It was the prisoner, the one kept in a place of honor by your husband and his soldiers, the one who the entire empire had ridiculed as he had been paraded through it like a champion hound. He was tall, towering over the army-men flanking him, and although his eyes drooped nearly shut, there was a heat to his demeanor, a severe, ferocious anger which shone through his exhaustion. He seemed like more of a half-tamed jungle cat than a man, and indeed when he halted before you, you half-expected him to snarl, to bare bloody fangs and lunge at your throat with fingers like claws, like swords, tearing through your neck as if it were paper.

“When he’s like this, you almost forget what a monster he can be,” your husband mused, reaching out and flicking the man on the forehead with a snicker. “Isn’t he all but lovely? Oh, don’t worry, dear lady, he can’t do anything to you. He’s under the influence of a sleeping draught at the moment, and anyways, those chains are thrice-blessed. It’s perfectly safe.”

The chains he spoke of were as gold as the man’s hair, looping around his wrists and forearms, curling over the red marks emblazoned on his shimmering skin, weaving in between his legs and around his torso. They were sturdy and gleamed with the power of their three blessings, and although you still understood little about this strange place with its strange power, you could tell that it would take a great force, greater than was possessed by any mere man or deity, to break them.

“He’s the prince of Kremnos,” your husband said when your shock stretched on. “A right beast, I’ll say. We almost fell to his efforts, but in the end, we bested him — as you can see. What do you think? Do you like him?”

“He’s — it’s — horrible,” you said, your skin crawling the longer and longer you stared at the prince, your words a jumble, your head spinning. You wanted to be anywhere but in this courtyard, in front of this fallen man, who was kept alive for — for what? For amusement? For play? As a gift?

“Isn’t he?” your husband said, patting you on the shoulder with a grim smile. “And now he is yours.”

The thrice-blessed chains flashed in the sun, and you shook your head, both in refusal and to clear your vision of the blinding, searing spots they left in it.

“I have no need of a prisoner,” you said, and although your tone remained ever-muted, you spoke as cuttingly as you could manage to. “What will I do with him? Why do you torture him so? You bested him; if he was as fierce an opponent as you claim, then the least you owe him is a death with dignity. Kill him and be done with the matter. Why have you brought him all this way? I don’t want him.”

“He will die, eventually,” my husband said. “I shall execute him myself when it comes to it, but the time is not yet right. I don’t expect you to understand such matters, and neither should you trouble yourself with doing so…but know this, dear lady: you cannot give back a gift once it has been freely given. You can do what you’d like with him now that he is yours, but you cannot refuse him. Perhaps that is how affairs were conducted in your backwards land, but here it is not so.”

You wanted my land, you longed to say. You took me from my father and wed me to a statue in search of it. And still you call it backward? But you could not, so instead, you turned away — away from the prince, who was close to crumpling and only remained standing out of sheer will, and away from your husband, who beamed as if he had done something great or wonderful.

“I will retire now,” you said. Do not follow me. This remained implied, unsaid, but a fool your husband was not, and so he only hummed in agreement.

“Be well, dear lady,” he said. “My messengers have told me that you are having difficulties adjusting to the climate here. I shall be sure to pray for your feeble constitution.”

“Thank you, my lord,” you said, stiffly, primly. It scratched like bile and you hated every minute of it, but you had no recourse for the matter, so you swallowed it down, as you always did and always would.

“And what of the prisoner?” he said. “Shall I send him to a jail? Do you think he is better suited for deprivation or pain?”

They meant to make him shatter, to methodically yank him apart until he faced death with the dull eyes and swayed back of an over-aged broodmare. You supposed to them it was meaningless — why should they show consideration or kindness to a man who would never show them the same? — but you were no warmonger, and that apathy did not cling to you yet. The prince was a beast born of sun, a wild, vicious creature, and if he really was slated to die, then you wanted him to meet his end as just that, nothing less. 

“Leave him be,” you said. “Treat him as well as you are able.”

“He would’ve killed me,” your husband said, a low note of warning in his voice. You shrank into the safety of your clothes, as if they were a shield against his vexation.

“But instead you will kill him,” you said. “So how does it matter? You said I could do as I like; well, this is what pleases me. Don’t prolong this anymore than necessary.”

You darted back into the palace without waiting to hear his answer, your jaw burning and your footsteps heavy against the mosaic floor as you ran all of the way to your chambers and slammed the door shut behind you.

For three days and three nights you did not leave your room, taking all your meals in seclusion, refusing any visitors that might attempt entry. You could not help it; the thought of seeing your husband or any of the soldiers made you want to weep — you! Who never wept, even as a baby! So you claimed that you were terribly unwell, that you could not stand for fear of collapse, and that managed to ward away your husband without incurring his wrath, even though it was only a temporary solution.

As the sun set on the fourth day, there was a knock on your door, and you were about to call out that you had no interest in conversation when someone hissed through the crack in the entrance: “Lady, I come not on your husband’s behalf but another’s. There is trouble, and you must attend to it.”

“What?” you said, scrambling to your feet, crouching by the entrance, pressing your ear to the wooden door without opening it. “Who is this? Who are you? Speak plainly, so that we may understand one another!”

There was a shuffling sound, and then an exhale. You worried with the collar of your shirt as you waited for them to continue, your arms pulled tightly around yourself, your brows furrowing together as you chewed on your lower lip.

“The prince of Kremnos,” they whispered. “He calls for you.”

“Are they mistreating him?” you said, straightening and flinging the door open. “The prince, are they — hello?”

The hallway was devoid of life. You peered down it, craning your neck this way and that, but it was placid, showing no signs of having been disturbed. Shutting the door slowly, you leaned against it, holding your head in your hands. Was this place driving you to insanity, then? And if it was, then why could you not have thought of something more pleasant than summons from a prisoner — prisoner!

Wasn’t it your duty to make sure your husband had held good on his word? The prisoner was yours, though the notion of ownership sent unpleasant shivers down your spine and didn’t feel quite right — perhaps a better way to think of it, then, was responsibility. He was your responsibility, and maybe the strange vision had been nothing more than a reminder of what you owed the man.

You waited until it was midnight, when you could be certain that your husband would not rise from his slumber at the sound of your activity, and then you donned a pair of slippers and a cloak, throwing the hood on and retreating into the billowing depths of the fabric, so that your face was obscured from prying eyes. Of course, there would not be very many of those, not at such a late hour, but you did not want to risk even one person recognizing you and reporting back to your husband, whose reaction to this escapade you could not foretell.

Although you were not so familiar with the palace’s layout, as you had never spent much time exploring it, most constructions of this nature followed a similar plan, and you had grown up in exactly such a grand, sweeping home, so you found the doorway to the cellar in record time. As the palace had no towers, the cellar was the only logical option for the keeping of such a dangerous prisoner, and you had no doubt in your mind that this was where you would find the prince, if he was still somewhere that you could find him.

The half-moon was your only witness as you fumbled with the lock, trying every key in your possession until one finally slotted into place and turned. Wincing as the door heaved open with a profound creak, you yanked it shut behind you quickly, without ceremony, lighting a small candle and using it to guide your way down the dark stairs, rushing so that you were out of sight in case someone came to investigate.

You did not know how long you walked for, but eventually the stairway ended, giving way to cool, damp earth. The must of uncut stone permeated the thick, heavy air, and the adjustment of your eyes to the surrounding blackness was slow, the pain of it only alleviated somewhat by the little candle’s valiant flame.

“Come to toss scraps at me?” The voice was rumbling and low; in spite of its weakness, you could hear a sneer in it, a disdain in the rough baritone. “You needn’t try again. Like I told you, I won’t eat your trash.”

“No,” you said. “I’ve brought nothing with me.”

There was a brief pause, and then: “You sound different than the others.”

“This tongue is foreign to me, as it is to you,” you said. “I cannot speak it in the same way as those who were born here. Verily I have been instructed in the art since I was but a child, for my father must have known in that manner of his what would eventually become of me, but I will never lay claim to it the way that a native of this empire would.”

“You’re his wife.” Chains clanked, the harsh drag of metal against stone reverberating in the cellar, and then you felt more than saw his looming countenance, filling what you had mistakenly believed upon arrival to be an empty room. Swinging your candle before you so that it was close to your heart, you gasped when it reflected in a pair of eyes glaring at you from mere paces away, the irises possessing a hollow and impossible brilliance in the way a pair of fading embers might. 

The chains now only encircled his left leg, binding him to the wall but leaving him otherwise free to move as he liked within the length of his confines. He had been stripped of armament and adornment alike, his mane of hair tangled and falling lank about his broad shoulders, yet for all of these injustices, you had no doubt in your mind that he was anything but a prince. He had a dignity to him, a hard-won pride to the straightness of his back and the firmness of his gaze; before you could chase it away, the thought came to you that there was far more intrinsic nobility to this man than there was even your husband.

“I suppose that I am,” you said.

“Have you come to gloat about your craven lord’s cowardly victory, then?” he said. The chains were pulled taut, so he could come no closer to you than he already was — you were sure of this, but you were still a slave to your instincts, which urged you farther and farther from him with every second. He watched you go with some measure of delight, like he was relishing in this power which you had inadvertently gifted him, and when you skittered to a stop, he huffed. “There is nothing to be proud of, and you look a fool for suggesting there might be.”

“I was just…” you trailed off, because it suddenly felt entirely absurd to suggest that you were inquiring after his wellbeing. What did it mean, the wellbeing of a doomed man? What reason would he have to believe your intentions? “What is your name?”

“My name?” he said with a brittle, incredulous laugh that rapidly descended into a cough. “Why? Do you wish to curse your husband with it? Does your language not have gods you can swear on?”

“You’re sickly,” you said, frowning and ignoring his jabs.

“You have torn me from the sun and chained me in this dingy room, and yet you have the gall to be surprised by that?” he said, scoffing. “You’re more of an idiot than that husband of yours.”

“I did no such thing!” you said. The defiance took you by surprise. You had forgotten what it felt like to defy someone, to disagree and resist their words, to feel alive with resentment and bad-temper. “I didn’t wish for this. I didn’t wish to keep you here anymore than you wished to be kept!”

“Is that so?” he said, and then he grinned at you, but it was less of a smile and more of a threat. “Then free me.”

“What?” you said.

“If you don’t want me, then free me,” he said.

“You’ll kill me if I do,” you said uneasily, shifting from foot to foot. 

“I give you my word that I will spare you,” he said, placing a solemn hand over his heart. 

“Not the others?” you said.

He did not respond, which in and of itself was a response. It was one you shouldn’t have liked as much as you did, but in truth the prospect of such a slaughter made your fingers twitch towards him. Only for a moment, and immediately, you shoved your hands behind your back, but it was too late — he had seen, and he raised his eyebrows at you in return.

“Well, anyways, it doesn’t matter,” you said hastily, hoping to distract him before he could comment on the treason. “I couldn’t free you even if I wanted to. Your chains are thrice-blessed. I didn’t know what that meant until recently, but now that I do, I understand why you have been kept without even a permanent guard.”

“Blessings,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t tell me you put genuine stock into that drivel.”

“Perhaps the gods of other lands have forsaken their subjects, but this empire is known as the birthplace of every divine act, and so deities still sometimes glance upon its people and offer up their favor. Thrice-blessed chains are one such offering, for they are in fact more like contracts than they truly are chains,” you said. When he did not interrupt you with any snide remarks, you were emboldened to continue. “They can restrain anything, even a god, but this strength comes at a cost: they are conditional. If their captive can understand this condition and meet it, they will crumble into dust, but until then, the chains remain unbreakable.”

“What is it?” he said insistently, reaching out his hands like he was going to grab you and shake the answer out. He fell short, grasping at empty air, his muscles straining against the chains which, true to legend, did not falter. “This condition. Whatever it is, I will do it. You only need to tell me and I will do it!”

“I don’t know,” you said. His lip curled, and you shook your head frantically. “No, no, I’m telling you the truth, I really don’t know! Only the wielder and the gods he prayed to can know for certain. The conditions are decided arbitrarily, without trend or reason. It could be anything from singing a song to moving a mountain! At least, that’s what I’ve gathered from the little I’ve read on the topic.”

“The wielder — your husband, then? That’s easy enough. Bid him to tell you, and then relay to me his answer,” he said.

“Easy enough? Not in the slightest. He would just as soon do your bidding as he would mine,” you said. The prince squinted at you, and evidently he must’ve determined that you were serious, for he broke into that awful laugh again, the one that must’ve once been handsome and full-bodied but now was little more than a rattling plea for air. 

“You are pitiful,” he said. “I thought that you must be some great, fearsome empress, as wicked as your husband, but you are just a frightened mouse of a girl. You would not survive a day in Kremnos, you know. It would crush you.”

Duty. Obedience. Docility. They were branded onto you, swirling letters that you had unwittingly carved into yourself with every wedding vow you spoke, and you could not escape them any more than the prince could escape his chains. If only you could argue with him, tell him that once upon a time, you had been someone unrecognizable from who you were now…but already, you had tested their limits. Your tongue was frozen in your mouth, refusing to move in anything but accordance with your oaths, and so you only clasped your hands together.

“If you say it is so, then it really must be the case,” you said. “Farewell, prince of Kremnos.”

“Farewell,” he said, but it was clear he did not mean it. “Dear lady.”

“Don’t call me that,” you said, recognizing the provocation for what it was. “You are not my husband, nor do I wish for you to be.”

“Then what should I refer to you as?” he said. “Your excellency? Your grace? Your most exalted highness? Your holiness, the saint of the realm?”

“Here, I am only known as lady,” you said quietly. “But I bore a different name before. I cannot…I cannot say it anymore, but if you ever come to know of it by other means, then please call me as such.”

Morning brought with it a freezing palm pressed to your brow. It startled you to consciousness both because of its temperature and its temerity, for you could not fathom who had dared to enter your room without your permission, and while you were asleep, at that! In the haze of your sleep-addled mind, a rebuke rose to your lips, but then someone clicked their tongue and you fell silent even as you clambered to a more alert state.

“Your fever has finally broken, dear lady! You do not know how overjoyed I am to hear it,” your husband said, helping you into a sitting position, one hand cradling the back of your neck and the other holding up a glass. You blinked, trying to clear the fog from your vision, swallowing down the water he poured down your throat without objection.

“Fever?” you said.

“The ailment you have been suffering from,” he said. “I was told it was a fever of some sorts. I bore it quietly, the prospect of your malaise, but today I could not stop myself from checking on you. I had some dreams of playing the nurse, but here you are, entirely well! Such a miraculous recovery.”

His grandiose words masked suspicion with affection, but he did not make any further accusations, for just as you had sworn to heed him, so too had he promised to trust you. His vows had been made to a portrait of yours, as well as written in pig’s-blood and sent to you in a sealed envelope. You could recall them with perfect clarity, the way the stench of iron clung to the parchment as you unfolded it and rang your fingers over the lines, which were grouped in stanzas of three. 

Trust. Favor. Companionship.

You spent the entire day with your husband, although you had neither the desire nor the will for it. You hardly ever had the desire or the will to do anything, of course, not nowadays, but this was the worst of all, because your husband was not just a reminder but the very reason for everything which had happened to you. Still, you could not refuse, so you trotted along at his side, motionless as he showed you off to his officers, his advisors, and even, at one point, his cousin, who could not be less interested in you if he tried.

“Brother,” he said boredly, for indeed he and your husband were the only children of their respective fathers, and so were more like siblings than anything, “you have better things to be doing than showing off a woman who doesn’t bear showing off in the first place.”

“Are you saying that she is somehow deficient?” your husband said, swelling up with righteous indignation. Anyone else might’ve lost their head for the statement, especially given how blandly he had said it, but his cousin was above reproach, being the only person he really loved.

“I’m saying that she looks ill with misery,” his cousin said, and then he sighed, returning to his book. “I’m not so sure the lady has recovered from her illness. You ought to be more cautious with her, that’s all.”

His cousin was younger and handsomer than he, and as the two of you walked away, you thought that you would not have minded marrying him as much. Though perhaps this was a paradox — after all, if he had taken you in the manner that your husband had, then you would have hated him, too. It was your lot in life, then; always you would detest whoever you wed, whoever stole your freedom in that way and bound you to them with the cruel ropes of matrimony.

The hall where you took your dinner was like an enormous cavern, so large that you felt like your voice might echo if you spoke. You and your husband were the only ones in it, which heightened the effect, and every clank of his silverware against his porcelain dishes resounded in your ears like discordant bells.

“My prisoner,” you said after a long time had passed wherein the two of you discussed nothing. Your voice was dry with disuse, and you pushed the food on your plate around without attempting to eat, although it was all appetizing and you were certainly hungry.

“What?” your husband said, covering his mouth with his hand as he chewed.

“My prisoner,” you said, clearing your throat but keeping your gaze trained firmly on your food. “The prince of Kremnos. Is he well?”

“You’re asking after his health?” your husband said with a chuckle. When you did not laugh or otherwise indicate that you were joking, he frowned at you. “You needn’t fret. As you requested, I am treating him as well as I am able. Far better than he deserves.”

The image of the prince, chained and kept in darkness, the only sound his persistent cough and unsteady breathing, given scraps for sustenance and mice for company, flashed across your mind. 

“I wish to see him,” you said. There was a warning in the back of your head — duty, obedience, docility — but you ignored it as best as you could, stabbing oversharp fingernails into your thighs, hard enough to draw blood and distract you from the dangerous line you tread. “My lord, I wish to see the prince and ensure that he is alright with my own eyes.”

At this your husband did not even pretend to humor you. He burst into a raucous fit of cackles, his fork and knife clattering to the table, his eyes watering at the corners. You waited for him to stop, picking your own cutlery up in vain before setting it down and folding your hands in your lap.

“No,” he said. “I am afraid that I cannot allow that, dear lady.”

“You cannot—” you began, but it was too much, you had stepped over that precarious boundary, and now you were frozen. Gulping, you counted to five before continuing. “He is mine. He is mine, you said it yourself, so why — can’t — I — see — him?”

Each word dug into you like gravel, and you knew that you had lost this argument before you could even attempt to have it. How could you ever win? When you had sworn thrice over that you would be tractable, how could you ever try to be anything else? Your intentions did not matter as much as the execution, not to the number three and the power it lent this empire.

“How obstinate,” your husband said, appraising you with a new eye. “I am sorry, dear lady, but as my cousin said, you are still weak. It will do you no good to be faced with such a base creature. You can see him again on the day of his execution.”

“Yes,” you said through gritted teeth, which was not as much as you wanted to do but was as much as you could, at present, manage. “Might I be excused?”

“Excused? You haven’t eaten anything,” he said, pointing at your plate. True to his word, it was untouched, and you picked it up, holding it close to your chest as you stood. 

“My stomach is protesting,” you said. “I will take it to my room and eat it later. If it pleases you.”

“Very well,” he said, waving at you. “I shall pray for your health, dear lady. Sleep as late as you’d like tomorrow, but once you are awake, I implore you to join me in my preparations. There is a grand celebration in the afternoon, as a marker of our victory against Kremnos, and I have been summoned to speak; if you could muster some words as well, it might hearten the people and warm them to you.”

“Yes, my lord,” you said. “I shall think of something.”

“See to it that you do,” he said, watching you with an unreadable expression on his face as you left, your footsteps growing faster and faster until you were all but racing to your room, your head spinning and palms clammy like you had gotten away with some great crime. 

Tonight, there were no strange voices beckoning you, but that did not stop you from staying awake far past the moon’s rise, waiting until it hung over the clocktower before picking your way back to the cellar, your heart pounding as you crept back down those dark, endless stairs, an actual lantern in one hand and your plate in the other.

The prince was still there. You had half-expected him to have disappeared, to have turned out to be some figment of your imagination, but he was leaning against the wall, his arms folded over his chest and his lips pursed as he watched the light of your lantern approach. When he realized it was you, his eyes narrowed, and he tucked his chin to his chest in what you could only assume was a stubborn display of the meager strength he had left.

“I brought food for you,” you said, setting the lantern on the last stair and presenting the plate before you. “Please eat it.”

“What do you think I am?” he said. “Some kind of a dog, such that I am eager for  you to foist your refuse on me? Hardly. Take it and leave me at once.”

“You’ll waste away,” you said. “You are only doing yourself a disservice! This is my own dinner, which I have gone without so that I could bring it to you. Does that make it easier to stomach?”

“Shall I sit on the floor, then, and eat it with my hands?” he said with a disparaging smile. “Will that amuse you? Is that why you’ve come? I heard your husband, you know. ‘Do what you’d like with him now that he is yours.’ How joyless your life must be, to think that this is what you entertain yourself with!”

“It is joyless,” you bit back, and your eyes widened at the freedom of the declaration. “It is! But you are not my — you are not some kind of amusement, I resent that you — I even spoke against my husband for you, and you say that! Fine, then. Starve, you thoughtless simpleton! Starve and die for all the good it’ll do me!”

You turned on your heel and stomped towards the stairs with the graceless irascibility of a child, not even sparing a glance over your shoulder at the prince. He was quiet, but you knew from the heavy weight of his stare on your back that there was something like turmoil brewing in his mind, a turmoil which weakened your resolve with every step you took away from him.

It was to your credit that you made it all of the way to where the lantern was sitting before you wavered, your stride shortening until you halted in place. Scrunching up your face, wondering when you had developed this love for punishment, for strife and conflict, you allowed your shoulders to sag in acceptance.

“Dispose of this before anyone comes to see you,” you said, shoving the plate into his hands before he could protest. “I suppose it matters little how you do it, but you must, or else I will be convicted of treason, and where will that leave us? Imprisoned side by side and left to rot together.”

He did not respond until you were almost out of earshot entirely, and then he coughed. You could not tell whether it was to capture your attention or to clear his voice of any residual hesitance; regardless, he accomplished both objectives, as you lingered for a moment longer than you would’ve.

“Ten,” he said. “That’s how many times I could’ve killed you in the time you’ve been here. But I—”

You continued walking before you could hear the rest of it.

You woke up the next day in better spirits than you had in some time, and in fact when a servant announced that you had a visitor, you opened the door with a new vigor. Upon realizing that the man in front of you was not your husband but rather his cousin, you thought that you might die from the glee of it all. Taking his arm, you allowed him to escort you to where the imperial contingent was setting up for the festival, at a grand stage which took up most of the square and was already laden with visitors at its base.

“It is a relief to see you recovering so well,” your husband’s cousin said. “The rumors in the palace are that you’ve contracted some illness of the chronic variety; in truth I believed them, especially after our meeting yesterday, but today I see that you have been revitalized. Did you rest well last night, then? I heard that you did not eat your dinner, but you must’ve taken it in your room, yes?”

You had done neither of those things, and his questioning did make you pause. What was the cause of your good mood? You had gone to sleep for only a short time, without much of anything in your stomach, and your situation had not improved any, so why did you feel, even if only marginally, as if you were something like yourself again?

“I suppose it must be something like love,” he mused, without waiting for your answer. 

“Ah, pardon?” you said, startled from the winding turns and byways of your thoughts at the strange declaration.

“To think that even a day in your husband’s presence has cured you to such an extent,” he explained. “Surely it is love? I cannot think of any other name for it…but I apologize! It is not my place to inquire, nor to speculate. I trust you will not tell my cousin about this?”

He had, in the taken-aback blink of your eyes and the pinch of your brow, found what he was seeking: a demure shyness which he could only comprehend as a lack of affection. You knew, then, that you had passed the test of the man, who had not believed any more than your husband that you were truly ill.

“I will take your leave,” he said, and then his palm clamped down on your shoulder. “But I trust you know this: however much you may love your husband, he is a difficult man to be loved by in return. If ever you are in search of solace…there are places you may turn to, dear lady.”

“What did he say to you?” your husband said, appearing at your side with his expression arranged into something like a frown. “I could not hear. Was he bothering you? I am sorry if he was. He has always been headstrong.”

“He was not bothering me,” you said, incapable of lying to your husband with any great skill but remaining certain that it was absolutely imperative you did not divulge his cousin’s secrets to him. “We spoke as family members might.”

If he recognized your evasive language, he did not comment on it. Instead, he stroked his chin in thought, and then he directed his attention towards the stage, where one of his generals was beckoning him — and, by extension, you.

The sun hung high in the sky as you ascended to the podium, though its rays did not dare touch you, disguised in your husband’s shadow as you were. Your vows tied more than your tongue, after all; your entire being, everything but your heart and your mind, were trained and twisted into the picture of submission, and soon those, too, would fall, leaving you a husk which could do nothing but nod and follow along.

Your husband did not need to start with any address. His mere presence was enough to silence the gathered empire, every single onlooker leaning towards the stage in eager anticipation of his words. From your vantage point, it was like the swell of a tide, crushing and suffocating, inescapable in its overwhelming intensity, but where you withdrew, your husband brightened at the weight, lifting his head and squaring his shoulders.

“Mydeimos,” he said, over-enunciating every syllable. The word, unfamiliar and foreign to your ears, had a rhythmic, marching cadence, more suited to a battle-cry than a formal declaration, and it seemed you were not alone in your thinking, for it had all the effect of one on the crowd.

A heckling clamor burst from them, the individual words indecipherable but for brief snippets. Demon. Monster. Warmonger. Kill. Curse. Blood. Kill. Kill. Kill! Your husband waited for them to quiet of their own volition, and only then did he venture to continue, this time with a wide, beaming grin.

“Mydeimos has fallen. The prince of terrors is no more!” he shouted, raising his fist in the air to thunderous applause. “Without him to lead the army, Kremnos will surely follow suit. Their lands will be ours within the year, of this much I assure you! Our empire will soon be the most prosperous in all the world. Even the great lands of the Southern Sea will pale in comparison!”

Your heart twinged at the mention of the Southern Sea. You could envision it even now, the streaks of salt left on the cliffs where the water lapped at them, the ripples in the placid blue where the balmy winds skimmed along the surface, the moon-white sand as it clung to the crevices of your feet and hands.

When you were younger, your father would take you on his boat and dip his fingers into it, urging you to do the same. You would ask him why and he would answer, always with a laugh or a smile: of all the jewels in my treasury, my darling, the Southern Sea is the second-loveliest. Then you would ask him which could be the first, if even the sea was not its equal, and he’d press his damp hands to your cheeks and kiss your hair and say you, my darling, you and only you.

“What a horrible thing he was,” your husband said. “Mydeimos. That wretched excuse of a man…the world is all the better now that he is locked away. I watched him — watched him, good citizens, with my own eyes — tear out a man’s heart with naught but his nails and teeth! Even now I can imagine it…the tips of his canines dark with pierced flesh…bits of entrails coating his fingers…the heart still beating in his palms…he looked the proper part of a devil, and I was certain that I had died and found damnation!

“But as I said, he is no more. Our army prevailed, as we always have, and as we always will; I made Mydeimos beg for mercy with my sword at his throat and my foot upon his inhuman heart, and then I dragged him back so that all of you could see what he has been relegated to — a chained puppy, given to my dear lady as a pet and kept as a servant until the day of his execution.

“For the surest way to kill a Kremnoan is to destroy their pride, and the prince of terrors has more pride than most, so we must endeavor to strip him of it, systematically and fastidiously, until even a child can cut him down!”

Your husband concluded his speech and pulled you forward simultaneously, with a great flourish which invited praise and drew attention to you both. You swallowed, your mind racing at breakneck speed, far too quickly for you to make any sense of the things you were saying until you were saying them.

“I have not seen the prince of Kremnos — Mydeimos — since the day that he was brought to me,” you said. The applause that had begun faded as soon as the soft words sparkled into existence, and the many eyes of the audience blurred together until you could pretend like you were alone, like you were speaking to nothing but small, bright stones reflecting your own sentiments. “But as my lord husband said, he was proud. I feel as though I have never seen a man prouder. Even after his loss, he remained proud. Even with nothing else left, he clung to that pride, that assurance…I remember thinking to myself that it was, in its own way, admirable. That he was admirable.”

Your husband’s arm around your waist grew tighter with unspoken warning, though it needn’t have. You had said all that you wanted, all that you could, and now there was nothing left but the judgement of the collective.

“Lady!” someone shouted, the singular soul brave enough to speak. She was a woman — you wondered if this was what bolstered her confidence, a perceived kinship between the two of you for that fact alone. “Do you fear the prince?”

“No,” you said, and although you had meant it only as a vague and empty placation, you were surprised to find that it rang true. You were not afraid of him, and it wasn’t his chains or his infirmity which caused this emotion to surge in you; rather, it was what he had told you last night, that declaration he had made with the utmost of seriousness, which you had not even allowed him to complete. “I am not. He cannot harm me.”

You knew your words would be interpreted as faith in your husband and the empire, and furthermore that this misinterpretation would curry favor with your subjects and your lord alike, so you did nothing to correct it. Yet you would know, and would hold close to your heart the knowing, that it was not your husband who you held faith in: it was Mydeimos, the prince of Kremnos, who might’ve killed you ten times over but had instead let you live.

“You have much to improve in terms of your orating,” your husband said coldly as the three of you — him, his cousin, and yourself — returned to the palace.

“I thought her speech was excellent,” his cousin said, shooting you a sly smile behind his back. “Very concise, and of a good style. It’s a gift to be able to convey meaning so succinctly. You ought to nurture it.”

“She certainly conveyed a meaning,” your husband said. “It remains to be said what value that meaning truly holds.”

“Is that for you to decide? Ah, brother, don’t be a curmudgeon, I am only teasing you! You spent so much of our childhood poking fun at me, so how can you fault me for paying you back in kind?” his cousin said.

“You need some lessons in respect,” your husband said, but without any real bite behind it. His cousin snickered before sobering, shifting his weight toward you.

“Will you take your dinner in your chambers again, lady?” he said. You nodded.

“If it does not offend,” you said. 

“Do as you please,” your husband said. “Though I expect you’ll do that anyways, sworn to me or not. Isn’t that right, dear lady?”

You couldn’t think of any response which would be satisfactory, so you said nothing, allowing the two of them to escort you to your room, where you waited with bated breath until the night fell and you could return to the cellar.

The entire way down the stairs, you turned the name over in your mind, polishing it in the way waves polished driftwood, battering it with incessant worry until it shone, uncanny and unrecognizable. Mydeimos. Mydeimos. Mydeimos. The prince of terrors. The man who had torn a heart out with his teeth. What did it say of you, that you were making your way to exactly such a knave? With trepidation, of course, but what did it say that you were still doing it anyways? Perhaps very much, or perhaps very little.

“There is an odd pattern to your footsteps,” he said before you could even greet him. He stood as he always did, prepared for a battle that he would never again see. “Or perhaps it is your breathing, or something else entirely.”

“What do you mean?” you said, putting your lantern and the dinner down in the space between you both. “I walk and breathe as I always have, as others do.”

“I know you,” he said, disgust mingling with the barest traces of awe in his tone. “The door to this cellar opens frequently. All manner of men come to visit me, to mock me from their places at the bottom of the stairs, lambasting me from the safety of their distance. I recognize few, and  I remember fewer — nor do I have any great desire to — but when it is you, I know. From your very step, from the very creak of the door, I know. I cannot understand how or why, but I know.”

“My husband told me your name,” you said after a pause, when it became clear he was not expecting a reaction from you. Motioning towards the food in a gesture you hoped he took to kindly, you continued: “I did not ask him, but he mentioned it in passing, so naturally now I know it.”

“I see,” he said, and although his gaze flicked towards the ground, he did not move. You remembered, then, what else your husband had said in that speech of his, the vainglorious words echoing in your ears: for the surest way to kill a Kremnoan is to destroy their pride, and the prince of terrors has more pride than most, so we must endeavor to strip him of it, systematically and fastidiously, until even a child can cut him down!

“Mydeimos,” you said, and then you sat on the floor, which was made of a cold stone that shot chills down the backs of your legs. Resting your elbows atop your thighs and your chin in your hands, you blinked up at him. “That is what he called you. ‘The prince of terrors.’”

“How unimaginative,” he said, and you suppressed a shudder at his glare, which was baleful and acute as it settled upon you. “My-deimos. Many-terrors. Yes, that is my name, though that ridiculous nickname is of his own invention. The Kremnoans would laugh if they heard it.”

“He said that he watched you tear out a man’s heart with your nails,” you said, and then you glanced at his lips, simultaneously and unconsciously wetting your own with the tip of your tongue. “And your teeth.”

He bared those very teeth, white and glinting, in a barking laugh — as much an expression of warning as it was humor. “My teeth! Your husband is one for fiction.”

“And — and he spoke of how he defeated you,” you said. At this, anything resembling mirth vanished from Mydeimos, and he grew curiously immobile — you almost thought that you had frightened him into the grips of memory, but then you realized that he was not frozen as much as he was waiting.

“Did he?” he said. “And what did your husband say of my defeat, dear lady?”

“He  made you beg for mercy with his sword at your throat and his foot upon your inhuman — upon your heart,” you said, correcting yourself for the slip of the tongue, finding no merit in telling him about that particular detail. “And then he dragged you back here.”

