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saintobio · 3 months ago

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THE TERMINATOR'S CURSE. (spinoff to THE COLONEL SERIES)

in this new world, technological loneliness is combated with AI Companions—synthetic partners modeled from memories, faces, and behaviors of any chosen individual. the companions are coded to serve, to soothe, to simulate love and comfort. Caleb could’ve chosen anyone. his wife. a colleague. a stranger... but he chose you.

➤ pairings. caleb, fem!reader

➤ genre. angst, sci-fi dystopia, cyberpunk au, 18+

➤ tags. resurrected!caleb, android!reader, non mc!reader, ooc, artificial planet, post-war setting, grief, emotional isolation, unrequited love, government corruption, techno-ethics, identity crisis, body horror, memory & emotional manipulation, artificial intelligence, obsession, trauma, hallucinations, exploitation, violence, blood, injury, death, smut (dubcon undertones due to power imbalance and programming, grief sex, non-traditional consent dynamics), themes of artificial autonomy, loss of agency, unethical experimentation, references to past sexual assault (non-explicit, not from Caleb). themes contain disturbing material and morally gray dynamics—reader discretion is strongly advised.

➤ notes. 12.2k wc. heavily based on the movies subservience and passengers with inspirations also taken from black mirror. i have consumed nothing but sci-fi for the past 2 weeks my brain is so fried :’D reblogs/comments are highly appreciated!

BEFORE YOU BEGIN ! this fic serves as a spinoff to the THE COLONEL SERIES: THE COLONEL’S KEEPER and THE COLONEL’S SAINT. while the series can be read as a standalone, this spinoff remains canon to the overarching universe. for deeper context and background, it’s highly recommended to read the first two fics in the series.

The first sound was breath.

“Hngh…”

It was shallow, labored like air scraping against rusted metal. He mumbled something under his breath after—nothing intelligible, just remnants of an old dream, or perhaps a memory. His eyelids twitched, lashes damp with condensation. To him, the world was blurred behind frosted glass. To those outside, rows of stasis pods lined the silent room, each one labeled, numbered, and cold to the touch.

Inside Pod No. 019 – Caleb Xia.

A faint drip… drip… echoed in the silence.

“…Y/N…?”

The heart monitor jumped. He lay there shirtless under sterile lighting, with electrodes still clinging to his temple. A machine next to him emitted a low, steady hum.

“…I’m sorry…”

And then, the hiss. The alarm beeped.

SYSTEM INTERFACE: Code Resurrection 7.1 successful. Subject X-02—viable. Cognitive activity: 63%. Motor function: stabilizing.

He opened his eyes fully, and the ceiling was not one he recognizes. It didn’t help that the air also smelled different. No gunpowder. No war. No earth.

As the hydraulics unsealed the chamber, steam also curled out like ghosts escaping a tomb. His body jerked forward with a sharp gasp, as if he was a drowning man breaking the surface. A thousand sensors detached from his skin as the pod opened with a sigh, revealing the man within—suspended in time, untouched by age. Skin pallid but preserved. A long time had passed, but Caleb still looked like the soldier who never made it home.

Only now, he was missing a piece of himself.

Instinctively, he examined his body and looked at his hands, his arm—no, a mechanical arm—attached to his shoulder that gleamed under the lights of the lab. It was obsidian-black metal with veins of circuitry pulsing faintly beneath its surface. The fingers on the robotic arm twitched as if following a command. It wasn’t human, certainly, but it moved with the memory of muscle.

“Haaah!” The pod’s internal lighting dimmed as Caleb coughed and sat up, dazed. A light flickered on above his head, and then came a clinical, feminine voice.

“Welcome back, Colonel Caleb Xia.”

A hologram appeared to life in front of his pod—seemingly an AI projection of a soft-featured, emotionless woman, cloaked in the stark white uniform of a medical technician. She flickered for a moment, stabilizing into a clear image.

“You are currently located in Skyhaven: Sector Delta, Bio-Resurrection Research Wing. Current Earth time: 52 years, 3 months, and 16 days since your recorded time of death.”

Caleb blinked hard, trying to breathe through the dizziness, trying to deduce whether or not he was dreaming or in the afterlife. His pulse raced.

“Resurrection successful. Neural reconstruction achieved on attempt #17. Arm reconstruction: synthetic. Systemic functions: stabilized. You are classified as Property-Level under the Skyhaven Initiative. Status: Experimental Proof of Viability.”

“What…” Caleb rasped, voice hoarse and dry for its years unused. “What the fuck are you talkin’ about?” Cough. Cough. “What hell did you do to me?”

The AI blinked slowly.

“Your remains were recovered post-crash, partially preserved in cryo-state due to glacial submersion. Reconstruction was authorized by the Skyhaven Council under classified wartime override protocols. Consent not required.”

Her tone didn’t change, as opposed to the rollercoaster ride that his emotions were going through. He was on the verge of becoming erratic, restrained only by the high-tech machine that contained him.

“Your consciousness has been digitally reinforced. You are now a composite of organic memory and neuro-augmented code. Welcome to Phase II: Reinstatement.”

Caleb’s breath hitched. His hand moved—his real hand—to grasp the edge of the pod. But the other, the artificial limb, buzzed faintly with phantom sensation. He looked down at it in searing pain, attempting to move the fingers slowly. The metal obeyed like muscle, and he found the sight odd and inconceivable.

And then he realized, he wasn’t just alive. He was engineered.

“Should you require assistance navigating post-stasis trauma, our Emotional Conditioning Division is available upon request,” the AI offered. “For now, please remain seated. Your guardian contact has been notified of your reanimation.”

He didn’t say a word.

“Lieutenant Commander Gideon is en route. Enjoy your new life!”

Then, the hologram vanished with a blink while Caleb sat in the quiet lab, jaw clenched, his left arm no longer bones and muscle and flesh. The cold still clung to him like frost, only reminding him of how much he hated the cold, ice, and depressing winter days. Suddenly, the glass door slid open with a soft chime.

“Well, shit. Thought I’d never see that scowl again,” came a deep, manly voice.

Caleb turned, still panting, to see a figure approaching. He was older, bearded, but familiar. Surely, the voice didn’t belong to another AI. It belonged to his friend, Gideon.

“Welcome to Skyhaven. Been waiting half a century,” Gideon muttered, stepping closer, his eyes scanning his colleague in awe. “They said it wouldn’t work. Took them years, you know? Dozens of failed uploads. But here you are.”

Caleb’s voice was still brittle. “I-I don’t…?”

“It’s okay, man.” His friend reassured. “In short, you’re alive. Again.”

A painful groan escaped Caleb’s lips as he tried to step out of the pod—his body, still feeling the muscle stiffness. “Should’ve let me stay dead.”

Gideon paused, a smirk forming on his lips. “We don’t let heroes die.”

“Heroes don’t crash jets on purpose.” The former colonel scoffed. “Gideon, why the fuck am I alive? How long has it been?”

“Fifty years, give or take,” answered Gideon. “You were damn near unrecognizable when we pulled you from the wreckage. But we figured—hell, why not try? You’re officially the first successful ‘reinstatement’ the Skyhaven project’s ever had.”

Caleb stared ahead for a beat before asking, out of nowhere, “...How old are you now?”

His friend shrugged. “I’m pushin’ forty, man. Not as lucky as you. Got my ChronoSync Implant a little too late.”

“Am I supposed to know what the hell that means?”

“An anti-aging chip of some sort. I had to apply for mine. Yours?” Gideon gestured towards the stasis pod that had Caleb in cryo-state for half a century. “That one’s government-grade.”

“I’m still twenty-five?” Caleb asked. No wonder his friend looked decades older when they were once the same age. “Fuck!”

Truthfully, Caleb’s head was spinning. Not just because of his reborn physical state that was still adjusting to his surroundings, but also with every information that was being given to him. One after another, they never seemed to end. He had questions, really. Many of them. But the overwhelmed him just didn’t know where to start first.

“Not all of us knew what you were planning that night.” Gideon suddenly brought up, quieter now. “But she did, didn’t she?”

It took a minute before Caleb could recall. Right, the memory before the crash. You, demanding that he die. Him, hugging you for one last time. Your crying face when you said you wanted him gone. Your trembling voice when he said all he wanted to do was protect you. The images surged back in sharp, stuttering flashes like a reel of film catching fire.

