ᴍɪꜱꜱ ᴀʟɪᴄᴇ

ᴛᴏ ʏᴏᴜ, ᴡʜᴏ’ꜱ ʟᴏᴏᴋɪɴɢ ᴛʜʀᴏᴜɢʜ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍɪʀʀᴏʀ / ᴍɪɴᴏʀꜱ ᴅᴏ ɴᴏᴛ ɪɴᴛᴇʀᴀᴄᴛ. ɴᴏᴛ ᴀ ꜱᴘᴏɪʟᴇʀ-ꜰʀᴇᴇ ʙʟᴏɢ.

[veneralice]

© ᴠᴇɴᴇʀᴀʟɪᴄᴇ / ᴀʟʟ ʀɪɢʜᴛꜱ ʀᴇꜱᴇʀᴠᴇᴅ

full credit of profile picture art to shelby degarmo!

(𝐭𝐨) 𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞 (𝐯𝐞𝐧· 𝐞𝐫· 𝐚𝐭𝐞) 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐚𝐫𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐝𝐦𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐝𝐞𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞; 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐨𝐫 (𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐜𝐨𝐧, 𝐚 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐜, 𝐞𝐭𝐜.) 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧.

“𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 𝙛𝙞𝙘𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙘𝙝𝙖𝙧𝙖𝙘𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙨.”

“hello, is this miss alice speaking?”

alice, twenty-two, albanian/german. currently not writing on request, until she gets her chaotic ass free time under control. daydreamer. professional yearner for her boyfriend (the one that exists, not the fictional men) (sorry fictional men). writes just for fun.

multifandom. will rave about almost anything. will also do it with you if you pop into her asks.

please don’t repost on any other sites. (my works still aren’t worthy of ao3….) do not translate or copy my work. inspiration by my work is unexpected welcome, but please tag me if you do. (dont think that will happen anyway sndndn)

this is a side-blog, so interactions will be coming from my main!

“right, who’s this?”

no centered fandom, fics ranging from one hyperfixation to the other (e.g. jujutsu kaisen, love and deepspace, castlevania, etc.); NOT SPOILER-FREE.

for now, this silly little thing serves as a shrine for my obsessions. open to gushing about anyone.

minors/ageless blogs DO NOT INTERACT. i have a silly little block button and i am not afraid to use it.

“the love of your life, silly. we have a date, remember?”

absolutely-dnr (do not request) | masterlist | tag system

please refrain from asking me about on-going writing processes. please absolutely don’t shy away of giving feedback. please be gentle with pointing out writing mistakes in any way (i am sensitive) (i will accept any and all criticism but depending how u deliver it i might kms /j)

all my works to be enjoyed with a grain of salt :) thank you for taking the time to read.

[veneralice]

hello everyone….. i’m still alive….. also i got my bachelor’s degree which is why disappeared into the void for so long LMAOOOO

[veneralice]

FIRSTLY I ABSOLETUY LVOE UR writing, I have seen some mydei drabbles about him with daughters but I personally picture him with twin sons, like he would raise them to be so gentle with every single soul and raise them to treat everyone with respect, I would love to hear ur thoughts on the topic!!

honestly i’m completely team girl dad mydei just because the idea is so adorable 😭 i feel like he’d see his mother in her and want to give her the life gorgo couldn’t have, and i really just like the idea of maternal mydei! it’s very masculine to me that he has that caretaking aspect!

but considering the idea of sons i’m absolutely obsessed with the idea that this would be mydei’s retribution 😭 he’d be able to raise his sons in a world where he’d be a better father than his own ever was, where their kremnoan values wouldn’t be distorted by evil or by greed! the chance to raise his sons free from his father’s taint in a way that mydei was never able to escape :(

thank u for liking my writing!! <3

[veneralice]

stupid fucking fish i’m going to kick a wall and then i’m going to make a fish fry

[veneralice]

Is the mydei fic going to have a good ending PLSPLSPLS MAKE IT HAVE A GOOD ENDING MY WEAK HEART CANNOT TAKE ANYMORE HURT EITHOUT COMFORT 😭

honestly i wasn’t planning anything decisive, it could be a good or bad ending! since we don’t know if he’s still alive atm in-game 😭 (he’s alive to me) (i’m coping) (leave me alone)

will write a good ending for the new mydei fic JUST for u though (or am i)

[veneralice]

Readinggg ur mydei fics are not enough i want to inject them into my veins and keep the words with me FOREVER IF THE STORY U WRITTEN EVER grew a face I WOULD GIVE IT A BIG FAT SMOOOCH (does that make sense? 😭) I JUST LOVE UR WRITING SOOSOS MUCHHH 😩

I LOVE YOU 💖💖💖💖💖😭 my writing would kiss u back TRUST. i was there

[veneralice]

I absolutely LOVED THE MYDEI fic I swear it literally is my favourite piece of writing. From the tension to the guilt to the comfort (oh how SWEET the interaction between those two were) and did I mention the ENDING AND THE FORESHADOWING OMG 😩 I literally cannot get enough of this IM HOPE THIS COMMUNICATED THE AMOUNT OF LOVE I HAVE FOR YOU WRITING (I spent the wholeee day reading and rereading the paragraphs cause it was so well crafted) sending you a WHOLE LOT OF LOVEEE 💕🫶

honestly just reading reactions like this makes it all so worth it 😭🩷🩷🩷 i love writing and its a passion that i’ve been harboring for many years but the urge to do it has always come and gone…. stuff like this lifts me up and cheers me up so much and i want to take the time to thank you from the bottom of my heart that you, and others, told me this 🥲 thank you thank you thank you!!!!!!!!

[veneralice]

LET ME LIVEEEEEEEEEE PELASE PELASE I WANT TI MAKE U HAPPY AND U SAID U WANTED IN BOX PEOPLE, ILL PROBBALY CREATE 2946396393 MORE ACCOUNTS TO PLEASE U THEN YOU’LL NEVER KNOW ITS MEEEE

I’M CRYING DEFINITELY DO NOT DO THAT, WE’RE MOOTS NOW NEVER FEAR!!!!!!!!!!

[veneralice]

Let me be ur moot istg pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls plspls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls pls

I BEG AND PLEAD AND PRAY PLEASEEEEEEEE

PLSSSSSS alright lets tone it down no begging needed!! 😭 moots!!!!!!! the only person we should beg like this is mydei 🙏

[veneralice]

CHAT CHAT I SAW YOU WANTED INBOX PEOPLE SO HERE I AM HALLO

NO THAT DOESNT COUNT YOU SEE BECAUSE I ALREADY PICKED U UP AND PUT U IN MY POCKET!!!!!!!!! YOU ARE TOO KIND TO BE LEFT UNATTENDED!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!!!!!!!!!!!

[veneralice]

y’all are gonna get real sick of me posting soon LMAOOO and then you’ll regret it because i’ll stop posting so erratically.. dont even try to ask me about the amount of uni assignments i’ve ignored this week bc star rail and mydei have infected my brain……….. me and mydei like a cat owner with that parasite thingy and their cat fr

[veneralice]

divider credit to @cafekitsune ! all credit to the original creator of the divider!

hands off! / honkai star rail men (m.)

seems like you’ve bitten off more than you can chew; they’ve gotten their hands on you now, and they’re not gonna stop anytime soon.

content/content warning: possibly ooc amphoreus men bc my stupid ass still needs to catch up with the in-game content (i am SO glad they’re adding recaps to the game…) (apologies to the non-skippers in chat i was Stressed by university), overstimulation (fem. receiving), oral (fem. receiving), p in v penetration, dacryphilia, cockwarming, doggy-style, face-sitting, they’re mostly written to be dominant but don’t let this fool you i love my subby and switchy men (switch anaxa save us switch anaxa… switch anaxa if u can hear us….), filth. just filth. born to ride forced to write fanfiction fr.

ᴘʜᴀɪɴᴏɴ

“Ah, ah, ah, I’m not finished with you yet. Where are you going, my darling? Come back here.”

Phainon’s laughter is sweet, but his hands are infinitely cruel. This is the second orgasm he’s torn out of you - yes, torn, I’m serious - tonight, and it’s only been an hour since he’s dragged you home. To revenge himself upon you for your mischievousness.

Honestly, how is it your fault that your boyfriend is just too pretty? Who could blame you for batting your eyelashes at him and bending just a little lower, so your tits would peek out over the cleavage of the clothes you were wearing?

Phainon can. And he’s teaching you, with your entire body bent over his lap, your suffering cunt at his mercy.

You try to stretch out of his grip, to escape his lap, but he only has to give your hair a gentle tug and you’re back where you’ve started, whining over the slow drag of his long fingers against your fluttering insides. Your pussy, the eternal betrayer, sucks him in despite the fact that she’s fighting for her life; the sinful squelch of you clenching around him is confirmation enough for Phainon to make you come again. Steadily, slowly, he continues to pump in and out of you, and your eyes roll back into your head. “Phainon, please.”

“Please, what?” You wish you wouldn’t be able to hear the smile in his voice, the innocent grin he must be sporting.

“Can’t.” You fling yourself over his lap as the pleasure grows in your stomach, pressing the palms of your hands at your eyes. His fingers, experts as they are, in love with you as he is, have learned your body by heart. He chuckles when he curls them to brush them atop that sensitive spot inside you that makes you jump in his hold, delights in the squeak you give when he presses against it. “I really, really, really can’t.” You’ve begun blathering now, pleading for a reprieve that will never come. You knock your knees against him, trying to curl up to flee from those fingers, trying to push them in further. It’s sick and twisted, the way he knows to use your body against your senses.

Phainon presses a kiss to your shoulder blade, forcing you back into position. Your answering whine as he adds another finger only helps with making him stretch out the torture further; you feel full, so completely full. He speeds up, beginning to drag his fingers across that spongy spot until you actually cry out loud and you think you’re going to explode soon, whether that’s from the third orgasm or the ongoing pleasure, you can’t be too sure. While his pointer, middle and ring finger seem to carve out your womb, already soaked with your slick, his free hand has moved to circle your needy clitoris. Your own hand flies out, punching the mattress; you’re positively crying now, the tears running down your face like shooting stars streaking across the sky.

“But you chose this, my love,” he tries to reason with you, the cooing only provoking you further. You thrash like a trapped animal, not sure if you want more, the steady incline towards your orgasm fearing for anything less. You wrap your free hand around the one Phainon uses to abuse your clit, the illusion of control; he shakes you off like brushing of a stray leaf, thumbing away at your clit until it turns as puffy as your tear-stained face. “Weren’t you asking for this when you tried to tease me so ruthlessly at the Marmoreal Market? I was so certain you’d be happy with my reaction, seeing as you basically palmed me in front of that vendor. I’m only returning the favor now.”

“You haven’t come thrice.”

His breath is as hot as hell, as seductive as sin itself. Phainon purrs into your ear. “Don’t put the cart before the horse. You haven’t come yet. Count properly, or I’ll add a fourth.”

He’s such a liar. By the end of the night, you’ve stopped counting, relinquishing all hold on grammar and language as Phainon fucks you stupid.

ᴍʏᴅᴇɪ

“Stop squirming.”

You don’t know whether you should laugh or cry at that. Fucking easy for him too say when he’s not the one who’s currently being eaten alive. You’ve always idly wondered what it felt like, a kind of macabre interest, passing by your thoughts and disappearing. You’d never have expected to experience it yourself.

Not until Mydei’s broad shoulders force your legs open, and you can’t even close them, his strength too overwhelming. So you sit there and take it, the eternal wax and wane of Mydei’s tongue on your bullied sex. His battle-roughened fingers keep you open for him as he tastes you from the inside out. If only you knew those muscles rippling across his chest and arms weren’t the only strong muscle he possesses.

You’re forced to discover pretty soon that not only is the utility of his tongue as versatile as the rest of his body, it pulls a few more tricks than the others does. It curves inside you, the wet push and pull preparing you for what will come later. This is all your fault, you know. If you hadn’t tried to tease him when you were the one going down on him, you’d never have found yourself facing near-death as you try to catch your breath from the haziness of another approaching orgasm. The lewd squelching of your sopping cunt is swallowed by the gasp-gasp-gasp inside your rattling chest as you try to draw breath into your strained lungs, back arching from the mattress as you fail to do so. You are suffocating on nothing, drowning on dry land.

Mydei is also drowning in some kind of way. But on his side, it’s willfull; his fingers tear at your thighs to cage him further, and the more your wetness splashes over his mouth, the more he gorges himself on you, the louder his own moans get.

“Gonna teach you a lesson,” he threatens, the words against your slit making you cry out from the echoing vibration. He splays his right hand over your tummy, the other he uses to intertwine your fingers with. Remaining the constant romantic, even if he’s torturing you. Even if he’s sucking the soul out of you. His nails dig into the space between your knuckles as he holds on tight, giving another kitten lick to your clit before he speaks again. “Teach you to stop playing games with me. Take it like a good girl.”

“But I am a good girl.” You’re barely able to voice the complaint; already your sight begins to blur at the edges, softening like confetti inside a kaleidoscope. Your eyes roll into the back of your head when he suckles your clit back into his mouth, his unforgiving tongue shaping its form, dragging it across his teeth. It hurts and it feels good and he needs to stop and he needs to keep going, needs to, need to cum you need to cum you need to cum. You don’t know whether you’re speaking out loud or thinking, falling over the edge.

Mydei holds you tight, keeping you safe. His lion eyes never leave your face as he watches the orgasm contort your beautiful features; he adores you, so much that he just can’t stop himself from seeing you make that expression again and again and again. “You sure are, my love.”

ᴀɴᴀxᴀɢᴏʀᴀꜱ

You’ve always known how sinful Anaxa’s tongue was, but somehow, it feels deliciously worse when he’s using to gather your tears.

It’s hot and messy. At any other time, you’d be complaining, and Anaxa wouldn’t even be doing this. He enjoys a clean, sorted environment, believing it served as a better learning atmosphere. Untidiness just wouldn’t do. Of course, it’s not any other time, since at this time, Anaxa is already buried balls deep inside you and there’s nothing orderly or tidy about the way he splits you open like lightning carves down a tree.

“Take it,” he tells you, lazily. “You’ve been complaining all afternoon that I haven’t been paying attention to you. Well, now I am. In fact, it’s quite impossible to pay even more attention to you, since you’re flooding my every sensory nerve. You wanted the attention, now take it.”

“But you’re not moving.” Your fingers dig into Anaxa’s shoulders, already aware of how he’s going to tell you off about this later. He hates it when his scholar’s robes look unruly. He just dislikes everything that disrupts his circles. You thought you were the general exception to that rule, using a flirty little pout and batting your eyelashes at him to get your way, and usually, you are, it works. Today, apparently Anaxa’s research is even more important than you are. As his hands squeeze your hips to keep you still, you let your head fall onto his shoulder with a strangled groan that makes him snicker. Asshole. “Please, my love. Let me make you feel good, just for a little bit, I promise you won’t regret it. Need a break. You’ve been doing so well, let me reward you, please.” Your voice cracks at the end, betraying your intentions. His erection seems to invade your entire abdomen; it nudges at that white-hot spot inside you that has you keening like an animal stabbed, the fat head of his cock kissing your cervix, but doing nothing more.

You’d been so excited when he’d motioned for you to come closer, his fingers forming that ‘come-hither’ motion that usually has you coming around his fingers. You thought you hit the jackpot when he kissed you, leading your hands toward the belt holding his pants up, making you guide him inside. He loves when you’re on top, loves the way you bite your lip as you slowly try to take him in. Only this time, he’d kissed you just as soon as he took matters into his own hands and slammed you down to take him in full, the scream it had elicited in you only being another melody of his favorite symphony.

Anaxa bites your earlobe then, ignoring your hiss of pain. When you turn your head to admonish him, his hips finally buck up, knocking against your womb’s door like a polite guest and short-circuiting your brain. You shudder, nails tearing through his clothes, tearing through the skin: you’ll definitely get scolded for this later, alright. For now, your sadistic boyfriend is too busy delighting in your pathetic position for him to notice. “But this is my reward,” he leers at you, treacherous hands curving around the shape of your ass. “You beg so prettily. Keep going, I haven’t heard enough yet. And you still haven’t apologized for ruining my work streak.”

ᴀᴠᴇɴᴛᴜʀɪɴᴇ

“Well, don’t run from it. You’ve been asking for it the entire night, and now you pout and fight back like the hypocrite you are.”

“Not like this,” comes your wailing response. You can’t see anything anymore from where you’re situated in the bed; face buried in the pillows, sight ruined from the tears you’ve cried from the stimulation, mouth dry from all the moans Aventurine has managed to pluck out of you. It was supposed to be an innocent game, just a little teasing beneath the table while you were playing cards. Your first mistake was believing a bet was anything but serious to your boyfriend.

Your second was ripping an orgasm away right in front of his eyes just as it’s within reach.

Alright, okay, it might have been a little mean of you. You know him well enough to recognize the signs by now; his soft little sounds, his clenched fists. You love the way they feel in your hair, those pleading fingers, asking without words, digging in fists of your hair when Aventurine was losing control. Losing his grip on reality. Losing to the feeling of your mouth around his cock.

You hadn’t even meant to. (You might be lying. Just a little.) But he looks so sweet when he’s whining, pawing at you as if a few pretty words will make you relent. There is no fixed role in the bedroom, no rules. It seems you’ve broken an unspoken one, though, and Aventurine is hell-bent on making you pay.

That very same cock you’ve been bullying is trying to drill a hole into you. It knocks you back into the mattress as he thrusts himself inside, your legs swaying under the strength as you took him from behind. “Not like this, huh?” he taunts, hands pulling you back onto him as you try to inch away. Slap, slap, slap. You cringe at the sound of his balls bullying your folds, collapse at the satisfaction it brings you. He doesn’t need you upright, anyways; when your own strength fails you, he wraps an arm around your lust-wracked body to keep you up against him. “Then how do you like it? Since we’re suddenly marching to your tune now. Go on, tell me. Tell me how you want to come, since I didn’t get to.”

“Aven’” you drawl out, the sound pitiful. You can’t even begin to take yourself seriously, not when you’re shaking apart around him as he pounds you into the mattress. The bruises on your hips are nothing to the broken wooden logs of the bed frame. “Didn’t mean it. Promise.”

“Didn’t mean, what? Ruining my orgasm? Laughing at it?”

“All of it.”

His hand slaps your swollen clit, swallowing the hitch of your breath as he angles your head around to receive his kiss. “Too fucking bad,” he moans into your mouth, the feeling of it almost as pleasant as his cock pummeling into you. “My turn now.”

ꜱᴜɴᴅᴀʏ

When Sunday had asked you to sit on his face, you didn’t quite expect this.

You’d never have known of wanton and yearning he could get, just by the simple act of eating you out. It’s adorable, really, the way he pleads for you to crush him with your weight, tugging and tugging at your thighs until they clamp around his head. You bend over so you can balance yourself on your hands, incredibly worried you’ve went and done it now, you’re really gonna have to explain to the Astral Express about how you murdered your boyfriend in cold blood just because he wanted to try something new in the bedroom. But before you can lift yourself up, you hear an earth-shattering groan, the kind that makes you shudder around him as it resonates inside your core.

Truly a man who has learnt that the true way to a woman’s heart is through her cunt and up her stomach.

It feels like he’s actually doing to it; the way he digs his tongue in like he’s sure he’s going to puncture your womb if he just gets it right. You’re certain his face is soaked by now, his supply of air probably cut off by the way you squash him with your body. But every time you try to release him, thighs shaky with another orgasm, his insistent hands drag you down again and again. “Just one more, please, please,” he whimpers, mouth glued to your slick-wet folds. You hiss at the sensation, out of control, out of your body. “I just want one more, I know I can do it, gonna make you cum, I promise.”

“Sunnie,” you gasp, sure he’s going to murder you both. You can’t even feel your cunt anymore, not until his mouth slurps up another taste of you that has you twitching on his tongue. “I think you’ve done more than just prove that you can do it. I’m going to explode if you make me cum again.”

“Just once more, I swear.”

“You’re a liar,” you tell him, feeling heady. Sunday worships the ground you walk on, and it’s reflected in his every action. In the way he drags his tongue around the inner walls of your cunt, making sure to etch every fold and imprint of it into his memory. “You’re insatiable.”

His fingers hurt from where they dig into your thighs, like he can’t wait for you to decide. He needs you on his tongue, more than his lungs need air. Ignoring both your pleas, meaning you and his air-constricting lungs, Sunday swallows you whole once more, delirious on his favorite meal. You don’t manage to get him to latch off, not until you pass out from the delirium his tongue provides.

[veneralice]

Spent the past hour soaking in all 28k words of that mydei fic and I loved every bit of it sm🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

do you want me to sob…. do you…. i am Serious…

no but genuinely i am literally going to pick u up and twirl u up wdym you loved it 😭😭 i love u 😭😭😭 kicking my feet at this rn bc wtf do you mean you guys actually perceive my writing…. i’ve tried to change my attitude about writing by doing it for my own love for it but it still never changes how good it feels to have people comment and react and participate in it…. so thank u from the bottom of my heart for telling me about how u feel about it, it means the world <3

[veneralice]

art credit @zephyrine-gate on X ! all credit to the artist!

divider credit to @cafekitsune ! all credit to the original creator of the divider!

a soul divided | mydeimos

born to be a spy in castrum kremnos’ ranks, your heart quickly learns that war and love are too severely entangled to extricate yourself from mydei in any way that matters. (28k words) (yeah idk either i went crazy)

content/content warnings: before you start reading this take my hand…. did you take it… okay good…. now promise not to spit in my face bc i know only the barest of details about amphoreus lore bc i’ve been skipping through the game like crazy ever since v3.0……….. Yeah…….. anyways i tried to read up as much as possible and some of the plot is inspired by mydei fanfics i’ve read Go Easy On Me yall pls, PLS, i’m sorry. okay now, also if mydei feels too ooc for you you’re legally obligated to stab me through the tenth thoratic vertebra, reader’s faith and city-state ladon is reminiscent of the tale of the garden of the hesperides, hesperia the goddess is inspired by the dragon ladon who guards the golden apples, ladon and hesperia is implied to be athens/athena-adjacent so it mirrors castrum kremnos ares-/spartan-adjacent lore (enemies to lovers am i right) (i think homer just turned in his grave), arranged marriage situation (mydei has become part of eurypon’s court to kill and usurp him), reader doesn’t know mydei is a chrysos heir or that he’s immortal, forced proximity, allusion to sex and some descriptives but no actual sex scene, murder attempt, reader is stabbed (no major character death), Idk . i’ll update this as i go LMAO

Hesperia guide you, because you have no idea how to kindle her light when your life is so completely enveloped by the threat of darkness.

You can still hear the growl inside your mother’s voice as they had broached the plan in the council meeting for the first time, the unusual anger that had tainted the usual decadence of it. It was a beautiful voice, clear and strong, strengthened by her faith in the goddess your home worshipped. It was said that Hesperia’s calls herself had been so loud it had shaken the earth and the seas, which is why the shallow sandbanks around Ladon stretch for miles before they deepen into the ocean. The only easy access one gained was through the terratic way to the north, symbolic for how Hesperia had to fly with the north’s winds to return home after fighting in the war against the looming darkness.

This is how they try to comfort you as they tell you about your duty to the country you call home: you’ll only be taking after the goddess, Hesperia, after all. And isn’t that the greatest blessing one could ever experience as a mortal being, to walk the path of gods?

Even as a child, you could taste the lie in the sweetened words. It was as clear in the water as the fish in the sea, the many eels you used to catch with your friends for entertainment in the lazy afternoon sun. And even if you hadn’t realized it, your mother’s angry disposition cleared up the situation at hand pretty quickly.

This was not an honor. This was the Golden Council throwing you the wolves, before they scented the blood and wounds the city of Ladon was already nursing.

It’s an easy lie, embedded in the fact that Ladon bleeds at the edges of this planet’s universe. Commerce and trade came often, but didn’t stay long, not interested in the wisdom of the city, and the luscious mountains did not provide any specialties that you couldn’t find anywhere else. There was a particular interest by the city-state of Okhema in the pearls the Ladonians harvested from its’ sea, due to its mythological connection to Hesperia as a daughter of light, a cousin to the Dawn Device’s creator. But aside from that, the fact remained that it was a ripe city, lush for the taking, and for Castrum Kremnos, whose existence depended on the import of life-saving goods, even a simple flourishing agricultural situation as Ladon’s was enough for them to covet Hesperia’s pearlescent city.

The water way is irrelevant when the terrain in the north is perfect for a march on the safe haven of Ladon.

They are here on the Golden Council’s cowardly invitation, of course. This conflict has been spanning on for even longer than you remember, older even than the crown forged for your mother as she ascended to the throne beside your father. You are not truly Ladonian, at least not in the Golden Council’s eyes, because your mother is only a “borrowed bride” from the shores of the wealthy city of Pyria. They do not recognize your mother’s authority, nor your claim on the throne. So when the time comes to work out a solution against old King Eurypon’s threat, they quickly suggest a marriage as “succesful as King Atlaion’s with the queen mother”.

Translated, they want you to go and become what they always feared from your foreign mother. A snake in the Castrum Kremnoan’s gardens. A dagger at the only prince’s throat.

If Atlaion had still been alive, the council would have been turning on a spit for the fire to roast as soon as the afternoon sun would have set on Ladon. You remember your father in the few times where you let yourself, when the memory doesn’t hurt. A melodious voice, a roughened palm that seemed as protective as your own skin. Your father hard always been praised for his big heart, too gentle for a throne. But also too weak for it. The council had verbally torn him to shreds for his decision in marriage, always claiming he’d been tricked by Pyria, always arguing that Aeolia was the true hand behind the throne. A fact that did not sit easy with a council as vying as this one. And a fact that had made them point their blaming fingers at the queen mother’s family, the one they accused to be hungry for Ladonian treasure.

Pyria had long been swallowed by the black tide then, but that wasn’t anything they wanted to discuss.

And anyways, your father is gone, and his assassins are still free. There is no universe for you except this one, where you bend your head to the borrowed authority of a council that refuses to crown any head but your future’s son’s, still hiding in your womb. Metaphorically, of course. If you hadn’t been unmarried, unwidowed and unchanged, they would never have been able to broker this pact with the mad king of Castrum Kremnos.

Eurypon had wanted an excuse to leash his son, and the Golden Council had wanted an excuse to press you for an heir. And if you threw in a few Kremnoan secrets that would help free Ladon of the title of a vassal state, well, that was only good and fair. So they raise you to be a sword, ready to cut anything down: to sneak. To spy. To steal.

Slyfooting is not part of a queen’s education, but it becomes a part of yours. You become a royal deceiver, a living lie. The Golden Council files your venom-containing teeth and puts its hands together for a prayer, a prayer for a future where Ladon becomes an empire again, reborn in the dawn of light. They dream of holding the Dragon banner high, to devour their enemies whole.