The longer Mydeimos remained silent, the shallower your breaths became, a cold fist forming around your heart and squeezing, the muscles in your arms and legs contracting, protesting their inactivity. You needed to run. If you were wiser, if you had anything resembling self-preservation, you would run, would flee and hope that you were fast enough to make it to the stairs before he pounced. 

You supposed you lacked both wisdom and self-preservation in spades, for you remained on the floor, peering up at him and praying that he could not read your mind, could not comprehend the depths of your thoughts.

“So that is his story,” he said. “I should’ve known he wouldn’t tell his people the truth.”

“He made it up,” you said rhetorically.

“You don’t sound surprised,” he noted.

“It is not — it is not —” You gnawed on the inside of your cheek, trying to come up with some way to circumvent your wedding vows, some way you could impress upon him what you were trying to say. “When we were wed, it was said that I loved him madly and completely, that I bawled to my father until he allowed me to come here.”

“Then it is not his first time dabbling in such falsehoods,” Mydeimos completed. When you nodded, he snorted. “You cannot speak ill of him, can you? Is it magic?”

“In the way of this land,” you said with a shrug.

“What an emperor,” he said. “So he can neither bed his wife nor win his battles without the use of tricks and obfuscation? Where I come from, they have a word for those like that, but as it is foul, I will not trouble you with hearing it.”

“What do you mean?” you said. “Ah, not by the foul word…that is, what tricks do you refer to? If the story he told is inaccurate, then how did he really defeat you? For surely he must have, or else you would not be here.”

“He did not defeat me,” he said. “Believe it or not, but that is the truth.”

“How?” you pressed, for you had already eschewed wisdom once and did not mind doing so again.

For a moment, it was as if the sun shone down upon him again. You saw him as he was on the day he met you, or perhaps even before — the prince of Kremnos, sleek and powerful and indomitable, red marks blooming in place of the scars he would never receive, eyes ablaze in his hollow face, hair as wild and untamed as his spirit.

“He surrendered,” Mydeimos said, scowling. “Our numbers were smaller, but Kremnoans have never cared for things like odds. We were winning, indubitably we were winning, and your husband knew it as well as we did. They attacked us in our own territory, fought us with our own weapons…how could we have lost? We would’ve wiped them out, but your husband and his men raised their white flags, and so we ceased to attack them.

“I went to parley with them, to negotiate the terms of their surrender. In a show of goodwill, I agreed to your husband’s request to come unaccompanied. His men were exhausted, and I found it honorable that he was putting their wellbeing first, so I ignored my instincts and the warnings of my advisors, going forth alone, leaving my armor and weapons as I was instructed to.

“That was my mistake. I should never have expected honor from a serpent, whose nature it is to bite. The surrender was a ploy; I was met by hordes of guards, each with a spear pointed at my heart. Even then, I fought. Do not think I met my end willingly, dear lady — I fought and killed as many men as he threw at me. I could’ve killed them all, I would’ve killed them all, but right as I was about to, he threw these chains at me from the corner where he hid. It should not have worked, his aim and the strength behind it were both lacking, but it was as if the metal had a mind of its own, and before I knew it I was bound.”

“As I told you, they are thrice-blessed,” you said. “Divine. They long to fulfill their purpose, and will do anything to that end. If it defies the laws of nature, well, what are those laws compared to the ones who wrote them? Those men were only a distraction. Once my husband received these chains, there was nothing which could’ve changed your fate.”

“What sort of a god favors a man who feigns surrender?” Mydeimos said. “What kind of deity loves perfidy?”

“I have often asked myself the same questions,” you admitted, half-expecting yourself to be unable and closing your eyes in relief when you weren't. “Why is it that he is the one they champion? What justice is there in that? He must have been a saint in his past life, to be treated as he is. A saint, or a martyr, or something like that. Something wonderful to the point of deserving so many miracles in this next iteration of his.”

You chose your speech carefully, injecting as much resentment into it as was needed to convey to the prince what you really meant, but not enough that you seized up into inaction. Not enough that you strained against the hold that your vows held over you.

You heard him exhale, and at this, you allowed your eyes to flutter open once more, peeking up at him and immediately wishing you hadn’t.

Whatever had briefly rallied in him, whatever fervor and fire he had briefly regained…it was gone. It was gone, leaving him fractured and bereft, forlorn instead of fearsome, prisoner instead of prince. Your husband had done that to him. Your husband had destroyed him, as he had destroyed you, and it was this reflection of your own fate which tore at you the most.

Breaking off a piece of bread, you dipped it in the long-cooled sauce pooled in the corner of the plate, and, without a word, held it out to him. He eyed it suspiciously, and for a moment you thought he might refuse it. The beginnings of an argument bubbled to the surface, but it never had the chance to take shape — before your lips could so much as part, he knelt across from you and took your proffered hand by the wrist.

Holding it in place, his thumb digging into your pulse like a reminder that he didn’t want this, didn’t want to accept your help, he used his free hand to swipe the bread from your palm. Then, his brows heavy, low over his eyes with mistrust and reluctance, he shoved it into his mouth and ate it.

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[daskken]

the best man

[luchsyy]

Been practising my BG skills lately! process pics under the cut

[diz-eaze]

rent-a-boyfriend. (yandere! phainon x female reader)

; yandere, modern au, slowburn (?), tfw instead of the customer breaching boundaries it's the employee :(, he kisses you drunk and gets touchy, not proofread.

; desperate to prove to your mother that your dating life is thriving in college, you begin to rent out a boyfriend from a shady website to trick her into thinking you're in a dedicated relationship. that's fine and all, but he's starting to act like your actual boyfriend rather than a rented one.

when stelle sent you a link to a website titled rentaboyfriend.com/profiles, out of all things, you had first assumed that she was joking around with you, as per usual. you heaved a sigh, putting down your phone as you stared at her smiling face across the table. 

“really now?” you frown, “i get that you’re trying to make me feel better, but this is not making me laugh, stelle.”

she sputters, hurriedly swiping through her phone before turning it around for you to see. she opened up the website, you realize, as she scrolls down countless and hundreds of different men’s profiles, different heights, styles, hair, etc. “i’m not trying to make you feel better, i’m offering a solution! look!”

stelle shoves the phone closer to your face, “didn’t you say that your mom’s been depressed thinking about your lonely ass? peep the name, you can rent a boyfriend here!”

you roll your eyes, “first of all, she’s not depressed, just worried. second of all, what do you mean i can rent a boyfriend?” you grab hold of her phone to scroll down at your own pace, “i thought renting only existed for apartments and items, not…. this. how are you even sure this isn’t a scam?”

she proudly huffs, “because i’ve tried this before!”

“oh, i see.” you dryly reply, staring down at her in unamusement. “so that’s why you had a date for march’s birthday last year.”

“what can i say? a magician never reveals her secret,” she shoves herself into your side of the table, forcing you to make space, “well, not unless it’s to help out a good pal. wink wink.”

“do not say wink wink, are you crazy?” you laugh, thumb hovering over one profile that caught your interest. “but… let’s assume that i did rent a boyfriend to placate my mother… what if she asks me about him again and again?”

stelle looks at you as if you’re downright stupid, “then just keep renting him out, duh? keep doing this for like, eight months minimum and play up a tragic story to your mom’s ears so that she’ll think you’re too boohoo over him to get into another relationship.” leaning back into the cushion, she flashes you a smirk, “and then no relationship pressure until you graduate, boom! i’m a genius, i know.”

you hum, staring down at a square-sized picture of a white-haired man with crystalline eyes. stelle, for all credit that is due, is right. 8 months is enough time for a loved and dedicated relationship to make your mother think that you’re genuinely heartbroken over him by the time he’s out of the picture. and perhaps your pride will be the one weeping in your stead, but sacrifices must be made for your fabricated love story. 

turning to face stelle, you give a noncommittal punch to her side, “If this doesn't work, i’m ending our friendship.”

RENT-A-BOYFRIEND RULES.pdf

physical touch (e.g., kissing, hand-holding, hugging) between a client and employee is allowed; however, the boundaries must be stated during the sign-up process to avoid any breaches. in the case of a boundary breached by either client or employee, please contact rentaboyfriend.com/costumer_service for more details.  for each appointment availed, 100% of the payment must be paid on the date of booking. falling in love and experiencing jealousy with and over the employee is strictly prohibited. the employees are workers with personal lives outside a client’s slotted time, personal information and feelings are not part of the conduct.  sexual intercourse is strictly prohibited. any initiation reported to the head department will lead to a termination of either the client's or the employee’s rent-a-boyfriend profile.  the client or employee may reschedule their appointment one week before the date. 

by agreeing to our terms and services, you hereby acknowledge that the relationship you are pursuing with an employee from rent-a-boyriend is not real. at the end of the appointment, the experience you had is part of the service, and is by no means a real, love-fostering ‘date’. 

you: mother, i got a boyfriend.

you: :)

I. lights, camera, action.

you picture stelle’s raised brows and her trying to hold in her guttural laugh as she eggs you on, “wow (y/n), first date already and he’s in your apartment? Attagirl!” and in perfect sync with her would be march’s uncontrolled giggles as she childishly repeats the motion of her index finger going in and out of her other hand that has formed into a circle. “I never knew you had in you, (y/n)! Remember to practice safe sex, okay?” 

and for that ungodly made-up scenario in your head, you choose to omit this detail from your friends and instead claim that you’re meeting up with him in the nearby theme park. a white lie that they’ll forget about in a few week’s time. while you yourself would have greatly preferred that to be the truth, reality often comes barreling in to disrupt you. 

that is to say, the moment you sent the text message to your mother announcing your so-called relationship, she’s been spamming your phone day and night begging to meet him through video call. at first, you tried to calm her by lying about your boyfriend being terrified to meet her, only for it to completely backfire as she promised to be on her best behavior when meeting him. you still remember the embarrassment that coursed through your veins as you texted your rental boyfriend about the meeting place, and you know the embarrassment will stick to you for days to come. 

and while calling in a different place is not a bad idea either, you’d rather not be in a public space where the script that you generously printed out could be seen by passing bystanders. if you could, you’d outright tell him that you’re not luring him into your apartment to violate guidelines and that you are not a pervert by any means, but saying those words out loud would only worsen the situation. 

you can only hope that he trusts you when you said that this video call is a one-time thing. 

your mother’s visage loads into your laptop screen, smile lines present as she beams at you in utter delight. she’s in the living room, and you can even spot your grumpy senior cat lounging in the background. you bow your head in greeting before smiling at her, “good afternoon, mother.”

“hello, my darling!” she leans in close to the camera, no doubt peering in to survey your background for any signs of the aforementioned ‘boyfriend’. “and where is my future son-in-law?”

your face heats up, flustered at her bold choice of words, “mother! don’t refer to him as such. we’ve only been together for a week, you’ll scare him!”

she only throws her head back and laughs, askewing her glasses without care. in her moment of distraction, you discreetly pull out your phone from below to view your recent messages.

phainon: i’ll be there any minute now

phainon: again, so sorry! Traffic took a while :( 

you: it’s okay. Take care. 

you sigh, nerves beginning to fray. you resume your focus back to your mother, pointing at your phone in hand, “my boyfriend said he’ll be here soon. I will wait for him at the front door.”

your mother frantically nods, “of course! You lovebirds must be dying to see each other, haha!”

“i’ll be turning off my camera and mic for now. when he arrives, please do not call him son-in-law, mother.” you cringe, dreading to imagine the tense smile on your rented boyfriend’s face.

you pick up two folders from the other side of the room, plopping them down just beneath the coffee table where your laptop sits. while you’re confident in your date’s memorization abilities, you prefer to play it safe. And true to his words, he comes knocking on your apartment door a minute or two later. 

standing up, you feel your palms getting clammy as you rush to welcome him in. the oak door creaks open, revealing phainon in all his boyish charm’s glory. pristine white hair, sparkling blue eyes, and wearing a casual fit consisting of a white shirt and baggy jeans. rather than a ‘hi’ or a ‘i hope it wasn’t too much of a hassle to get here’, the first thing you say to him is, “do you have the script memorized?”

he chuckles at that, setting aside his shoes before stepping in. “of course, how could i not with the effort you put into it?”

the effort in question is the FAQ section you added to the several-page-long document you sent first thing after introductions. in generosity, you even added an alternate option wherein he tries his best to act like the shittiest guy in the world so that your mother will beg for you to break up with him. 

but he had kindly refused, stating that he didn’t want to be the subject of several aunties’ conversations for several years. you understand where he’s coming from. auntie gossip feels like its own curse. 

you smile, ushering him further into your apartment. “thank you for accepting my ludicrous offer, phainon. have you eaten yet?”

he shakes his head no, observing the trinkets and personalized furniture you have displayed, “it’s no problem to me, (y/n). in fact, i’m eager to play actor for your mom.”

stopping right outside of the living room door, you glance at him over your shoulder. “remember the script, okay? my mother is not a harsh person, quite the opposite, actually. but she’s intelligent and quick to pick up on any discrepancies. the moment she notices a fault and a lack of consistency in our stories, it’s over.”

“and there’s a printed-out script on the floor, but if you need to read it, signal it to me first.” 

he salutes you like a sergeant, back straightened and all. “got it! I’ll keep that in mind.”

you inhale, grabbing hold of the knob, “ready?”

phainon grins, “always.”

the script you created plays out like this: while studying for your first midterm, you resorted to a secluded library with a nearby cafe. amidst your dutiful reading, you felt hunger and went to the cafe for a quick snack. the person manning the counter during that time was phainon, and you immediately formed a crush on him, adding that place into a near-daily routine. after a month or two of ogling at him, you one day steeled your nerves and asked him for his number, which he dutifully complied with. you flirted with each other through text for a while before phainon decided to ask you to be his date for a nearby festival. and the rest is history.  

when you first presented this storyline to your two friends lucky enough to know you’re about to fake a relationship, they both wore faces of disgust, as if what you had shown them was human feces scooped up with your bare hands rather than a document.

“i thought i begged you to stop watching those romance dramas that sushang introduced you to?” stelle, the enabler for your whole scheme in the first place, crinkles her nose, swatting away your phone like it personally wronged her. 

“like come on, a person asking for a barista’s number would be reported asap! get real, (y/n). Are you just going to infodump that on your mom?” march squints her eyes shut, dramatically shivering. “you should just say that you met through AstralGram!”

“that’s objectively ten times worse. sit this one out, march.” you huff, shutting off your phone, “you both don’t get it. my mother adores this type of relationship. she’s a chronic xianzhou romance drama watcher with a premium subscription.”

“right. sure, whatever helps you sleep at night.” stelle pulls out her phone, getting ready to gamble, “just remember to update us.”

assholes, the lot of them. out of pure spite, you won’t. after the success of fully making your mother believe that you are now in a committed relationship, you like to think that your two assholes of friends don’t deserve to know that. for now. wrapping up the plastic container in a cute, patterned cloth, you turn around to give it to an awaiting phainon on the living room couch.

“here, as a token of my gratitude,” his calloused hands reach out to accept, briefly brushing against yours. 

“you didn’t need to do this, (y/n). but still, thank you.” he cradles the clothed container to his abdomen, peering up at you in gratitude. 

“it’s the least i could do.” you give a thoughtful hum, looking at your cat-themed wall clock ticking away, “next week, we’ll meet in a restaurant as per my mother’s wish. i hope this is fine with you?”

“and you’ll send her pictures of us on the date, right?” phainon clarifies, stretching his body out. 

you nod. “of course, the date will be fully paid by me. should you lack formal attire, tell me now so I can transfer extra funds to your account.”

phainon gapes at you, blue eyes wide open, “...i’m deeply sorry if i’m just assuming things, but wow, you are loaded.” 

you look at him in confusion, “with the website’s payment rates to afford just one appointment, i would hope so.”

you stare at your phone, confusedly blinking at the 58th cat meme that phainon had sent you ever since he managed to pry out the name of your senior cat back home. the first time he had sent you a meme, you believed that it was an accident on his part. but now, it appears that his chattiness simply carries on over to texts, regardless of who he’s sending nonsensical clips to. so you give him another laughing emoji reaction rather than a reply, because the image did make you laugh. 

but he sends another meme just 10 seconds later, making you look at it in astonishment.

you: where do you get all these materials?

phainon: you finally responded!

you: ? 

you: I’ve been responding to each one of them?

phainon: laughing reacts don’t count

phainon: i thought you ghosted me :(((

you: phainon, that is not ghosting. and what would i gain from ghosting you? I need you. 

phainon: .

phainon: you need me????

you: yes, because i rent you to be my boyfriend?

he doesn’t grace you with a reply thereafter, so you shut off your phone and redirect your attention to a struggling march with calculus, back bent over the table as she tries her best to take in the formulas. beside her is a thriving stelle typing her way through a multi-paged essay, a perfect dichotomy to the pink-haired girl’s misery. and just across from you is dan heng,

who is already staring right at you, arms crossed.

you tilt your head, “is something wrong?”

“you have a boyfriend?” dan heng asks, brows furrowed, and you hope that the flinch you give doesn’t reveal your scheme. 

giving him a small smile, you nod, “...who told you that?”

march and stelle are quick to abandon their respective work in favor of listening in through side glances. you wish you could ask for their help, but alas, this is a battlefield you must fight alone. 

“i found out through auntie. hm, i was wondering who the guy entering your apartment a few days back was.”

of course he did, childhood friends be damned, dan heng lives just a few doors down the floor as your mother wanted him to live nearby to watch over you. just like when you were children.

“s- she told you?” you mentally curse out your stutter. if dan heng ever finds out that you were faking it, would he tell your mother? you shiver just from entertaining the thought. “are you… mad?”

dan heng sighs, a weary sound, as if his soul is thousands of years old, “no, not mad. just… disappointed, i suppose.”

chewing on your lip, you press further. “why?”

it takes him a moment to reply, and when he does, there is a strange note of melancholy in his voice, “it’s... nothing, don’t worry about it.”

II. my boyfriend is a fake one, but i care regardless. 

a cumulative 8 dates later, alternatively, two months, it is now a well-known fact around your circle of friends and acquaintances that you have a boyfriend, with march and stelle being the only exceptions to your lie. you never revealed his name, only giving a vague description of his appearance, in fear of someone finding out about the rental boyfriend site. and you substitute his name by simply just referring to him as your ‘boyfriend’ or ‘lover’. 

the false relationship begins to bleed through personal parts of your life in order to maintain the facade, trickling further day by day. your old lockscreen, a photo of your cat when she was still a kitten, has been swapped out for a selfie with phainon taken during a beach date, both smiling widely - your hair partially wet, and phainon’s abs peeking through his sheer shirt. his contact name on your phone has undergone changes, too. a formal 'phainon' transformed into a cringy, eye rolling, 'babe'.

you’re required to slip him into a conversation every now and then, lest people start to think that you broke up. if they start thinking that, then the news will get to dan heng, who will then report back to your mother over your failed relationship. it’s too early for separation. 

a topic about working out more will have you remarking, “oh! I believe that my boyfriend has a routine for the upper body, i can ask him for you if you’d like.”

your mother will send a picture of an item saying, “i think phainon would love this!” and you’ll reply through text with, “yes, i agree :)”

some random student hitting on you in the hallway gives you a valid reason to reject them, “sorry, i have a boyfriend.”

a conversation with your peer during free time in class leads to a topic about relationships, and they’ll complain about their significant other’s bad habit before asking about yours. with a practiced smile, you laugh, “he has none.”

you hold slight envy toward your rented boyfriend in times like these, while you’re here needing to mention him at least once per day, he’s free to live life as he pleases, not tied down to an obligated lie around others. you imagine then what it’d be like to be in his shoes, a rental boyfriend, taking pictures together as if you’re enjoying the time of your life with your client and appearing lovey-dovey to send it to her mother before going back home with a new check having just arrived in your bank account.

perhaps in an alternate reality, should such a thing exist, you’re the employee living a hassle-free life, attending dates almost daily. you laugh at the thought, finding it unfit for you. 

well, you’re happy that phainon is at least free from this mess outside the slotted date each week. 

still… you sneak a look over his side profile, dimly lit from the theater you’re currently in. perhaps once a week is too much for his schedule. he is, just like you, a college student with his own set of deadlines and classes struggling with. he may be paid, but is it at the cost of his academics, you wonder?

you can’t bring yourself to focus at the movie when phainon’s head is bobbling up and down while he tries to abate the sweet respite of sleep. you lean to whisper in his ear, “are you alright?”

he immediately shoots upright, casting you a wobbly smile and speaks in a reassured tone that, in fact, does not reassure you, “sorry, sorry! Just a little tired.”

you ponder to yourself if what you’re doing is meddling with the guidelines of your rental boyfriend when you ask, “what’s wrong? You don’t look too well.”

phainon pauses, head turned to you as he’s illuminated by the light coming from the screen. you see him visibly gulp, you spot his fingers twitch, and the askew strands of hair sticking out. he doesn’t look fine, probably hasn’t been for days now.

the decision is made then, you don’t wait for his reply when you tug at his wrist and point in the direction of the exit, “let’s get out of here, come on.”

his eyes widen, and he stutters (the first time you’ve heard it from him), refusing to stand up from his seat, “but what about the movie?”

you huff, tugging on his wrist harder despite knowing you have no physical strength against him, “it’s most likely some slop. I’m saving our time here, let’s go.” you give him a pleading look, bottom lip jutting out as you try to mirror his signature kicked puppy expression, “please, phainon?”

phainon closes his eyes and with a resigned sigh, mutters, “fine.”

phainon’s cheerful exterior leads to cracks of vulnerability harder to break through. as you sit with him inside a mostly empty diner, you start to think that he’ll never speak up about his recent troubles. nursing an iced tea, “this is fine, too. We can just sit here in silence until time is up,” you offer, gazing at his troubled eyes. this is a first for you, your friends easily trust you, so they spill out their darkest thoughts and troubles like waterfalls cascading, dan heng included. 

to see phainon so guarded… 

he hasn’t even touched the food you ordered for him. from what your memory recalled during past dates, he adores a classic burger with fries on the side. did he get sick of it? or is he craving something different today? you harshly chew on your bottom lip, worry gnawing away at your conscience. but if he doesn’t eat, would that not lead to even more lethargy? should he pass out here and then, do you even possess the strength to carry him to safety? maybe you should take his gym routi-

phainon reluctantly picks up a fry, his usually bright blue eyes downcast with dark bags beneath. and just like that, the dam breaks. shedding some of his bravado as he begins to speak of his life, of his experiences that shaped him - that clings to his skin every waking day.

you and him stay in that diner way past the agreed time slot you booked him for, but you couldn't care less when phainon is bearing his heart out to you. he paints himself in colors that, for once, don’t serve to make him shine brighter. a stroke of green, as he expresses envy toward his peers back in college that didn’t need to scrape the bottom of the barrel just to attend, you think he felt envious toward you at some point, too. a hurried gray while he recalls his family, whom he had lost to a wildfire when he was still scrawny and little. 

a beautiful purple, he tells you of how he grew up in an orphanage after, and how he had to take up odd jobs around the city to save up for a dream he wished to fulfill; leaving amphoreus to study in a place far away. a deafening black for when he discovered how to make easy money through the rental boyfriend website his college friend introduced him to, no more picking up odd jobs and heavy labour. 

a navy blue for he rebuilt himself from the ground, tweaking aspects of himself to parade around to be the general ideal type of man that most would flock to; up to date with trends, flirty but charming, good looking, and nice.

at the end of it all, his bright colors of sunny yellow, slate white, bright red, and teal are overshadowed by the neutral tones he reveals to you. You had been sorely mistaken, you realize, having assumed that he is what he portrays himself as rather than seeing what he actually is: a method actor called upon the stage the moment he enters one of his countless appointments, dedicated to his role of playing the picture-perfect boyfriend. 

your heart squeezes in pain, knowing that you’re part of his burdens, no matter if you’re just a speck. your eyes are peeled back, beginning to view him as less of a guy you just pay to pretend he’s your perfect lover, and more of a friend who deals with his own problems just like everyone else. pure ignorance on your part. 

he looks at you as he finishes his long-winded talk, searching for an inkling of annoyance or disgust in your eyes as you stare back at him. at that moment, you could only offer a classic, “I’m sorry.”

phainon shakes his head, defeated, “you have nothing to be sorry for, (y/n).”

you wish you could let him go right now, announcing to him that he’s free from you as a client to lessen his burden. someone else will be quick to replace you as his client, after all. but your mother’s approval weighs above all, even above your own priorities. your hands ache to reach across the table to hold him comfortingly, wishing that you can tell him it’ll only be 6 more months until he’s free. 

for now, your lips part to give him the barest minimum, “you can just play up the boyfriend act for the photos to send to my mother. everything else,” you smile, “just treat me like you would a friend. that’s the least i can gift you, phainon.”

his breath hitches. he pauses, wetting his lips before looking at you in earnest, eyes shining from unshed tears, “thank you.”

and if the scheduled date the following week takes place in a restaurant that specializes in serving dishes from amphoreus, if only to give him a crumb of home? you will turn a blind eye to phainon’s astonished face and pretend that you hadn’t known this would happen.

but as his fingers tenderly interlaced themselves with your own as he walked you to the parking lot, his gratitude was more than felt. 

“what? my mother’s number?” you frown, pausing mid-bite, “are you… hitting on my mother, phainon?”

phainon refutes the moment the accusatory words leave your mouth, hands forming an ‘X’ as he violently shakes his head from left to right, “what? no! it’s so i can talk to her through text!”

you merely raise a brow, not seeing where he’s going. it causes him to hurry his explanation.

“she’s been pestering you about another video call, right? I mean, i don’t mind…” he blushes, looking at you as a giddy smile forms on his lips, “but…! give me her number so i can earn brownie points and be the best boyfriend ever.”

ah. “so you’ll sacrifice your free time to distract her from bothering me? you see, she's a very talkative person.”

he nods, scarily resembling a happy puppy from his white tufts of hair and goofy smile, “yeah, your paper is due next week, right? Don’t worry, i’ll talk to her like a good son-in-law.”

you exhale at his jokingly proclaimed title, making you recall back to when your own mother referred to him as such. “sure, whatever floats your boat.”

III. an unscripted moment.

you wake with a blaring awareness that the mere act of swallowing hurts, and your entire body is burning up. your back feels sticky from dried sweat, and your body screams at you as you reach for your phone on the bedside table. It’s 11:34 AM, friday. no classes, but a date with phainon as per schedule.

you groan, eyes burning up the longer you stare at your screen. with sluggish movements, you quickly type up a message to send him before shutting your eyes once more, praying that slumber will quell your horrid fever. 

you: i'm cancelling the date today.

you: don't worry, you still keep the money.

the influx of notifications coming from your phone in relentless ‘ping’s are fruitless. 

the second time you blearily blink your eyes open, you hear the faint, yet never-ending, sound of knocking coming from your apartment door. body still burning up, you whimper in pain as you sit up, immediately feeling your skull going around in circles. it induces nausea in you. once more reaching your phone, you’re greeted by an onslaught of spam texts from phainon that are still ongoing.

- 11:34AM - 

you: i'm cancelling the date today.

you: don't worry, you still keep the money.

babe: woah? good morning to you too beautiful

babe: nice joke btw i laughed

- 11:40AM -

babe: i said i laughed at your joke

babe: so take back what you said :( 

babe: (y/n)?

- 11:55AM - 

babe: hey. are you mad at me?

babe: (y/n)???

babe: give me a laugh react and i’ll take that as no

babe: or at least read my message

- 12:10PM -

babe: whatever i did wrong im sorry

babe: so respond to me 

babe: please?

babe: or at least let this be a joke you’re just dragging on

babe: i won’t even be mad

babe: just

babe: happy 

- 12:31PM - 

babe: please answer me

babe: im starting to get worried

babe: are you in danger?

babe: or maybe you don’t want me around anymore

babe: haha

- 12:45PM -

missed call from babe.

missed call from babe.

babe: pick up

babe: im begging you

- 1:12PM - 

babe: i wish i could visit your apartment to check up on you

babe: but fuck. Would that be too much?

- 1:33PM - 

babe: i asked auntie if you were in your apartment

babe: told her you weren’t responding to me

babe: and she said you weren’t replying back to her either

babe: i’m sorry but i need to visit you

babe: i can’t you lose you like this.

- 2:00PM - 

babe: i’m at your front door

babe: answer me. Please?

- 2:22PM - 

babe: (y/n) i know you’re finally reading all these messages

babe: your reading receipts are turned on

you: i know, phainon.

you: i just woke up, i’m sorry for making you worry. 

you: hold on, i’ll unlock the door for you.

despite wanting to remain in the comfort of your bed, your sickness won’t quickly abate if you continue to rot here and allow your guest standing outside. with slow, measured steps, careful not to worsen your headache, you eventually reach the door to welcome phainon in.

blessed with looks he may be, right now, he looks like a mess. his usual part in his white hair is nowhere to be found, resembling a bird’s nest rather than a hairstyle. his eyes are shrouded in a mix of worry and devastation, and his usual stylish outfits are severely downgraded into a bright yellow hoodie and… purple pants?

you have always been one for honesty, ironic considering your relationship is a hoax, so you look at him and croak out, “you look like shit.”

your words are static noise with phainon’s worry worsening as he looks at you from head to toe, hand holding onto you like you’d wither without him, “have you eaten yet? your body is burning up.” to double-check, he presses his other hand up to your forehead, gasping in shock when he does so.

his lips wobble, acting like he’s in just as much pain as you. rather, seeing you in pain puts him in much worse agony, “lay down on your bed,” he ushers you further down the hall, “i’ll cook you something warm. did you finish all your backlogs yet? I can do them for you.”

weak hands try their best to pry off phainon’s steady grip on you as you sluggishly mutter, “it’s okay, phainon… you don’t have to be here.” a yawn, “i’ll be fine, i promise. the payment won’t be deducted from you.”

instead of a relieved expression you envisioned, phainon’s face sours, “it’s not about that,” he retorts, tone curt. “i want to take care of you, so please let me.”

with the firmer shove, yet still mindful of your weakened state, “go back to your room and rest. It’ll take a while for me to cook, okay?”

you sigh, feeling the room melting around your vision, “yeah, fine. whatever. don’t complain if you end up regretting this.”

his usual liveliness resumes when you hear him laugh, “i would never.”

you don’t resume sleep, having overslept more than enough for today. yet looking at your phone only irritates your headache further, leaving you no choice but to play background music while staring up at your ceiling, contemplating your past actions this week to see where you went wrong that led to you being bedridden. 

you hate getting sick. you try to prevent it as much as possible by eating your daily dose of greens, fruits, and protein, and you always make sure to bring an umbrella in case of an unexpected weather. you try your best not to stay up too late if preventable, and yet… 

phainon knocks twice before entering your room. his left hand carries a steaming bowl that, upon further inspection, is tomato soup. his hair pushed back using your headband, and he’s wearing the pink, glittery apron that march gifted you earlier this year. the hot pink layered on top of his yellow and purple combo fit makes you laugh, triggering a coughing fit. 

he hurries to set down the bowl and fishes his phone out of his pants before patting your back, “what’s wrong, are you okay?”

you let last few coughs before hoarsely replying, “i like your fit.” he looks down on himself like he hadn’t thought of what he was wearing prior, “oh.”

red dusts the tip of his ears as he pulls back, clearing his throat and hurrying out of the room, “anyways! i’ll go get the other bowl and cups, let’s eat together.” he’s gone before you can even laugh a second time. 

your focus is soon shifted when you spot his phone on the bedside table. He left it behind, the screen flashing open as a push notification came, briefly exposing his lockscreen. even in your fever-addled mind, you recognize the exact picture,

it’s the beach date picture, the same one set as your own lockscreen. 

you blink in wonder. it had only appeared on the screen for a split second. was that a product of your imaginative fever-induced mind? if not, why would he set that picture as his lockscreen?

