Dionys was where she expected him to be.
By the tent. Not inside, not pacing, just standing.
Still enough that, for a moment, Alessia thought he might not be breathing at all.
Then she heard it.
Slow, heavy.
In.
Out.
Like waves.
Her jaw tightened. Good.
He’d stayed where she told him.
She stopped a few paces away. Didn’t call out. Didn’t soften it.
“You knew,” she said.
He turned his head until his eyes found hers in the dark. Flat. Black. Stripped of the warrior’s glare he usually wore like armor.
“Yes.”
The word scraped out rough as stone.
He didn’t step toward her. Didn’t raise his hands in supplication. He just stood there, breathing, the sound loud in the quiet, deliberate as the surf against rocks.
“Knew she was tired,” he continued. He looked back toward the tent flap, his jaw tightening until the muscle jumped beneath the skin. “Knew her hands shook.”
Alessia exhaled slowly through her nose.
“She thought you’d leave,” she said.
That made him move. Not much, but enough.
His shoulders pulled tight.
“She thought if she wasn’t fast— if she wasn’t useful—”
Alessia cut herself off. She didn’t need to finish it.
Dionys’s fingers flexed at his sides, opening and closing on empty air where a spear-shaft should have been.
“Thought sharp was safe. Thought hard was better.”
He exhaled sharply through his nose, a broken sound.
“Wrong.”
Alessia studied him.
“You told her warriors don’t rest.”
“Yes.” He looked at the ground between them, fist clenching until the knuckles whitened. “Said stopping was death. Said warriors breathe only… after.”
He exhaled, sharp and ragged.
“She learned. Rest meant…” His jaw worked, the word forcing itself out like a blade from a wound. “Meant I would go.”
“And then you left her in a bed with bandaged hands.”
“Couldn’t look at her.”
The admission scraped out raw, his hand coming up to press flat against his own chest, over the heart that hammered there, too loud. Too fast.
“Saw the swelling, the tremor. Knew…” He swallowed, his throat working. “Knew I put it there.”
Alessia looked at him, at the way his hand pressed against his chest like he was trying to keep his heart from escaping, at the blood welling in his palm from the splinters. At the noise of his breathing.
“You don’t get to leave when you’re ashamed,” she said, her voice flat and hard as the packed earth. “You don’t get to march off to break firewood or sharpen spears because you can’t stand what you see in her bandages. She’s five, Dio. She doesn’t know you left because you felt guilty. She thinks you left because she broke.”
Dionys stepped forward, sudden and graceless, and sank to his knees in the dirt at her feet. Not a king’s bow, not a warrior’s submission.
Just collapse.
His hands hung empty at his sides, blood dripping slow from the splinter-wounds, pattering dark against the dust. he didn’t reach for her. Didn’t touch. Just knelt there, his chest heaving with the forced rhythm of his breathing.
“Tell me how to fix it,” he rasped, his head dropping forward, his voice stripped to gravel and need. “Not the wrists. Not Patrian’s work.” He looked up at her, his eyes naked. Flat black surfaces cracked with something desperate. Something wounded. “Tell me how to make her know…”
He swallowed hard, his throat working.
“…that I loved her when she snored. Not the striking. Not the sharp. The…”
He faltered, his hand finding his own knee and gripping hard enough to bruise.
“The her.”
He looked up at Alessia, and the shame was absolute.
“Tell me how to stay,” he whispered. “When every breath I take reminds her what I did.”
Alessia looked down at him, the mountain of a man kneeling in the dirt like a penitent, and she wanted to kick him. Wanted to scream that he didn’t get to fall apart, not when Stella was inside trying not to cry because she thought she was doing it wrong.
But she saw the ruin in his eyes. The same ruin she’d seen when he held her after the basin, when he carried her back like she was made of glass and ash.
“You don’t fix it with words,” she said, her voice low and rough as gravel. She crouched down, ignoring how her ankle screamed, ignoring the stitch-pull in her side.
“You fix it with presence. You sit. You breathe. You don’t move when she leans on you.”
She reached out, her fingers trembling, and she grabbed his chin, forcing him to look at her.
