Content Warning:
This chapter includes themes of abusive household dynamics, coercion involving a minor, pregnancy involving a minor (discussed only), threats and intimidation toward a child, psychological conditioning, physical mistreatment (non-graphic), confinement, and detailed recollections of escaping an abusive situation. It also contains strong emotional distress responses and intense anger toward the abuser. Please be safe while reading. A summary of events is included in the post-chapter author note.
The next evening, Alessia managed to walk to the shoreline with Stella.
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 that Stella was doing so well so close to the water. Alessia was afraid of the ocean, a fear she had accidentally passed on to her daughter. It was nice to see Stella being so brave and confident.
Alessia looked down at the doll in her hands, being mended once again. Really, she needed to get new fabric to replace all of Dottie’s limbs, which were more patchwork and darning than original now.
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 just leaned against a weather-worn post nearby, his arms crossed, watching the way Stella giggles as a crab scuttles over her toes.
She didn’t scream, didn’t flinch. Just watched, fascinated. Brave in a way Alessia had never been.
After a moment, Dionys pushed off the post and crouched beside Alessia—close enough that their shoulders brushed, but not so close that he crowded her. His gaze flicked to the doll, then back to the sea.
“She’s not scared,” he said—an observation, quiet, 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,” Alessia said. “I’m glad she’s not afraid.”
Dionys watched the sea a moment longer before murmuring, “She’ll swim someday.”
“Only if someone else teaches her,” Alessia said. “I can’t swim myself.”
Dionys stopped. 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, who had escaped from Walus, who laughed at death itself—couldn’t swim.
His jaw worked before he finally muttered, “Fine. I’ll teach her. After you’ve healed.”
And the way his thumb taps against the hilt of his dagger says the rest: And you’re learning, too.
Alessia laughed at his apparent confusion.
“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’d never learned to swim, 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: This place is safe. This world is yours now.
He turned the doll over in his hands, inspecting her handiwork—careful stitches holding the doll together.
“You’re good at this,” he said—a reluctant compliment, but a genuine one.
“He’s right,” Odrian said as he came up to them. His fingers ghosted over the doll’s patched-up arm. “You don’t sew half bad for a self-taught thief.”
“Ah, I had an advantage there,” Alessia said. “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’ fingers stilled, just slightly, on the doll’s stitches. It wasn’t a question, he remembered her fevered whispers—mother, ring, waves, home.
He paused—brief and barely there—before he muttered, ”…Explains the precision.” Then, with a glance toward Stella (currently attempting to negotiate with a seagull for its lunch), “Explains her, too.”
Stubborn. Clever. Meticulous.
His thumb retraced the doll’s stitches—her stitches—before murmuring, “She taught you well.”
Rare praise, meant for the dead as much as the living.
Odrian—always quicker to press where Dionys hesitated—leaned in. “Tell me about her.”
A suggestion, not a demand.
“She used to tell me stories while she worked,” Alessia murmured, more to herself than to Dionys or Odrian. “She said that 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’ thumb ghosted over a particularly neat seam—a silent acknowledgement—before he handed the doll back, his gruffness a poor disguise for the quiet understanding beneath.
“…Good stitches,” he muttered. Then, with a glance at Stella (who was now winning her argument with the seagull), “Good prayers.”
Odrian watched them—Alessia’s fingers on the doll, Dionys’ careful hands—and something in his chest ached.
With a smirk that doesn’t quite hide the softness in his eyes, he says, “Better teach the terror how to sew soon, or she’ll demand you fix every rock she tries to pocket.”
Alessia chuckled as she slid Dottie into her bag. “I’ve tried a couple of times, but she hasn’t been interested so far. She’ll learn once she’s ready.”
Her hand rested on the hilt of the dagger in her satchel, the one she’d kept hidden from them. She knew that if this family was going to work she needed to talk to them about it.
She needed to talk about him.
And now—with Stella firmly distracted, and away from the prying ears at camp—was the best opportunity.
But she was scared. Scared they’d see her and Stella as pawns once they knew who they were. Or worse, that they wouldn’t think she and Stella were worth the trouble they carried with them.
But if she and Stella were staying, then Odrian and Dionys needed to know, deserved to know, who—what was chasing them.
She took a deep breath before pulling the dagger out, putting it on the sand in front of herself, angled so Walus’ wolf’s head mark 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.”
