Chel Maxfield writes stories about the quiet moments that break people open and the fragile magic that holds them together. A lifelong storyteller and artist, she explores themes of loss, transformation, and connection across both fantasy and contemporary worlds. When she’s not writing, she’s usually sketching, crocheting, or rewatching her favorite animated films. She lives in San Francisco with too many notebooks and not enough shelf space.
The sun had barely crested the horizon when Stella woke, her tiny fists already tugging at Alessia’s tunic with the urgency of a general marshaling her troops.
“Mama,” she whispered conspiratorially, “the birds are stealing breakfast.”
Alessia groaned and buried her face against Dionys’ shoulder.
“Tell the birds to come back later,” she mumbled.
Dionys—who had rarely slept so deeply—cracked one eye open to assess the supposed avian threat.
“That’s a seagull,” he informed Stella flatly. “In our tent.”
Stella nodded solemnly. “Thief bird.”
Alessia lifted her head just enough to peer at the offending creature—a particularly bold seagull perched on top of one of the supply crates, systematically pillaging a loaf of bread.
“…That is the most Aurean thing I’ve ever seen,” she muttered before flopping back down.
Dionys’ lip curled. Then—without looking away from the bird—he reached over Alessia’s head, grabbed a nearby sandal, and hurled it with lethal precision.
The seagull squawked indignantly as it retreated—bread still clutched in its beak—leaving a very smug warlord in its wake.
“Fixed.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to come back to bite us,” Alessia muttered, picturing a vengeful seagull army descending upon the Aurean lines later. Still, she didn’t move—content to stay half-sprawled across Dionys, his warmth more comforting than she’d ever admit.
“Odrian’s rubbing off on you,” she teased. “Next, you’ll be dramatically declaring war on seabirds.”
Dionys huffed—barely restraining himself from rolling his eyes—before tugging her closer.
“I negotiated,” he corrected dryly. “Politely.”
“Mm. Sure. Politely,” Alessia echoed with a snort, burrowing further into Dionys’ side.
Meanwhile, outside, Odrian could be heard loudly chastising the retreating gull for its “unconscionable theft”—while simultaneously offering it a second loaf of bread.
“…He’s the one declaring war,” Dionys said. He tugged the blanket over her head with a grunt, mostly shielding her from the morning light, and mostly muffling Odrian’s increasingly elaborate negotiations,
(Let the birds have their war; his duty was here.)
“Sleep,” he ordered, though it came out closer to ‘please.’
As if Alessia could, with Odrian’s impassioned “YOU CALL THAT A FAIR TRADE?!” echoing through the camp.
She drifted—not quite sleeping, not quite awake—suspended in a rare, golden moment of peace.
This was enough.
The seagull crowed. Odrian vowed vengeance. Stella declared herself monarch of the shoreline.
This was everything.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Dionys was not scowling.
(He absolutely was scowling.)
In ten minutes, chaos incarnate that she was, Stella had turned the washing basin into a tide pool, declared herself High Admiral of All Coastal Creatures, and got sand in Dionys’ wine.
His patience—legendary, unwavering—was drying up faster than the seawater on his boots.
“Enough.” His voice was a thunderclap. “You—both of you—” he included Alessia, who was supposed to be supervising but was instead lounging on a nearby crate, laughing at the chaos, “—are going intothe sea.”
He stomped toward them—half-heartedly, but with enough intensity to make Stella shriek and bolt, zigzagging her way toward the shore like a tiny, chaotic crab.
Alessia, still grinning, didn’t even attempt to escape, letting him haul her up over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
“Oh no,” she deadpanned, kicking weakly. “Whatever shall I do~?”
“Drown,” Dionys growled, adjusting his grip as he marched after Stella.
“Love you, too,” Alessia shot back with a snort.
And then she froze.
So did Dionys.
Alessia could feel her cheeks warming with a blush.
‘…Sweet Hera, did I just say that?!’
‘… Yes, I absolutely did just say that …’
‘Oh. Oh no.’
Her eyes snapped to Dionys, who was standing preternaturally still.
‘Shit.’
Stella—blissfully oblivious and now hiding behind Odrian’s legs—giggled.
Then, slowly, Dionys leaned down and bit Alessia’s shoulder.
Not hard. Just enough to make her yelp.
“… Tch.”
Alessia—half laughing, half startled—shoved at his face.
“What was that for?!”
She’s giggling too hard to say anything else—and she couldn’t bring herself to regret the words, no matter how impulsive they were.
“For being annoying,” Dionys muttered. His arms tightened around her waist, hauling her further up his shoulder as if daring her to take it back.
Stella, suddenly inspired, tugged urgently on Odrian’s tunic.
“Bite him back, Mama!”
Alessia, still dangling over Dionys’ shoulder like an unruly lamb, narrowed her eyes at Stella’s suggestion, then at Dionys’ smug expression.
She shifted so she could lean over and nip his ear.
Not hard. Just enough to make him growl.
Her lips lingered a second too long, her teeth softening into something suspiciously like a kiss, although she’d never admit it. It was his fault for being so damn biteable.
Dionys stiffened, then growled in earnest, his grip shifting to drag her into his arms.
His ears were red.
“Unacceptable.”
Then he kissed her properly—right in front of Odrian and Stella and every gossiping soldier within a five-mile radius.
Alessia pulled back just enough to breathe—grinning wildly, flushed from head to toe—only for Dionys to growl and tug her in again.
Somewhere beyond them, Odrian was absolutely cackling.
Alessia didn’t care.
Not with Dionys’ hands tangled in her hair and Stella’s laughter ringing like bells.
Odrian gagged—loudly—before covering Stella’s eyes with a dramatic flourish.
“Scandalous! Think of the child!”
Stella squirmed, trying to peek between Odrian’s fingers.
“I like scandalous!”
Then, because she was Stella, she blew a raspberry at them, clearly not the least bit scandalized.
Dionys glared over Alessia’s shoulder—daring Odrian to keep mocking them. Just to make his point very clear, he kissed Alessia again.
Odrian squawked, feigning horror, but his eyes were alight with mischief and something softer. Something warm.
“Stella, sweetheart, sappy adults have infiltrated us,” he said mournfully. “Terrible fate.”
Alessia laughed against Dionys’ lips—breathless and happy—before pulling back just enough to smirk at Odrian.
“Jealous?”
He gasped, clutching his chest like she’d run him through, before breaking into a grin that was as sharp as glass.
“Oh, Princess,” he purred, suddenly right there, crowding into their space with all the grace of a prowling cat. “I don’t get jealous.”
His fingers brushed her chin—lightning-quick—before adding, low and wicked, “I intervene.”
And then, because he was Odrian, he stole the next kiss for himself.
Alessia squeaked—completely caught off guard—before melting into it.
Dionys growls—though it’s half-hearted at best—before yanking Odrian away by the back of his tunic.
“Mine,” he muttered, as if that settled it.
(It does. Mostly because Odrian was laughing too hard to argue.)
Stella, utterly delighted by this turn of events, clapped her hands. “More!” she demanded—like she was watching particularly entertaining street theater.
Dionys snorted—then, because he had apparently lost all sense of self-preservation, he hauled Odrian in by the collar and kissed him, too.
Brief. Chaste. Devastating.
“There,” he growled—threatening—although the effect was ruined by the way his thumb stroked the nape of Odrian’s neck. “Happy?”
Odrian—king of Othara, scourge of the seas, general of a thousand men—blinked.
Then he beamed.
“Ecstatic.”
Stella dramatically flopped backward onto the sand with a groan.
“Ew,” she declared, despite grinning ear to ear. “So mushy.”
Alessia reached out, ruffling Stella’s hair.
“Better get used to it, Starlight.”
Her voice shook just a little with the sheer wonder of it all.
No one mentioned it. They just held her tighter.
In the fragile moment, Dionys tugged Alessia and Odrian both into his arms—a tangle of limbs and warmth.
And there, under the sunlight, amidst Stella’s giggling and sand that would never come out of their clothes—
They stayed.
For as long as she’d let them.
For as long as they all lived.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
After the chaos of the day—the seagull wars and impromptu family kisses—Alessia lingered near Askarion’s tent.
She hesitated at the entrance, fingers brushing the fresh bandages beneath her tunic.
They were clean. No old blood, no festering pain. Just careful stitches and poultices that smelled of herbs, not rot.
She cleared her throat.
“Do you have a minute?”
Askarion didn’t look up from his worktable; instead, he grunted and jerked his chin toward an empty stool.
“If you’re here to whine about the stitches itching,” he muttered, “save it. Everyone whines. Even kings.”
Alessia snorted as she took the seat.
“Not here to whine.” A beat. “Mostly.”
Askarion arched a brow, unimpressed, but set down his mortar and pestle.
“Then what?”
The question was gruff, but his hands—already reaching for a jar of salve—betrayed him.
Alessia exhaled slowly.
“Walus never let me learn,” she admitted, the words quiet, but steady. “Medicine, I mean. He always had his own physicians. Kept me ignorant on purpose.”
Her fingers curled against her thighs.
“I hated it. Hated not knowing how to help Stella when she was sick. Hated needing someone else.”
Askarion’s hands stilled.
Then, with a soft tch, he reached across the table and slapped a worn, leather-bound journal in front of her.
“First lesson,” he grunted. “Willow bark. Good for fever. Tastes like piss. Don’t let the brat complain.”
Alessia blinked—then laughed, sharp and startled, before she flipped the journal open.
Inside were pressed flowers and meticulous notes. Dosages. Symptoms. Remedies both common and obscure.
She traced a fingertip over the pages—carefully, like they might vanish—before glancing up.
“…Why?”
Askarion rolled his eyes.
“Because stupid patients are the worst patients.” He paused, and then continued, gruffer. “And you’re not stupid.”
Alessia swallowed hard.
It shouldn’t have meant so much, but it did.
She was about to answer when—
“MAMA!”
Stella exploded into the tent like a tiny hurricane—followed by at least three crabs, a suspiciously compliant seagull, and a goat that was absolutely stolen from somewhere.