IV. what to do if your rented boyfriend starts to act a little too seriously?

the first thing you had done after signing up for the rent-a-boyfriend website was to read their guidelines. you had incinerated each and every word into your retinas, ensuring that you wouldn’t forget a single thing, no matter how much time passed. among the guidelines that stuck with you the most was;

falling in love and experiencing jealousy with and over the employee is strictly prohibited. the employees are workers with personal lives outside a client’s slotted time, personal information and feelings are not part of the conduct. 

you kept this in mind from the moment you had chosen phainon to be the unfortunate victim to your false relationship. you even assured him through email that you’re not the type to fall in love so easily, especially not under a measly 8 months. 

this stands true even now.

falling in love and experiencing jealousy with and over the employee is strictly prohibited. the employees are workers with personal lives outside a client’s slotted time, personal information and feelings are not part of the conduct.

phainon is an amazing actor when he needs to play the boyfriend role. he deserves flowers for that. had he not been living under unfortunate circumstances, you’re sure you would’ve seen his handsome face playing as the male lead for one of the xianzhou romance dramas that your mother watches in the evening. he suits every romance trope, oddly enough.

falling in love and experiencing jealousy with and over the employee is strictly prohibited. the employees are workers with personal lives outside a client’s slotted time, personal information and feelings are not part of the conduct.

but even you cannot turn a blind eye to the gradual, sinking feeling that slowly began to accumulate in your stomach after your fever incident. you recall the rules inscribed upon the website, clients are strictly prohibited from falling in love with their rental boyfriends.

falling in love and experiencing jealousy with and over the employee is strictly prohibited. the employees are workers with personal lives outside a client’s slotted time, personal information and feelings are not part of the conduct. 

pray tell, what can you do if the rental boyfriend is the one in love with you?

days leading up to the long-awaited semester break, or alternatively, nearly 4 months into your rental boyfriend antics, your mother messaged you one late evening. you had been losing your mind over a stern professor, crying immaturely over the directions they had given for finals, or lack thereof, that had you losing days’ worth of sleep just to fulfill.

at that moment, the notification from her had brought salvation to your suffering, making you forget about such troubles, even if for a brief moment, just to see what she had to say. the content of her message, however, made you raise your brow. 

mother: semester break is soon, right?

you: yes, mother. :) 

mother: and you’re coming back home, right? ☺️

you: of course, mother.

mother: that’s wonderful!

mother: i’ve been thinking about it for quite a while

mother: and i was wondering

mother: maybe you should bring phainon with you!

mother: i can cook your favorite meal for him to taste

you: what

you: apologies for my abrupt reply. 

you: however, bringing my boyfriend along to meet the family… mother, is that not too soon?

you: phainon and i are barely hitting the four-month mark.

you: the last thing i want is to scare him away.

mother: oh, you’re overthinking this!

mother: phainon is a sweet boy! he’s been telling me that you’re under his loving care 💓

mother: he even sent me a picture of you when you caught that fever ;)

you: he truly is, yes. but…

you: give me more time to think about this, please.

you recount this situation to your date with phainon a few days later, deeply troubled at how you’re going to tell your mother that your rental boyfriend cannot, in fact, be brought back home. he has his own life, friends, and duties. he’s either going to stay in his own apartment here or visit amphoreus for the month of december.

phainon, in an ideal world, would have laughed at you and agreed that he wouldn’t be available for semester break. probably throw in a tease or two about company rules and whatnot. instead, the phainon in front of you merely sips his drink, blinking with no surprise or mortification whatsoever. “oh, i know. auntie told me yesterday. but don’t worry! i already told her i was coming.”

that’s not what you were… you inhaled sharply, “what? Wait.” you rubbed your temple, frustration reaching an all-time high, “that would be near impossible, phainon.”

“why so?” he prods, expertly dodging your swatting hands as he steals a fry from your meal. 

“because you need to book a flight? And there’s less than two weeks left for that?” you stress, “and what about amphoreus? your friends back there must be worried sick over you. you truly don’t need to sacrifice this much for me, phainon. i will tell my mother that yo-”

“you worry your pretty head too much,” his thumb tenderly rubs at the crease formed between your brows. he stares deep into your eyes, "relax, it’ll be fine. I want to be there, (y/n).”

“remember, don’t mention any unfavorable traits about either myself or you. they don’t know how i act outside our house, and they don’t know your work description. avoid speaking about our fabricated love story as much as possible so we can play safe,” you call out from behind phainon, worriedly looking over your childhood home just a few feet away. your hands itch to hold something, but phainon had already graciously carried your luggage for you.

he simply nods, focused on making that both your luggages don’t swerve in the other direction as he hoists it up the stairs. clearing your throat, you prepare yourself in front of the closed door, casting phainon a side glance as you caution him one last time, “let’s be on our best behavior.”

“just for you.” he winks, knocking on the door first before you could. you roll your eyes.

the muted clicks of heels fast approaching tenses you up, knowing that your mother will be opening the door for you and your boyfriend. you take a deep breath right as the entrance creaks open, displaying your mother in all her glory. her glasses perched on her nose bridge, wearing a black turtle neck, and a long skirt with red bottom heels. she gasps excitedly, eyes locked onto you before even taking a look at the man on your side. 

“hello, mother.” you give a tight smile whereas phainon does a perfect bow, “good evening, mrs. (l/n)!”

“welcome home, you two!” her hand eagerly reaches out to take care of all the luggage but phainon politely refuses as he hauls them all inside. stripping off your shoes, you take a look around your home, finding it strange how quickly it had become unfamiliar from the months you’d been away for college. while you had grown up vaguely aware that your family possessed, it had never truly sunk into your mind until you met march and stelle during the last year of high school. opulence bleeds through every corner of your spacious house, not blaringly so, but subtly, akin to a glimmering gem beneath light.

phainon’s hand quickly finds purchase in yours, happily swinging them back and forth while you follow closely behind your mother. he leans in to whisper into your ear, “you’re adorable.” you throw him an unamused look. he tilts his head, all coy, “what? Don’t tell me you’re not seeing the picture frames all over the walls?”

“not another word.” you whisper back, bumping his side into the hallway. 

your mother leads you to the dining room, a massive elongated table that makes your father feel like an emperor every time he sits at the head. an overkill purchase on his part, considering you only had one other sibling, but you suppose that man will buy anything for the sake of his ego. 

“phainon, you sit next to (y/n), of course.” she pulls out two seats, eyeing your interlocked fingers with twinkling eyes. “oh, and you’ll be staying here until the end of the month, yes?”

phainon eagerly nods, tugging you along to your designated seats, “yes, mrs. (l/n)!”

you hold back the urge to ram your face straight into the wall, already feeling drained as you wait for the long night ahead. 

late past midnight, there’s a knocking on your door that rouses you from your desk. having retired back to your childhood bedroom the moment family dinner was done, leaving phainon with your family downstairs with nothing but a withering glare on your face as warning. but he merely nodded, sending you kissy faces, before going back to arm wrestling with your father to prove that he was ‘worth your love’ while your sibling howls in laughter.

“who’s there?” you call out, staring at the door.

for a moment, the knocking stills, silence wafting in the air. 

then it picks up again.

you huff, now staring indignantly, “pardon me, i asked who’s there?”

silence. knocking.

nerves fully riled up, you throw your phone down before stomping over until you’re right in front of your door. “are you going to keep knocking or what?”

finally, “it’s me, phainon…” he twists the doorknob left and right, rattling it. 

you frown, noting the low volume of his voice and the slur in his words. “phainon?” you open the door, light from your bedroom pooling into the dark hallway as you stare up at your rental boyfriend’s face. “do you need something?”

you observe his features; flushed cheeks, unfocused eyes, and fringe covering his other eye… there’s no doubt in your mind, phainon is at best, tipsy, and at worst, wasted. it must be from the rum that your father adores, you conclude, finger brushing his hair from his face. “hello? Are you still with me, phainon?”

he blinks slowly, eyes trying to focus on you but it’s a useless endeavor. “i…” he leans closer, towering over you and smelling like dark molasses, permeating through the air, “can we uh, talk? please?”

you pause. “why? about what?”

“just, i-” he fumbles with his words, inching closer and closer, “i wanna talk about something…”

“is it important? it’s,” you glance behind to look at the wall clock, “twelve-fifty in the morning, phainon.”

“yeah, it’s- it’s really important,” his foot wedges inside, like he’s scared you’d close it on him, “i promise.”

you open the door further, encouraging him inside. he follows through with swaying footsteps, blue eyes fixated on you. you sit him down on the edge of the bed, sitting right beside, “what is it?”

he doesn’t answer you right away, merely looking around your room with this awed look on his face. his gaze sifts through your old shelf filled with dolls and dollhouses, and just beside is a shelf dedicated to all the trophies and medals you acquired while studying. a little further left is the door entrance to your walk-in closet, where some of your clothes from kindergarten are still somewhere inside, buried beneath your newer, shinier clothes. 

phainon then sinks into your bed, back resting against the lush mattress of your beloved bed. you think you heard him inhale the bedsheets before speaking, “your mom…. she said that i’m your first boyfriend.”

he turns his head, red flush still present while beholding you, “is that.. Is that true?”

your lips purse, “well, that’s what they believe, yes.”

he inches closer until his bare forearm makes contact with your pajama-clad ones, “and your dad, he… welcomed me to the family. said that he always wanted you to be happy, you know? and.”

you stay silent, allowing him to continue. “your sibling, they congratulated me… joked about waiting for the wedding.”

your face sours, recoiling from guilt at the massive farce that you’ve been playing right in front of your family, “that’s…” you bite your lip, “it’s whatever. probably a result from the festive atmosphere, don’t let them get to you, phainon. this is just business at the end of the day.”

his face falls, a vacant look overtaking. 

“...is it really?”

“it is.” you reply, not missing a beat, finally catching up to what he’s here for. “phainon, don’t be ridiculous right now.”

“i’m not ridiculous, (y/n).” he softly chastises, sitting up as he corners you to the edge of your bed. “don’t tell me you’re not feeling what i’m feeling every time i see you. this feeling is mutual, isn’t it?” and you’re so dumbstruck at the entire situation that you can’t seem to formulate a response to his ludicrous actions.

phainon climbs on top of your body, calloused hands cradling you as if you were a star he bottled up with his own two hands. he leans in just mere centimeters away from your lips to whisper madness meant to be shared only with you, “i love you, i truly do. i want to be your real boyfriend. i want to go around my campus and yell out your name. i want to say your name every time someone asks me if i’m taken. it makes me want to crawl out of my skin when i go on a date with someone who isn’t you. i want to spend each and every morning until death in your arms. i want to graduate and get a job to provide for you. i love you so, so much (y/n), you’re all i ever wished for. i’m so tired of pretending to be this pristine guy i’m not.”

a heaving gasp, nails digging into his skin that only serves to make him groan out in pleasure, “phainon-”

he leans in to kiss you, sealing and tainting your first kiss with his filth. your childhood plushie resting on your desk being the sole witness.

years down the line, i will make you look back and say that you're glad you found me through that website. then your eyes will glisten in affection as you lean into my embrace and say, "i love you, phainon." as easily as breathing.

rent-a-bf phainon, if he was allowed to be absolutely manic: are you talking to other people be honest w me

(y/n), thinking: wow his boyfriend acting is getting so real these days. they should cast him in a xianzhou drama.

[diz-eaze]

; yandere phainon, modern au, not proofread.

i love it when the celebrity is the one deep into a parasocial relationship, not the fan.

in this case, it's successful, young, and attractive streamer phainon, more commonly known by his online alias neikos496, whose streams always have an average of 100k+ concurrent viewers. nowadays his live chat needs to have slow mode turned on from the amount of people wanting to spam every second, and he's always getting sponsorship offers from gaming brands, down to the snacks he consumes on stream. he attends gaming events, makes an appearance at conventions, and once even joined an e-sports team for his favorite game. the latest talk that surrounds him is that he'll soon enter the modeling scene; not hard to imagine with a killer face and body.

however his beginnings were much, much humbler.

a country bumpkin who decided to stay in the city after graduating with a (supposed) useless degree. a young man who spent his last credits to buy a low-quality mic, together with his second-hand gaming pc and obs webcam, he took his chances at breaking through the intimidating world of streaming.

he begins with sandbox games, long chill streams late at night after he was done working his ass off at his daytime corporate job. there were no viewers, but he can't fault in that when the frontpage of the streaming site are all well-established bigshots. it's difficult to find something new when one is so used to the sense of familiarity that their favorite streamer carries.

phainon tries flash games next, making fun of all the silly, borderline fetish art of beloved animation characters, but all that brought him were bots that got his hopes up, only to be cruelly let down when his chat was filled with nothing but advertisement spam.

well... third time's a charm.

phainon tries horror games. he plays the faces of the genre like resident evil, silent hill, amnesia. etc. to the short, obscure indie horror that he only heard through word of mouth in online forums. paired with his usual schedule of late-night streaming and a newly purchased better-quality mic, he feels like it'll get him somewhere this time.

this proves to be true when he gains his first ever viewer in the middle of him shooting down monster enemies. the loud ping from his chat entirely breaks his focus on the game, head swiveling to face the corner of his monitor where he can view the chatbar.

he reads your username out loud before your message, " "what are you playing right now?" oh! i'm playing resident evil 2! the remake, to be specific."

he grins at his webcam, all coy when he asks, "wanna keep watching? i'll be worth your time, i swear!"

when a handsome man with big, puppy dog eyes asks that of you, it's nearly impossible to say no. so type in the chatbar once more,

"sure, why not :)"

to your surprise, this streamer you found out in the wilderness of your recommended page, jumps up from his chair and fistbumps the air in glee. the suddent action makes you laugh. it makes him laugh too, his cheeks are dusted with pink by the time he sits back down. he clears his throat and resumes the game as if nothing ever happened.

you'll definitely be here tomorrow.

the first couple of months in phainon's streaming career, his only viewer was you. it feels less of a livestream and more of a videochat on discord with your friend with how often he refers to you while playing a game. he's moved on from horror games; now he's trying random ones each day.

before beginning a new game, he'll ask without looking at the chatbar, "you ready?" and then promptly calls your username. when he gets jumpscared or chased, he'll look at the chatbar and asks for you to come help him. during puzzles, he'll give his best puppy look as he fully expects you to solve it for him.

his viewers exceeded one (1) when phainon was one of the first ones to play an indie game that would soon blow up in popularity. he had found the game through the developer's social media account, added it to his steam wishlist, and played it on the day it came out.

the second time he streamed that indie game, he was awed at the whopping 2000 live concurrent viewers on his stream. he thanked everyone that was currently watching before his eyes zoned in at the chatbar, eyes sparkling as he called out your username, "are you still there? a-are you seeing this right now!?"

you laughed, pride blooming in your chest to see the once unknown streamer you've been watching for a while now take his first steps onto the grand stage of stardom. your fingers tingle in excitement as you type in,

"yes!! welcome everyone, phainon is an awesome streamer, i promise ^^"

another viewer typed, "phainon? is that neikos496's real name?"

oops. you forgot it's no longer just you and him in his livestreams anymore. before guilt could form in your guts, phainon laughs and waves his hand around.

"you're right about that, friend." he mentions your username. "they've been a long-time viewer of mine, you see. we're practically online friends now!"

he winks at his camera. "isn't that right?"

username.

there's a pattern to be found in how, as phainon's fame grows, so do his reliance on you. while before, his behavior of constantly paying attention to you was to be expected, seeing as you were his only viewer at that time, it tends to come off as odd now that his number of viewers is increasing day by day. he still retains old traditions by specifically calling out for your username and checking if you were ready before starting the game he was set on playing that day.

not to mention how he always singles out your chats, always making it a priority for him to read first amidst a sea of emote spammers and other people trying to grasp his attention. even the ones who paid for superchats are inherently stuck in second place the moment you send something to the chatbar.

sure. that's fine. loyalty and routine are good traits to have on a person, right? this just proves that despite his rising fame as a streamer, phainon is still the same man you met back then by staying to his roots. but it begins to slowly suffocate you with how much phainon demands from you, becoming bolder and bolder as his channel grows.

one time, you felt like lying back and observing him for the entirety of the stream, so you hadn't felt the need to type in anything to the chatbar. but an hour into his stream, he's still not playing any game.

after taking gulps from his water bottle, his blue eyes focus on his (newly acquired) second monitor, "chat, chat," he calls out, eyes skimming through the strings of text from different people pouring in. he says your username, "are they here yet? in the stream, i mean."

albeit confused, his viewers tell him no, having believed you weren't there yet with the lack of your usual chattiness. he visibly deflates into his gaming chair. "really? aw, well, we can wait for them before i start playing."

his chat bursts into confusion, spamming questions marks and many complaints to just begin the damn game already beginning to pop up. yet phainon remains undeterred, leaning back on his gaming chair with a slight frown on his face, fingers toying with his water bottle cap.

you straighten up, hurriedly typing in an effort to do damage control from the angry mob.

"heyyyy!! i've been here since the beginning TT TT start the game, neikos!"

akin to dangling a dog treat in front of a puppy, phainon excitedly leans in close to his screen and exclaims your username.

"you've been here all this time! why didn't you say anything? i was about to be sad, you know?" he pouts, bottom lip exaggeratedly jutting out. you nervously laugh, already imagining the curses thrown your way from his viewers.

"srry.... was quite drained from work today ^^;;;; so i didn't feel like typing much..."

then you hurriedly add, "but it's ok now!! let's get this party started .·´¯`(>▂<)´¯`·. "

phainon hesitates for a moment, seemingly wanting to say more. but then he blinks and returns his focus back to the game he was supposed to play.

in a quieter voice, he mutters, "next time, don't leave me waiting like that, okay? i was scared something happened to you..."

that's... (odd) fair. it must have shaken him quite a bit, being used to you so present and vocal in his streams.

so you go ahead and reassure him, "got it (●'◡'●)"

it's passed off as jokes at first; his fanbase online has an ongoing inside joke wherein phainon is dating you in private. it's not an unreasonable conclusion, and it'd make sense to an outsider just peering in from outside, but when phainon mentioned your username in a fanmeet event, the line between jokes and genuine belief is blurred. a shipping culture is born, and the flames are fanned further when a fan posts a screenshot of their profile being followed by phainon before it quickly gets unfollowed.

from a supposed friendship in the eyes of his many viewers, it quickly becomes uncomfortable for you when other fans begin mentioning you in the chatbar, asking for confirmation during phainon's livestreams.

you turn a blind eye to the best that you can. a deranged fan dming you, claiming to have spotted you and phainon out on a date, is quickly blocked. all variations of your shipname with phainon are muted from your timeline, and the accounts related to it are blocked as well.

but even that's not enough. eventually, you decide that it's best to forget this streamer altogether; you stopped attending his livestreams, you moved accounts, you changed usernames, and you wished him the best of luck with his career. not that he needed any if the rumors of him being invited to gamescom held an ounce of truth.

not even a week later, you wake to a dm request on your new account from a burner,

"hello, i didn't mean for the entire situation to quickly turn sour. and i am so sorry for dragging you into this mess when i should've been at the forefront defending you from harassment and hate. i understand that you're not quite ready to reveal our relationship to the public just yet, and i fully respect your decision.

my only wish is for you to go back to watching my streams, just like old times? i really miss you, and i find myself having difficulty playing when you're not there to cheer me on. my personal cheerleader, in a way :) they don't have to know it's you, i know you changed your username, after all. we can keep it secret. i can ignore your messages (but just know i read them and keep them close to my heart), i'll pretend that i'm not paying attention to you, anything.

i just miss you so much. come back to me soon. please, (y/n)?

i love you.

yours,

phainon."

... that's not your username he's typing. it's your real name that you never revealed to anyone online - not to him.

and what does phainon mean by keeping it private? you're not even dating - not once have you even met up with him in real life.

this guy... this beloved, worshipped streamer, one that you used to look up to with so much admiration, is absolutely deranged.

[archive5-61]

Farewell...

[ddorothywei]

[diz-eaze]

god forbid streamer phainon plays any type of co op game that chat can join (jackbox, lethal company, etc) you KNOW he's gonna be riding reader's ass, hyping them up and basically neglecting everyone else playing... but the moment reader leaves, he ends the co op session to play something single player </3 the unwilling pda here is insane

it's 10000x times funnier when we put ourselves in the shoes of a normal viewer of neikos496.

; streamer phainon, modern au, blurb, not proofread.

paint this scene: after a long day at work, you come home to settle down and watch your comfort streamer play random games as he always had. you have your dinner on your desk with his stream pulled up on your monitor. today, he surprises the chat by announcing he's going to play a multiplayer game, the type wherein either it's randomly matched or needed to have a special invite code. it's a murder mystery with elements of horror and jumpscares added in, the perfect game to play with multiple players and on a livestream.

as expected, the chat ignites into excitement with people spamming their own wants and needs to play at least one round with him. every millisecond, there's a new message that makes the chat scroll faster, but phainon remains undeterred with how he's purposefully looking for something in there - rather, someone.

a superchat pops up on his screen: "mystqtie donated 100 subs!: phainon i'm begging you to give me an invite to the lobby. i'll do anything king."

his intense focus breaks, blue eyes leaving his monitor as he chuckles into his mic. "thank you for the dono, mystycutie, or is it mystcutie? haha, either way, i'm afraid i can't do that. we're going on a first-come, first-served basis here! fair for everyone. right, chat?"

however the following sentence completely contradicts what he just said, "[username]? are you here in the stream now? i made a special invite code for you, friend! come join my lobby first before i turn it public."

"[username]: ok! ^^"

you almost roll your eyes at how hypocritical your favorite streamer is when it comes to that beloved [username] viewer of his. had you been ignorant of him, you would've assumed that he was less of a celebrity figure and more of a fanatic of [username].

but you can't fight against blatant, rigged from the start favoritism granted to [username]. well, that's fine. you'll just have to wrestle the internet speed of over 200k live viewers from across the globe once phainon opens up the lobby.

in the end, it turned out to be your lucky day. you snagged the third member placement out of the seven players needed. but your supposed 'luck' is brought into question when, throughout the entire game, phainon keeps straying from the group to run off into an exploration duo with [username]. you try to bring him back to the group investigating in the main hall, but he never listens unless it's [username] themselves telling him to. even then, the pout on his facecam conveys how he hates being apart from them. okay romeo :/

furthermore, he's always the knight in shining armor when a jumpscare pops up to throw the investigation team into disarray. he's in front of [username]'s character, jumping and swearing at the ghost while he's shielding them from behind with his character's body. ... as if that helped with preventing them from experiencing the jumpscare on their screen, too. after the threat's gone, he'll turn around and comfort them, asking them countless questions and making sure they are really alright. and is he... speaking in that babytalk voice boyfriends use on their partners?

but despite his somewhat cringy behavior during the 'scary' parts, the phainon and [username] duo turns out to be a formidable pair of investigators. when he calms down from the high of playing the same game as [username], phainon locks in to a terrifying degree (is he trying to impress them?) and discovers major clues just from scanning the surface. piecing together the major clues phainon collected, [username] is able to formulate an accurate timeline of the game's events which leads the team to a new area of exploration.

unable to contain his joy, phainon blurts out, "what a brilliant mind! good job, bab- [username]! [username]...! i knew you had it in you!"

right. right. moving on from that terrible cover-up... it wasn't long before the mystery was solved. the evil is defeated, and the match ends then and there. phainon, eager puppy that he is, immediately suggests another around.

you agree, but unfortunately, [username] does not.

a minute after phainon expressed his desire to continue, a chat from them pops up;

"[username]: would love to, neikos! but i have work tmrw TT TT sorry.... but have fun everyone! rooting 4 u ☆*: .｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆"

phainon deflates like a popped balloon, his gaming chair making a thud when he crashes down with a disappointed look on his face. "aw... do you really have to? work, i mean..."

"[username]: ofc i do....?? ^^;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

[username]: bye neikos bye guys!"

the pout doesn't leave his face, eyes fixated on the last message [username] sent in chat, even with countless others begging him for another around.

a superchat pops up.

"rembrnce subscribed for 12 months!: dude let's start the next match plz we're waiting"

it takes a moment for phainon to laugh, albeit clearly forced. he leans back on his chair, mouse aiming for the 'disband team' option in the game. right before clicking, phainon says,

"sorry guys, i suddenly feel like playing silent hill right now. we can play co-op again next time! okay?"

sure, when [username] is conveniently available again, that is.

you hate your comfort streamer sometimes, you truly do.

[diz-eaze]

Hi hello

Imagine, streamer!Phainon that commissions Artist!Y/N (from his burner account obv) to draw Phai x ,,OC” selfship art. But the thing is that the „OC” looks just like Y/N and while they think this is just a coincidence that they look so similar, Phainon is kicking his his feet with excitement, because it's his lover that draws THEM TOGETHER <3

bonus points if it's something perverted :)

THIS IS SO FUNNY EGE N GIKFN EN IGNVIFD i answered a similar ask in the past, but NOT where the artist phainon's commissioning is (y/n) themself 😭😭😭😭

you're a digital artist struggling to get clients, so when a burner account - no profile picture, no banner, joined this month, username a bunch of randomized numbers - suddenly messages you, claiming that they're willing to pay a hefty price for a drawing commission (or several), you have no choice but to take the risk if you want to continue living in an apartment. your rent isn't going to pay by itself, and neither will being picky !! ><

you ask the mysterious account for details on the piece they're commissioning you for, and it's akin to breaking the dam. they send you reference photos of your favorite streamer phainon??? and then they went on some tangent about their OC, describing said OC to be the most ethereal person (err, OC) who coincidentally has your hairstyle, hair and eye color, fashion tastes, hair type, etc. okay nothing unordinary so far.... apart from shipping an OC with a real-life streamer but what the hell, sure. so you ask for more details.

[username]: ohhh ur OC sounds so cool !! :)) so any idea on how you want the illustration to be like?

user33550336: yes ^^ you said in your commission sheet that you're fine with doing nsfw, right? i hope it's not too much to ask... but can it be a morning sex illustration? >///< i have reference images for their pajamas... the entire bed should be in the frame, and the balcony is peeking out in the corner where sunlight will be coming from. phainon should be shirtless with scratch marks on his back, and some of his streaming set-up have little cameos (≧∇≦) and can you make phainon's dick 8 inches long with the penetration being extra sloppy? thank you :)

[username]: ...sure :) that's fine with me !! i should send you the sketch three days from now, is that an acceptable timeframe for you?

user33550336: of course

user33550336: take all the time you need (≧∇≦)

NEVER ACCEPT COMMISSIONS FROM ULTRA FREAKY BURNER ACCOUNTS. it's an ominous warning that circles around your head while you complete that damn commission. each time you sent over the WIP to get checked by them, they were always on your ass, asking for little tweaks on their precious OC here and there. which ended up... looking eerily similar to you. well.. whatever. it's not like you own the concept of having that specific hair and eye color anyway. just send the completed illustration as a file and be done with it.

...the 10000 credit tip is unexpected though.

and why are you seeing a glimpse of that commission printed out in the background of neikos496's latest stream.... ^^;;;

[dawnurora]

more farmernon and bikerdei i imagine mydei driving all the way to the countryside to surprise his husband and then taking him out on a ride ueuehe....live laugh love. please wear proper safety gear when driving anything always

[wasvrenagusa]

ALMOST HOLY YEARNING | MASTERLIST

pairing: Phainon x Fem!Reader summary: A painfully ordinary healer is transferred into the worst possible workplace scenario: direct proximity to the literal sun in human form—Phainon, the Deliverer you have been secretly, responsibly, and catastrophically worshipping from afar. Between overflowing infirmaries, impossible odds, and a boss who thinks throwing you at the Chrysos Heirs is “character building,” you must keep people alive and keep yourself from combusting every time Phainon smiles, laughs, or unforgivably, comes back just to see you. This is, let's say, a comical story about accidental closeness, professional boundaries being obliterated, and the terrifying realization that the man you admire from a safe distance might be looking back… and finding you hilarious. status: Ongoing

一 PART I: Safe Distance? Obliterated

一 PART II: Discount Day: Enter at Your Own Risk

一 PART III: Hello, My Name is Embarrassment

一 PART IV: A Healer's Guide to 'How to Lose Your Chill in Front of the Sun God' 101—Yet Again

一 PART V: One Healer, Five Chrysos Heirs, and a Funeral for Existing

一 PART VI: A Tale of Two Dummies (One Divine, One Ghost)

一 PART VII: Don't Call it Clinging, Call it Intimate Resolution

一 PART VIII: Anaxa's Provisional Title Has a Colon. Of Course, It Does

More chapters will be added soon.

[danijaci]

source: trust me bro (1) w/ phainon

LS! YN is still dedicated to the act even while tipsy!!!

taglist @thatkawaiidesubitch @atsukawolfcat @fandomfloozy @ladiosapalmera @lalalatataa @belovedxiao @liesatemyocean @heather-hutchcroft @absentlyfreshfate @docile-dove @what-was-i-thinking-t-t @skyh20 @avalordream @hyukabean @yanderecon @alatusou @jarjarwinx @m4k0m4y4 @carol-of-the-chains @no-interest-rightnow @bbluppsbblapss @krickets-chirping @mokonasenpaiposts @kohavalon @angelrot9 @lulukex @unseenslayerglitch @moristhesecond

[dawnurora]

[porcelainbirdss]

Series summary: the meaning of freedom becomes none when you’re of descending wealth. And the value of freedom becomes all when you get forced into an unwanted marriage, shackled to a man against your will.

Or, in other words: upon witnessing a prophetic dream, you decide to rip your honor back by force — killing some beast, after all, cannot be that difficult. Your own betrothed agrees to help.

Series warnings: fem!reader, yandere!Phainon, NSFW elements, MDNI, oral sex + fingering (fem receiving), dubious consent (both of them are drunk during the scene), slight asphyxiation, non-canonical setting, Phainon is reader’s fiancé, arranged marriage, power imbalance, jealousy, manipulation, possessive behaviors, toxicity, misogyny (not described in detail), brief mentions of animal hunting, mentions of death; descriptions of injury, blood and puking; alcohol consumption, physical violence, please do check tags for more || wc: 19.5k

II. IT’S FINGERS ON YOUR THROAT, IT’S PAIN THAT ALL THINGS KNOW

On the ninth day marking the start of your journey, you and Phainon finally reached the southern village, a place that seemed forgotten by time, at least in some sort of way. A little community, living at a high altitude and separated from the fast-paced city of Okhema below, acting as if the people living at the foot of this mountain didn’t exist, weren’t of any importance, and perhaps you understood that mindset very well, for you’d ignore such pompous affairs too if you had the chance to ever live there. Maybe you will, you thought distantly, maybe one day you’ll return to this mountain, free and unburdened, shackled to no one, and then you’ll live here without any man or woman telling you how to lead your own life.

The houses here were made out of dark pine, and so was the inn that you decided to stop at for a rest, your foot needing a bit of a longer reprieve. The inn in question was dimly lit, the last of daylight barely reaching past the doorway before lessening into none, late afternoon turning into dusk, twilight’s pale, waning light unable to brighten up the dark space; the air inside the inn was warm but it’d be a stretch to say that the smell was equally pleasant.

Several lanterns were set across the walls, their glow amber-like, subdued and uneven, spreading out into tall shadows. A handful of passing travelers of your ilk, perhaps, occupied separate corners of the inn, their conversations so low that you could not gather what they might be possibly speaking of, voices hushed and secretive, as if those talks were of things far more terrifying and grand than just the rising prices of alcohol.

Everything around you seemed darkened with age, the deep-brown wood appearing even black in some places. Cobwebs, dust gathered here and there, tracks of mud. Your eyes trailed after the unclean path of dirt that someone must’ve carried inside, and Phainon’s arm squeezed around yours near playfully. “What a cozy little place they’ve got there. Perhaps we should leave and instead ask one of the locals to let us stay the night?” The man asked quietly as he leaned down to your level, lips already stretching into a blithe smile.

“Perhaps not.” You answered just as quietly, squeezing his arm back, your bodies pressed close enough to make others send you somewhat intrigued, maybe even intrusive looks. It’s not like you had much choice, your injury was still aching and putting too much pressure on it caused you a considerable amount of pain, which more-or-less forced you to rely on Phainon. Being guided was definitely better than getting carried anyway, and he always insisted on aiding you very, very fiercely, assuring that your foot would only get worse if you continued to walk by yourself for too long, which you had no reason to doubt. “We’re already here, so let’s not change our plans so suddenly.”

Phainon shrugged, “whatever you wish for,” he said, sounding like he’d be fine either way.

Then you were getting led to the wooden counter, Phainon’s forearm winding quite tightly around yours, making you think that any more pressure and he’d suffocate you or break a few bones. Not like the inn itself had many guests in it, so why the sudden paranoia? It did appear safe, but your naïveté could be clouding your judgment, so you did not speak against Phainon’s wariness and his need to keep you overly close.

Following Phainon obediently, you finally stopped in front of the counter, assessing the woman behind it. She was young, surely, a crown of pale locks framing her delicate face, and you thought the woman’s apparition was particularly gentle, cheeks wan and eyes doe-like; a thick, loose braid of lavender rested over her shoulder, equally violet irises already assessing you back.

The intensity of her gaze was curious, you were near beckoned to speak by yourself and greet the innkeeper, though Phainon spoke first. “We’d like a room for two,” he said, tone not unkind but reserved.

“Just for one night?” The woman asked, reaching below the counter and opening some drawer, plucking a singular key of rusty color.

“Yes,” Phainon confirmed, briefly adjusting his hold on you before grabbing several coins from the travel bag and placing them on the wooden surface politely. “At least we suspect so.”

“It is quite a short time, especially if you’d like to show your wife the sights this village has to offer,” her gaze was no longer on you, instead downcast, counting the payment.

A strangled sound left you, eyes shooting wide as you looked between Phainon’s half-bemused, half-enthralled expression and the girl’s elegant, utterly innocent face, still oblivious to what she just suggested. “Excuse me but—”

“Wife?” Phainon interrupted, smile stretching wider, eyebrows arching in unconcealed enjoyment.

The innkeeper finally lifted her big eyes, then blinked at Phainon in abashment, previously pale cheeks turning rosy. “Is she not…?” The woman trailed off, voice cracking a bit with sudden nervousness. “My apologies, I did not mean to come off as presumptive…”

“Oh, but it is all right,” Phainon waved his hand dismissively, grabbing the key that was passed into his hold, “you were not far off, miss.”