The shift in the air was instantaneous—Odrian stilled beside her, his usual playful grin fading into something sharp and calculating. His gaze dropped to the dagger, then flicked to her face, assessing.
“…I had my suspicions,” he admitted. His voice was low but lacked any trace of mockery. “I wanted you to tell us when you were ready.”
Dionys didn’t react at all at first; he stared at the wolf’s head, his fingers flexing once against his thigh before he exhaled—slow, controlled.
“Commander Walus,” he said flatly. It wasn’t a question. “The Butcher of Ellun.”
Of course, they knew the name. Of course, they’d heard the stories—the flayed prisoners, the villages burned for sport, the executions drawn out over days.
And now—now Dionys understands Alessia’s scars.
Odrian’s jaw tightened as he picked up the dagger, turning it over in his hands. “This isn’t just a soldier’s blade,” he murmured. “This is his personal mark, which means—”
His eyes snapped to hers, dark with sudden understanding. “You weren’t just running from him. You were important to him.”
More important than Nomaros’ reports of a ‘broken toy’.
Dionys’ breath hissed between his teeth—his posture shifting subtly, ready to move, ready to act—but he forced himself to be still. Waiting. Listening.
For Alessia.
For Stella.
***
“My father, Tikkun, was a gambler,” Alessia said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “He got in over his head. Walus was looking for…for a ‘wife’, he claimed. A bed slave and pet were closer to the truth. Shortly after my mother died, he offered to clear my father’s gambling debts in exchange for me.”
She swallowed hard. “Tikkun agreed.”
Odrian’s grip on the dagger tightened—knuckles white, face carefully blank. But his other hand found hers, lacing their fingers together before she could pull away.
“That was seven years ago,” Alessia continued. “I was twelve.”
Odrian went very still.
It was one thing to suspect. It was another to know.
His grip on the dagger whitened his knuckles before he forced himself to set it down—careful, controlled.
“…How old were you when Stella was born?”
His voice was too even. Too calm.
He didn’t look at Dionys. Didn’t need to. The fury rolling off the other man was palpable.
If Commander Walus had been there, he would have been dead before he could blink.
“Fourteen,” Alessia said. “Thirteen for most of the pregnancy.”
Dionys moved—abruptly, violently—but not toward her. Away. Several paces down the shore, his back turned, shoulders heaving with the force of his breathing. His hands flexed, curled, shook.
He didn’t trust himself to speak, didn’t trust himself to stand there and remain civilized.
Odrian didn’t follow. He just exhaled—rough and ragged—through his nose. His thumb rubbed circles over Alessia’s knuckles.
“…And Stella?” he asked quietly. “Does she know?”
From down the beach, there’s the distant crack of something splintering—likely a piece of driftwood meeting a very unfortunate end against the rocks.
Odrian doesn’t flinch, just squeezes her hand again, grounding.
“Ignore him,” he murmured. “He just needs to … process.”
A charitable way to say that Dionys was currently imagining at least seven different ways to murder a man. Possibly more.
“Stella?” Odrian prompted gently.
“She knows he’s her father by blood, but I don’t think she really understands what that means. Not really. She knows she’s mine, and if you ask her who her father is, she’ll claim Hermes, the little heretic.”
The laugh that punches out of Odrian is raw but genuine. “Gods, of course she would.” His fingers tightened around hers, brief and fierce, before he exhaled. “Smart girl.”
Then, softer, “And you? Are you alright?”
He doesn’t mean physically, and they both know it.
“No, but knowing she’s safe helps,” Alessia said. “And … I’m getting there.”
Odrian’s smile is thin but real as he leans in to press his forehead to hers. “Good,” he murmurs. “Because we’re not going anywhere.”
No take-backs, no retreat.
Not now that they had found her.
Alessia leans into the touch, exhaling shakily.
For the first time in years, she let herself believe in someone else.
(She’s allowed this. Allowed to be soft. Allowed to trust.)
“Then neither are we.”
Odrian’s breath caught—just once—before he grinned, sharp and alive. “Damn right.”
Seven days left—seven days until Nomaros tested their resolve.
Odrian would make it twenty. Seventy. A hundred. However many it took to keep this.
Whatever the cost.
Dionys returned when he had wrestled the fury back under his skin, when he could speak without his voice breaking with it. He sank onto the sand beside Alessia with all the grace of a man sitting on a bed of nails.