Alessia barely had time to yelp before Stella skidded to a stop—beaming—and thrust a very disgruntled crab toward Askarion.
“Fix him!” she demanded. “He walks sideways!”
Alessia snorted.
“Stell, he’s a crab. They’re supposed to walk sideways.”
Askarion didn’t even blink. He just leaned down, glaring at the crab like it was a particularly incompetent recruit—before snatching it up and examining it with alarming seriousness.
“…Diagnosis: crab.” He said before he plopped it into Stella’s waiting hands. “Treatment: Stop stealing livestock.”
Stella gasped, offended, before spinning to Odrian (who had, of course, followed the chaos inside).
“Uncle Ody! Tell him crabs are noble steeds!”
Odrian stroked his chin, nodding sagely. “A fierce cavalry, truly. But even the finest warhorse needs rest.” He plucked the crab from her grip and set it gently on the ground. “Go on, Admiral. Dismissed.”
Alessia picked the crab back up before it could scuttle away.
“Let’s release him back into the ocean. Pretty sure he’d like it there more than here.”
“Fine,” Stella huffed, but her lower lip wobbled, just a little. “Can I throw him?”
She clearly expects a ‘no’.
Askarion exhales—long suffering—and shoved the crab toward her. “Throw. Then wash your hands.”
Stella beamed—already spinning toward the shore when Askarion added, flatly. “And no more stolen goats.”
Her gasp was pure betrayal. “BUT THEY’RE GOOD AT EATING SCRAPS!”
Askarion rubbed his temples and glared at Alessia—as if this was her fault.
It was.
“What?” Alessia demanded. “She inherited the sticky fingers honestly.” She turned to Odrian and Dionys, hovering near the tent flap. “…Right?”
“Oh, absolutely,” Odrian agreed—while very slowly pocketing a handful of Askarion’s best herbs.
Dionys sighed, resigning himself to a life of theft and anarchy, before he grabbed Odrian’s wrist and forcefully returned the stolen goods. “…No.”
Askarion snatched the herbs back with a growl, but there was no real heat in it—just exhausted, exasperated fondness.
Then he tossed a second journal at Alessia. Smaller, newer.
“For her,” he muttered, jutting his chin toward Stella—who was currently attempting to ride the goat. “If she can sit still long enough to learn.”
A test.
A challenge.
A gift.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Alessia had just washed the considerable amount of sand from her hair—courtesy of Stella’s oceanic delegation—when Odrian materialized beside her, a rolled-up parchment in hand and mischief in his eyes.
She knew that look. Knew it far too well.
She flicked water at him. “What.”
Odrian just grinned—delighted by her suspicion—before unfurling the scroll with a flourish.
“Be it known,” he announced, loud enough for half the camp to hear, “that on this day, the illustrious Alessia of Tharos—mother of crabs, tamer of goats, supreme nuisance—has been officially instated as—”
He paused dramatically.
“—Court Physician’s Apprentice!”
Alessia blinked.
Askarion, lurking nearby, grunted in approval before tossing her a fresh bandage roll.
“Pay’s terrible,” he deadpanned. “Hours are worse.”
Dawn found them tangled together, Stella between Alessia and Dionys.
The little girl woke first—poking Dionys’ bicep with the academic curiosity of a child who had discovered a wall where there wasn’t one before.
Alessia woke slowly to the sound of Stella’s enthusiastic poking and Odrian’s poorly stifled laughter.
She cracked open an eye—wincing at the morning light—to find Stella fascinated by the fact that Dionys was still asleep.
“Shhh,” she murmured to Stella, pressing a finger to her lips.
Stella grinned—suddenly conspiratorial—and nodded before immediately leaning in to poke Dionys again.
Alessia sighed, but didn’t stop her.
Dionys’ eyelid twitched—the only warning before his hand snapped up, catching Stella’s tiny wrist mid-poke.
“…No.” His voice was gravel-rough with sleep, but there was no real heat in it—just weary exasperation.
His grip is gentle as he tugs her into the crook of his arm instead of shoving her away—a secret between him and the morning sun.
Stella giggled—delighted by the development—and immediately cuddled into his side with all the triumph of a conquering general.
“You’re warm,” she informed him, as if it were both a scientific breakthrough and a personal insult.
Alessia hid her laughter with a cough as she watched Dionys blink groggily at the tiny human barnacle attached to him.
“You know, if you keep being this comfortable, you’re going to become her favorite.”
Dionys squinted at her—the full force of his sleep-rumpled glare undermined by the fact that Stella was now nesting against him like a particularly stubborn chick.
“…This,” he muttered, “is sabotage.”
But he didn’t move her. Not even a little.
Alessia bit her lip, failing to stifle another laugh.
She watched them—the mighty Dionys, lounging in bed with a five-year-old using him as a heated rock—and something warm and light bloomed in her chest.
She could get used to this.
She wanted to get used to this.
Slowly, careful of her stitches, she shifted closer—close enough to press a fleeting kiss to Stella’s wild curls, close enough for her shoulder to brush Dionys’ arm.
Stay.
She didn’t say it out loud. She didn’t have to.
Dionys glared with all the heat of the sun. “…Traitor,” he muttered, the growl in his voice undercut by the way his thumb absentmindedly brushed Stella’s shoulder.
A surrender. A precious one.
Alessia watched them with her chest so full it ached.
Then she snorted and flopped back onto the bedding, yanking a pillow over her face.
“Five more minutes.”
Dionys reached over without looking and flicked the pillow from her face.
“No.”
Stella, sensing an opportunity, immediately gasped before scrambling over Dionys with all the grace of a drunk kitten. She landed squarely on Alessia’s stomach, somehow avoiding any of her injuries.
“NO SLEEPIN’! BREAKFAST!”
Dionys made a sound disturbingly close to a laugh as Alessia let out a dramatic oof—but he didn’t lift a finger to help.
Odrian, lounging at the tent flap, leaned over to murmur conspiratorially to Stella.
“I heard someone stole honey cakes from the kitchen tent…”
Chaos, as always, was his love language.
Stella’s eyes went wide as she scrambled toward the exit with single-minded determination. “I’mma find them!”
Dionys moved, snagging the back of her tunic before she could bolt.
“Sandals,” he ordered gruffly.
Stella huffed, but obediently shoved her feet into her sandals before pausing, turning back to Alessia with sudden solemnity. “…Mama, too?”
Alessia let out an exaggerated groan as she sat up, pressing a kiss to Stella’s forehead before shooing her toward Odrian. “Go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”
As soon as she could convince her limbs that moving was an acceptable life choice.
Dionys watched Stella drag Odrian out into the morning light—already chattering about strategic honey cake locations—before he turned back to Alessia.
“…Five more minutes,” he allowed as he pulled her back down against his chest with a sigh.
They both knew it was a lie. He’d let her doze as long as she needed. But for now, they’d steal the quiet.
Alessia didn’t argue, just curled into him with a hum, tucking her head under his chin.
Outside the tent, Stella’s laughter rang bright as bells.
Inside, Alessia breathed easy for the first time in years.
Dionys pressed his lips to her hair—silent and savoring—as the morning sun painted the tent in gold.
No oaths. No grand declarations. Just her weight against him, the scent of salt and herbs in her hair. The distant sound of Odrian pretending to lose a debate with a five-year-old about appropriate breakfast portion sizes.
As Alessia lay nestled into Dionys, with the weight of exhaustion and relief pressing her into the bedding, she listened to the muffled sounds of the camp waking around them.
She should get up. She knew she should get up. Stella was already out with Odrian, probably making trouble. But—
But for once, she let herself stay, just a little longer.
For the first time in years, she finally felt safe.
She exhaled, fingers curling slightly in the fabric of Dionys’ tunic as she surrendered back to sleep’s pull.
The war would still be there when she woke. The danger, the fear, the questions that lingered—none of it had vanished.
Dionys tightened his arm around her—silent and wordless—as her breathing evened out against his chest. He didn’t sleep, didn’t even close his eyes. He just watched over her, over them as he listened to the rhythmic cadence of Stella’s giggles outside.
He should wake Alessia, make sure she ate. But she looked peaceful like this—soft and young and unafraid—and he couldn’t bring himself to ruin it.
Let the war rage. Let the universe spin on without them.
Here, in this stolen moment, they were untouchable.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Alessia stirred at the sound of careful footsteps nearing the tent—lighter than Dionys’ or Odrian’s, with an unfamiliar cadence. She forced her eyes open as the flap lifted, revealing a man with dark hair tied back, sharp brown eyes, and a neatly trimmed beard.
Patrian.
She vaguely recognized him as the person who had been there with Askarion after someone had stabbed her. He had sung in harmony with Odrian.
“You’re alive,” he said softly and slightly bewildered, as though he hadn’t believed his own stitching would hold.
Quieter, more hesitantly, he gestured to her bandages.
“…May I?”
“Of course,” Alessia said as she shifted her tunic so he could check her wounds.
Patrian knelt beside her, his gentle hands already unwinding the bandages with practiced ease. His gaze flicked briefly to Dottie, then back to Alessia’s face.
“Your work is careful,” he murmured. “But fabric can only bear so many repairs before the original threads fray beyond use.”
Alessia hummed in agreement, unsure what to say, and they fell silent as he continued to examine her wounds, fingers gentle and sure. His brows furrowed at the angry edges near her ribs—a lingering shadow of infection—before he nodded, satisfied.
“…You almost died on my table,” he said so casually that it took a moment for the weight of the words to land. “Lost a lot of blood, nearly drowned in it.”
His gaze flicked up, sharp and assessing.
“And yet, here you are. Sitting. Talking. Laughing with them.” He paused. “Should I be impressed? Or wary?”
Alessia exhaled, meeting his eyes.
“Both, probably,” she admitted, with a one-sided shrug. “I am a thief. And a liar.”
Patrian was quiet for another moment.
“Why did you approach the Aurean camp that day?”