You, on the other hand, dream of a quick death.

As you walk the causeways of Ladon’s only defense ring to the north, you can see the detachment of soldiers come nearer and nearer. It restricts the air in your chest, strangling you to the bone. An entire decade ago, this had been the sight you glimpsed from your apartments as Castrum Kremnos first drew closer to beat Ladon into submission. Eurypon himself had headed that army then, eager for a fight against the noble Atlaion, of whom he’d only heard about his golden-coated words and his shying back from a warrior’s valor. He had wanted a fight, and had almost burned the city to the ground when he thought Atlaion would rather hide than face him. A good king would go to his death willingly, if only to uphold his city’s honor and the people’s pride. Little did anyone know that good, old, noble Atlaion had been murdered in his throne room, the beheaded corpse still seated on the throne. He’d been readying himself for peace talks. The banners of surrender had already been prepared to be flown. The surviving soldiers of the Kremnoan invasion instead found the banners stuffed into the mouths of the murdered royal guard, drenched in blood. A fitting image for a situation so totally beyond salvation.

You, however, had to live with the sight of your father’s beheaded corpse forever. They found you shaking the body, crying for him to wake up and face you, your own face streaked in tears and blood. You didn’t see the face of the assailant, but you had found the weapon. Despite the extensive investigation, no culprit had ever been found, and the dagger was to be locked away and sealed forever. In case the murderer would ever be found. In case anyone woule be ever able to identify the owner of the weapon.

In the end, King Eurypon had made your mother sign away the future of Ladon. This, too, became a weapon the Golden Council brandished against her. Here sat this foreigner, who’s only been crowned queen because she seduced a soft-hearted king. And she dares to hand away Ladon’s future just like that. You hadn’t been present then, confined to a prison that was supposed to serve as a hiding place. Not that Eurypon was unaware of you. But the hope was still there that he wouldn’t take notice of you. His own queen had made him a widow, and no one knew what the king would do. All morality had seemed to have fled him in the days after the loss of both of his son and queen. After long-breathed peace talks which had felt like a particularly calm siege, King Eurypon and his army had finally withdrawn, one city-state richer.

Back in the present, you stare at the advancing army and think of the commander leading its charge. You wonder how you are supposed to marry a man whose only inheritance was blood and violence, when you had been supped on wisdom and gentility.

Hesperia herself had been a strategic queen, a clever woman. The faith of the Hesperian gardens practices patience, meditation, self-reflection. This city alone had been born out of Hesperia’s wish to reunite with her family, her song rising steadily in volume until all her sisters had come rushing home. The seas had dried and opened a way for her sisters to place their feet upon, so they could rush to Hesperia’s waiting arms. In their reunion, they had planted a golden-leaved tree bearing fruit of the same color, forever a symbol of their love, community and perseverance. Nowhere in that picture does the Kremnoan urge for patricide and warmongering fit.

And yet here he marches, Mydeimos of the noble blood of Gorgo. Ready to become part of that picture, against his will or not.

The winds carry the salty scent of spilled blood, though you can’t be sure if that’s actually true or just a product of your fearful imagination. But it also carries something else: a spiced perfume that settles in your chest, like a cozy blanket thrown over your shoulder. You turn and see Queen Aeolia approach, a heavy-mantled cloak she must have stolen from your father’s closet hastily thrown over her shoulder. She must have seen you climb the causeways and went to join you. “I knew I’d find you here,” she says when she has drawn near enough, although the wind swallows some of her words eagerly, as if it too cannot contain the yearning for her wisdom in the same manner as your father had. “Though I do wish you wouldn’t have come. I wished to spare you this sight.”

To that, you can only answer with a sigh. “Mother, I’m supposed to marry him. It’s not like I can avoid this army forever. I’ll be marching with them to my new home, after all.”

“It won’t be your home.” Your mother’s voice is steady, firm. She’s always been your bedrock, the foundation of your life. Silently supporting you always. Helping you stand steady. “No matter what that blasphemous council says, your home is here with me.”

“What, you don’t believe they speak with the voice of Hesperia?” you ask sarcastically. It should have come off as a quip, a joke with which you had intended to ease the tensions. All it sounds like though is bitterness. This is your mother, whom you do not have to hide anything from. So you cannot find it in yourself to pretend to be alright. “I don’t really care whether the gods are with them or not. The Golden Council means nothing to me. But I don’t want to turn my back on father and all he’s done for this country, and I cannot deny that an alliance with Castrum Kremnos, no matter how it came to fruition, is something that could benefit the people. We’d never have to worry about an invasion again.”

Your mother musters you warily. It’s the look you give someone when you know they aren’t being quite honest with themselves, but you cannot deny them, either. So she says, “And I love you for that. But do not forget that an heir to the Ladonian throne is only a forefront. What those vipers truly yearn for is a Castrum Kremnos they’d be able to control.”

You roll your shoulders, still focussed on the troops as they transform from indistinguishable dots to the silhouettes of real, blooded men. The distance is closing steadily. It feels like they might be running to you, and the panic, which had nestled itself on your tongue in the past few days, has finally travelled into your blood and is beginning to seep into your bones. It will live with you there, forever perhaps, or until your golden-soled boots crushes Castrum Kremnos in the name of Ladon. Neither solution seems realistic. “I will bear it,” you say, and then, as if to convince yourself, “I can do it. Hesperia is with me.”

Your mother’s hand goes to your head, brushing over the elaborate hairdo. The hairpins you have studded inside the coiffure are wrought in the image of Hesperia’s dragon appearance, an image of bravery from which you are trying to draw strength from. “The light of Hesperia be with you, daughter,” your mother sighs in turn. Then she straightens up, for both her sake and yours. The time to mourn and grieve is over. The battle has just begun. “Now come with me and get changed into that other gown. I’ve heard this prince favors the color pink.”

You think in truth your mother might be trying to distract you from what you perceive as your impending doom (really now, what Kremnoan prince would like the color pink? or perhaps that just pertains to the lovers he is attracted to? Maybe he likes it when they wear pink?). But you grasp at the opportunity to be a daughter again, just one last time. For now, you are still princess of Ladon, daughter to the Sunlit Throne. And you are safe in your childhood chambers, laughing with your mother, unworried abut anything. You are present. You are here. And you are loved.

In the glint of the jewelry your mother holds up to your ears, you briefly wonder what her marriage was like. You’re not familiar with Pyrian marriage customs, had only been schooled on what a proposal to you might look like. Not even this marriage to the Kremnoan prince was usual. His own traditions outlined different approaches, and the arrangement itself was unusual for their royal house. As far as you were aware, the proposed to partner was carried away under the cover of night, with the proposed to partner giving consent ahead of time. In fact, it lies in the will of the proposed-to party to set the meeting and location, being fully in control of everything up until the marriage bed. There, a Kremnoan marriage served but a single duty for the rest of its duration: the production of an heir.

Your mother had paled in reaction when she had first heard the terms. After a long-battled discussion, both royal families had finally come to the agreement that Prince Mydeimos was allowed to carry you off, but he had to come and do it in the light of sun, where Hesperia could see. And you had to be allowed to say goodbye to your loved ones, to fulfill the celebrations on the shore of your old home. After this marriage, your home would be Castrum Kremnos. Only time would tell how that would work out.

They find you just as the sun reaches its zenith in the sky, the young noon bathing you in its stinging heat as the lady’s maid that will accompany you knocks at the door. “Your Majesty, Your Highness,” she speaks, her voice tentative. Perhaps she fears for her own future, as well. “The prince is here.”

The prince.

You gather your skirts and rise, feeling deceptively light. Maybe that’s because you are about to be cut free. This had been your childhood kingdom, but also a gilded cage in the claw-fingered hands of the Golden Council. You knew next to nothing about Prince Mydeimos: not about his behaviors, not about his personality. He is said to be the most skilled warrior alive, more walking death than man. His enemies scream in terror at the mere mention of his name. His blood-soaked shadow has been said to swallow entire battlefields whole; in fact, his armies always prepare for celebrations ahead of the battle because of the surefire certainty they have in him. He may not be accepted by his father, but he is his people’s pride. You try to be comforted by this, but all you can think of is blood and violence and murder.

Mydeimos. Prince Mydeimos. You roll the name around your tongue in silence as your mother walks you to the throne room.

Yet when you see him, you can’t make heads or tails of him.

Prince Mydeimos of the Castrum Kremnoan dynasty is a tall, impressive man, of a muscular and broad stature that seems to tower above his peers and the emissaries of the Golden Council who have come to welcome him. He is painted in the colors of his home; honey-dew hair, pomegranate eyes, bloody whorls on his chest and arms which you cannot decipher. It’s nothing you’ve read about in the history books which were supposed to lecture you about your groom’s city. You suppose he might the very picture of a Kremnoan ideal. On another woman, that might have made a lasting impression: he’s attractive, after all, and you are not blind. But his appearance only turns the syllables of his name to ash in your mouth, a fresh batch of anger welling up inside you. If he had never accepted his father’s terms and asked for your hand, you might have been free from this fate. When Prince Mydeimos eyes’ finally find yours, they look as if they know exactly at what you might be thinking.

“Prince Mydeimos,” comes your mother’s loud address, cutting in over a particularly nasty councillor who had once compared your mother to a slow-working poison. The sneer that presents itself on his face only seems to imbue your mother with more strength, as if his envy only spurs her on more. She approaches Mydeimos with a polite smile, leaving you to remain where you stand. Indicating with her hand towards you, she says, “My prince, I am pleased to introduce you to this humble island’s only princess. This is my daughter and your bride.”

Mydeimos respectfully inclines his head at your mother. The motion makes your mother’s eyes flash with surprise, an emotion she cannot hide as quickly away as she usually does; Ladon was but another colony in Castrum Kremnos’ repertoire, smaller than most of the treasures King Eurypon had acquired. Eurypon had never bowed his head, nor made any over effort to grace your mother with any kind of respect that would befit her station. “Queen Aeolia, I thank you for welcoming us so graciously in your home,” he speaks then, and his voice is a lion’s roar. Not because it sounds threatening, or because he speaks particularly asserting. It’s in him, you realize, that natural inclination to command authority. No wonder his troops seem to adore him. “You will forgive me for joining you so late. As I am not old enough, I still sleep in the barracks with the men who serve me. We intended to settle in quickly so I could meet your daughter as soon as possible.”

“Of course.” Your mother has reasserted her own grip on her politics. She is quick that way, more skillful than you are. You are going to have to mimic her when you are married. Mydeimos’ odd decision to bunk with his barrack mates has already been reported long before he set sail for Ladon, a matter your mother privately worried about. Kremnoan women do not live with their husbands for the entirety of their military service, and she fears in your future lonely days and even lonelier nights. In truth, you could not care less. This was a marriage for duty, not for love. “If there is anything you or your men might ask for, do not hesitate in doing so. The city is yours, my prince.”

“Yes,” he quietly affirms. “That I know. But I thank you for your hospitality.” It’s an arrogant comment, a statement that sets your blood to a boil even though he doesn’t mean it with any bad intent. His eyes are devoid of his father’s hostility, but they are still his father’s eyes: war-driven and impulsive. When they find yours again, you have carefully built up a wall in the same manner as your mother has done, steeling yourself against this lion-born nightmare. Mydeimos thus passes by your mother and approaches you, and the room grows quiet at that. You warily watch as Mydeimos comes to a halt before you, wondering if he will approach you like this when he discovers your true intentions before he murders you for your crimes. He upturns his palms, each finger ensconced by his gauntles. He hasn’t even bothered to disarm himself as he proposes to you. The thought settles in your already upset brain as Mydeimos asks, “Chosen princess of Hesperia, in the eyes of the golden-eyed dragon and the sunset mountains, I ask for your heart and your faith. Will you accept me as your groom?”

You stare up at him, stunned.

These are not the words your advisors have prepared you for. They are your words: your traditions as you had reminisced about just an hour earlier. Kremnoan marriages do not seem to glorify the process, keeping to a very simple ‘marry me’ and a ‘yes, I do’ to bring it to a close. There aren’t even any priests to preside over the wedding that will be held, and so you hadn’t had any hopes for this proposal, either. It was all dictated upon, anyway, your hand practically already given away.

You do not know what to make of this. You do not like the fact that these words are coming out of his mouth, and yet, a small corner inside your heart breathes out a sigh of relief since you aren’t abandoning your father’s ways entirely. Unsure about Mydeimos, and still in awe at the reunion with a part of your culture before you are torn away from it, you answer, placing your hands in his, “In the spirit of Hesperia’s faith and devotion, I accept you as my groom, Prince of Castrum Kremnos. In the eyes of the golden-eyed dragon and the sunset mountains, I vow to become your wife.”

There are no rings, no other significant symbols of the engagement. But as you look into this prince’s eyes, you feel that vow wash over you as dizzily as the future does - forceful and unstoppable. The metaphorical lock has clicked into place. The gleaming metal of his armor is sun-warmed and smooth. It feels like touching a human heart. Mydeimos presses your fingers and releases them.

You are a captive of Castrum Kremnos now.

Mydeimos is still staring at you as you hesitantly put your hands into another, fumbling with your fingers nervously. You cannot tell what he’s thinking; he seems to be more statue than man, and he strikes the same fear in your heart as he does in his enemies. You are glad that you never have to face him in earnest on a battlefield, but then remember your duty, and you lower your eyes. This makes Mydeimos clear his throat, and the moment passes. He turns towards your mother again, leaving you to your inner turmoil. “If not to your offense, I would like to retire with my men now. The days have been long, and our exhaustion has made us weary. We are quite eager to partake in the celebrations you have prepared for this evening.”

The councillor at your mother’s side, who apparently has had enough of your mother’s spotlight, speaks up almost immediately. “Understandably so, Your Highness!” he rushes to assure Mydeimos. “But perhaps you’d like to attend this evening’s assembly before you attend the revelries? You still have not told us when you would like to leave, and when the marriage is supposed to be held.”

“That will be at my bride’s discretion.” Mydeimos nods once at the councillor, the only sign displaying that he seems to have listened to the puny man, then directly addresses your mother again. “Queen Aeolia, if you’ll excuse me. I will withdraw now.”

And so he flaunts his cape behind him, leaving the throne in his wake.

The councillor, in the face of naked disrespect, stares after the Kremnoan prince in what seems to be open indignation. Over his shoulder, your mother’s lips break into an uncharacteristic grin, an expression she so rarely employs. You tentatively smile back at her, your relief making you sag back into a more comfortable stance. You still don’t know what kind of man Mydeimos is, but he’s at least proven to possess a better set of manners than his father does. Although this is his vassal state, and his army is large enough to destroy the city without breaking a sweat, he went out of his way to to treat your mother with the respect a queen mother of the prospective bride should be treated with. If anything else, it bespeaks diplomacy.

You watch that lion’s back be swallowed up among his men, disappearing in the throng of human bodies. Of course he’s diplomatic, you think to yourself, the magic of the situation disappearing in the same moment as your tiredness returns. He’s going to steal you away from here and keep you like a particularly special treasure. You do not rattle a toy beyond repair without ever having played with it first.

You’re only moments away of becoming a bride in earnest, and yet you already shrink back from the responsibilities that await you. As you inspect your fingers, you realize Mydeimos’ gauntlets have already drawn first blood. This is how it starts.

(Back in the comfort of your chambers, as your mother watches your personal attendants slip you into another dress of your choosing, she falls trap to mistaking what this entire farce is about. She says, “He might not be such a cruel husband as I thought. Well, I don’t know. He might also just be trying to put on a good face here so I’ll let you go without a fuss, but it did feel like he’s was trying to make an effort to be different than his father. You don’t earnestly look into someone’s eyes like that. I really do hope he would make a good husband to you, if only politically.”

“Oh, mother.” You had raised your arms higher as the maid tried to feed you through the dress’ opening, feeling as though you were prostrating yourself in front of a weapon that was coming to swing down. “It doesn’t matter if he’s a good husband. I’m not there to actually be his wife.”

She doesn’t say anything after that.)

Hesperia’s embrace begins to bathe Ladon city in the feverish warm light of the dusk while you hide out in a hallway right before the Great Hall. The festivites are already in full swing, an entire group of musicians having travelled here to sing your father’s childhood songs and reminisce about a life on Ladon. The homesickness grips your chest like a sickness, like you might keel over and begin to vomit everywhere. It’s a confusing feeling. You are standing inside the bones of your father’s home, surrounded by the only buildings you’ve been raised in. And yet you already feel so, so far away. The thought saddens you.

“Not feeling festive enough to join the celebration?”

Your head snaps up, alarmed. You are a pacifist’s daughter, unused to the ways of war. That doesn’t mean you’re entirely stupid, though. Most times, sneaking up on you is not the easiest feat - the sounds of a servant’s steps, of wandering councillors searching for an excuse to eavesdrop, have become a steady rhythm you were attuned to so that you could maintain your privacy. Amidst all these instincts you’ve honed, Mydeimos has managed to surprise you.

He’s found a chink in your armor.

In what seems to be a lazy manner, he begins to lean on the side of the wall you had been turning your back to. You straighten up, your royal tutelage not allowing you to make him see past that careful face you maintain in the schemes of politics. “Oh, no, nothing of the sort,” you tell him, the lie tasting disgusting already. However were you going to do this, when you’re married and shipped off? “I was just thinking about my father. I have always been told, by my mother and old friends of his alike, that he had a particular knack for dancing during Ladonian celebrations. It seems that talent has evaded me. I was just thinking about what sort of excuse I might dish up in case you were wanting to take to the dancefoor.”

At the mention of fathers, a dark shadow passes of Mydeimos’ eyes. You do not know what to make of that. You know of the rumors surrounding his mother’s death and the own fate he seemed to have suffered in the loss of his homeland, but you know not what is rumor and what is truth. You do not want to poke at a lion before you ever step into the lion’s den. Mydeimos himself does not address it, instead pouncing on the ‘dancing’ part of the sentence. “I assure you, no lie is necessary,” he says, gesticulating with his arms at the parade of his own company as they stream into the grand hall. “If you do not wish to dance, I will not make you. I myself have not felt the urge to. We Kremnoans are raised to the dance of swords, not the dance of partners.”

We Kremnoans. Rather soon, that will include you. The thought makes you twist the rings adorning your fingers rather nervously. Mydeimos’ eyes pick up on it, then watch as you still your fingers as to not reveal your fear. “I’m sure my prince jests,” you try to joke, but you have none of your mother’s grace. The joke, like your tone, falls flat. “I’m sure there are some dances you partake in. After a successful battle, perhaps.”

“You ought to call me Mydei.”

You stare at him, mystified. “Your pardon?”

Mydeimos draws himself up, staring at you with an indifferent gaze which reveals nothing. He is the mask of a human, as part of the masquerade as you are, even though he does not know what your actual endeavors for this marriage are. “Mydei,” he repeats, this time a little louder. “Mydeimos is the name the subjects of the crown or strangers use. But we are to be husband and wife, and I tire of formalities rather easily. Call me Mydei. It does not have to imply any intimacy between us.”

You grip your rings again. This time, you don’t twist them, but the bite of the cold metal keeps you steady as you look at him. Use this chance, a voice whispers in your mind, the personification of the Golden Council digging through your brain, sifting it with a sieve until all your thoughts become hateful. Get close to him, and then carve out his heart. “Mydei,” you echo with a faint voice. He reaffirms the action with an approving nod. “I will do that. But, my lord, I cannot so easily slip off the bonds of my house’s teachings. I will try to be less formal, but please understand when I slip back into these habits, because even in their restriction they offer a kind of comfort.”

The words settle into the air as Mydei takes them in. “I understand, my lady. Then I do suppose I might have to insist on a single dance with my bride, for formality’s sake.”

Which is how you end up on the most powerful man of all Amphoreus’ arm, led in under the gawking gaze of a gossiping, scavenging court. For all his talk about not knowing the rules of dance, Mydeimos - Mydei - leads you into the center of the room and then faithfully takes up his position. As you face each other, Mydei raises his hands to mirror your own, and thus you begin to twirl around each other, beginning the dance.

It’s not comfortable, or relaxing. But it does loosen up some of the tension that’s been holding you prisoner, and you let yourself fall back into the familiar rhythm of the circling partner dance your mother taught you in your father’s stead. One, two, three, four; one, two, three, four. Mydei’s eyes, still steeled over to hide the truth below them, never once leave your face as you dance, though you try not to be intimidated by it. In the artificial light of both Kephale’s devices and the more natural one as the flickering candlelight, his image does not frighten you into visions of a doomed future as they had this noon. You decide to break the silence then. “I am quite sure this makes you the liar after all, Mydei, and not me. It seems like you dance as though you’ve been born to it. I have encountered more unfortunate men who kept falling out of the rhythm, or stumbling into me without meaning to.”

His golden eyes seem darker than earlier. The shadow hasn’t quite left them yet. “It was my mother who taught me,” he answers, turning in time to evade a stray couple which proves your earlier point of the common fail-at-dance attitude at your court. Your chest feels tight at the mention of Queen Gorgo; you hadn’t meant to steer the direction of the conversation there, but now that he’s speaking about her, the interest does begin to spark up. You wonder what of that woman’s traces have remained in Mydei. He seems to have become the epitome of his father’s Kremnoan ideology. “She was always of the opinion that dancing and fighting are not so different. I did not share that opinion, but given the nature of how my father and her came to be married, I suppose she might have been more right than I previously assumed.”

You remember the tale, of how lion-braving Gorgo almost managed to best Eurypon himself. In turn, he married her. Just as violence was the key to the throne, it seemed it was also the key to stealing a Kremnoan’s heart. “I see,” is all you manage to voice. This isn’t what you wanted. You hadn’t wanted to be perceptive enough to recognize how this man was talented enough to reveal no weakness, and yet his tone had significantly gentled. How he must have cared for his mother. You will betray him. You are going to eradicate his dynasty. There is no time for niceties. “My lord,” you say, making his honeydew eyes flick towards you again, and your voice feels very far away as you speak your next words. You are making yourself walk onto that path you can never return again from, afraid that the longer you seek to suspend the moment, the more it will hurt when the sword finally swings down. “This was celebration enough for an engagement, and for my taste. If it does not bother you, I would wait for a full week so that your army’s strength might be restored, and then leave for Castrum Kremnos so we might be married.”

Although Mydei has looked passively polite the entire day, his face now visibly puzzles up in confusion. Your actions and behaviors aren’t matching up; you’re sure that your lackluster face hadn’t been able to support the forced enthusiasm of the words you had spoken. It’s no matter. You cannot seem to rip yourself free of that assembly inside your mind, how they had poured poison into your ears, equipped with you so many lies. It will be so easy to charm him, don’t worry about it. All you have to do is write a few letters. You might naturally even be inclined to tell us, after all. They are so terrible, it won’t even raise suspicion for you to report about it.

And if you can kill him, then do it swiftly enough that we can still extract you.

You swallow the memory, and Mydei’s eyes follow the motion. “It will be done,” he concedes, but his voice has lost the melody it had taken on earlier, the way he had spoken about his mother. You thought it had made him seem more human.

(You forge your first lie that day, in the same manner as a sword-smith completes his very first order to prove his efficiency and skills. When your mother asks what exactly made you want to quit the shores of Ladon so quickly, you find yourself forming the words, without thinking about them too much: “I can’t lie properly if I’m still surrounded by the home in which I always could be my most true self. I need to leave, or I’ll never able to.”

That exact statement helps you understand why the best lies contain a kernel of truth. You see that kernel hit your mother straight into the heart, the way her lips turn down to form that heartbreaking expression you as her daughter cannot bear. But she needs to hear it, now, before her seeds of betrayal bear fruit and result in an altercation with the Golden Council. “Strength and wisdom, my daughter,” she only answers, the ancient words a promise. She wishes for Hesperia to be with you, but where you are going, that goddess cannot possibly follow you to. You nod and accept the blessing graciously, because the alternative would be to break down crying and tarnish that very first good lie you taught yourself to speak.)

Your soon-to-be husband, apparently, does possess a sense of humor. It’s just so dry that you cannot make sense of it.

When he passed by the guard who was supposed to feed you into the chariot so he could help you himself, you almost snapped at him out of reflex (you don’t have to do that, this is an arranged marriage, don’t pretend to care about me). Then the anguish made you pliant (don’t make this any harder for me). You took his hand without words, letting him handle you inside, the gauntlets as startling on your skin as the day he met you. It felt like he was reaching right through the chiton, below even the flesh of your human body and right into your traitorous heart, weeding out the lies before you could even get started tossing them at him. You look into his eyes to reassure yourself he can’t actually do that, and find him already looking at you. Mydei truly is quite unsettling. You cannot even imagine the sight of those righteous-fury eyes through the visors of his war helmet. “You should get comfortable,” he advises you. “The roads to Castrum Kremnos are as unforgiving and winding as the descent into Tartarus. It might take us an actual month to reach it.”

You gape at him, feeling the startledness resonate in your mind like a scream into the void. “Truly?” you sputter out, feeling your entire perception of time shift. How would you survive out of a chariot for an entire month…? “I …had not known. I promise to be a courteous and patient traveller.”

Mydei stares at you for a very long time … quite so long that you feel awkward beneath his gaze, like an insect inspected through the scope of a magnifying glass. And then, as wondrous as the first flashes of brilliant light in the morning dawn, the corners of his lips jump. Barely there. Not even enough movement to call it a twitch. But you recognize it for what it is: the ghost of a smile. “What a faithful bride they have given me,” he says, slipping back into his tonedead diction, something you begin to recognize he employs to guard his true feelings. “She hangs on to my every word. In fact, I give you my word I will not use it for my own personal entertainment.”

“Oh,” comes your embarrassed reaction. And then, because you cannot bear the shame and your lady’s maid of all people begins to chuckle, you place your hand on the heavily armored shoulder of his intimidating back and turn him away. This oak tree of a man, whose reputation makes him out to be an unstoppable force, turns at the lightest of your touches. Mydei actually lets himself be pushed away. “I suggest you leave before I hit you with my fan for the deception.”

“I do think that would be entertaining still, my lady,” Mydei retorts. “But I accept your command. You are, after all, my bride.”

Your hands fall from his shoulder as he begins to skirt away, returning to the position he has been given as the commander of this company. You hastily clamber into your seat, not wanting to see him go. Not wanting to see him in general. You clench your hands into fists.

When they first told you about how you were going to be a bride to a foreign king, you had tried to conjure up an image, to try to fit yourself into that equation. It was all smoke and mirrors, anyways, the attempt like sifting through sand to find a treasure that has long ago disappeared. But from what you’ve known about Kremnoan culture, about the tales that had proclaimed Mydei to be a god-killer, how his father’s cruel blood ran in his veins, you had expected something more monstrous. Something akin to honorable Nikador, succumbing to baseless violence and madness, losing grip on His divinity. You meant no disrespect to Nikador, as you had been raised to respect all the gods in equal measure, but you certainly were no Mnestia. You couldn’t think of yourself as a noble lover, sacrificing everything to try to steer Nikador back into his true place at your side. That wasn’t the nature of this arrangement, anyways. Even without Eurypon’s and the Golden Council’s scheming, this marriage would still only serve the survival of the Kremnoan line. Marriage is for reproduction. It had no room for love, at least not in the traditional sense that you were raised into. Perhaps you would have been able to come to accept Mydei as an amicable business partner, but that, too, would only survive so long as any son of yours would grow into maturity. That future is as invisible to you as the one that you are actually walking towards. But something about the shape of the smoke has changed distinctly.