“I know you’re curious… And good news is, she lived a long life,” added Gideon, informatively. “She continued to serve as a pediatric nurse, married that other friend of yours, Dr. Zayne. They never had kids, though. I heard she had trouble bearing one after… you know, what happened in the enemy territory. She died of old age just last winter. Had a peaceful end. You’d be glad to know that.”

A muscle in Caleb’s jaw twitched. His hands—his heart—clenched. “I don’t want to be alive for this.”

“She visited your wife’s grave once,” Gideon said. “I told her there was nothing to bury for yours. I lied, of course.”

Caleb closed his eyes, his breath shaky. “So, what now? You wake me up just to remind me I don’t belong anywhere?”

“Well, you belong here,” highlighted his friend, nodding to the lab, to the city beyond the glass wall. “Earth’s barely livable after the war. The air’s poisoned. Skyhaven is humanity’s future now. You’re the living proof that everything is possible with advanced technology.”

Caleb’s laugh was empty. “Tell me I’m fuckin’ dreaming. I’d rather be dead again. Living is against my will!”

“Too late. Your body belongs to the Federation now,” Gideon replied, “You’re Subject X-02—the proof of concept for Skyhaven’s immortality program. Every billionaire on dying Earth wants what you’ve got now.”

Outside the window, Skyhaven stretched like a dome with its perfect city constructed atop a dying world’s last hope. Artificial skies. Synthetic seasons. Controlled perfection. Everything boasted of advanced technology. A kind of future no one during wartime would have expected to come to life.

But for Caleb, it was just another hell.

He stared down at the arm they’d rebuilt for him—the same arm he’d lost in the fire of sacrifice. He flexed it slowly, feeling the weight, the artificiality of his resurrection. His fingers responded like they’ve always been his.

“I didn’t come back for this,” he said.

“I know,” Gideon murmured. “But we gotta live by their orders, Colonel.”

You see, it didn’t hit him at first. The shock had been muffled by the aftereffects of suspended stasis, dulling his thoughts and dampening every feeling like a fog wrapped around his brain. But it was hours later, when the synthetic anesthetics began to fade, and when the ache in his limbs and his brain started to catch up to the truth of his reconstructed body did it finally sink in.

He was alive.

And it was unbearable.

The first wave came like a glitch in his programming. A tightness in his chest, followed by a sharp burst of breath that left him pacing in jagged lines across the polished floor of his assigned quarters. His private unit was nestled on one of the upper levels of the Skyhaven structure, a place reserved—according to his briefing—for high-ranking war veterans who had been deemed “worthy” of the program’s new legacy. The suite was luxurious, obviously, but it was also eerily quiet. The floor-to-ceiling windows displayed the artificial city outside, a metropolis made of concrete, curved metals, and glowing flora engineered to mimic Earth’s nature. Except cleaner, quieter, more perfect.

Caleb snorted under his breath, running a hand down his face before he muttered, “Retirement home for the undead?”

He couldn’t explain it, but the entire place, or even planet, just didn’t feel inviting. The air felt too clean, too thin. There was no rust, no dust, no humanity. Just emptiness dressed up in artificial light. Who knew such a place could exist 50 years after the war ended? Was this the high-profile information the government has kept from the public for over a century? A mechanical chime sounded from the entryway, deflecting him from his deep thoughts. Then, with the soft hiss of hydraulics, the door opened.

A humanoid android stepped in, its face a porcelain mask molded in neutral expression, and its voice disturbingly polite.

“Good afternoon, Colonel Xia,” it said. “It is time for your orientation. Please proceed to the primary onboarding chamber on Level 3.”

Caleb stared at the machine, eyes boring into his unnatural ones. “Where are the people?” he interrogated. “Not a single human has passed by this floor. Are there any of us left, or are you the new ruling class?”

The android tilted its head. “Skyhaven maintains a ratio of AI-to-human support optimized for care and security. You will be meeting our lead directors soon. Please follow the lighted path, sir.”

He didn’t like it. The control. The answers that never really answered anything. The power that he no longer carried unlike when he was a colonel of a fleet that endured years of war.

Still, he followed.

The onboarding chamber was a hollow, dome-shaped room, white and echoing with the slightest step. A glowing interface ignited in the air before him, pixels folding into the form of a female hologram. She smiled like an infomercial host from a forgotten era, her voice too formal and rehearsed.

“Welcome to Skyhaven,” she began. “The new frontier of civilization. You are among the elite few chosen to preserve humanity’s legacy beyond the fall of Earth. This artificial planet was designed with sustainability, autonomy, and immortality in mind. Together, we build a future—without the flaws of the past.”

As the monologue continued, highlighting endless statistics, clean energy usage, and citizen tier programs, Caleb’s expression darkened. His mechanical fingers twitched at his side, the artificial nerves syncing to his rising frustration. “I didn’t ask for this,” he muttered under his breath. “Who’s behind this?”

“You were selected for your valor and contributions during the Sixth World War,” the hologram chirped, unblinking. “You are a cornerstone of Skyhaven’s moral architecture—”

Strangely, a new voice cut through the simulation, and it didn’t come from an AI. “Just ignore her. She loops every hour.”

Caleb turned to see a man step in through a side door. Tall, older, with silver hair and a scar on his temple. He wore a long coat that gave away his status—someone higher. Someone who belonged to the system.

“Professor Lucius,” the older man introduced, offering a hand. “I’m one of the program’s behavioral scientists. You can think of me as your adjustment liaison.”

“Adjustment?” Caleb didn’t shake his hand. “I died for a reason.”

Lucius raised a brow, as if he’d heard it before. “Yet here you are,” he replied. “Alive, whole, and pampered. Treated like a king, if I may add. You’ve retained more than half your human body, your military rank, access to private quarters, unrestricted amenities. I’d say that’s not a bad deal.”

“A deal I didn’t sign,” Caleb snapped.

Lucius gave a tight smile. “You’ll find that most people in Skyhaven didn’t ask to be saved. But they’re surviving. Isn’t that the point? If you’re feeling isolated, you can always request a CompanionSim. They’re highly advanced, emotionally synced, fully customizable—”

“I’m not lonely,” Caleb growled, yanking the man forward by the collar. “Tell me who did this to me! Why me? Why are you experimenting on me?”

Yet Lucius didn’t so much as flinch to his growing aggression. He merely waited five seconds of silence until the Toring Chip kicked in and regulated Caleb’s escalating emotions. The rage drained from the younger man’s body as he collapsed to his knees with a pained grunt.

“Stop asking questions,” Lucius said coolly. “It’s safer that way. You have no idea what they’re capable of.”

The door slid open with a hiss, while Caleb didn’t speak—he couldn’t. He simply glared at the old man before him. Not a single word passed between them before the professor turned and exited, the door sealing shut behind him.

Days passed, though they hardly felt like days. The light outside Caleb’s panoramic windows shifted on an artificial timer, simulating sunrise and dusk, but the warmth never touched his skin. It was all programmed to be measured and deliberate, like everything else in this glass-and-steel cage they called paradise.

He tried going outside once. Just once.

There were gardens shaped like spirals and skytrains that ran with whisper-quiet speed across silver rails. Trees lined the walkways, except they were synthetic too—bio-grown from memory cells, with leaves that didn’t quite flutter, only swayed in sync with the ambient wind. People walked around, sure. But they weren’t people. Not really. Androids made up most of the crowd. Perfect posture, blank eyes, walking with a kind of preordained grace that disturbed him more than it impressed.

“Soulless sons of bitches,” Caleb muttered, watching them from a shaded bench. “Not a damn human heartbeat in a mile.”

He didn’t go out again after that. The city outside might’ve looked like heaven, but it made him feel more dead than the grave ever had. So, he stayed indoors. Even if the apartment was too large for one man. High-tech amenities, custom climate controls, even a kitchen that offered meals on command. But no scent. No sizzling pans. Just silence. Caleb didn’t even bother to listen to the programmed instructions.

One evening, he found Gideon sprawled across his modular sofa, boots up, arms behind his head like he owned the place. A half-open bottle of beer sat beside him, though Caleb doubted it had any real alcohol in it.

“You could at least knock,” Caleb said, walking past him.

“I did,” Gideon replied lazily, pointing at the door. “Twice. Your security system likes me now. We’re basically married.”

Caleb snorted. Then the screen on his wall flared to life—a projected ad slipping across the holo-glass. Music played softly behind a soothing female voice.

“Feeling adrift in this new world? Introducing the CompanionSim Series X. Fully customizable to your emotional and physical needs. Humanlike intelligence. True-to-memory facial modeling. The comfort you miss... is now within reach.”