There was no judgment or accusation in his voice, just curiosity wrapped in a quiet, fierce protectiveness.
He wasn’t looking at her as he asked, focusing instead on applying fresh salve to her wounds with steady fingers—but his shoulders were tense. Waiting.
Then, softer, almost to himself, he amended his question. “Or, no. The real question is: Why didn’t you leave Stella somewhere safe first?” His fingers paused. “Were you alone?”
There was no suspicion in his voice, only grief. He had seen too many children caught in the war’s crossfire. Too many on both sides.
“I left her in the safest place I could,” Alessia said, hoping she didn’t sound too defensive. “Back at the shack we’d been hiding in. It’s just been us since we left Ellun.” She sighed. “She had started getting fevers. They weren’t too bad, and they broke quickly, but I was worried. I didn’t—I don’t know enough herb lore to treat anything more than a head cold.” She looked away as she finished. “She knew what to do if I didn’t return by dusk.”
Patrian’s fingers stilled. “…Dusk?”
The word was quiet, disbelieving. He didn’t know Stella well, but he understood children, and no five-year-old, no matter how clever, should have been left alone.
“How long had she been feverish when you came to us?”
His voice was too light, as if he were bracing for her answer.
“About a week,” Alessia admitted. “I kept hoping they’d stop on their own if I just…” she trailed off, feeling foolish. “…If I just took better care of her. I started stealing more to feed her, tried to keep her as warm as I could.”
Patrian exhaled before reaching into his satchel for a cloth and a fresh vial of salve. “She wouldn’t have lasted another week,” he murmured. Not cruel, just clinical. “Not without proper medicine.”
He didn’t say, ‘You should have come sooner.’ He didn’t need to. The tightness in his jaw said it for him.
His voice dropped, quiet enough that Alessia had to strain to hear him.
“You had to know our reputation.” The pillaged villages, the burned fields. The prisoners who didn’t return. “So why? Why them?” His eyes flicked toward the tent flap, where Odrian’s laughter echoed, mingling with Stella’s. “Why him?”
His gaze flicked up—searching, knowing—but not unkind.
He wasn’t asking as a healer. He was asking as a man who had spent years stitching his friends back together after battles they started.
“Do you know who I am?” Alessia asked in return.
Patrian leaned back slightly, a silent ‘no’. He didn’t know the important parts. He didn’t know the scars beneath the scars.
His fingers resumed their careful work, but his gaze stuck to her face, waiting.
He would listen, but he’d let her choose the words, and when to say them.
Alessia nodded, unsurprised.
“My … “ she faltered for a moment before sighing. “The easiest term for him is ‘husband’, but he wasn’t … our relationship wasn’t what you would expect from that term. My husband was—is—Commander Walus. I assume you recognize his name.”
Patrian’s hands didn’t falter—he kept working, methodical and steady—but his breath caught.
Commander Walus.
The Butcher of Tharos. The man who skinned deserters alive. Who left prisoners strung up along the city’s walls like macabre banners.
“Ah.”
It wasn’t shock or pity. It was just recognition clicking into place.
“So that’s why Nomaros was sniffing around,” he muttered, more to himself than to her.
Then, because he had to know—
“Did he send you? To spy?” The question was quiet. Careful and backed with bronze.
Not an accusation. A calculation—because if she had been sent, if this was a trap…
…Patrian would be the one to end it.
Quietly.
Before Dionys and Odrian found out.
“You think I’d admit it if I were?” Alessia asked. She shook her head and waved a dismissive hand. “No, I didn’t come to spy,” she said. “If he had sent me, he wouldn’t have let me bring Stella. The Butcher isn’t a man in the habit of letting his leverage go.” She met his eyes again, serious. “I’m not his anymore.”
Patrian’s lips twitched—almost a smile—at her answer. “Fair point.”
Silence fell between them for a moment.
“I chose the Aurean camps because I couldn’t risk being identified near Tharos,” she said. “They would have returned us to Walus. The Aurean camps were safer.” She looked away, cheeks flushing slightly. “I also…naively…believed things my mother told me. That the tradition of guest rights made Aureans more civilized than Tharons.” She sighed, “I didn’t account for the rules being different during war.”
She hesitated before continuing. “I chose Odrian’s camp by luck. I’d been rotating camps for weeks. It just lined up that I stole from him the same night he laid a trap for me.” She sighed. “And I trusted him simply because he didn’t kill me on sight. He knew I was a thief. He knew I was the one stealing from the camp. No one would have questioned it if he had killed me or brought me back in chains. By rights, he should have. But he didn’t.”
Patrian listened—really listened—his fingers only briefly stilling when she mentioned her mother. Then he exhaled, shaking his head slightly as he resumed cleaning her wound.
“Luck,” Patrian repeated, dry as desert sand. “Luck that you stumbled into the one camp whose king would sooner let a dagger in his ribs than turn away a child.” A pause. “Luck that his warlord apparently purrs.”
There was no mockery in it, just a quiet resignation.
Then, softer, he added, “…Your mother wasn’t wrong.” His fingers pressed a fresh bandage into place. “We acted civilized. Once.” He met her gaze, suddenly weary. “War changes people.”
He didn’t say, ‘but not all of us.’ He didn’t need to. The careful hands tending her wounds said it clearly enough.
“If you had found another camp—if they had helped—would you still have stolen from us?”
“Only if I had to,” Alessia said. “I never wanted to steal to begin with.” She swallowed hard. “The first time I approached the camp was months ago, before I ran out of jewelry to barter. I asked for work. I was … turned away. About a month later, when I ran out of jewelry, I came back. Different sentries. Different sigils. Same result.” She huffed a small, mirthless laugh. “I don’t like thieving, even if I am good at it.”
Patrian finished securing the bandage—his hands lingering just a second longer than necessary—before he sat back with a sigh of his own.
“You are good at it,” he agreed, a flicker of amusement in his otherwise solemn gaze. “But that’s not what I asked.”
He leaned back on his heels, studying her.
“You knew stealing from us was a risk. You knew our men don’t take kindly to thieves. And yet—” His fingers drummed idly against his knee. “—you kept coming back to this camp. Even after that wound.”
He motioned at her shoulder.
“So I’ll ask again: why us?”
Because there was a difference between desperation and trust. Between luck and instinct.
And Patrian was a man who understood both.
“I had no other options,” Alessia said. “I was stealing drachmae to get enough to buy our way onto a caravan going north. I had enough to pay for passage, but not enough to cover a bribe to make it worthwhile not to sell us back to Tharos. Leaving on my own wasn’t an option. I can fight, but not well—especially not if I have to keep an eye out for Stella. The Tharos camps weren’t an option because they were even more likely to turn me in than the caravans.”
“Fair,” he said, “But you stayed. Even after Odrian caught you. Even after he brought you here.”
His fingers stilled, his gaze sharpening.
“So I’ll ask once more: Why us?”
A test.
A challenge
Prove you won’t hurt them.
Prove you’re worth the risk.
Prove you see them.
Prove you choose them.
Or admit you’re still running.
“Ah,” Alessia said as she realized what Patrian was getting at. She gave a small, rueful smile. “Because I’m not so stupid, I’d walk away from the first people to treat me like a person in nearly a decade. You, them, Askarion … none of you had to help me, but you did. And you never asked for repayment.”
Stella’s laugh drifted into the tent from somewhere outside.
“Besides, she likes it here,” Alessia said with a fond smile. “So do I.”
Patrian went still—just for a moment—before exhaling sharply through his nose.
“…You love the girl.”
It wasn’t a question.
“With all my heart,” Alessia said.
“Then we’re on the same side,” Patrian said as he tied the bandage with a final tug. “Stella deserves safety. You both do.”
His gaze flicked to the tent flap—where distant laughter betrayed Odrian’s location—before returning to her.
He added softly. “And they deserve someone who won’t break their hearts.”
Alessia inhaled sharply and suddenly, as if struck. Because that was the heart of it, wasn’t it? She could leave. Could disappear into the night with Stella if things got bad. But they—reckless, loyal, hers—would follow.
“I won’t,” she whispered, her voice rough. “I can’t. Not after—”
Not after their hands in hers, their promises, their names in Stella’s bright lexicon—Uncle Ody. Uncle Dio.
She exhaled.
“…I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good.”
A single word. But the way his shoulders relaxed—the way his fingers resumed their work, gentler now—said everything.
With deliberate care, he reached into his satchel to pull out a small bundle of linen—freshly laundered and neatly folded.
“For the doll,” he muttered, placing it beside her before standing. “If you’re remaking her.”
He didn’t wait for thanks, just nodded once and turned to leave.
“Askarion needs an assistant. Someone with steady hands and no patience for fools.” A beat of silence to let the offer land. “You’ll need to learn proper herb work, though.”
He paused at the tent flap. “…They’re good men,” he breathed. “Don’t make me regret vouching for you.”
It wasn’t a threat. It was a plea.
Then he was gone—leaving Alessia with cloth softer than anything she had touched in years, and the weight of a second chance heavy in her hands.
She traced a finger over the edge of the bundle, marveling at the way it felt beneath her fingertips.
“Thank you,” she whispered, knowing Patrian wouldn’t hear her.
Because that was trust, that was faith—an offering with no strings.
She looked up to see Stella standing at the tent’s entrance, grinning and covered in honey cake crumbs—then back to the linen, and she knew.
This was worth fighting for. This was worth staying for.
And when Dionys returned moments later with food, when Odrian trotted in behind him, already launching into some ridiculous story about Stella’s negotiation tactics with the cooks—
—Alessia just smiled, tucked the fabric into her satchel, and let herself belong.
This chapter contains themes of past abuse, threats made toward a child, intense fear-based coercion, discussion of a parent preparing a fatal “backup plan” for herself and her child, references to severe mistreatment by a former captor, and strong emotional distress. It also includes characters reacting with overwhelming anger and protective intensity. Please be safe while reading. A summary of events is included in the post-chapter author note.