You hadn’t expected Mydei to view his father through the same critical eyes the rest of the world seemed to look at him with.

Here he is, walking with common men, accepting their hands. He nods in the same rhythm as their laughter; although he can’t share their bellows and jests, he makes an effort to be present, to acknowledge their camaraderie. He doesn’t cull their cheers, only heeding them to stay in formation, and everyone does so without complaint. At one point, they break out into a coordinated yell, startling your lady’s maid from the careful slumber she’s been nursing while at the same time trying to remain upright at your side. “The son of Gorgo will be crowned in blood!” they chant. “May his sword always strike true and his back reflect the illumination of our future! Long live the prince!”

You are at a loss for words. You recognize the words in passing, of course; the clever dichotomy of them. Gorgo, his noble ancestor, shares a name with the mother who has given birth to him. They are honored both in that chant, whether consciously or unconsciously. But they didn’t say “long may he reign”, the usual phrasing for a prospective monarch such as Mydei. They wished for him to live. And you see the effect it has on him: Mydei straightens up, becoming the shield and mirror they wish for him to be. The sun sparks across his shoulders like stars, making him seem more mythical, a prophecy having become flesh and bone.

They love him. You cannot find a better fitting verb that would encompass their culture more accurately, so you scramble to your own terms. This is what Atlaion had always dreamed of. Mydei is a king already in their eyes; they have given him their loyalty.

The thought rains a dangerous shower of goosebumps down your back. No wonder his father wants him dead.

The truth of Mydei’s joke (if that can be actually called a joke…) reveals itself after a steady, continous trek that stretched out for three nights and four days in total. On the afternoon of the fourth day, the glorious city of Castrum Kremnos has begun to claim the entire horizon as you stare at it. You hadn’t realized how pompously giant it was. Ladon is an ant in comparison to its size. The soldiers have begun to yowl in relief as they recognize the walls of their home, and this time Mydei doesn’t scold them. In fact, he’s headed straight for your chariot, and without waiting for it to stop, he jumps inside, with the same slinking grace as a predator going for the killing strike. Ignoring your lady’s maid quickly-smothered squeak in reaction, he settles into his seat as if nothing out of sort has happened. “As you can see, my lady, we will reach Castrum Kremnos shortly. I have sent a rider ahead to inform them of our coming, which is why I am here to warn you of what greetings will await us when we pass the city’s borders.”

(You find yourself forced back into the memory of the day you had left Ladon. Those customs, as shrewd as they were, had seemed to you more like a funny tale than an actual literal activity to be done. But Mydei, without even blinking or shying away from it, had lifted you up as one might pick up a doll; with the clinical neutrality of a healer, his hands had found the hollows of your knees and the space in-between your shoulder blades to lift you up. Your head had fallen at his chest, and the sound of his heartbeat had surprised you into wordless compliance. As though you had become part of his army, when he told you to hold on to him, you had obeyed and wrapped your free arm around his shoulder as best as possible (he was impossibly broad…), then used the free hand to wave goodbye to the people gathered. Mydei’s pulse had over-toned even your mother’s laughter, which in retrospect almost seems sad because of how rare it was for her to laugh in earnest. Your father’s death had eaten at her in a way that made her untouchable to most, even to you. You couldn’t help it: the sound of Mydei’s steady heart had soothed you, because in the end, he was a human being just like you.)

You take in the words, thinking about them. Will there be a riotous celebration for the prince’s return, then? Or do they condemn the crown’s choice in their bride, and have come to proclaim that rejection? You sure hope his deadly literacy will not make you carry you inside the city, then, because you would need your hands free to be able to defend yourself. “I see,” you say. Today, your nervous fingers are hidden beneath the swathes of your chiton. You specifically chose this one for its ruffles, intending to look as polished as a prospective bride, but also wanting to don some kind of armor of your own. Mydei, however, looks down at your hidden hands as if he can tell exactly what you’re doing. During the celebrations at home - Ladon, you chide yourself, that place is no longer your home, not for a long time - you had already taken note of how perceptive he was. You needed to kill your habits now, or you’d never live to be called a spy (you have to actually spy on something to be considered one, don’t you?). “So what will our day look like?”

“Your hands,” Mydei says though, immediately throwing you off course again. Does he always ignore questions so impolitely if he doesn’t want to answer them? But you’re too distracted to take offense. You feel shocked that he’s decided to call out the weakness himself. “I think that if you fold them together and then hide them in your lap, it would make you seem more like a blushing bride. Then you’d have the comfort of holding on to something, but also not having the danger of someone sniffing out your fear. Try it.”

You don’t know whether to laugh or sob. Here this man sits, the object of all your future sins, teaching you how to betray him. But only an idiot would reject advice from the most talented commander in all of history. You intertwine your fingers, then lay the conjoined hands into your lap. They still seem to twitch, something you cannot identify whether it’s actually happening or is just an illusion of your overworking mind, but Mydei nods in approval. You breathe out a sigh of relief. “Thank you,” you say, not knowing how to handle the situation. Everything is already going so much differently than what the council had outlined. “Was it so obvious?”

He cocks his head at you. You try to find any sign in his eyes, of mockery or contempt or bemusement. You find nothing. “Not to the unlearned eye,” Mydei tells you then, and you can’t decide if he’s saying it to soothe your nerves or whether that’s actually true. Your own people had never taken any notice. Or maybe they just hadn’t bothered to tell you. “I would think that leaving the only country you’ve ever known, especially for marriage, would be daunting to anyone. And you are handling this in your own way. You’ve never once complained, or anything. I did not mean to offend you or your manners.”

“No, do not worry. You didn’t.” You press your fingers together. “I am not afraid of marriage. Or at least that’s what I think. I mean, the Sunlit Throne cannot be sat on by a queen alone, so I’ve always known that I would need an heir whom I could crown for the future of Ladon. And that entails a political marriage. I am just not … I mean… Ladon is not exactly similar to Castrum Kremnos.”

“No,” Mydei agrees. “You will quickly realize that. When we get home, they’ll fit you with a weapon of your choice for the wedding. At dawn, the wedding will be held in front of a few witnesses, including my father.”

“A weapon? Of my choice?”

Now there actually is a tint of amusement inside his sunny eyes. The color, although just a regular golden, seems to melt and rearrange itself depending on his mood. Quite disorienting. “I trust you know what a dagger is? Didn’t Queen Hesperia fight with one?”

“I know what a sword is, thank you,” you interrupt him impatiently. The insult, although harmless, paints your cheeks in an unwilling blush. His gaze zeroes in on it, and you try not to squirm under his gaze. For all his complacency, he still doesn’t have the courtesy not to disrespect your home and upbringing. Just because your father was a pacifist, it does not mean he raised you to be an idiot. “I just don’t know what relevance it possesses in correlation with our wedding. I was told there would be a simple procession, where no priest is necessary to reside over the rites, and we will be sharing a cup of wine that is supposed to represent our union. Your emissaries have specifically asked for a barrel of the finest Ladonian wine we had so they could mix it with the type that is produced here in Castrum Kremnos.”

“Quite right you are. What your teachers have neglected to foretell though, is that we have to cut our palms to bleed into the cup and sweeten it this way. The Kremnoans of old have always advised to consume blood, so it strengthens us in battle.”

You blink at him, all finely court manners forgotten. You’re sure that even your lady’s maid mouth has dropped open. “You drink blood?”

Mydei leans back against the chariot’s seat, spreading his legs to sit more comfortably. You ignore it. “No, of course not,” he says. “Do you think us brutes? We enjoy pomegranate wine, though I prefer to take mine mixed with a good cup of goat’s milk.”

“Goat’s milk?” you squawk. It doesn’t make any sense at all. His lips twitch, in that aggrevating almost smile that makes you want to stomp your feet. Heavens above. This man is a test from Hesperia herself. So annoying! Every answer he gives creates a thousand more questions, clarifying nothing!

Your lady’s maid carefully taps your hands. “My lady,” she cautions. When you look down, you’ve realized your careful arrangement has reasserted itself into clenched fists. You quickly loosen them, abandoning your hands for now. You’ll try to work on that habit later. “Alright,” you huff then. “I’ll just follow your lead, my lord. I’m sure it will work out.”

“Certainly,” Mydei answers. “They’ve given me a queen that is as wise as her father herself. You’ll do fine.”

He doesn’t sound sarcastic. In fact, this is the most earnest he’s sounded during the entirety of the conversation. You want to ask what he means, to have him clear up the confusing clouds looming above your head, but Mydei has already vaulted himself back over the chariot again. It seems like you will brave the citizens of Castrum Kremnos alone.

When the gates of the city swallow you up and spit you back out onto a long passageway leading into the inner walls of the urban life, you’re not sure what to expect. But the people’s faces are smiling, if not singing. These are songs you don’t recognize, songs of return and bravery and honor. Their hands stretch out to touch the soldier’s shoulders, and you hear a passerby applaud the guard near your own chariot for not returning on his shield, although you don’t understand what he means. The guard knocks her shoulders against the passerby’s, laughing and joking about how if she couldn’t return from a simple retrieval of a bride unharmed, than she did not deserve to be part of the royal household’s infantry. “Honor to Castrum Kremnos!” he tells the guard in answer, and that’s that. You continue walking, leaving the man behind.

From your vantage point, you can only see the tops of Mydei’s shoulders and his head. His own hands are situated firmly at his sides, and no one reaches to touch him, but they honor him in his own way. The jubilant chant belonging to the Son of Gorgo follows him into the endless maze of his city, and before long, the castle bids you welcome as you leave the cheerful masses behind.

As before, Mydei himself waits below the chariot to help you down. You cast a quizzical look at him, one that he doesn’t catch. Why bother? you think, and then, as always, Don’t make it any harder for me. Stop being courteous. Stop. But you give him your hand. His metal-cold fingers carefully wrap around the wrist he could easily break before it writes down any tales about the Kremnoan court. The architecture outside of the palace had involved a lot of humongously large pillars, stretching so far that even the craning of your neck did nothing to erase the intimidation they had evoked, and an intricate connection of block-like facades incorporated into siege-surviving walls. But the inside was as familiar to you as the passageway to the Ladonian castle, a sight that took hold of your frail heart and made you want to collapse with grief. You already missed your home. Despite your aversion to the young prince, you find yourself grateful for the support of his hand, feeling as unsteady as the reeds in the wind. “I had not expected such a warm welcome,” you admitted to Mydei. Somehow you knew you wouldn’t have been this honest towards him if you weren’t so shaken by the loss of Ladon. “They were all so happy. I assume that is because they saw you rather than me, but it was still a relief. The city of Ladon historically has been a thorn in Castrum Kremnos’ eye, so I was preparing myself for the worst.”

Mydei guides your hands toward his bicep. The emissary who was supposed to be your chaperone steps away and melts back into the shadows instead of taking offense. Even at his father’s court, where he is supposed to be surrounded by enemies at all sides, they defer to him as naturally as one might require air. The Golden Council would never. They never squandered any opportunity to flaunt their disrespect into your mother’s face. Mydei feels unnaturally hot beneath you, and your fear-cold fingers curve around his muscles on instinct so that they might warm up. If that bothers him, he doesn’t address it. Courteous as always. Perhaps it’s not so wild to believe that he might be his father’s doppelgänger, but it is his mother’s nature which guides him. She had been a warrior, too. A more welcoming concept of a warrior to your Hesperian beliefs than Eurypon is. “I will not lie to you. There might still be some folk which cling to their old hatred of the Ladonian revolt. But Kremnoans take pride in their values: strength, glory, victory. Castrum Kremnos has already called Ladon to heel, and you’ve been a loyal subject ever since then. No one likes to grovel over past grievances when there is victory in other places still to be secured.”

You nod, although the logic doesn’t appear that sound. You’re in no inclination to pick apart his arguments. Instead, the ruby-red halls of Castrum Kremnos begin to busy all your senses; there hangs the scent of their favored pomegranate wine, there the loud clang of soldiers being led through a series of drills by their drillmaster. Hanging around the stairs to a courtyard with a pond embedded in the middle of it you even spot a gaggle of children, busying themselves with flicking stones across the pond’s surface. The children look as trained to the bone as their soldiers do, but as you search their faces, not one looks dissatisfied. Their grins are as familiar to you as the expressions of the children at home; youthful, mischievous and happy.

After a long series of stairs (which tire you, while Mydei seems to remain unbothered, darn athlete) you come to a stop before a with wood carvings adorned door. “This is to be our sleeping quarters,” he informs you, gesticulating for you to open the door. You remain where you are, wiping a drop of sweat from your forehead. “I thought you were sleeping in the barracks,” you reply, forgetting your manners.

Mydei raises his eyebrows at you. “Did you think Kremnoans stayed celibate until marriage?”

Oh. Well, of course that settles it. It doesn’t matter if he slips into your chambers to … produce an heir, as long as he returns to his own bunk in the barracks by the end of the night. Prude of you to consider otherwise. Foolish of you to think that the elders of the Golden Council were actually right in claiming that being his bride would require no effort at all. You think of blood soaking a blanket, seed taking root. “Your pardon,” you hear yourself say. You wish you could let go of his arm.

The silence stretches on for a long time. When you look up, wondering what the matter is, Mydei’s eyes look at you in what seems to be his attempt at smothering pity. “Listen,” he says, sounding awkward. He even has to clear his throat before continuing. “I won’t be … consummating the marriage. But we have to keep up appearances, which is why I will sometimes come and sit with you. You won’t be bothered by me, I assure you. I’ll sit on the bedroom bench and read.”

“Why would you do that?” You don’t understand this man. He was acting all pliant to his father’s wishes, so intent on the marriage. For crying out loud, he’s been carrying out every custom to the exact letter. Does he not … maybe he doesn’t desire women? You are at a loss for words. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to consummate a loveless marriage? Maybe he thinks this won’t hold, and he’ll be free to take a partner he loves when he ascends the throne?

Mydei disentangles your fingers from where they were holding on to him, but it doesn’t feel like an insult or rejection. He respects my boundaries, you think, the realization like a lightning strike. He’s only been following what he thinks is proper in the sense of this arrangement. It makes you uncomfortable. He’s going to make this as hard for me as possible. He’s making sure that any betrayal on my side will hurt. “If you wish to consummate the marriage, I will,” he clarifies, although that makes your stomach twist in disgust. “But I do not feel comfortable with the thought of forcing that upon you. I may appear thick-headed to some, but I am well aware that this is a marriage of convenience. My father has told me if I do not marry, the Council of Elders will strike me off the line of inheritance. I need an heir. But I won’t be breeding at their every wish and whim. I am my own person, and their future king.” At those words, his face tightens in what you interpret as anger. For making himself seem so calm in front of you the entire time, you feel like his true fury makes him less scary than his faux-peacefulness earlier. This is what you were expecting at least.

Well, how good for him. Mydei’s already proven himself to be your better. Where you had bent your head like a shameful commoner, Mydei has found a way to assert himself in front of an over-reaching council. Perhaps it’s better you wouldn’t be able to ascend the Sunlit Throne. It feels bitter to admit to. “Thank you,” you murmur. “I don’t … I mean no disrespect, but I don’t feel comfortable with immediately consummating the marriage either. I will find a way to entertain you during your visits to our chambers.” At his quiet chuckle, you find yourself blushing again, and this time, instead of pushing down the instinct as you did in the chariot, you actually stomp. “You know what I mean, Mydei. I just meant that we’ll find some board games or something to pass the time. I’m quite mean at chess.”

“I will be quite pleased to crush you decisively in chess, then,” he answers, dropping your hand. Mydei opens the door to your bedroom for you, ushering you inside and watching you go. You turn to look at him standing on the threshold of the door. “I am a strategist after all. And quite competitive. But I look forward to seeing you try.”

He actually looks like he means it.

As he nods at you in a simple goodbye and makes sure to acknowledge your answering wave, the door then clicks decisively in its lock. You immediately find your way to the bed and crawl beneath its covers, feeling both in and outside your body. So many liberties, so many cages. The image of your marriage undergoes constant metamorphosis. It’s better if you stop expecting things to happen, in the same way as when you told Mydei in reference to the Kremnoan welcome you wouldn’t, and just start letting them happen of their own accord. It seems like you process things better that way.

Now that you’ve come to know the heir of Nikador’s strife a little better, you try to adjust the way you think about him. You are still bothered by his arrogance, although he’s given you no reason to - it’s kind of infuriating how he just exudes it, because of the Kremnoan attitude of how victory and glory are always certain. Defeated warriors have no place in their society: they are fed to Nikador’s wrath as appeasement, stricken from their country’s historical records. Aside from that, he’s made every effort to become the amicable business partner your mother had tried to envision for you. You don’t know what to think about that. It would have been easier if he could have made you hate him. Perhaps he will give you reason to when you are actually married.

But at the moment, you just don’t know how to go behind this man’s back without the guilt crushing you in his fists’ stead. You are aware of the Kremnoan attitudes to enemies who strike a Kremnoan’s back to defeat him; they are deemed honorless, and unworthy. You crawl deeper below the covers, hoping the shame will swallow you whole.

Your mother would have never wavered like you did. You are a disappointment to all.

This is how you remain as the sun steadily climbs the sky. You watch her travels from the little window that opens up the sight to the clouds above, training your eye at the passage of time. Perhaps you should have freshened up or something. Or maybe Kremnoans find honor in endurance like this. Whatever the case, not one of the attendants comments on your state of being when they come to knock on your door. You let them in with a sigh. As they come to surround you, you scan their faces with a wary glance, but don’t bother taking note of possible foes or allies. Inside this castle, every person is your enemy.

Your lady’s maid Hemera joins you a little while later, out of breath from the household inspection. She’s supposed to be in charge of you, as you take charge of Mydei’s household as his wife, your only task in this marriage. Aside from that, you will be freer than any Kremnoan woman to walk this city, not even mentioning the helots it employs. That is the single aspect you focus on as Hemera makes an effort to catch you up with her newfound knowledge. “My lady, I’ve already informed the kitchens to draw you and Mydei up a dinner after the wedding. They don’t exactly have our golden apples, but dire times demand dire solutions, so we’re just gonna have to make do with regular red Kremnoan ones. Do you think His Highness might be averse to them? The cook has told me he’s not allergic, but maybe he doesn’t like them? He couldn’t exactly tell me a lot of His Highness’s preferences.”

“Hemera,” you patiently interlope. The lady’s maid seems to be more fraught with nerves than even you are. Strangely, that helps you come to terms with your own anxieties. No wonder your mother liked to surround herself with attendants when she herself was dealing with an unquiet mind. “We’re not in Ladon anymore. I appreciate your attempt at trying to bring me comfort in a strange land, but this is a Kremnoan wedding, not a Ladonian one.”

“But my lady.” Hemera sounds strangely sad. “You are Ladonian. It would only be fair to at least share both your countries’ traditions, would it not? I apologize for my indiscretion, but I do believe His Majesty, your father, would have liked for you to feel like a Ladonian bride.”

Your throat constricts. (Don’t think about father, don’t think about him right now.) Hemera has always been the gentlest of all your maids. Her fellow attendants had scorned her when your mother decreed for her to become your lady’s maid, feeling as though she didn’t put in enough effort to actually deserve the task. But Hemera has always, unswervingly and faithfully, served you well. Your mother had gifted you with an anchor that would steady you as you braved the Kremnoan court. “No apology necessary,” you rush to tell her, and she smiles in relief at that. “And I’m sure you’re right. My father has always told me to take pride in my Ladonian ancestry. We should not disregard his wish just because I am marrying a man of a different dynasty. I trust you’ve told the cook to serve the apples with the freshest cream he could find?”

Hemera’s smile is down-right radiant. In another life, perhaps she would have been the princess you would have been doting on. “Yes, my lady.”

That radiance warms you to the very core of your existence as she guides you into the palace gardens. True to the fibers patterning Castrum Kremnos’ banners, the sky has been streaked blood-red with the last shoots of dawn’s light, reflecting back in the armor across Mydei’s chest. It’s different than the one he usually tends to wear, adorned in designs that are identical the ones embedded into the garment of your own wedding garb. The garden itself has been readied for the occasion, and your heart rejoices in the fact that although beauty is not celebrated here, at least they have incorporated it into the venue. Decorational bows and flowers line the greenery, and the witnesses are holding rice to be thrown when the wedding vows have been exchanged. You can’t discern the colors of your surroundings due to your own choice of dress; the red veil which has hidden your face has tinted your sight. It is lifted by King Eurypon himself, and his hand feels much coarser than his son’s as he hands you off like a trinket to be gifted.

Under the watchful gaze of Nikador’s sky, you turn to face Mydei as a fiancée one last time. With your hands free at last, you accept the weapon you were supposed to prepare ahead of the ceremony from the attendant who carried it for you. She places it on your palms, with the guard of the weapon removed already. At the choice of your jeweled dagger, the only ornate one out of the collection of weapons to be presented, Mydei’s eyes flash with mirth. Perhaps he’d wagered you’d choose that one, favoring beauty of practicality. The pommel of the dagger was decorated with the depiction of a lion, but its choice of diamonds and glittering rubies had evoked the light of Hesperia in your eyes. “Mydeimos,” you speak, and then revel in the shock that your voice had come out unwavering. You’d have expected to stutter with all the faux-pas you’ve been stumbling into today. “I take you as my husband, now and forever more.”

Simple and succinct. This is what your councillors had drilled into you for when Mydei came to ask for your hand.

You draw the sharp blade over your unscarred palm, not being able to hide the wince that flashes across your features. You’ve never been wounded in a serious manner, not touched by a weapon except for those which had been strictly decorational. Although Mydei continues to do the exact opposite of what you assume, it still surprises you when his warrior hands come to steady your own, hiding the tremor of pain from the sight of the witnesses. Though your entire body remembers that this is a man you have been raised to recognize as an enemy, it inadvertently relaxes under his touch, taking comfort in it. His eyes never stray from your face as you raise your hand, taking his with it, and then obediently bleed into the presented cup in Eurypon’s hands.

The king looks like he wants to guffaw at the spectacle. Given he’s the only one aware of the full truth, you don’t think he’s taking this seriously. Mydei, though, with all the somberness of a priest, deftly changes the positions of your fingers so that now your hand cradles his own as he moves to cut his own palm. It feels oddly intimate, but you don’t draw your hands away. You recognize the act for what it is. Just as he supports and boosts his troops’ morale, Mydei has tried to uplift you. “Bride of Hesperia,” Mydei says, using the polite form of addressing you, “I take you as my wife, now and forever more.” You watch as the blood wells from the clean cut he has made, the blood pearling like a clam’s treasures. It drips as assuredly into the cup as your own.

“Children of Kremnos!” Eurypon bellows then. In comparison to his son, he has nothing to hide. The schadenfreue in his eyes is as easy to discern as the stars in the nightsky. “Take the cup and be united, in both body and soul. May your marriage be timeless and eternal.” When Mydei accepts the cup and turns away from the sight of his father, Eurypon grins at you. It looks like a monster flashing his teeth at the prey he’s caught. You shudder and turns towards Mydei.

Mydei himself looks unbothered by his father’s antics. You press your hands above his own as they carry the cup, smaller than his, but as certain as his own in their grip. You are going to do this: you are determined. It almost seems like Mydei’s headstrongness has permeated through his skin and infected you. For better or for worse, you are partners in crime now.

He keeps watching you as you take the first, strong swallow. It tastes like salt and corruption.

Your own fingers help tip the cup towards his mouth as Mydei makes his own gulp. The witnesses have begun to cheer as soon as the goblet touched Mydei’s lips. He truly is beautiful; every feature, precise an artist’s rendition, contorts as he drinks, but it does not lessen his beauty. If the mixture tastes strange to him, he certainly doesn’t comment on it. Eurypon leads the applause as you begin to trade the cup back and forth, like nursing a cup of nettle tea when you have fallen sick, and then the king leaves you to your drink to meld back into the masses. His voice booms over all else, louder even than the encouraging smack he gives an advisor, who in turn flinches.

“Eyes on me, my lady,” Mydei breaks you out of your thoughts. He hands you back the cup so you can take the last swallow, and you scrunch up your nose as you look at the last lap of liquid at the bottom of the goblet. “Nothing to turn your nose up at. The last swallow is the easiest.”

“Easy for you, perhaps,” you throw back, intending for it to sound teasing. You want to let yourself be wrapped up in the cheerful atmosphere before you turn into the scheming bride. The witnesses have already begun to mingle and laugh amongst each other. “I don’t really enjoy the thickness of blood enough to swallow this without complaint.”

Mydei raises his hands. One hand - he’s not wearing gauntlets, you think with a note of appeasement you can’t crush - he places just below your jaw, the fingers there guiding you into position. It doesn’t feel forceful. Instead, like the instinct you had given into when he had carried you off from Ladon, you let your head be tipped back, steadied by that powerful hand. You hope he doesn’t see the way your nervous swallow grips your throat. His touch doesn’t feel that revolting. In fact, it leaves a shiver of sparks in its wake. The other hand cradles the cup as he takes it from you, then lifts it to your lips. “Come now, wife,” he says, and you feel like he’s laughing at you, but not because he’s being demeaning. More like two companions, in on a shared inside joke. It makes you smile. “One more toast to your health.”

You open your mouth to receive the last of the bloody liquid, then lick your lips when the goblet is put away. You don’t miss the way Mydei’s lips curl into an actual smirk. Cocky bastard, you think. The thought lacks its usual heat. You are too busy trying to ignore the flips in your abdomen at seeing the expression. “Alright, enough of the jokes at my expense,” you announce. “I think I’d like a tour of the gardens now.”

“A tour of the gardens?” Mydei snorts.

You blink at him, slipping into the role of naivety. Tomorrow, you’ll don the mask of deception. But today, you are a bride as any other. If nothing else, then at least this will be a joy for you. Perhaps there are still small acts of rebellions you can live out against the Golden Council, small victories of your own. Honor and glory, as the Kremnoans proclaim. “Yes, exactly.”

Mydei shrugs, offering you his arm again. As if you’ve done this a thousand times before, you hold on to it. “As my wife desires,” he says, and for now, it doesn’t sound like an insult.

It almost sounds like a term of endearment.