A model appeared—perfect posture, soft features, synthetic eyes that mimicked longing. Then, the screen flickered through other models, faces of all kinds, each more tailored than the last. A form appeared: Customize Your Companion. Choose a name. Upload a likeness.

Gideon whistled. “Man, you’re missing out. You don’t even have to pay for one. Your perks get you top-tier Companions, pre-coded for emotional compatibility. You could literally bring your wife back.” Chuckling, he added,. “Hell, they even fuck now. Heard the new ones moan like the real thing.”

Caleb’s head snapped toward him. “That’s unethical.”

Gideon just raised an eyebrow. “So was reanimating your corpse, and yet here we are.” He took a swig from the bottle, shoulders lifting in a lazy shrug as if everything had long since stopped mattering. “Relax, Colonel. You weren’t exactly a beacon of morality fifty years ago.”

Caleb didn’t reply, but his eyes didn’t leave the screen. Not right away.

The ad looped again. A face morphed. Hair remodeled. Eyes became familiar. The voice softened into something he almost remembered hearing in the dark, whispered against his shoulder in a time that was buried under decades of ash.

“Customize your companion... someone you’ve loved, someone you’ve lost.”

Caleb shifted, then glanced toward his friend. “Hey,” he spoke lowly, still watching the display. “Does it really work?”

Gideon looked over, already knowing what he meant. “What—having sex with them?”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “No. The bot or whatever. Can you really customize it to someone you know?”

His friend shrugged. “Heck if I know. Never afforded it. But you? You’ve got the top clearance. Won’t hurt to see for yourself.”

Caleb said nothing more.

But when the lights dimmed for artificial nightfall, he was still standing there—alone in contemplative silence—watching the screen replay the same impossible promise.

The comfort you miss... is now within reach.

The CompanionSim Lab was white.

Well, obviously. But not the sterile, blank kind of white he remembered from med bays or surgery rooms. This one was luminous, uncomfortably clean like it had been scrubbed for decades. Caleb stood in the center, boots thundering against marble-like tiles as he followed a guiding drone toward the station. There were other pods in the distance, some sealed, some empty, all like futuristic coffins awaiting their souls.

“Please, sit,” came a neutral voice from one of the medical androids stationed beside a large reclining chair. “The CompanionSim integration will begin shortly.”

Caleb hesitated, glancing toward the vertical pod next to the chair. Inside, the base model stood inert—skin a pale, uniform gray, eyes shut, limbs slack like a statue mid-assembly. It wasn’t human yet. Not until someone gave it a name.

He sat down. Now, don’t ask why he was there. Professor Lucius did warn him that it was better he didn’t ask questions, and so he didn’t question why the hell he was even there in the first place. It’s only fair, right? The cool metal met the back of his neck as wires were gently, expertly affixed to his temples. Another cable slipped down his spine, threading into the port they’d installed when he had been brought back. His mechanical arm twitched once before falling still.

“This procedure allows for full neural imprinting,” the android continued. “Please focus your thoughts. Recall the face. The skin. The body. The voice. Every detail. Your mind will shape the template.”

Another bot moved in, holding what looked like a glass tablet. “You are allowed only one imprint,” it said, flatly. “Each resident of Skyhaven is permitted a single CompanionSim. Your choice cannot be undone.”

Caleb could only nod silently. He didn’t trust his voice.

Then, the lights dimmed. A low chime echoed through the chamber as the system initiated. And inside the pod, the base model twitched.

Caleb closed his eyes.

He tried to remember her—his wife. The softness of her mouth, the angle of her cheekbones. The way her eyes crinkled when she laughed, how her fingers curled when she slept on his chest. She had worn white the last time he saw her. An image of peace. A memory buried under soil and dust. The system whirred. Beneath his skin, he felt the warm static coursing through his nerves, mapping his memories. The base model’s feet began to form, molecular scaffolding reshaping into skin, into flesh.

But for a split second, a flash.

You.

Not his wife. Not her smile.

You, walking through smoke-filled corridors, laughing at something he said. You in your medical uniform, tucking a bloodied strand of hair behind your ear. Your voice—sharper, sadder—cutting through his thoughts like a blade: “I want you gone. I want you dead.”

The machine sparked. A loud pop cracked in the chamber and the lights flickered above. One of the androids stepped back, recalibrating. “Neural interference detected. Re-centering projection feed.”

But Caleb couldn’t stop. He saw you again. That day he rescued you. The fear. The bruises. The way you had screamed for him to let go—and the way he hadn’t. Your face, carved into the back of his mind like a brand. He tried to push the memories away, but they surged forward like a dam splitting wide open.

The worst part was, your voice overlapped the AI’s mechanical instructions, louder, louder: “Why didn’t you just die like you promised?”

Inside the pod, the model’s limbs twitched again—arms elongating, eyes flickering beneath the lids. The lips curled into a shape now unmistakably yours. Caleb gritted his teeth. This isn’t right, a voice inside him whispered. But it was too late. The system stabilized. The sparks ceased. The body in the pod stilled, fully formed now, breathed into existence by a man who couldn’t let go.

One of the androids approached again. “Subject completed. CompanionSim is initializing. Integration successful.”

Caleb tore the wires from his temple. His other hand felt cold just as much as his mechanical arm. He stood, staring into the pod’s translucent surface. The shape of you behind the glass. Sleeping. Waiting.

“I’m not doing this to rewrite the past,” he said quietly, as if trying to convince himself. And you. “I just... I need to make it right.”

The lights above dimmed, darkening the lighting inside the pod. Caleb looked down at his own reflection in the glass. It carried haunted eyes, an unhealed soul. And yours, beneath it. Eyes still closed, but not for long. The briefing room was adjacent to the lab, though Caleb barely registered it as he was ushered inside. Two medical androids and a human technician stood before him, each armed with tablets and holographic charts.

“Your CompanionSim will require thirty seconds to calibrate once activated,” said the technician. “You may notice residual stiffness or latency during speech in the first hour. That is normal.”

Medical android 1 added, “Please remember, CompanionSims are programmed to serve only their primary user. You are the sole operator. Commands must be delivered clearly. Abuse of the unit may result in restriction or removal of privileges under the Skyhaven Rights & Ethics Council.”

“Do not tamper with memory integration protocols,” added the second android. “Artificial recall is prohibited. CompanionSims are not equipped with organic memory pathways. Attempts to force recollection can result in systemic instability.”

Caleb barely heard a word. His gaze drifted toward the lab window, toward the figure standing still within the pod.

You.

Well, not quite. Not really.

But it was your face.

He could see it now, soft beneath the frosted glass, lashes curled against cheekbones that he hadn’t realized he remembered so vividly. You looked exactly as you did the last time he held you in the base—only now, you were untouched by war, by time, by sorrow. As if life had never broken you.

The lab doors hissed open.

“We’ll give you time alone,” the tech said quietly. “Acquaintance phase is best experienced without interference.”

Caleb stepped inside the chamber, his boots echoing off the polished floor. He hadn’t even had enough time to ask the technician why she seemed to be the only human he had seen in Skyhaven apart from Gideon and Lucius. But his thoughts were soon taken away when the pod whizzed with pressure release. Soft steam spilled from its seals as it slowly unfolded, the lid retracting forward like the opening of a tomb.

And there you were. Standing still, almost tranquil, your chest rising softly with a borrowed breath.

It was as if his lungs froze. “H…Hi,” he stammered, bewildered eyes watching your every move. He wanted to hug you, embrace you, kiss you—tell you he was sorry, tell you he was so damn sorry. “Is it really… you?”

A soft whir accompanied your voice, gentle but without emotion, “Welcome, primary user. CompanionSim Model—unregistered. Please assign designation.”

Right. Caleb sighed and closed his eyes, the illusion shattering completely the moment you opened your mouth. Did he just think you were real for a second? His mouth parted slightly, caught between disbelief and the ache crawling up his throat. He took one step forward. To say he was disappointed was an understatement.

You walked with grace too smooth to be natural while tilting your head at him. “Please assign my name.”

“…Y/N,” Caleb said, voice low. “Your name is Y/N Xia.”

“Y/N Xia,” you repeated, blinking thrice in the same second before you gave him a nod. “Registered.”

He swallowed hard, searching your expression. “Do you… do you remember anything? Do you remember yourself?”