After Alessia put Stella to bed, she sat by the fire, watching the flames dance as she absentmindedly toyed with a small vial sealed with wax.
It was among her last secrets. Beyond the vial, there were only three others—Dolos, her dreams, and what she did for Walus. She would tell them about Dolos in time. She would tell them about what Walus had made her do.
But the dreams were a secret she would take to her pyre. She knew what happened to those cursed with the prophecy. She remembered what had happened to the prince and princess when others had discovered their abilities.
Odrian spotted her by the fire—just a silhouette against the flickering light—and paused. For the first time all day, he was quiet.
Then, because he’s Odrian, he plopped down beside her and stole the vial right out of her fingers.
“…This looks important,” he mused, turning it over. “Dangerously so.” A beat and then, “So. What’s the last secret, Alessia of Ellun?”
Dionys appeared on her other side like a shadow given form—silent, sudden, there. He didn’t ask about the vial, just stared at it like it was a blade pressed to her throat.
If she said nothing, he would walk away.
If she said everything, he would burn the world.
But the choice is hers.
Alessia took the vial back from Odrian and turned it over in her fingers.
“Three years ago, I tried running after Walus hurt Stella. One of his lieutenants caught us. Didn’t even get to the city gates. That’s when Walus put the shackle on me. I was under constant guard, only allowed three places in his villa—the training yard, his bedroom, and a cell under his villa. But it wasn’t my only punishment.” She took a deep breath, her hand clenching around the vial. “He gave me a warning. Told me that if I ever tried to run again, when he caught us, he would kill Stella. You know what he does to prisoners and traitors. The torture, the long deaths. He told me those would look like mercy compared to what he would do to her. He said he’d make me watch.”
She swallowed hard, “I stole jewelry when we ran. I traded some of it for this almost as soon as we were out of the city. I…I had to be sure.”
Dionys moved before she could finish, kneeling in front of her, his hands braced on her knees. “Alessia.” His voice was rough, blistering. “What’s in the vial?”
He already knows. Gods, he already knows. But he needs to hear her say it.
Odrian had gone very still beside her—his fingers twitching like he wanted to reach but didn’t dare. When he spoke, his voice was too light.
“Alessia. Sweetheart. You didn’t.”
A plea. A denial. Anything but this.
“Bitter almond,” Alessia said softly, resigned. “Fast, painless … or relatively so. Enough for an adult and a child.”
Dionys rocked back like she struck him—just once—before surging forward again, dragging her into his arms so suddenly the vial clattered to the ground.
His grip was crushing. His breath hitched against her shoulder—just once—before he muttered, thick with fury and grief and relief, “You idiot—”
You are not alone.
You are not dying.
Not while I breathe.
Odrian—unusually quiet—plucked the vial from the ground and stood, walking to the fire. For a moment, he just stared into the flames.
Then he tossed the vial in.
The wax seal blackens.
The clay cracks.
The poison burns.
He didn’t turn back right away. Just watched it crumble to ash before exhaling roughly.
“No more contingencies,” he murmured—half to himself, half to the night. “Only us.”
Dionys’ grip on Alessia didn’t loosen—if anything, it tightened, a silent promise in the press of his fingers.
“We don’t lose.”
No room for arguments. No room for doubt.
Alessia was shaking. Not from fear now—from something else. Something raw and aching and hopeful. Tension she hadn’t realized she was carrying bled from her shoulders.
They burned it. They burned her out.
The fire crackled, the last of the vial’s remains collapsing into embers, and something in her chest unfurled.
“…Okay,” she whispered with a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob.
It’s surrender. It’s trust. It’s everything.
Dionys exhales—rough, relieved—before dragging her tighter against her chest, his arms locking around her like she might vanish if he let go. His pulse was a drumbeat against her cheek—fast, alive, furious.
“…Okay,” he echoed—gruff, tender—into her hair.
Odrian didn’t crowd them, just sank back onto the log, close enough that his knee brushed Alessia’s, and watched the fire consume the last of the poison. His fingers tapped absently against his thigh—counting, planning—but his posture was relaxed. Certain.
Dionys finally loosens his grip—just enough to tilt Alessia’s face up, his thumb sweeping under her eye. “No more running,” he muttered. It wasn’t a request. “No more sacrifices.”
Odrian leaned in then—close enough to press his forehead to Alessia’s temple, his voice dropping to a whisper.
“You wouldn’t have used it,” he said softly. “Not really.” A desperate hope. “You’re too damn stubborn to die.”
Alessia let out a wet, trembling laugh as she leaned into Dionys’ touch—just for a moment—before pulling away,
She stared at the burning remnants of the vial.
“I wasn’t going to—” She stopped, shook her head. “Not unless there was no other choice. Not unless he had us. And even then …”
Her fingers twitched as she glanced toward the tent where Stella slept.
She exhaled, slow and shuddering. “I didn’t want to. But the world isn’t certain. The Fates aren’t kind. They hear our plans and oaths and laugh as they weave.” She wrung her hands together. “I believe…I know you would both die before letting us get taken again, but if it comes down to me or her, promise me you’ll protect her. Always her.” She swallowed hard, “Even if he gets me, Walus won’t kill me. Not immediately. I’ve survived him before. I can do it again. But Stella…” She trailed off, the words catching in her throat. She was shaking, terrified they’d see her as the monster she felt like for even considering what she had.
“I need to know she’ll be okay.”
She felt like a monster.
Dionys’ hand closed over hers—rough, warm, unyielding. His voice was barely more than a growl.
“No one is ever touching her again,” he swore. “No one is ever hurting you again.” His grip tightened, “Not while I live.”
A pause, then—so quietly only she could hear—“And if the Fates laugh?” His jaw set. “I’ll carve our names into their threads myself.”
Odrian’s fingers brushed her temple—gentle, steady—as he leaned in.
“Alessia,” he murmured. “Listen to me, really listen.”
He tipped her chin up, forcing her to meet his gaze.
“You don’t have to be ready to die for her anymore,” he said, each word deliberate. “Because we are here. And we are not letting either of you go.”
His thumb traced the line of her cheek before he added, softer, “You don’t have to be the monster, Thelktria. That’s our job now.”
Alessia’s breath hitched—hard—at the name. Thelktria.
She’d heard the word before—only in stories, in the old myths her mother would whisper at bedtime.
The woman who wove silver from moonlight.
The sorceress who made kings kneel with a glance.
Her fingers curled around Dionys’, her other hand fisting into Odrian’s tunic as she shook.
She didn’t cry. She wouldn’t. But her vision blurred anyway.
“…You can’t promise that,” she whispered. “You don’t know what—”
Dionys tugged—sharp and insistent—forcing her to meet his gaze. “Yes. We can.”
His eyes were alight—not with anger, not anymore, but with something hotter. Something unbreakable.
“You don’t get to argue with kings, thief.”
Odrian chuckled darkly as his hand slid to the back of her neck, grounding. “Darling, Sweetheart. You forget—we’re Aurean.”
A beat, his grin turned feral.
“Which means we cheat.”
Alessia’s laugh was half sob, but she leaned into them both—letting their certainty, their fire, seep into her bones.
Maybe she didn’t have to carry this alone anymore. Maybe she could believe.
“…Fine,” she muttered. “But if you two idiots get yourselves killed, I’m going to the Underworld just to yell at you.”
Dionys snorted, sharp and satisfied, before flicking her forehead.
“Good.”
He didn’t say we’d drag you back. He didn’t have to. The look in his eyes said it for him.
Odrian’s fingers tightened against her nape, his smirk all teeth. “Promise?”
He didn’t want her in the Underworld. Not ever. But the thought of her rage, of her storming after them even into death—
It was the most Alessia thing imaginable.
“Yes,” she said. “I promise.”
Dionys exhaled before pressing his forehead against hers, “Good.”
It’s a growl. A prayer. A promise.
Then he locked eyes with Odrian over her shoulder to snarl, “We’re keeping them.”
It isn’t a request. It isn’t even a declaration. It was a law of nature.
Odrian didn’t smirk, didn’t argue. He just met Dionys’ glare head-on and nodded—sharp and final.
“Was there ever any doubt?”
The fire wasn’t quite loud enough to cover the crack in his voice, but they all pretended it was.
“Never again,” he murmured to Alessia—fervent and desperate. “You hear me? No more backup plans. No more exit strategies.”
His thumb swiped at the dampness on her cheek. “You don’t need it. Not while we’re here.”
Dionys’ arms tightened—just slightly—before he pulled back, gripping her shoulders hard enough to bruise.
“You run,” he growled, “we chase you. You fight, we fight beside you. You die—” He draws in a ragged breath. “—we burn the world after you.”
It isn’t poetry. It isn’t pretty. It is a promise carved in blood and bone.
“But you don’t get to leave first.”
Alessia closed her eyes. Breathed.
They’re keeping us.
It settled in her chest—warm, solid, and real.
No more poisons. No more running. No more alone.
When she opened her eyes again, she was smiling.
“…Does this mean I get to call you my kings now?”
Dionys snorted and flicked her forehead. “No.”
Odrian gasped, clutching his chest like she had mortally wounded him. “Barbarian. After all our bonding? After the olives?”
He’s teasing, but his fingers brush her wrist—gently. “You’re stuck with us, thief.”
Alessia grinned, bright and alive, before she stole the wineskin from his hand.
“Good.”
Odrian’s grin softened, something unbearably fond in his eyes as he watched Alessia and Dionys.
“To family,” he murmured as he took the wineskin back and tipped it to his lips, half toast and half prayer. There was no mischief in it, just truth.
He rested his cheek against Alessia’s hair, just for a breath, before murmuring again, “We should get some sleep. Big day tomorrow.”
“Planning homicide takes energy,” Dionys said with a nod.
“Not homicide,” Odrian corrected, his smirk almost audible. “Just a long-overdue demotion.” He paused. “…To corpse.”
Dionys huffed and stood, then offered a hand to Alessia. “Bed,” he ordered—no room for argument. But his thumb brushed her wrist, just once.