The small garden was a place of retreat for Queen Gorgo. Her handiwork is reflected in the patterning of flowers embedded in the earth. A particular exotic flower whose name you don’t recognize was brought here after her marriage to Eurypon, in recognition of her valor. It was imported from Styxia, and is said to grow from the blood of fallen enemies. The meaning is gruesome to you, but you find comfort in the fact that it was an attempt of honoring her. Even your own mother Aeolia had sung Gorgo’s praises, comparing the queen to Hesperia, who had been a queen in her own right. You may not agree with the Kremnoan way of battle, but both your cultures recognize the necessity of warriors. The flower thus cheers you. When you ask whether you would be permitted to pluck one, Mydei goes ahead and pulls the stem from the earth, putting the flower in its entirety into your hand. With Mydei in one, and the flower in the other, you continue to weave in and out of the crowd. Here he explains the relevance of a particular statue, and here he shows you a Kremnoan inscription on the steps that lead into the garden. They are said to be magicked to light the path to victory. Concerning your inquiry into whether that’s actually true or just make-believe, Mydei shrugs and says, “Well, it did bring you here so I could become your husband”. You hurry to switch the topic, and Mydei lets you.

The night continues in that manner. Eurypon himself interjects your tour only once to shake your hand once more. This is your actual partner in crime, one you’ve made against your own will. His secretive little laughs only serve to irritate Mydei further, and when Eurypon states, “I do believe you shouldn’t tire yourself out with a stroll already, you’ve got the entire night still in front of you!”, the prince clenches his fist. As his father throws his head back to laugh, you notice that he misses Mydei’s unwilling reaction. You move to cover his hand with your own, intertwining your fingers before Eurypon can see. “You’re quite right, Your Majesty,” you tell him, not looking Mydei in the eyes. “I do believe it is time for us to retire.”

“I’m sure it is!” Eurypon guffaws. He just cannot help himself from delighting in his son’s humiliation. The court itself rearranges themselves to look away from the sight. Perhaps they don’t share their king’s taste for degradation, but they also don’t do anything to stop it. You bow and take your leave when Eurypon gives the permission, stopping you only once to remind Mydei to return to his barracks after “he’s finished” (that is underlined with His Majesty’s mocking laughter, too). You try not to let your own shame soften your spine, instead remaining rigidly upright as you lead Mydei away. This time, it’s him who turns pliant, only taking charge when you find you do not recognize the way and need him to guide you back to your apartments.

The hallways seem much spookier at night. The moonlight, like cobwebs, bathe the rooms in a mysterious aura. “I apologize,” Mydei finally speaks after a long time of walking. He hasn’t let go of your hand yet. “I’m afraid my father delights in cruelties like these. I did not mean for you to have to bear them.”

You wave the concerns away, concentrating not to stumble over the length of your gown as you begin to climb the stairs. “No need to worry over me,” you state. “I’ve had my fair share of bothersome councillors. Meaning no disrespect towards your father, my lord. I just meant to imply that this isn’t the first time I’ve been the subject of these kinds of jokes. They may be harmless, or not. It does not mean anything to me. If you were wondering, I was actually already busy conspiring a strategy to beat you with on the chessboard.”

You can’t see his face, but you’d like to imagine his lips are turned up in that almost-smile that he can’t bring himself to finish. Maybe it’s been too long for him, in the same manner as it had been for your mother. Some lose the ability to experience joy in the face of so severe grief. But his shoulders roll back, the tension in his shoulders easing. “Although I am asking myself how that can be possible without us having moved a single piece on the board, it remains irrelevant,” he shoots back, in his voice the lazy undertone of his usual arrogance. “I will deal with you as swiftly as with any enemy of Castrum Kremnos.”

You ignore the spark of fear inside your abdomen. You will learn how to live with it inside your bones, nibbling at your marrow. “Most certainly not. Prepare to be utterly crushed, Prince Mydei, because I will be the one teaching you humility.”

“Hah!” Having arrived at the door of your chambers, he quickly opens it and beckons you inside. As you finally glimpse at his face, you’ve realized that he’s looking at you with pure bemusement, none of the explosive anger he’d been carrying inside at his father’s words. You sink back down on the bedroom bench, disoriented. You hadn’t realized how important it was to you that he wouldn’t remain angry. It was your wedding night, for crying out loud. “I’d like to see you try.”

(You spend the night not only eating the prepared apple slices, their relevance explained to Mydei and accepted quickly when he had realized what it meant to you, but also your words. Sitting in that maddeningly stance that he’d been employing in the chariot, muscled legs spread wide open and arms crossed over his chest as he stared at you in triumph over the board, you had allowed yourself to cuss in front of him in the same manner as you would in front of any other friend. You’ve actually thrown a rook at him the third time he put you in check, not wanting him to speak the checkmate out loud. For a man who’s been hit in the shoulder with a chesspiece, he had only declared with the graciousness of a victorious leader that you’d lost fair and square, so he’d like some recompense for your lies now. When you pointed out that he had lied first on the dancefloor, you were rewarded with a returning throw of a bishop of his own, which had made you burst into laughter. Mydei, mystified by the sound, only stared at you, so you hastened to challenge him again.

You lost twice more. When you rose to rain your fists on his back because you were a sore loser, he had only taken your hands into his and said with a deadpan expression that your attempt at violence was pathetic. If you wanted to actually learn how to inflict pain, he promised to take you to the courtyard to drill you properly in the ways of war. You, distracted by the way how fascinating the muscles in his back had felt like, had hurried to shake your head before he could get any more ideas. Hesperia forbid if you ever picked up a weapon in earnest.)

That is how you continue to spend the remainder of the next few nights. Although you don’t beat him once, you at least get better in chess. Your mother had been evenly matched with you, so sparring across the chessboard had most times just resulted in friendly draws. With Mydei, not only is your patience heavily tested, but your nerves are, as well. It seems to amuse him to no end how quickly you are roused to anger, or to embarrassment for that manner. When he had suggested guiding your hands since you couldn’t be trusted to play accurate strategies on your own, he’d earned himself another chess-piece to the face. Your attendants have come to the stupefied realization that Mydei has begun to duck in preparation when you pick something up, and Hemera secretly asks you if you’re being violent with your husband.

“Me?” you echo, incredulous. “No, of course not. Does he look scared to you, Hemera? The man is the embodiment of blood and death.”

“Well, no, Your Highness, but it does seem puzzling, to say the least, to see him hurrying to avoid your throws … perhaps you’d like to adjust the way you treat him.”

The next night, Mydei asks you if you’ve swallowed a frog or something since you’re so quiet and reserved. You resume with throwing chess pieces.

That’s the crux of it, really. Your mother’s wish, intended to be harmless, has turned into a curse upon your existence. It’s just too friendly with Mydei. You bicker like children about the littlest of things - his hubris concerning all things in life, his pokes at your home life in Ladon, his stupid winning streak. You’ve even forgotten to keep up appearances because of how smoothly your interactions go, and you are shocked when Hemera makes the absentminded comment that your sheets don’t contain the slightest splatter of blood, so perhaps the prince is being particularly gentle with you? You hurry to tell her yes, of course he is, you are quite happy with him. You are glad when Mydei announces that same night that at least for now, the game of charades is over, as he is expected to leave for another skirmish at the Kremnoan borders in a fortnight.

You blink at him, unsure of how to respond. “Don’t return on your shield,” you say. You remember hearing them in passing, when the passerby who recognized your guard on the march to Castrum Kremnos had spoken them. You thought they were meant as a blessing, in the same manner as the people in Ladon told one another “may the light of Hesperia be with you”. Mydei, however, in response begins to sputter. You belatedly realize that he’s actually trying not to laugh.

“Do you even know the meaning of what you just said?”

You glare at him, crossing your arms in front of your chest in a protective manner. Guarding your heart. “No,” you deadpan. “Forgive me for trying to be a supportive bride who only wishes the best for you. Why yes, I would personally light the beacons of hope inside Nikador’s temples for you if you let me. Of course I don’t know! I was making an effort here.”

Mydei puts a hand to his mouth, the mirth in his eyes coloring them in the image of honey today. They are soft and warm, an expression so unusual for someone who usually has the same charm as a stone. “The proverb goes ‘either with it or on it’”, he clarifies, his tone gentling in the same manner as it did when he had told you of Gorgo. You wished you wouldn’t know him well enough to recognize it happening. You wished he wouldn’t turn that gentle tone on you. “It means that as a Kremnoan, you are either expected to return victorious or carried home as a corpse on your shield. If you’ve been defeated, you do not return to grace the city with your shame. Return victoriously with the shield, or dead on it, so you can at least be buried with dignity since you tried to return victorious.”

“Oh.” What a crude belief. There was no shame in a retreat. It could be quite tactical, really. Ladon itself was known to survive on sieges, the soldiers fleeing towards the comfort of the inner city’s walls as it steeled itself against the outside world. You feel like it would be disrespectful to voice these thoughts, though, since Mydei is still the prince of the city, and these are the values he’s been brought up with. “Then I do hope you return with your shield. I’d make an awful widow, but a beautiful one. I think I look quite nice in black.”

“I’m sure you do.” He doesn’t sound flirtative; instead, it sounds like he’s stating a fact. Distracted by what sounds like an earnest compliment, you don’t notice the way he unsheathes his dagger until he’s grabbed your hands and placed the weapon inside. As you stare at him with a quizzical look, he clarifies, “You may be a beautiful widow, but I won’t be. And I’m not sure I’ll find another bride whose anger rivals my own. So make sure you won’t make me a widower.”

The implication is clear. Mydei is wary and suspicious. Maybe not of his own men, but very clearly of those who are loyal to his scheming, brutal father. You enclose your fingers over the weapon, certain you will never be able to wield it, but taking it all the same. Perhaps it gives Mydei some kind of peace of mind if he at least knows you’re in possession of a weapon. “Hide it inside the sleeves of your chiton,” he tells you, and you do. Listening to his commands as always. Another habit you should break. “And don’t cut yourself on it. Seeing as to how self-destructive you are on the chessboard, I shudder to think what you could achieve with this.”

You make sure to stomp on his boot as hard as you can. Fully knowing that violence to him is like a kiss given, as seen in the way his mother had fought her way into his father’s heart, you turn your face away with a pout when the only response you earn is a grim smile. You have become husband and wife in earnest.

Watching his enormous frame grow smaller and smaller as he disappears, you ponder what to make of Mydei. You hadn’t expected for married to life be so … well, unbothered. It almost feels like cohabitation. You are two animals to be experimented on by your respective courts, interacting with one another like two variables. But no matter how friendly he is, you cannot let yourself forget what you are truly here for.

Under the cover of darkness, the first dove containing your first report of intelligence is let loose. You try not to think about what will happen if your spywork were to be discovered. You won’t even get the quick death you were hoping for.

You wonder if Mydei himself would become the torturer.

When Mydei returns from his campaign (victorious, of course, what did you even expect), you find yourself greeted by an entirely different sight than the one you were provided with the day you arrived here to become a bride. After having loosened another dove under the pretense of wanting to message your mother, but not meeting anyone who would dare question your decisions, you had decided to walk through the palace to at least maintain the charade of appearing busy. Like wildfire, word had quickly spread that the army had returned, and you made your way to the place where you would expect them to be. Standing still at the railing so you can have a better vantage point of the courtyard that opens up into the palace, you peer down to watch Mydei about to be crowned with a laurel signifying his success by a gaggle of children who have surrounded him. Unbecoming of his station, he bends his head as low as his seated position on the ground allows, and their tiny hands struggle to place the wreath of leaves atop his sandy-colored hair. The blond in his curls looks molten in the sunlight, framing his face like a saint in a mural.

And he’s smiling. In a way he’s never been able to with you, or anyone else for that matter, his lips are turned into a fond expression as he interacts with the children, accepting their curious hands as they pat his shoulders and flood him with a torrent of questions. The rest of the world seems to have stolen away, and Mydei’s face looks like he’s entirely swept up in their conversation, answering earnestly and promptly. The children clap in satisfaction when the answer is to their liking. When it isn’t, they hurl another torrent of questions at him. Anyone else would have lost their head at this rapid-fire way of interviewing a person, but Mydei isn’t deterred, seemingly taking the time to answer every single one properly.

You are lost in thought. This is supposed to be the warrior who turns into a beast on the battlefield, eating the hearts of men for sport. All you can think of is whether perhaps he’d delight in having children of his own, how perhaps he’d avoid his father’s methods of raising a child like a pig to slaughter. The consideration of that hurts. It actually manages to tear at your heart, when all you’ve been doing this entire time is try to guard it against Mydei’s influence.

You think of the way you eavesdropped on the Council of Elders, how quickly you had penned that treacherous letter before you could think better of it.

“Excuse me,” you call to a passing female attendant, carrying a heavy box of scrolls. She rushes to attend you almost immediately, and you wince, thinking of the weight of that box. “I apologize for disrupting your work. I was just wondering whether this was a common occurence.” And you point down at the spectacle.

The woman follows the line of sight your finger points out, then erupts into polite laughter. “Oh, yes, the prince is popular with the children of the city,” she proclaims, her voice tinged with pride. Beloved Mydeimos, you think. “He often takes some time in the week to train and spar with them. When they do exceptionally well, he rewards them appropriately, and they love to be taught by him. He’s quite patient, much like noble Krateros, who was his mentor before. And he does have quite the hand with children, doesn’t he?” She drops a wink at you, her gaze only briefly flickering to the stomach guarding your womb.

Almost like an afterthought, you move to cradle your stomach. Right, you’re supposed to be expecting soon. Or at least try to be. “He does,” you confer, your voice soft. Your eyes drift back to where Mydei still sits with the children, their childhood-softened voices detailling something to as him as he listens attentively. The attendant snickers and leaves you to it, probably busy with delivering whatever that box contained. If you’d been a cleverer spy, you would have used the opportunity to steal one of those letters, perhaps feign interest in them and see what she would reveal. But your eyes remain glued on Mydei.

When you finally descend to join the throng, the children quickly disperse to make way for you. Mydei’s eyes flicker up to meet yours, then return to rest on the children. “This is my wife,” he introduces you to them, sweeping with his gauntled hands towards you. There’s a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” that makes you smile. “Be kind, or there won’t be any water balloon fight come next morning anymore.”

“No!” comes the indignant response from one of the children, a boy that looks to be the oldest out of the three of them. “Of course we’ll be nice. My name is Antonus, but you can call me Toni!”

“And my name is Lydia! Please remember it! I like the way your hair looks!”

“Lydia!” The third child sounds horrified at Lydia’s extroverted compliment. “You can’t just go around giving people compliments about their hair! It could be rude! I apologize, Your Highness. My name is Lycaon, and I’m Lydia’s older brother.”

“Oh, that’s quite alright, Lycaon,” you assure him, voice purposefully gentle as to not startle them. You lower yourself to the ground so you are on the same eye level as them, which puts you below Mydei. He stares at you with an indecipherable look in his eyes, but you’re busy shaking each tiny hand as somberly as you can, and they giggle at being treated like political officials. “I thought it was quite nice to be complimented. And I was just going to compliment Lydia’s braids. They’re beautifully done. Did you braid them yourself?”

“Yes!” The girl beams, pleased at having her efforts recognized. Her hands go to her braids as if to reassure herself that they’re still there, then pluck up the bundle of hairs so she can show you the intricacies of it. “It wasn’t difficult, you see! It’s very easy once you get the hang of it. My mother told me this was called a fishtail braid, and they’re quite fond of it in Okhema, so I begged her to teach me and she showed me. I like popular things!”

“It looks extraordinary.” You nod earnestly. “You must teach me some other time.”

“I will!”

“Alright.” Mydei offers you his hand, and you allow yourself to be pulled up. The children surround you again as you stand, their upturned faces reminding you of puppies scrambling for attention. You almost laugh. “That’s enough attempts at stealing my wife, you rascals. I’ll see you tomorrow, without her.”

“But we’ve barely gotten to talk to her! Lydia was hogging up the entire conversation.”

The girl in question nods, quite satisfied. You move to stifle your laughter with your hand, not wanting the boys to feel mocked. “I promise I’ll come talk to you another time,” you vow, which makes their eyes light up in happiness. At Mydei’s annoyed expression, you snicker and add, “with my husband’s permission, of course. If you can convince him.”

“We will!”

“Shoo, you,” comes Mydei’s response. “We’ll see about that tomorrow.” He turns to watch them go, his gaze soft. You like that look on him. You don’t like that you like that look on him. When he faces you again, you bite your lip in an attempt to smother the well of emotions that has poured up in you. You feel like your insides might be on fire. “What, did you enjoy watching me squirm like that?” he questions you, sounding gruff.

He might actually be pouting.

You dig your teeth into your lower lip so you don’t actually laugh at him. His eyes, matching his armor, harden over as they trace the way you release the lip to put on a polite smile, the kind you use to entertain ambassadors of foreign courts. “Well, of course I do. It’s not often I get to see my mighty husband crumble at the whim of children.”

“No one’s crumbling. You might be projecting.”

“Oh, truly? Then perhaps I also imagined the conversation with the maid I had just now, where we commented upon how truly lovely your smile looked when you interacted with the children? That would be quite odd. Perhaps you ought to fetch me a doctor to help with these mental ailments.”

Mydei crosses his arms, unimpressed. He does not blush as easily as you do, nor is he perturbed by the mention of the chink in his armor you’ve found now. A well-seasoned warrior who’s trained to reveal nothing, even as he suffers. “What was that about a lovely smile?”

Ah, well, he’s got you there. Slip of the tongue.

You lean back as Mydei begins to tower menacingly over you. And it truly takes no effort. The man is a living statue, perfectly sculpted in the images of the gods, every muscle cording into the other in a flawless pattern. You can even see the veins that rise above his skin from the countless hours of training he endures. Your frame merges with his shadow, becoming part of him. You’ve never met a man as well-endowed as Mydei. “I’m sure you’ve misheard,” you tell him. A meager attempt at evasion. “In the same manner as I must have misheard you talking with the children. What an odd day of auditory and visual hallucinations.”

“I assure you I’m quite sane. Do elaborate on the judgement you’ve passed on my smile, dear wife.”

“Ah,” you breathe out shakily, stepping back. Your heart has begun to race now, steadily climbing in speed. It wishes to escape your chest and run, although this isn’t true fear. More intimidation. And maybe anticipation. Only a liar or a blind person could close their eyes to the truth; seeing as you were the former but quite inept at it, you were forced to face the fact that Mydei was the most attractive man you’ve ever laid eyes on, and that was not an exaggeration. Seeing him care for children so tenderly only seemed to accentuate that. “Oh, then, maybe it’s me who’s delirious. You must excuse me, husband, so I can lie down and recover from this tenuous ailment. I am losing all grip on sense and meaning, it seems, and my words evade me…”

“You seem to be talking just fine.” And for the first time since the night you were married to Mydei, he consciously reaches out to touch you. His hands, wrapped in the gauntlets you’ve been steadily cursing from preventing a skin-to-skin touch, come to rest on your waist, pulling you closer like an anchor rushes to meet the seaground. You fall against him without any fight. For the first time, the feeling of the sharp metal threatening to rip your skin does not feel disrespectful, but rather… enticing. You look up into a heated gaze that gives you a dizzy spell, melting down like actual gold as you become trapped in the yellow of Mydei’s eyes. “My smile, wife. What did you call it?”

“Lovely,” you exhale with great exertion. Mydei seems to delight in it.

“And you liked seeing me with the children?”

“Perhaps.”

His fingers, each tip of the gauntlet sharpened to resemble the claw of a wild animal, dig in. Not enough to hurt you. Just enough to caution. It feels exhilarating. “That’s not an answer.”

“Yes,” you hiss at him, the anger finally catching up with you now. If only you had a chesspiece … but the closing distance between you feels so achingly nice, and this is the first real human contact you’ve had since leaving Ladon. You hadn’t realized that though he looks like a beast from the distance, being in his proximity felt like residing in a safe haven. Your hands curl into fists on his chest so you don’t actually grab him out of desperation. “Yes, I liked seeing you with these children. It pleased me to see you interacting so gently and carefully with them. Does that please you?” You had meant it as a jab, to return the insult. He’s the one whose put you into this humiliating situation, after all.

His answer is as blunt as his expression. “Yes, of course it does,” he tells you, cutting to the quick. Straight and direct. You blink at him, shocked. “What man doesn’t delight in pleasing his wife?”

Oh. You are going to explode after all. Your fingers, your ever-betraying fingers, twitch inside their prison, and you clench your fists harder. You can’t seem to look away from Mydei. He, in turn, looks at you as though you are behaving stupidly for ever thinking otherwise. But this is a marriage of convenience, you think, grasping for the safety ring of that excuse. I am going to sneak and spy and deceive you. I might even kill you. This doesn’t matter to me. Your senses, immune to the logic inside your thoughts, are thrumming with desire. You are hungry for any kind of intimacy, any scrap you can get.

You stand up on the tips of your toes, slowly approaching Mydei’s face with your own. His eyes screw shut as you place your lips to his cheekbone, kissing him there. The kiss lingers as you press yourself against him, and his fingers are on your spine, and your nerves are alight with sensation. As you lean back again, his eyes have taken in the color of the burning sun. “There, that’s how much I liked it,” you tell him. You’re actually shaking, vibrating in his hold like a twitching instrument. “I am pleased. Your wife is pleased.”

Now you’re both blushing.

That night, neither of you speak as you play chess. No chess-pieces are thrown. You are staring at the board, never at each other, but the heavy erotic implication of your fixation on the other’s fingers looms above you. Something has changed within the nature of your relationship, loosened the boundaries. All the armor you’ve clung to is beginning to fall from you in a steady rhythm, and you are afraid that when you are finally as exposed as you can be, naked as the day you were born, it will divide you forever as you overturn the kingdom Mydei has fought and bled and struggled for. So you continue staring at his fingers, never once saying anything, and Mydei doesn’t say anything either.

He loses for the first time, though even you realize that this was entirely the fault of your distracting kiss in the afternoon rather than a rise in skill on your side. He hands you his king, palm up, and you try to focus on the outstretched hand as you move to take it. His fingers wrap around yours the moment you try to grab it. Startled, you let the chesspiece fall. Instead of leaving with a courteous bow as he always does, Mydei’s head drops to your hand as he kisses the fingers there, his lips somehow feeling as sharp as his gauntlet’s claws even though you knew that was just your mind playing tricks on you, and your heart expands in your chest. “For a win well-earned,” he says, relinquishing your hand. You cradle it to your chest, as if it were wounded, and he says nothing more as he stands up and leaves the room.

You are unravelling, coming undone. Hours later, the scent of his perfume still hanging in the air, you drag the palms of your hands against your eyes so you can stop thinking of the way he looked, his eyes darkening like pooling blood, his fingers possessive and strong. The bed feels hot and uncomfortable. You twist and turn until exhaustion claims you, and even then, you do not go easy; your hands tear at the memory of Mydei, dragging him into your dreams. He is all-encompassing, warm, firm against you.

Perhaps he’ll be the death of you, instead of the other way around.

(In your dreams, he tastes rather sweet than salty. Still drunk on his kisses, you never realize when the dagger comes stabbing down.)

Mydei begins to visit you more often then, as if the lure of another kiss beckons him. That was something you hadn’t once considered; that as soon as you kissed someone in earnest, the possibility of it happening again lingered over every interaction. It remains at the forefront of your thoughts, making you nervous around Mydei, and making Mydei restless in turn.

He finds you in Gorgo’s garden, enraptured in your weaving. The festival of Hyacinthia is closely approaching, a celebration that was considered to be among the most important of the Kremnoans. It was tradition to prepare a chiton as an offering to the hero who has been lost, his name swallowed by the erosion of history. The memory of his identity is long forgotten, but his honor and glory remain. To keep at least that in tact, the celebration, representational for all efforts of victory, centers around communal prayer, drinking, sharing meals, and giving offerings. As wife to the youngest prince, it would not do if you didn’t partake in it as well.

Most importantly, though, the rite of weaving a chiton feels reminiscent to you. In Ladon, too, the people offered clothing and the like to Hesperia, although for a different reason. Since Hesperia had yearned for a home to protect, and a home is where a family feeds, clothes and nurtures you, the men prepare a meal to feast entire armies for days, while the women work on preparing clothing for Hesperia to wear. Another common denominator that binds you a little tighter to Castrum Kremnos. You glide your hands over the expensive material the servants brought you, touching the stitches. You had used the familiar traditions to write another letter, this one encoded. There were men gathering under the light of moon, whispering, conspiring. You hadn’t been able to discern exactly what they were speaking about, but it bespoke dissent, dissatisfaction with the king. You imagined the Golden Council would be ravenous for a piece of information like that, scenting weakness like a shark scented blood in the water.

“I wasn’t aware you were quite this talented in weaving.”

You set the weaving fork down. The light of the morning sun is too bright already, and you are feeling tired from your menses, which is why you only shrug in response. When Mydei sits down beside you, his knee leaning against yours, you finally muster up the energy to formulate an appropriate answer. “It’s not truly a talent, but it’s better than doing nothing. And I don’t quite have the strength for anything else today. I have my menses, so you’ll sadly have to inform the Council of Elders that I do not carry an heir yet.”

“I don’t imagine that’s any of their business.” Mydei takes up the weaving fork, twirling it around his fingers. It looks beautiful to behold, the quick trick of making the wood disappear and appear again. Maybe you’ve just grown too entranced by Mydei. Now that you know what these fingers feel like on your skin, you cannot trust your sanity anymore. Or your judgement. When he looks up, his face looks entirely open, almost vulnerable. “Are you in a lot of pain? I’m not too familiar with the bodily processes during the menses, at least not in a satisfactory way. I’ve been taught what it is like and what it does, but I have no knowledge of personal experience. I’ve not grown up encountering it.”

You tuck your hands under your butt, sitting on them. You don’t trust your restraint when it comes to Mydei. You almost cradled his face just for his adorable expression for inquiring about your wellbeing. You’re a snake in his bosom, you scold yourself, but it sounds ridiculous. You’re an evil spy. Get it together. “Yes, it hurts,” you tell him. “Sometimes it hurts so badly I cannot even leave the bed without collapsing or passing out. Sometimes it’s barely noticeable. It’s different for me every month, but also different for every woman.”

Mydei stares at your hands. “How cruel of the gods, then, to test you so strenuously. But I admire with which strength you braven these trials and try to face the day. It is an admirable feat.”

That makes you stare. You don’t need any reassurance from a man, mind you, especially not concerning such a matter as this. But the way he says it, devoid of any tone and delivered completely earnest, offsets you. “Thank you. It means a lot.” You gift him a rare smile, the kind you used to reward your mother with if she made a particularly funny joke.

The way Mydei stares at that smile hits you right in the chest. As if stripped from all his usual masks and reserves, his eyes contain only fondness. He’s letting you see beneath his usual calm and collected demeanor, deeper than you’ve ever dared to peek behind his facade. Your heart is racing.

“Prince Mydeimos! Your father is asking for you.”