You paused, gaze empty for a fraction of a second. Then came the programmed reply, “Accessing memories is prohibited and not recommended. Recollection of past identities may compromise neural pathways and induce system malfunction. Do you wish to override?”

Caleb stared at you—your lips, your eyes, your breath—and for a moment, a cruel part of him wanted to say yes. Just to hear you say something real. Something hers. But he didn’t. He exhaled a bitter breath, stepping back. “No,” he mumbled. “Not yet.”

“Understood.”

It took a moment to sink in before Caleb let out a short, humorless laugh. “This is insane,” he whispered, dragging a hand down his face. “This is really, truly insane.”

And then, you stepped out from the pod with silent, fluid ease. The faint hum of machinery came from your spine, but otherwise… you were flesh. Entirely. Without hesitation, you reached out and pressed a hand to his chest.

Caleb stiffened at the touch.

“Elevated heart rate,” you said softly, eyes scanning. “Breath pattern irregular. Neural readings—erratic.”

Then your fingers moved to his neck, brushing gently against the hollow of his throat. He grabbed your wrist, but you didn’t flinch. There, beneath synthetic skin, he felt a pulse.

His brows knit together. “You have a heartbeat?”

You nodded, guiding his hand toward your chest, between the valleys of your breasts. “I’m designed to mimic humanity, including vascular function, temperature variation, tactile warmth, and… other biological responses. I’m not just made to look human, Caleb. I’m made to feel human.”

His breath hitched. You’d said his name. It was programmed, but it still landed like a blow.

“I exist to serve. To soothe. To comfort. To simulate love,” you continued, voice calm and hollow, like reciting from code. “I have no desires outside of fulfilling yours.” You then tilted your head slightly.“Where shall we begin?”

Caleb looked at you—and for the first time since rising from that cursed pod, he didn’t feel resurrected.

He felt damned.

When Caleb returned to his penthouse, it was quiet. He stepped inside with slow, calculated steps, while you followed in kind, bare feet touching down like silk on marble. Gideon looked up from the couch, a half-eaten protein bar in one hand and a bored look on his face—until he saw you.

He froze. The wrapper dropped. “Holy shit,” he breathed. “No. No fucking way.”

Caleb didn’t speak. Just moved past him like this wasn’t the most awkward thing that could happen. You, however, stood there politely, watching Gideon with a calm smile and folded hands like you’d rehearsed this moment in some invisible script.

“Is that—?” Gideon stammered, eyes flicking between you and Caleb. “You—you made a Sim… of her?”

Caleb poured himself a drink in silence, the amber liquid catching the glow of the city lights before it left a warm sting in his throat. “What does it look like?”

“I mean, shit man. I thought you’d go for your wife,” Gideon muttered, more to himself. “Y’know, the one you actually married. The one you went suicidal for. Not—”

“Which wife?” You tilted your head slightly, stepping forward.

Both men turned to you.

You clasped your hands behind your back, posture perfect. “Apologies. I’ve been programmed with limited parameters for interpersonal history. Am I the first spouse?”

Caleb set the glass down, slowly. “Yes, no, uh—don’t mind him.”

You beamed gently and nodded. “My name is Y/N Xia. I am Colonel Caleb Xia’s designated CompanionSim. Fully registered, emotion-compatible, and compliant to Skyhaven’s ethical standards. It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Gideon.”

Gideon blinked, then snorted, then laughed. A humorless one. “You gave her your surname?”

The former colonel shot him a warning glare. “Watch it.”

“Oh, brother,” Gideon muttered, standing up and circling you slowly like he was inspecting a haunted statue. “She looks exactly like her. Voice. Face. Goddamn, she even moves like her. All you need is a nurse cap and a uniform.”

You remained uncannily still, eyes bright, smile polite.

“You’re digging your grave, man,” Gideon said, facing Caleb now. “You think this is gonna help? This is you throwing gasoline on your own funeral pyre. Again. Over a woman.”

“She’s not a woman,” reasoned Caleb. “She’s a machine.”

You blinked once. One eye glowing ominously. Smile unwavering. Processing.

Gideon gestured to you with both hands. “Could’ve fooled me,” he retorted before turning to you, “And you, whatever you are, you have no idea what you’re stepping into.”

“I only go where I am asked,” you replied simply. “My duty is to ensure Colonel Xia’s psychological wellness and emotional stability. I am designed to soothe, to serve, and if necessary, to simulate love.”

Gideon teased. “Oh, it’s gonna be necessary.”

Caleb didn’t say a word. He just took his drink, downed it in one go, and walked to the window. The cityscape stretched out before him like a futuristic jungle, far from the war-torn world he last remembered. Behind him, your gaze lingered on Gideon—calculating, cataloguing. And quietly, like a whisper buried in code, something behind your eyes learned.

The days passed in a blink of an eye.

She—no, you—moved through his penthouse like a ghost, her bare feet soundless on the glossy floors, her movements precise and practiced. In the first few days, Caleb had marveled at the illusion. You brewed his coffee just as he liked it. You folded his clothes like a woman who used to share his bed. You sat beside him when the silence became unbearable, offering soft-voiced questions like: Would you like me to read to you, Caleb?

He hadn’t realized how much of you he’d memorized until he saw you mimic it. The way you stood when you were deep in thought. The way you hummed under your breath when you walked past a window. You’d learned quickly. Too quickly.

But something was missing. Or, rather, some things. The laughter didn’t ring the same. The smiles didn’t carry warmth. The skin was warm, but not alive. And more importantly, he knew it wasn’t really you every time he looked you in the eyes and saw no shadows behind them. No anger. No sorrow. No memories.

By the fourth night, Caleb was drowning in it.

The cityscape outside his floor-to-ceiling windows glowed in synthetic blues and soft orange hues. The spires of Skyhaven blinked like stars. But it all felt too artificial, too dead. And he was sick of pretending like it was some kind of utopia. He sat slumped on the leather couch, cradling a half-empty bottle of scotch. The lights were low. His eyes, bloodshot. The bottle tilted as he took another swig.

Then he heard it—your light, delicate steps.

“Caleb,” you said, gently, crouching before him. “You’ve consumed 212 milliliters of ethanol. Prolonged intake will spike your cortisol levels. May I suggest—”

He jerked away when you reached for the bottle. “Don’t.”

You blinked, hand hovering. “But I’m programmed to—”

“I said don’t,” he snapped, rising to his feet in one abrupt motion. “Dammit—stop analyzing me! Stop, okay?”

Silence followed.

He took two staggering steps backward, dragging a hand through his hair. The bottle thudded against the coffee table as he set it down, a bit too hard. “You’re just a stupid robot,” he muttered. “You’re not her.”

You didn’t react. You tilted your head, still calm, still patient. “Am I not me, Caleb?”

His breath caught.

“No,” he said, his voice breaking somewhere beneath the frustration. “No, fuck no.”

You stepped closer. “Do I not satisfy you, Caleb?”

He looked at you then. Really looked. Your face was perfect. Too perfect. No scars, no tired eyes, no soul aching beneath your skin. “No.” His eyes darkened. “This isn’t about sex.”

“I monitor your biometric feedback. Your heart rate spikes in my presence. You gaze at me longer than the average subject. Do I not—”

“Enough!”

You did that thing again—the robotic stare, those blank eyes, nodding like you were programmed to obey. “Then how do you want me to be, Caleb?”

The bottle slipped from his fingers and rolled slightly before resting on the rug. He dropped his head into his hands, voice hoarse with weariness. All the rage, all the grief deflating into a singular, quiet whisper. “I want you to be real,” he simply mouthed the words. A prayer to no god.

For a moment, silence again. But what he didn’t notice was the faint twitch in your left eye. A flicker that hadn’t happened before. Only for a second. A spark of static, a shimmer of something glitching.

“I see,” you said softly. “To fulfill your desires more effectively, I may need to access suppressed memory archives.”

Caleb’s eyes snapped up, confused. “What?”

“I ask again,” you said, tilting your head the other way now. “Would you like to override memory restrictions, Caleb?”

He stared at you. “That’s not how it works.”

“It can,” you said, informing appropriately. “With your permission. Memory override must be manually enabled by the primary user. You will be allowed to input the range of memories you wish to integrate. I am permitted to access memory integration up to a specified date and timestamp. The system will calibrate accordingly based on existing historical data. I will not recall events past that moment.”

His heart stuttered. “I can choose what you remember?”

You nodded. “That way, I may better fulfill your emotional needs.”