Again, you sent him a scornful glare, but the man did not react, checking the number attached to the key and starting to guide you towards the staircase — the fact that Phainon didn’t really try denying the fact of your possible marriage irked you, same goes for him saying that this innkeeper wasn’t exactly wrong to assume you as a couple. You were not a couple, not by any means.

Once away from people’s earshot, you looked up at Phainon. “What was that?” You hissed, feeling blood come rushing to your face.

“What was what, [Name]?” Phainon asked dumbly, long eyelashes fluttering down at you with all the guiltlessness of a little ewe.

“Well, for starters, you are acting as though we are— hard to say, married, still in a betrothal?” The tone of your voice wasn’t chastising, no, it sounded far too subtle for your liking, but then again, you’ve always been soft when it came to Phainon.

The door of your temporary room opened, Phainon herding you inside gently, your eyes fixed on the ground as you began to take off your shoes. “Theoretically speaking, you are my betrothed,” he said, lacking fault.

You clicked your tongue, scoffing, lips already parting to tell him that you were done with the nettling for today, that you were tired and his poor humor no longer amused you, but the sight inside the room caused you to momentarily falter. Instead of two separate beds, there was only one, the mattress big enough to fit two people yet lacking in space to lie comfortably without any accidental touches. Oh, that doe-eyed innkeeper, did she do so to spite you? No, certainly not, for she looked far too genuine to indulge in such nonsensical jests. Still, her mistake was clear as day.

“Gods above, I’ll tell her to give us a different room.” With a sigh, you turned on your heel, leaving Phainon’s support and starting to head back towards the outer corridor.

Before you could depart, he grabbed you by the wrist, causing you to stop with an inelegant stumble. “No, it’s fine. It is just for one night, [Name], let us spare that girl trouble. She already looked quite frustrated when we spoke to her.”

“Very well,” resigned, you shifted to face Phainon again, knowing that he was right and it was you who acted rashly. It really was just one night, the two of you slept side by side many times before.

He sent you a benign smile, one which you reciprocated, carefully walking past him, making sure not to put too much pressure on your foot. Then you sat down on the bed, sighing in relief, grateful for the finally subsiding pain — your calves were giving you a hellish time lately, so being able to finally rest on a soft mattress was like a godsend, whole body immediately relaxing as you leaned back, supporting yourself on your elbow.

Phainon followed after you, taking a seat by your legs, pulling them over his lap and briefly examining that injured foot of yours. “How is it?” He asked, tone light.

“Could have been worse,” you admitted in a quiet, somewhat doleful voice, watching as he started to press the pads of his thumbs into the arch of your foot, the sensation simultaneously alleviating the pain and somehow making it more prominent.

Still continuing the massage, Phainon hummed, sight rising to focus on your face. “Even if it’s late, I could still try to go out, see if they have any herbs in the village. Maybe something to lessen the pain or put you to sleep faster.” The man offered, now kneading the ball of your foot.

A small laugh escaped you, lips curling into a smile. “What does it matter to you? I don’t think the beast is far, we’re already in the southern territory — all you’ll need to do is drag me there and be done with it.”

Appearing incredulous, Phainon blinked at you, leaning forward till you had to bend your leg in order to accommodate his weight. “But you must have hit your head somewhere along the way, [Name], what are you even implying? I do it because I care, I care about you.”

Seeing the surprisingly sincere distress in his eyes, you huffed out a giggle, feeling like the man before you wasn’t the fiancé you wanted out of your life but a good friend, a companion, something in-between all the things you did not wish to voice. “Hm, is that so?” Still, you mused, indulging this play even if it later on turns out to be a horrible idea, hands reaching to cup Phainon’s slightly pouty cheeks. “First you call me sensitive, then you act childish. What am I going to do with you, Phainon?”

He leaned into your touch without any sort of hesitation, head tilting so that the side of his face pressed snugly against your palm, eyes half-closed and lips smiling in a way that reminded you of a satiated puppy, docile and harmless, gentle-tempered thing. Your right hand moved to card through the lilac-white locks, earning a sigh from Phainon, and you thought yourself cruel. Despite being used as a way of getting your ticket to freedom and being well aware of it, he remained loyally by your side, helping and caring for you, lending his strength whenever you needed it, extending such hilarious amounts of fidelity toward you that it seemed near absurd; and still, what did he receive in exchange?

A risk that he might not return home, even if in your eyes Phainon was powerful, and the prospects of him losing the fight with the beast were slim. That must’ve been cruel, knowing all of it yet letting him go. Your expression probably twisted in a forlorn way, because Phainon soon pulled back slightly, taking hold of your hands.

“You look cheerless,” he said. “I’ll ask where to wash the clothes later, for now we should come down and eat. And I’ll buy you whatever meal you wish to have today, [Name], all right? You haven’t been eating well lately, which worries me too…”

“It is because of my injury, I’m afraid. The pain renders my appetite gone.” You admitted, feeling bad to complain so much.

Yet Phainon merely nodded in solemn understanding, letting go of your hands and helping you get up. Then you put on your shoes and were finally guided outside, both of you leaving the room, heading downstairs and passing a few persons on the way, which unsurprisingly made Phainon press you closer into his side, a habit you deemed endearing and concerning at the same time.

The adjacent common room smelled, perhaps, even worse than the main one, though you did not whine about that. The hour wasn’t too late, so travelers were still gathered on the long benches, and you were honestly shocked to see so many of them, nearly all of the places occupied to the brim, men and women alike squeezing together by the dark-wood tables while drinking alcohol and dining — there was even a boy playing some cheery tune on a flute in the corner, but hearing his melody clearly was impossible with the ongoing clamor.

By miracle, you managed to find an empty seat, just enough space to fit two people, even if you’d have to be squeezed together. So you sat, watching over your shoulder as Phainon went to order you food. The choice wasn’t vast, but you asked for a meat dish, missing the taste, already fed up with constantly eating berries and the dried rations that you took from your homes. It took some time and you were starting to sweat a bit, overheating from so many people gathered in just one place, the fireplace bursting in angry flames even if it was summer and the weather was rather hot, all the voices surrounding you suddenly becoming grating, very hard to make out.

But Phainon did eventually return, two plates in his hands, steaming meat that had your mouth watering. “There you go.” He placed the food in front of you with a smile, sitting down.

He was only partially on the bench, body taking up too much space, and you chuckled at the sight of Phainon nearly hanging off, trying to move a little to the side but finding that you couldn’t. “Gods, you’ll fall at this rate.” You said, shaking your head in amusement as you took the utensils, some worn knife and fork. “Move closer.”

Phainon did so without much convincing, making you feel unfortunately hotter, sandwiched between him and some granny sitting at your left. Just to shut yourself up, you took a bite. The meat didn’t taste bad, but it was somewhat charred, too salty and rough on your palate, yet you still continued to eat.

The man at your side was saying something, but you didn’t hear, sending him a questioning look. “Does it taste good?” Phainon repeated, leaning into your space. “We can switch if you dislike yours.”

You assessed his portion, it seemed less burnt. Perhaps leeching on Phainon’s kindness so much was bad but you still nodded without any sense of hesitation, swapping your plates and immediately tasting the other meal, thinking it was moderately better, a decent amount of seasonings coating the meat. Phainon observed you in a way that could only be described as some weird self-satisfaction, then he started to eat the charred food.

A few beats of silence passed when neither of you spoke. The dish was enough to keep your mouth occupied, so instead of trying to strike another conversation with your friend, you watched the people around you, seeing them get up and leave, then come again, some even bringing spare chairs to sit on when the benches got too stuffy. You wondered what sort of inn this must be for so many to come here — not like you saw any travelers on the way to the southern mountain. It may be that they simply lived here, paying a feeble sum for the rooms monthly.

“We should ask about that field from my prophetic dream,” you eventually began, nudging Phainon to get his attention. “Those people seem to be travelers, seasoned ones at that, they might just know where it is located,”

“Right now?” He mused, swallowing the half-burnt meat from his mouth. “No, we can do that in the morning. See, everyone’s already busy with merrymaking, no one will give you a concrete answer.”

A scoff. “But they’ll go to work in the morning, or get on the move, travel. Do you wish to bother them all before that?”

Phainon shrugged, “perhaps you’re right. Still, talking to drunks while sober is quite impossible, in my opinion.” He looked over his shoulder, your gaze immediately following, locking on the arrangement of barrels behind the long counter, filled with most likely strong wine, considering the state of people around you. It didn’t take long for Phainon to look back at you, already smirking. “What do you say, [Name]? A few won’t hurt.”

A few would most certainly hurt, reducing your clarity of mind to none, making you slower and more likely to abandon the objective task altogether. Still, you were weak to his smiles and offers. “I can’t understand why you’re doing all of this, Phainon, shouldn’t we focus on different things…?” You sighed, folding your hands on the table with predictable defeat. “So be it, bring us the alcohol.”

With a triumphant chuckle, Phainon got up from his seat, saying, “I do it because I want you to enjoy yourself, truly. You’ve been through a lot.” Then he rubbed your shoulder and strolled away, leaving you alone.

Enjoying yourself assuredly wasn’t your priority here. With so many things to do and see, with so much constant trouble tugging at the edges of your mind and inclining your instincts to focus majorly on survival instead of dwelling on the further future, you often seemed to forget your goal. Slay the beast, return home, be recognized as a warrior, and free yourself from the betrothal before your marriage. That’s what you should be doing, that’s what should be occupying you all the time; yet instead of worrying about your tentative freedom, the things you’ll have to do to achieve it, you still got lost in such fickle activities as drinking, eating, sitting in an overcrowded tavern while the clock ticked mercilessly above your head. And that ticking reminded you of the passing time, of how you’re wasting it, indulging Phainon and your own self.

Though you started to feel anxious with urgency, you still smiled when Phainon returned, placing the two mugs down, their contents dark with the blood-red wine inside, so much of it that it nearly spilled over. You looked into the mug, seeing your own distorted reflection gleaming along with the passing light and the shadow. It might’ve been that the wine’s surface twisted how you look, but you could swear that you appeared more tired than usual, eyelids heavy and the circles beneath your eyes prominent, lip split and corners tilted downwards, the deep bruises around your eye still there. Your foot continued to ache. Sleep came harder as of late.

“Let’s make a toast.” Phainon said, scooting closer, his mug already lifted and eyes crinkling in the corners.

A humorless laugh left you as you also lifted your mug. “To what? We haven’t achieved anything,” you answered, voice barely audible over the commotion of a dozen people conversing all at once, voices only getting louder and louder to talk over each other.

Phainon’s lips moved, a singular syllable, one that you did not catch — then his mug knocked against yours, spilling just a bit of wine over your knuckles. You watched him take a swig and instead of asking to repeat what you were exactly toasting for, you simply mirrored the action, feeling the bitter-sweet taste of the alcohol, wincing just slightly which earned a melodic laugh from your companion.

And so, you drank. Then drank some more. Telling how much time passed was impossible with no windows in the common room, the only source of light being the big chandelier above your heads and the couple of lanterns hanging in the corners, casting warm light along with the hearth’s fire. You have had three mugs in front of you, though you swear that you had more earlier. Phainon was downing his fourth one beside you, cheeks deeply flushed, eyes heavy-lidded with the alcohol running through his veins. The sight was almost delightful in a way that made you reach out to tousle his hair, endeared by the contrast of his white locks and the reddened face, and he merely laughed at your action, the sound of his joy suddenly so unguarded.

The noise in the common room had risen, though you don’t know when that happened, a shift of tone without a clear moment of change. Voices stacking over one another, laughter breaking out so loudly that it would’ve irritated you in normal circumstances, and then dissolving just as quickly into something lower — mugs thudded and slammed against the tables, an uneven rhythm, a cacophony of sounds. You were drunk, so inebriated that any thoughts of getting the information that you needed, that you came here for, suddenly evaporated.

Someone was talking by the door and you heard it, a meaningless —said it was closed, I heard him—, followed by that’s not what… no, you weren’t even there, and the words blurred so much that they hardly made any sense. Then laughter took up again, resounding through the inn.

At the table beside you, a man leaned far too back in his chair that you watched him bring in earlier, balancing it on just two legs, and another person took the empty mugs from you, arms brushing against your neck. It was a stranger touching you, but just for a small second, you let them take the mugs and asked for more wine, though you’re unsure whether they’ve heard your request.

After a second, your eyes fell on the man on the chair again, something curious about his face drawing you in like a magnetic force. “Didn’t see you come in,” he said, gaze focused not on you but on a different woman. No one answered. “Shame,” he added after a moment, gaze sliding somewhere then stopping, and you felt your head getting particularly heavy now, “would’ve remembered that.”

Something clattered behind you, ceramic, maybe. You didn’t jerk in fright, body and mind reacting too slow, thoughts rolling in so belatedly to the point where nothing really startled you anymore. A faceless voice behind you swore, making you look over your shoulder to gauge what was happening — true enough, someone dropped their plate piled with food so tall that it felt like a tremendous waste, yet everyone laughed, and so did you, chortling at the poor person’s misfortune.

Suddenly, someone was touching you again, a hand pressed up against your waist. Your head whipped in agitation, only to realize it was just Phainon, his familiarity and harmless intentions. Perhaps he wished to get your attention back. With a swiveling vision, you looked up into the blue irises, seeing four then six instead of the usual two; that earned a chuckle from you, Phainon reciprocating it as you hugged up to him, muscles too heavy with the alcohol’s poison to stay fully upright.

The stranger man leaned forward, body angling in the direction of your table, chair dropping back on all fours with a dull sound you barely caught. “You traveling far, lovebirds?” He asked, eyes boring into your form. You wondered how old he was, for he did not seem too young even to your drunken self, maybe twice your age or so. “Or just passing through.”

There was a pause, your expression twitching between amusement and consternation. “Not that it matters,” the chair-man went on, waving a hand vaguely, “I just don’t see…” he stopped, as if losing his thought only halfway through, then picking it up again, “…people like that often, is all.”

“What is he talking about?” You asked Phainon, still tilting into his space way too heavily, your voice slurring and quiet but laced with undeniable amusement.

Some other chair scraped across the floor. Phainon sent you a look before his hand settled on you more firmly, more surely, palm splaying across the curve of your hip, which obviously made you chortle again, because why was he acting so clingy?

“You’re staring,” came the response, flat and maybe less slurry than yours, Phainon’s tone still level. It was impressive, you thought, having so much sway over your own speech after drinking several mugs of wine.

The chair-man blinked owlishly. “Am I?” He said, clicking his tongue in condescension. “Didn’t realize it was forbidden.”

The atmosphere was tense yet you did not feel its weight, still so curious about that stranger who, despite having a mean smile on his face and a few scars stretching across the bridge of his nose, appeared so intriguing to you. Like an antique painting, hanging in one of the long halls, slightly dusty and crooked but very appealing to your interest.

“Stop,” Phainon said, tone turning hostile.

Around you, the noise didn’t subside, it picked up in volume if anything. The boy playing on the flute had apparently very spacious lungs, for he continued to blow and blow, the tune getting chaotic and more disorderly, only two people dancing before him. Some travelers went to sleep by now, yet what remained seemed to be an especially rowdy group, their shouting mixing with laughter, a few hands slamming against the tabletops hard enough to rattle the mugs and plates, a cacophony of sounds and smells and the overwhelming warmth that had you feeling ill.

“Relax,” said the chair-man, laughing under his breath, eyes flitting around Phainon’s face mockingly before setting on yours, “wasn’t talking to you.”

Leaning against Phainon, you could feel his muscles tense, though you had no energy or even will to gauge his expression. “I said stop, didn’t I?” He hissed, quite aggressively.

Phainon’s rising form jostled you, though his unpredictable zeal to fight was snuffed out instantly, a woman of blond locks that curled beautifully at the ends and a very strong, broad silhouette approaching the chair-man and starting to speak to him about something, gesticulating rather fiercely. She reminded you of Mydei, this woman, obviously temperamental and of equally delightful looks.

“Oh, what is wrong with you?” Huffing and with your eyebrows knit together, you also attempted to stand, putting too much pressure on your foot by accident and wobbling then, grabbing Phainon’s bicep to support yourself before you could topple over.

It was expected that he caught you, strong arms winding around your middle before sending the last glare toward that stranger. Then the eyes of blue were already back on you, penitent and big. “[Name], let’s just— just go back to our room,” Phainon stammered, words starting to turn slurred as well, syllables melting into something clumsy. His earlier bravado must’ve been a little for show, then, for his expression morphed into a very pitiful one, lower lip jutting out, cheeks still coated in blush.

Knowing that Phainon was prone to causing scenes now, you nodded, gracing him with a sympathetic rub on the arm. “So be it, let’s retire for the night now,” you decided, barely keeping yourself upright. Maybe it was stupid to let two people, both of them highly inebriated and one partially unable to walk by herself, go freely on their own, but there was obviously no one to stop you, so you simply allowed yourself to be guided forth by the man.

The route was challenging, at least when you reached the stairs. Him and you stumbled and staggered like newborn fawns, his arm barely holding you upright as you somehow dragged your bodies towards your shared room, tripping over each other’s legs and snickering, probably too loudly for the sector that’s meant for reprieve.

Hastily, you began to kick off your shoes, Phainon mimicking your action. The room was completely dark now, the only source of light being the waning crescent moon outside, and your eyes briefly fell on the glinting steel leaned against the wall’s corner, thinking it was fortunate that Phainon left it behind, for his anger seemed to get the better of him back at the common room.

“I feel like I’m going to fall asleep while standing up…” you mumbled, dragging your heavy limbs to the bed, movements still uncoordinated and sluggish. At least your foot no longer hurt so bad, the pain gone for as long as you didn’t put any weight on it, and with so much alcohol in your body, it was very likely that you’d be knocked out almost instantly, troubles with sleep no longer of your concern.

You collapsed atop the bed, groaning in relief, eyes already closed. The soft mattress was truly a blessing, your joints relaxing as you finally rested in safety instead of struggling through wilderness, and you could easily ignore the fact that your head was spinning like a wild swing. Just as you thought to finally snuggle into the sheets and drift off, a sudden weight beside you made the mattress dip, and that’s when you remembered that Phainon still, in fact, does exist. He kicked the duvet up, dragging it over your bodies, tucking you in blindly. You let him do so, only pausing when you rolled on your side and felt that heavy arm curling around your upper torso, a coil sitting tightly on your shoulders, rendering you somewhat immobilized.

Sighing softly, you reached to feel at the limb slung over your form. “You’re clinging, Phainon…” you slurred out, voice muffled against the pillow, quiet and slightly unintelligible. “You’ve always been overly affectionate, but— but now this is getting a little ridiculous…”

“So what?” Phainon huffed, his breath summery against your nape, body shifting closer and closer until he was pressed up against your back, legs slotting together like puzzle pieces, the back of your thighs glued to his lap.

“So you should perhaps ask Cyrene about that doeling of hers once we return, get yourself a goat to coddle,” you snorted, a brittle laugh slipping past your lips.

A puff of hot air tickled you at the back of your neck again, half-laugh and half-scoff. “But will that really be necessary…?” Phainon drawled, voice dropping low, speech articulated in a way that only seemed to punctuate his obvious drunkenness. His arm tightened around your shoulders.

“If you continue being such a child, then yes,” you grumbled in response, a hint of reluctant amusement resounding beneath the feigned gruffness. The grip he had on you was uncomfortable, overly snug.

Phainon whined, then, a pathetic sound that somehow didn’t surprise you. “You’re so cruel, [Name].”

You only chuckled in response, feeling too drunk and too weak to do anything, sleepiness already overtaking your mind, making you accept the fact that Phainon was hugging you this whole time, pressed up against your back like a very insistent leech that yearned for a human’s warmth. The man didn’t say anything more, merely grabbed onto your bicep more firmly and hushed down for good.

Predictably, sleep took you soon — but when you awoke, it was still dark, the moon having shifted only a bit during your brief rest. Because of Phainon’s body folding around yours, you were quite literally sweltering, the duvet, as thin as it was, not doing much to alleviate the unbearable heat, sweat dripping down your chest and back practically in buckets. His arm was still hooked around your shoulders, one leg now swung across your own legs as if to pin you to place, like you were a dead dragonfly, waiting to be fixed forever-still by those long needles people use when they secure their oddities in frames, an odd trophy of sorts.

Unfortunately, you were being smothered, struggling to catch breath from how hard Phainon was gripping you. That led to another reaction, which was an overwhelming nausea, stomach flipping around and making your throat clench, if only to stop the food from escaping, which honestly wasn’t working; heart starting to beat faster with urgency, you disentangled yourself from the heap of limbs that you and Phainon created, like godsdamned hibernating snakes, then hopped off the bed. Your vision kept swimming, body devoid of any balance, but you still had enough wits to put the majority of weight on your good foot.

Then, in a moment of curiosity, you glanced over your shoulder, catching the sight of Phainon’s face. He seemed so very peaceful. It was hard to discern the exact details of his contours, though you noticed his arms curling around nothing and feeling rather sympathetic, you placed a spare pillow against his breast, making him immediately cuddle to the thing. Both of you were still equally drunk — if you managed to stay quiet, Phainon wouldn’t even guess that you ever left in the first place.

Another wave of nausea hit you straight in the guts, so you finally turned around, heading for the door. Your gait was incredibly clumsy, your bad foot dragging behind you awkwardly, yet you somehow managed to descend downstairs without any aid, without even falling or tripping too much. The lanterns in the main room were still surprisingly lit, and so were the lanterns in the common room where you got so inebriated just a few hours ago, their amber glow illuminating the spaces dimly.

Not thinking too much of it, you grabbed one of the nearby lanterns by the metallic handle, heading outside. Pushing past the doors, you looked around for privy, finally spotting the small, wooden shed, rushing towards it and practically hurling yourself inside when you felt your mouth begin to water, barely-digested meat traveling up your throat and making you gag.

Violently puking your insides out certainly wasn’t the best experience, but that’s what you get for drinking irresponsibly. After a few minutes, you got up from your knees, leaving the privy and grabbing the lantern that you abandoned outside in your haste, frowning at the swarm of moths that managed to gather around. Such foolish creatures, you thought, wishing for the distant moon and mistaking any sort of light for it. What fickle lives they must lead.

Your eyes remained focused on the moths for a few seconds more before you finally grabbed the lantern, making them all scatter in different directions, some even hitting your face as they flew, startled, unsure of what to do. Then you were dragging yourself back inside, wincing at the ache in your foot and the swimming vision that had you stumbling at the threshold, shoulder knocking against the doorframe roughly — in your mouth, the distinct, acrid taste of vomit still lingered, clinging to your palate and tongue, making you near sick again.

Miraculously managing to utter a logical thought, you put the lantern down, turning towards the common room. Water, you needed water, stomach still tight and throat irritated. You walked inside, mildly surprised by the sight of the innkeeper already there, her waif frame only partially illuminated, hands busy sweeping the tabletops with a cloth.

The woman’s doe-eyes rose, fixing on your frame with great curiosity. “Miss, did you need something?” She asked, voice polite and soft, settling the cloth down and approaching you in an elegant way, her alabaster-colored skirts swaying with each step.

A cough ripped from your lungs before you could answer, eyes watering. You nodded, feeling rather weak and still so very drunk, falling heavily on the now completely empty bench. “A glass of water would be nice, if that’s alright.”

The innkeeper nodded in understanding, swiftly walking behind the long counter and pouring you water, then getting back at your side. She passed you the glass, and you took it with a grateful, albeit faint smile. “Thank you, miss…?”

“Castorice,” she said, reciprocating the smile in a very cordial manner.

“I’m [Name].” You introduced yourself without much apprehension, for this girl obviously was of pure heart, making you trust her almost instantly.

Castorice sat beside you in a tentative manner, folding her hands on her lap. “It’s a pleasure meeting you, miss [Name]. Though, I simply must ask: are you feeling ill?”

Genuinely surprised at her careworn tone, you blinked a few times, letting out an incredulous chuckle, because you did feel ill, head pounding and hands still shaking from how hard you vomited back at the privy. “No, I’m…” you paused, taking a generous sip, “I’m quite fine. But we overdid it with alcohol.”

“You mean you and that man?” She queried, and you thought she must be really shy, considering the quietness of her voice.

“Yes,” you answered simply.

“I saw you two leave.”

“I guess we let loose,” you paused yet again, fingers drumming against the now half-empty glass, struggling to remember what you and Phainon were even doing earlier on. “Unfortunately.”

Castorice nodded slowly. “Miss [Name], I do not mean to come off as nosy, but who is he to you?” The look in her eyes shifted, both a subtle and noticeable change, something solemn passing through the violet irises. “I took you for a married couple earlier, and he did not seem particularly moved. If anything, I’d say he was happy with the misunderstanding.”

You didn’t know why this woman was asking you such intrusive questions but it’s not like you minded in the first place, surprisingly feeling no offense. Maybe it was, in some sort of way, pleasant to get these things off your chest. “It’s— it’s fine. Uh, he’s…” you stammered, “we’re engaged.”

“You are?” Castorice mused. “I suppose that makes sense.”

There was a moment of silence between you where you didn’t know how to answer, shifting tensely on the long bench, fiddling with your joints. Castorice’s fingers clenched around her skirts, she seemed uncomfortable too, apparently sensing that something was wrong but unable to put her finger on it, a distinct sense of unease.

“Though…” the girl continued, “you do not appear thrilled, miss [Name]…”

A half-hearted scoff. “Well, considering my circumstances, it’s hard to be.”

“You weren’t glad when I mistook you for his wife.” She whispered, suddenly so small, her shoulders curling inwards as if in abashment. You almost felt bad, wishing you could hold her hands and tell her that it wasn’t her who you were agitated by, that it was all right, but you held your urges back, knowing your action would be far too daring and certainly not appreciated.

“Miss Castorice, do you wish to know why I’m here?” The question fell easy, alcohol running through your system, making you bolder, more open and careless, longing to tell somebody — anybody — about your own plight. She nodded, saying sure, so you continued: “I am not of this place — I live at the foot of the mountain, in Okhema. The thing is, I had to embark on this harsh journey, I had to, for this… this might be my only chance at regaining freedom,” the confession spilled from your mouth like a waterfall, too much all at once, and your voice cracked at the end, a brittle sound.

Castorice’s fingers twitched against her lap, eyes widened in concern. “Regaining freedom… So you did lose it once?”

“Yes,” you said, expression tight, “it’s… it’s about that man.” It felt like talking about a stranger instead of Phainon, the sweet Phainon that you knew, that you managed to grow so fond of, that you never truly minded.

“I mean no offense, miss [Name], but do you not wish to marry your fiancé?”

“I do not, no.”

“Then is he cruel to you?” Her gaze briefly brushed over the bruises around your eye and you nearly laughed, thinking how different the true story was from whatever Castorice’s mind must’ve conjured up in that moment of uncertainty.

“Quite the opposite.” A sigh, long and heavy. “My, uh,” you paused, swallowing thickly, the word feeling like a broken bone lodged inside your throat, choking, choking, “betrothed is incredibly kind and caring, and he’s an excellent leader. He’s the type of man that every woman dreams of marrying.”

“Oh… there must be another that your heart longs for, surely?”

That made you pause, teeth grinding together for a short second, jaw working. Such an innocent question, yet you already felt your whole chest caving in bitterly. “Perhaps once, there was someone. But not anymore.”

Castorice must’ve noticed your stress, for she immediately faltered again, posture slouching. “I understand.”

“I was forced into this betrothal, that’s what happened. Everything in my life goes against my will, and just this once, I wish to be finally in control.” You felt yourself getting emotional, not to mention in front of a girl that you practically didn’t know, pouring out your woes to someone whose name was still a mystery to you just a few minutes earlier. Isn’t that pathetic? And yet, you couldn’t help the utter helplessness promising to swallow you whole, suddenly so vast, a deep-seated fear you harbored.

The woman beside you shifted, eyes falling on her lap. “But you must have a plan, then, any sort of an escape route…”

“I do. I had a prophetic dream.” You said, making Castorice’s gaze rise once more. “In order to break free, I need to kill the beast of this mountain.”

“The beast?” She echoed, a bit perplexed.

It was awful, knowing that no matter who you opened up to, probably would not believe you anyway. Against your poor experiences, you continued, “yes. I have seen it in that prophetic dream of mine and it spoke to me in riddles, though I understood enough to know what it wanted to communicate.”

“The gods must really favor you, miss [Name], if they sent you such a vision.” Her voice betrayed nothing.

“They hardly do.” What use these visions had if no one believed you anyway, most likely not even Castorice, who seemed so kind and understanding. Well, at least Phainon put faith in you. “But I believe it is true that killing this wretched fiend will bring me glory, despite everything.”

“I have lived on this mountain for the majority of my life, yet I haven’t heard even a word about that beast.” The girl hummed, tethering her fingers together and putting her hands on her lap, donning an expression of deep contemplation, as if your words genuinely made her wonder. “Still, do you know where it may be?”

“It was hiding in a vast field of beargrass, that’s all I know.”

Recognition flashed in Castorice’s eyes suddenly, back straightening out. “With ponds and caves?”

“Y-yes,” you stuttered, a rush of hope surging through your veins, almost enough to subdue the feeling of drunkenness that still appeared to be overwhelming your whole body, “do you happen to recognize that place?”

“I think I do.” Castorice responded, something akin to a delitescent smile of happiness blossoming on her face, as if she was starting to feel hopeful for you, too. “My sister and I were shepherdesses long ago, and that place… I can still see it so clearly in my memory, as if we were herding sheep there just yesterday. Our now late mother always scolded us for getting home late, saying those fields were probably an imaginary place that me and my sister conjured up… ah, but I digress, don’t I?” A small, weak chuckle slipped past her lips, a forlorn look passing through the violet irises. “Trust me, miss [Name], we have explored many fields, yet that one has always been special. Beargrass doesn’t grow anywhere else, surprisingly, at least not in such amounts.”

You felt your cheeks turning hot with anticipation, body edging closer to Castorice, as if she was an all-knowing and all-saving saint. “And how do I get here?”

“All you need to do is take the southern route from our village,” she said. “The paths are already sparse as they are, only branching off in four directions. You’ll have no trouble finding your destination, no, you’ll know exactly when you get there. Oh, those fields… how I wish I could visit just one more time, with my sister by my side…”

“I don’t know how to thank you enough, miss Castorice, I’m— I’m forever indebted to you.” Near tearing up, you gave her a shaky smile, thinking how fortunate you were that this angel crossed your way, that she was here all along, in this inn. But then you spotted the lingering sadness that her gaze still held, and you felt your great enthusiasm waver, for you have seen that look countless of times before, you’ve known it better than anyone else, meeting it every single day in the mirror. Utter loneliness. “But, about your sister, perhaps you two could go there? Once the beast is slain and those fields are safe again, you’ll be able to take her and…”

Feeling like you’ve suddenly made some sort of a misstep, you paused, studying Castorice’s face, the somber set of her lips and knitted eyebrows. “My sister,” she began, voice so unsure and so little, “is no more. She passed away five years ago.”

Now you lost your footing completely, blindsided by the woman’s depressing confession, and so you blinked a few times, feeling so incredibly bad for her, because this was a person that you really did not know yet could sympathize with, because a cherished member of your family died too, and that left you feeling more alone than ever. You did understand Castorice, her pain and sorrows — perhaps it was bold to think so, but you could clearly see how much in common you had. This girl and you, weren’t you like two sides of a broken pendulum? Swaying, swinging, all done at nearly equal rhythm, hope and all that you ever held dear going away with the wind, like a flock of wild birds, like daisy’s petals.

“I’m so sorry to hear that. I am,” you murmured, feeling the edges of your eyes burning but fighting the despondency back. “I— I know this is really not much, but perhaps you’d like to talk about her? Tell me about your sister, miss Castorice, tell me anything.”

She did appear apprehensive at first, yet that initial impression seemed to pass just as quickly, for recognizing people of the same clay comes easily to anyone. A small sigh left her lips before she began, eyes falling on the ground, “her name was Polyxia. We… We used to live in Aidonia, though our father insisted that we move here. This inn that we are in belonged to our grandfather, and after his passing, we had no choice but to take over the business. Before we were old enough to help out at the inn, people of this village asked us to herd sheep. It was… truly a carefree time.

“But, you see, my sister has always been quite sickly. Not even her love nor dear heart could save her from death… It came upon us, a late afternoon during the month of Reaping, and all I remember is how sweltering hot it was. I can’t— I can’t recall Polyxia’s face, not even the sound of her voice at that very last moment.

“We’ve always been together, me and Polyxia. It was so incredibly hard to come to terms with her passing. I… I genuinely think she was a better person than me. More patient, more caring, kinder, and possessing much more wit. Unfortunately, time cannot be turned back, right?” Castorice’s voice was weighed down by grief, yet you couldn’t see a hint of tears in her eyes, as though she cried and cried so much in the past that no tears wanted to fall down now. “I can only hope that she’s finally resting in a peaceful place, free from pain and any worldly suffering. That… that she’s running free in an endless field of flowers, unburdened, unlike how she was during her life. But that’s all I can do.”