Mydei’s head snaps back, breaking apart the connection. You breathe out in relief, although you don’t understand why. It felt like his gaze had kept you captive, but you hadn’t been an unwilling prisoner. More so a willing participant. There was an active decision there your unconscious had madefor you. The wish to look further. To see more. To want more. As Mydei looks back at you, you carefully try to school your features in a way that doesn’t reveal those wishes of your heart. “I’m afraid I’ll have to go now,” he says, as if you hadn’t heard the servant yourself. Either way, you nod. You understand the scramble for a return to formality. The safety aspect of it. “But I’d like to see the chiton when it’s finished. It truly does look beautiful.” With this, he leans forward and drops a kiss on your cheek. More careful, less lingering than yours had been. But still decisive. Like he wanted you to feel the kiss down to the marrow inside your bones, to recognize it by his name.

You raise your hand to your cheek, watching him go. You are playing with fire, and mistaking the warmth of the flame with a safe kindling, when the reality of it is threatening to swallow you whole.

(You’re not able to join the celebrations after all, which is why you ask Hemera to bring the chiton to the marketplace, where they have decided to hold celebrations, and offer it there in your stead. She returns with the cheeky news that Mydei has cut into several conversations to point out the magnificent gown his wife had made, and to give a closer look to the intricate details in-laid in the weaving work. You complain to Hemera how that man has no sense of propriety and humility at all, but secretly, you want to explode in happiness. Of all the things Mydei can take pride in, he decides to do so in you. His weaving wife.)

(The night passes with you dozing in and out of sleep, the soft sounds of laughter and singing waking you every few hours. It’s a relaxed rhythm of consciousness and unconsciousness. Floating gently on the clouds of dreams, you notice too late that someone has come and gone out of the room. You reach for the carefully folded letter you find tucked under the plate where a slice of chocolate cake has carefully been arranged around an array of golden-sliced apples. Ladonian apples. You rub your sleep-blurred eyes, then rub them again for good measure as you come to understand what is written. Your heart feels as light as a feather.

Eat up. I asked around on what food the women in the household like to eat when they have their menses, and I have been told that chocolate is not only a craving, but also beneficial for one’s health. I made this myself, so I hope it is to your taste.

Mydei.)

A warrior, a cook, a drillmaster, a caretaker, a husband.

So many roles that you begin to associate with Mydei.

In the discovery of those roles, you come to know his favorite colors, the types of activities he favors. You even find out he has a habit of sleeping like a felled bear, after a particularly long night of learning more about the other person. With wildy pointing hands and as many adjectives as you could, you had tried to explain what living in Ladon felt like, how the waves were just the right temperature to bathe in, but still refreshing enough to cool you after a warm summer’s day. How you had learnt how to ride in the sweeping hills to the north where his campaign had led him towards the city and back to Castrum Kremnos. Tales of the father you knew, not those you’ve been told about after his death. And Mydei, in turn, rewards you with a gift of his own: his soft but demanding voice as he tries to make you understand what it had tasted like to cook a proper dish on his own, how it felt like making magic despite it being the most normal of human activities. The thrill of battle, even though its ugliness continues to scar you long after the blood has been shed and the enemy in front of you has fallen. What his mother had smelled like in his earliest memory, a disorienting perfume of earth and wood and flowers, as spicy as cinnamon. You read each other like books, flipping open pages you want to know more about, re-reading passages just to make sure what you have heard was correct. He asks you about the Ladonian summers, and you ask him about Kremnoan pomegranate wine. When he asks about the athletic games you hold every winter, you in turn want to know everything about the race they hold in Nikador’s honor, a marathon where they pass the flame of Nikador’s strife from one hand to the other until the last runner reaches the walls of Castrum Kremnos again. Neither of you tires of questions. Neither of you tires of the other’s company.

The days turn into weeks, stretching into months. You barely notice the time pass by. Twice more, the city holds celebrations, once for the summer solstice, a second time to honor Nikador’s homecoming. It’s supposed to be like his birthday, you suppose, but in actuality the Kremnoans celebrate the day they think Nikador descended from heaven to defend the city against the cruel enemy tearing down the gates. This marks the birth of both the Titan and the empire. Thrice more, Mydei goes to war.

The third time, he returns with Phainon of Aedes Elysiae.

Mydei has told you about the knight long before you came to know him, claiming him to be a ‘good-natured idiot’. Seeing as you would describe Mydei in a very similar way, you had only cocked your head at him and took him at his word. If it were otherwise, then you’d learn about it soon enough. Now the opportunity has risen for you to discover yourself what Mydei’s friend is like, and Phainon in turn is very enthusiastic about you.

“It is so good to finally meet you!” Phainon proclaims as he takes your hand and tucks it into the crook of his arm. You see the flash of annoyance in Mydei’s eyes come and go, a sight that makes you want to raise your eyebrows in curiosity. He has a very short temper, and often times can be described as quite hot-headed, but this is still a first. Perhaps because Phainon is such a close companion? “I’ve heard so much about you, friend, so it feels like I know you already. You must know how often I have complained to Mydei about the fact that he’s hidden you away like some jealous dragon guarding a treasure. Or perhaps it’s you that’s the dragon in question? I hear you are Ladonian.”

You grin at him, happy at the mention of your country. Aside from Hemera, your grip on the memories of your home continue to slip away from you. Slowly but surely, Mydei has started to replace them with Castrum Kremnos: accompanying you to the temple, showing you the city, taking you out for boat rides and street markets and food festivals. He’s even let you watch him drill the children now, although he still scolds them for trying to steal his wife away from him. You, uncertain about your relationship, have stopped interjecting a long time ago. “Why yes, Phainon, I am. But I am a dragon in a very well-kept cage, and it’s not often I get to meet Mydei’s friends. How did you manage to change his mind?”

“It was easy. Seeing as it’s his birthday soon, I simply had to come attend the celebrations. It’s the least I could do after he fought with me, even though he’s taken out a lot less monsters than I have.”

“Rubbish.” Mydei scoffs, then sidesteps around Phainon. In a quick motion, he’s tugged your arm out of the confines of Phainon’s and instead wraps it around his own, his familiar bicep fitting around your fingers like a wedding ring. The strength of his grip doesn’t elude you; if you didn’t know any better, you’d assume he was acting possesive. Phainon drops a knowing wink at you, then turns back to Mydei as he speaks again. “I am the better fighter out of the two of us. The proof lies in the countless bets you’ve already lost against me.”

“Well, but you rigged those competitions.”

“Are you a sore loser?”

“No, but I’m guessing you are. Do you not like admitting defeat when it’s necessary?”

“Ironic, since you’re the one who’s doing that right now!”

You watch them bicker back and forth like a particularly angry debate in the city hall, the sight of it curling a smile around your lips. It makes you happy to witness, but also sad. With every day that passes, the reminder that although you are learning more about Mydei, the fact that you continue to deceive him with your every breath becomes more unbearable. Hemera herself isn’t even aware of all the details. How you broke into the royal treasury to secure a report. How you listened in on assembly after assembly after assembly. The many doves you’ve had to intercept just to see who Eurypon was contacting, your fingers covered in the wounds procured in the fight against the dove’s claws. You are wracked with guilt, weighed down by the existential dread when you will be figured out.

For Mydei’s birthday, all matters of planning and organizing had fallen to you. You were in charge of his household, after all, the matron of the house, and even though there were no heirs running around yet, the servants deferred to you in the same manner as Mydei. A mother of the Kremnoans, with or without a womb carrying the newest monarch. You’ve been faithfully speeding around the palace, amusing even Mydei, who’s started to grace you with the same smiles he gives his own children, the students of battle he entertains on Sundays where is not off to make war in Eurypon’s name. The necessary nobles have been invited, the decorations prepared, and even the kitchen has started to dance to your tunes. Although you are quickly shoved out of it due to Mydei’s own hobbies being cooking and baking, you manage to fire off a series of commands concerning the rest of the cooking staff, and they fall in line immediately. Only Mydei, who thinks you’re making a big fuss out of nothing, refuses to listen to your requests, so you’ve had to make him.

(At one point, letting his stubbornness get the better of him, Mydei flipped you over his shoulder like one might carry a sack of potatoes and carried you away from the market. You’d been telling him to point at anything he would like, since his obstinacy made him insist in you not getting any gift for him at all, and Mydei, who was always of the opinion that actions spoke louder than words, had put an end to it. You remember the way you had to claw at the small of his back in an effort to stabilize yourself, and his only response had been to not excite him further before he decided he’d want you as a gift.

In an effort to turn the tide on him, you had asked whether he was actually able to handle a gift like you. You were a dragon, after all, capable of eating lions. Mydei had laughed so loud that even the people on the street had turned to watch the prince walk by as he carried his wife home. As if this were just a regular occurrence during his daily schedule. He never laughed, and not this genuinely.

“Sweetheart,” he’d said. “I was born to handle you. Otherwise I should not be permitted to call myself your husband. You’ll regret asking me that.”)

You are torn back to reality by someone’s careful fingers in your hair. They gently tug at the root of the strand to gain your attention, but also take care that it does not actually hurt you. Your gaze goes to Mydei automatically. His features are schooled into an expression of puzzlement, a singular arched eyebrow raised in question at the lack of the attention you seemed to display to their show-off. “Where did your mind wander off to? I was beginning to worry.”

“What, does my prince have to bask in my attention all the time?”

“He does.” The answer comes to him as natural as breathing, delivered with the straightest face one could imagine. Phainon, much more expressive than Mydei, gives a dramatic gasp and places his hand above his heart, then grins at you over the top of Mydei’s shoulder. That makes you laugh.

“My apologies, Your Highness. I promise you have my undivided attention. My mind was just occupied with the memories of my home, since Phainon brought up their recollection, but I promise I am here now. A flash of nostalgia, that was all.”

“My apologies,” Phainon cuts in. His face, suddenly somber, seems to reflect the exact same melancholy yours does at the thought of the sunny shores of Ladon. Perhaps he too has a home that he yearns for, but cannot return to. Mydei’s eyes too have softened at your demeanor, although more imperceptibly than Phainon’s obvious expressional change. “I did not mean to upset you, my lady. Does it ache to think of Ladon?”

You lean your head on Mydei’s shoulder. As the time has progressed, you and him have come to an understanding that seems to satisfy both your needs for intimacy. You still haven’t shared a marriage bed, but small affections like these don’t seem to matter. A kiss goodbye, a press of the fingers. Even now, as you lean your head on the strong shoulder that has become a home akin to Ladon to you, his gauntled fingers go to brush over the strands of your hair that have tumbled loose from your chignon. A slight touch, barely there. But enough for your heart to recognize that he is appreciative of your trust. “No, it is my mistake for phrasing it that way. Against all odds, my husband has made Castrum Kremnos a home for me. It feels odd to me now not to wake up in the baked sun and breathe in the dry air.” Your lips curl into a mischievous smile at your slight nudge at the climate of Castrum Kremnos, but Mydei only rolls his eyes. Not taking the bait. “But it does make one reminisce about the place of childhood. I sometimes think I miss the memory of Ladon more than I actually miss the place itself.”

You will sneak, spy, and steal everything that kingdom has to offer. And when the time is ripe, you will either cut his throat, or make way for us to do so.

As Hesperia returns home to her family, so shall you return to us with the crown prince’s head.

Phainon hastens to reassure you that he understands completely, but your strength for niceties and politeness has left you. Mydei, recognizing your mood, brings the conversation to a stop and then informs Phainon that he’ll accompany you to your chambers, then rendezvous with him at the training grounds. While the white-haired knight nods at you in understanding and continues to wave goodbye as you leave, you try to your best to reciprocate the earnest goodbye. You will see him this evening anyways, when the festivities for Mydei’s birthday are scheduled to happen. “I apologize for clouding your birthday, Mydei,” you tell the prince in question, still waving as he makes you turn the corner to begin climbing the stairs towards the wing of the palace that contains your chambers. “I am not truly upset. Just distracted. I think I’m nervous you’re not gonna like the celebration.”

Mydei, whose hand had been positioned on your lower back to propel you forward, moves to take your hand. Although he cannot intertwine his fingers with you with the heavy armor scaling his skin, the touch still makes a rush of blood quicken your pulse. He truly has a considerate heart. Not many see it, due to the way he carries himself: his Kremnoan pride, his gunpowder temperament, his prowess in battle. In part, it is exactly because Mydei wills it so that he is perceived so scarily and menacingly. But on the other hand, the truth is as clear as the Ladonian sea. He cannot hide his Gorgon heart. “You are truly senseless if you think your mood is less important to me than some celebration I hadn’t even expected. At any other time, the day would have gone by unceremoniously. It is you who has made it special.”

That makes you stop in the middle of the stairs. Mydei, who had been focussed on the long train of your garment so you wouldn’t trip and hurt yourself, stops immediately after, as attuned to you as the songbirds to the sunset. My Mydei, you think to yourself, and that is perhaps the worst lie out of every single one you’ve ever told. He will never be yours, not truly. “But it is a special day,” you insist. “And you are special to me. As much as I wanted to find a gift that will enrapture your heart, it is you who has become a true gift to me. Your attentiveness, your caring attitude even though you loathe to address it. You know, in the Hesperian faith, one can only hope to ever share even the slightest of steps Hesperia has taken. But you have given me her entire path. You have given me belonging.”

The words burst out of you before you can take them back. After all the poison your lies have inflicted on you, it feels freeing to tell the truth for once, to rid yourself of their nasty influence. Mydei’s eyes, which you have learned to interpret as surely as the signs of the gods, for once are wide open in surprise and reveal nothing. Your heart beats too quickly in your chest, and a sweat has broken out on your skin, one you are certain has nothing to do with the actual heat and everything with the way Mydei is staring at you right now. “I’m sor…” you hasten to apologize, but then you are actually falling, once again tumbling against that familiar chest. Like you’ve done so many times before.

This time, Mydei’s fingers angle your face up towards the sun, and then he’s kissing you so deeply you think you can feel it in every cell of your being.

Your very soul melts in the constraint of its vessel. You throw your arms around his neck, molding your shape to the curve of his sinful body as he bends to kiss you. He dedicates himself to the act like a devotee faithfully, rigorously throws himself into prayer: his lips, fervent and passionate, perfectly fit into your own, a heart that’s been divided slotting together to create a full. You feel so complete that you find yourself sighing into the kiss, lips parting as you do, and then your long-lost dream finally becomes true as you taste Mydei’s tongue for the very first time.

He tastes simply divine.

It seems your roles have reversed. It is you who becomes the ever-devouring beast, your blunt nails creating crescent moons on the naked skin of Mydei’s defined back. They seek purchase as his tongue learns to dance with your own, the action as unfamiliar to him as it is to you, but you are chasing after an instinct that has born under your skin and there are no lessons necessary. As surely as Nikador and Mnestia had been fated to be together, your tongue embraces Mydei’s as he explores your mouth, butterflies exploding on the tip of your tongue from the sensation. Where your fingers seek refuge from the pleasure, his own touch gentles: the hands cradling your face as he kisses you turns reverent, the fingertips of the gauntlets becoming more and more careful as he traces the shape of your jaw, your cheeks, the curve of the back of your head. You melt against Mydei as he tucks you closer, intending to close the distance as much as possible.

If you could crack your chest open and let him inside, you would.

When your lungs feel like they are going to burst and the need for air in your lungs makes you release Mydei’s lips with a shuddering gasp, his own lips continue to chase you, feathering across the skin of your face. “You idiot,” he tells you, but from his mouth, the insult feels like the most beautiful compliment you have ever received. Like a lion teasing its cub, he bites into the curve of your throat, not breaking the skin. Just nudging you, teasing you for a reaction. You squeak and angle yourself away, cocking your head to hide the skin his teeth had been grazing. There’s a lazy smile on his face that feels reminiscent of the grimaces he sports when he is trying to get under your skin, but this one is so radiant with genuine, explosive joy that you can’t help yourself but smile in return. You’ve never been this blissful, not once in your life. “Did you really think you were the only one who felt that way? Why exactly do you think I was being so pig-headed about not needing a gift from you? I’ve got everything I need already.”

“You mean me?” Your eyes are wide, hanging on to every word.

“Of course I mean you, you foolish woman.” The words are as tender as his kiss, so languid it makes your insides want to rearrange themselves in exultation. Everything, including you and your body, wants to jump in joy. Even his gauntlets seem dear to you now, the shape of them as familiar to you as the features of his face. They glide around the curve of your waist, protectively, possessively. You definitely weren’t imagining that tang of jealousy that had hung over your conversation with Phainon, and the realization makes you want to laugh. But you are still intently focussed on every word his heavenly mouth speaks. “Aren’t you a blessing from Hesperia herself? My entire life, I thought I had to build myself up like a castle, to guard the inside of it from anything and everything that could penetrate it. There was only dust, and sorrow, and darkness, and I thought it would remain that way for the rest of my life. There was dimmed candlelight, and flashes of lightning, from the single moments in my life that brought me joy… and then you came, endowed with the power of Hesperia herself, and you broke open the gates so that each and every facet of myself could feel the warmth of the sun again. You have broken me open. You have made me vulnerable.” The words feel like an accusation, but they are spoken like a caress, like his hands in your hair, on your skin, on your heart. “And I want it that way. There’s nothing you can do to change that, now or ever.”

You are brimming with emotion, shaking apart. “Wow,” you can only say. “That is the longest assortment of words you’ve ever spoken to me.”

Again, Mydei rolls his eyes, but this time there’s a curving smile underlining the sting of his actions. “There you go ruining the moment again, my lady,” he grumbles, pulling you in for another kiss. You giggle against him, then lean your head over his as he hides his face in the crook of your throat. “Does that mean you don’t like my words?”

“Oh, I like them alright. But I have something I think you’ll like even more.” He goes still in your arms. Preparing himself for the worst. You grin and place your lips to his ear, lips brushing over the sensitive cartilage. “Prince Mydeimos, son of Gorgo, I have given you my heart. I love you.”

(Do you remember his claim of him being born to handle you? Yeah, me too.)

…

(He never does make it back to meet Phainon for sparring before the celebration. You, however, learn exactly how Mydei feels like under all that armor, and for ruining his romantic speech, you learn to appreciate every single wag of his tongue, for better or for worse. You don’t think you’ve ever wept that much from simple bodily pleasure; how your soul seemed to separate from your body and comes apart on his tongue as Mydei feasted on his birthday present early. You also find out the exact reason why he always has to spread his legs so far to sit comfortably: you are spread open for that exact same reason, split open by it. You never knew how much the borders of agony and pleasure could seem to blur, and even though you cannot walk for a while right after, you don’t regret a single thing. Mydei, lounging on your marriage bed, his face cradled by his own hand as he rests his head on it, seems bemused by your attempt to stand, and you end up falling into his arms again pretty soon.

You do it all over again. And again. And again.

Turns out you two like the consummation part of a marriage much more than you would have thought.)

(Phainon, of course, spends the afternoon gossiping with an attendant he always visits in the kitchens when he visits the Kremnoan palace. He snickers at the attendant’s shocked expression as he recounts the gloomy look on Mydei’s face when Phainon had tried to make him jealous on purpose. He’s gotten sick of Mydei’s endless pining after you during campaigns, and his ears have started bleeding from it, so he was determined to make that visit to Castrum Kremnos count. This marriage was going to become real, damn it, or he would never be able to call himself ‘Phainon, the talented matchmaker’ again.)

Hours later, the attendants are invited in and treated to the sight of you guys still naked in bed. They have the common decency to avert their eyes, a feat that Mydei hasn’t been blessed with. With his arms behind his head, leaning back against the headboard with his entire chest exposed down to the muscled curve that is feathered with a happy trail you’ve found a happy ending to, he watches shamelessly as Hemera detaches from the group of attendants to help you up. You are naked still, your throat covered in the evidence of your coupling, some bruises on your thighs leaving remnants of the clawed hands that had kept you open until you had positively crushed Mydei’s head between them. “Good evening, Hemera,” he says then, voice as dry as the desert.

Your poor lady’s maid nervously turns her head to the ceiling as she robes you, fully intent on not breaking any rules of propriety. “Good evening, Your Highness.”

“Don’t mind him, Hemera. He has no manners.”

“I thought that was the part you most liked about me. It certainly sounded like it just an hour ago.”

“Mydei!”

He remains as he is while the servants surround you and prepare you for the birthday celebrations. When you look like a fully polished jewel, sparkling enough that you could be in-laid in the Kremnoan queen’s crown, you dismiss everyone but Hemera and sit down next to Mydei as you plead for her to prepare your hair. Mydei, sitting up, careful to keep himself covered for the most part, reaches for your hands and presses them to his lips. “Are you excited?” he asks, meaning the party.

You shrug minutely, careful not to disrupt Hemera’s ministrations behind you as she weaves the comb through your hair. Mydei hands her a strand of hair dangling in front of your eyes, and she quickly incorporates it in the braid she’s begun. “I guess I am. It’s the first birthday I’ve ever celebrated with you,” you answer, grinning at him. He returns the smile, tentative but real.

In truth, there’s been a cold spot inside your stomach that you’ve been nursing for almost a month now.

When they asked you for Mydei’s head, you had ripped the letter to shreds before you could think otherwise about it. They hadn’t even bothered sending a coded letter through your mother: this missive came straight from the Golden Council itself, the scrawls so angrily imprinted onto the letter that it tore through the creamy paper in some spots. You had expected a reaction like this when your intelligence grew scarcer and scarcer. Eurypon was not your king, so you hadn’t cared about spying on him. But the longer you remained in Castrum Kremnos, the more you realized that he was not even the people’s king. There was a deep-reaching unhappiness etched into the souls of the people here, dividing them in their soul and loyalty. When they turned their souls towards Mydei, that unhappiness turned into hope. You couldn’t find it in yourself to crush that hope, remaining Atlaion’s daughter whether you wanted to or not - so you tore your metaphoric spy’s teeth out, the ones the Golden Council had been filing for more than a decade, and turned quiet as the grave. What little information slipped from your fingers was always in dismissal of Eurypon, never Mydei himself.

But the Golden Council had never wanted Eurypon. They wanted Castrum Kremnos.

All your life, they had been a roaring group of fools pretending to be dragons, exerting their influence over both you and your mother. Now they had grown silent. It scared you more than anything you’ve ever endured in your life, because your thoughts keep circling back to your mother, the way her letters told you not to back down from your courage, to not regret anything. How those letters had ceased. How they’d been replaced by that one, unforgiving order.

“Will you teach me how to pin her hair up, Hemera?”

You look up just in time to see Hemera hand Mydei the hairpins, the ends of the pins adorned with both lions and dragons, an effort to incorporate both the cultures that have moved and changed you. Glittering red and golden, she gently lifts up your hair and tucks it in place in mock fashion of how Mydei will have to do it, and your heart lurches at the concentration in his eyes, the determination to do this right. His fingers are light in your hair, lighter even than your feather heart, and when your hair has been affixed, his fingers remain. Hemera quickly stands up and leaves the room, and Mydei bends towards you to kiss you one last time, hot and slow and mind-curdling. Speaking the words directly against your lips, straight into the very core of your existence where his name has begun to imprint itself over the shape of your soul, he whispers, “You are more beautiful than anything this world has to offer.”

And because he doesn’t want to ruin your prepared, polished appearance, he lets himself be pushed down to be ruined just one last time before he has to go get ready himself.

The memory of the bedroom haziness still hangs over you as you make your way to the ballroom, but there’s a certain sweetness, as well, a pep in your step and a giggle in your mouth. Mydei pinches at your waist and cheeks, but he can’t find himself to be bothered by your quiet happiness, not when this is the prettiest birthday celebration he’s ever had, not went you went out of your way to prepare his favorite dessert even though you never knew how to cook. The honey-cakes are slightly too doughy, and the cream a little bit too sugary, but he scarves it down like it’s his last meal before the expected execution. Just to see that prideful look in your eyes, to reward your efforts in the only way he can.

You watch him socialize with military officials you don’t recognize, the expression of joy permanently etched into your face now. You just can’t get rid of it. Phainon, whose decided to glue himself to your side while the crown princes mingles with potential enemies and rubs shoulders with potential allies, raises a glass for you to clink yours to. “Seems like you two finally got down and dirty. Thank god. I was getting real sick of his lovelorn puppy behavior.”

“Oh, shut up.” The pearling laughter his joke illicits from your mouth makes Mydei turn and look for just a second, his own mouth twitching into that almost-smile you had to grow accustomed to at the beginning of your marriage and now only have grown fond of. “I know you since, like, yesterday. I feel like there has to be a certain passage of time before you get to comment on my sex life.”

“Yesterday? My dear, I feel as though we’re best friends already. He’s only been talking my ear off all summer long about you!”

“You exaggerate, I’m sure. Mydei? Talking?”

Phainon crosses his arms, pouting at your disbelief. “Like you wouldn’t believe. But it was always this angry kind of groveling, like he wanted to talk about you and didn’t at the same time because he never talks this much. I barely got in a word myself. And I love talking!”

“I can tell.” You knock your shoulder against his, grinning at him like you would at a brother. Perhaps in another life, he would have been. In a life where the black tide didn’t threaten families and countries whole, swallowing them without leaving a trace. But in this one, you make sure to make him feel as at home as Mydei did, even though he disliked admitting that he did. Your eyes go back to your husband in question, having lost sight of him during your chatter with Phainon. Not seeing him anymore, you scan the crowd for his pretty face.

And then lose grip of your glass.

You can barely hear the sound of Phainon’s complaint, the way it transforms into worried inquiries. The whole world has fallen away. If you listen closely, it even sounds like your heart has stopped in its chest, like a clock winding down, dying, freezing time. They’d stopped all the clocks in the palace when they found Atlaion dead: stabbed by the same dagger you were staring at right now.

You’d recognize that dagger ANYWHERE.

You break into a sprint. At your shoulder, without you having noticed, Phainon has pressed a worried hand to try and break your trance. You shake the hand off, its touch feeling as intangible as dream, swallowed whole by the nightmare in front of you. You dig your way through the crowd, losing sight of the dagger, not once, but twice. And then you see Mydei’s back - the wide, strong back that only his soldiers saw as he protected them and guided them towards victory, the back that was lined in the illumination of the future of Castrum Kremnos.

The same back a fellow Kremnoan would never stab, taught as they were that a backstabber is a coward, never a true warrior.

You should scream, direct Mydei’s attention towards you, but the fear keeps your tongue captive. Some animal instinct clawing its way out of your brain tells you that you need to guard that back, the wide expanse of it specifically, you NEED TO. You push through a mass of bodies, reuniting with the sight of that dagger, all breath in your lungs evaporating like the dew in the morning sun.

You think you see the dragon guarding the apple tree open its mouth wide, ready to incinerate you for your sins. You’ll be too late. You won’t reach him. You won’t.

(Mydeimos, my Mydeimos - I always knew I was going to die for you. I just didn’t realize how relieving it would feel. Better me than you. Better me.)