“You stay when she’s quiet. Not when she’s performing.”
His hand rose, slow and trembling, and pressed against the ground where her shadow fell, fingers sinking into the dirt as if he could root himself there.
“Stay,” he repeated, the word scraping out rough as stone on stone.
He looked up at her, and the flat black of his eyes held something new, something cracking through the iron.
Gratitude that she had not simply cast him out to drown in his guilt.
“Every sunset,” he rasped, his fingers curling against the earth, gathering a handful of dust that he let trickle back down. “Breathing.”
He rose. Not gracefully, not with the warrior’s fluidity, but with the jerky, uncertain motion of a man learning to stand under weight he’d never expected to carry.
“Tell her about the mud,” he said, his voice dropping to a murmur meant for himself, for the tent, for the girl inside listening with her heart in her throat. “Tell her I was small once. I was scared.”
He straightened to his full height, his shadow stretching long and stark against the canvas, but his eyes were not the warlord’s flat flint. They were open. Wounded, but willing.
“I stopped,” he said. Not as an excuse, just a fact.
Alessia’s gaze sharpened. “Because I told you to.”
“Yes.”
No flinch. No deflection. Just the word, heavy as a blade between them. He held her gaze, his jaw tight, his hands flexing at his sides.
“Told you I would.”
His chest rose and fell with another breath.
“Staying now because—” he stopped. Swallowed. Forced the rest out, rough and scraped raw. “because she breathed. Said she liked it.”
He looked toward the tent flap. His voice dropped to a whisper of gravel and grief. “And she still wants me there.”
Alessia sighed. Her anger didn’t vanish.
But it shifted.
Not gone, just re-aimed.
“He knew.”
“He set it,” Dionys said, his voice flat as bronze. “I did it.”
Alessia looked past him, toward the edge of the camp.
Toward where Odrian would be.
“He lied to me.”
“Yes.” Dionys turned his head, following her gaze to the shadows where Odrian’s silhouette would be. “Saw the limits. Ignored them.” His hand flexed, the splinter-wounds in his palm opening fresh. “He knew. I did.”
A long silence stretched.
Then, unprompted, Alessia spoke again. Softer.
“She liked it.”
Dionys went still.
“The mornings.”
She crossed her arms over her chest.
“She liked being fast. Being quiet. Not being watched.”
Her voice dropped.
“She liked that you smiled.”
That landed. Harder than anything else.
Dionys looked down, his hands flexing once.
“I know.”
Alessia studied him.
“You gave her something I didn’t.”
Not an accusation.
Recognition.
Dionys exhaled, his breath stirring the dust between them. He flexed his bloodied hand, watching the splinters shift in the meat of his palm.
“Gave her the dawn. The fast. The not-being-seen.”
He looked up, meeting her eyes with a gaze that had shed its flint, leaving only raw bedrock beneath. “You give her the rest.”
Alessia nodded once.
It wasn’t forgiveness. Not yet.
She stepped past him.
Then stopped.
“…She asked if you could sit with her.”
Dionys didn’t move.
“Not train,” Alessia added. “Not teach.”
She turned to look at him.
“Just … be there.”
He nodded once, sharp, and turned toward the tent.
He paused at the flap, his hand hovering over the canvas. Not entering. Not yet.
He looked back at Alessia, his chest rising and falling, deliberate and loud in the quiet.
“Will breathe,” he rumbled. “Loud. So she knows.”
Then he pushed through, into the dark where Stella waited.
Not a warlord entering.
Just a man.
Breathing like waves.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Dionys settled against the tent pole nearest her bedroll. Not looming over her, not touching, just occupying the space where the shadow fell heaviest. His back hit the canvas with a soft thud, his legs sprawling into the dirt, one knee bent. The position was sloppy. Undignified. Nothing like the rigid guard-stance he usually held.
He let his head tip back until it rested against the wood, his throat exposed to the dark, and he breathed.
In.
The sound was ragged, catching in his chest, scraping past the guilt lodged there. He forced it deeper, slower, filling his lungs until they burned.
Out.
A long, low exhale, audible in the quiet tent. Loud as surf against rocks, like he’d promised.