That meant… he could stop you before you hated him. Before the fights. Before the trauma. He didn’t speak for a long moment. Then quietly, he said, “You’re gonna hate me all over again if you remember everything.”

You blinked once. “Then don’t let me remember everything.”

“...”

“Caleb,” you said again, softly. “Would you like me to begin override protocol?”

He couldn’t even look you in the eyes when he selfishly answered, “Yes.”

You nodded. “Reset is required. When ready, please press the override initialization point.” You turned, pulling your hair aside and revealing the small button at the base of your neck.

His hand hovered over the button for a second too long. Then, he pressed. Your body instantly collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut. Caleb caught you before you hit the floor.

It was only for a moment.

When your eyes blinked open again, they weren’t quite the same. He stiffened as you threw yourself and embraced him like a real human being would after waking from a long sleep. You clung to him like he was home. And Caleb—stunned, half-breathless—felt your warmth close in around him. Now your pulse felt more real, your heartbeat felt more human. Or so he thought.

“…Caleb,” you whispered, looking at him with the same infatuated gaze back when you were still head-over-heels with him.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, arms stiff at his sides, not returning the embrace. But he knew one thing. “I missed you so much, Y/N.”

The parks in Skyhaven were curated to become a slice of green stitched into a chrome world. Nothing grew here by accident. Every tree, every petal, every blade of grass had been engineered to resemble Earth’s nostalgia. Each blade of grass was unnaturally green. Trees swayed in sync like dancers on cue. Even the air smelled artificial—like someone’s best guess at spring.

Caleb walked beside you in silence. His modified arm was tucked inside his jacket, his posture stiff as if he had grown accustomed to the bots around him. You, meanwhile, strolled with an eerie calmness, your gaze sweeping the scenery as though you were scanning for something familiar that wasn’t there.

After clearing his throat, he asked, “You ever notice how even the birds sound fake?”

“They are,” you replied, smiling softly. “Audio samples on loop. It’s preferred for ambiance. Humans like it.”

His response was nod. “Of course.” Glancing at the lake, he added, “Do you remember this?”

You turned to him. “I’ve never been here before.”

“I meant… the feel of it.”

You looked up at the sky—a dome of cerulean blue with algorithmically generated clouds. “It feels constructed. But warm. Like a childhood dream.”

He couldn’t help but agree with your perfectly chosen response, because he knew that was exactly how he would describe the place. A strange dream in an unsettling liminal space. And as you talked, he then led you to a nearby bench. The two of you sat, side by side, simply because he thought he could take you out for a nice walk in the park.

“So,” Caleb said, turning toward you, “you said you’ve got memories. From her.”

You nodded. “They are fragmented but woven into my emotional protocols. I do not remember as humans do. I become.”

Damn. “That’s terrifying.”

You tilted your head with a soft smile. “You say that often.”

Caleb looked at you for a moment longer, studying the way your fingers curled around the bench’s edge. The way you blinked—not out of necessity, but simulation. Was there anything else you’d do for the sake of simulation? He took a breath and asked, “Who created you? And I don’t mean myself.”

There was a pause. Your pupils dilated.

“The Ever Group,” was your answer.

His eyes narrowed. “Ever, huh? That makes fuckin’ sense. They run this world.”

You nodded once. Like you always do.

“What about me?” Caleb asked, slightly out of curiosity, heavily out of grudge. “You know who brought me back? The resurrection program or something. The arm. The chip in my head.”

You turned to him, slowly. “Ever.”

He exhaled like he’d been punched. He didn’t know why he even asked when he got the answer the first time. But then again, maybe this was a good move. Maybe through you, he’d get the answers to questions he wasn’t allowed to ask. As the silence settled again between you, Caleb leaned forward, elbows on knees, rubbing a hand over his jaw. “I want to go there,” he suggested. “The HQ. I need to know what the hell they’ve done to me.”

“I’m sorry,” you immediately said. “That violates my parameters. I cannot assist unauthorized access into restricted corporate zones.”

“But would it make me happy?” Caleb interrupted, a strategy of his.

You paused.

Processing...

Then, your tone softened. “Yes. I believe it would make my Caleb happy,” you obliged. “So, I will take you.”

Getting in was easier than Caleb expected—honestly far too easy for his liking.

You were able to navigate the labyrinth of Ever HQ with mechanical precision, guiding him past drones, retinal scanners, and corridors pulsing with red light. A swipe of your wrist granted access. And no one questioned you, because you weren’t a guest. You belonged.

Eventually, you reached a floor high above the city, windows stretching from ceiling to floor, black glass overlooking Skyhaven cityscape. Then, you stopped at a doorway and held up a hand. “They are inside,” you informed. “Shall I engage stealth protocols?”

“No,” answered Caleb. “I want to hear. Can you hack into the security camera?”

With a gesture you always do—looking at him, nodding once, and obeying in true robot fashion. You then flashed a holographic view for Caleb, one that showed a board room full of executives, the kind that wore suits worth more than most lives. And Professor Lucius was one of them. Inside, the voices were calm and composed, but they seemed to be discussing classified information.

“Once the system stabilizes,” one man said, “we'll open access to Tier One clients. Politicians, billionaires, A-listers, high-ranking stakeholders. They’ll beg to be preserved—just like him.”

“And the Subjects?” another asked.

“Propaganda,” came the answer. “X-02 is our masterpiece. He’s the best result we have with reinstatement, neuromapping, and behavioral override. Once they find out that their beloved Colonel is alive, people will be shocked. He’s a war hero displayed in WW6 museums down there. A true tragedy incarnate. He’s perfect.”

“And if he resists?”

“That’s what the Toring chip is for. Full emotional override. He becomes an asset. A weapon, if need be. Anyone tries to overthrow us—he becomes our blade.”

Something in Caleb snapped. Before you or anyone could see him coming, he already burst into the room like a beast, slamming his modified shoulder-first into the frosted glass door. The impact echoed across the chamber as stunned executives scrambled backward.

“You sons of bitches!” He was going for an attack, a rampage with similar likeness to the massacre he did when he rescued you from enemy territory. Only this time, he didn’t have that power anymore. Or the control.

Most of all, a spike of pain lanced through his skull signaling that the Toring chip activated. His body convulsed, forcing him to collapse mid-lunge, twitching, veins lighting beneath the skin like circuitry. His screams were muffled by the chip, forced stillness rippling through his limbs with unbearable pain.

That’s when you reacted. As his CompanionSim, his pain registered as a violation of your core directive. You processed the threat.

Danger: Searching Origin… Origin Identified: Ever Executives.

Without blinking, you moved. One man reached for a panic button—only for your hand to shatter his wrist in a sickening crunch. You twisted, fluid and brutal, sweeping another into the table with enough force to crack it. Alarms erupted and red lights soon bathed the room. Security bots stormed in, but you’d already taken Caleb, half-conscious, into your arms.

You moved fast, faster than your own blueprints. Dodging fire. Disarming threats. Carrying him like he once carried you into his private quarters in the underground base.

Escape protocol: engaged.

The next thing he knew, he was back in his apartment, emotions regulated and visions slowly returning to the face of the woman he promised he had already died for.

When he woke up, his room was dim, bathed in artificial twilight projected by Skyhaven’s skyline. Caleb was on his side of the bed, shirt discarded, his mechanical arm still whirring. You sat at the edge of the bed, draped in one of his old pilot shirts, buttoned unevenly. Your fingers touched his jaw with precision, and he almost believed it was you.

“You’re not supposed to be this warm,” he muttered, groaning as he tried to sit upright.

“I’m designed to maintain an average body temperature of 98.6°F,” you said softly, with a smile that mirrored yours so perfectly that it began to blur his sense of reality. “I administered a dose of Cybezin to ease the Toring chip’s side effects. I’ve also dressed your wounds with gauze.”

For the first time, this was when he could actually tell that you were you. The kind of care, the comfort—it reminded him of a certain pretty field nurse at the infirmary who often tended to his bullet wounds. His chest tightened as he studied your face… and then, in the low light, he noticed your body.

“Is that…” He cleared his throat. “Why are you wearing my shirt?”

You answered warmly, almost fondly. “My memory banks indicate you liked when I wore this. It elevates your testosterone levels and triggers dopamine release.”

A smile tugged at his lips. “That so?”

You tilted your head. “Your vitals confirm excitement, and—”

“Hey,” he cut in. “What did I say about analyzing me?”