His fingers curled around the dagger—Walus’ dagger—and his voice was dangerously calm when he finally spoke.
“Did he hurt her?”
“Not like he did to me,” Alessia says. “He’d hit her if she irritated him or got underfoot. He screamed at her. Mostly, he ignored her—or threatened her to keep me in line.” She took a deep breath and looked out to where her daughter played in the sand. “You may have noticed that I don’t use her name when I talk to her. I use pet names instead—Stell, Starlight, Little Star—when I use her name, she’ll obey. Immediately.”
When she saw the recognition on their faces, she continued, “It’s … a code, of sorts. She knows that when I use her name, it’s serious and that she needs to listen to keep both of us safe. She’ll get quieter and hide when I use her name. There’s another half of it, the name Stellaki, which is the signal that things are safe again—or as safe as they ever got in Walus’ household.”
“…You trained her,” Dionys whispered. It wasn’t an accusation; it was a realization—a horrified one.
Stella wasn’t just obedient when frightened. She was silent. She hid. Those instincts would not belong to a child who had only been disciplined.
They were the instincts of prey.
Alessia nodded. “From before she could crawl.”
Dionys stared at her—through her—for a long, silent moment. Then abruptly, he stood.
There was death in his eyes.
Before he could stalk toward the shore—before he could lose himself to rage again—Alessia’s hand darted out, catching his wrist.
He froze, looked down at her.
Her grip wasn’t strong enough to stop him if he wanted to go. But he stayed.
Odrian’s voice was dangerously light. “Alessia, sweetheart. Let him go murder something.”
He knew Dionys needed this. Needed to bleed the fury out before it ate him alive.
Dionys didn’t shake her off; he just exhaled through his nose. His free hand flexed.
“I’ll be back,” he muttered.
Alessia frowned as she searched Dionys’ face, her grip loosening but not letting go yet.
“Come back in one piece,” she murmured. “We need you.”
Because she did. Because Stella did. Because whatever fragile, half-formed thing they were building wouldn’t survive losing him—not to rage, not to recklessness, not to anything.
Dionys’ breath caught—just once—before he exhaled, long and slow. The tension in his shoulders didn’t ease, but his fingers uncurled, brushing against hers as he pulled away.
I will.
He doesn’t say it aloud. He doesn’t need to.
Then he’s gone again—striding toward camp, his shadow long against the sand.
“He’ll be fine,” Odrian murmured as he watched the other man go. He turned back to Alessia, his gaze sharp despite the forced levity in his voice. “You—” his thumb traced the back of her hand, just once. “You’re braver than he is right now.”
Because admitting fear, admitting care, took a different strength.
“How did you escape?”
Because he knows seven years is a long time to endure hell. And Alessia didn’t have Stella with her at first—which meant she stayed. Willingly or otherwise.
And then she left. Somehow.
“I mixed a sleeping draught into his wine,” Alessia said. “Ran once he passed out.” She took a deep breath before continuing. “He threatened her, but not like normal. It wasn’t really a threat at all. There was no ‘Obey, or she suffers’ in it. It was … he just told me what his plans were.”
She took a deep breath before continuing. “Walus has … ideas about how people should be, how wives should be. He wanted me, as young as I was, because he believed that a man has to train his wife to live happily. He figured if I were younger, I’d be easier to control.”
She gave Odrian a wry grin. “I was a failure. Too headstrong, too independent.” She frowned as her eyes returned to watching Stella play. “He decided five was the perfect age to start.” She swallowed against the bile that rose in her throat whenever she thought of it. “‘Old enough to follow orders, young enough to break,’” she mimicked Walus’ cadence as she quoted him. “He didn’t care that she was his daughter. He was going to replace me with her.”
Her fists clenched. “I couldn’t let that happen.”
She sighed, “Running headlong into a battlefield felt safer than staying where we were.”
Odrian’s expression didn’t change. It couldn’t without shattering completely. But his grip on her hand turned bruising for a heartbeat before he forced himself to loosen it.
With care bordering on reverence, he lifted her hand to his lips and pressed a single, searing kiss to her knuckles.
“Thank you,” he murmured against her skin, “for keeping her safe.”
She could have died outside the city. She could have been captured, tortured, killed, but she chose the battlefield anyway because anything—anything—was better than letting Walus sink his claws into Stella.