Alessia took his hand with a grateful squeeze, letting him pull her up—she swayed slightly, exhaustion and relief hitting her all at once.
She glanced toward the tent, where Stella slept in safety and warmth, and then back to the two of them—these impossible, stubborn, wonderful men who had somehow become hers.
Hers.
“Bed,” she agreed, her voice rough but steady. Then, softer—for them alone, “Thank you.”
Not just for that night. For everything. For seeing her—really seeing her—and staying, anyway.
Alessia was home.
And they were hers.
Odrian pressed a kiss to the crown of her head—quick, playful, affectionate—before nudging her toward the tent. “Save the mushy stuff for after we’ve murdered your ex.”
“Too late,” Dionys muttered—but he’s looking at Odrian, not Alessia, with something dangerously close to fondness in his glare. “You’ve already gone soft.”
He tugged Alessia toward the tent, stopping just long enough to mock-glare at Odrian. “You’re on first watch.”
It wasn’t a request.
Odrian clutched his chest—gasping, betrayed—but he didn’t argue. He just watched them disappear into the tent before turning back to the fire, his grin softening into something quieter. Something warm.
His strategist. His warrior. His impossible, vicious, perfectly matched set.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Alessia let Dionys steer her into the tent, settling beside Stella—who instinctively curled into her, the second she felt the dip of the bedroll.
Dionys lingered—just for a heartbeat—to brush a calloused knuckle against Stella’s cheek, checking her temperature with gruff tenderness.
Then—without a word—he turned to leave.
Alessia caught his wrist before he could go.
“…Stay?” she murmured—half question, half plea.
It was too soon. Too much. But she didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to wake from nightmares to an empty tent.
She was so tired of being alone.
Dionys stilled. For one endless second, he just stared at her hand on his wrist, like he’d seen nothing like it before.
Then, slowly, he exhaled.
“…Move over.”
He didn’t ask whether she was sure. Didn’t hesitate. Just toed off his sandals and folded himself onto the bedroll beside her with all the grace of a man settling into a siege.
“Move once and I push you off,” he grumbled.
A lie. If Alessia woke screaming tonight, he would be there. If Stella cried out, he’d answer.
If the world burned, he would stand between them and the flames.
His arms locked around her waist like a steel band. His heartbeat was thunder against her spine. He didn’t let go.
Alessia let out a shaky breath—half laugh, half relief—and curled into him, savoring the warmth, the weight, the sheer solidness of him.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she whispered.
And she meant it.
Stella, sensing the shift even in sleep, wriggled closer—nestling against Alessia’s chest with a contented sigh, her tiny fingers clutching her mother’s tunic.
Alessia closed her eyes—breathing them in. With Dionys at her back, Stella in her arms—and for the first time in years—she let herself rest.
Outside the tent, Odrian watched the fire dim, his gaze occasionally flickering toward the tent as his smirk softened.
Safe, he thinks. They’re safe.
Then—because someone needed to be dramatic about it—he tossed a pebble at the tent’s canvas. It barely made a sound, but it was enough.
“Goodnight, paramour.”
His voice was barely louder than the wind, but he knew Dionys heard him. Knew Alessia did, too.
Alessia sits by the fire after putting Stella to bed, turning over a small sealed vial—her last and most desperate contingency. When Odrian and Dionys join her, she finally admits what the vial is: something she acquired long ago as a final escape if Walus ever caught them again. The revelation hits both men hard—Dionys with raw panic and fury, Odrian with a quieter but just as devastating grief. They burn the vial, making it clear that she doesn’t need that kind of plan anymore, not with them.
The rest of the chapter is the emotional aftermath of that confession. Alessia struggles with the guilt of having even considered such an option, while Odrian and Dionys ground her with fierce, absolute assurances that she and Stella are safe now—and that she no longer has to survive the world alone. The scene ends with the three of them settling into a fragile but real sense of family, safety, and mutual trust, with Dionys staying beside her and Stella as they sleep and Odrian standing guard just outside.
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.”
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.
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—
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.
Dionys sat on the nearby shoreline, watching the sunset over the Myrian and thinking.
Alessia had fallen asleep again, much to Stella’s annoyance and mild distress. Odrian had calmed the child down, and she was busy building rock towers as she hummed to herself near the tent.
And Odrian himself headed toward the beach, carrying a wineskin in his hand.
Dionys didn’t turn when Odrian’s sandals scuffed against the sand behind him. He kept his gaze fixed on the horizon, where the sun was drowning in the sea. His shoulders lost the slightest edge of tension, just enough to betray that he knew precisely who was approaching.
Odrian flopped down beside him with a dramatic sigh, offering the wineskin. Dionys took it without a word, drinking deeply before passing it back.
For a long moment, there was only the crash of waves and Stella’s distant, off-key humming.
Then—
“So,” Odrian said as he swirled the wine, “our paramour is terrifying.”
He said it lightly. Too lightly. Testing.
Dionys exhaled sharply through his nose—something between a scoff and reluctant agreement.
“Our,” he repeated, tone flat with an undercurrent Odrian knew how to read all too well.
Not denial or protest, just … acknowledgement.
“…She’ll outlive us all out of sheer spite,” he said after a beat of silence. A compliment.
Odrian hummed in agreement, taking a slow sip of wine before speaking carefully.
“For someone with no military training, she handles pain … remarkably well.” He hesitated before adding, quieter, “Too well.”
‘What made her like this?’ hangs between them, unspoken.
Dionys scowled at the waves, his fingers tightening around the wineskin.
“Walus,” he muttered, the name tasting like poison on his tongue. He’d heard Alessia’s delirious pleas; he’d seen the scars. He didn’t need more details to know, to understand. “We need to find out the truth behind those scars. If it was really him.”
A long, heavy pause.
“And when we do…” His knuckles whitened around the wineskin. “They die slowly.”
No hesitation, no mercy. Only the promise of blood, deep as the sea before them.
Odrian didn’t flinch, just took the wineskin back and rolled it between his palms, his gaze distant.
“We will,” he murmured. Simple. Certain.
He exhaled, forcing calm into his bones.
“She called him an asshole while bleeding out,” Dionys said after a moment. “I like her.”
Which was practically a declaration of undying allegiance, coming from him.
Odrian chuckled, low and warm. “A woman after your own heart, clearly.” He took another swig before passing the wineskin back. Then, softer, he said, “We need to be careful. Nomo suspects.”
Dionys grunted, fingers twitching toward the spear at his side. “He suspects nothing. Just thinks she’s a warm body in your bed.”
“Our bed,” Odrian corrected, a dangerous glint in his eyes.
Silence stretched between them again, charged but comfortable. The sort of silence that could only exist between men who had fought side by side for years. A silence of gaps and implications.
And then, because someone had to address the other looming truth, Odrian added, “…She doesn’t know. About us.”
Their history. The quiet thing that still lingered between them, even now.
Dionys was quiet for a long moment. Then, he whispered, “She will,” his voice nearly lost to the wind.
A fact, as inevitable as the tide.
“…When she’s ready,” he added gruffly. “When we’re ready.”
And if his fingers brushed Odrian’s as he reclaimed the wineskin—some promises didn’t need words.
Odrian’s fingers tightened around the wineskin, just for a heartbeat, before he released it with a slow, deliberate exhale.
“Good,” he said. “And Walus—”
Dionys finally turned his head—just enough to pin Odrian with a look that would have flayed a lesser man alive.
“She lives,” he said, slow and deliberate. “That’s all that matters.”
Don’t push. Not yet.
Odrian exhaled through his nose and nodded for now.
Then, Dionys lowers his voice again. “Nomaros won’t let this go.”
Odrian’s fingers tightened around the wineskin. “He’ll try to use her.”
A knife already twisting in both their guts.
Dionys didn’t answer immediately. He just watched the waves roll in.
“Let him,” he said, his voice low and dangerous. “See what happens when he touches what’s ours.”
A vow.
A warning.
Odrian recognized the tone. The same one Dionys used before they razed the shores of Thalor near the beginning of the war. The same one he used when they stood back-to-back against a horde and won.
This wasn’t just protectiveness.
This was war.
“I’ve already drafted three contingency plans.”
Dionys finally turned his head fully to look at Odrian, one eyebrow quirking.
“Only three?” The dryness in his voice is almost teasing. “You’re slacking.”
Odrian huffed—part amusement, part exasperation—and shoved the wineskin back into Dionys’ hands. “Oh, forgive me, General. I was distracted arranging olive-based bribes for our tiny warlord over there. “…She’s going to brain herself when that collapses.” He nudged Dionys with his shoulder. “Admit it, you like them.”
Dionys didn’t answer immediately; he just took a slow, deliberate sip of wine. The corner of his mouth twitched—just once—before he muttered.
“…They’re tolerable.”
Which, from Dionys, was practically a declaration of undying devotion.
Finally, Odrian exhaled. “Ten days.”
Dionys nodded. “We’ll make it twenty.”
Not a reassurance: a promise.
The corner of Dionys’ mouth twitched as he watched Stella’s perilous rock tower.
“…She’s fearless.”
Odrian grinned—properly, now—and leaned back on his elbows, watching the sky bleed from gold to bruised purple. “She takes after her mother.”
Stella’s voice drifted over—cackling as her rock tower collapsed spectacularly.
Odrian sobered. “If—when—we pull this off…” He tilted his head toward Dionys, the question implicit.
What do we do then?
Dionys looked at him before shrugging. “She stays. With us.”
It wasn’t a question. Not for him.
He tore his gaze away, staring back at the darkening horizon. “Suppose that makes Stella our problem now, too.”
His voice was gruff, but the warmth beneath the words was unmistakable.
Odrian’s grin is sudden and bright. “Gods help us.”
Then he leaned in, nudging Dionys’ shoulder. “Our problem,” he agreed. “Our paramour. Our chaos.”
He didn’t say our heart.
He didn’t need to.
Dionys didn’t pull away. Didn’t scoff. He let the contact linger—brief, solid, and real.
