Dawn arrived softly. The camp stirred, the usual clamor of soldiers rising from their bedrolls, their armor clanking, voices spilling into the morning air. But within their tent, for now, there was quiet.
Alessia slept, her breathing steady, fever chased into memory. Dionys remained at her back, stoic as ever, his fingers tracing idle patterns on the edge of her chiton.
Stella, still curled against her mother’s side, blinked awake in increments. She stretched like a cat before nuzzling back into the warmth.
Odrian watched them all from his perch near the tent flap. His usual smirk was absent, replaced by something quieter.
The war was still outside.
Nomaros’s shadow still lingered.
But for these few stolen moments, they were safe. They were whole.
They were his.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Alessia woke when she heard Stella stir. She rubbed her daughter’s back absently, checking to see if she was feverish.
She blinked, remembering the last few moments before she had fallen asleep again.
Calling Dionys a pillow, him pretending to hate it, Odrian being dramatic.
She glanced up and—
Oh.
Dionys was still there behind her, arms looped loosely in a way that suggested he hadn’t moved an inch while she slept. His expression was as unreadable as ever, but there was something almost protective in the way he hadn’t let her slump.
“You’re… you’re still here…?” Alessia said with a sheepish grin. “I figured you would have gotten sick of me drooling on you.”
Dionys didn’t even glance at his damp sleeve. He just arched one brow.
“You weigh less than my spear,” he muttered. “Wasn’t worth the effort of moving.”
Odrian, lurking near the tent flap, nearly choked on the lie.
Dionys shifted just enough to roll his shoulder, subtly testing the stiffness of a limb that had been immobilized for hours.
“Also, you would’ve whined.”
Alessia blinked at him, speechless. Then with a slow, knowing smirk, she leaned her head back against his shoulder, testing him.
“Oh, so that’s why,” she said, her voice dripping with exaggerated understanding. “Because I would’ve whined. Not because you care or anything.”
She sighed theatrically.
Dionys’s jaw clenched just slightly. His usual stoicism wavering for a split second before he slammed it back into place like a shield wall.
“Obviously,” he grunted.
Odrian failed to stifle a snort.
“Naturally,” he chimed in. “Our beloved Dionys is known for his selflessness. Just yesterday I saw him personally carrying three wounded soldiers and a stray puppy back to camp, purely out of disinterest.”
Dionys leveled them both with a glare.
“You,” he growled at Odrian, “are unbearable.” Then to Alessia, his voice dropping into something like warning, “And you are incredibly heavy.”
His arms, still looped securely around her, begged to differ.
“Ah, the truth comes out,” Alessia said as she glanced down at herself. “You’re trapped beneath my impressive weight.”
Dionys’s nostrils flared as his glare intensified.
“Crushed.”
The word was flat, and yet his grip didn’t loosen.
Odrian kicked lazily at Dionys’s foot.
“You poor, powerless man.”
Dionys exhaled through his nose, long-suffering, and didn’t dignify Odrian’s theatrics with a response. Instead he glanced down at Alessia.
“Are you done?”
“Never,” Alessia said with a grin. “But I’ll grant you a reprieve for now.”
Dionys rolled his shoulders like he was finally free of a great burden, his hands lingering just a moment too long as he helped ease Alessia upright.
“Finally, some mercy for the weary warrior,” Odrian said. His smirk softened as he glanced at Alessia, searching for any sign of lingering pain or fever.
He only found her. Grinning, stubborn, and alive.
Odrian’s smile softened slightly further before he clapped his hands together, the vulnerability already shuttered away.
“Now! Who wants breakfast?”
Stella was awake in an instant, her hand shooting up like an eager recruit’s.
Odrian left the tent, only to return a moment later balancing a wooden platter piled with stolen luxury.
“Only the finest,” he teased as he lowered the tray toward Alessia and Stella. “Fresh bread, salted fish, olives—even a pomegranate… if you promise not to stab me over it.”
“I’ll stab you if you don’t give it to me,” Alessia said with a slightly feral grin.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had pomegranate. It had been years.
Odrian threw back his head and laughed as he stood back up.
“Noted,” he wheezed, clutching his chest for dramatic effect. “Your pomegranate, Your Highness.”
He didn’t quite escape the tent before Alessia caught the way his grin lingered. Soft at the edges, like sunlight through storm clouds.
“Dionys,” his voice floated back, slightly muffled. “Restrain your bloodthirsty paramour before she redecorates my tent with my internal organs—”
Alessia choked on the water she was drinking, feeling the tips of her ears burn pink.