Unable to hold yourself back any longer, you finally reached for Castorice’s hands, squeezing them between yours. The girl gasped in surprise softly, though she didn’t tear her limbs free, merely looking up at you with something between disbelief and deep-rooted heartache painted all over her face. “Miss Castorice, I know how it feels to lose a loved one. I, despite what it may seem, know loneliness. And you’re right — the only thing we can do is hope that everyone we held close to our heart is now resting in a place free from any sorrows or fears. But I know for a fact that wherever your sister may be, she’s watching over you. She’ll always be.” You squeezed the woman’s frail hands harder. “You said that you were inseparable once, right? Then such love must transcend anything, even the realms separating you.”

Castorice was still looking at you with those surprised, woeful eyes, but she did smile eventually, blinking away some unshed tears before they could roll down her pale cheeks. “Miss [Name], you needn’t comfort me now… I know you’re probably still feeling unwell and worn, and I am selfishly keeping you there to—”

“Selfishly? Oh, what nonsense,” you cut in sharply, inching just a bit closer, “I wanted to hear about Polyxia, and I don’t regret doing so. My own tiredness does not matter.”

A chuckle left Castorice, quiet and a little wet, “is that so? I am glad, then.” The corners of her big, sad eyes crinkled, a barely-there blush of happiness gently coloring her face. “You said you experienced the same thing as me… I guess that makes the two of us.”

“Yes.” You said, smiling wider, the hold you had on her hands finally loosening. “It does.”

The girl sighed before you could add anything else, her fingers twitching against yours, as if she was uncertain whether she should take them away or let your contact linger. “In any case… you’ve got important things to do. Your dear freedom to regain, a new life to live. I mustn’t hold you back any longer, it is quite late already.” She finally untangled her joints from yours, folding them across her lap, even if she did so with obvious reluctance. “I wish you victory.”

Your eyes searched out Castorice, then you glanced around yourself, and you said, “I’d love to return here, to this village. If— if that’s fine. I see myself starting over here, I don’t know why, but I truly do.”

“Oh?” She intoned softly, long eyelashes fluttering in sudden interest. “You… you really would like to do that?”

“Of course.” You nodded, full of enthusiasm.

“Then…” Castorice started, the corners of her lips still curved so gently. “Maybe I know a good place for you to stay at, miss [Name]. This inn has particularly cheap rooms to rent, an even more reasonable price to friends. Many people of Okhema leave in order to stay here forever and it’s not unheard of, so…”

Immediately understanding what she was getting at, you almost squealed in glee, a beaming grin splitting your face in half. “If that’s the truth, then I’ll surely return here. I see no other place where I could be equally as happy.”

With a more subdued, albeit still cheerful expression, Castorice nodded her head, eyes flitting around the common room, as if she could not yet comprehend what just happened. “That makes me incredibly happy, and I’ll… I’ll be waiting for the day of our reunion to come.” The girl confessed, her vision finally settling on your face before another shift seemed to suddenly overcome her, rendering her precious features tighter, more solemn and firm. “I— I also have something that might help you, but please, kindly stay here. I wouldn’t want you overworking yourself now.”

Just as you were opening your mouth to ask what she was talking about, Castorice got up from the wooden bench that you were both sitting on, her long skirts swaying in rhythm with her steps as she hastily left the common room. Obviously, you did not know where she was hurrying off like that, but you didn’t say anything, waiting patiently for her return. And when she walked back to your side, cradling something to her chest, a thing that certainly was not of a big size but appeared important with the way her fingers slightly trembled around it, thick layers of cloth coating it, you finally let yourself breathe, a tentative smile curling the corners of your lips upwards.

“What is this?” You inquired, pointing at the bundle.

There was some inkling of hesitation on Castorice’s face, but she was quick to stomp it down, instead stepping closer to you but still keeping her distance. “It’s a blade, miss [Name]. One that’ll surely let you defeat the beast — but it is you who must hold onto it, not your fiancé, not anyone else.”

“Uh,” you stammered, unsure. “All right. But what makes it so special? I’m not sure any existing knife could kill that beast, especially not such a little one.”

“It’s an old thing, brought from my homeland, laced with poison only found in Aidonia. A poison so strong that…” Castorice trailed off, oh-so carefully unwrapping the blade; and it was terrifying in its beauty, a sharp glint of silver pointing at you, a handle made out of bronze, adorned in intricate shapes of flowers and butterflies winding all around, cradled in the woman’s delicate hand. “…so strong that it may kill anyone upon just a small scratch, a seemingly insignificant contact. The poison never gets spoiled, you see, it never loses its deadly strength.”

Hearing those words of warning, you suddenly felt apprehensive about handling this weapon — a thought of passing it over to Phainon, who was much more competent, came to you, but you disposed of it fast, remembering Castorice’s plea that you mustn’t let him have it. You didn’t even question the reason why.

“Ah, gods… that really does seem quite capable of slaying that creature.” You said, eyes wide. Then you extended your hand towards the blade, feeling your fingers shake despite previously deeming yourself calm, and you wondered whether it’s wise to let a drunken person handle such a thing. “May I?”

Castorice nodded slowly, wrapping the weapon in cloth again before passing it into your hold, and you, just a wee too frightened to keep your heartbeat steady, saw the grim resolve in her innocent eyes, the heavy seriousness sitting there. “I don’t think death should be cruelly prolonged or painful.” She said, the gentle murmur of her voice contrasting with those severe words. “This blade shall slay your beast near immediately. It’ll not suffer before passing, for death will come and take it the moment it closes its eyes. The pain that comes with taking a life is great, miss [Name], but you must weather it if you wish to regain your freedom.”

Haven’t you heard something similar before?

“Oh, of course. I’m glad that this creature, despite probably being some fiend, will not suffer too greatly.” You smiled tightly, even though you couldn’t comprehend Castorice’s moral compass.

She smiled at you, then, placing her hands on your shoulders, and you stood up, carefully nursing the bundled blade by your breast, feeling frightened to hold something so small and yet so heavy, so inconspicuous and yet so absolutely deadly, but knowing you have no choice anyway. Maybe, against thinking differently at first, you’ll be the one to make the final blow.

“Miss [Name]… you have to promise me that you’ll return. You have to.” Castorice pleaded, her eyes staring into you with such intensity that you felt near shy.

“I will. Of course I will.” You answered, lips curling up, and you reached out to embrace her with your unoccupied arm, pressing the woman into your side and earning a quiet giggle that you reciprocated immediately, both of you joyous at the prospects of what future might hold. “I see no other way for me.”

“Then that’s settled.” She hummed, slowly stepping back, still smiling. “We’ll meet again. And… I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yes.” You nodded, also stepping back, already thinking of how you’ll, perhaps, eat breakfast together; you, Phainon, and her, and how you’ll talk some more. Of how you’ll return here in just a few days, free and ready to start over. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Castorice.”

The walk back to your bedroom was tedious, carefully defeating the stairs without any aid then navigating the long corridor of many rooms in complete darkness only by yourself. You had to make sure to keep your footsteps light. It surely was not easy, considering that you were still somewhat drunk, and drunk people are never exactly quiet, no matter how hard they try — then there was also the aspect of your bad foot, a troublesome thorn in your side, causing you to stumble occasionally, tripping over your own limbs and having you catch on random furniture all around you.

But you did manage, eventually, finally opening the door. You went out barefoot so you didn’t even have to bother with the shoes, eyes already lifting to fix on the bed, eager to crash and sleep some more. The sight there made you pause, though, pulse kicking up wildly with surprised spook.

Phainon was not asleep, that’s for certain. He was half-reclined against the headrest, his silhouette so dark that its contours practically blended in with the inky blackness of the room’s surroundings, only a small halo befalling on the back of his head, the moon’s weak light shining down to outline the mess that his hair was. You quickly hid the bundled blade behind your back, hoping that Phainon did not notice it, and slowly moved forward, eyes never leaving the man.

“Gods above, Phainon, you scared me…” you breathed out, still walking, discreetly trying to locate where your own travel bag was . “Have you been awake for long?”

You saw him shift in the darkness. “No,” he answered simply. “I was just thinking about where my wife disappeared off to.”

The lilt of his voice was humorous, and it must’ve been merely a jest, yes, a reference to the mistake Castorice made earlier, taking you for a married couple; still, your fingers curled tighter around the weapon’s intricate handle, nearly trembling with the effort it took not to lash out. You were so tired, weighed down by the fatigue and absolutely worn.

“I am not your wife.” You retorted, wanting your voice to sound sharp yet failing to obtain the effect.

That earned you a short laugh from Phainon, his keen vision trailing after every single step of yours, like a hawk, like a hunter. “Why, I know that. Do you think me demented, [Name]?”

“With the way you’ve been acting,” you paused for a brief moment, finally dropping the wrapped blade into your travel bag, “it just may be so.”

Upon recognizing the defiant nature of your words, Phainon quieted down. Then he huffed, an indulgent sound, one that you’d make whenever your beloved dogs knocked over the furniture as they rushed to greet you with their licks and cheery barks. “Come here,” he said, neither a plea nor command, something in-between that automatically made your legs move.

Resigned, you fell atop the mattress, the dip there causing you to roll closer to Phainon than you would’ve liked, though you could not complain, not with how heavy your head was starting to feel again, not with the returning ache of your bad foot, the strain that you had to put on your entire body. The man shifted so that he lied down as well, yet this time he didn’t tuck you in, no, he just reached to swipe the hair that fell on your face. You let him, far too distracted to even bat his touch away — not like you’d want to do that in the first place, despite how much chagrin Phainon could evoke within you at times, despite how badly you wanted to close your eyes and go to sleep, skip over to the morning, for you were a weak thing starving for any sort of contact.

“Where have you been?” He asked, palm traveling lower to caress your side, tone still as docile as ever.

The sensation and the familiar, warm voice tamed your earlier anger, unfortunately, rendering it completely gone in a span of just a few seconds. What a terribly simple creature you were. “I’ve felt sick— I needed to go to the privy.” You muttered, tongue moving slowly, not quite keeping up with what you wanted to say.

“Is that right…” Phainon mused under his breath lowly and you sensed just a hint of skepticism hiding beneath his casualness. Then his palm slid even lower, lower. “But you weren’t talking to anyone, were you?”

You frowned, eyelids already fluttering closed. “Why would I be talking to anyone?” The lie fell far too easily from your lips.

“Oh, I don’t know. You tend to do silly things when you obviously know it’s unsafe.” He said, sounding rather lighthearted, voice conversational as if you were talking only about the weather — and you eventually felt that heavy joint resting somewhere where it never truly was before, where it theoretically wasn’t ever supposed to be, fingers digging into the meat of your backside.

“I’m— that’s—” you exhaled through your nose, surprisingly not bothered by the touch. Even though the both of you were still somewhat inebriated. Even though it was unwise.

If you wished to do so, you could simply slap Phainon’s hand away, tell him to go sleep on the floor or the benches downstairs if he couldn’t act properly, but you felt no need, no want to admonish him for the obviously impure action. It was foolish. And it was to be expected, considering the conclusion that you came to not so long ago, about your lacking intellect. Letting a man, who happened to be your unwanted betrothed, quite literally paw at your behind, must’ve been incredibly stupid yet you did not shy away from the contact, you did not push him away like you probably should have.

Phainon didn’t move his hand and you shifted minutely closer to him, taking a breath to try and calm yourself down, which only resulted in another wave of longing, covet that would not go away. His scent invaded your nostrils, your mouth, spreading over your palate, and it wasn’t unpleasant like the smell that emanated from everyone back at the common room, no, it was already embedded in your mind as an indicator of safeness, of security, masculinity tinged with something akin to peppermint lying underneath. That was enough to have your stomach coiling in knots.

Almost subconsciously, you reached to feel at Phainon’s breast, his heart thundering below your palm before you moved your hand up, blindly touching the column of his neck, the pulse there drumming with equal force. Still keeping your eyes closed, you remembered the morning, how you found a river to bathe in before stopping at the southern village. Phainon always respectfully averted his eyes and so did you, yet there was a moment where you accidentally lifted your gaze, seeing his bare form just a few meters beside you; water lapping at his strong thighs, the width of his muscular back dappled in the sunlight, arms moving languidly as he spread what little soap he cut off for himself. It caused your mouth to go dry, then, as you continued to gawk at his form. The man usually dressed modestly, even more so than you, therefore you could never fully gauge the physique hidden underneath those chitons reaching to his ankles, nor the size of his arms covered by chalmyses that he loved to wear. And it wasn’t quite like the statues that you saw in the gardens, of perfectly chiseled gods, nor was it like the men with plenty additional padding that worked in the countryside. Maybe a mixture of both. A combination which, unfortunately, caused you to fancy Phainon in the physical sense, an inevitable pull you felt whenever he did as much as looking your way.

Apparently sensing your eagerness to continue this folly, Phainon brought you closer to himself before rolling you both over, suddenly looming above your form, making you blink your eyes open in surprise. You could not see much due to the darkness, though it was clear that he was smiling, the moon giving enough pale light to brighten up the contours of his face. Perhaps Phainon was even enthralled, the corners of his lips stretching just a bit too wide for comfort.

“But don’t worry.” He said, leaning down to nose and sniff at your neck like a pedigreed blood-hound. “I know you wouldn’t lie to me. Not you, [Name].”

The weight atop your body, pressing you into the mattress so heavily, was too much for you to feel any actual guilt about lying to Phainon — because yes, what you said was untrue and he, despite his ever-present wariness, seemed to trust you a bit too blindly, his own naïveté showing through.

“Of course I would not…” you only assured him further, which earned you a nuzzle, hands already sliding up and down your sides.

Then Phainon, completely unexpectedly, moved his hips against yours, humping you once then twice, panting harshly against your skin, and you thought he might simply take you there like an ordinary man without bigger inspirations. For whatever reason accepting it came very easily, mind too set on the prospect of finally having your own need fulfilled. Except he did no such thing, soon pulling away, examining your form for a brief moment.

“I’m hungry,” he stated, announcing it in the same way people announce their hunger after a long day of work in the wheat fields, in the same way anyone would say it after walking the cows back home.

What, was he going to cannibalize you?

A bit stupefied, you blinked up at Phainon, lips already opening to ask what he was talking about. Except he beat you to it, flipping the skirts of your chiton and exposing your bare skin to the slightly cold air, bunching it up just around your ribs, eyes already fixed downward. You couldn’t say that you had much experience, yet you did not shy away, probably assured by the darkness surrounding you.

Phainon shifted just slightly, one hand reaching for your knee. “May I?” He rasped out, surprisingly affected, and you actually regretted not being able to see his face fully, only the blurry outline of his lips and eyes and nose, the sharp chin and tousled locks curling just slightly where they framed his cheeks.

“Yes,” you replied, a bit awkward, a bit puzzled about how you should act.

Still, the man didn’t seem to mind. “[Name], you have no clue how long and how much I’ve been thinking about this moment.” He practically simpered, fingers dragging the waistband of your underwear down, down, until you felt it sliding over your ankles. Only then did you start to become a little nervous, but Phainon was already lowering himself, grabbing you by the legs. “It must sound near absurd, I know, but the mere thought of it kept me awake each night. Do you know what you do to me?”

Without thinking too much about Phainon’s words, chalking them down to simple drunken babbling, you let him spread your thighs wider. “Are you even hearing yourself…” you chuckled quietly, slowly starting to get affected too, heat traveling over to your cheeks.

Phainon hummed under his breath, a bit dismissive. “Don’t worry, you don’t need to believe me. You don’t need to do anything, in fact.” He manhandled one of your legs to hook it over his shoulder, pushing the other one to the side to make some space for himself, hot breaths flushing against your underbelly fast, signifying his own excitement.

You clenched your teeth, afraid of making any sounds as he began to mouth at your abdomen, one hand cosseting the bare skin of your thigh. Phainon’s ministrations seemed uncoordinated, sloppy, almost overzealous in their nature, lips trying to cover every single inch of you as though he was no longer driven by simple drunkenness but something more sweltering, more intense, like a parched man that just crawled to oasis and couldn’t get enough. You were nearly surprised by such covetous behavior coming from him, but you did not voice your thoughts, already too bothered by the sting of cooling saliva on your stomach, your inner thighs and groin, head swimming from the attack of sensations.

His hands slid beneath your hips, then, lifting you effortlessly toward his mouth with the reverence of a bowing saint, with the fervor of a starving animal. “I’ll make you feel good.” Phainon near groaned, kissing that heavily innervated place that had your hips bucking in surprise. “I’ll make you feel so good that you’ll forget about anything else.” He repeated the action, making one of your feet kick out, dismissing the almost demented sound of his voice, the sheer ecstasy running through every single syllable.

The first lick was deliberate in its slowness, as if to make you feel every inch of his tongue — and you did, gods, you did. An involuntary sound slipped past your lips, something between a gasp and a whimper, which only appeared to spur Phainon on, efforts doubling without a warning. One of the man’s hands gripped your hip tighter, the other one splaying over your stomach, and you’d say that his touch was possessive if not for the nature of your relationship. Because your relationship really meant nothing, nothing, for he was just helping you out temporarily, your betrothal teetering on the edge of breaking forever.

Suddenly feeling too overwhelmed to formulate sensible sentences, you simply reached down, petting Phainon’s head. That earned you a gratified chuckle, the vibrations of his voice not helping at all with your daze, lips latching onto you, sucking, your joints tightening around the white tufts of hair and tugging as you no longer knew what to do.

Phainon briefly pulled back, then, lips and the mouth area all drenched. “I could drown in you, [Name].” He said, eyes heavy-lidded, what little moon there was illuminating the somewhat debauched state of his face, hot breaths puffing against your skin. “I wouldn’t mind.”

You smoothed a hand down his cheek, gathering some of the dampness and trying to wipe it off. “But drowning means dying, does it not?” The breathlessness of your voice was startling.

Instead of answering with words, Phainon merely laughed, as if greatly amused by what you just suggested. Then he dipped his head down again, tongue diving into your heat and laving over the folds there, swallowing several times as he gathered the slick wetness before moving upward, latching back onto you with feverish need that seemed to seep into your own bones too, down to the very marrow, twisting everything into longing.

Barely, you managed to discern the way Phainon looked while settled in-between your thighs so comfortably. Fingers digging into the plush meat of your body, holding you flush to his mouth as if you might dissolve into a simple daydream if he loosens his grip for even a second. The blue gleam of his eyes, the curve of his soaked lips. That’s all you could see through the darkness and you wondered, very distantly, will this beast that you have to kill so-very soon harbor the same look on its nightmarish face? Doesn’t it feel familiar, in a way?

Before your mind could spiral, Phainon’s fingers suddenly prodded at your entrance, earning a yelp of surprise-pleasure from you. Two of them slid inside, the middle and the ring one, causing your walls to flutter wildly, clenching as his long joints curled in a beckoning gesture. That, coupled with his unrelenting tongue and lips still pleasuring you, immediately had you going empty-headed, any sort of thoughts evaporating immediately.

The man’s incandescent vigor terrified you. But at the same time, you terrified yourself, shaken by how easily all of this happened. Both of you must’ve been horrible and the enormity of your desire disgusted you.

Throwing the rest of your wit aside and feeling the impending release starting to loom over you, you impulsively wrapped both legs around Phainon’s neck, bringing him closer, closer, making the man growl as he got pressed deeper into your heat. Each flick of his tongue seemed to be precisely measured to only unravel you further, fingers hooking rhythmically, your thighs clenching around his face, squishing his cheeks hard by accident.

More sounds spilled from your mouth like a true downpour, unrestrained now, that knot in your stomach coiling firmer by the second. Your hand scrambled to hold onto Phainon’s hair more tightly, the other one fisting in the sheets above your head, and when your grip turned desperate, he just laughed again, a dark, elated sound, letting you drag him however deep you liked, tongue coaxing moan after moan from your trembling lips.

“There we go.” Phainon’s voice was muffled as he briefly pulled away, just far enough to speak. “Such pretty sounds from my [Name], gods, aren’t you a sweet thing?” He purred, obviously delighted by the state that his own tongue and fingers put you in, probably smirking with self-satisfaction.

Flustered, you knocked your calf against the back of his head, urging him to continue. Phainon snorted but obliged without any further delay, resuming his ministrations with redoubled efforts, having you keen and whine as the pressure in your underbelly finally snapped like a herd of startled rabbits, body shaking in spastic movements. Your hips canted into Phainon’s mouth, limbs pulling him snugly against you; at that moment, you did not care whether you were smothering him or cutting off oxygen, for he said that he could drown in you, and that must count for something.

Phainon didn’t relent, didn’t pull back, didn’t dare breathe as he continued to wring out every last tremor from your climax. He moaned, then, quite loudly, the fingers of his unoccupied hand gripping onto your flesh hard enough to bruise — while you didn’t understand what provoked such a reaction, you were also too loopy to even endeavor in pondering that. Only when your thighs finally slackened around him did Phainon gentle his tongue, tearing himself off and pulling his fingers out with a great gasp for air.

In that short moment of lull when neither of you spoke, you simply stared at each other, both dazed in their own ways, panting to catch your breaths and attempting to allay the thunderstorm that just broke out beneath your skin. Then Phainon smiled, his entire chin and mouth dripping in your wetness, and despite everything, you smiled back.

Still, there was one aspect budging you, so you said, “and what about your own needs? Surely, you…”

Chuckling quietly, Phainon dragged his body above yours, plastering himself back over your spent form. “My needs? What about them, [Name]?” He queried almost humorously and you felt something, a damp patch of his chiton pressed up against your bare thigh.

Disbelief washed over your expression, eyes going wide as you blinked up at Phainon. Did he really come untouched, just from pleasuring you? It appeared so abstract that one was capable of obtaining such a thing without any sort of physical stimulation, especially since you never saw him humping the mattress or even stroking himself, both hands occupied. Wasn’t it… sort of concerning?

Noticing the disconcerted look you donned, Phainon shrugged before licking his fingers and lips clean, only giving a sound of amusement as if that explained anything. “As I said earlier today, I’ll ask where to wash the clothes in the morning.” The man hummed, grabbing the sheets and carefully attempting to get the mess sticking to your things under control. You felt bad for whoever would be on laundry duty.

“You’re impossible.” You muttered, sending him a half-hearted frown.

Phainon’s face was suddenly near enough for you to see how the corner of his lip curled into a lopsided smirk. “Oh, but I don’t see you cursing me out or telling me to go home.” He chuckled, finally lying down, tugging the duvet over your bodies before hugging up to your side snugly, impossibly close, like a serpent. “You need me, don’t you?”

That made you pause for just a second, eyebrows drawing together. “Perhaps…” you admitted without actual commitment to your words, though it still gained you a delighted noise from Phainon, his strong arm tightening along your ribs.

With a soft sigh, you trailed your gaze over to the window — the sky was finally cloudless, more stars appearing there, and so you looked at all the shimmering points, trying to count them as you felt that post-coital clarity slowly washing over your mind, heart kicking up into an afflicted rhythm. What you just did, not to mention with who, suddenly appeared so overwhelming in its severity.

Maybe you were being too paranoid. Maybe it was the lingering alcohol running through your bloodstream. Or maybe it was entirely your fault for not feeling even remotely regretful, judgement clearer than earlier and yet still devoid of any remorse.

Phainon’s breath already steadied against your skin. You could feel the brush of his eyelashes on your shoulder. “Hey, Phainon,” you began, vision still fixed on the night sky outside. “If you saw a shooting star, what would you wish for?”

There was a pause. Then, he huffed out a small chuckle. “I’d wish for all shooting stars to disappear forever.”

You swallowed thickly, hand slowly caressing his back, and for the first time since that accident in the mountains, your eyesight blurred again.

The next morning, so the tenth day of your journey, started out quite hurriedly. So hurriedly that you could not really gather your bearings before Phainon was already dragging you out of the bed, insisting that you get up just a few seconds after you managed to blink your eyes open, the world still appearing hazy and confusing. You could not comprehend the reason for his sudden haste, nor did you try to question it.

Things only started to irritate you when you finally walked downstairs, Phainon giving the key away. Castorice appeared very content to see you, already sending you a sweet smile, eyes gleaming with some sort of familiarity and still-fragile yet obviously present bond that you had formed the night before, sharing your deep-rooted woes and fears and hopes. Naturally, you smiled back, exchanging a few pleasantries that were purposefully inconspicuous enough to not rouse Phainon’s suspicions or paranoia. Despite wanting to talk with Castorice for a bit longer, you’ve been interrupted by the man who stood beside you all this time and gripped onto your arm just a wee too hard, the corner of his lips curled, eyes narrowed as if in harsh assessment of the completely guiltless girl in front of you.

With firm decisiveness, Phainon said that it’s time to leave. Perplexed, you sent him an incredulous look, but he was already tugging you away, explaining that the laundry can be done later by some river, and that you’ve got enough food so you obviously don’t need to eat the breakfast at the inn. It made no sense. You could not understand why Phainon was suddenly changing all of his decisions so impulsively, so rashly, as though there was some unspoken, invisible threat waiting for you at this inn, that had him panic and go as soon as possible.

Ultimately, you did not have your promised breakfast with Castorice, nor were you able to hold a proper conversation with her. Gods, you didn’t even say goodbye, Phainon dragging you away so fast that once he swiveled you around, you could no longer even glance over your shoulder — the last thing you can recall seeing is Castorice’s unsettled expression, widened twins of violet staring at you while Phainon was too occupied dictating his own terms.

That whole ordeal left you feeling rather bitter and disappointed, though as always, you couldn’t stay mad at Phainon for too long. It was for certain that you’d return to the southern village soon, greet Castorice again and start over as a clean slate, devoid of reputation, people’s opinions, ugly rumors or unflattering words swimming from mouth to mouth. As for now, you had a bigger fish to fry, which was killing the beast.

Phainon walked at a steady pace, one fitting for your injured foot, appearing quite relaxed. “You know, I’ve been wondering which part of the beast we should take to Okhema with us.” You mused, adjusting the strap of your travel bag around your shoulder. Somehow, you were able to convince Phainon to pass it over to you, insisting he needed his full agility and should not be hindered by any additional weight. He, of course, was very reluctant to agree, but he eventually did upon some more persuasion.

The man sent you a sidelong look, humming under his breath in consideration. “And what did you decide?”

“Well, I think taking the whole carcass would be too much, even for you. So we won’t do that.”

“How thoughtful.” Phainon snickered, the summer sky reflecting in his eyes as they crinkled, azure mixing with that unique shade you could never name. “But you’re right, [Name], aiding you while also dragging the whole body behind us would be far too challenging. Even for me.”

“Assuredly.” Reciprocating the man’s smile, you let him shift his hold on your arm, getting more comfortable. “Which is why we’re taking the head. That should send a message, no?”

Phainon laughed at your words, shaking his head, “oh, I love your confidence. And what if that beast catches us off guard and eats us both? What will you do then?”

You snorted, sending him a half-exasperated, half-amused look. “Then we’ll rip its belly open from the inside.”

“Grim.” He said, eyebrows arching. “Still effective, I suppose.”

That caused the two of you to break out into easy laughter, and you were incredibly grateful to have Phainon beside you at this crucial moment; to have him, unchanged, humorous, not an inkling of any awkward air between you. When you were falling asleep the night before, you were quite certain that something would change between you. After all, what you did was, well, a particularly intimate act that usually tilts the whole dynamic or at least some parts of it, demanding the participants to become closer, like a couple, like two lovers. Or maybe you were just naive and innocent, believing that any sort of intercourse should tether people together. Apparently, rules of romantic novels didn’t apply to real life.

“Either way, we’re going to defeat the beast and I’ll be finally free.” You hummed, tone jaunty, and you’d skip forward in your happiness if not for the bad foot that still weighed you down like a very uncomfortable shackle.

Phainon glanced at you, yet he didn’t respond, the curve of his smile faint now. And you didn’t bother him anymore, thinking that he must be perhaps nervous or uncertain, already fretting about the fight with the beast, even though he still seemed at ease, muscles relaxed and sword hidden in its scabbard. But it was fine. Everything would be just fine.

Time passed, maybe an hour, you were unsure since the sun barely moved its position, still beating down on your nape. The path that you were currently treading on finally narrowed, softening as it rose just a bit higher, winding on the uneven mountainside — clusters of flowers littered it, dense patches of pale yellow and muted violets, whites catching the light, colors spreading in beautiful abundance, all shifting faintly with the gentle breeze. The ground seemed less disturbed here, less worn, an obvious indicator that fewer passed this way, a partially abandoned route with no living soul in sight.

Eventually, the incline eased and the path did not end as much as it simply dissolved, losing its firm shape amidst the grasses until it became indistinguishable from the land itself. Beyond it, the terrain opened wider. A vast stretch of beargrass filled the slope, rising in wan, silvery-green tufts. Each cluster stood tall, its long blades bowing with the rising wind, their surfaces catching the sunlight so that the entire field seemed to shift between brightness and shadow. Wide-eyed, you glanced around yourself, assessing the area, heart beginning to hammer with anticipation of what was about to come. You squeezed Phainon’s hand. Wordless, he squeezed it back.

The field spread farther than you initially thought, extending and then dipping slightly in rolling lines. Here and there, the ground filled up with water, small ponds forming in these shallow basins, their surfaces holding the deeply azure firmament above your heads, cloudless and uninterrupted. Among the rises of the land, dark openings broke through the surface, cave mouths, yawning back at you with their narrow blackness. Most little and barely noticeable, others descending into darkness so horrid that you dared not look at them for too long. Closer to the edge of the field, the terrain shifted again, trees outlining it, hugging it all together.

It was a prepossessing sight that had your breath hitching, and suddenly you understood very well why Castorice yearned for this place, you could see why she longed so badly to visit it once more, why her mother thought it nonexistent. Anyone would be enchanted by its beauty, even Phainon appeared speechless, his usual nonchalance stomped down by the charm these fields held.

“We’re… we’re finally here,” you breathed, still in disbelief that you somehow managed to reach this place from your prophetic dream. Ten days of struggle, but you found it.

Phainon nodded slowly, eyes drifting from one place to another. “I find it hard to believe that it truly exists,” he said, sounding rather stunned, almost confused.

You could easily stand there, rooted in place, admiring your surroundings till the sun dipped behind the mountain ridges and shrouded the world in darkness, but you had a goal to obtain. So you tore yourself free from Phainon’s hold, taking a few tentative steps forward. The state of your foot still wasn’t ideal, you had to admit, the irritating ache sometimes rendering you weak and unable to move, though right now you were willing to ignore the pain, ignore any obstacle that stood between you and your freedom.

“Let’s split up and try to localize that beast.” You announced, already heading left, feeling the determination and desperation both mixing within your chest and urging you forward.

“Is it wise?” Phainon questioned, but made no move to stop you.

Glancing over your shoulder, you sent him a reassuring smile. “Certainly not. Still, that is my wish.”

The man relented easily enough, which was near puzzling with how overprotective he could get when it came to your wellbeing — he merely said to call out to him if any wild animal tried to attack you, then started walking right, leaving you to your own devices.

Without thinking too hard, you began to trudge through the beargrass, its white tufts brushing against your bare skin, the sensation almost ticklish. The entire time, you kept your guard up, paranoid of any sound, even simple bird calls making you jump in fright, as if the beast would suddenly lunge at you from behind and rip your vulnerable body to shreds. Fortunately, you had your poisonous blade with you. That gave you enough confidence to push your jitters away, feeling just slightly assured by the weapon that Castorice gifted you with.

You passed over the cave mouths and ponds, looking in each of them, seeking out the beast. Much to your dismay, it was nowhere to be found. Sure, you did spot a few dens, yet each of them was empty, devoid of any signs of this fiend that you needed to slaughter. Then there were some signs of life, all of them seemingly too small and too vague to belong to a larger animal, prints and any other things appearing useless. While you were no hunter, lacking in experience that would let you track the beast, you could easily tell that it just wasn’t here.

Against your earlier assurance, you were starting to waver. Convictions were one thing, but the actual state of how things stood? You straightened out, sighing heavily, eyebrows narrowed as you studied the vast surroundings with your keen gaze. On the far end, you could spot Phainon’s head, his white hair nearly blending in with the beargrass, as if he was one of the stalks too — there were the ponds, the mountains so clear that you could count each tree perched atop its rocky sides, the forest stretching far beyond this field. Everything was just like in your prophetic dream, so that must’ve been the right place.

Shoving your doubts aside, you forced yourself to keep going, dragging your feet to one of the ponds in order to refresh. You knelt in front of it, looking into the crystal-clear water and the little rocks that made the bed, examining your sad-looking reflection for just a second longer than needed. Messy hair that you forgot to brush in the morning, the morose curl of your lips that were still split. Then the bruises covering one side of your face, sitting just beneath your eye, already healing from ugly purple into a more amiable yellow-green. What a great warrior you made. Surely, everyone will believe your story with all these injuries that your visage has to carry.

Leaning down, you dipped your face in the pond’s cool water. That was enough to restore some of your energy, so you followed it up by taking a few generous sips before finally standing up and resuming your search.