Then, grudgingly, he said, “…Should tell her that.”
He didn’t specify which part. He didn’t have to.
Odrian’s lips quirk. “Right after we teach her our language,” he mused. “Wouldn’t want her to miss the nuance.”
Dionys snorted. “She’ll pick it up in five minutes flat and have it weaponized in six.” A pause before he added wryly: “…I’d pay to see that.”
Odrian threw his head back and laughed—unrestrained, alive. The sound carried over the water, scattering gulls from the shoreline.
When he looked back at Dionys, his eyes were warm. “Then let’s make sure we’re around to see it.”
Tonight they’d keep watch. Tomorrow they would scheme.
But this, right now? This was theirs. Whatever this was.
“…We’re really keeping them, aren’t we.”
It wasn’t a question. Dionys didn’t answer—didn’t need to. They both already knew the answer.
Instead, he took another swig before passing the wineskin back—his fingers brushing Odrian’s just so.
A silent promise,
A beginning.
The waves crashed; the sun dipped lower. Somewhere behind them, a tiny voice giggles.
Alive, alive, alive.
And for now—just now—that was enough.
A comfortable silence settled between them—no need for words when their shared understanding was already so deep. The waves continued their rhythmic crashing against the shore. Stella’s distant giggling was a balm to the weight of their thoughts.
Odrian finally tipped the wineskin back, savoring the last of it before setting it aside. He glanced at Dionys—really looking at him—studying the hard lines of his profile, the way the fading sunlight caught on his scars.
“She called you a pillow, you know,” he said, his voice laced with mischief and something softer, “Said you were unreasonably comfortable.”
Dionys didn’t react at first. Then slowly—so slowly—he turned to glare.
“You’re enjoying this.”
“Immensely,” Odrian admitted, his grin unrepentant. Then he added, softer, “She fits with us.”
Like the last piece of a puzzle clicking into place.
“You didn’t move for hours, Dio. Not even when she drooled on you.”
Dionys let the rare nickname hang in the air between them—just for a breath—before he exhaled sharply.
“She was warm,” he muttered, like that explained everything. Like it was a perfectly reasonable justification for allowing himself to become a human pillow for half a day. His fingers flexed against the hilt of his dagger; his gaze dropped to the sand between them.
It’s the closest he will get to admitting that letting Alessia and Stella burrow into his space had felt … right. That he’d been unnervingly reluctant to move, even when his muscles had screamed in protest.
Odrian didn’t tease him for it—not this time. Instead, he nudged their shoulders together again, a quiet understanding passing between them.
She fits with us.
They both knew it was true.
Then, with a smirk creeping back onto his face, Odrian ruined the moment with a single question.
“Should we tell her you purred when she cuddled into you?”
Dionys stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“To throw you into the sea,” Dionys said with the same tone he used to discuss the weather.
Odrian cackled, scrambling to his feet as Dionys grabbed for him—both of them stumbling like boys, uncaring of dignity, uncaring of anything beyond this.
This reckless, stupid joy.
It was something they’d both forgotten.
And when they end up wrestling like teenagers, half-tripping into the shallows—
A king and a warlord can afford to be foolish. Just this once.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Later, when the sun had fully set, and the camp was quiet, Stella had curled up near the fire inside the tent, finally asleep after insisting she wasn’t tired and then immediately passing out the moment she stopped moving.
Alessia—still recovering, still weary—was awake again, watching Odrian and Dionys approach with damp tunics and sand in their hair.
She raised an eyebrow.
“…Did you two try to fight Poseidon?”
Odrian, still dripping seawater onto the tent floor and grinning like a man possessed, flopped gracelessly onto the nearest bedroll.
“Worse,” he declared solemnly. “We played.”
Dionys scowled—but there was sand in his hair, a flush on his cheeks, and no real venom in his glare.
“He cheated.”
“Uncle Dio pushed Uncle Ody into the ocean,” Stella mumbled sleepily from her nest of blankets, one eye cracking open. “For bein’ annoying.”
Odrian gasped, all mock outrage. “I was pushed? I was—” he whirled on Dionys. “She witnessed your crimes, and you still claim I cheated?”
“Yes,” Dionys said, with no hesitation, no shame. Then, to Alessia, he deadpanned, “He started it. He pushed me first.”
“Purely tactical,” Odrian assured, pressing a dramatic hand to his chest. “That crab was seconds away from declaring war.”
Stella, once again dead to the world, let out a sleepy snore that sounded suspiciously like “Liar.”
“I have a lot of questions,” Alessia said. “But I’m also too tired to ask them.”
Dionys stalked closer, dripping onto the tent floor with purpose, before dropping a handful of seawater-soaked olives into her lap. “From our victory feast.”
His stone-faced delivery was flawless.
Odrian’s cackling was unrestrained. “You are—without question—the worst.”
Alessia stared at the olives. Then at Dionys. Then back to the olives again.
Slowly, she picked one up—examining it like she had never seen such a concept before—before popping it into her mouth with a solemn nod.
“…Still good.”
Dionys folded his arms. “Obviously. The sea enhances the flavor.”
“This is why you’re my favorite,” Odrian said as he wrung out his own tunic with theatrical flair. Then he paused mid-squeeze to shoot Alessia a look. “…Why are you awake?” he demanded—the concern beneath his exasperation palpable.
Alessia shrugged, then winced as the movement pulled at her stitches.
“I couldn’t sleep.”
She didn’t mention the nightmares—the phantom sensation of hands holding her underwater, the echoes of a man’s taunting laughter. She didn’t mention how she’d woken up gasping, fingers clawing at the blankets like they were chains—only to find Stella’s small hand already fisted in her tunic, keeping her anchored.
She gestured vaguely at the two men, her smirk returning full force.
“I do regret missing whatever epic battle led to all this,” she said as the wine warmed her chest more than usual, chasing away the lingering shadows from her mind.
Dionys rolled his eyes as Odrian scoffed, but neither corrected her.
Alessia laughed, sharp and sudden, then immediately winced as her injuries protested.
“Ah—ow. Worth it,” she said with a grin and a shake of her head. “I’d say I’m surprised, but…” her gaze flicked between them—damp, disheveled, alive—and something softened in her expression. “I’m not surprised at all.”
Odrian’s expression melted into something unbearably fond as he watched Alessia laugh. He opened his mouth, no doubt ready with some theatrical retort, but Dionys beat him to it.
“Good,” he muttered, reaching out to adjust Alessia’s pillow with a precision that belied his usual gruffness. “Because if you were surprised, I’d have to question your observational skills.” His fingers lingered for half a second before retreating. “Considering you somehow survived this long.”
Stella hummed sleepily, cracking one eye open again.
“Mama’s real smart,” she slurred, half-muffled by her blanket. “S’why she found Uncle Ody. He’s sneaky. Like a spy.” A beat. “…’Cept when he’s loud.”
“He found me, Stell,” Alessia corrected her gently. “Big difference.” She glanced at Odrian with a smirk. “Lucky for him.”
Odrian clutched his chest—wounded. “You stole from me first,” he reminded her with his own grin, “So really, I was just reclaiming my property.” A pause before he added, softer—“Best tactical decision I ever made.”
Dionys rolled his eyes, but there was no bite to it. Just the same, gruff fondness as he reached over to adjust her blanket without thinking.
“Rest,” he muttered. “Before you give Askarion another ulcer.”
Not ‘go away’. Not ‘stop talking’. Just… rest. Here. With us.
Odrian flung sand everywhere in his attempt to dry off before peering at her. “Do we need to fetch an antidote?” he asked with sudden, exaggerated suspicion. “Because if you like the taste of sea olives, we clearly miscalculated the dosage of something.”
Alessia snorted, tossing an olive pit at Odrian’s face—bouncing it off of his nose. “I do have taste, just less than you two kings, apparently.”
She hesitated before glancing down at the last olive in her palm.
“I can’t actually tell if these are that bad, though,” she admitted—because lying would be worse, somehow. “I haven’t had olives in…years. They’re briny, but … isn’t that normal for olives?”
She popped the olive into her mouth before they could respond—before their faces could do that thing, the one that made her chest ache.
“When I was little,” she added, chewing absently. “I used to steal olives from the market. One at a time so that the vendor wouldn’t notice.”
Not that the vendor would have cared. Alessia was pretty sure Dolos had encouraged her to steal from that specific merchant because he ignored their antics.
She didn’t say that part. She didn’t say a lot of things.
Dionys stilled—just for a breath—his gaze sharpening with something dangerous. Then, carefully, he reached into his belt pouch and produced another handful—this time dry—and deposited them silently into her palm.
These were smaller, firmer. The kind cured with spices from the southern isles.
His own stash.
“Eat,” is all he says.
But the way his fingertips barely graze her wrist says the rest: No stealing necessary. Not anymore.
Odrian, for once, didn’t mock the gesture. Instead, he studied Alessia—really studied her—before exhaling sharply and plopping down beside them, close enough that their shoulders brushed.
“Good thing we liberated an entire crate, then,” he mused—casual, like he was discussing the weather and not the fact that he absolutely pillaged some poor merchant’s stock.
He may or may not have also left enough coin to buy the man’s silence. And his loyalty. And possibly his firstborn child.
Alessia looked at the olives, at them, and the warmth in her chest burned.
For once, she didn’t have to reach for something. Didn’t have to fight or steal or earn it.
She’s not sure what to do with that.
She swallowed hard, but her voice was light when she spoke again. “You know, if you two keep this up, people might think you like me.”
Dionys didn’t dignify that with a response.
Odrian gasped—clutching his chest like she had stabbed him. “How dare you! I’m furious right now. Incensed. I’d challenge you to a duel if you weren’t already—” he gestured vaguely at all of her. “—like this.”
Alessia laughed—actually laughed—the sound is bright, startled out of her.
“Thanks.”
For the olives. For everything. For being the kind of men who would drown themselves before admitting they cared.
It’s enough.