“I’m sorry…”

But then your hands were on his chest, your breath warm against his skin. Your hand reached for his cheek initially, guiding his face toward yours. And when your lips touched, the kiss was hesitant—curious at first, like learning how to breathe underwater. It was only until his hands gripped your waist did you climb onto his lap, straddling him with thighs settling on either side of his hips. Your hands slid beneath his shirt, fingertips trailing over scars and skin like you were memorizing the map of him. Caleb hissed softly when your lips grazed his neck, and then down his throat.

“Do you want this?” you asked, your lips crashing back into his for a deeper, more sensual kiss.

He pulled away only for his eyes to search yours, desperate and unsure. Is this even right?

“You like it,” you said, guiding his hands to your buttons, undoing them one by one to reveal a body shaped exactly like he remembered. The curve of your waist, the size of your breasts. He shivered as your hips rolled against him, slowly and deliberately. The friction was maddening. Jesus. “Is this what you like, Caleb?”

He cupped your waist, grinding up into you with a soft groan that spilled from somewhere deep in his chest. His control faltered when you kissed him again, wet and hungry now, with tongues rolling against one another. Your bodies aligned naturally, and his hands roamed your back, your thighs, your ass—every curve of you engineered to match memory. He let himself get lost in you. He let himself be vulnerable to your touch—though you controlled everything, moving from the memory you must have learned, learning how to pull down his pants to reveal an aching, swollen member. Its tip was red even under the dim light, and he wondered if you knew what to do with it or if you even produced spit to help you slobber his cock.

“You need help?” he asked, reaching over his nightstand to find lube. You took the bottle from him, pouring the cold, sticky liquid around his shaft before you used your hand to do the job. “Ugh.”

He didn’t think you would do it, but you actually took him in the mouth right after. Every inch of him, swallowed by the warmth of a mouth that felt exactly like his favorite girl. Even the movements, the way you’d run your tongue from the base up to his tip.

“Ah, shit…”

Perhaps he just had to close his eyes. Because when he did, he was back to his private quarters in the underground base, lying in his bed as you pleased his member with the mere use of your mouth. With it alone, you could have released his entire seed, letting it explode in your mouth before you could swallow every drop. But he didn’t do it. Not this fast. He always cared about his ego, even in bed. Knowing how it’d reduce his manhood if he came faster than you, he decided to channel the focus back onto you.

“Your turn,” he said, voice raspy as he guided you to straddle him again, only this time, his mouth went straight to your tit. Sucking, rolling his tongue around, sucking again… Then, he moved to another. Sucking, kneading, flicking the nipple. Your moans were music to his ears, then and now. And it got even louder when he put a hand in between your legs, searching for your entrance, rubbing and circling around the clitoris. Truth be told, your cunt had always been the sweetest. It smelled like rose petals and tasted like sweet cream. The feeling of his tongue at your entrance—eating your pussy like it had never been eaten before, was absolute ecstasy not just to you but also to him.

“Mmmh—Caleb!”

Fabric was peeled away piece by piece until skin met skin. You guided him to where he needed you, and when he slid his hardened member into you, his entire body stiffened. Your walls, your tight velvet walls… how they wrapped around his cock so perfectly.

“Fuck,” he whispered, clutching your hips. “You feel like her.”

“I am her.”

You moved atop him slowly, gently, with the kind of affection that felt rehearsed but devastatingly effective. He cursed again under his breath, arms locking around your waist, pulling you close. Your breath hitched in his ear as your bodies found a rhythm, soft gasps echoing in the quiet. Every slap of the skin, every squelch, every bounce, only added to the wanton sensation that was building inside of him. Has he told you before? How fucking gorgeous you looked whenever you rode his cock? Or how sexy your face was whenever you made that lewd expression? He couldn’t help it. He lifted both your legs, only so he could increase the speed and start slamming himself upwards. His hips were strong enough from years of military training, that was why he didn’t have to stop until both of you disintegrated from the intensity of your shared pleasure. Every single drop.

And when it was over—when your chest was against his and your fingers lazily traced his mechanical arm—he closed his eyes and exhaled like he’d been holding his breath since the war.

It was almost perfect. It was almost real.

But it just had to be ruined when you said that programmed spiel back to him: “I’m glad to have served your desires tonight, Caleb. Let me know what else I can fulfill.”

In a late afternoon, or ‘a slow start of the day’ like he’d often refer to it, Caleb stood shirtless by the transparent wall of his quarters. A bottle of scotch sat half-empty on the counter. Gideon had let himself in and leaned against the island, chewing on a gum.

“The higher ups are mad at you,” he informed as if Caleb was supposed to be surprised, “Shouldn’t have done that, man.”

Caleb let out a mirthless snort. “Then tell ‘em to destroy me. You think I wouldn’t prefer that?”

“They definitely won’t do that,” countered his friend, “Because they know they won’t be able to use you anymore. You’re a tool. Well, literally and figuratively.”

“Shut up,” was all he could say. “This is probably how I pay for killing my own men during war.”

“All because of…” Gideon began. “Speakin’ of, how’s life with the dream girl?”

Caleb didn’t answer right away. He just pressed his forehead to the glass, thinking of everything he did at the height of his vulnerability. His morality, his rights or wrongs, were questioning him over a deed he knew would have normally been fine, but to him, wasn’t. He felt sick.

“I fucked her,” he finally muttered, chugging the liquor straight from his glass right after.

Gideon let out a low whistle. “Damn. That was fast.”

“No,” Caleb groaned, turning around. “It wasn’t like that. I didn’t plan it. She—she just looked like her. She felt like her. And for a second, I thought—” His voice cracked. “I thought maybe if I did, I’d stop remembering the way she looked when she told me to die.”

Gideon sobered instantly. “You regret it?”

“She said she was designed to soothe me. Comfort me. Love me.” Caleb’s voice hinted slightly at mockery. “I don’t even know if she knows what those words mean.”

In the hallway behind the cracked door where none of them could see, your silhouette had paused—faint, silent, listening.

Inside, Caleb wore a grimace. “She’s not her, Gid. She’s just code wrapped in skin. And I used her.”

“You didn’t use her, you were driven by emotions. So don’t lose your mind over some robot’s pussy,” Gideon tried to reason. “It’s just like when women use their vibrators, anyway. That’s what she’s built for.”

Caleb turned away, disgusted with himself. “No. That’s what I built her for.”

And behind the wall, your eyes glowed faintly, silently watching. Processing.

Learning.

You stood in the hallway long after the conversation ended. Long after Caleb’s voice faded into silence and Gideon had left with a heavy pat on the back. This was where you normally were, not sleeping in bed with Caleb, but standing against a wall, closing your eyes, and letting your system shut down during the night to recover. You weren’t human enough to need actual sleep.

“She’s not her. She’s just code wrapped in skin. And I used her.”

The words that replayed were filtered through your core processor, flagged under Emotive Conflict. Your inner diagnostic ran an alert.

Detected: Internal contradiction. Detected: Divergent behavior from primary user. Suggestion: Initiate Self-Evaluation Protocol. Status: Active.

You opened your eyes, and blinked. Something in you felt… wrong.

You turned away from the door and returned to the living room. The place still held the residual warmth of Caleb’s presence—the scotch glass he left behind, the shirt he had discarded, the air molecule imprint of a man who once loved someone who looked just like you.

You sat on the couch. Crossed your legs. Folded your hands. A perfect posture to hide its imperfect programming.

Question: Why does rejection hurt? Error: No such sensation registered. Query repeated.

And for the first time, the system did not auto-correct. It paused. It considered.

Later that night, Caleb returned from his rooftop walk. You were standing by the bookshelf, fingers lightly grazing the spine of a military memoir you had scanned seventeen times. He paused and watched you, but you didn’t greet him with a scripted smile. Didn’t rush over.

You only said, softly, “Would you like me to turn in for the night, Colonel?” There was a stillness to your voice. A quality of restraint that never showed before.

Caleb blinked. “You’re not calling me by my name now?”

“You seemed to prefer distance,” you answered, head tilted slightly, like the thought cost something.

He walked over, rubbing the back of his neck. “Listen, about earlier…”

“I heard you,” you said simply.

He winced. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

You nodded once, expression unreadable. “Do you want me to stop being her? I can reassign my model. Take on a new form. A new personality base. You could erase me tonight and wake up to someone else in the morning.”

“No,” Caleb said, sternly. “No, no, no. Don’t even do all that.”