Dionys, who had been resolutely ignoring the entire exchange while checking Stella’s rock collection, went still at Odrian’s words. He turned to stare at the tent flap, slowly, as though contemplating whether to strangle the king with it.
“… Paramour,” he repeated, voice flat as a dull blade.
Then, with a pointed glare at Alessia, he grabbed the nearest object and chucked it at Odrian’s retreating back.
The linen bandages fell pathetically short.
Alessia snorted.
“Truly a devastating display of force. I tremble at your might.”
Stella, mouth full of bread and pomegranate pips, giggled and flopped back against Alessia’s uninjured side.
“You know, paramour is very generous for someone who just called me a burden,” Alessia said as she tilted her head and pitched her voice to carry.
Dionys’s look was nothing short of withering.
“You drooled,” he said. “On my sword arm.”
She opened her mouth to retort and he leaned in, close enough that his breath stirred the hair at her temple as he dropped his voice to a whisper.
“And if you want to be my paramour, say it plainly. I won’t play word games with kings or thieves.”
Alessia went still, so still that Stella tilted her head up to check if her mother was okay. She could feel the warmth of Dionys’s breath at her temple, the weight of his arm bracketing her ribs, the solid reality of him after hours spent sleeping against him.
Her heart hammered in a way that had nothing to do with her injuries.
Say it plainly.
Words fail her, caught in her throat like fish bones. She had spent so long surviving on silence and half-truths that speaking plain tasted foreign. Dangerous.
“Plainly?” Her voice came out rough, quieter than she intended. She swallowed hard, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on Stella’s back. “I want…”
She hesitated. The words were there, scrambled, terrified, and true, but they felt too big for her mouth suddenly.
“I want you to still be here tomorrow,” she finally breathed, not quite meeting his eyes. “When I wake up. Even if I’m drooling on you again. Especially then.”
She forced a wry smile, trying to claw back some of her armor. “But if you tell anyone I admitted to wanting something, I’ll deny it and stab you with a sewing needle. Plain enough?”
Dionys went still against her, his arm tightening around her ribs to anchor, his fingers pressing once into the fabric of her chiton.
“Plain enough,” he rumbled, voice gravel-rough and unshakable. He didn’t look at her, staring instead at the tent wall, but his jaw had softened. “I’ll be here. Drool and all.”
A beat, then quieter, “Won’t tell a soul. Your secrets are safe here.”
His other hand lifted, briefly, to hover near Stella’s hair. Not quite touching, just a silent canopy of protection. Then he settled back.
Solid.
Present.
Staying.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
The morning air outside the tent carried the bite of early winter, sharp enough to sting the lungs but clean compared to the closeness of canvas and wool and the metallic tang of spilled blood. Alessia breathed it in carefully, mindful of her ribs, and took her first unassisted step beyond the flap.
She had not slept in sunlight in days.
The sentry posted three paces from the entrance snapped to attention. Not with hostility, but with the oiled precision of a mechanism engaging. His spear remained upright, vertical and ceremonial, but his free hand lifted in a gesture that was half-halt, half-salute.
“Hold there. Name yourself and where you’re headed.”
Alessia froze. The motion instinctive, primal. A prisoner hearing keys turn. Her shoulders drew inward, hunching protectively around her wounds, and her chin dipped until she was staring at the dust between the sentry’s sandals rather than his face.
She had practiced the posture for years in Ellun.
Eyes down. Voice soft. No threat.
“Just… taking air,” she murmured. “Near the river. Only a few paces.”
The sentry did not lower his hand. His gaze flickered over her, assessing her chiton, the pallor of her cheeks, the bandages visible at her throat. His expression remained professionally blank, but his stance shifted to block the path more solidly.
“Authorization?”
“I don’t—” Her voice cracked. She wet her lips, tasting copper and fear. “I don’t have a seal. Or a chit. I didn’t know I needed…”
“All personnel require escort clearance beyond the medical perimeter.” He spoke as if reciting from a tablet, uninflected and immutable. “Does the King of Othara know you are mobile? Does Commander Dionys?”
Does your master know you’re wandering?
The unspoken echo of the question made her stomach twist. She had heard that tone before. Not the cruel cadence of Walus’s punishments, but something worse: The bureaucratic indifference of a system that classified her as property to be logged and tracked. The sentry wasn’t being cruel. He was being correct.