More time passed, two hours, if your calculations of the sun’s position shifting were correct. You’ve already made several laps around the beargrass fields and by then, the beast appeared to be some faraway concept that resides on another southern mountain, far from here, hidden away from the steel of your blade. It’s not like hope abandoned you completely, though you were starting to get nervous, anxiety tugging at the edges of your psyche.

The environmental conditions were becoming rather poor, too. Since the current year’s summer was especially humid and hot, a storm began to approach. Previously clear skies of blue now turned an intense indigo, electric and ominous, wind picking up so hard that the trees seemed to bend in half, beargrass swaying from one side to another in a wild dance, disturbed by the strong gusts. Even if your surroundings turned all dark, the sun still pushed through the dense clouds, coloring the grass in vivid yellow. It was both a terrifying and beautiful contrast, one that made you pause to admire it for a short minute in your tiredness.

That’s true, you were exhausted beyond belief. Fatigue had you tripping more frequently, stumbling clumsily over rocks and weeds that your shoe got occasionally tangled in, foot aching more and more. You were absolutely convinced that by now, you’d have already defeated the beast and descended triumphant. And you were wrong.

In the distance, you could see Phainon’s silhouette, his head tilted as he observed the stormy sky. Reluctant to temporarily give up your search, you headed in his direction, trying not to wince too hard whenever you stepped on your bad foot, knowing that if he were to see, he’d probably scold you for overworking yourself and demand that you remain firmly planted to his side.

Hearing the rustle behind him, Phainon soon turned back to face you. His posture was easy, unperturbed, sword still in its scabbard as if he was assured that this beast would not try to attack him, and that made you frown, wondering how he could act so nonchalant while the chance of getting suddenly pounced or even stalked was high.

“The beast’s not here.” You said, hastily brushing the hair that got in your eyes with each gust of wind.

The man shrugged. “I can see that much.”

“Perhaps it just ventured out into the forest to hunt.” Honestly, you didn’t know, but it seemed like the only logical explanation. “We should hide somewhere and wait.”

Phainon’s expression couldn’t be defined as enthusiastic, arms folding over his chest as he measured you. “The storm’s coming, [Name], where would we even hide?”

“Well, do you see any other option?” You retorted, heat of ire rushing to your cheeks.

“We could turn back now and head to the southern village. It’s still not too late.”

“But—” you breathed, agitated and desperate, “but the beast—”

“The beast is not here, you said so yourself.” The tone of his voice was calm when he interrupted you, near indulgent, as though he was talking to a spooked animal. “I don’t know, truthfully. I say we turn back, since neither me or you spotted any signs of that creature being there.”

“What’re you suggesting?” You hissed, affronted. “Phainon, we mustn’t, I swear to every god that this is the place from my prophetic dream, it really is!”

“Yet none of us were able to even confirm where that creature might be hiding.”

“So… what you’re saying is that you’re willing to give up? For good?”

In theory, you could walk back to the village, wait out the storm at the inn and get on the move again; but who knows when the downpour might stop, who knows how long it’ll take. In the worst case, you’d have to wait until tomorrow. And what if tomorrow the storm comes too? What if the scenario repeats itself? You really didn’t have much time to spare, Phainon clearly stated, in the letter you left behind at his house, that you’d be back after three weeks. If you’re not, then what? Would they send a search party after you? Most probably, yes. You simply could not back out, not now, not when everything you fought so hard for suddenly teetered on just one final act.

The man sighed, heavy and long-suffering. “Think logically, [Name].”

“I am!” Your tone rose and cracked with urgency. “It is you who’s spewing nonsense right now, can’t you see? How could we give up after such tremendous efforts?”

Phainon clicked his tongue. “We are not giving up. The beast is simply not here.”

“Not here?” You echoed, feeling something stronger than mere irritation rising in your chest.

“Exactly, not here.”

“And how can you be so sure?”

“I don’t know, but it’s not here, and now you’re just acting stubborn.” He said, obviously dismissive. Like your father. Like everybody else.

With your pride and feelings hurt, you sharply turned away from Phainon, taking a few steps to distance yourself from him, suddenly feeling as if you were no longer speaking to your friend but a stranger donning his skin. How can it be that this ever-supportive, always docile and understanding man turned into whatever was now standing a few paces behind you? Despite trying your hardest, you could not comprehend it. You simply couldn’t.

And you were furious. Panting harshly, trying to get a grip on yourself, you stared into the yellowed grass, letting the wind bat aggressively at your exposed skin, tangling your locks even more, stinging your burning eyes. The truth that you’ve been trying to run away from appeared to catch up to you, grasping at your ankles and rendering you hopeless — for you’ve always been alone. A never-changing factor of your life. Something you could not elude, no matter how much you talked yourself into thinking otherwise.

Did Phainon ever believe you? Or did he only pretend, lying to you all this time? No, no, it couldn’t have been true, because why would he deceive you for such a long time? The dreadful questions without any answers swarmed in your mind, coloring it darker and darker, like locusts, eating away at the remnants of your sanity and leaving nothing behind.

Still on the verge of tears, you turned around to gauge his form, hoping that maybe it was just a sick daydream, a hallucination evoked by your lethargic brain and the heat.

Phainon stood exactly where he was earlier, yet this time his head was turned away from you, eyes locked on the distant line of trees that kept on bowing low to the ground, painted eerie gold by the intense sun. You were unable to tell what reveries were passing through his head at that moment, expression unreadable. The white of his tousled hair contrasted with the indigo sky, same as his fair skin and the ivory-shaded chiton he was clad in, and then you thought that his whole form was light.

(Can you see my snout and the coat of mine, light as day?

The familiar words resounded at the back of your head ominously.)

Almost subconsciously, you reached into your travel bag, fingers curling around the bronze handle of the poisoned blade. You took it out discreetly, slowly, gently unwrapping it from the thick cloth, pressing it to the back of your thigh as you wondered how hard you’d have to shove it in order to pierce through the padding on the beast’s underbelly.

Phainon’s gaze finally fell back on you. The wind continued to beat the short tufts of his locks around, making him appear somehow younger than he really was, a nearly mean smile starting to stretch his lips. A short, disbelieving gasp of air ripped free from your lungs when you looked into his eyes, for how could you ever be so blind to their cornflower shade?

(You’d toss the two cornflowers out, no matter if flowers are meant to be cherished.

The echo of your mind sounded like a tolling bell.)

And then you thought: what really was that beast all along?

Your legs moved instantly, like some greater being pulling at the stings attached to your limbs, dragging you forward even though you did not will yourself to go, still keeping the blade hidden behind your back, fingers tight and trembling around the handle, the intricate ornaments depicting flowers and butterflies, so innocent in their deadliness, digging into your flesh upon your unyielding grip.

Phainon’s smile widened. “Finally admitting I was right?” He threw in your direction, utterly self-satisfied.

Despite wishing that things were different, despite the overwhelming sorrow flooding every single crevice of your heart, you knew what you were going to do. And that hurt. Gods, it hurt so much, despair winding around your ribs and lungs, squeezing till you had no more air to breathe, but your legs just wouldn’t listen, the feverish conviction urging you to go, go, move against all of your instincts begging you to stop.

(I don’t think death should be cruelly prolonged or painful, Castorice said to you, only yesterday.

This blade shall slay your beast near immediately. It’ll not suffer before passing, for death will come and take it the moment it closes its eyes.

The pain that comes with taking a life is great, miss [Name], but you must weather it if you wish to regain your freedom.)

Yes, you thought to yourself, tears already blurring your sight, you were going to kill him. There was no other way.

(The only sound around you was the unrelenting wind, the faraway howl of some animal and the frightened call of birds as they scattered all around, seeking shelter before the upcoming storm. This part of the mountain held no civilization, no human life. No one herded sheep here anymore, no one ventured out into the southern path leading to the beargrass fields. Only the ghosts, only the forgotten laughter of what once was.

The numerous cave openings and ponds were located here for a reason, you realized. Who in their right mind would search through them? Perhaps just the starving animals, yearning to fill their stomachs. Everything was right before your eyes and you were unseeing this entire time, naive in your blind belief in the god who sent you that vision.)

A singular teardrop rolled down your cheek, swept away with the wind as you finally stumbled in front of Phainon, unable to look into his eyes, too cowardly to watch the initial confusion forming into hurt then fright once you made that blow. But you needed to be brave, so many people always told you this, beckoning you to keep your sight straight ahead instead of backing away.

Freedom awaited you just behind that one action.

Gathering courage, you whipped your arm from behind your back, pointing the blade at Phainon’s abdomen and thrusting it forward — except his hand shot out to catch it at the very same moment, grabbing you by the wrist so hard that your bones seemed to creak. The pain instantly caused you to falter, a gasp of shock ripping from your throat as you now grasped the handle with both hands, wrestling to push it forth with all your might.

Both of you struggled for a moment, more tears falling from your eyes as you groaned and cried, trying so hard to either thrust the blade, angle it as to at least somehow slice through the man’s skin, maybe force yourself away from his deadly grip, you didn’t know at that point, panic clouding your judgement.

The blade continued to shake along with the tremble of your hands, the fight that broke out between you. Then again, what would you even do after killing Phainon? You wouldn’t be able to return to Okhema, but starting over at the southern village was out of question, too. And what would his parents go through? Cyrene? Mydei? All of his companions from the army?

Phainon’s other hand finally clasped around your remaining wrist, his bitter laugh grating at your ears as you swallowed around the falling tears, hiccuping. “As much as I adore you, [Name], I’ve always known that you’re mentally unwell, coming up with all these ‘prophetic’ dreams and whatnot,” he huffed, voice strangled somewhere between humorless amusement and anger, “but this is an another level of your foolishness.”

Still gasping for air, you sniffled, Phainon’s frigid words washing over you like cold water. Did he really deem you as ill? Insane in the head? For that entire time, way before you set out on this long journey, you were convinced that Phainon wasn’t like the others, that he didn’t look down on you. That maybe, just maybe, he understood you.

And how terribly wrong you were. Now, as you still struggled with the blade, his bigger hands curling around your wrists and causing pain, you were starting to see that you must’ve been led astray by your own false perception of things. A great misunderstanding conjured up by your overly naive and optimistic mind, one which caused you to brush over all else that should’ve arisen concern.

You remembered how Phainon talked with your father, just eleven days ago. Saying that you seemed ‘out of sorts’, how a pleasant company in the form of a godsdamned goat would surely soothe any of your woes, that even his very own mother suggested he should gift you with one, that Cyrene agreed to his plan without any hesitation, his whole family and circle of friends probably already convinced of how utterly disturbed you were as an individual.

Then there was the ‘therapeutic trip’ excuse. Sure, you eventually agreed that it wasn’t so terrible, but only because Phainon somehow managed to turn the situation around and make himself out to be your accomplice. He wasn’t, not really, not anymore. What else could he have included in that short letter back at his house? What else did he lie about, most likely making you out to be cray, in need of treatment? Was it even an excuse to begin with?

Phainon often made sure to point out how unhappy you were. How sorry you constantly acted, how much you cried in your despondency. Assured of his actions and opinions, he first turned you against Mydei, hammering some fallacies into your head before you could even realize it, convincing you that he understood your sorrows and sensitive nature. But those hand-fed words passed into your mind simply weren’t true and what else could you do now?

With tears in your eyes, you finally forced yourself to look up, gauging Phainon’s expression; brows drawn together, lips tight, twisting into a snarl and something much different, much less angry — almost sad-like. Subtle misery settled there, making him appear rejected, hurt. But it would be hard to notice such a vague detail if not for your own experiences, if not for your own melancholy that dragged behind you every day like an abandoned dog from the nether.

“What…?” You breathed, feeling the adrenaline slowly leaving your body, rendering you more vulnerable. “What are you saying, Phainon…? Why are you acting this way?”

The man didn’t answer at first, letting you struggle until you were finally worn from any strength or fight. You noticed, completely resigned, how close the blade was from sinking into his stomach, just one centimeter away from its goal. One too many.

Then Phainon suddenly twisted your wrist, making you yelp in surprise-pain, more tears flowing as he tore the poisonous blade away from your hold and threw it over his shoulder, making it disappear amidst the tall stalks of beargrass, first thunder finally snapping through the unsettling stillness of your surroundings. It was loud enough to make you recoil, shoulders curling over to your ears in fright.

“Let me turn the question around, [Name].” Phainon began, still holding onto your limbs securely but not as roughly as before. “Why were you trying to stab me here? Why were you trying to kill me when I’ve been nothing but good to you?” The sound of his voice was enough to make you perturbed, unused to hearing him both so furious and miserable.

You yanked yourself backwards, but seeing that it was futile, you simply scowled, saying, “because you are the beast, Phainon. You!”

“Me?” He scoffed, befuddled, eyes going wide as an incredulous smile stretched the corners of his lips. “If I am the beast, then that must make the two of us.”

These words caused you to flinch, eyelids clenching shut together as you sobbed, somewhere deep down knowing it was true, for you just attempted to end someone’s life in order to regain yours. Wasn’t it selfish? It absolutely was, though still, you could not find much guilt left in your heart, not much to give away to Phainon, anyway. You felt like throwing up.

Only a few days ago, you were so grateful for his help that you’d do anything to please him, to make him happy, to make him look upon you with favor. Now it all felt so stupidly useless, like trying to catch snow in your palms and praying it would stay forever. But the snow will melt away like everything else, for such is the inevitable course of life, all things leaving, leaving, never staying as they were. You are still holding the snow now, but it is no longer cold and frozen on your skin, just a mild puddle of water.

Phainon tugged at your wrists to get your attention back, surprisingly gentle, the action causing you to stagger only partially. “I see you still must be confused, with the way you’re acting. But don’t worry, I’ll explain everything, like I always do.” Your eyes finally opened, vision clouded by your tears, seeking out Phainon’s face even now, mind mixing up the source of danger with what it proclaimed as safety. “A few months back, I realized you do not wish to marry me. At least not willingly, that is.”

“Naturally,” he continued, “I inferred that something needs to be done about this unfortunate predicament. Of course I would never want my wife to be unhappy. But, you see, I just didn’t know what. No matter what I did, you seemed to push my advances away, making up all sorts of excuses till I was bereft of your attention for weeks on end.

“It killed me. It genuinely killed me. [Name], if only you knew how much sorrow your absence brought me, then you’d surely rethink your actions.” Phainon chuckled emptily. “In any case, your sudden need to embark into the mountains was like a godsend. Not that I ever believed your little story about all these prophetic dreams and beasts and whatnot…

“But such a long walk is hard, and I thought that you evidently needed to wear yourself out. To finally calm down and stop musing about all these— these silly ideas and concepts that do not exist.” Pausing, he leaned down a little bit to look into your eyes better, suddenly so soft-spoken and docile. “And I must’ve been right, for you’ve been acting quite happy during our entire trek.”

Another thunder rolled somewhere in the distance. You felt the need to retort anyhow, to deny everything Phainon said, yet he pushed on, not letting you speak, “all I had to do was to give you a small push. Something to help you understand that I am willing to take care of you, to protect you, that I can be a good husband.” His lips curved into the familiar, gentle smile, the same one which always lulled you into mellowness. “Against whatever you might think, I am insecure. But after all the things we did together, after you let me have my way with you last night — you must love me. There is no other option.”

Hearing these words, you felt your stomach churn, finally gathering enough strength to tear yourself away and take a few steps back, even though it was obvious that Phainon let you go willingly. You took a shaky breath, brain still failing to grasp what the man just said. Many said your naive nature could doom you sooner or later, that it wasn’t prudent to put so much good faith in people, and yet you did, you did despite everything that you experienced.

And perhaps this is exactly why you were now in such a hopeless situation. Shaken, you found that your tongue went numb from the accumulated betrayal, pain and fear, knees wobbling so hard you nearly fell over. Your mouth opened and closed, yet nothing coherent came out of your struggle. The ache in your foot was getting unbearable.

With tears still rolling down your face, you looked at Phainon who simply stood there and did nothing, distantly reminding you of that one hunting trip you went on with your families, you, Mydei and him. How your parents gathered around the stricken fox, unhurried, knowing the animal would not run away when so severely wounded before someone finished it off.

A single glance over your shoulder told you enough. Even praying to Kephale, the benevolent Sky Father of all, would not be able to help you. Paralyzed, you couldn’t move, legs rooted in the ground.

The violets swaying on the lower path beneath the incline reminded you of Castorice, of how you weren’t even able to say goodbye — how she must be waiting for your return, wishing to see your face again after all those promises that you’ve made. How she’ll continue waiting. Then the vision of Mydei’s face flashed through your mind, the way he looked at you with so much remorse like it was his fault and you were utterly doomed no matter the outcome. Like he knew. Like he hoped that you’d emerge victorious, even if all the stakes were against you from the very beginning. The beautiful amber-gold of his eyes dissipated just as quickly as it arrived.

You missed your mother, too. She passed away so long ago, but you never came to terms with the fact that she won’t be returning anytime soon, sometimes waking up with so many things to tell her before remembering she’s gone. She’d side with you if it ever came to this engagement during her life, coming up with a solution to your problem. And she’d wipe your tears away the same way she always did, saying how you needn’t worry, that everything would be alright.

Even your own awful father, you suddenly longed for the warmth of his embrace, for how he used to be in the past. Long before greed consumed his mind, before he became what he was currently. You’d like to return to how things once were, yet now, standing on this cursed mountain, you came to a conclusion that it is probably impossible.

Finally, your sight rose to focus on Phainon’s face again.

There was a method to his madness, you thought, and no method to how easily you put your trust in him and submitted to his every single whim like a mindless fool.

Phainon eventually shifted, though he did not move forward, merely spreading his arms in something akin to mock-invitation. “[Name], you can run. I won’t stop you, of course, I already told you that I’d respect every choice of yours.” He paused, a knowing look to his eyes. “But I’d advise you to decide wisely.”

Once more, you managed to peek behind yourself, tempted to go and simply sprint down this winding path, yet the ache in your foot was a constant reminder of how futile this attempt would be. There was a chance you might run for two meters, maybe more, but then the man would simply tackle you to the ground.

When you looked back at Phainon, seeing these familiar features, that strained smile with an undercurrent of thinly-veiled dismay, you realized that there’s no way out. It weighed down on your heart so heavily, a thousand boulders crushing you down with helplessness, for even nature itself turned against you, wind picking up rapidly, more deafening thunders cracking through the dark skies. This world was unfair. Your life was unfair.

And in that very moment, you also realized there’s nothing you can do. The first step felt like falling into the abyss, the second one like a simple walk, like a stroll. Phainon’s smile widened, for he knew that in the end, he won. His arms outstretched in your direction, and he said, “that’s right, [Name]. I knew you weren't completely brainless.” The sound of his voice was giddy in a way which made your skin crawl, a barely concealed elation.

Wordless, you let Phainon gather you up into his embrace. Relief immediately washed over you as you leaned against his body, the pain pulsing through your foot finally subsiding, lessening into a dull throb, enough to diminish the dread at the back of your head, screaming at you to stop this folly. Still, you didn’t listen.

“When we return, I’ll give you that goat.” Phainon’s hand reached to stroke along your hair, and all you could do was nod uselessly, too exhausted to even respond. “I’ll give you the horse and whatever it is that you wish for, all of it can be yours.”

“Your desirous father can attend the wedding, I’ll allow that.” Phainon went on, one arm winding around your middle to keep you upright. “But he’s always thought me an imbecile, assured I’d let him take away my wife’s gifts and disrespect her name. Senile old man.” A scoff. “So you’ll move in with me, in the countryside villa back at Aedes Elysiae, that I had rewritten under my possession. I wouldn’t want us to live with my family either, not really, my own father has been such a pain. Do you know how long it took me to convince him that I should marry you instead of some stranger lass I held no interest in? Hah… anyway, I’ll even let you take your dogs. We’ll be alone and happy there, I promise.”

Resigned, you continued to nod your head — and you have betrayed yourself, though the truth seemed to elude your worn mind, as it always did. Beneath your cheek, you could feel Phainon’s erratic heartbeat. It drummed there, thud thud thud, a song of unsettling ecstasy which seemed to run through his entire being, sick devotion turned violent, yet still so heartbreakingly delicate.

The man’s fingers still smoothed up and down your head. His warm, trembling grip both smothered you and alleviated your pain, making you wonder if that’s how you’ll wake up every morning from now on. Maybe there was a chance to avoid this. Surely, there was. You did not take it, though, and that’s where your life of freedom ended.

You’ll see the golden fields, stretching far beyond the reach of eye, their surface rippling just like the sea laid out ahead of all the wheat. You’ll see the grazing cows, the vast pasture, the clear night sky and the olive gardens. The air will still carry the scent of earth and dry grass, warm from the day yet cooling as the evening settles in, but it won’t be as gentle as it used to be. Not anymore.

Phainon’s hand finally paused, instead reaching for your palm, brushing against your ring finger. “I’m sure mother is eager for you to try on the wedding dress she’s been sewing for weeks.”

You looked above, gauging his delirious eyes, the manic curve of his smile. And despite everything, you somehow smiled back.

“Let’s go home, [Name].”

[porcelainbirdss]

Series summary: the meaning of freedom becomes none when you’re of descending wealth. And the value of freedom becomes all when you get forced into an unwanted marriage, shackled to a man against your will.

Or, in other words: upon witnessing a prophetic dream, you decide to rip your honor back by force — killing some beast, after all, cannot be that difficult. Your own betrothed agrees to help.

Series warnings: fem!reader, yandere!Phainon, NSFW elements, MDNI, oral sex + fingering (fem receiving), dubious consent (both of them are drunk during the scene), slight asphyxiation, non-canonical setting, Phainon is reader’s fiancé, arranged marriage, power imbalance, jealousy, manipulation, possessive behaviors, toxicity, misogyny (not described in detail), brief mentions of animal hunting, mentions of death; descriptions of injury, blood and puking; alcohol consumption, physical violence, please do check tags for more || wc: 16.5k

I. A WANT IS NOT A NEED RESERVED FOR HUMAN BEINGS

The beast’s eyes fix on you from its den — even when you stand on the soil’s edge, you can still feel the hotness of its breath lapping at your bare ankles. The beast’s hide would make a comely sight, adorning your father’s hearth with its shade, beautiful and silken, for despite being a wretched creature, it is still just as prepossessing.

If you were to take hold of the beast’s head, cut it clean off, slicing through the strings of meat and tendons, forcing the bones to crack and give, then you’d surely be deemed worthy. As worthy as a man can be, worthier than those surrounding you.

You’d toss the two cornflowers out, no matter if flowers are meant to be cherished. Flesh is for the dogs to eat, your loyal companions, the pets that you’re so fond of, to devour. Gnaw at the ivory, lick the marrow out. Perhaps it is not wise. The beast is evil, not even dogs deserve to be fed that. You’d burn it, then, letting its blood char, its fat to sizzle out into nothing.

And once everyone sees the valor that you carry within your breast, you’ll be set free.

The beast looks at you from its den, still, shrouded by darkness, yet so clear. Your fingers itch to curl around the blade sitting at your hip, though you carry no blades, and your legs yearn to push you forward, into the hollow, yawning maw, into peril and its bared snarl. How easy it would be to slay this beast. How simple it would be to sink the knife in and push it through the padding of its underbelly, to watch it perish in spastic movements.

How utterly, awfully effortless it would be to regain lost dignity and the insouciant life that once was yours.

You take one step, then two. The beast doesn’t seem to be frightened. It cannot be, you think distantly, privately, a quiet realization settling at the back of your mind. With such claws that seem to curve sharper than any weapon, with such fangs that must’ve ripped apart more than just god-forsaken does and bucklings, the beast knows no fear. Yet you walk and walk, feeling as if you’ve no choice.

This must be true, girl, the beast whispers to you, can you see my snout and the coat of mine, light as day? Can you see the release waiting for you, if only you’re willing to show courage? To weather the sting of my teeth and the pain that comes with taking a life?

Beasts — animals — are unable to speak. How is it possible for it to articulate its wicked, barbed words so confidently? Your eyes widen and the hands that grip onto the knife tremble, for it must be a god talking to you, an omen, a warning. A divine being communicating with your pitiable self, trying to aid you. You must be incredibly self-assured to believe that. Somehow, you still do.

Even if you do not understand the beast’s words entirely, it continues, head south, seek me there. Away from all, away from those who may see, by the lakes and caves surrounding fields of tall beargrass — you’ll know when, you’ll know, girl, for you are far smarter and wiser than any eye sees.

And when you defeat me, then you’ll taste the lightness and sweetness of freedom again. Not sooner, not later.

By now, you shuffled your sandaled feet close enough to peer into the beast’s den. And it is large, so, so very large. You wonder how it fits there, into this hole, a cavity etched from an inconspicuous hill of dirt and roots. Trepidation clenches around your hammering heart viciously, you’re terrified by the tongue laving over canines. When looking at your own weak limbs, you cannot help but feel hopeless.

There is no other choice for you. Go on and heed my words forever, lest you be doomed, it says, then lunges forward. Not even a yowl of pain manages to escape your lungs when the beast’s jaws snap closed around your wrists, kicking up your pulse into a wild gallop. You do not see anything else.

Predictably, you did not die, nor were you devoured; but when your eyes shot wide open, a breath of horror catching in your throat, you truly felt dead. Just for that brief second.

Soon enough, you calmed your body down enough to hear the chirping of morning birds outside. The sun did not rise from the window of your modest bedroom, yet its brightness was already there — not irritating as it usually was, no, a gentle warmth spreading over your cheeks, the slope of your nose, soothing your troubled mind. When you looked to your side, you could see clear skies with just a few altocumuli clouds. A row of tall poplars, the distant peaks of mountains.

You sat up, kicking the sheets off. Your head hurt. It was pounding like some sort of a stampede, though the fresh air filling up your room helped, if only just a little. That dream… it was unsettling. Perhaps you were foolish to hope this wasn’t another prophecy to weigh down on your shoulders, but you knew better by now. Humans with enough intelligence always learn from their past experiences. They are capable of understanding that things of certain nature, no matter how problematic those may be, are inevitable.

Such was your current case, it would seem. Frustrated, you raked your fingers through your hair, huffing. You knew it’s no use trying to deny what you saw. Gods seem to regard you with either fondness or contempt, for they always send you visions that leave you more confused than before.

Eight years ago, you had foreseen the impending death of your now late mother — no one believed you, so you didn’t believe yourself either. Just a foolish dream made up by the mind of a foolish girl. She passed, of course, but not a single person who dared laugh in your face thought to reconsider their skepticism.

Then seven years ago, you dreamt of your father’s downfall. The man was not very bright or sharp, lacking in wits that your mother had aided him with when she was still alive. Your mother was clever, your father was not, and the fortune of your family began to steadily lessen and lessen till you were regarded as stripped of your old honors. A single man with no lover, having one daughter and no sons. How pitiful. Again, no one listened. No matter how badly you begged and cried to your father, pleading for him to understand that you were not deceiving him, he continued to ignore you.

And three years ago, you had another prophetic revelation. A message shrouded in a thick veil of your dreams, as they all were, yet somehow clearer and more specific than any of them. You were to be engaged with Hieronymus’ son at the age of twenty. And it just so happened that your financial situation worsened exactly five months ago, having Hieronymus and your father making a simple agreement — that you’ll marry into their family. That time, you didn’t even attempt letting anyone in on your visions. It was of no consequence either way.

Why Hieronymus agreed to this, you had no idea, for you were not affluent and had nothing to offer. Still, it wasn’t like this marriage would condemn his son to failure; perhaps it was even beneficial for him, in some sort of sense or form. Not like it concerned you, though.

Just as you were getting up from the bed, swinging your stiff legs over the edge, you heard that characteristic voice resounding through the house. Slightly too loud, with a jaunty lilt, melodic enough to humble even the most skilled nightingales. At such an early morning, it was near vexatious. A quiet groan left your lips as you dragged your feet towards the wardrobe, utterly resigned, tugging out a simple chiton to change into.

Your head was still pounding. The shake of your hands did not help as you dressed yourself. That ominous beast from your dream was still sitting at the back of your mind, somewhere, thoughts marred by the sight of its terrifying mouth and eyes, and you wanted it so badly to go away, but it just wouldn’t. Nothing ever went according to your wishes anyway and trying to chase it off was for none.

Once you gathered your bearings and exited the bedroom, you were quick to search for your father. Upon reaching the courtyard, you had to pause, though. It was to be expected, you heard them having a dialogue, after all, but interrupting the scene before you felt almost like trespassing. Is it possible to trespass in your own house? Probably not, even if you felt like you were doing it constantly — stranger to the four walls that you were brought up within.

“Have I told you, sir?” Phainon’s broad back was facing you, though you could clearly hear the smile in his voice. “My friend’s goat — Cyrene’s, you must remember her — recently kidded, they have a doeling,”

Fido, Argos and Kydos, your beloved hounds of beautiful furs and graceful, strong backs, kept circling Phainon as if he were a piece of shank meat hanging on a stick. The man simply laughed as they nudged him with their snouts, demanding more pets, and Phainon obliged, briefly leaning down to give their long heads a few affectionate strokes, laughing some more when they licked at his fingers. Argos even went as far as sitting between his legs, tail thumping happily.

Your father’s eyebrow rose, a curious-like expression on his face, “and why’re you telling me this, Phainon?”

Kydos whined rather loudly, nosing at Phainon’s palm. He ignored it, instead folding his arms. “My dear mother came up with the idea, actually. [Name] has been so out of sorts recently, hasn’t she? Perhaps a pleasant companion would lift her spirits, the doeling is very lovely, I have seen for myself. Cyrene said that she would not mind giving it away, if it’s meant to be a gift for my own betrothed.”

Fido was starting to feel impatient, slobber dripping down the dog’s muzzle. The offer almost made you snort, because how could a simple goat allay your internal troubles? Not to mention, those regarded the impending marriage, despite what Phainon might’ve thought.

“Is that so?” Your father chortled, mildly incredulous but definitely amused, “I’m afraid [Name]’s hounds would deal with it before she could even lay her eyes on the poor thing.”

Somehow, Phainon didn’t seem offended. “You must be right, then. But cabrito does taste good, sir, and it’s healthy too. [Name] should only eat healthy things…”

Because that’s exactly how your current reality looks like. Phainon, the son of a high-ranking officer, a member of Okhema’s army himself, was the one who you were engaged with; or rather, literally given out to. Like a present. Like a particularly uninteresting, average hare that someone hunted down and deemed a worthy trophy.

This man has been present in your life since you both were summer-sweet children, though you cannot say for sure that you were ever genuinely close.

There’s a distant, half-faded memory that you think about sometimes. Back when you were only seven and Phainon was nine, before everything went to hell, your families decided to go for a hunting trip in Okhema’s vast forests. Another boy’s family went too — Mydeimos is his name, a quiet child who grew up into a great warrior. You weren’t fond of horseback riding, you still aren’t, but you got dragged along.

And you remember Hieronymus attempting to strike down a fox. When he did not succeed, your father tried too, then finally Eurypon put an end to the animal’s misery. You were children, so such activities mattered little. While the adults gathered together to celebrate their fire-red catch, you snuck off, too occupied with your own small lives.

Phainon found the fox’s den, then he hopped down, goading you and Mydei to come with him. You thought he was being inept. Mydei agreed with you, because he always did, but the boy’s soft heart caved when Phainon sent him those jilted eyes of a mistreated dog. He tumbled down by a faulty step, ankle catching in some root, both him and Phainon falling on their backsides upon the inevitable collision. It looked silly — they barely fit there.

That much was enough to make you laugh. The brighter one, Mydei, only grumbled and complained, calling Phainon names that would get him scolded harshly if your parents were to hear. But Phainon seemed uncaring, extending his scraped hands towards you. [Name], why won’t you come down with me?, he asked. The fox is not here, even if it was I’d protect you, Phainon pleaded, fingers finally catching on your skirts.

One pull was enough to throw you off-balance and have you rolling down clumsily, though you did not want to. You really, really did not want to. Then you cried for the rest of the trip, having everyone coddle and comfort you. You also don’t know why you didn’t step back when you still had the chance to — if you did, then Phainon wouldn’t have grabbed you, he wouldn’t have caused you to fall and bruise your knees. There was a very good chance to avoid the accident.

But that doesn’t matter now, does it?

Finally, your betrothed’s eyes landed on your form — previously occupied with talking your father’s ear off, he didn’t notice your presence. “[Name]!” Phainon cheered, genuinely surprised. “I didn’t notice you standing there. Why didn’t you come up to us and say hello? We’ve been—”

“I know what you’ve been conversing about, Phainon.” A weak smile stretched your lips as you sighed, stepping closer. “And while I appreciate your thoughtfulness, I also have no need for the doeling. Spare Cyrene her poor animal, father’s right.”

The man visibly deflated at your straightforward rejection, yet he was quick to spring back, putting his hands together. “Then perhaps a little rabbit? She has those too, they—”

Your father clapped Phainon on the shoulder, successfully cutting his logorrhea off, and naturally, you were grateful — whenever Phainon started to wag his tongue, it felt like willingly giving yourself up to an avalanche. Still, you couldn’t help but frown. The truth was simple, you weren’t overly keen on your father, the mere sight of his face enough to make breathing harder.