You slam against the one person in your life you can never betray, that strong body that’s been holding you up this entire time without complaint while you were struggling not to drown. The dagger goes in, scarily deep in, blighting your nerves. You think you’ve been struck by lightning, the way the agony sears your nervous system alive. Perhaps it actually was Hesperia herself coming to burn you for your treason. It tears and tears, cutting you free like a puppet on strings, and then you finally lose all grip on reality, returning to the darkness.

You wonder if this is how your father had felt.

Gentle Atlaion, dragon-born Atlaion, soft as the golden dragon’s wings. Unfit for the throne. Unfit for the Sunlit Garden.

You are not in the throne room, but somewhere else entirely. This is not your ocean. But as your feet sink into the surf, you’re not sure whether it matters. Like a tree, your roots reach deeper than the earth, deeper even than anything you’ve ever been taught.

And your father is here.

Atlaion of the House Hesperia looks much younger than the father you came to knew. His face is not yet burdened by worry lines, his spine more straight than ever. This Atlaion hasn’t learned how to bend yet. This Atlaion wasn’t aware what it meant to balance himself on a throne.

He is blissfully, unworriedly, completely happy.

“They came for her, you know,” he tells you. He never turns his face from Aeolia, not once. She is all he sees. Her laughter is louder even than the waves itself, and as you cock your head to take in the sight, you begin to realize what she looks like. Like Hesperia herself has come to level the earth again. Love personified. “I’ve always known my council consisted of traitors. But this was my father’s throne, and his father’s before him, and I thought that as long as we remained in Hesperia’s light, we would be able to vanquish the threat together. Aeolia supported me, and guided me, and protected me. She wasn’t a queen consort. She was my queen. That’s why I ruled together with her, instead of over her. I thought it would please Hesperia, too, if she knew why I had done it. I thought I could keep them in line.”

“Papa,” you whisper, the word like sand in the wind. Drifting apart without ever taking shape. Weightless in the echoes of time. He smiles at the sound, mellow and bittersweet, like the word pleases him.

“That, too, I thought would still their hands. I was too foolish to realize that their hatred was not for the throne itself, but for the competent women that would replace them atop it. That council may have called itself as golden as Hesperia’s apple itself, but the inside of it was rotten to the core, failing at its function long before consumption. Do you understand, daughter? It’s not your fault.”

“But they tried to kill him, Papa.” Your voice cracks. After all this time of wishing you’d be able to open your chest like a closet so the entire world could see the truth, the key in its lock turns to reveal your heart whole. It’s scabrous and poison-riddled and dead, but it beats despite it all, beats for the lion-haired prince with the lamb heart. “If I had recognized your assassin, if I had done away with the council, they’d never have supped themselves on an authority that was never theirs to begin with.”

“My dear daughter.” Although unwillingly, Atlaion’s eyes leave Aeolia to her dance in the ocean. You cannot bring yourself to face your father, instead concentrating on the graceful figure sweeping in the water, cutting through the sea. The dances of her childhood she never got to teach you. “We may wish to become Hesperia’s image, but we should not allow ourselves to become blasphemous in our wishes. Do you truly think you could become as omniscient as a god? Do you think that is the purpose of humanity? Why have them create humanity in the first place, then?”

Your lips crack into an unwilling smile, the begrudging kind he always used to laugh at when your father had still been your teacher and guide. Clever Atlaion, caring Atlaion. “I’m sure you’re going to tell me. You always knew better, father.”

When he laughs, he sounds as if he never died in the first place. The sound is sweet and clear as a bell, like the first bite of a Hesperian apple, comforting and nurturing both. The wind rises, blurring the sight of both your parents, like the gently fading edges of a photograph. You wish to brush your fingers over it just once, before the memory drifts away and leaves you behind. Father, father. “My sweet daughter,” he says. “Of all the things I’ve taught you, I’d have imagined this was the one your mother and I imparted the best. Fate has brought you to the one your heart calls home, after all. Does it matter how that has happened, or what obstacles it will bring? Isn’t it the nature of humanity that has sustained you all this time?”

On the third day of Mydei’s vigil at your bedside, the guards at the gate of the palace bring him new tidings. If he’d been a tyrant like his father, he’d have sent them away with a head lesser. Murder now, ask later. But Eurypon is rotting in an unmarked grave, and Mydei is not his father, so he tells them to come in and keep their distance from your comatose body.

“If it’s another emissary from any country, send them away. I haven’t decided on Castrum Kremnos’ fate yet. If it’s a Chrysos Heir, then have them sit in the reception room in the east wing and tell them I’ll join them shortly.”

“Your Majesty,” the left guard, who looks less nervous than his compatriot, speaks up. His voice is more betraying than his face. Though he looks more composed, his words are shaky. “You don’t understand. It’s the queen’s mother.”

He stares at both guards, hard. They stare back. When no one laughs or slaps their knee, and Mydei does not get the excuse to beat them for their lies, he presses your hand one last time before he rises to stand. “Have Hemera come and sit with the queen in my absence,” he orders the soldier that’s been standing guard in the room. The man nods and silently slips outside to search for the lady’s maid in question. Then, with a sigh, Mydei turns back to the gate guards. “Alright. Have her brought to the reception room.”

To leave you feels as painful as to watch you be stabbed again. He can’t erase the image, no matter how hard he tries. It’s burned on the back of his eyelids, tattooed on every fold of his brain. The way the blood had drained your face immediately, a surefire sign of deadly blood loss. Your immediate collapse to the ground, the coldness of your limbs as he caught you before your head could crush against the unforgiving marble stone. For one scarily long minute that might have been the worst minute of his life, you had ceased breathing, your pulse giving way to silence. With the help of the healer, he’d been able to resuscitate you, but then the panic was clouding his brain and he’d begun yelling and punching the wall, stabbing the next pillow he came across. He’d never been this afraid in his life, not once, not even when the cold waters of the river of souls had closed over him. At least then, the spirits’ soothing whispers had told him he wasn’t alone, and though they were dead and gone, they still had been able to guide him to safety.

As he looks at your pinched, deathly pale face, he fears to be alone for the rest of his life. The loss of you will be the one thing he will never be able to overcome.

He feels the distance growing between the two of you like an invisible string drawn taut. It doesn’t hurt as much as watching you rescued from the brink of death did, but it hurts nonetheless. At least he’d have some good news if you woke up. When you woke up. His traitorous word choice in thoughts has him gasping for air, clenching at his chest, and he momentarily stops in the hallway to try to remember how to breathe.

When you wake up. When you wake up. When you wake up.

Your mother looks just as destroyed as he does. At least here now sits someone who shares his mental state, who looks as half-crazed as the image in the mirror. Her emerald-green eyes, which had sparked with mirth and intelligence when she first introduced him to you, have grown dead, their light diminished. “I assume it’s King Mydeimos now,” is all she says in greeting. Although it would be considered disrespectful in any other setting, she remains seated. Mydei, who couldn’t give less of a shit about formalities at the moment, remembering the way they used to give you comfort, settles in the chair. “Do I offer congratulations?”

“I suppose you should. Your Golden Council’s spying and scheming presented the golden opportunity for me to finally rise up against my father and take my place on the throne.”

Mydei watches as the words wash over her and result in nothing. Not a single muscle in her face twitched at the knowledge that he was aware of her country’s treason, and what it might mean for her that she delivered herself right into the Kremnoan justice’s hands. “So you knew what she was,” your mother croaks, the only sign of her fear. For you. Not even for her. “And you married her all the same? Why?”

“My hands were bound. I understood that this was my father’s way of leashing me, and it worked.”

“But she would have been fair game the second you knew about her spywork. You could have exposed him in front of the Council of Elders. The marriage would have been nullified then. And I knew you did not consummate it; she told me. So I ask you, son of Gorgo… Why?”

Yes, why?

He remembers your small, fear-stricken face when he had come to ask for your hand. The many times he’d left the barracks to come visit you and then stopped in front of your door due to the sound of heartbreakingly grief-stricken sobs, imagining the way you were falling apart and building yourself up every night. The letters he’d intercepted, the crude refusal you’d dished out to your mother, the woman you might worship more than even Hesperia herself. I love him. I choose him.

He thinks of the happiness you’ve returned to his life with just a simple joke, a small gift, an affectionate action here and there. The way you listened and listened and listened. Never judging. Always curious for more. The way you told stories, hands sweeping and eyes alight. Your habit of knocking into doors and objects when you try to sneak up on him.

Your face, as bright as the sun in the sky.

“You know,” Mydei finds himself speaking. “I don’t really care if you believe this. If you’ve even heard about the Chrysos Heirs. But the gods, in their mercy as my father turned me over to the depths of the river of souls, have made me immortal. I can die, of course, but every time I do, I find myself back on the shores of Styxia, the river of spirits at my back, the safe haven of the land in front of me. I’ve braved that river so many times, I could dig my way out of it eyes closed. And I was always searching for something. In the beginning, I think it was for Castrum Kremnos. When my mother died, I prayed for a reunion, always hoping to see her face at least once as I died. But something changed. While I was drowning, I began to hear your daughter’s voice on the shore. Singing so unbelievably loud, you’d never believe those tiny lungs were even capable of breathing those kinds of melodies. The spirits sighed and quietened, and the waves themselves seemed to gather a path, guiding me back home. To her. Always to her. I stopped looking for the light guiding me towards Styxia and have started chasing after the sound of her songs. She is my home. I love her.”

Your mother gapes at him, painted in the colors of disbelief. In a slightly comical way, her mouth has even dropped open. “Hesperia’s light,” she whispers, the closest thing to cussing she possesses. “So she chose you. And you chose her.”

“I’d choose her in every life time,” Mydei shoots back. It sounds like a vow, but it feels more significant to him. You are the manifest of his existence. “It doesn’t matter to me what she did. She stayed. She saved my life. I wasn’t in any real danger, of course, but she didn’t know that. For that, I’d die a thousand times over.”

In the end, Mydei does not pass any judgement at all. His father is dead, the country is his, and his people are waiting for his call. He doesn’t even know if they will be able to remain here, not if the black tide continues to rise. It has already swallowed Ladon whole, the city immortalized in your memory now forever. And Aeolia is his mother-in-law. After having lost a mother already, he does not want to lose the chance to connect with another. Nor does he want to be responsible for taking away yours.

At the moment, her hand is intertwined with yours, her gaze fixed on your sleeping face. The dream of recovery. The illusion of return. She fears, just as much as him, that the river of souls will claim you. But then Aeolia raises her hand to place it on his arm, the touch so motherly that he allows himself, for a brief moment, to feel like a son again. “You are a good man, Mydeimos,” she says, sounding like her daughter. In the echoes of her tone, he can only find you. “My daughter has proven that to me now. And it is the pride of any mother to have her child follow in a goddess’ footsteps.”

Mydei swallows his tears. “She is the only faith in my life.”

In the past, your father guards Ladon as steadfastly as he guards you, his gentle smile watching as you grow into your throne. In the future, a prophecy in Okhema is about to be fulfilled as you and Mydei try to protect your Kremnoan people, the only children you will ever have.

But in the present, the sun has risen, the wind is cool on your skin, and Mydei is here.

Breathing in too deeply hurts. Breathing in too shallowly hurts, as well. Everything hurts. But what hurts the most is how Mydei’s hot tears splash over your hand, searing into the skin there. For years after this, long after the threat of the titans has been vanquished and you are the only one holding on to the hope that your husband will return home, you will remember what this feels like. Swear that those tears will actually have brand-marked you. Point out the shape of the drops as they scattered over your skin, like pearls skimming over the ocean’s surface.

You smile, tired from the pain, tired from all the lying. “I’m guessing I’m in trouble?”

“So much trouble.” His voice comes out a growl.

You want to laugh, but the sound dies in your chest, transforming into a cry. Mydei moves too steady you, but then shrinks back trom it; the fear in his eyes hurts, too, so you make yourself go still, not wanting him to worry anymore. “Sorry,” you whisper. “I’m fine. Where were we?”

“I was going to kill you for scaring me that badly, actually.”

“Wouldn’t that be counterproductive, after I just took a knife to the back for you?”

Mydei glowers at you. The anger in his eyes is stifling, murderous and real. But it’s not directed at you, not really. All he has for you inside his eyes is love. It looks the same as that dream you had of your father, his gaze on Aeolia, the one you cannot tell whether it was a vision or a memory or something else entirely. “You’re awful,” he says. “An awful spy and awful bride and awful person. I thought I was going to lose you forever. The thought was so crushing I thought I was going to die right alongside you in that bed.”

“But you love me?” you try. The joke, like always, doesn’t fly. It seems to whoosh right over Mydei’s head.

But then his hand is in your hair, gently disentangling the knots. He looks as if he is holding the most precious treasure. “Yes,” Mydei confirms. “I love you. Titans help me, I love you more than anything.”

“Even more than your wish to kill me?”

“Even more than that.”

“Enough to give me a healing kiss?”

“Don’t get too over-hasty.”

That makes you laugh, and this time, you cannot hold it back. It resounds in your chest, a multi-melodied symphony of pain, and sorrow, and endurance, and joy, and love. It almost makes the gentle scolding he gives you worth it as your husband leans over to kiss your forehead, each kiss separated by another warning of how you were never going to do that again, the next kiss on your nose bespeaking how he’s going to tie you up and sit on you so that you’ll stop running head-first into danger, and then his lips are on your mouth and no one’s saying anything at all because your soul has never felt this whole and it’s singing to Mydei’s in enough words for the both of you.

The future may divide you, but this moment is entirely yours.

Hesperia sings, lighting the way home. Your love, the lighthouse on the sea, continues to glow, now and forever, even when the black tide rises against Okhema.

But that is a tale for another day.

[veneralice]

so many people liking my writing but no one interacting with me in my inbox </3 pspspspsps guys don’t be shy……. anon is on………….. Yap 2 me i will listen pinky promise…..

[veneralice]

chat how would we feel about a mydei fic asking for a friend haha totally not obsessed with him rn… totally not…::::::::::;;::::;

[veneralice]

art credit to @Qianbenshan on X ! all credit to the artist!

divider credit to @cafekitsune ! all credit to the original creator of the divider!

the ocean’s call / rafayel (m.)

rafayel just thought it would be funny to lead the fisher’s daughter astray by crowning her in water and blood - he’s killed so many of rafayel’s brethren, after all. if only he had known how hard it is to resist the desire of something you cannot have. (14.7k words)

content/content warnings: reader as the daughter of a fisher who hunts mermaids for their caviar (yum), reader and father’s relationship is not physically abusive but perhaps emotionally idk how to properly describe but i don’t want to leave it untagged, reader probably has some daddy issues (and i don’t mean that in the mocking way but in a the-author-has-daddy-issues-and-this-shit-is-not-funny-or-sexy kind of way), some body-horror detailing caviar harvesting, stealing star wars names for my background characters because i just finished andor and i’m not good at naming stuff, oral sex (male receiving), body worship (fem. receiving), switch!rafayel who seems submissive at first but in reality is just a crybaby dom, animalistic behavior (rafayel’s shark ass bites reader), some flesh-eating thoughts on rafayel’s behalf because you give him cuteness aggression, no actual cannibalism (wouldn’t that be funny) (i love yellowjackets), some overstimulation (both receiving) if you squint, idk . Idk i just kinda went crazy over this . who even wrote this

You were nine when your father took the joy out of the sea for you.

Perhaps you should start this off differently. You should remember the way it was a perfect summer’s day, and you had just finished your very first day of tutelage under the shrine maiden in Whalefall City. Your mother, whose rejection of that idea had been whittled down like a wooden arrow for the entire spring, had finally relented and allowed you to pursue a shrine maiden’s education. One day, it would be her daughter calling her to prayer and not the sneer-faced woman who currently held the title of ‘seasinger’. It wasn’t because your household was necessarily non-religious, or averse to the faith practiced in the city.

It’s just that your father spits on the holy city’s faith by partaking in the hunt of mermaids, just for sport, just for fun, just because he can.

Before that magical summer, you had never once been able to affix a picture to that. You knew your father was a talented fisher who was able to draw out even the most difficult of oceanic bounties, and he always made sure your family was fed. But you were a daughter, you see, a fact your father always had secretly mourned no matter how much it hurt your mother (“How I have groveled and suffered to deliver you to this earth!”), and thus you had never been taken with on the boat to hunt the mermaids littering the shores of Whalefall City.

You’ve seen them. It’s impossible not to. They dive in elegant curves, as whorling as the waves, a star-speckled shadow across the water before they disappear in its depth. The colors of the rainbow, the shimmer of the night-sky in their tails. More myth than real life. More dream than reality. Yet still here, sharing these waters with the citizens of the city. Lurking. Hiding. Surviving.

As per your own tradition, you bend down at the curve of the cliffpath you always took towards the sea and scoop up the wild-growing oceanvales. This was something you never once had told anyone about, and it was a daily routine you never neglected, feeling as though the day would remain incomplete if you didn't. This was not part of the religious teachings one received in the halls of the Dolphin's Hall, but it was a part of you, just as the ocean was. In the end, everything returns to salt. You throw the oceansvale into the waves and watch as the petals dissolve above the water's surface, as if sending a paper lantern off to carry your wishes.

In that moment, on the edge of you casting one last look at the horizon and in the turn of your heel to begin the climb back home, a blue-haired, child-like head bobs above the waves. You almost miss it, absentminded as you are, but you do see it: the small hand, barely differing to your own human one, furling around the petals and taking them with it as both hand and mermaid disappear. It makes you smile, almost making it worth it; as if this routine had finally been acknowledged for what it was. You wondered if mermaids and humans could be friends.

You couldn't have known how decisively crushing your father's answer would be.

The door is already open when you come home. An ominous sign, a warning for yet to come. The door was never left open, especially not on days where your father is supposed to take to the sea so he can partake in his favorite illegal dealing. There's no specific law condemning the prizing of roe out of a mermaid's womb, but it isn't looked upon with favor, either. The scriptures had always foretold of a deep unity between earth and sea, between moving plates and shaking waves, between mineral and salt. To turn your back on the ocean's creatures was to turn your back on the seasinger's preachings. That does not erase the hunger for their caviar, though, and the black market flourishes. And as long as the black market for caviar flourishes, your father refuses to cut into his own pockets, especially now, when the taxes in the city become more unforgiving and unforgiving with the preparations for the festival that is to be celebrated in just a moon's turn.

Your father is standing just beyond the door, in the dimly-lit hallway leading to the comfort of your mother's kitchen. His face is suffused with blood, red with anger, a fact that makes you duck your head in alarm, but is in vain. As soon as he sees you, your father's hand grips your frail shoulder and turns you toward him, his face the shadowed grimace of a man annoyed. "Did I not tell you to not go near that cliff time and time again?" he chastizes. For the moment, he holds himself back; your mother has drawn herself up in preparation of your defense, and her face mirrors the storm clouds you perceived in your father's grimace. But you can feel the need for him to shout rise steadily, like a tsunami beginning to swallow you whole. You lower your gaze to the ground, not knowing what to say. When you don't answer, your father finally shakes you and barks out, "Speak, girl! If it hadn't been for old Luthen pointing you out to me, I would have never found out about this, and then we'd be fishing out your bones out of that damned cove instead of a good piece of salmon for dinner!"

"Oh, leave it!" Your mother's hands shake off your father's threatening grip, and you allow yourself to breathe again. At your mother's chest, the world is safe. There are no scary men or scary bed-time stories about the unruly ocean. Instead, the scent of cinnamon and warm wood wraps you in its’ embrace, and you hide your face in the crook of your mother’s arm as she glares at your father. “She’s gonna be a seasinger, this girl is, and I won’t have you interfering with it. We all agreed to listen to her wishes. She’s not gonna be a fisher like you, Galen!”

“Well, I sure hope she won’t, because she does not heed a single warning I’ve ever taught her about it! Those mermaids don’t exactly gallop into my nets of their own free will, they’re dangerous!”

“You’ve made your point, now shove off.” Your mother glides her hand over the curve of your head. Protective, caring. Her presence is the calming lighthouse in the stormy seas, guiding you home, and although your father is still enraged, you believe the worst to be over. You are wrapped up in a childhood kingdom that is still entranced with the unknown, the beckoning of the deep, the ocean’s call. No one has taught you how to drown yet.

Not yet. But someone will, now.

Your father, your only father. You remember him tying knots in all ur robes, the way he made you laugh when swinging you up into the skies, up, up, and beyond. His fingers digging into the sides of your tummy to tickle the giggles out of you, claiming the sound was so joyous that all on earth and in the sea should rejoice in it. But you also remember the way his fingers dug into the soft of your flesh, yelling at your fingers bitten down to the quick, belittling you for your fear. The sneer on his face when he couldn’t fathom where your stupidity came from. The stormy eyes. This was the man who had never been taught better on how to love his family, and he won’t change for you, not for your mother or anyone else.

So when he encircles your wrist with his manacle-like fingers, you already know you’d been hoping for a reprieve and now the guillotine came swinging down to behead you. Your mother’s startled voice speaks up, but you cannot even begin to decipher the words, because your father is already shouting, “I don’t want to hear it, not from you, not when it’s your fault she’s turned out this soft and naive! If she wants to be a seasinger so badly, I’ll teach her what it means to sing into the sea!”

Her panicked voice is swallowed by the wind as your father begins to tug you down the pebbled path winding down from your house into the city, but you quickly turn off-path as your father begins to steer you towards the ocean. The salt is in your eyes and in your mouth, and you cannot be sure if the sharpness on your tongue is the rain, your tears or the taste of pure fear. As you angle up your head to look at the house one last time, your mother stands in the door, looking incredibly forlorn. You understand that look very well: that although your father is an incredibly hotheaded, temperamental man, the fact still remains that his little sport paints a target on the fishers’ backs.

It is time to stop romanticizing the mermaids now.

It’s the only thing you can think of as they claw the mermaid to ship. The words repeat over and over in your head, like the sharp stones thrown against the waves as the soft water makes them yield. They become round and pliant, your thoughts, running together in a string as you stare at the sight and try not to look. You don’t want to see. You don’t want to see. But they make you: Old Luthen (you’d spit on the name if you could) has his hands settled on your shoulders, keeping you turned towards the sight of your father and his shipmates heaving the gods’ dearest creation on deck. You try to see through the face, make yourself not acknowledge it, as if it could help if you pretend not to take note of her face. But she looks back at you, straight on. Her pearlescent eyes zero in on the way old Luthen has his fingers carved into your shoulders, the way he could crush and grind you down like brittle bones if you resist. And she understands: you are as trapped as she is. It is a terrible thing, this understanding that passes between the two of you, and you wish it hadn’t happened, wish she would have growled and screamed at you as she did at her captors.

The understanding flees her eyes pretty quickly when they begin to carve her out like a pig on a spit.

It’s terrible. The fear on your tongue turns into bile, and then you find yourself swallowing back vomit, not trusting yourself to throw up when your father was still intent on punishing you. The knife glides into the soft-scaled tail way too easily, giving way to a glittering, human-like nightmare. You’ve seen the way clams guard their precious pearls, the almost pretty membrane surrounding them to keep them safe. The translucency of it made it a beautiful wonder to behold, but there’s nothing beautiful about this, not when they’re clawing at the mermaid’s insides as if they were the bothersome strings of a spider’s web. The mermaid thrashes and screams, and then the bloodcurdling noise coming out of her mouth is unrecognizable, because they begin to serrate at the edges of her wound to drive into the hard scales surrounding her womb. To get everything, y’know, there’s people paying a pretty penny for their organs. S’pposed to have miracle healing properties. You swallow and swallow and swallow, but when they begin to tear at the flesh that was supposed to keep her roe safe, and the guts begin to speckle your feet, you find your way out of Luthen’s prison-hold and throw up right over the side of the ship. You can still hear her sobs, despite the sound of Luthen’s laughter - can’t stomach the fisher’s life, can she, your daughter? - and more deafeningly so, you can hear how loud the silence is in your ears when she finally quietens down, when she returns to the sea, the only burial the men give her. One last time, you’re looking at her as she bobs in the waves, her helpless arms streaked with wounds she suffered as she strained against the nets and knives. You think of those arms, and her ocean eyes, the way they had looked like a nightmare come true and yet the gaze they contained had been softer than any look your father had ever given you. Maternal, almost.

You close your eyes and think of your own mother. You guard that image of her, imprint it on the back of your eyes as your father settles his hand on the top of your head. Wanting to slip back into the role of the nurturing, caring father. Your fists clench and unclench at your sides. “It’s not a pretty thing, girl,” he says, and it’s supposed to sound soothing. Instead, it feels like he’s stabbing your ears with the same knife he used to gut her womb with. “They know what we’re capable of. They like us just as little as we like them. Your songs will help you nothing. It changes nothing.”

But something had changed. Irrevocably, unrepairingly, it had changed. As they paddle you back to the shore, all you can think about is the fact that this mermaid, this stranger, had viewed you more kindly than your own father had. And you carry that look with you as you grow into a woman, as unacknowledged and resented as the young daughter you had been.

From his hidden viewpoint, Rafayel can only glimpse the edges of your skirt. It’s a silver, diaphanous material, hugging the back of your legs like a seastar clings to the rocks. Expensive. Noteworthy. The garb the students of the shrine’s faith don as they perform their traditions, as if they don’t smile at the sea’s creations with one corner of their mouth and spit with the other. Disrespectful, your faith is, as disrespectful as your father’s nets and his arrogance as he takes to the sea. Rafayel’s sea. “Father, you forgot to take your hooks with you again,” your voice then rings out, freeing him from his hateful looks. It sounds too melodious. It should be as scratchy, as bothersome, as vile as humanity’s existence. But he is Lemurian at heart, and he cannot help himself from appreciating your lovely voice. A true seasinger, he begrudgingly thinks, but then he hastily corrects himself. A seasinger with the talent for it, but a liar nonetheless. Humanity can only deceive. “You should at least maintain the illusion that you’re hunting for something … legal. They’ve been cracking down on the black market’s dealings for a while now.”

“Only makes my prizes more precious, girl,” comes your father’s dry retort. He’s never once called you by your name in the entire time that Rafayel has begun to trail you, following your traces around town. He hears the gentle splash of your feet hitting the water, feels his senses prickle as he becomes aware of the way your body braves the spitting sea. “Just means I’ll get a better fetch for this stuff because of how rare it is. Alright, hand it over, before you catch a cold. Stupid attire you’ve got on there barely even protects you from the wind.”

“The sea warms me, father.”

“Pah!” The mockery comes easy to your father, he, whose entire business relies on his mockery of the Lemurian species. He can’t tell whether you’ve handed the bucket to your father, but he can tell when you retreat, the way your toes send up sandstorms all along the beach as you wade back to shore. “Spare me. If I wanted a sermon, I’d be sitting next to your mother in that overstuffed hall of yours. And I’ve told you countless times to avoid this cove!”

You ignore the latter part of his sentence. “The Dolphin’s Hall would have to be hit with a meteorite to ever move you to its sanctuary, father.”