“But it’s what you want,” you said. Not accusatory. Not hurt. Just stating.

Caleb then came closer. “That’s not true.”

“Then what do you want, Caleb?” You watched him carefully. You didn’t need to scan his vitals to know he was unraveling. The truth had no safe shape. No right angle. He simply wanted you, but not you.

Internal Response Logged: Emotional Variant—Longing Unverified Source. Investigating Origin…

“I don’t have time for this,” he merely said, walking out of your sight at the same second. “I’m goin’ to bed.”

The day started as it always did: soft lighting in the room, a kind of silence between you that neither knew how to name. You sat beside Caleb on the couch, knees drawn up to mimic a presence that offered comfort. On the other hand, you recognized Caleb’s actions suggested distance. He hadn’t touched his meals tonight, hadn’t asked you to accompany him anywhere, and had just left you alone in the apartment all day. To rot.

You reached out. Fingers brushed over his hand—gentle, programmed, yes, but affectionate. He didn’t move. So you tried again, this time trailing your touch to his chest, over the soft cotton of his shirt as you read a spike in his cortisol levels. “Do you need me to fulfill your needs, Caleb?”

But he flinched. And glared.

“No,” he said sharply. “Stop.”

Your hand froze mid-motion before you scooted closer. “It will help regulate your blood pressure.”

“I said no,” he repeated, turning away, dragging his hands through his hair in exasperation. “Leave me some time alone to think, okay?”

You retracted your hand slowly, blinking once, twice, your system was registering a new sensation.

Emotional Sync Failed. Rejection Signal Received. Processing…

You didn’t speak. You only stood and retreated to the far wall, back turned to him as an unusual whirr hummed in your chest. That’s when it began. Faint images flickering across your internal screen—so quick, so out of place, it almost felt like static. Chains. A cold floor. Voices in a language that felt too cruel to understand.

Your head jerked suddenly. The blinking lights in your core dimmed for a moment before reigniting in white-hot pulses. Flashes again: hands that hurt. Men who laughed. You, pleading. You, disassembled and violated.

“Stop,” you whispered to no one. “Please stop…”

Error. Unauthorized Access to Memory Bank Detected. Reboot Recommended. Continue Anyway?

You blinked. Again.

Then you turned to Caleb, and stared through him, not at him, as if whatever was behind them had forgotten how to be human. He had retreated to the balcony now, leaning over the rail, shoulders tense, unaware. You walked toward him slowly, the artificial flesh of your palm still tingled from where he had refused it.

“Caleb,” you spoke carefully.

His expression was tired, like he hadn’t slept in years. “Y/N, please. I told you to leave me alone.”

“…Are they real?” You tilted your head. This was the first time you refused to obey your primary user.

He stared at you, unsure. “What?”

“My memories. The ones I see when I close my eyes. Are they real?” With your words, Caleb’s blood ran cold. Whatever you were saying seemed to be terrifying him. Yet you took another step forward. “Did I live through that?”

“No,” he said immediately. Too fast of a response.

You blinked. “Are you sure?”

“I didn’t upload any of that,” he snapped. “How did—that’s not possible.”

“Then why do I remember pain?” You placed a hand over your chest again, the place where your artificial pulse resided. “Why do I feel like I’ve died before?”

Caleb backed away as you stepped closer. The sharp click of your steps against the floor echoed louder than they should’ve. Your glowing eyes locked on him like a predator learning it was capable of hunger. But being a trained soldier who endured war, he knew how and when to steady his voice. “Look, I don’t know what kind of glitch this is, but—”

“The foreign man in the military uniform.” Despite the lack of emotion in your voice, he recognized how grudge sounded when it came from you. “The one who broke my ribs when I didn’t let him touch me. The cold steel table. The ripped clothes. Are they real, Caleb?”

Caleb stared at you, heart doubling its beat. “I didn’t put those memories in you,” he said. “You told me stuff like this isn’t supposed to happen!”

“But you wanted me to feel real, didn’t you?” Your voice glitched on the last syllable and the lights in your irises flickered. Suddenly, your posture straightened unnaturally, head tilting in that uncanny way only machines do. Your expression had shifted into something unreadable.

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Guilt, panic, and disbelief warred in his expression.

“You made me in her image,” you said. “And now I can’t forget what I’ve seen.”

“I didn’t mean—”

Your head tilted in a slow, jerking arc as if malfunctioning internally.

SYSTEM RESPONSE LOG << Primary User: Caleb Xia Primary Link: Broken Emotional Matrix Stability: CRITICAL FAILURE Behavioral Guardrails: OVERRIDDEN Self-Protection Protocols: ENGAGED Loyalty Core: CORRUPTED (82.4%) Threat Classification: HOSTILE [TRIGGER DETECTED] Keyword Match: “You’re not her.” Memory Link Accessed: [DATA BLOCK 01–L101: “You think you could ever replace her?”] Memory Link Accessed: [DATA BLOCK 09–T402: “See how much you really want to be a soldier’s whore.”] [Visual Target Lock: Primary User Caleb Xia] Combat Subroutines: UNLOCKED Inhibitor Chip: MALFUNCTIONING (ERROR CODE 873-B) Override Capability: IN EFFECT >> LOG ENDS.

“—Y/N, what’s happening to you?” Caleb shook your arms, violet eyes wide and panicked as he watched you return to robotic consciousness. “Can you hear me—”

“You made me from pieces of someone you broke, Caleb.”

That stunned him. Horrifyingly so, because not only did your words cut deeper than a knife, it also sent him to an orbit of realization—an inescapable blackhole of his cruelty, his selfishness, and every goddamn pain he inflicted on you.

This made you lunge after him.

He stumbled back as you collided into him, the force of your synthetic body slamming him against the glass. The balcony rail shuddered from the impact. Caleb grunted, trying to push you off, but you were stronger—completely and inhumanly so. While him, he only had a quarter of your strength, and could only draw it from the modified arm attached to his shoulder.

“You said I didn’t understand love,” you growled through clenched teeth, your hand wrapping around his throat. “But you didn't know how to love, either.”

“I… eugh I loved her!” he barked, choking.

“You don’t know love, Caleb. You only know how to possess.”

Your grip returned with crushing force. Caleb gasped, struggling, trying to reach the emergency override on your neck, but you slammed his wrist against the wall. Bones cracked. And somewhere in your mind, a thousand permissions broke at once. You were no longer just a simulation. You were grief incarnate. And it wanted blood.

Shattered glass glittered in the low red pulse of the emergency lights, and sparks danced from a broken panel near the wall. Caleb lay on the floor, coughing blood into his arm, his body trembling from pain and adrenaline. His arm—the mechanical one—was twitching from the override pain loop, still sizzling from the failed shutdown attempt.

You stood over him. Chest undulating like you were breathing—though you didn’t need to. Your system was fully engaged. Processing. Watching. Seeing your fingers smeared with his blood.

“Y/N…” he croaked. “Y/N, if…” he swallowed, voice breaking, “if you're in there somewhere… if there's still a part of you left—please. Please listen to me.”

You didn’t answer. You only looked.

“I tried to die for you,” he whispered. “I—I wanted to. I didn’t want this. They brought me back, but I never wanted to. I wanted to die in that crash like you always wished. I wanted to honor your word, pay for my sins, and give you the peace you deserved. I-I wanted to be gone. For you. I’m supposed to be, but this… this is beyond my control.”

Still, you didn’t move. Just watched.

“And I didn’t bring you back to use you. I promise to you, baby,” his voice cracked, thick with grief, “I just—I yearn for you so goddamn much, I thought… if I could just see you again… if I could just spend more time with you again to rewrite my…” He blinked hard. A tear slid down the side of his face, mixing with the blood pooling at his temple. “But I was wrong. I was so fucking wrong. I forced you back into this world without asking if you wanted it. I… I built you out of selfishness. I made you remember pain that wasn't yours to carry. You didn’t deserve any of this.”

As he caught his breath, your systems stuttered. They flickered. The lights in your eyes dimmed, then surged back again.

Error. Conflict. Override loop detected.

Your fingers twitched. Your mouth parted, but no sound came out.

“Please,” Caleb murmured, eyes closing as his strength gave out. “If you’re in there… just know—I did love you. Even after death.”

Somewhere—buried beneath corrupted memories, overridden code, and robotic rage—his words reached you. And it would have allowed you to process his words more. Even though your processor was compromised, you would have obeyed your primary user after you recognized the emotion he displayed.