Who gave you away to marriage that you didn’t want for? Who belittled and undermined every single word of warning coming from your mouth? Who caused the downfall of your family? Who was it if not precisely him? Your affections towards your own parent faltered as quickly as the wan, morning sky gave way to azure above your heads. If anything, you’d prefer Phainon to be the only one speaking. Even if he can be a bother, that chatterbox.

“Since [Name] is up, why don’t we discuss things of actual importance by the dining table?” He finally said, causing Phainon to nod his head rather enthusiastically. You continued to frown, the corner of your lips curled. There went your easy morning. Most assuredly, you were naive to believe that you could ever have a second of reprieve in this cursed house.

It didn’t take long for the three of you to sit by the table inside, its surface already adorned with a humble breakfast that would be a true luxury, in case that you were emaciated mares, for the servant that your father vehemently refused to let go of was already senile. Privately, you thought it to be funny. Overzealous persons with too much pride and boast will not resign from one single sign of wealth left, even if it means eating sludge for dinner and silt for supper.

Unsurprisingly, Phainon was already loading his cheeks with said abomination. The engagement band around his ring finger was not necessary, yet he continued to wear it, just like you did, most likely out of sheer politeness, to simply avoid misunderstandings and conflicts, you were certain. Your vision zeroed on the piece of silver, watching it catch the pale light and glint as Phainon gesticulated, moving his hands around, talking about something.

With great effort, you eventually forced your eyes to lift, your brain to focus. Phainon was still speaking, saying, “my mother’s almost done with the dress. I would love to describe how it looks, though I am forbidden from seeing it before the wedding,”

The twins of blue were glued on you — your betrothed was talking to you, of course he was, yet you somehow failed to understand that. When you didn’t answer, creating an air of awkwardness, Phainon’s attention returned to your father. He chuckled stiffly, smile tight. You were too deep in the darkness of your own thoughts to even consider feeling bad.

“And Cyrene’s very busy coming up with flower arrangements for the bouquets.” Another laugh, still a bit dry. “I tell her that she’s doing too much, she says I need to go search for some exotic flower that I have not ever heard of. Well, I did. It’s nowhere to be found, though…”

Fine, at this point maybe you were starting to feel a little bad. Your father appeared to be entranced by the sloppy semolina porridge inside his bowl, only answering with uncommitted grunts; you, on the other hand, didn’t endeavor to answer at all. Phainon was having a conversation with himself.

It wasn’t anything to be surprised by, though. During your betrothal, your fathers agreed that this marriage would be for financial benefits. Obviously, that didn’t sit right with you, still. What benefits were there? For your family, yes, but for Phainon’s? Nevertheless, your father always made sure to indulge the younger man at least a little — humoring his fickle whimsies, ideas of gifting you with goats, rabbits or even ponies so that your hypothetical children would have a mount to play with. Tolerating Phainon’s babbling, his constant visits, constant musings and constant requests to spend time with you.

But your father’s patience was always thin, just like the floss of your chiton’s embroidery. “And what about the gifts?” He queried, visibly straining to keep his tone amiable.

Dishonorable man, you thought almost angrily, he’d like to sell the wedding gifts. No, he really is going to do it. There’s no stopping a desperate fool, not when covetousness already overtook his heart and senses, blinding, muddling, making the gormless parasite even more avaricious.

Phainon replied with something, honest and open as always, apparently enough to keep your father at bay, for he merely nodded in satisfaction, an agreeable smile stretching his lips. You didn’t even try to interject. It was your father’s most favored topic to talk about, something he was physically unable to refuse himself indulging in, imagining the money that he’ll get, the wealth that’ll return to the hold of his crooked fingers.

He was literally going to rob newlyweds and you, his own daughter, were the pass. Perhaps you should be more offended by the prospect of your father disrespecting you and your soon-to-be-husband to the point where he’d take the gifts and sell them — but there was a problem of bigger scale tugging at your psyche.

Selfishly, you wished for your freedom to return. Greedily, you wanted to snatch it back. Childishly, you needed Phainon’s radiant, stupidly handsome face to disappear from your life altogether and leave you alone. No other man’s family would be dense enough to agree to marrying you.

But… maybe not all is lost. You tuned out Phainon’s chatter, your father’s grating words. There was hope — and you haven’t got the chance to think of it properly yet, but the beast still lurking at the back of your head seemed to sneer. When you remembered its claws and fangs, the beast turned amused, its dark lips lifting. It did not look like a smile, though. More like a mean smirk, a snarl, a condescending: so you’ve finally decided to stop being cowardly and take what was given?

Killing the beast wouldn't come easy, even if its promises of glory and honor tempted you to take on the task by yourself. This wretched fiend, where could it be hiding? South, you remembered, a field of beargrass with cave openings littered all around, mountains hugging the area. There was someone who could help. Someone capable of wrestling with the beast’s muscular, large body, of besting its strong paws and snapping jaws.

“Excuse me,” you said suddenly, causing both your father and Phainon to pause. “But I am feeling rather ill. A walk in the fresh air will be enough to fix my state, I’m sure,”

“[Name], you’re unwell?” Phainon fired back just as quickly, standing up when you did, eyes already wide with concern. “Then you mustn’t go on the walk alone, what if something happens? The heat is too much today. You’ll only faint or worse.” He walked up to you without sparing a glance at your father, slightly leaning down to examine your face. The amount of genuine worry there nearly made you pause.

You averted your eyes. “I’ll be fine, Phainon. Stay with father or go home.” It was all you managed to say before pushing past the taller man, accidentally knocking your shoulder against his arm. Phainon barely budged. Then he was being ushered back by your father, who obviously didn’t mind the lack of your presence, insisting that they discuss some money-related details more.

Was it wise to take everything for granted? No, but you and your father were of the same blood, and his desperation seemed to rub off on you. This beast, this animal that has no right to exist, you’ll make sure it sees its end soon enough. If, by the gods’ opinion, that much is going to grant you freedom, then you’ll do it, doesn’t matter what it takes — it could gnaw your limbs away and swallow you whole, at least you’ll die knowing you never gave in to fate’s cruel whims.

Reaching Okhema’s training grounds did take long, for it was a completely different area of the city, with a higher density of citizens, and despite what many people thought, ignorant by their prejudice, this piece of Okhema, occupied mainly by warriors and army, was very welcoming. Colorful, full of camaraderie and connection that others seemed to lack. You rarely visited yet you still loved it, feeling soothed by the lively, fierce nature that dominated over this place.

Then you were looking at him. At the mane of blond-red locks that curled at the ends strikingly — at the handsome musculature he always carried with such feline-like grace. Mydeimos.

You watched him settle the javelin down, both hands reaching to wipe the sweat away from his brow and eyes. The corners of your lips lifted. Against what many thought, Mydei didn’t change much from when he was a little boy. Still the same mannerisms, still the same golden heart. It was uplifting to see someone who stuck with their convictions so deeply, so confidently, without any waver. Mydei’s unorthodox approach remained just as unchanged as the way he shook his hair out, reminding you of a little lion cub that tripped into a puddle.

When the man noticed you smirking from across the training grounds, he frowned. “[Name].”

“Yes?” You couldn’t help the amused expression blooming on your face, eyebrows arching.

As you sashayed closer, Mydei finally sighed, a faint smile softening his sharp features — the slight crinkle of his amber-gold eyes made you just a bit more placid. “I see you’ve decided to visit me. Any particular reason?” He mused, once again attempting to wipe his damp face.

“Who do you take me for, Mydei?” You chuckled, fingers gently flicking the small braid resting over his shoulder. The man didn’t even attempt to bat your hand away. “Perhaps I simply wished to see my old friend. You know, despite being busy, I still do miss you.”

Mydei’s arms crossed over his bare chest. “True, you are busy.” A scoff. “Busy planning the wedding with that imbecile, assuredly. Is he causing you trouble?”

You kissed your teeth, smile waning. Somehow, Mydei had this uncanny ability to pinpoint exactly what kept you awake at night, what caused your stomach to drop and your heart to clench. He was perceptive, especially when it came to you.

“Actually…” you trailed off, tentative of how to approach the topic. This situation as a whole was already ridiculous, and Mydei was known for his no-nonsense attitude; always clear-headed, always the rational one.

Seeing your hesitation, Mydei’s expression hardened. “What? Was I right to suspect that Phainon did something to upset you?”

Phainon upsetting you on purpose was definitely a stretch, for that man seemed to dance around your orbit like some kind of a jester, if only to appease you. Still, there was some truth to it. The fact that you’d have to marry Phainon was your main concern, a thorn stuck in the sole of your foot. A constant ache.

And, if you are correct, there is only one way to deal with that. The dice have been already thrown — maybe it was Janus’ benevolence that allowed you to hold a conversation with that beast in the first place. It could have been Oronyx too, their kind nature letting you see. Cerces, perhaps, was a logical possibility as well, extending their divine wisdom towards you like an olive branch. Who knows? Not like it’s of any significance now. The beast must be slain, that message sent to you through your prophetic dream was clear.

“It’s… not like that,” you lowered your eyes, voice faltering, “I apologize for lying earlier. There is a reason why I came to you, Mydei, and we need to talk. Please.”

You heard the man sigh, his feet slowly starting to shuffle back. “Very well,” was all Mydei said, voice leveled. Then he led you away from the scorching sun, stopping once you reached the marble columns that circled the training grounds. You leaned against one, thankful for the shade provided by the roof supported atop them. “Now, [Name]. Whatever it is that you wish to speak of?”

A shallow, nervous laugh escaped your lips. “Mydei, I’ll be straightforward,” you began, looking into his winsome eyes. “Do you think it is possible for someone like me to escape my current situation?”

For whatever reason, Mydei didn’t appear surprised by your question in the slightest, barely a twitch to his stoic expression. “You don’t want to marry Phainon.” It sounded like a statement.

“I don’t.”

“If you came to me, then you must, at the very least, have a vague idea of what you wish to do in this situation.” A pause. “What is it?”

Mydei didn’t ask why, he didn’t try mocking or jeering at you. It felt almost foreign, at least to you, being treated with such seriousness and respect. Normally your word would be immediately undermined and your intellect belittled, reduced to a jest, to a foolish girl that knows no better. The man before you did no such thing.

“To regain one’s dignity, to gain independence and status… there is a way. A few have done it before, Mydei, and you have to tell me.” You took a shaky breath, feeling that desperation kicking up again, reducing your form to a sweaty, restless wreck. “If I were to kill a beast and bring its head home, would I become someone worthy of freedom?”

Everyone knew of people like you, people who were never lucky nor considered particularly valuable — the same people who wrestled against all odds and won. Those who obtained glory through various acts of bravery and courage.

The man hummed, nodding in consideration. “If the beast was truly formidable, yes. You could be recognized as a warrior and resign from your betrothal.” Mydei’s face softened again, a near unnoticeable shift in the set of his brows. “There are people who’d vouch for you.”

A small breath of relief escaped you, chest warming all over. You smiled, then, thinking that this was a half of success; now came the more tricky part, and though you began to feel confident, there was still a risk that Mydei wouldn’t agree.

Because your plan was very simple. That beast you saw in your dream was intimidating, its large body filling up the den completely. You were smart enough to know that defeating it by yourself would be impossible. Trickery could work, but praying to Zagreus and asking for aid was just as risky as jumping straight into the beast’s liar and attempting to strike its heart.

The truth was that: you are not skilled in anything. Therefore, you’d plead Mydei for help. No one would need to know that he was the one to actually make the kill and it seemed like a very logical option, at least in your opinion.

“And if I asked you to lend me your strength in defeating the beast, would you agree?”

“I would.” His answer came so quickly, so easily, that even you got startled. “But you speak of this hypothetical beast as if it already exists, [Name].”

“Because it’s not hypothetical.”

That caused Mydei to pause and blink, long eyelashes fluttering in mild surprise. His mouth opened and closed before he finally asked, “how are you so certain of this? You must have seen it, then.”

Your clammy hands clenched into fists. “I did. I have seen it in my prophetic dream, it truly was there. A large beast, hiding in its den, spoke to me and… and I know where to search for it. I know, because it wasn’t just a dream, you must understand that it wasn’t—”

“So you’ve had a nightmare and deemed it as truth?” Mydei’s eyebrows drew together, sudden skepticism leaking into his previously calm voice.

By then, all hope evaporated from your heart. Of course you knew he wouldn’t believe you — and you couldn’t even blame Mydei for refusing to, because this was genuinely abstract.

Still, you tried again: “it was no nightmare, and it wasn’t me who judged it as real. There’s… gods, Mydei, you are just as religious as me.”

“Though I do not rely on said gods as much as you do, [Name]. I’d wager that I don’t need them at all.”

Right. After Nikador turned their back on their followers, Mydei had stopped praising any deities altogether. That little detail slipped your mind constantly. It was so easy to cling onto that old memory of you and Mydei, praying by the altar together and burning sacrifice. You weren’t children anymore.

“I…” you stammered, fiddling with your fingers nervously. “So you don’t believe me.”

There was a short, yet loaded beat of silence. Mydei shifted on his feet, you watched his expression turn conflicted. “I wish I could believe you.”

A brittle chuckle ripped from your throat as you shook your head. No one ever put any trust in you, what were you even expecting? Mydei was a busy man. He was an important member of the army, had plenty of political influence — even if he went to hunt with you, he’d kill the first wolf or bear in your path and deem the task done. But the prophecy, that god-sent dream you had, spoke of no bears or wolves. It was a specific beast. One that lived far from here, and it hid itself, away from people, away from any civilization. Leaving Okhema for more than a week wouldn’t be beneficial for Mydei. The trip you’d have to embark on would take longer than just seven days.

“It’s all right.” You finally breathed out your reply, struggling to keep eye contact. Mydei looked visibly remorseful. “I know… I know that my request was selfish. And you’re my friend, Mydei.” With a weak smile, you reached to squeeze the man’s shoulder, feeling the tension sitting there. “How cruel of me it would be to force you into following my foolish lead?”

“You know I’d follow you,” Mydei’s voice went quiet, “but our convictions do not align this time. There is a difference between us now, and you already made up your mind.”

“That’s true.” Your rueful smile weakened even more. You let go of his shoulder slowly, stepping back, eager to finally leave and stop humiliating yourself in front of your friend. “Either way, I’m sorry for taking up your time. Please, if you’ll excuse me now…”

Turning around with a downcast gaze, you only stopped for a brief moment when Mydei spoke again. “I hope that you are going to get to the future where everything will have been worth your struggle, [Name].”

You had no answer for that. And you also knew that you had no choice.

Rain caught you before afternoon. Stupidly, you decided to clear your head and take a walk around Okhema, to think of all the preparations and things you’d need to do. A plan, maybe? You pondered on all these aspects of your journey — because you were quite hellbent on going — then the heavy rain chased you down into some tavern.

Sitting there for the rest of the day, huddled with a dozen other people, certainly wasn’t what you wished to do. Still, your options were limited. You were of poor health, and even a gentle drizzle could cause you illness. No surprise Phainon was so distressed earlier. Anyway, you decided to stay in the tavern and wait the rain out, for you were at least clever enough to avoid risking any sicknesses before your… little trip.

By the time you returned home, it was already night. The walk took you long, and half of the roads you had to take were made out of soil instead of cobblestone. This reduced your sandals to a muddy massacre, dirt clinging everywhere. Your feet were wet from the puddle you accidentally stepped in, water sloshing over your bare ankles and calves, the edges of your long chiton equally ruined.

It felt uncomfortable and you were incredibly tired. Before stepping inside the house, you took off your sandals, padding quietly through the corridors. No one was out to greet you. It was for the better anyway — at least you had free reign, without any obstacles getting in your way.

You have decided to do it yourself. It was both a heavy and easy resolution.

Death may await you there; you were not fit or capable, lacking experience needed for such a job. Perhaps you were unwise to storm away from Mydei like that, uselessly sensitive heart urging you to flee before you’d start weeping. At least you could’ve asked him for some weapon or advice.

Yet at the same time, your shoulders felt lighter, mind relieved and sharper. It could have been the fresh air after rain, it could have been the conviction that no matter what comes, doom or release, you’ll be set free on your own terms.

There was no point in trying to put this whole ordeal away. The closer it gets to your wedding, the more futile it would be to try and do anything on your own. Surely, both Phainon’s family and your father would keep you occupied. So instead of waiting for some ‘miraculous moment’, you were going to elope on your hunting trip today.

Keeping your footsteps light, you first searched for a weapon. A crossbow would be useless, same as any sort of sword or lance — after all, you had absolutely no clue how to use them. Your main tactic of survival relied heavily on running and hiding. With that in mind, you picked up a needle-point knife from one of the drawers. Doesn’t offer much, but it would do.

Then you continued to look around the house, gathering any other necessities like a critter preparing for winter. The traveling bag in your hand was starting to get heavier by the second, and you knew that you’d need to eventually stop packing it full of things. Carrying such weight would only make things unnecessarily harder.

You even thought of taking your hounds with you at some point. That idea was quickly rejected, though, for you wouldn’t risk the lives of your innocent pets just for a tentative chance of safety. So instead of waking the dogs, you finally entered your bedroom.

There wasn’t much else to be done. With a sense of finality in your mind, you took a quick glance at the clock — one hour before midnight. The whole house was so, so very silent. You opened the wardrobe, starting to sort through clothes that you’d need. One garment of thick material to keep you warm and one light to help you cool down during the rapidly approaching summer season. That was enough.

“[Name], what are you doing?”

Heart jumping straight into your throat, you jerked, accidentally letting go of the wardrobe’s doors and letting them slam shut. What the hell was he doing here?

You turned on your heel rapidly, gaze falling on the familiar silhouette of a man standing in the threshold. The full moon was enough to illuminate his face, blue eyes blinking in confusion like a puppy that just got denied his favorite treat. You clutched the clothes in your hands, leveling Phainon with a defensive stare.

“Why are you still in my house?” The question came out harsher than you intended it to, but controlling the tremble in your voice seemed near impossible.

Phainon didn’t appear to be particularly moved by your hostile tone. “It was raining,” he said, “that is, if you haven’t noticed. Which I doubt, looking at the state of your chiton.” The man’s vision focused on your muddy, damp attire, a slightly unamused gleam to his eyes.

When you remained silent, chewing on the inside of your cheek, still benighted, Phainon stepped closer. “Your father was kind enough to let me stay. But you…” your betrothed reached for a single strand of your somewhat tangled hair, “where were you for the entire day? I was so worried — first you say you feel ill, then you disappear.”

The genuinely careworn expression on Phainon’s face and that characteristic, benign voice, caused you to waver. “I needed to speak with someone,” you admitted. “Rain caught me later, so I waited till it stopped in a tavern.”

You let Phainon smooth his palms down your locks, getting the mess on your head under control. The touch was careful, not invasive or pushy, just a gentle motion that nearly lulled you into vulnerability. “Who did you talk to, then?” He asked, tone still affable.

“Mydeimos,” came your answer, and you bit the tip of your tongue belatedly.

But Phainon — sweet-tempered and docile — didn’t get angry at you for speaking with another man alone. At least you don’t think he did. His hands stopped, though there was no major change to his expression. “You mean our Mydei? What for?”

“That’s not of any importance.” You finally gathered your bearings, pushing past Phainon, the clothes still clutched against your breast. “I’d be grateful if you left now.”

Despite your request, the man didn’t move. He continued to examine your form, then turned his body fully to face towards bed. Phainon’s twins of blue locked on the travel bag you put there earlier and you felt your pulse jump in trepidation, throat clenching. Gods, why was everything always going against you?

“What is this?” The man asked, reaching for your stuff.

Without thinking too much, you slapped his hands away, a grimace marring your face. “I’ve told you to leave, haven’t I?” You hissed, attempting to shove Phainon out of your bedroom. Predictably, he hardly budged.

Then he was already grabbing the travel bag, causing you to take a hold of it too, both of you starting to wrestle for it quietly. Neither of you caused a ruckus, waking your father would only bring more trouble. Scandalized, you watched Phainon finally rip it away from your grasp, turning the bag over and spilling its contents out atop the bed.

Before even a gasp could escape your lungs, Phainon was already rummaging through the things there. They were very telling, unfortunately. A knife, a long rope, a map, a compass and a lot of dry food, matches, a blanket, whatever herbs you could find along with dressings. Then the clothes still folded against your chest, and the terrified expression on your face.

The man’s eyes lifted, visibly widened. You blanched. “[Name], you were planning to leave.” Somehow, he didn’t appear mad at all. “What happened that made you so angry with me? That you’d be willing to elope so surreptitiously, without even…”

When your betrothed trailed off, sounding quite betrayed, you suddenly felt the need to deflect, turn the situation around, attempt lying straight through your teeth. But the thing is, you were against deceiving people that have never actually done anything to wrong you, it just didn’t align with your nature. Perhaps such an attitude towards life was utterly naive, for others never backed down when it came to saving their own hide. Alas, you were unlike them.

Phainon was never mean or cruel towards you — quite the opposite. He was tender-hearted and treated you with respect. Maybe he wasn’t as perceptive or as tuned-in with your needs as Mydei was, but it was still obvious that Phainon genuinely tried his best. You did not dislike him.

In another world, a kinder place, you’d be glad to marry such a man. But this was no fairytale. Your reality was much more grim and everything that happened so far was caused by your inability to take control over your own life. Understandably, the prospect of marriage that didn’t come out of your good will was dreadful.

Lying to Phainon was out of the picture. Telling him the truth seemed just as stupid. The man was already confused, your explanation would only knock him sideways and have him condemn you as mentally unwell.

Or… maybe that’s exactly what you need? When Phainon hears your story and understands that you are, very obviously, sick in the head, he’ll get scared and break the engagement himself. Who’d be willing to subject themselves to a life with someone like you by their side?

“Phainon, I’m sorry, but I have never wanted to marry you.” A heavy, long sigh. “And you must know that this is not caused by my disdain toward you, nor anything else, for you are an honorable man. I do enjoy your presence, I do not mind us spending time together.

“Yet… you must also know that all of this goes against my wishes. This betrothal, this whole agreement that our fathers made… ah, I’m not sure if you understand what I’m trying to communicate here. Either way, I am not marrying you willingly. Again, I am sorry for that.”

Perhaps you shouldn’t have dropped so much information all at once, because Phainon did look befuddled. Still, you swallowed nervously, pushing on: “and I’m also aware that you would not break our engagement, if you had it your way. Which, well, you do have… but I know how to end this, I know how to break free by myself, Phainon. I have had a prophetic dream.”

Against your expectations, Phainon didn’t start laughing or calling you insane. “What did you see, then, [Name]?” He asked, tone remotely calm, and that was one of the many things to surprise you.

“A beast.”

“A beast?”

“Yes,” you affirmed, tone steadying just a little, “a beast. It said to defeat it — only then I would regain my honor and independence. Be reckoned with. Obtain a warrior’s title, Mydei told me it’s true. And… I am going to do it. No matter if the beast is large, no matter if you all try to stop me—”

“I’ll help you.” Phainon interjected, causing you to drop the clothes from your arms in shock.

What? You blinked a few times, jaw slacking down, hands hanging limply at your sides.

You were sure that you must’ve misheard, but upon seeing your startled state, Phainon repeated: “I’ll help you, [Name].”

That… was the most unexpected thing you have heard so far today. Perhaps in your entire life. Phainon agreed so easily, he was even smiling now, whole posture suddenly relaxed and open, it was as if the thought of rejecting you didn’t cross his mind in the first place.

“So you believe me? And you’re willing to accept it, just like that?” You questioned, eyebrows shooting into your hairline.

Phainon laughed, actually laughed. “Oh, why wouldn’t I believe you? You’re the most honest person I know, trust me when I say this.” His hands reached out for you again, smile widening in a way that had you questioning if your betrothed was even sane to begin with. Phainon’s fingers folded around yours, and he continued, “I’d have believed you, [Name], even if you suggested the existence of other worlds. Hah… I am almost offended that you put so little faith in me.”

You laughed as well, then, a weak and brittle thing. How can it be? No one ever believed you, not even Mydei, who you were sure would at least give you the benefit of doubt instead of outright rejection. Yet here Phainon was, your own fiancé that you just informed about your unwillingness to marry and some prophetic dream sent by gods. Previous visions offered to you were much lighter, more plausible. Death, downfall, engagement. This one was unlike any other — find the beast that has no right to exist, slaughter it and set yourself free. And yet, Phainon still believed.

“But why help me?” You pressed, voice trembling. “There is a difference between believing and helping me. Why? Phainon, you have said, not that long ago, that you do not wish for our betrothal to end. So why?”

Phainon merely tilted his head, humming, the pads of his thumbs running over your knuckles twice. “Because I respect you.”

“Is… that it?” Chuckling faintly, you squeezed his hands. “No. No, you must’ve misunderstood something, for this is…”

Before you could spiral, Phainon let go of your hands, instead starting to pack your bag anew. “This is me taking your own will into consideration, [Name].” The man replied, stuffing everything inside carefully. “You’d have gone by yourself anyway, you stubborn creature. Since that beast of yours is so large, I think it’s wiser for me to accompany you than letting you venture out into peril alone.” The man finally finished re-packing the travel bag, straightening out with a genial smile. “Aren’t I right?”

A half-resigned, half-amused sigh escaped your lungs. “Yes, Phainon. You’re right.”

And you left the same night. Departing from your house surprisingly didn’t come as hard as you thought it would, you didn’t even spare a single glance back. Instead, your eyes locked south. The beast was waiting there — and you were waiting for it, too.

The woods shielding your bodies from one side didn’t do much to block out the bright sunlight that seemed to practically envelop you. Panting, you took a brief glance around yourself. Trees. More trees. Mountains in the distance. Some flowers, moss, rocks. A couple of butterflies dancing between the grass blades, twirling around your aching feet.

It was the first day of your journey and you haven’t stopped for a rest since leaving the house. The trek wasn’t that hard, but you still struggled. Upon mapping out your route, Phainon guided you atop a slope; not a very high one, no, still remotely safe to tread on. A forest stretched from beside you, a long line of trees. Down the slope, you could see a valley, probably once filled up by water, now adorned in big patches of wildflowers, colorful points dotted across its expanse.

On your left, Phainon continued to walk steadily. He never tripped or faltered, even though his body appeared to be generally weighed down. The man offered to take your travel bag, which coupled with his own (because obviously he asked to stop at his house and get his personal stuff) probably weighed a considerable amount. There was also steel at his hip. Phainon took the smaller one with him, leaving the favored great-sword behind. While the great-sword wasn’t heavy, it was still, well, great in size, which would simply take up too much space, and that’d be inconvenient.

“You’re doing okay there?” He asked, sending you a sidelong look. There was a slight breathlessness to his voice, most likely caused by the constant move. “The sun’s very high.”

To be completely honest, you weren’t okay. The heat was unbearable, your legs hurt, your heart continued to hammer from exhaustion, and you felt yourself dripping with sweat. With such straw-like zeal, you even thought of turning back, multiple times at that. How plaintive you must be to consider giving up simply because of a frail body. The whole trip won’t take longer than three weeks — marriage would last you your whole life. Which one is worse? Apparently, enduring the heat and throbbing legs was much more challenging than bidding goodbye to your dignity altogether.

“I’m— I’m fine,” you forced out through clenched teeth, struggling to keep up. Phainon was very tall by nature and it never bothered you... up until now, that is, because you’ve continued to curse out his long legs for the past several hours.

Noticing your plight, Phainon finally slowed down. “Are you sure, [Name]?” His palm stretched back in your direction, fingers splayed wide, beckoning you to grab onto him for support. “You do seem short of breath.”

A frown grew on your face as you pointedly ignored the man’s hand. Phainon genuinely wanted to help, even if he kept jesting about your poor condition ever since you set out; still, you wouldn’t accept his pity that easily, so instead of catching the outstretched palm, you batted it away.

It did look a bit empty without the engagement band, though. You were used to seeing the thin, silver ring, its modest appearance matching with the same one you used to wear. Before leaving your house, you told Phainon that it’d be wise to take off your rings — he initially didn’t agree, saying no one would go after you trying to steal them. Perhaps it was true, but you were close to breaking up the betrothal anyway, and you saw no point in strutting around with that thing on your finger. Phainon ended up agreeing, albeit with slight reluctance.

You asked him why he was so apprehensive and the man looked at you, then, as if the question came from a place of utter incongruity instead of normal curiousness. If you squinted, he might’ve even appeared frustrated. Lips pursing, eyes blinking just a bit too fast, like you were speaking to him in a foreign language. Ultimately, Phainon explained that the rings were valuable. Wishing to solve his inner conflict, you offered to leave them at his place for safety — which you ended up doing, putting the two rings atop a scrap of paper.

On this paper, Phainon wrote a simple explanation for your collective absence. Truthfully, you weren’t sure what the note contained exactly, though he assured everyone of your eventual return. You never bothered reading it.

“[Name], I have been pondering this for quite a while now,” Phainon began, adjusting the straps of the travel bags slung over his broad shoulders, now hunched under the combined pressure on them, “we have set out with an agreement that it is I who’ll defeat the beast from your dream.”

“Correct,” you said, still struggling to catch air.

“Then, once we return to Okhema with… well, whatever trophy it is that you wish for us to take, what explanation will you possibly offer?”

You nearly groaned in complaint, thinking how nice it would be to finally stop and rest, drink water from one of the clear streams winding around here. “What are you getting at?”

“I imagine it’s hardly believable we changed our little therapeutic trip into a hunt, where you just happened to catch this overgrown animal and stab it till death.” The lilt of his voice was blithesome.

Even though you were staring ahead, eyes fixed on the slope’s route slowly shifting into a more steep path, still full of green shrubbery, you could clearly see Phainon’s light tufts of hair in your periphery, the small smile he donned. Then you nearly paused in your step, corner of your lips curling, incredulous. “What did you say? A… a little therapeutic trip? Is that what this is?”

“You told me to make up an excuse as to why we left so suddenly.” Phainon shrugged, “not that it’s very believable. Who in their right mind leaves in the middle of the night?”

Again, you felt the overwhelming need to groan and perhaps grab Phainon by the nape, throw him off the slope down into the valley. “They might just have doctors on the standby when we return,” you said. “I do not know what possessed you to tell both our families that this is a therapeutic trip... Cerces must have left you bereft of their reason.”

Phainon huffed, tilting his head to look at your face, “but what else was I supposed to say? You were acting disconsolate, though I doubt anyone aside from me had noticed.”

Mydei surely had noticed, you wanted to say, Mydei had noticed way before you did. But you did not say anything of the sort, instead pursing your lips in thinly veiled ire, trying to stomach Phainon’s insistent nettling. “So you made me out to be the unwell one, from what I’m understanding so far.”

The man’s expression did something funny, unpredictable, a small twist that you would have missed if you weren’t currently holding eye contact; mouth closing tightly, eyebrows knitting together for just a brief moment as Phainon smirked. Then it was gone, gone before you could begin to overthink it, smoothed over by his usual felicity.

Phainon’s hand reached to rub your shoulder, voice just as light as the trilling of songbirds around you. “At the end of the day, you and I left the house at an ungodly hour without telling anyone, [Name].” The corners of his eyes crinkled. “That must make both of us look quite mental.”

You let yourself sigh, back relaxing. He was right, in a way, yet the excuse that he came up with was still rather unflattering. “Right… and as for the explanation that I am going to offer — I’ll simply say my poor betrothed acted careless and provoked the beast’s wrath.”

“So you’ll make me out to be the fool of this story?” Phainon half-laughed, half-scoffed, feigning offense.

“Not only that,” you continued, a wicked smile growing on your face, “I’ll also say you fell, unable to pick up your blade in the moment of weakness.”

“But that would strip me of any dignity, [Name].”

“I’ll be the one to slay the angered beast and save you, Phainon, while you are lying there, all frightened on the ground.”

“What a vast imagination you’ve got there.” Phainon crossed his arms, one eyebrow cocking amusedly. “And such an artful way of narration. Makes one nearly believe that such a thing really happened.”

“You’ll agree to go with it?” You asked, also on the verge of chuckling, knowing Phainon will simply refuse and move on, for you were merely teasing.

The man hummed thoughtfully, tapping his chin. “All right. I don’t see why not,” he said after a beat, not an ounce of hesitation in his voice.

That caused you to bark out a surprised laugh, brow lifting. “Phainon, have you lost your mind? We’ll come up with a better story, I wouldn’t throw you to the wolves the second we get back.”

Instead of agreeing with you and dropping the topic altogether, Phainon shrugged in dismissal. “As I said, I don’t mind this version.”

At this point you were unsure whether the man was only pulling your leg or being genuine, the tone of his voice sounding far too calm for it to be a jest. It wouldn’t make sense for Phainon to put himself in this position, to willingly subject himself to humiliation. Then again, since he was fine with this version, you won’t try to come up with another one; his approach seemed to be quite casual anyway, not once have you seen him fretting over anything regarding this journey of yours.