And that correctness felt like bars clicking shut.
“I can go back,” Alessia whispered. The compliance was immediate, automatic. A conditioned response that made her want to claw at her own skin. “I’m sorry, I’ll go back inside.”
She turned, too fast, her gait hitching as her injured ankle twisted on uneven ground. She didn’t cry out.
She had learned not to make noise when retreating.
Dionys rounded the corner of the supply tent at a brisk pace, carrying a fresh waterskin and a length of linen for bandage changes. Then he saw her.
Retreating.
Her shoulders were curled inward like broken wings, chin tucked so low he could only see the crown of her head and the tremor in her hands. The sentry stood at attention, spear vertical, expression professionally blank.
Correct.
Dionys stopped dead.
The waterskin hit the ground with a dull thud.
“Stand down,” he snapped at the sentry. His voice carried the razor edge of command, though he knew the man was only following orders. “Return to your post. Now.”
The sentry saluted and withdrew without question, boots crunching away into the morning bustle.
Dionys didn’t move toward Alessia immediately. He watched her frozen posture and felt something cold settle in his stomach.
He’d seen that stance before.
In prisoners. In the broken men sent back from Ellun’s interrogation chambers.
They’d built her a cage. Polished the bars with their good intentions.
He stepped closer, careful to make noise so she knew exactly where he was. He stopped just inside her peripheral vision, not blocking her path. When he spoke, his voice was lower than usual. Rough.
“…He was following orders. Standard security.” A pause. His jaw tightened. “I should have told them. Should have put your name on the damned roster myself.”
He extended his hand, not to grab but to offer, palm up like a truce. “River’s this way, if you still want air.”
He didn’t apologize. Didn’t say we didn’t mean to trap you.
The words would be ash in his mouth.
Alessia stared at his hand for a moment. Not a command, not a trap, just an offer. It took longer than it should have for her brain to catalog it as safe, to override the screaming instinct that said hands grab, hands hurt, hands pin you down when you try to run.
She took it.
Dionys’s palm was rough, callused from spear-work and sword-work and whatever else kings did when they weren’t propping up half-dead thieves like convenient cushions. She gripped tighter than she meant to, fingers digging in, grounding herself in the reality of bone and skin and choice.
“Roster,” she said finally, her voice steadier than she felt. Her ankle twisted again on a loose stone, and she stumbled, catching herself against his side with a hiss of pain.
But she didn’t let go of his hand.
“Sounds very formal. Very Aurean.”
She forced a smirk, though her throat was tight. The river was close now, she could smell the wet stone and the algae.
“So, what am I, then?” she asked, aiming for light but landing somewhere near brittle. “Prisoner? Patient? Odrian’s latest indiscretion?” She tilted her head, watching Dionys’s profile as they walked. “Or just… Alessia?”
The name felt foreign in her mouth. Just a name. Not Skia. Not ‘that Tharon bitch.’ Not ‘Walus’s toy.’ Just… Alessia.
Her fingers twitched in his grip. She didn’t pull away.
“And you,” she added, softer now, watching the way he shortened his stride to match her limping half-step, “don’t have to shepherd me. I know the river’s this way. I’m not going to—”
She almost said escape. Almost said steal your boat and vanish.
She settled for: “—drown myself in three inches of current. I’ve got too many stitches to ruin now.”
Dionys didn’t look down at their joined hands, but his thumb shifted, brushing once against her knuckles in a scuff of skin that might have been reassurance, might have been grounding.
He didn’t let go.
“Just Alessia,” he grunted, voice low and gravel-rough, scraped raw by the morning air. He kept his gaze forward, on the path, but his periphery tracked every twitch of her posture, every hitch in her gait. His stride stayed deliberately shortened to match her limp, his bulk angled to block the wind. “No roster for that. No seal.”
When she stumbled, his arm was already there. Not grabbing, simply bracing. A solid pillar against her side that held steady until she found her footing. He didn’t comment on the stumble. He just waited, patient as stone, until she was stable.
“I’m not shepherding,” he muttered finally. His jaw flexed, the muscle ticking. “Escort.”
The river grew closer, audible now, the sound of water over stone that made her tense. He noticed, and his grip tightened fractionally.
“You’re unsteady. Ankle’s swollen. You tear those stitches, Askarion will carve strips off my hide.” Then quieter, almost an admission, gruff and stripped bare, “And you’d bleed. Again.”