Odrian watched things unfold with the glee of a man already composing ballads about it. He opened his mouth—
“Tell her I purred and you’re sleeping in the latrine.”
Odrian snapped his jaw shut, grinning.
“Oh, my gods…” Alessia said, realizing exactly what must have happened before she burst out laughing—only to cut herself off with a wince, pressing a hand to her side.
Immediately, both men snapped to attention—Odrian hovering with a waterskin, Dionys’ arm halfway out like he was ready to brace her if she toppled.
“I’m fine,” Alessia said as she waved them off, still grinning. “It just hurts to laugh at you two idiots.”
She giggled a little more, desperately wanting to ask if Dionys actually purred, but she sensed that someone had pushed him to the limits of his comfort zone for the night. She let it drop.
If he had purred…maybe she could get him to do it again sometime. While she was conscious to enjoy it.
Dionys apparently could hear her thoughts loud and clear because he twitched like she had just admitted to planning his murder.
“Bed,” he growled—shoving the blanket more firmly around her shoulders in retaliation. “Before I dose your wine with sleeping draughts.”
Odrian wisely pretended to suddenly find the tent ceiling absolutely fascinating.
Stella made a tiny noise in her sleep, something between a sigh and a murmur—and Dionys reached over to tug the blanket higher over her shoulders.
Alessia glanced between them—Odrian’s knowing smirk, Dionys’ carefully maintained scowl—and exhaled, letting herself lean just slightly into Dionys’ side.
“…You two are ridiculous.”
Her voice was soft. Affectionate. Fond.
And all at once, she realized something undeniable.
This was what she had spent the last six months running from Ellun to find.
Not just safety.
Not just survival.
This.
Belonging.
Dionys’ breath caught—just slightly—at the contact. He didn’t pull away. Didn’t even stiffen. He just allowed it. Allowed her.
He should move. Should retreat behind his walls of stone and stoicism. But the weight of her against him felt…right, like the last piece of a battle formation clicking into place.
So he stayed. His arm was a solid line of heat against her side, his fingers brushing a loose thread on his tunic—almost reaching for her hand before stopping himself.
“You’re worse,” he muttered. But there was no venom in it, just exhaustion and truth.
Just the faintest upward tilt at the corner of his mouth.
She fit. They all fit.
There was something terrifying in that—in the quiet surrender to care.
Odrian watched them both—the way Alessia fit against Dionys’ side, the way Dionys let her—and his smirk softened into something dangerously close to joy.
“…Yeah,” he murmured as he reached over to nudge Stella’s discarded rock pile back into something resembling order. “We are.” He didn’t sound the least bit sorry about it. “So,” he murmured, feigning nonchalance. “Are we calling this an alliance or—?”
He reached out and took Alessia’s hand, his grip tightening in a squeeze, just once. A soldier’s promise carved into the silence.
No take-backs.
No retreat.
He wouldn’t let go. Neither would they.
Odrian’s head whipped toward Dionys—mouth open in theatrical betrayal—but the way his lips kept twitching upward ruined the effect.
He knew Dionys would be the first to say it. Knew.
And he’d goaded him into it, anyway. Bastard.
But then his gaze flicked back to Alessia—seeing the quiet wonder in her eyes—and he exhaled, all pretense falling away as he squeezed her hand back.
“Yeah,” he admitted. “Family.”
The word settled between them, fragile and indestructible all at once.
Alessia exhaled sharply—something between a laugh and a sob—as her fingers tightened around Dionys’ in a silent answer. Then she reached for Odrian with her free hand, wanting him closer, needing to make sure he knew it wasn’t just her and Dionys, but him, too.
Then she leaned back against Dionys, letting her head rest on his shoulder as she kept Odrian’s hand clasped in her own.
Family.
For the first time in years, it didn’t feel like a lie.
Not when Stella snored softly nearby, blissfully unaware of the weight of the moment.
Not when Dionys—stoic, ruthless Dionys—pressed a kiss to the top of her head without a hint of hesitation.
Not when Odrian, who lied like breathing, just grinned at her—bright and honest—like she was the best damn thing he’d ever stolen.
To anyone else, the word family might not mean much, but to her?
To the girl who grew up clinging to the ghost of one, who clung to Dolos like a brother and lost him, who fought to build one for Stella against all odds—
Family was everything.
And these two reckless, ridiculous, wonderful men had just handed it to her. Without conditions. Without hesitation.
She didn’t even have to steal it.
(She was going to keep them.)
Dionys let himself exhale—finally, finally—and rested his cheek against her hair. His free hand lifted, brushing a stray lock from her forehead with a tenderness that surprised even him.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. The steady beat of his heart against her back said it all.
You’re ours now.
Odrian watched them for a beat—something unbearably soft in his expression—before he scooted closer, pressing his shoulder into Alessia’s free side. His fingers interlaced with hers, warm and unshakable.
“Welcome home, Princess.”
He could tell a story here—something grandiose and absurd, to make them scoff or laugh or groan. But instead, he just leaned his head against Alessia’s, closing his eyes with a contented sigh.
“Took you long enough,” he murmured—fond, exhausted, home. “And you are stuck with us.”
No take-backs.
No mercy.
They were hers. And she was theirs.
The moment is perfect—warm and alive and theirs—until a small, sleep-groggy voice beside them piped up.
“…Are we having a group hug?”
Stella blinked at them from her nest of blankets, rubbing one eye with tiny fingers. “…Where’s mine?”
Odrian made a choked sound that was definitely not a sob—burying it quickly with an exaggerated sigh.
“Ugh. The tyranny of tiny despots.” He let go of Alessia’s hand to reach over and scoop Stella into his arms, pressing a loud, obnoxious kiss to her forehead. “There! Happy?”
Stella beamed, sleep-tousled and far too smug for someone who had been dead asleep mere moments before.
She giggled and shook her head.
“Nooooo. Uncle Dio has to do it, too!”
Dionys stiffened, caught between fight and flight, before he let out a slow breath. Then, because this was his life now, he reached out. Carefully.
Deliberately.
He pulled Stella into the circle of their arms, pressing his own gruff kiss to her messy curls before promptly dropping her back into Odrian’s lap.
“…There,” he muttered, flushing just slightly. “Happy?”
He was terrible at this.
He never wanted it to end.
Stella beamed—nodding so hard her curls bounced—before immediately curling onto Odrian’s chest like a satisfied cat.
“Yes.”
Odrian exhaled—long-suffering—but his fingers lingered in Stella’s hair, smoothing down her wild braids. His other hand found Alessia’s again, lacing their fingers together with a quiet chuckle.
“Demanding little tyrant.”
Alessia watched them all with a growing sense of bewildered awe and had to wonder, How did she get here?
How did she go from a cold shack by the river to this—warm and safe and surrounded by people who stayed?
She squeezed Odrian’s fingers, then reached out to ruffle Stella’s hair, her voice thick with something she couldn’t quite name yet.
“Yeah,” the words crack a little. “Happy.”
It’s okay. Odrian and Dionys would hold the pieces for her.
Dionys exhaled and pressed a second, surreptitious kiss to Alessia’s temple, barely there at all. But it’s enough.
Odrian watched them—his family—with a quiet awe he’d never admit to. Then, because he has to ruin the moment, he grinned and whispered to Stella, “Now will you stop hoarding rocks in our boots?”
Stella gave him a look of such profound betrayal that even Dionys snorted.
“No,” she informed him with the solemn gravity of a queen. Then, softer, “But I’ll share some with you.”
Alessia’s throat tightened.
She remembered the boy in the harbor, his dark eyes wide with trust as he swore to get them both out one day.
She remembered her mother’s comb—broken teeth, waves etched in olive wood—and the way her hands had trembled as she braided Alessia’s hair for the last time.
She remembered stealing olives from a merchant who pretended not to see.
She remembered running—always running—toward something she wasn’t sure even existed.
You’re home.
The words settled in her chest, warm as wine, bright as firelight.
She turned her face into Dionys’ shoulder—just for a moment, just to regain her composure—before pulling back with a wet laugh.
“So,” she rasped. “Now, can we eat those olives properly?”
She’d teach them all the best ways to steal them tomorrow.
Odrian squeezed her hand back—tight enough to bruise, to keep her there—but his thumb stroked over her scarred knuckles, soothing instead of demanding.
Dionys shifted behind her, his arm tightening almost imperceptibly around her waist—not possessive, just present. He let out a slow breath—something perilously close to a laugh—before reaching for the pouch again.
“Demanding,” he murmured, but his fingers were gentle as they pressed another olive into her palm.
There would be time for plans tomorrow. Time for thievery and warfare and the thousand loose threads still waiting to be pulled. For now …
“Eat.”
For now, this was enough.
Stella, sensing a shift in the air, yawned and snuggled deeper into Odrian’s chest before peeking up at Alessia.
“…Mama?” she murmured, small and drowsy but certain. “Can we stay here forever?”
Alessia knew she should ask first, should verify. That she shouldn’t make promises she wasn’t sure she could keep.
But she doesn’t hesitate. Doesn’t glance at Odrian or Dionys for confirmation.
She just knows.
“Yeah, Starlight,” she whispered, pressing a kiss to Stella’s forehead. “Forever.”
Odrian’s breath caught—just slightly—before he glanced at Dionys. Their eyes met over the top of Stella’s head.
A silent conversation.
A shared decision.
He gives a single, barely there nod.
Dionys pressed his lips together—but it didn’t hide the way his jaw softened, the way his fingers tightened just slightly against Alessia’s side.
This was theirs to carry now. Whatever it cost, whoever they had to tear apart to keep it—this was theirs.
“Good,” Stella mumbled, already half-asleep again, her small fists clutching Odrian’s tunic like she was afraid he’d vanish if she let go. “…’Cause I already love them.”
Odrian froze.
Kings didn’t cry. Kings especially didn’t cry over sticky-fingered, rock-hoarding miniature warlords who had somehow carved a place in their ribcage.
But his arms tightened around her anyway—his thumb brushing her tiny knuckles with surprising gentleness.