His hands rested on his knees, palms up, the splinter-wounds weeping slow and dark into the bandages he’d wrapped himself with clumsy, shaking fingers. His palms throbbed.
He kept his hands open, visible, empty. No spear. No dagger. Nothing sharp.
He closed his eyes and listened.
Her breathing was lighter than his, shallow and uneven, the rhythm of a child fighting sleep rather than surrendering to it. He heard the rustle of wool as she shifted, the catch in her throat as she hovered on the edge of waking. The sound of her bandaged wrist brushing against the bedroll.
He breathed again.
In.
Out.
Louder this time. Deliberate. A rhythm to fill the dark with something constant that wasn’t a threat. The sound filled the small space between them.
A rustle.
Small.
Tentative.
He didn’t open his eyes, but he tilted his head slightly toward her, his chin dipping in acknowledgment.
“Just me,” he rumbled, the words stripped to gravel, barely sound at all.
Just vibration.
Just breath.
Silence.
The softest whisper of fabric.
She was sitting up.
He opened one eye. She was a small shape in the dark, her bandaged hands fisted in the blanket, her face turned toward the sound of him. He couldn’t see her eyes, but he felt the weight of her stare, testing. Waiting for him to demand something.
To teach.
To sharpen.
He did neither.
He just breathed.
In.
Out.
Slow. Heavy.
Like waves.
He let his injured hand drop from his knee to the dirt between them. Not reaching for her, just bridging the space, palm up, blood seeping dark against the dust. An offering.
“Sleep,” he whispered, the word rough as stone and soft as sand. “I’m staying.”
He closed his eye again. Settled deeper against the pole.
And he breathed. For her, for himself, for the three weeks ahead.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Alessia leaned against the tent pole just outside the flap, her bad ankle throbbing against the packed earth, and watched through the gap in the canvas.
The light inside was poor. A single lamp burning low, casting long shadows that made Dionys look like a mountain collapsed against the far wall. He was slumped there, spine curved, head tipped back against the wood, his legs sprawled in the dirt like he had forgotten how to stand.
His chest rose.
Fell.
Rose again.
In.
Out.
It really did sound like waves. Like the surf at low tide was just sliding up the sand and retreating. She didn’t believe him when he said he could do it. Didn’t think a man who held himself like a drawn blade could ever loosen his grip enough to make noise like that.
But there it was. Filling the tent.
Filling the dark.
Stella shifted. Alessia saw the shape of her sitting up, bandaged hands fisted in her blanket, small silhouette tense. Watching. Waiting.
Dionys didn’t move.
Didn’t open his eyes.
Just breathed.
In.
Out.
Slow. Heavy. Deliberate.
Alessia saw the exact moment Stella believed it. Her shoulders dropped, just a fraction. Just enough. Her fingers uncurled from the wool. She settled back against her pillows, not turning away from him, keeping her face toward the sound of his breathing.
Alessia’s hand found the knife at her belt. Not to draw it, just to feel the hilt under her palm, the familiar weight of violence in a world that demanded it.
She should be angry still.
She was angry still.
The rage hadn’t gone anywhere, it was just sitting in her chest, sharp and steady.
But watching them, watching her daughter unclench her jaw because he was snoring in the corner like a sleeping bear… She felt something else settle alongside the fury.
This was what she demanded of him. The willingness to be soft, and loud, and there, even when it cost him his pride.
Stella’s breathing evened out. Alessia saw her eyelids flutter, heavy and trusting. She reached out one bandaged hand toward him, not touching, her fingers curling in the air between them.
Dionys didn’t flinch. Didn’t wake. Just kept breathing.
In.
Out.
Alessia stayed where she was, the canvas of the tent flap rough against her shoulder
Her ankle screamed.
She didn’t shift.
She didn’t go inside.
She stood and watched.
She let them have it.
When Stella was truly asleep, she would go in. She’d check her bandages. She’d kick Dionys awake and make him go clean his hands.
She’d be the wall again.
But for now she just watched.
And let the sound of waves fill the space between them.
Next
Tiny Raven 
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