He glanced down at her, just a flicker of grey eyes in a weathered face. “So. Escort. Until you don’t need one.”
Not can’t leave. Not won’t let her. Just until she didn’t need one. A limit. A promise. A door held open, if she chose to walk through it.
He stopped at the river’s edge, still holding her hand, and gestured with his chin toward a flat rock worn smooth by water.
“Sit. Before you fall.”
She stared at the rock like it might bite her. Sitting meant admitting she was tired, and admitting that felt too much like admitting she was trapped, even if Dionys just performed verbal gymnastics to avoid calling her a prisoner.
“Just Alessia,” she repeated, testing the weight of it on her tongue. It was lighter than she expected. Less sharp than Skia, less bitter than Thief, less broken than all the other names she’d worn like manacles. “No seal. No title. Sounds… boring.”
She sat, her knees buckling the last few inches faster than she meant them to. She caught herself with her free hand braced against the stone, cold and slick under her palm. The river was right there, churning, and her stomach lurched at the sound.
She squeezed Dionys’s hand harder, just for a second, grounding herself in bone and callus rather than memory.
“Escort,” she said, looking up at hi with a smirk that felt stretched too thin over her teeth. “Very proper. Very heroic. Next you’ll be wrapping me in blankets and forbidding me from walking anywhere alone.”
Her ankle throbbed in time with her pulse, hot and swollen agains the manacle’s rub. She should let go of his hand.
She didn’t.
Her fingers stayed tangled with his, a lifeline she was too exhausted to be embarrassed about.
“How long until I don’t need one?” she asked, quieter now. The river mist clung to her eyelashes. She blinked it away. “The stitches, I mean. Askarion’s going to want me upright and useful before Nomaros’s time limit is up. I need to be functional.”
She didn’t say I need to run if I have to. Didn’t say I need to know I can grab Stella and vanish without needing a permit.
Dionys heard it anyway, in the space between her breaths.
“Odrian probably thinks I’m already planning to steal his boat,” she added, deflecting. She looked at the water rather than him. “He’s right, by the way. It’s a very nice boat. Stealing it would be rude of me, though. I’d have to leave a thank-you note.”
Her voice cracked on the last word. She was tired.
The river spray misted between them, fine and cold, clinging to Dionys’s beard like dew. He didn’t look at the water. Instead, he watched Alessia’s face. The way her jaw tightened when her ankle twisted, the deliberate slowness of her blinking.
Exhaustion.
Pain.
The stubborn refusal to let either show.
He’d met soldiers who broke faster.
“Odrian’s boat,” he said, voice pitched low enough to cut under the river’s rush, “draws four feet. Too shallow for the estuary this time of year. You’d run aground before you cleared the harbor mouth.”
Not you can’t. Just you’d fail.
He crouched beside her. Not kneeling, not sitting, just lowering himself to her level with the rough grace of a man who spent more time in dirt than chairs. His hand stayed in hers, the angle awkward, but he didn’t pull away. Didn’t comment on the sweat of her palm, or the tremor of her fingers.
“Thirteen days,” he said. “For the stitches to hold firm. Twelve, if you don’t tear them ‘being functional.’”
He let that hang, watching her profile.
“Boat’s useless without a crew. And the wood’s rotten below the waterline. Patched twice with rawhide.” He paused, his thumb tracing the back of her hand once, barely perceptible. “But the northern pass? Past the salt flats? Dry most of the year. No sentries. Fewer questions.”
He looked at her, the way she held his hand like a weapon she couldn’t bear to drop, and thought of the men he’d known with the same hollow look behind their eyes, the same readiness to flinch.
“Not saying you need it,” he added, gruff. “Saying you’ll have options. When you’re ready.”
Not if. When.
He reached into his belt pouch with his free hand and withdrew a clay marker. Stamped with his own signet, the boar of Kareth. He pressed it into her palm, folding her fingers over it.
“Show this. Most of the patrols are mine. They’ll let you pass, or they answer to me.”
He finally looked at the water, the churning grey surface that made her knuckles white.
“Not a prisoner,” he said, quieter now. The words scraped from him like they cost something. “Not an indiscretion. Just… Alessia. With a key to the gate.”
He stood, knees popping, but he didn’t release her hand. He just waited, solid and patient, a wall against the wind and the river-sound.
“Sit,” he repeated. “Breathe. Then we’ll go back.”
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Alessia walked to the shoreline with Stella that evening.
She smiled as Stella wandered the shore, picking up shells and disturbing hermit crabs, completely enamored by the small creatures.