“You got out,” he murmured, half to himself. “Took Stella. Survived.” His thumb brushed her knuckles with quiet awe. “How?”
Because the Butcher of Ellun didn’t let things go. Especially not prized possessions.
“A lot of it was luck,” Alessia admitted. “It helped that he believed I was his completely. That he had full control over me, if only because of his threats to Stella.
“She has nightmares of me being taken away. She’ll wake up screaming sometimes. Walus hated it, so he had his physician make a sleeping draught for her. Poppy and mandrake, mixed with enough honey water to dilute it so it wouldn’t kill her. The physician hated coming by to administer it every night, so he told me the correct amounts and stressed that too much could be fatal.”
Alessia grinned, “That gave me a means to drug him.”
She lifted the hem of her chiton enough to show the shackle around her ankle. “By the time I left, a chain kept me in a single room.” But he removed it at night so I could serve him wine without having to drag it behind me. I’d obeyed for so long that he didn’t think twice about freeing me.
“I mixed the draught into his wine before I served it to him. Once he was asleep, I grabbed everything I could and ran. Because Stella and I were kept in near total isolation, no one knew us. It was easy to just become faces in the crowd once we were out of his villa.”
Odrian exhaled—like he could feel the weight of the shackle, the phantom burn of metal against skin. His hand hovered over it—almost touching—before he pulled back.
“Smart,” he murmured. “Brilliant.” Because it was. To turn his own cruelty against him—to slip through the gaps in his control like smoke—
“You left him alive. Why?” It wasn’t judgment, just curiosity. Because if it were him, if it were Dionys—
“Too much of a risk. If I hesitated, or made a mistake, he would call for his guards—or worse, fight back himself.” She sighed, “I had hoped I had given him enough of the draught to kill him. But either someone intervened in time or my measurement was off.”
Odrian nodded—sharp and understanding. “Next time,” he murmured, “we’ll do it together.”
Not if. Not maybe.
Next time.
His free hand clenched into a fist, his gaze darting to Stella (still blissfully distracted by her seagull negotiations) before he returned to Alessia.
“…The shackle. It’s welded shut.” His voice was terrifyingly soft. “How long have you been wearing it?”
“Three years,” Alessia said softly. “He put it on after my first escape attempt failed. Poured molten metal into the lock so I couldn’t pick it. Always said it wouldn’t come off without taking my foot with it.”
“Where was it anchored?” Odrian asked, though something in his tone suggested he already suspected. A room, not a dungeon, a bedroom.
Dionys heard the end of Alessia’s answer, caught it on the wind as he stalked back toward them, his earlier fury banked into something colder, deadlier. His shadow fell over Alessia as he stopped beside them, his breathing too controlled.
“Where,” he echoed Odrian, his voice flat, “was it anchored?”
He’s not really asking about the chain. He’s asking where Walus kept her.
Odrian knows he could intercept, could steer the conversation away—but he doesn’t. Dionys deserves to know exactly what kind of monster they were up against.
He just squeezed Alessia’s hand—silent permission to answer, or not.
“His bedframe,” Alessia said. “The chain looped around one leg.”
***
Dionys moved—sudden and violent—but not away. He goes toward the shore again, his gait stiff, his spine rigid. He took exactly three steps before pivoting sharply and kicking a piece of driftwood hard enough to send it shattering against the rocks.
Then—still breathing hard—he turned back.
“Sorry,” he gritted out. Not for all the rage. For leaving. Even now, he won’t—can’t—walk away from them for long.
Then—because he can’t stay still, can’t stand there doing nothing—he turns abruptly toward Stella, kneeling to inspect the crab she was now lecturing on proper behavior.
“No pinchy,” she told it sternly. “Bad crab.”
“Pinch her,” Dionys informed the crab stoically, “and I turn you into soup.”
Stella whirled on him, scandalized. “NO SOUP!” Then, hastily—whisper-yelling to the crab: “Run!”
Alessia can’t help it; she laughs, bright and startled, wincing only slightly when it pulls at her wounds. The sight of Dionys, feared warlord, assisting in crab diplomacy is just too much.
Which of course is when Stella spots her laughing, and the tiny tyrant’s face lights up.
“Mama!” she shrieked, abandoning her crustacean pupil to barrel into Alessia’s lap. “You laughed!”