“Ha! Haha!” His laughter seems biting, then becomes less striking as your father begins to paddle away. It creaks, heavy with his gear; the little rowing boat is just a distraction from the heavy vessel way out in the ocean his friends are waiting for him on. “It hasn’t taken your humor, at least. Alright, get back now. Go on!” He has to shout as the distance grows. “Gonna catch a cold, you will! And kiss your mother from me!”

The murmured answer you give him is lost on both your father and Rafayel, but it doesn’t sound very assenting. What isn’t lost on Rafayel is the realization that your father is the worst person in the world, but you are his favorite daughter, and that knowledge drags you down like an anchor rapidly descending. Keeping you in one places, weighing you down. Your footsteps become heavy as you walk up the beach, not as graceful as the way you had carried yourself in the sea. As he begins to follow you upstream, following the ocean’s arms deeper into the woods which border your village, he can still hear you angrily muttering to yourself.

He doesn’t know what to make of that. When he had suggested to his court that he’d revenge himself on the fisher and his entourage, his advisors had only given him a pained smile. Most of the elders still cling to the memory where their devotees on land would outstretch their hands in a blessed union, where their friendship made the moon wax and wane with happiness. They shake their heads in sadness with every murdered mermaid, as if that would fix anything. And yet, there are also those with a mind as murderous as his, still cautioning him, she’s not her father. If we take what is precious to them just because we can, what makes us better than them?

Morality. Rafayel scoffs to himself, sounding as resigned as you did in your trudge upward. As if that could help with anything. Had your father thought of morality when he had killed sweet Lyra right before her wedding night? Had he thought of morality when he desecrated her corpse for a handful of eggs, which could have been Rafayel’s nieces and nephews to dote on?

The ocean merges into a river he refuses to swim in, so Rafayel halts at the edge of the water to watch your slight frame disappear into the city. He doesn’t like to leave behind his tail in favor of awkward, human legs, but if he wants to keep an eye on you, he will need to. He’s getting pretty good at this, actually: Looking at you. Memorizing the way your lips curve into a smile, the shark teeth glint inside the grin you sport for when something makes you laugh. The way your light and deft fingers can tie the most powerful of sailor knots. The way your gentle hands hold a knife in the most reverent manner, as if this was an honor entrusted to you, not in the uncouth way your father points it at precious life.

You are not like him, uncomfortably so. It rankles Rafayel to see how much you are trying to escape your father’s taint.

The more he watches, the more he sees that taint poisoning you. You are a river current, slowing, slowing under the poison the human world dumps into you. It eats away at you, the way the rust claims the metal it swallows before it destroys the metal whole. The way you lower your head like a supplicant, shameful of the tales your fellow shrine maidens carry when your father sports another ‘treasure’ on the market. The way you paint on a smile when necessary, because you do not have the strength to face the naked truth. Your careful fingers, always touching in devotion. Moving to prayer. Guiding along to the sea’s chants. Hands of peace, not of war.

Of course, that only makes you an even more delicious offering. Even the gods know an innocent life is more precious than the forced sacrifice of a man already doomed for punishment.

As the sun sets on Whalefall City, people begin to flood the Dolphin’s Hall with eager chatter. Rafayel melts back into the shadows of the impressive dome, becomes one with the many murals depicting the ocean’s history. The hall itself is decorated in such an ornate manner that it makes Rafayel question whose devotion had turned into flesh here, bearing fruit to a worship so true that even Rafayel doesn’t dare think of blasphemy. Perhaps there was a time where humanity hadn’t been an accursed thing for him to ponder over. A long time ago, when words and actions still had meaning.

But then is not now. And now, everything has changed.

He watches as that change warps you, the shadow that passes over your face taking on the shape of his long lost Lyra. When you look up again to lead the group into prayer, your eyes have steeled over - as if through the entire room full of people, his thoughts have reached you. They hang above you like the clouds gathering before a storm as you begin the sermon, your voice crystal-clear, never wavering. Whatever doubts your father has stirred in your heart, they do not find their way here.

The last bell of prayer rings out at the same time as you bow to the masses. In acknowledgement, they murmur back their only line in the script - may the moon guide you through the storm - and then turn, flooding the exit like over-eager sardines squirming inside a can. Rafayel joins the stream of people, casting one last look back at you, but you’ve already risen again and turned your back on him. Your connection is broken now, a fact that Rafayel is secretly relieved, then aggrieved about.

Why does that matter to him, anyways?

On a full-moon night, Rafayel decides to cut you loose before you can confuse him further.

He’s been anticipating this for days now, anxiously looking up into the sky every time his head broke through the waves. As a seasinger, you are required to take part in monthly ablutions under the light of the full moon, returning to her domain of power before the wax and wane pulls at the seas. You’re supposed to take the maiden in training with you, but over the past few months, you’ve rejected her every time, gently but sternly relegating her to other tasks to be completed inside the Dolphin’s Hall. You want to be alone with your shame, alone with the fact that you seem to speak to the moon like she’s your only friend.

You’re not aware of the fact that Rafayel has been quietly listening on, every full moon night. As a Lemurian, he does not partake in a faith that revels in the worship of the sea. And yet, here he sat come every full moon, hiding himself in the rivers converging into the shallow pool in which you submerge yourself. He cannot keep hanging on to your every word. If he wants to revenge himself on the old fisherman, he has to do it now, before his too-humanoid-heart foils his plans and spares you. He thinks of Lyra and her kindly face, knowing she’d disapprove, but he makes himself go through the motions anyways.

He hadn’t been prepared for your reaction.

You don’t divest yourself of your clothes when you enter the pool, but Rafayel doesn’t have to imagine much to paint a picture of what is beneath, anyways. The satin hugs the shape of your body like a fervent lover, beginning to pool around you as you accept the water’s embrace. Lower and lower you sink, before you dive into the water to be fully submerged and rise again. He comes to a halt just a few feet away from you, on the periphery of your gaze. You do not see him yet. But he sees you. He sees the way the water falls in rivulets from your luminous lashes as they frame your clear eyes, sees the way the moonlight drinks in your irises. There’s a jealousy he cannot pinpoint inside his chest as the water begins to tear down your cheeks, framing your face so gently. You shudder slightly when the cold begins to settle in your bones, and your hands come to cover your exposed arms. As Rafayel realizes that he should not feel so enticed by the sight of a mere mortal being and his heart begins to tighten, you finally turn your face and realize that you aren’t alone here.

For a very long, heart-stoppingly awkward moment, no one says anything.

Rafayel stiffens up, waiting for your scream. He has planned this carefully, and he knows there is no way any help will reach you here, not when you’re in his domain. The moon may peer her gaze over these waters, but the water is his dominion, his kingdom. You are trapped inside the palm of his hand, and he is readying himself to swallow you whole.

But you don’t scream.

Your breath comes more shallowly, speeding as your lungs rush to fill air. He idly wonders how that feels like, the way the lungs balloon inside that easily broken chest. Despite all this, despite the circumstances, despite the fact that you are quite aware what the sight of a mermaid might mean to you, your eyes do not fill with fear. So Rafayel doesn’t move, either. He watches you and the way your chest constricts, listens how your breath stutters. And then you finally speak. “Is it you?” you whisper. “Did you hear my prayers?”

The magic of the moment is broken then, and Rafayel audibly breathes out. He almost breaks out into mocking laughter, - me, fulfilling your prayers? - but he stops himself short, not intending to waste the opportunity. If you would come willingly to meet your fate, then that would be even better. “Your prayers?” he repeats, and then, although he couldn’t make his disbelief clearer, he says, “Do you really think a being like me would bother to listen to any of your prayers? After all your kind has done to us?”

You take in his words with an austere expression. “No, I suppose not,” you murmur out, biting down on that full lower lip. No, don’t think about biting that lip for her. Don’t think about it. He chases away his own thoughts and instead begins to wonder why you’re not scared yet. Are you aware that there is nothing you can do to change this fate? “But one can hope. I couldn’t ever call myself a seasinger if I didn’t still have faith that the earth and the salt could reconcile again.”

“And whose fault is it that a reconciliation seems to be so impossible?”

You blink at him, fresh rivulets of water carding through those lashes like tears. You look like you’re crying, even though Rafayel knows you are not. “Do not take me for a hypocrite,” you tell him, sounding entirely too earnest. “I am quite aware of whose fault it is. We humans bear the sins of our fathers, after all.”

You sound bitter.

She’s not her father. If we take what is precious to them just because we can, what makes us better than them?

Rafayel hums at that. It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t change anything. He’ll kill you swiftly if he has to, give you a kind death. It’s better than anything your father’s crewmates have ever given to any mermaid they’ve stumbled upon. You won’t suffer, that he promises you, but he’s not going back on his word, not for anything. So he makes himself move closer. You still don’t scream for help as he approaches you, just muster him warily, like you’ve encountered a familiar face on the street yet cannot remember where that familiarity comes from. “And if I was your friend?” he asks, challenging your logic. “Then what? Would all be forgiven, and we’d dance in a circle throwing flowers?”

“Why don’t you find out?”

You stretch out a hand.

He should spit on it. If anything, he should claw at that hand like a man drowning and pull you into the depths. Your father does not deserve to cradle your corpse and reminisce about the day he’s held you for the first time. He deserves to suffer beyond all measure, and Rafayel intends to see to that. He schools his features into polite neutrality before he readies himself for the killing strike.

Rafayel draws in a shuddering breath. And then, like the liar he is, he takes your hand.

It is as soft as he had imagined. Too human, too weak, too frail. Every bone and sinew feels like it will give with just a squeeze, broken beyond repair. It feels like a betrayal.

He can barely make himself think a proper thought when you use the opportunity to step closer to him. He can smell you now, that distinct scent of myrrh and burnt offerings that clings to your skin. This is the scent he’s been using to track you for months. Below the too-thin garb of your seasinger attire, he can see the way your precious collarbones lift and sink in quick succession, your breath coming entirely too fast now. You’re panicking. You are deathly afraid of him. And yet you ignore that fear to squeeze his hand, as if this was just another interaction in the Dolphin’s Hall to you. In your eyes, he finds that steady faith that holds your spine rigidly straight, the look you can never give your father because of how you defer to him. “You’re much taller than I thought,” you tell him, your voice shaky. Then you give him a tentative smile. The light of your hope is reflected in that expression, and it hurts to realize that he will be responsible for diminishing that forever.

It’s okay, he tells himself. I’ll just grow closer to her so she’ll trust me, and then, when I’ve got her wrapped around my finger, I’ll kill her in front of her father’s eyes. “You look too small for a human, so I’m not certain you’re equipped to be delivering these kinds of judgements on appearances,” is all he says in response.

“Well, that is a valid observation.” You haven’t let go of his hand yet. Rafayel makes no move to free himself, either. You are locked into this situation, moved by something neither of you can understand. You let your gaze roam over the entirety of his face, the way it lingers on the sharp edges of his ears, the scales rippling down his throat. He certainly hopes you don’t see the way he squirms beneath that gaze. “But you’re my friend now, so you’ll forgive me for my deadly honesty. I fear that is just part of who I am, so you’re going to have to live with it.”

“Is that how one becomes a friend? This quickly?”

“Oh, certainly. You’ve been holding my hand for quite some time now. No,” you rush to say as he attempts to disentangle himself, fingers flashing to grip his arm. His first instinct is to strike out, to defend himself from humanity’s danger. He wrestles that instinct down until it becomes nil. He is bending at the edges, unraveling like threat inside your skilled hands. You guide him back towards you and intertwine your fingers. Your seasinger voice lulls him into a sense of security that is going to get him killed someday. She’s already bewitching you far too much for this plan to work, his inner voice cautions. The sound is growing increasingly frantic, every thought stumbling after the other until it turns into a senseless avalanche. Kill her now, before she undoes us all. Kill her now. “Will you let me prove that our friendship can work?”

No, his inner voice shouts. She’s your enemy’s daughter. SHE is your enemy. KILL HER NOW.

The warmth of your hand melts into his every bone. Sinking in like poison. “I suppose I have no choice,” he tells you, sealing his fate.

Rafayel begins to realize how fucked he is.

He was already quite aware of his awful disposition before he ever approached you, the way your mortal face charmed him the way a snake ensnares its victims. Too pretty for a human, a trap laid bare. He feels that very trap biting into his skin every time you smile at him. It draws blood every time your touch brushes him. As ridiculous as it sounded, he feels himself exploding from a second puberty, your every notion setting fire to his blood.

He struggles to maintain his murder fantasies. It’s a little bit difficult to focus on when all his dreams plague him with the image of you.

Today, you’ve asked him to accompany him to the hidden cove that he’s watched you frequent when he was still trailing you. It’s a beautiful location, the sandbank curving to accommodate the ocean’s kisses as it laps at the earth. Almost absentmindedly, your bare feet come to a halt every few meters to gather up a bundle of oceansvale, a flower you’re particularly fond of and have been ridiculed with by him. Idiot human, he had said, as if your obsession with the ocean wasn’t big enough already. You’re a seasinger, for crying out loud. Aren’t you religious enough without an obsession with the only flower that blooms near these waters?

You’d only looked at him with a steady, self-satisfied look. Are you jealous, per chance?

Yes. As if. Like he’d care what you’re obsessed with and what not. Anyways, mermaids don’t fall in love with humans. They kill them. By luring them to the sea, to be exact, so you’re halfway to the gallows already, so who’s the idiot now?

“What’s all this, then?” Rafayel wildly gesticulates around him - at the sweeping cliffs, the sand-carrying wind, the beautiful beach. The atmosphere is way more serene than he is, a calm and quiet getaway. The perfect hiding location for a forlorn daughter. “I hate using my human legs. If you were going to take me to the ocean anyways, why torture me before you do it?”

“I very much appreciate you using your human legs, Rafayel. But I am afraid the hike up to the mountain and down to this place is the point of the trip.” You give him a lopsided smile, the kind that makes him dizzy with emotions. Sickening. He clenches a hand inside the pocket of the jacket you lent him. “You know, I’m a little disappointed you don’t recognize the place. This is where I first met you. I remembered you straight away, yet you were ignorant.”

He waves away the words. “I’m a Lemurian, after all. Time passes much more differently for us than it does for your kind. What does an encounter like this mean in the grand scheme of things? ‘Tis a single star in the universe we traverse.”

The words make you frown. In fact, the frown disfigures your face entirely, your nose scrunching and your lips twitching together in an expression of dejectedness. He almost eats his words, almost hurries to tell you that of course he remembers, that he couldn’t forget the tiny human who bothered to throw the ocean flowers, even though its inhabitants were humanity’s enemies, but then you speak up again and the matter becomes irrelevant. “Then I ought to be thankful this star turned out to be brighter than it was. I’m quite thankful we got to meet again. I’ve always wanted a chance to meet a mermaid, to fight back against this enmity between our species.”

“Quite the conciliator, you are.” Rafayel follows you down unto the beach. Your feet trace a path into the sand which he follows dutifully, making sure to cover your tracks in case your father still admonishes you for coming here. “Is that what you meant when you saw me for the first time? ‘Did you hear my prayers’?”

“Yes. My mother’s always mocked me for that too, you know. She’s the only one who listens to me about this stuff, and even though she loves me a lot, she’s not above teasing me. I guess it’s kind of an inside joke in my family.”

Rafayel takes note of the way your eyes steel over. He knows you long enough now to recognize that stance. If you were a soldier, this would be the position you’d move into if you had to defend yourself against the thoughts about your father. Even when he is not present, he haunts your wellbeing. Even when it’s your mother you think about, his phantom always lurks right behind. “Your father isn’t too fond of the ocean?” he asks. The lie on his tongue tastes vile.

Like the rotting corpse of a gutted mermaid.

You shake your head. “No, he’s fond of the ocean, alright,” you correct. When you sink into the water, clothes and all, Rafayel joins you immediately. Before your eyes, his legs merge back into his trusted tail. It makes you shake with laughter. “You know, I wanted to make a joke about you being like a fish in water, but um. You are one. A fish, I mean. In water.”

“You’re too funny,” Rafayel deadpans. “Truly, I am beside myself with laughter.”

You turn away your face and laugh into the palm of your hand, as if that could hide your mirth. Not like he’s feeling every single vibration in the water that your quiet giggles send out. The sound settles in his chest, taking root there. “Note taken,” you chortle still. “I’ll work on my jokes.”

“Don’t bother. You’ll never be as funny as I am.”

“Oh yeah?” You swivel your head around to him. Whatever smart response Rafayel was cooking up dies inside his mouth, turning dry in the face of your beauty. The dimples in your cheeks make you look younger than you are, your face luminous with real happiness. This is what had been lacking from your expression inside the Dolphin’s Hall. You were living for your faith, for your duty, leaving yourself much too neglected. But you were finally growing comfortable inside your skin. Opening up to him.

Kill her, the voice still whispers. He smothers the spark of that thought before it sets his brain on fire. Rafayel swallows. “Is that all you brought me here for, then?” he sighs. “To bore me with your unfunny jokes and reminisce about the past?”

“You sure do know how to kill the moment.” The sentiment makes you snort. You finally turn your face to the horizon, and Rafayel can breathe comfortably again. Looking at you for too long makes him want to dig into you. With knifes, of course. Not with kisses. Or his fingers. Of course not. Nothing of the sort. None. “I just wanted to free my mind for a little bit. It gets incredibly loud in there, sometimes.” You tap your temples, the guardians of your thoughts. He wants to climb into that brain and see for himself how loud it is. He’d risk turning deaf to hear. “Everyone always looks to me, because I’m a seasinger, but they aren’t looking at me, not really. So I make myself entirely into that role I’ve been given. And I lose sight of who I really am. When I’m here, I don’t have to do that. I can just listen to the ocean. And she listens to me.”

You sound wishful.

In his own silent moments, when Rafayel discards his own roles, he is able to admit to himself that he wants to read your every wish from your lips and make them come true. If possible, he’d crown you in oceansvale and pearls, to show you the beauties of the watery underworld and all it has to offer. But that is something he can never allow himself to desire. So, like you, he makes himself steel over, and then asks instead: “Aren’t I listening to you?”

“Sure, but you’re just required to, aren’t you? You’re my friend.” You nudge him with your shoulder, the touch a brand of fire on his skin. You’re so, so warm. Rafayel chases that sensation as you lean away, and you let him drape himself over you, already used to his clingy behavior. You’re my friend. You’re my enemy. “The ocean doesn’t have to listen, but she does. She’s been a better parent to me than my father has. He’s always thought I wasn’t worth raising because I was of the cursed sex, anyways.”

“Does that matter? Your mother loves you.”

“But he’s my father.” And your voice breaks. As he angles another look at you, he realizes that you’ve been gazing at the sea with tears in your eyes. If you were Lemurian, you wouldn’t need him to crown you: your own pearl-teary eyes are already beginning to fill with treasure. Like tidepools, they spill over, painting your face in salt-burned tear tracks he wants to kiss until his mouth runs dry. Rafayel curls an arm around you, all thoughts of murder forgotten, and all he can think of is how to comfort you properly so you’ll never have to mourn your father again. “He’s my father,” you repeat with a muffled voice against his shoulder, as if he didn’t hear you the first time, “He should have loved me anyways. I would have become the son he wanted if he gave me the chance. But he didn’t want me. He didn’t want me.”

Rafayel doesn’t know if it’s the ocean or his blood he hears rushing in his ears. His mind has already become clouded with rage, swirling into a hurricane that tears your father apart. He rocks you back and forth, and he hopes it feels like the ocean is cradling you, carrying you far away from your sorrow.

It’s already been two full moons since Rafayel has become your ‘friend’.

Your birthday has come and gone, and you’ve scared Rafayel out of his own skin when you burst into tears as you accepted his gift. It’s just a necklace made of a shell, idiot, he had clarified, flustered. It’s not like I spent money on it or anything. It was just something I had laying around and wanted to get rid of.

Rafayel, you had said, voice shaky with teary joy. It’s everything to me.

It’s getting harder and harder to convince himself into doing what he set out to do.

Particularly today he finds himself reaching back for the memory of his bloodlust, watching you guide new devotees to the sea to be baptized, like turtles taking to water for the first time. He’s seen his fair share of baby turtles scrambling to the sea, muddling up the waves as their tiny legs fought to master them. These children are not dissimilar to the freshly born turtles. Traitors, the lot of them, he thinks to himself, but the threat feels hollow. Cursed species, they are. Liars and deceivers all. He tries to ignore the irony of that prejudice considering the nature of your relationship.

When you finally send the kids off and join him in the water, he schools his features into a childish pout he hopes will mask his hatred. “You’ve made me wait all evening,” he complains, the annoyance in his voice real. It has been quite some time since you got to unwind with him. The thought of Rafayel looking forward to seeing you again had made him panic, and he had scrambled to avoid you for a few days before his own longing drew him back to you. “I was freezing to death here.”

“As if!” Your laughter rings as jubilously as the bells inside Dolphin’s Hall call to prayer. There’s a myth as old as humanity which decrees that when the bells ring twelve times, the gates of heaven will open to flood the world entire. Only the true believers will become one with the sea, the earth finally reunited with its one true love. The planet will become a single ocean again, and it will be as if land and sea never had separated, all creatures under the moon united under one banner. “I know exactly well that wherever you live is way colder than whatever temperature these waters are. This must feel like a hot bath for you in contrast.”

Rafayel sniffles, caught in the lie. “It’s the principle that counts.”

Your smile gentles. “Rafayel,” you say. The way that name rolls of your tongue makes him want to roll his eyes back into his head: if all sermons sounded like this, he’d be the most devoted follower of the sea’s faith alive. Your voice is the single most exultant sound any living creature could create. Perhaps you were a siren in your past life. “Don’t tell me you missed me.”

I miss you all the time, he thinks. I miss you even when I fantasize about killing you. I miss you even when I should be grieving all the mermaids my brothers and sisters have lost. I miss you even more when I watch them take brides and grooms and make the kingdom of the depths a happier place in the face of adversity. You would like us, the way we cling to hope like you do. “I bet you’d like that,” he drawls out, feigning normalcy. “Any living being would want to be missed by me. I’m very beautiful, after all, and very desired.”

“Truly? Are they all vying for your attention down there?” You flick his shoulder, intending to be teasing. Even the pain is welcome. He tries to ignore the way his stomach flips. “And yet you’re here for me. What an honor, oh desirable bachelor.”

“You should be honored,” he tells you. It sounds arrogant, but why shouldn’t he be? He is beautiful after all. For once, he’s not lying. Rafayel takes pride in his appearance, and he preens at the chance of receiving a compliment from you.

You cock your head at him. It’s supposed to look threatening, but you hold all the danger of a sweet otter. “Don’t make me laugh,” you tell him, still joking, but your voice is breathy.

Maybe his looks don’t leave you as untouched as you pretend to be. Maybe he’s not the only one feigning.

Rafayel brushes his fingers over the hollow of your arms, following the veins as they reach upward. It makes you shudder. He delights in it. “I adore hearing you laugh, sweetling, but it’s not the intention I have here,” he says. He is in and out of his body at the same time. Most times, he smothers these thoughts before they reach his mouth, yet he continues to speak as if this were just another dream of you. “Go on. Say it. Tell me I’m beautiful.”

Your lips part, speechless. Behind you, the human world goes on, tickering away like a fluid mechanism. With or without you. You look like as if you realize that the ocean is beckoning. He is beckoning. If you’re not careful, he’ll drown you, bones and all. “You’re beautiful,” you whisper then, the sound of it caught up in the rushing of the waves. They cling to the sand, dragging it with the pull of the tide. He yearns to do the same.

His hand comes up to cradle your face. You fit perfectly into it, as if you were made for him. As if he was made to compliment you. Rafayel’s heart stutters in his chest, threatening to burst. “Again,” he says, his voice steady. (He doesn’t know how he does it. He feels like he’s about to explode.) “You can do better than that.”

You draw in another sharp breath, your lungs fluttering. The human body was so very fascinating. He wants to reach inside you and look at everything, feel it all. “You’re truly beautiful, Rafayel,” you try again, and this time, you pitch up your voice. Every word is clearly enunciated. You look at him straight on. “All the wonders in this world pale in comparison to you.”

Oh. Oh.

“You,” Rafayel breathes out. His fingers are shaking on your face, but they hold on. Latching on to you. If he strengthened his grip, will he be able to crush your skull? Will he be able to reach inside? His body feels heavy with desire; as he bends towards you, he finds that you’re already meeting him halfway, and this time, the soaked material of your clothes exposes the sight of your stiff nipples. He yearns to warm them up for you, to take them in his mouth and kiss you until you’re burning from the inside out. He’s always wondered what you would taste like.

You are both torn out of the fantasy at the sound of your voice in a human mouth, carried by the wind from the shore. You draw apart hastily, as if a spell had been broken, and you fumble to rearrange your clothes and fix your hair although nothing had happened. Rafayel tucks his traitorous hands behind his back.

“I,” you manage to say, your voice drowsy with the lingering desire, “I have to get back. I’ll see you?” You phrase the order like a plea, as if Rafayel wouldn’t bend over backwards for you. You miss his assenting, fervent nods as you whirl around and wade back to shore, your own hands drowning in the material of your dress as you lift it up and wring it out. The water trails behind you in his stead, leaving him behind.

He’ll totally be able to carry out his revenge, alright.

It’s getting increasingly difficult to resist you.

The more time passes, the more it feels like the sun rises and sets just for you. Your happiness is his own, your sadness his bitter grief. Every emotion you ever display resonates so deeply in his soul that he grows hazy with responsibility, wants to reshape the world in your image. Every tear you shed is carefully collected like his own well-cared for treasure, every laughter bottled in the memory palace of his mind. His mind traces each and every one in your absence, creating melodies which cannot compare to your voice. He is becoming enraptured. He is coming undone.

Even the distance is beginning to choke him. You feel so close and so far. He wishes to lap at your body like the ocean does when you perform your prayers, wants to smother you in a hug that threatens the ocean’s might when you dive down with him. In the few times where you were able to swim with him - your timetable strict, your parents suspicious - he’s allowed you to trace your hands over the scales of his tail. To you, it’s the satisfaction of a curiosity. To him, it is a so startling intimacy that he wants to weep. There is no room for justice as his heart expands to encompass you, and it grows inside his chest, breaking apart his ribcage so it can guard you from the world. There are no words. You’re in every breath, every steady push of his blood.

Although the active threat of your father’s suspicions has come between the two of you, every meeting rarer, but becoming more precious over time, it cannot erase the wish for his soul to reach for you. You doze away in your place on the stony slopes surrounding the pool you perform your ablutions in, and Rafayel is content to guard your slumber, dipping in and out of the water. He never strays away for too long. He makes sure to count every strand of those stunning lashes that had already enticed him when he first met you here, follows every vein inside your face to see where it branches into. What was hated has become dear to him now, your humanity as endearing as your very existence. He wonders what you dream about. Wonders if you dream about him, as often as he dreams about you. His brain has become very enamored with you, every fold of the thing having been etched over with memories of you.

