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m1ckeyb3rry · 1 month ago

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

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Mydei x F!Reader

Chapter Word Count: 17.0k

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I see,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who will weep if it does?” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I understand,” he said.

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

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

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

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

“Are you asleep?” you whispered.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Pardon?” you said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Very well,” you said. “Though I—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Then?” you said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I see,” you said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What?” he said.

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

“No,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes,” you said. “You could.”

“You are frightened,” he said rhetorically.

“I’m not,” you said.

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

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

“Then?” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh,” you said. “Oh, that’s it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Y/N,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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