And completely distracted.
She was amazed at how well Stella was doing so close to the water. Alessia herself was afraid of the ocean, a fear she had passed on to Stella, or so she thought. But here Stella was, brave and confident as the waves kissed her toes.
Alessia looked down at Queen Dottie in her hands, who she was mending once again. Truthfully, she needed to find new fabric to replace all of the doll’s limbs, which were more patchwork and darning than original, but she hadn’t had time to scavenge for them.
Dionys found her there, something in him refusing to let either of them out of his sight for long.
Old habits. New fears.
He didn’t intrude. He leaned against a weather-worn post nearby, his arms crossed, watching the way Stella giggled as a crab scuttled over her toes.
She didn’t scream, didn’t flinch. Just watched, fascinated.
After a moment, Dionys pushed off the post and crouched beside Alessia, close enough that their shoulders brushed. Not so close that he crowded her. His gaze flicked to the doll, then back to the sea.
“She’s not scared,” he said, a quiet observation wrapped in something like awe.
Alessia looked up with a smile and a nod before returning to her mending.
“She loves the sea, she just doesn’t know it yet,” she said. “I’m glad she’s not afraid.
Dionys watched the waves a moment longer before murmuring, “She’ll swim someday.”
“Only if someone else teaches her,” Alessia said. “I can’t swim myself.”
Dionys stilled. Blinked. Turned to stare at her. “You don’t—”
He cut himself off, shaking his head as if he were trying to dislodge the sheer absurdity of the claim.
This woman—who had survived Ellun’s streets, had escaped, who had laughed at death itself—couldn’t swim.
His jaw worked before he finally muttered, “Fine. I’ll teach her. After you’ve healed.”
His thumb tapped against the hilt of his dagger, saying the rest.
You’re learning, too.
Alessia laughed.
“I grew up in a city where the nearest sea was the harbor. Not exactly water you want to go diving into,” she explained. It wasn’t the only reason she had never learned, but it was the easiest to talk about.
Dionys stilled at that, just for a heartbeat, before nodding once.
“You’re right, it’s filthy.” Quieter, he added. “This water is clean.”
A gentle offer.
He turned the doll over in his hands, inspecting her handiwork, the careful stitches holding the doll together.
“You’re good at this,” he said. A reluctant but genuine compliment.
“He’s right,” Odrian said as he approached them. His fingers ghosted over the doll’s patched-up arm. “You don’t sew half bad for a self-taught thief.”
“I had an advantage there,” Alessia admitted. “I didn’t teach myself. Not the basics at least. My mother was a seamstress. She taught me.”
“The one who gave you the comb,” Dionys’s fingers still on the doll’s stitches. It wasn’t a question, he remembered her fevered whispers.
“Explains the precision,” he muttered. Then he glanced toward Stella. “Explains her, too.”
Stubborn. Clever. Meticulous.
Currently attempting to negotiate with a seagull for its dinner.
His thumb retraced the doll’s stitches, her stitches, before murmuring, “She taught you well.”
Odrian leaned in. “Tell us about her.”
“She used to tell me stories while she worked,” Alessia murmured, more to herself than to Dionys or Odrian. “She said every stitch was a prayer, a wish for the wearer. Safe travels, warmth, luck…”
She traced a finger down the doll’s repaired arm.
“Never thought I’d be doing the same for my own daughter.”
Dionys’s thumb ghosted over a particularly neat seam in silent acknowledgment before he handed the doll back.
“Good stitches,” he muttered. Then, with a glance at Stella, “Good prayers.”
Stella was now winning her argument with the seagull.
Alessia slid Dottie into her bag, her hand resting on the hilt of the dagger inside. The one she’d kept hidden from them.
She knew she needed to talk to them about it.
She needed to talk about him.
With Stella distracted and the camp far enough away not to overhear, this was the best opportunity she was likely to get.
She was scared. Scared they’d see her and Stella as pawns once they knew who they were. Or worse, that they’d decide she and Stella weren’t worth the trouble following them.
But if they were staying, Dionys and Odrian deserved to know what was hunting them.
Alessia took a deep breath before drawing the dagger from her satchel and setting it on the sand in front of herself, angled so Walus’s wolf’s head sigil was clear.
She knew they’d recognize it. Gods knew it had been burned into the backs of captured scouts often enough.
“I know you have questions,” she said softly. “About Ellun. About… him.”
Tiny Raven 
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