Your father is already hounding you. Your newfound happiness hasn’t gone unnoticed. It should please Rafayel, how your friendship has changed your life for the better. You are standing up straight, opening up to the world. When you laugh, it finally sounds like your vocal cords are singing in true harmony, never again pushing for the falsity you used to employ to wave away concerns.

If anyone were to discover you were sneaking away with a mermaid, they’d be dumbfounded. Perhaps they’d mock you for it. But if your father were to discover you two, then it wouldn’t take much until Rafayel would find himself face to face with the same knife he used to kill Lyra.

I’ll have to tell her the truth, Rafayel thinks then, stricken. If I really love her, then I have to let her go. He closes his eyes, losing himself to the sharp sting of grief inside his chest. That’s what Lyra would have said, anyways. She was always so enthusiastic about fairy tales and happy endings and true love. He mourns for the way his childhood had been shaped with the loss of her, and the loss of all the mermaids that had ever died an unjust death. But it has taken on a new meaning. He looks into your face and cannot find it himself to justify the means to the end he had intended for you. There was nothing vengeful or freeing about this. If anything, he’d push himself off to his own metaphoric end, because Rafayel has reached the ends of his wits and he’s finally accepted that there is no you without me. He stretches out a hand to card his fingers through your dry hair before it can fall into the water. What a blessing it is to do at least this, to be cherished by you.

He begins to ask himself how he is supposed to leave you.

As Rafayel’s thoughts take a turn for the worse, you open your sleep-drowsy eyes. They are still blurred over with the dreams you’ve been chasing, just slowly becoming clear and taking in your surroundings. “Raf?” you whisper, and he tries not to melt at the nickname. No one’s ever thought up a nickname for him. So many things you’ve given him that he will never be able to repay you with. So much light you’ve brought into his dark, dark life. The bottom of the ocean, despite all its magic, had never been as bright as this. “I’m here,” he tells you, the sentence literal, but he means it with every ounce of his soul.

You blink away the last traces of unconsciousness, your pretty lips stretching open to release a yawn. “I was afraid you’d left,” you tell him. Also so literal. But in the way you look at him and your tone turns up with hope, he finds himself recognizing the underlying meaning, just as you had discerned his.

He’s told you so many lies already. What’s one more? “I’d never leave you,” he tells you, and he tries to mean it. In another universe, he would be able to mean it. Rafayel swims closer so he can throw an arm over your frame as you lie back down, and he angles himself up so he can cage you in-between his hands. As he arranges himself, he abandons the scales and tail in favor of his awkward human legs, caging your delicate waist inbetween his knees. He’s balancing himself on top of you now, not caring if the drops of water pearling off his skin splash on you.

You don’t look like you care, either. You stare at him as if there’s nothing else in the world, just the two of you for all eternity. The thought fills him with happiness.

Slowly, very slowly, as if asking for permission, you lay your hands on his naked chest. The tips of your fingers are even softer than the palms of your hands, a testament to your nature. Not a toiler, not a warmonger. Something more peaceful and calmful, that brings his own soul rest. “I dreamt about you,” you tell him, honest as a Lemurian. He smiles at the inadvertent way you had answered the question he’d been thinking of while you were sleeping. “What was your dream about?” he asks, anchoring his weight on one hand so he can use the other to curl around the side of your throat. He can feel the pocket inside it traveling as you swallow to gather your bravery.

“A little bit like this situation right now.”

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to elaborate, friend.” Rafayel’s fingers dig into the supple flesh of your shoulder as they move, then gently claw at your skin as he follows the curve of your arm. He’s always been fascinated with your human skin, the way it seems entirely different from Lemurians although they look so similar. The smallest of things could break it. Bruises bloom like flowers with the lightest force. It makes him want to cage you inside his chest, where he can keep you safe from harm and make sure no one will ever hurt you again. It’s irrational, and unnecessary. But he just can’t help himself.

You narrow your eyes at him playfully, blissfully unaware of his thoughts. “Are you enjoying this?”

Now Rafayel begins to smile as well. It is entirely genuine, and only reserved for you. He is yours, heart and soul. “Of course I am,” he confesses, feeling as exposed as a newborn babe. “You always act so unbothered by me, you know. I was beginning to worry whether I was the only one caring about this … friendship.”

Your own hands have begun to wander. You place them directly on his cheeks, directing his gaze at you, as if you weren’t already the single fixed point around which his entire existence was centered around “Rafayel,” you say. “I don’t want to be just your friend.”

His breath catches. He searches your eyes for a joke, for the mockery, but you are serious. And for once, his own mind blanks at the possibility that his feelings might be reciprocated. “Do you… mean it?” he whispers, afraid. Vulnerable. She’s human, she’s a liar, she’ll lie to you, watch. This isn’t possible. This is a trick.

“Shall I prove it to you?”

Rafayel’s heart stops.

(God, he always knew you’d be responsible for his death.)

The answering smile you give at the sight of his eagerness makes his insides melt into the same constitution as a jellyfish. There is a fire at the core of his existence, and you have come to kindle it. He feels the blood rush; in his cheeks, in his body, down his abdomen. He is alight with emotion, bursting at the seams. As you flatten your palm and curve it around the shape of his chest, he chokes out a, “Yes. Please.”

Your touch is hesitant, but your eyes are determined. “I love you, Rafayel,” you finally tell him, the magical words that crack open his chest like a volcanic crater exploding into the water. He collapses against you, crushing his lips against yours, and then he can’t tell where you start and he ends because of how you meld against him. Every inch of his body comes alive with the sensation of you against him, and you fit into every curve inside his body. Your lips carefully trace the shape of his own, moving against his tenderly, carefully. He can’t bring himself to entertain the same restraint as you do: as he digs his hand into the curls of your hair, he angles your head appropriately and then delves inside to finally taste that sinful mouth he’s been dreaming about for so long.

Your answering whimper is smothered almost immediately by his beckoning tongue. Greedily, selfishly, Rafayel kisses you as if his life depends on it; like he might die without ever getting lost on your tongue, dissolving like sugar. He groans into your mouth when you carefully tangle your tongue with his own, not used to this kind of kiss. When he tries to pull back to grant you a reprieve, your heavenly lips wrap around the tip of his tongue, sucking on it in the mock-fashion of a blowjob.

He almost comes then and there, that’s how embarrassingly obsessed he is with you. Only you.

You chase him as he disentangles himself, but Rafayel quickly busies himself with your throat, littering those veins he’d been staring at like a vampire starved with kisses. “You have no idea,” he whimpers into the skin there, speaking directly into your soul, “how you make me feel. No idea. You’re dangerous.”

You don’t mock him for once. Instead, Rafayel is gently pushed to the side. Before he can worry about being rejected, you straddle his lap and sit down like a queen crowned on her throne, and the sight makes him so breathless that Rafayel finds himself falling back against the wet ground without complaint. Your lips are kiss-swollen and smiling, a sight he mentally declares to be his favorite sight in the world. “I’ll find out soon, enough,” you promise, the words as delicious as your kisses. “For example, how does this feel?”

And you grind down, your clothed core sliding over his exposed cock in a perfect glide.

Rafayel throws his head back, cussing in Lemurian. He doesn’t even realize the crack of pain as his head hits the ground, his entire nervous system too caught up with the sensation of you rubbing against the most sensitive spot of his body. There’s a sound he doesn’t immediately recognize, a quiet giggle that shakes your entire body, and then the feeling of the weight on top of him shifting as you bend down to kiss your way down this body. “My Rafayel,” you murmur against his abdomen, lips shaping the words against his hipbones. He almost trills in happiness at the sound of that. Yours. “You’re so, so, so beautiful.”

If it was possible to dissolve in extreme happiness, Rafayel would be seafoam on the water surface right now.

He digs his fingers into the hard stone, unyielding as it is, as your lips seem to vanish off his skin right before reaching his already erect dick. He catches the look of your eyes, the slight surprise at his size - he can’t lie, it makes him want to puff up in pride - but then you begin to sport a scary smile, the kind that makes Rafayel realize that you’re going to suck the life out of him, and he’s already on the brink of death from the possibility of this happening alone. “My love…” he begins to caution, but then he chokes off as each and every one of your fingers wraps itself around the shaft of his cock, and there is no consciousness to form thoughts, no thoughts at all.

You kiss the tip of the head, tongue peaking out to catch the first beads of pre-cum. “Gonna make you feel good, I promise, Raf.”

He wants to answer, he swears he does. There is just no way he can. Rafayel’s entire body arches off the ground as you take him in your mouth, and he’s barely aware of the way you slightly choke on the size of it - his hands go to your head, are you alright, are you okay, love? - yet that doesn’t stop you; the slide of his cock on your tongue continues and continues and continues, and then he feels himself hit the back of your throat and he cries out in pleasure, feeling like a star that’s exploded.

“Fuuuuuuuck.”

You sound like you want to laugh; your mouth shakes and shudders around him, and that makes him tug at your hair, unwillingly, instinctively. He’s about to apologize, but your own tugged out moan makes him hold himself back. He hates hurting you, but you seem to enjoy it, so he tangles his fingers into your hair and gently begins to guide you up and down, up and down. He hisses at the sensation, of the clenching around his dick, the gentle swipes your tongue makes when you get to. “You’re so good to me,” he tells you, watches the way your eyes light up with the praise. He’s never even thought about how lovely and romantic sex could be. Love-making. “So good.”

You hum, and Rafayel hisses; it’s a delicious kind of vibration, both torturous and pleasing. “Please,” he pleads with you, his fingers shaking. Not aware of what he’s asking. But you seem to understand, you speak the language of his soul; you hollow your checks and suck, and then his eyes do roll back so far into his own head that he thinks he can finally see his brain and all the images of you he imprinted on it. As your fingers begin to stroke in time with your tongue, he begins to feel like he’s shaking out of existence, both here and not. Both bound and untied. The coil in his abdomen begins to tighten, his toes curling at the way you drag your tongue around the tip, suckling, teasing. Your lips pop as you remove your mouth, pumping him quicker and quicker, watching him. A predator devouring its prey. “Beautiful,” you say again. “The prettiest, my Rafayel. Look at you taking it so well.”

He keens at that, hands sliding down to claw at your arms, not sure if he wants you to stop or keep going. He’a never experienced an orgasm building up like this, a literal supernova beginning to build at the edges of his perception. “I,” he gasps out, looking for words, finding none, but you help him out of his predicament by kissing him messily, the taste of his own pre-cum lacing his tongue. Your hand, every caress growing in pressure, continues to pump his cock even when he cries out against your mouth, even as his teeth find your shoulder and latch onto it to bite it. You don’t push him away, not even when he explodes into your hand, his release beginning to pearl over your hand as you continue to fuck him through the orgasm. When he begins to sob against your collarbone, pushing at your dangerous hands, he finally understands how deadly a single human being can be.

You’ve ruined him, and he couldn’t be happier about it.

The second you remove your hand, Rafayel flips you onto your back and begins to lick your fingers clean, pleased at the way your mouth drops into that cute little shocked ‘o’. Intertwining your fingers, he drags his tongue over every inch of your palm, taking note of the way your eyes zero in on the length of it. His chest rumbles, pleased; he wants to be as desirable, as perfect to you as you are to him. You are an absolute miracle, a wonder to behold. “Your turn,” he tells you, and your eyes darken.

But you shake your head. “Raf,” you say. Your voice is deadly serious. “If you don’t fuck me right now, I’m going to explode into a thousand pieces and you’ll never see me again.”

Despite the sensuality of the situation, Rafayel finds himself bursting into laughter. Your own obscene, reddened lips curl into a matching grin, and for the moment, you are both innocent again, youthfully in love. Love-making, he thinks again. I want to make love to you for the rest of my life, for all eternity. “I love you,” he says out loud. “And I don’t want you to explode. But I want to show you how much I love you, as well. I want to worship you from head to toe.”

Your eyes widen in the most adorable way. As someone who’s always lowered herself as a supplicant, you find yourself entranced by the idea of being an object of worship. “You do?” you ask, unsure.

Rafayel raises your still sticky hand to his face, not caring about the mess. He wants to be messy with you. He wants to be part of you. “There’s nothing else in this world,” he begins, kissing the inside of your wrist, nuzzling the skin there. “I adore as much as you. I already worship you. Your hands, your face, your waist, your entire body. All of it is holy to me, holier than any faith I’ve ever believed in my entire life. And if that is a sin, then I will die the happiest sinner to have ever graced this earth.”

The way you blush at his words make him want to eat you whole. He’s never once considered partaking in human flesh, and although he isn’t too fond of what could possibly be considered cannibalism, his desire borders on the urge of devouring you entire. You are just too sweet.

“I’m going to eat you,” he actually tells you. Your answering laughter only makes his chest constrict in pure, unbridled joy.

He backs the words up with another gentle nip to your fingers, his sharp teeth only stopping short of breaking the skin; he finds himself back at your throat, lapping up the thin stream of blood and listening in to the way your laughter turns into a strangled moan. “Oh,” you yelp. “I thought that was a joke.” That makes Rafayel grin; with the taste of your salt on his tongue, he begins to kiss the space inbetween your chest, his fingers gently rolling your nipples through the thin dress you’re wearing. You sigh in please, your back arching just so slightly at the feeling of his fingers on you. “Adore this chest,” he tells you, trying to stay true to his word, but he’s already getting lost in the delicious sight of you surrendering to your pleasure. Following an urge that’s been haunting him ever since that almost-kiss on the beach, he wraps his lips around the rose-bud like nub and suckles it into his mouth, the sound of your sharp outcry like music in his ears. He groans against your chest and hopes you can hear the sound inside your heart; he wants to crawl inside and live there, reside under your skin. As he kisses the nipple with the same fervor he did your mouth, his other hand gently fondles the neglected nipple until you begin to whine for him to stop, the gentle torture not enough for you.

He abandons your chest in favor of your soft, soft stomach - he smushes his cheek against it like a cat, reveling in the way it feels. “God, I love you,” he says, hands cupping your waist. You don’t answer him, too lost in the sensation of his knees beginning to grind against your exposed core for some friction: your dress has ridden up, revealing the lack of underwear. His mouth runs dry, sparing only a moment of pondering where he asks himself whether the seasinger’s attire just doesn’t include underwear; you don’t leave him any more time to think as your fingers claw their way down his back, the pain as erotic as your lewd moans. “Please,” you beg him, grinding up your hips against his. He’s rock-hard again, straining to be inside you. “Please, I need you so bad. Fuck me, Raf.”

“You’ve got a filthy mouth,” he grits out. It’s not a reprimand, more an articulation of how crazy you drive him. Rafayel’s hands glide to the small of your back, lifting you up to receive him, readying you. You’re staring straight into his eyes, panting heavily, and he wonders whether you’re actually seeing him or staring into his soul. “I love you,” you say in response, clinging to the words like a lifeline. His heart jumps and jumps and jumps in chest, struggling to break out of its cage to join hands with yours. The head of his cock nudges against your labia, opening you up, and you fold open like a pond lily, more beautiful than even the oceansvale you adore. “I love you so much.”

“But I,” he tells you, voice strained, “love you more.”

And he pushes inside.

For a second, it feels like all kingdom come. It’s blasphemous and religious all at once; Rafayel feels whole, feels like you’ve become one person as he stretches you open. You feel so perfect around him, so, so perfect. “Oh, gods,” you whisper, the only time you take the name of your articles of faith in vain, a fact that he’s arrogantly proud of, and then Rafayel draws back and curls back inside again, the head of his dick nuzzling against something spongy that makes you wail like a woman stabbed. He almost pulls out, if not for the way you kiss him like this is the last time you ever will, your tongue inside his mouth before he can register, and then the hunger you illicit in him is too much to tolerate and Rafayel begins to fuck into you.

“Full,” you whimper, the words drawling together on your tongue as if you don’t even have the peace of mind to formulate the thoughts properly. Rafayel drags his cock back, pulling out almost entirely before he snaps it back inside; you bare your teeth at him in the same manner as he had done before he had bitten you, which would have made him smile at the way his behavior’s rubbing off on you. But there’s no space to do anything, no controls inside his mind. He’s become prisoner to your gummy walls, the way your warmth swallows his whole, every clench of your pussy around him like a shooting star frying his nervous system alive. “So perfect,” he whines, letting his instincts take over, and your fingers shakily hold on to his shoulder as he begins to piston in out of you. The slapping of flesh meeting skin is so loud it makes you screw your eyes shut in embarrassment, yet you offer up your body all the same. Your legs interlock behind his back as he continues to grind into you, in and out, in and out, in and out. “God, you take me like you were made for me. You’re a dream come true. You are. You are.”

“Rafayel,” comes your pitiful answer, but he’s not paying attention to you right now, not when his body is so hyperfixated on the way you make him feel and the way your own pleasure becomes the forefront of his mind. “S’too much. Slow down.” Your pussy flutters around him, dragging him back in every time he tries to pull out, and his solution is to pump into you quicker, harder, deeper. There is no sound, none that could be described when his cockhead begins to kiss your cervix, and now Rafayel’s chasing after your climax, desperate to get you there before he comes again. There are tears pooling at the edges of your eyes, tears which he licks up with the same delicacy he would use to gorge on you, lose himself in the taste of your cunt. His own tears blur his sight, dripping onto your face, searing into the skin there. “I can’t,” he bawls, sounding entirely too heartbroken for the way he fucks you, the way he folds your body into position to take him better, take him deeper. The bloody trails your nails leave on him don’t even make an impression on him anymore. He sobs into the curve of your throat, chasing, chasing. He ruts into you like a man possessed.

Even in your fucked out state, your shaky hands brush away the tears from his face. He hisses into the palm of your hand, swallowing his sobs, ignoring the hiccups. His own hand finds its way down your body until he’s sure he’s found your clitoris, finding the confirmation in your stuttered out “Fu-u-uck,”, and the hasty circles he draws have your thighs shaking in time with the constant snapping of his own hips, meeting him halfway as he chases your climax, pounding you into the ground. “Gonna come, gonna come, gonnacomegonnacomecomeRaf.” The last of your sentence becomes unintelligible as your orgasm hits you like a tidal wave, and he holds you close to his chest and continues to fuck you through it as his own begins to spill inside you, no stop to it seemingly in sight, up until the heartbreaking sob that falls out of your mouth breaks him out his trance and snaps him awake. His hips come to a stuttering halt, the picture of a stumbling drunk, then stop completely, and Rafayel slumps, still inside you. He can feel his semen dripping outside, running down his thighs, pooling on the ground. He’s dimly fascinated by the fact that he even has this much cum, but the majority of his consciousness focusses on the way you kiss his forehead, his head, everything you can reach.

“Don’t expect me to move anytime soon,” he mumbles from where his face is smushed against your boobs, and your laughter makes his head shake like the oceanvale bobs in the wind. “Well, darling. You’ve certainly showed me how much you love me.”

“Oh, I haven’t even gotten started, Raf.”

This time, it’s he who laughs. He hides his face in your chest and laughs, loud and free, in a way that he’s never been able to ever since he’s been a child. He feels your fingers comb through his blue-pink hair and feels like he’s finally home.

When you wake up from another nightmare in the night, crying for Rafayel like he’s abandoned you, he kisses every tear away until he’s positively certain you’ll never remember the way that dream felt again. You are safe in his arms, joined to his hip, bonded to his soul.

Caught up in so much luck, Rafayel forgot the looming threat.

He forgot how perfectly capable your father was of stealing away Rafayel’s happiness

The memory of Lyra drifted away from him as steadily as his craving for revenge did. She had raised him like her own in his dead mother’s stead: they’d been best friends once, and she became his only connection the mother that had labored and labored to give birth to him. Lyra had always warned him to take good care of his long hair, as it looked exactly the same as his mother’s, and she’d spent all her free time brushing the tangles out. It wasn’t Rafayel she was seeing, not really. But if she was chasing the after-image of her best friend in her son, then there really wasn’t anything he was going to do about it, not when he looked into her face and could only see his mother. They had been united in their loss, and then loss had divided them again.

It’s mother’s long hair, and Lyra’s plea for him to maintain it, that ends up being weaponized against him. Someone is tearing at his hair like a leash, pulling him from the safety of the pool. “Father, no!” You shout. You’ve never raised your voice in anger, not once. “Let go of him!”

“I’ve told you countless times!” Your father’s voice overpowers your own easily, as loud as the thunder before the lightning, as loud as the bells inside Dolphin’s Hall. Rafayel had always guessed you’d been trying to drown out the sound of your father’s shouting, the way he’d done your entire life. “They’re not to be trusted! Ask him! Ask the bastard why he’s entertaining you in the first place!”

You draw back from the accusation, the word ‘entertaining’ like a slap to the face. “He loves me,” you defend him, but your voice has become meek, small. As Rafayel thrashes in your father’s and a second man’s hold, he catches sight of your pale face, the way it’s stained with fear. For his life? Or because of an anticipated betrayal?

“Bullshit.” The unknown man spits at the ground.

“I love her,” Rafayel manages to stay. There’s a punch thrown at him that bites the taste of blood back into his mouth, foreign, not as welcome the way your blood had been. His teeth have cut into the insides of his cheek. “Which I can say with more certainty than you can, you bastard. Yes, I’ve entered her life under a guise. You murdered the woman who raised me. You’ve killed countless of my siblings. But I saw the way you starved your daughter of love and affection, and I vowed I’d never do that to her.”

“Do not play hero with me,” your father says, the hatred in his voice like the lash of a whip. Your own small hand spins out, and for a moment, Rafayel scared he’s lost you, that it’s him you’re going to strike. But your fingers wrap around your father’s wrist, as i you can do anything, as if this wasn’t the hand controlling your entire life. “Let him go, or I swear I’ll tell everyone,” you vow. The threat inside your voice is as venomous as the enmity your father’s had contained. “I’ll tell them where that caviar you so adore comes from, I swear it. Let him go or kill us both. Or maybe I’ll kill you.”

Your father halts in his shock. Rafayel can’t tell what is happening, his head still lowered to the ground by the hand pinning him there, tearing at his hair. It loosens then, and he’s kicked aside, like some stray dog that was a bother and is then forgotten. When he looks up, he sees you locked in a stare-off with your father - your father, whose looking at you as if he’s never once seen you in his entire life.

Perhaps he hasn’t.

“Walk,” is the only thing your father says then. “Walk before I forget myself.”

Rafayel struggles to sit up, to defend you as you had defended him, but you shake your head at him, the dismissal clear enough.

He watches as you leave him behind. How ironic, for you to have feared abandonment, when here he sits being abandoned now. Lost and alone.

In the following days, you don’t turn up. When Rafayel comes to search your human house, despite the fact that your father had threatened to kill him, the building is empty, stripped of all its belongings. None of the vendors in the city know about what has happened, giving only absentminded shrugs and I-do-not-cares. You’ve turned into an actual dream, a fantasy conjured by his love-sick brain, a haunting nightmare. He finds himself clenching his chest as if the heart contained inside was going to give out, broken apart like an empty shell by a mere mortal’s love.

He fears he’s going to die like this.

Alone, and unmourned, and forgotten.

When his desperation mounts in impulsiveness, he either decides to flee Whalefall City or look for you one last time. He can’t remain here, not when he looks everywhere for you, in the strange faces of this place or the gentle tosses of the waves in the harbor, in the sound of a melodious seasinger calling to prayer. It’s driving him insane. He turns up on the steps of Dolphin’s Hall, half-crazed from the loss of you.

It’s there where he witnesses the miracle of the Gods.

It’s not you, sadly; but your shrine maiden, freshly appointed as the new seasinger, hurries thorugh the throng of hall-going attendees. “It’s you!” she exclaims, a haunting echo of the very first words you addressed at him.

That makes him wary. “How do you know who I am?”

She blinks as if Rafayel was the one acting suspicious. “Well, because she’s told me, of course. And your description doesn’t really fit to any of the people here. In a city like this, it’s easy to recognize a new face.” The girl - no, woman - unfolds a letter, revealing a penmanship that he’s never seen, but which he recognizes with his heart.

Rafayel, the very first word on the paper shapes, in elegant loops, written in the soft scribbles of love.

He’s gone to meet you before the letter can hit the ground. Your successor, shaking her head, watches him go.

You’re right where you said where you would be, sitting in the surf like a mermaid would, your human legs anchored in the sand as the ocean drinks the earth. Your arms are crossed over your chest, over clothing he’s never seen before: garment from below the sea. His heart pounds inside his chest.

When you turn your head to face him, the smile on your face is entirely real.

Rafayel hurries to meet you, and then you are embracing each other like one soul being knit together; there was a physical pain in being separated from you that had strangled him for every second that you had been gone, drowning on land like a beached fish. He swipes your windswept hair out of your face, behind your ears, holding your head in his hands. You fit there, as always, like a missing puzzle piece. “I thought … you wouldn’t want to see me again,” he chokes out, the words a struggle. His tongue is heavy with sorrow, weighed down by his betrayal. “I mean, I wanted to tell you the truth. Long before I ever wanted to confess my feelings. I was going to do this properly. But I didn’t expect you.”

You snort, as if amused. “I could see that.”

His thumb strokes your cheekbone, as gentle as a clam reaches to embrace its pearl. “No, you don’t understand,” he tells you, and his chest unlocks in the same way it had when he had allowed himself to be vulnerable with you. “From the very beginning, I hadn’t expected you. I came to you with a heart heavy with hatred, blind with pain. I was so sure of myself, so sure of what was going to happen. But you reached inside me and changed everything. I’ve never even realized how painful it was to be me. Not until you administered the cure.” Rafayel leans his forehead against yours, tasting his tears. Crying, for the first time in so long. Only you. Only you. “Say something. Please.”

“Rafayel.” Your voice is wondrous. When Rafayel looks into your eyes, he only sees pure and unadulterated love, the kind of love that had drawn him off the edge of self-destruction and right into your safe arms. “Don’t you realize you’ve done the exact same thing with me? You’ve come into my life and filled it to the brim with a kind of joy I’ve never thought would be possible for me. I had resigned myself to my fate, to always be under the thumb of my father, and then you came, with all your unbridled anger and pompousness and unconditional love. If it hadn’t been for you, I might never have been able to shake off my parents’ expectations and build a life for myself with you.”

“With me?” Rafayel speaks the world gingerly. As if he can’t let himself believe it. As if he can’t let himself believe that the kinds of happy endings Lyra had always lectured him about were possible, after all.

If you witness true love, hold on to it.

Your fingers are reverent on his face, your smile so all-encompassingly loving. “How else are we going to heal this deep rift between mermaids and humans? I promised to show you, after all.”

Rafayel bursts into laughter. It’s an unexpected reaction, as unexpected as the miracle in his life that had been you, love of his life you. “That doesn’t sound too bad,” he admits, and instead of taking your hand as he had done so long ago under the secretive gaze of the moon, Rafayel finally gets to kiss you in the light of day, claiming you in front of the whole world.