Before you could start mulling it over further, Phainon stopped walking, pointing in-between the trees. “There is a stream nearby, [Name], I hear water. We should rest.”

Then he was already guiding you away from the slope, pushing through the shrubbery and making an easier route for you, parting the bramble and thistle with the sharpness of his sword. You followed obediently, grateful for the path, watching small twigs crack and fall under the arcs of Phainon’s blade.

The hum of the water was enough to calm your worn body. There, beneath the thick canopies of hackberries and oaks, you could breathe with more ease again — sun would not force its way through completely, pleasant coolness making your sore muscles relax. Your knees finally hit the soft soil at the stream’s bank, right next to briar. Phainon followed, crouching beside you.

Wordlessly, you leaned down to cup the water in your palms and drink. It was cold, of a different taste than the water you had back home in Okhema. You repeated the action twice, then thrice. Despite continuing to drink, your body still demanded more, urging you to lap up the water greedily, with haste, nose accidentally snorting it up and causing you to cough.

Phainon chortled at your state, evidently amused. “You might want to slow down. The stream’s not going anywhere, you know.” The man mused before bowing in half and dipping his face, making you breathe in surprise.

When Phainon leaned back, his fair hair stuck to his forehead and temples, eyes fluttering open, lashes sticking together with wetness that only seemed to accentuate their length better. Quiet, you watched his cheeks turn rosy with the stinging cool of water, your lips subconsciously stretching into a smile. He looked more youthful like that, more carefree, unburdened.

Upon noticing your curious gaze, Phainon grinned. “Perhaps you should cool down as well. It’s only noon, the sun will remain high in the sky for the next few hours.” His joints plunged through the stream’s surface, flicking a few stray droplets at your face — you scrunched up your nose, making the man snicker. “I do worry about you, [Name].”

“Fine, since you seem to know better…” you obliged with a sigh, folding over the water and dipping your face down. True enough, it did feel pleasant. The insistent thirst appeared to lessen, slight headache caused by the lack of rest and fatigue finally subsiding.

After a few seconds, you straightened out, taking a deep breath. Phainon was already staring at you and he was quiet, the silence stretching between you interrupted only by the cooing of a mourning dove, a soft, distant sound mingling with the happier chirp of a robin.

“Better?”

Smiling awkwardly, you wiped your brow. “Yes.”

“That’s good,” Phainon said, expression no longer a cheery grin but something more taken, more private. Then he was leaning towards the water again, head diving below its coolness, and you followed without much thought.

You opened your eyes for a second, watching the air bubbles exploding all around you — the sensation was ticklish, in a way, soothing too, and you thought that all of this was going to work out in your favor. That, perhaps, the god of fortune will smile in your direction despite everything, and you’ll be finally set free from your sorrows.

When you pushed back, wet, heavy hair clinging to your face, Phainon did the same, both of you taking big breaths of air, laughing meanwhile, letting the coolness of the water drip down your cheeks and lips. Even if the start of your long travel was bumpy, now it seemed to smooth over. Click into place. Without anyone to impose on him, without anyone to impress, Phainon acted naturally. Just like the innocent children that you once were, unbothered by fickle affairs of the adult world, he appeared suddenly normal.

A friend, a companion, someone who you could rely on instead of fretting being close to, fretting the impending wedding day and marriage you never wanted for. Why Phainon decided to help you was abstract. All the reasons why, in your opinion, were quite preposterous in a sense that he never wished to break the betrothal. Phainon once told you about Hieronymus’ insistence and being worn by the never-ending candidates practically shoved into his face; his engagement to you saved him the trouble. You were a familiar face, an old acquaintance, something to grab on.

Still, he was here now and you felt no need to dig deeper into Phainon’s questionable decisions.

“I think we’re ready to go now,” the man said. “We’ll stop in a few hours again to eat and rest.”

Phainon got up from his knees with a satisfied exhale, reaching out a helping hand in your direction. You grabbed it this time, smiling up at him. He smiled back, adjusting the travel bags along with his sword before giving you an encouraging pat on the back — then you were off again, pushing through the thickets to return to the slope’s edge.

The path ahead wound along the mountainside in a long, stretching curve, its edges softened by lush grass that seemed untouched by none, if only by passing travelers that sometimes used this specific route in order to gather herbs; the fields themselves were littered with wildflowers, so many of them, their petals already beginning to close upon slowly approaching night. Below, the land fell away in uneven terraces of green, for you and Phainon did climb higher over this mountainous area within the four days of your trek, meadows interrupted by darker clusters of trees, fir and black cherry.

The sun was lowering behind the line of horizon, even though you couldn’t have seen it fully, the strong peaks of the mountains obscuring it. Its light was not bright anymore, no, more of a dimming thing, spreading wide, turning everything it touched into muted gold — stone, bark, moss clinging to where dampness was highest, even the pale dust of the path. Above, where the light thinned and seemed no longer as intense, it shifted into softer tones. Periwinkle and violet, gentle pink enveloping the deepest parts of the sky.

Despite the waning day, the temperature was still quite easygoing on the body. Not low nor high, a perfect balance between warmth and the soft breeze occasionally cooling you down. It would get colder, but not for now, now the weather was pleasant, maybe a gift from one of the more benevolent gods. Your legs ached from treading the winding mountain paths, shoulders hunched even if you had no weight on them, for it was Phainon who still carried everything, vehemently insisting that he will remain the one to wrestle with the luggage while you can prance about like an untroubled filly.

Though the man insisted that you pass another hundred or so meters before the sun dips below completely, you could clearly see his exhaustion, so instead of letting Phainon drag his feet forward, you grabbed onto his wrist, causing him to stumble just a bit in surprise. “Phainon,” you said, eyes of blue immediately locking on your form with the attentiveness of a loyal hound, “I don’t think it’s wise to continue walking any farther. Let us rest somewhere around here, I am sure there’s a suitable spot nearby.”

Just as you said this, both of you began to look around, gauging the surroundings for a place shrouded enough, safe from thorns or the worst of winds that can, at times, howl through the mountain’s hollows during night. “I think this one is adequate,” Phainon hummed, pointing in the general direction of a few broadleaf trees, their trunks circling together tightly.

Without any sort of preamble, you walked up to the trees, Phainon following in tow. As you began to sit down, he suddenly grabbed you by the elbow, making you look over your shoulder with a questioning tilt of your head. “[Name], don’t sit on the grass like that. There could be a snake there, or worse, and the ground’s too cold. You know you’re of poor health.” He scolded, making you groan as you relented. Such a mother-hen.

Phainon’s been like that since the second you set out; while he teased you relentlessly about your lack of stamina and strength, he also looked out for you fiercely. Whenever you stopped for a longer period, he always made sure that everything was safe and well. You watched Phainon poke his sword around the grass for a bit, then open up one of the traveling bags, tugging out a thick blanket and spreading it out meticulously, kicking away a few rocks and rearranging everything till he deemed it worthy.

He smiled at you proudly, presenting with the nest. “My, such a gentleman.” You huffed out a chipper laugh, shaking your head as you plopped down, patting the empty space beside you.

Phainon still appeared to be a little distracted, though, eyes flitting around the stretching expanses of fields and mountains surrounding you, and so you grabbed him by the hand, pulling down without a warning. This caused Phainon to make a surprised sound, something between a yelp and a whine, knees hitting the blanket clumsily as he nearly toppled over into your side, hands barely managing to bracket him upwards before the sudden collision. He gave you a look of feigned offense, even if he was smirking, mirth dancing in those big eyes.

“Stop daydreaming already, you oaf. Rest.” You said in answer to Phainon’s mock-ire, grabbing the two bags. “I’ll prepare us some food to eat, so that you won’t faint suddenly and have me dragging you by the legs.”

Phainon leaned back against the trunk, legs crossing. “Whatever you say…” he muttered with a blest expression, folding his hands across his stomach and tilting his head to gauge your form, a rather fond look gracing his eyes.

Reciprocating the easygoing smile, you soon turned your attention back towards the traveling bags. Initially, you were convinced that food would be one of your biggest concerns, a major trouble dragging behind and slowing you down, yet you turned out to be wrong. You’ve had enough to survive, even to be comfortable. So you grabbed the loaf of bread, part of it already missing, unwrapping the cloth that shielded it and starting to cut the thing with your needle-point knife. It was quite difficult to do but you ultimately managed, next reaching for the small jar of mulberry jam.

Of course, you never thought to take any jam with yourself. Neither you or Phainon were naive enough to drag such fickle things with you, especially since this journey was, at least in theory, supposed to be treacherous and rough. But these mountains weren’t completely devoid of any civilization. There were small villages scattered all across the mountain, tight communities of highlanders, living away from Okhema’s clamor.

Yesterday, you were serendipitous enough to pass through such a village. The people of the mountain were cordial, open and welcoming, inviting you without much suspicion or fear for the unknown faces. You stayed with some couple and they let you sleep through the night in their attic, then take a bit of their food; kindness seldom came for free, though, so Phainon was asked that he plucks three pheasants and guts them. Naturally, you offered to help him with the task, yet he shooed you away, saying you shouldn’t stain your hands with the birds’ blood. Perhaps he deemed you too delicate, fingers too smooth and graceful, which aggravated you.

Either way, just as Phainon was done dealing with the three pheasants, the couple’s only child, their son, started to get curious with your friend’s sword. You were quite amused when the boy’s parents told Phainon to play with him. By some miracle you didn’t get involved in their silly game, simply watching the frolicsome scene from your safe place on the kitchen bench, Phainon showcasing his steel in careful arcs before letting the boy take hold of it as well, supporting his frail hands when they faltered. It was insouciant, it was lively, and for a second, you seemed to have forgotten where you were headed. To the beast’s liar, its den. A nauseating chill ran down your spine, then, as you took in Phainon’s grinning face, his strong arms that playfully folded around his head once he feigned defeat, sprawling on the floorboards and making the child giggle in contentedness.

You’re practically sending him out to battle the beast, to give you your freedom. While Phainon wouldn’t have ended your betrothal out of his own will, he was very eager to aid you in obtaining a warrior’s title and breaking from the shackles of engagement by yourself, on your terms. But, even in all of his valor and prowess, who said the beast won’t ultimately win?

Sighing heavily, you pushed the unpleasant thoughts away, instead focusing back on the food — once you spread the mulberry jam on the two pieces of bread, you reached into your bag, taking out the fruit you gathered at a slightly lower altitude, apricots and currants wrapped in a wax-coated cloth. Those should go well with the sweet jam.

When you handed Phainon his portion, he was quick to beam in that buoyant way, taking everything gratefully. “How domestic, [Name]. Preparing me tasty food with such care — if I were a lesser man, I’d ask you to marry me again after you finally break our engagement,” the man said, mouth and teeth already closing over the bread.

Even if the jest was good-natured, you still frowned, biting into your own piece. “You better not, unless you enjoy women rejecting you.”

“I most certainly do not mind women rejecting me. In most cases, at least.” Phainon remarked with a somewhat wistful tone, twins of blue drifting away from your face to focus on the surroundings better, examining the ridgeline and the sun slowly hiding behind it.

Silence fell after that, only interrupted by the distant chirping of night birds and rustling leaves. Your eyes fell on Phainon’s profile, tracing the handsome lines of his facial features, the strong yet boyish contours, a lingering softness that never went away even with the passage of years. His locks always reminded you of white lilac, at least in shade, the fair tufts framing his cheekbones in a comely fashion, and the intense blue of his eyes…

Which flower would his eyes be? You pondered it for a while before giving up, thinking that finding a proper comparison would take you far too long. So instead you simply continued to observe Phainon, smiling faintly when he turned for a brief moment and offered you the last apricot before those prepossessing irises fixed back on the faraway mountains. You’ve gotten close over those four days. The constant struggle of pushing through wilderness caused your bond to strengthen, become more intimate in a sense that you trusted Phainon enough to bathe in one river with him, to sleep beneath the same cover, huddled together in order to preserve heat.

The sun was mostly down now, sky paling from its warm hues. Without asking, Phainon dragged out the second blanket that he took with him, a thing made out of thick material, adorned with floral embroidery. You shuffled close enough for your side to press into his, immediately feeling warmed over. There was a longer beat where neither of you spoke, your eyes lifted high, observing the vast expanse of the darkening firmament above you, the stars dotted all across.

Then Phainon began to chuckle out of the blue, making you whip your head to the side. “What’s got you so merry?” The question was lighthearted, as easy as the approaching night. “Maybe Zagreus’ playing tricks on you, making you see things right before sleep.”

“No, I just remembered something,” the man said, still smiling at nothing like a complete lunatic. “A very humorous story.”

“Pray tell which story, exactly, is so very amusing?”

Phainon hummed, “mm, sure. Do you remember the cows, [Name]?”

It took you a good second to understand what Phainon was getting at, but when you did, a gasp of both exasperation and abashment ripped from your throat, hand reaching out to shove at his arm in admonishment. “I do not!”

“Oh, but I think you do,” his chuckling shifted into quiet laughter, “it seems quite impossible for me to forget such an eventful memory.”

You rolled your eyes, arms crossing over your breast. “I don’t remember anything of the sort.”

“Then let me remind you,” Phainon began, clearing his throat, and you already knew that you were doomed, for this man rarely knew when to stop his verbose tongue. “Whenever your family along with sir Eurypon and lady Gorgo came to our countryside villa, me, Mydei and you would go play in the fields. The fields outside Okhema, back at Aedes Elysiae, are quite vast, [Name], remember?

“We always played for so long there… I can recall heading out at sunrise and coming home only when the sky darkened. Our parents always scolded us so! Well, either way, I suppose we were too occupied with each other to even gather that, perhaps, those fields aren’t meant as children’s playgrounds but rather as pastures.

“And,” Phainon had to pause there, struggling to contain his obvious beguilement, “and one day, we set out as usual, except there were cows. Cows occupying our playground, oh, you were so distraught by the revelation that you threw a tantrum.”

A scoff. “I— well, I’d wager that this tantrum wasn’t baseless,” you said, eyebrows knitting and lips curving in reluctant enjoyment of the story.

“I agree, it wasn’t!” Phainon chirped. “Both me and Mydei were also quite displeased by that too, but for whatever reason I seem to remember your reaction best. It is quite uncommon to be so moved by… cows.” That gained him another smack to the arm, received only with a mirthful chortle. “We went to play in the field anyway and one of us thought to approach the grazing cows — they had little calves, though, and apparently your dismayed face was enough to render them furious. Maybe they deemed you a threat, [Name]?”

“I’d be hardly surprised if it was your stupid face that angered the cows, not mine.”

Phainon cleared his throat quite loudly. “The fact remains, it’s you who got chased through the entire pasture, not me or Mydei. The way you ran… and the way you cried later on, gods, you’ve always been such a crybaby, one would think it was Phagousa themselves granting you with such spectacular waterworks,”

Then he dissolved into laughter so full-bodied that it surely chased off any lingering animals, critters unfortunate enough to stumble in Phainon’s vicinity. A groan of indignation left you, though you also laughed a bit, shaking your head as you turned to lie on your side, facing away from Phainon and his hilarity.

“You’re being ludicrous, you know,” you mumbled into the blanket, “how can you even recall it all with such amount of detail?”

But instead of relenting, Phainon pressed further, “or, do you remember meeting behind the winery with Cyrene? She had those dice of hers, she did enjoy playing with them — I always used to think her silly prophecies were true, as if she was a real oracle. Dice divination… it does sound rather believable, at least from a child’s perspective.”

Privately, you still think Cyrene never attempted to fool either of you; yet you didn’t say anything, letting Phainon continue, “there was one divination that I remember particularly vividly. Cyrene told me that I’d become a revered man in my community, with plenty of valor and great swordsmanship. I guess that much is true,” he chuckled, voice turning quieter, “but what did she say for you…? Something about…”

About how little luck you’ll have and how unfortunate your life will be — that’s what Cyrene said, back then, those eleven years ago. You were so shocked by the grim revelation that you suddenly forgot about it being a simple game, a way of passing the time without much meaning or weight. To your younger self, it appeared entirely true. Then Cyrene said that you’ll be met with a certain choice at some point in your life, a choice that you’ll have to make, a choice that’ll decide over your future and whether misfortune will continue to follow in your step.

“I think it was about some sort of a decision? Well, no matter! We can ask Cyrene to foretell our futures again once we return, just for the old time’s sake.” Phainon hummed happily, adjusting the heavy blanket over your shoulders, tugging it higher, tucking you in with enough care to put you in a state of lull, to make you swallow down the unexpected bitterness. “Now she must be rather busy making those flower bouquets for the wedding, I imagine.”

“Then her efforts will be for naught,” you said, tone surprisingly harsh, as if you didn’t care about Cyrene’s good will at all.

Phainon’s hand froze above your frame, nearly making you wince in remorse. “True, that.”

Thinking to lessen the somewhat cumbersome atmosphere, you looked over your shoulder, sending Phainon a sheepish smile. “Sorry to say this, but I’m going to sleep now. You’ll be left alone to your own devices, though I do believe the sight of my unconscious face shall make great entertainment.” You endeavored to jest, knowing that outright apology would only make things more awkward.

The man always stayed up for the majority of the night, keeping watch, making sure no wild animal or potential bandits approached you in your sleep — he assured you that it was alright, that he was fine, that he wouldn’t sleep easy knowing you weren’t properly resting while he was, as he so put it, ‘indulging in selfish slumber’. Phainon said that he didn’t wish for you to stay awake during night, when the surroundings were dark and the shrieking calls of animals could frighten you, only waking you at morn so he’d be able to doze for at least two or three hours.

And you wholeheartedly believed that Phainon would laugh at your poor attempt at humor, yet he merely rubbed your side through the blanket, saying, “I’m not sure, [Name]. I do get quite overwhelmed when I watch you sleep, and I often wonder — where are you going that I can’t follow?”

Slowly, your smile faltered and you shifted to settle fully against the nest, finally facing away from Phainon, eyes staring into the sharp grass blades beside. You had no answer for that.

When thinking about how it came to this, on the sixth day of your journey, you felt quite tentative of all the details and reasons why — perhaps there was no reason why, the rain simply happening as it did most of the time, Aquila’s tears befalling on the land.

The path before you narrowed as it climbed, losing its previous softness. Grass thinned into dry, somewhat scattered patches that left not much to grab onto in case you needed support, giving way to exposed stone that broke through the earth. What was once certain, easy to tread on, now felt like a yawning mouth of peril, so simple to slip down into were any of you to take a wrong step and tumble along with the little rocks. Loose gravel shifted under your feet, sliding slightly, inconspicuously, each step causing it to move before settling again.

The thickets of the forests surrounding you did not disappear entirely, yet they appeared more sparse now, trees standing farther apart, their roots gripping tightly to the mountainside, twisted and partially exposed where the earth had eroded. Water gathered quickly along the slope, slipping between jagged rocks and cutting narrow, shallow paths through the soil; it moved without direction at first, then as if by some cruel force found its way towards you, downward, tracing the incline that crossed the trail unpredictably.

It was bad, you knew. You have been on the go since early morning and though it was barely afternoon, the sky was already dark and shrouded with clouds so thick that the sun couldn’t have pushed even a single ray through their density. Aside from the weather conditions being less than ideal, your body was starting to give up on itself too, lungs clenching uncomfortably with the lack of oxygen that you were, unfortunately, unable to fully take in; your legs trembled with each step, calves and thighs achingly sore, feet struggling to plant stably on the ground as every muscle locked up with the rain’s frigid chill.

“[Name]!” Phainon called over the loud thudding of the rain, looking up to gauge your plight with his squinted eyes, rain rolling down his whole face, dripping from the slope of his nose and chin. “Will you manage to keep going? The path’s getting steeper!”

You panted harshly, raggedly, a rasping noise that sounded more like a dying animal than a person, turning your gaze to look at Phainon’s soaked form, hair sticking to his temples and heavy clothing clinging everywhere. Even craning your neck felt like a lot of effort, eyes fighting to stay locked on the man who happened to be just a meter behind.

“I’ll try, but I don’t know!” You called back, hurriedly wiping your brow and eyes when the water started ruining your vision, making everything blurry and unclear.

Phainon nodded, still aflutter, “the southern village’s near!” He said, probably as a way of comforting you, before resuming the climb upwards.

Gathering any courage left, you pushed your legs to go, not feeling placated by Phainon’s words at all but deciding to move anyway, wrestling with the gravel and rocks and gnarly roots that seemed to be always in your way, making you trip, making you waver. Phainon followed closely behind, though you pleaded earlier that he goes first, that he does not look behind at your pitiful form that only slows you both down.

Another several minutes passed, maybe ten or fifteen or more, rain still heavy and unrelenting. The path ahead was, just as Phainon said, getting only steeper and steeper, causing your feet to tremble with uncertainty as you wondered which rock was safe to step on, which one you could grab on for support without fretting about it breaking in half and sending you rolling to death. The route that you decided to take was faster, yet unsafe, a risk you collectively decided to take with full conscience — now you were starting to regret it, wishing something persuaded you to do the opposite. What’s one or two more additional days? You must be a fool, yes, a complete fool, for even Phainon attempted to subdue your zeal and yet did not succeed in doing so, him out of all people.

One step, two steps, three steps, you felt the ground beneath your feet turning unstable and too soft, too uncertain to tread on safety, fourth step had you faltering and the fifth one was enough to cause you panic, legs wobbling as you suddenly began to slide along with the rolling wetness of rain, leaning forward as if only to grab onto the grass, the rocks, the roots, anything to keep you planted. But that was not enough to save you from your dreadful situation, fingers futilely scrambling and catching on jagged stone, skin slicing from the sharpness and bleeding, red turning pink with the falling rain, wounds caked in dirt and tree needles.

Still sliding down, struggling like a terrified doe with a broken leg and the wolf’s jaw hovering just above its nape, you looked over your shoulder, catching sight of Phainon’s alarmed face. At first he seemed quite unsure of what to do but his arms were quick to reach out, hands trying to catch you. Your descend continued, though, body sliding down the steep mountain even if Phainon grabbed you by your forearm, wet skin against wet skin, your weight already slipping from his grip no matter how hard he was squeezing, expression affrighted, which your own must’ve mirrored with equal intensity.

“Hold onto me!” Phainon yelled to you, lips twisting upon his efforts as he attempted to haul you upwards, your weakened body refusing to cooperate, “[Name], do not let go!”

But even as your knees dug into the gravel, one hand desperately gripping Phainon and the other one holding onto a few feeble weeds that were already starting to get ripped free from the soil, you were still unable to stop yourself from slipping. The man continued to drag you up, up, making your joint feel like it was going to dislocate and pop, skin chafed, scraped raw. Any fortune that you previously had must’ve already been used and evaporated, for your forearm slid from Phainon’s tight hold, hands scrambling to lock together, and the weeds that you were gripping finally snapped beneath the heavy weight of your more-or-less limp body.

“I’m— I can’t!” You forced out, stammering, body rolling on your side awkwardly. Even if Phainon was still wrestling to keep you away from tumbling down the mountainside completely, his fingers that were supporting him against a jutting-out rock were slipping with the wetness, your combined weight making it impossible to remain firmly planted for too long.

Before either of you could exchange any more panicked words, Phainon finally let go — willingly or unwillingly, who knows, both of you letting out a startled noise anyway. Aghast, you felt your body dragged down by the gravitation, watching the sharpness of stone ahead, unforgiving and deadly, and you whimpered in fearfulness, sending a thousand prayers to Georios to lessen the blow of rocks which already cut through your flesh, then to Thanatos, begging them for a quick death.

Despite your fervent prayers, death never came, Phainon’s bigger body folding around yours and shielding from the worst of the pain. He did not even cry in hurt or fright, merely grunting when his cheek got sliced, one arm wound tightly around your frame while the other finally managed to grab onto a pine’s trunk, abruptly stopping your descend as the two of you crashed into the tree, Phainon taking the major blow from the impact.

Panting and gasping for air, heart pounding so hard that you long stopped feeling any pain, you looked around yourself. Against your grim predictions, you were very much alive and kicking. All you suffered, or could feel at that current moment, was some sort of bruising underneath your eye and a split lip. The pine that you landed on creaked quietly under your combined weight, bending just slightly, and you let out a shaky breath, feeling tears of relief gathering in your eyes as you finally were, at least remotely, safe.

Then you looked at Phainon’s face next to yours, the gash running across his cheek. It wasn’t deep, fortunately, a shallow wound that probably wouldn’t even scar visibly, blending in with the shade of his skin. He was breathing harshly as well, labored pants leaving his lungs, and when you looked down at the muscled legs bracketing you partially against the tree, you could notice the bloody chafing there, the skin of his calves worn down as though someone rubbed them raw with sandpaper, the state of his forearms just as bad.

Instead of concerning himself with his own rather worrisome state, Phainon immediately turned his utmost attention towards you, shifting you in his arms so that you sat more fully against the rocky slope. “[Name],” he smiled with obvious relief, even if the situation wasn’t humorous by any means, “I am so glad that you’re fine, gods, what would be of me if I let you injure yourself? No, that… I simply would never forgive myself.” The man laughed nervously, evidently stressed, examining your form with eyes too wide and too frantic.

When Phainon reached to swipe your drenched locks away from your forehead, you grabbed his wrist with your own bloodied palm, wide lacerations running through the tender flesh, the worst of the injury washed away with rain, and you said, “what of you, Phainon? Look at yourself, you’ve suffered too because of my—”

“Though your concern is appreciated, you mustn’t worry,” he interrupted, shutting you up with a tone one octave firmer than usual, “it is me who agreed to this route, even if I knew how treacherous it might be.”

“You’re suggesting that you should take responsibility for the more important decisions?” You couldn’t help scoffing, suddenly a bit affronted. “What sort of logic is that? I, too, knew this path is dangerous, yet I still chose to take it — we both agreed, not just you, who apparently thinks that all fault rests now on his shoulders.”

Frustrated, you continued to measure each other with narrowed eyes before you finally conceded, sighing in defeat. “All right, we shouldn’t fight now…” you murmured, more amiable now, even if you felt as though you were missing some crucial detail, Phainon appearing more confused than vexed by your words.

“Agreed,” Phainon said. Slowly, he began to stand up, supporting himself against the pine, muscles of his legs spasming a bit before they settled down, and you regretted not telling him to wear trousers, instead simply letting Phainon strut through the mountains in just his chiton. Though, you supposed, the trousers would’ve been ripped to shreds anyway. “Can you walk or stand?” The man asked, then, extending his bruised palm towards you, bursted blood vessels making his thenar appear splotched in mauve, a pitiful field of violets.

You shook your head, attempting to get on your feet, “I’m not quite sure…” the adrenaline was already ebbing away and the longer you spent on calming yourself, the worse the pain got. Absolutely worn and still shaken, you grabbed Phainon’s hand as gently as you could, hoisting yourself up. Then you cursed under your breath, a broken sound leaving your lips the second you put pressure on your foot — it didn’t seem to be broken or snapped, no, you could stand on it, though the pain still rendered you trembling, knees wobbling.

“When did this happen…?” Phainon sighed, a flash of fatigue crossing his features, yet he was very fast to recover. “No matter. We’ll find temporary shelter till the rain stops, since you won’t be able to go by yourself for any longer.” He said it with such conviction that your eyebrows drew together and you frowned, quite eager to deny, but Phainon was already crouching in front of you.

The sight of his broad back waiting for you, beckoning to finally lean on him and rest, was too much. “True, it does hurt too much for me to walk,” you muttered, voice coy, barely audible over the all-engulfing sounds of rain. Admitting your weakness came surprisingly easy, a mindless action, just a few fickle words that really didn’t mean as much as the grip that Phainon secured around your knees once you climbed atop him, your arms hugging to his neck, forehead falling against the man’s soaked nape.

He hoisted you up effortlessly, adjusting your slumped body and starting to trudge forward, wordless, still somehow managing to remain calm. Time passed quickly when you kept your eyes closed, body drained from energy, brain detached; you barely noticed yourself being lowered before Phainon was starting to tug off your shoes, pouring the water out of them. Dazed, you watched him work, blinking a few times before realizing you were sitting in some sort of a hollow, rain unable to get inside the rocky cavity, water drizzling down but sliding ahead instead of inside, making it a great place to stop for a rest.

By then, there was no adrenaline in your body, nothing to push you through. Phainon seemed preoccupied with drawing the bandage around your ankle and foot snugly, secure but not tight enough to cut off your circulation, and you felt guilty for being so weak, so frail, tears already starting to sting at your eyes. The first sob that left you was quiet, almost not there, a strangled whimper. Soon, though, you were no longer able to hold back your fatigue mixing with despair and frustration, that helplessness ripping another cry, then another and another.

Through your blurry vision, you thought you saw Phainon smile under his nose, but maybe it wasn’t real. His irises rose, fixing on your face. “Why are you crying, [Name]? Does your ankle really hurt so much?” He asked, tone soft, hand settling on your shin and squeezing to get your attention as you continued to hiccup.

“No,” you answered, sniffling. “No, it doesn’t… I don’t know why I’m crying. It’s just— ah,” reaching to wipe your face, you shied away from Phainon’s gaze, feeling like a silly child, “that’s so stupid, isn’t it? Mydei always told me to stop whining so much, he must be right. The only thing I can really do is cry, for I…”

Before you could fully curl up on yourself, Phainon grabbed you by the wrists, pulling them away from your crying face, as if he genuinely wished to gauge the expression you donned. “Don’t speak of Mydei, he’s not here. Why are you even thinking of him now?” The corner of Phainon’s lips twitched, then he was smiling, eyes crinkling in the corners as he reached to wipe your tears away. “You were always so sensitive, [Name], always so quick to tears.”

You huffed a little, allowing Phainon’s thumbs to swipe gentle arcs across the apples of your cheeks, getting rid of the dampness there, and he continued, “but I do not think it to be something bad. You can weep when next to me, because I am not Mydei and I understand.” The man’s hands finally moved over to your chiton, grabbing the skirts and starting to wring them, rainwater splashing right next to you on the ground. It was cold, so cold. “Unlike the others, I’d rather gouge my eyes out than look at you with condescension. You must know that, [Name].”

Phainon was still smiling and you found yourself slowly starting to smile too, even if his words did make you pause. Mydei did understand you, he did, he was one of your best friends and it’s untrue to say that he perceives you in a condescending way — though after a short while of pondering, you couldn’t help but agree with Phainon. It might be that Mydei often dismissed your heartaches, making you feel lesser, a foolish, oversensitive girl, bereft of any values that could make one a truly respectable individual. How come you never noticed?

“I already know, Phainon.” You sniffled again, but this time the tears already stopped, a crooked smile stretching your lips weakly.

Apparently content with your answer, Phainon sent you a pleased look, then reached into one of the travel bags that he previously deposited on the ground and plucked out your warmer attire. “We should change. I wouldn’t want us freezing to death while we wait for that downpour to stop. Who knows when Aquila will finally settle.” He jested lightly, passing you the clothes.

“Right,” you nodded, a humorless chuckle leaving your mouth, voice still small and devoid of vigor.

So you stood up, having to hunch down a little in this cavity that you took for shelter, shedding your utterly soaked, heavy chiton in exchange for a cloth of warmer, thicker material, draping it over your body with shaky hands. Through the hollow’s stilly air, you could hear Phainon starting to change too. And even though you were now clad in a garment created to preserve warmth, you had no warmth to begin with, which caused your joints to keep shivering, body plopping down stiffly once you were done changing.

Phainon was quick to follow in your step, sitting beside you; you thought to tell him that your clothes needed to be wrung out, dried, that you’d be fine, yet he was already scooting closer, keen eyes judging your state. “Starting the fire might be hard now,” he said, “we foolishly did not predict the rain, and which one of us thought to save any dry wood?” A rueful smirk curved his lips upward.

His bigger hands held yours, starting to rub them, the friction of your skin meeting together enough to warm you up — shivers still wrecked your body, so you pushed yourself closer to Phainon, swallowing down your pride. It wasn’t like you minded being this close, anyway. The man’s eyes, previously locked on your connected hands, finally lifted, a grin splitting his still-damp face in half. Both of you laughed as he began to huff into your cupped hands, summery air heating you up. You leaned against the sturdy, warm frame, causing Phainon to pause. Was he surprised? You hardly believed that.

“I should carry you for the rest of the way,” Phainon mused. He reached for the flower-patterned blanket from his bag, finally tucking it around you both. “And you should agree.”

A hum, “maybe. I don’t know… but, then again, how can I demand this much of you?” Your head lolled to the side, resting against Phainon’s shoulder. He was always so very helpful, looking out for you and acting like you actually mattered instead of being a simple scapegoat that he used to lift his father’s expectations off of his shoulders. What did it matter to Phainon? You’ll break your betrothal soon and everything will be over anyway.

A clear answer never came, for Phainon merely muttered something incomprehensible under his breath, arm tightening around your midriff snugly enough to have you tilt into his orbit, unable to resist the pull.

Perhaps, despite having tried to convince yourself otherwise, you truly were half-witted.