A rare sound. A treasure.
And just like that—the heavy conversation, the shackle, the ghosts of Ellun—all of it fades into the salt air.
There is only this:
Stella’s sticky hands patting her cheeks, Dionys’ quiet hmph of approval, and Odrian’s fingers laced with hers.
“Oh!” she said as she suddenly remembered, “I almost forgot the most important thing about the dagger.” She reached for it, showing Odrian and Dionys the top of the pommel, which was engraved with a wolf’s head—Walus’ sigil. “The dagger is his command seal. Unless he’s been able to replace it, which would require explaining to King Parnas and his sons what happened, his pride wouldn’t let him. He’s likely been giving orders without the authority to for months now.”
Odrian picked up the dagger, examining the sigil with a suddenly sharp focus—like a hound catching a scent. His lips curled. “So…no one knows he lost this.” A slow, wicked smile spreads. “Interesting.”
“Except possibly his lieutenants.”
Odrian grins—suddenly, brilliantly—before leaning in to press a swift, smug kiss to Alessia’s temple.
“You,” he murmurs, “are magnificent.” Then—louder, already scheming—“Dionys. How fast can we get a message to our spies in the city?”
Dionys turned to Odrian, deadpan—“Seven hours if we bribe the right courier. Less if we send Pelys.”
“Please tell me you’re thinking of spreading rumors that Walus is forging false orders,” Alessia says with a grin. “It’d be absolutely hilarious if he gets imprisoned by his own king for treason.”
Dionys’ smirk is vicious. “No.” He leaned in, voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur. “We’re going to tell them the truth.”
A merciless pause.
“And then we’re going to sell the dagger back to Walus’ lieutenants.”
Odrian gasped, clutching his chest in theatrical awe, before beaming at Alessia. “See? This is why we keep him around. The man’s a genius.”
Dionys grabbed Odrian by the back of his tunic and heaved him into the surf.
Alessia lost it, laughing so hard she had to clutch her ribs—but gods, it’s worth the pain.
Dionys watched her laugh—watched the way her eyes brightened, the way she pressed a hand to her side but didn’t stop—and something in his own chest eased, just a fraction.
Let Walus rot in his own mess. This—her laughter, the spray of the waves as Odrian splutters back to shore, Stella clapping with glee—this was better than any revenge.
Then—because he can’t help himself—he reached down and flicked water at her from Odrian’s splashing. “You’re next, thief.”
Stella—who had finally decided she liked the ocean—immediately started kicking water at everyone.
“Fight!” she crowed. “Fight! Fight!”
Odrian resurfaced with a vengeance—soaking wet, sand in his hair, grinning like a madman—before lunging for Dionys’ ankles.
“Traitor!”
Dionys sidestepped him effortlessly before plucking Stella up and holding her out of reach like a tiny, giggling shield. “Yield.”
Odrian halted mid-lunge—gasping in betrayal—before dropping to his knees in the shallows. “Mercy!” he wailed, clawing at his chest. “I am but a poor, defenseless king!”
Stella kicked her feet gleefully. “NO MERCY!”
She has no idea what’s happening. She just knows she’s winning.
Alessia watched them—her family, hers—and didn’t even try to stop her tears.
Let them fall.
Let them stay.
Because against all odds, against every shadow that chased her—
She’s home.
Summary: Alessia, Stella, Dionys, and Odrian spend a rare quiet evening by the shore, the calm giving Alessia the space to finally reveal the truth she’s been carrying. As Stella plays, Alessia mends her daughter’s doll and hesitates over a decision she knows she can’t postpone any longer. When she shows the men Walus’ marked dagger, everything shifts—both of them instantly understand who she was running from and why she’s so wary. What follows is a careful, emotional unraveling of her past: how her father handed her over, how she lived under total control, how Stella was born, and how she finally escaped. Dionys and Odrian each react differently, but with the same core fury and protective instinct.
As Alessia talks through what happened—what was done to her and what was threatened toward her daughter—the two men anchor her in different ways. Odrian stays close, gentle but sharp, grounding her as she speaks. Dionys has to walk away more than once to keep from losing control, but he comes back every time. By the end of the chapter, Alessia has not only told them the truth but claimed her place with them. They make it clear, in their own ways, that she and Stella aren’t going anywhere alone again.
Tiny Raven 