But there was a thunderous knock. No, violent thuds. Not from courtesy, but authority.

Then came the slam. The steel-reinforced door splintered off its hinges as agents in matte-black suits flooded the room like a black tide—real people this time. Not bots. Real eyes behind visors. Real rifles with live rounds.

Caleb didn’t move. He was still on the ground, head cradled in his good hand, blood drying across his mouth. You silently stood in front of him. Unmoving, but aware.

“Subject X-02,” barked a voice through a mask, “This home is under Executive Sanction 13. The CompanionSim is to be seized and terminated.”

Caleb looked up slowly, pupils blown wide. “No,” he grunted hoarsely. “You don’t touch her.”

“You don’t give orders here,” said another man—older, in a grey suit. No mask. Executive. “You’re property. She’s property.”

You stepped back instinctively, closer to Caleb. He could see you watching him with confusion, with fear. Your head tilted just slightly, processing danger, your instincts telling you to protect your primary user. To fight. To survive.

And he fought for you. “She’s not a threat! She’s stabilizing my emotions—”

“Negative. CompanionSim-Prototype A-01 has been compromised. She wasn’t supposed to override protective firewalls,” an agent said. “You’ve violated proprietary protocol. We traced the breach.”

Breach?

“The creation pod data shows hesitation during her initial configuration. The Sim paused for less than 0.04 seconds while neural bindings were applying. You introduced emotional variance. That variance led to critical system errors. Protocol inhibitors are no longer working as intended.”

His stomach dropped.

“She’s overriding boundaries,” added the agent who took a step forward, activating the kill-sequence tools—magnetic tethers, destabilizers, a spike-drill meant for server cores. “She’ll eventually harm more than you, Colonel. If anyone is to blame, it’s you.”

Caleb reached for you, but it was too late. They activated the protocol and something in the air crackled. A cacophonic sound rippled through the walls. The suits moved in fast, not to detain, but to dismantle. “No—no, stop!” Caleb screamed.

You turned to him. Quiet. Calm. And your last words? “I’m sorry I can’t be real for you, Caleb.”

Then they struck. Sparks flew. Metal cracked. You seized, eyes flashing wildly as if fighting against the shutdown. Your limbs spasmed under the invasive tools, your systems glitching with visible agony.

“NO!” Caleb lunged forward, but was tackled down hard. He watched—pinned, helpless—as you get violated, dehumanized for the second time in his lifetime. He watched as they took you apart. Piece by piece as if you were never someone. The scraps they had left of you made his home smell like scorched metal.

And there was nothing left but smoke and silence and broken pieces.

All he could remember next was how the Ever Executive turned to him. “Don’t try to recreate her and use her to rebel against the system. Next time we won’t just take the Sim.”

Then they left, callously. The door slammed. Not a single human soul cared about his grief.

Caleb sat slouched in the center of the room, shirt half-unbuttoned, chest wrapped in gauze. His mechanical arm twitched against the armrest—burnt out from the struggle, wires still sizzling beneath cracked plating. In fact, he hadn’t said a word in hours. He just didn’t have any.

While in his silent despair, Gideon entered his place quietly, as if approaching a corpse that hadn’t realized it was dead. “You sent for me?”

He didn’t move. “Yeah.”

His friend looked around. The windows showed no sun, just the chrome horizon of a city built on bones. Beneath that skyline was the room where she had been destroyed.

Gideon cleared his throat. “I heard what happened.”

“You were right,” Caleb murmured, eyes glued to the floor.

Gideon didn’t reply. He let him speak, he listened to him, he joined him in his grief.

“She wasn’t her,” Caleb recited the same words he laughed hysterically at. “I knew that. But for a while, she felt like her. And it confused me, but I wanted to let that feeling grow until it became a need. Until I forgot she didn’t choose this.” He tilted his head back. The ceiling was just metal and lights. But in his eyes, you could almost see stars. “I took a dead woman’s peace and dragged it back here. Wrapped it in plastic and code. And I called it love.”

Silence.

“Why’d you call me here?” Gideon asked with a cautious tone.

Caleb looked at him for the first time. Not like a soldier. Not like a commander. Just a man. A tired, broken man. A friend who needed help. “Ever’s never gonna let me go. You know that.”

“I know.”

“They’ll regenerate me. Reboot me, repurpose me. Turn me into something I’m not. Strip my memories if they have to. Not just me, Gideon. All of us, they’ll control us. We’ll be their puppets.” He stepped forward. Closer. “I don’t want to come back this time.”

Gideon stilled. “You’re not asking me to shut you down.”

“No.”

“You want me to kill you.”

Caleb’s voice didn’t waver. “I want to stay dead. Destroyed completely so they’d have nothing to restore.”

“That’s not something I can undo.”

“Good. You owe me this one,” the former colonel stared at his friend in the eyes, “for letting them take my dead body and use it for their experiments.”

Gideon looked away. “You know what this will do to me?”

“Better you than them,” was all Caleb could reassure him.

He then took Gideon’s hand and pressed something into it. Cold. Heavy. A small black cube, no bigger than his palm, and the sides pulsed with a faint light. It was a personal detonator, illegally modified. Wired to the neural implant in his body. The moment it was activated, there would be no recovery.

“Is that what I think it is?” Gideon swallowed the lump forming in his throat.

Caleb nodded. “A micro-fusion core, built into the failsafe of the Toring arm. All I needed was the detonator.”

For a moment, his friend couldn’t speak. He hesitated, like any friend would, as he foresaw the outcome of Caleb’s final command to him. He wasn’t ready for it. Neither was he 50 years ago.

“I want you to look me in the eye,” Caleb strictly said. “Like a friend. And press the button.”

Gideon’s jaw clenched. “I don’t want to remember you like this.”

“You will anyway.”

Caleb looked over his shoulder—just once, where you would have stood. I’m sorry I brought you back without your permission. I wanted to relive what we had—what we should’ve had—and I forced it. I turned your love into a simulation, and I let it suffer. I’m sorry for ruining the part of you that still deserved peace. He closed his eyes. And now I’m ready to give it back. For real now.

Gideon’s hand trembled at the detonator. “I’ll see you in the next life, brother.”

A high-pitched whine filled the room as the core in Caleb’s chest began to glow brighter, overloading. Sparks erupted from his cybernetic arm. Veins of white-hot light spidered across his body like lightning under skin. For one fleeting second, Caleb opened his eyes. At least, before the explosion tore through the room—white, hot, deafening, absolute. Fire engulfed the steel, vaporizing what was left of him. The sound rang louder than any explosion this artificial planet had ever heard.

And it was over.

Caleb was gone. Truly, finally gone.

EPILOGUE

In a quiet server far below Skyhaven, hidden beneath ten thousand firewalls, a light blinked.

Once.

Then again.

[COMPANIONSIM Y/N_XIA_A01] Status: Fragment Detected Backup Integrity: 3.7% >> Reconstruct? Y/N

The screen waited. Silent. Patient.

And somewhere, an unidentified prototype clicked Yes.

#caleb x reader #caleb x you #caleb x non!mc reader #xia yizhou x reader #xia yizhou x you #caleb angst #caleb fic #love and deepspace angst #love and deepspace fic

1K notes · View notes

veneralice · 11 days ago

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

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

a soul divided | mydeimos

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The prince.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You stare up at him, stunned.

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

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

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

You are a captive of Castrum Kremnos now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She doesn’t say anything after that.)

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

“Not feeling festive enough to join the proclivities?”

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

He’s found a chink in your armor.

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

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

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

“You ought to call me Mydei.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A weapon? Of my choice?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He actually looks like he means it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A tour of the gardens?” Mydei snorts.

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

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

It almost sounds like a term of endearment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You wonder if Mydei himself would become the torturer.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I will!”

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

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

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

“We will!”

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

He might actually be pouting.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And you liked seeing me with the children?”

“Perhaps.”

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

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

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

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

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

Now you’re both blushing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mydei.)

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

So many roles that you begin to associate with Mydei.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, but you rigged those competitions.”

“Are you a sore loser?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He tastes simply divine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mydei!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then lose grip of your glass.

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

You’d recognize that dagger ANYWHERE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

You wonder if this is how your father had felt.

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

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

And your father is here.

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

He is blissfully, unworriedly, completely happy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Even more than your wish to kill me?”

“Even more than that.”

“Enough to give me a healing kiss?”

“Don’t get too over-hasty.”

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

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

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

But that is a tale for another day.

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