“…Yeah,” he rasped. “Me too.”
Dionys closed his eyes, just for a heartbeat, before pressing his face into Alessia’s hair, his exhale shuddering against her skin. He didn’t say it back; he didn’t have to.
They knew.
Alessia leaned into them both—letting their warmth, their solidness, chase away the last shadows of her fear, and she let her eyes drift shut.
‘This is how people survived wars,’ she thought. Not with blood or fire, but with this. With hands held tight and a child’s whispered love. With the quiet certainty that no matter what comes next, they won’t face it alone.
Dionys watched her sleep, watched the way her breathing evened out. The way Odrian’s fingers stayed laced with hers as he drifted off as well, Stella a warm, trusting weight against his chest, and exhaled.
He let his head tip back against the tent pole, but he didn’t close his eyes. Not yet.
Someone had to stand guard.
And if his hand settled over Stella’s tiny back—if he traced the ridges of her spine, proof that she was alive, that she was theirs…that was between him and the night.
Dawn arrived softly. The camp stirred, the 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, her fever chased away into memory. Dionys remained at her back, stoic as ever—though his fingers absently traced idle patterns on the edge of her borrowed tunic—something he’d deny if called on it.
Stella, still curled against her mother’s side, blinked awake in increments—stretching like a cat before nuzzling back into the warmth.
And Odrian…
Odrian watched them all from his perch near the tent flap. His usual smirk was absent, replaced by something quieter, something almost content.
He doesn’t say that this—this strange, fragile peace—feels like something worth fighting for. He doesn’t need to.
The war is still outside.
Nomaros’ shadow still lingers.
Walus’ threat still looms over Alessia and Stella.
But for these few stolen moments, they were safe. They were whole.
And they were his.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Alessia woke when she heard Stella stir, the little girl stretching only to cuddle closer to her side. She rubs her daughter’s back absently, checking to see if she’s feverish.
Then she blinks, 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 didn’t move 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.
Which would have been sweet if she hadn’t also realized that she’d been drooling on his arm.
She swallowed, wiping her mouth as subtly as possible.
“You’re…you’re still here…?” she asked with a sheepish grin. “I figured you would have gotten sick of me drooling on you.”
Dionys doesn’t even glance at his damp sleeve. Doesn’t flinch. Just arches one brow—slow and unimpressed—like her drool is the least offensive bodily fluid he’s endured today.
“You weigh less than my spear,” he muttered, deadpan. “Wasn’t worth the effort of moving.”
Odrian, lurking near the tent flap, nearly chokes on the lie.
Dionys shifted just enough to roll his shoulder—subtly testing the stiffness of a limb that had been immobilized for hours, before adding, gruffly, “Also, you would’ve whined.”
Another lie, worse than the first. Alessia knows she was dead asleep. And the way his fingers briefly tighten at her hip, just once, betrays him entirely.
Alessia blinked at him, momentarily 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, y’know, care or anything.”
She added a theatrical sigh, like she had just uncovered a great mystery of the universe—The Enigma of Dionys’ Feigned Indifference.
His jaw clenched just slightly, a tell. His usual stoicism wavered for a split second before slamming back into place like a shield wall.
“Obviously,” he grunted. It was painfully unconvincing.
Odrian—still pretending to not be eavesdropping—failed to stifle a snort.
“Oh, naturally,” he chimed in. “Our beloved Dionys is famous for his selflessness. Why, just yesterday, I saw him personally carrying three wounded soldiers and a stray puppy back to camp—purely out of disinterest.”
His eyes gleamed with mischief as he leaned in, whispering conspiratorially to Alessia, “Rumor has it he even smiled once. A terrible tragedy. The physicians are still studying the phenomenon.”
Dionys leveled them both with a glare that could curdle milk.
“You,” he growled at Odrian, “are unbearable.” Then to Alessia, his voice dropping into something perilously close to a 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—gaunt, skeletal, seven whole stone soaking wet if she was lucky. “You’re trapped beneath my impressive weight.”
Dionys’ nostrils flared—just slightly—as his glare intensified.
“Crushed.” The word was flat, completely deadpan. “Might never recover.”
And yet his grip didn’t loosen, not even a little.
Odrian gasped—pointing dramatically at Dionys’ biceps, which were, in fact, fully capable of bench-pressing a small chariot.
“Look at him, Alessia! A prisoner of your devastating bulk! How will history remember this tragic tale?” He clutched his chest, swooning against a tent pole. “The Great Dionys, Felled at Last by a Woman’s Crushing Feather-Lightness!”
He kicked lazily at Dionys’ foot. “You poor, powerless man.”
Dionys exhaled through his nose, long-suffering, but didn’t dignify Odrian’s theatrics with a response. Instead, he glanced down at Alessia.
“… Are you done?”
His tone suggested she had better be. His grip—loose enough to let her shift away if she wanted—suggested otherwise.
“Never,” Alessia said with a grin. “But I’ll grant you a reprieve for now.”
Dionys made a show of grumbling—rolling his shoulders like he was finally free of a substantial burden—but his hands lingered just a second too long as he helped ease her upright.
Odrian let out a dramatic sigh, throwing his hands into the air. “Finally, some mercy for the weary warrior.”
His smirk softened as he glanced at Alessia, searching for any lingering pain or fever.
He found none, just her: grinning, stubborn, and alive.
“…You scared us,” he admitted quietly.
Alessia observed Odrian for a moment—just long enough to see the fleeting moment of raw concern before he veiled it again, and offered him a soft smile. Not teasing, not sarcastic. Just genuine.
“I was scared too,” she admitted softly. “Thank you for staying with me.”
Odrian’s smile softened slightly more. Then, just as quickly, he clapped his hands together—the morning’s vulnerability already shuttered away.
“Now, who wants breakfast?”
Stella was awake in an instant, her hand shooting up like an eager recruit’s.
“Only if it’s better than camp rations,” Alessia said. “I was stabbed, after all. I deserve something nice.”
She tightened her arms around Stella as the little girl wiggled excitedly at the mention of food.
“Only the finest for our resident knife magnet,” he teased—already halfway to the tent flap before pausing. “And…you’re welcome.”
Simple words, but the way his fingers twitched at his side—like he wanted to reach out but didn’t quite dare—said more than enough.
“Fresh bread, salted fish, even olives,” he paused, “…if you promise not to stab me over them.”
“I’ll stab you if you don’t give them to me,” Alessia said with a grin that was only a little feral.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had olives. It had been years.
Odrian threw his head back and laughed—bright and startled—as if her feral little oath was the most delightful thing he had heard all week.
“Noted,” he wheezed, clutching his chest for dramatic effect. Then, with a theatrical bow, he ducked out of the tent. “Your olives, Your Highness, or my life.”
He doesn’t quite escape the tent before Alessia catches the way his grin lingered—soft at the edges, like sunlight through storm clouds.
His voice floated back in, slightly muffled.
“Dionys, 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. She wasn’t unhappy with the description…just surprised.
Dionys, who had been resolutely ignoring the entire exchange while checking Stella’s rock collection for contraband (more likable stones), went preternaturally 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 like she had personally orchestrated his humiliation, he grabbed the nearest object and chucked it at Odrian’s retreating back.
The linen bandages fell pathetically short—a tragic end to his rebellion.
Alessia’s laughter burst out before she could stop it, only slightly pained as her stitches protested the movement. She pressed a hand to her side but kept laughing—partly at Dionys’ outrage, and partly at the sad little arc of his projectile.
“Truly,” she gasped, wiping her eyes. “A devastating display of force. I tremble at your might.”
Stella, sensing the shift in mood, giggled and flopped back against Alessia’s uninjured side—watching Dionys with wide, delighted eyes, clearly waiting to see if he would actually murder Odrian.
Then came the true danger: Alessia tilted her head, mischief glinting in her eyes as she pitched her voice to carry.
“You know, paramour is a very generous term for someone who just called me a drooling burden.”
His look at her was nothing short of withering.
“You were drooling,” he said. “On my sword arm.”
Then, just as she was opening her mouth to retort, 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.”
And with that tossed neatly into her lap, he straightened—satisfied—and fished a honey cake from his belt pouch. Wordlessly, he broke it in half, handing one piece to Stella and hovering the other near Alessia’s mouth like a man attempting to bribe a feral cat.
Alessia glared at him, but there was no heat in it, and her bright blush belied her actual feelings. She snapped at the honey cake, trying to cover her embarrassment with humor.
Dionys’ smirk is vicious as he lets her take the honey cake—purposefully lingering just close enough that their fingers brush. “That’s what I thought,” he murmured, voice low and smug.
Stella—mouth full of her own honey cake—watched them with wide, fascinated eyes.
“Oooooooh,” she whispered to Dottie.
She had no idea what was happening.
Odrian chose that moment to reappear—arms laden with a small, cloth-wrapped bundle that smelled suspiciously like stolen luxury.
Alessia, cheeks still burning, was too busy pretending the honey cake required her full attention to notice Odrian’s return immediately.
Stella, however, whispered loudly, “Uncle Ody! Uncle Dio’s got butterflies!”
Alessia chokes on the honey cake.
Violently.
“Stell,” she wheezed between coughs as she tried not to asphyxiate in front of them all. “What—”
Dionys, who had very much heard Odrian walk in and had been enjoying Alessia’s fluster a little too much, suddenly went rigid. Then, agonizingly slowly, he turned his head to meet his best friend’s gaze.
Odrian, standing frozen in the tent flap, stared at Dionys with an expression of pure, unmitigated delight. His mouth twitched twice before he finally burst into laughter loud enough to startle birds from the trees outside.
“Dionys,” he managed between wheezes. “Uncle Dio with butterflies.” Another peal of laughter. “By all the gods, this is the best day of my life.”
Then, just to ensure maximum chaos, he tossed the bundle of food onto the nearest cot and folded himself onto the ground, bracing his chin on his hands with all the eagerness of a child waiting for story time.
“Please,” he said with a grin like a fox in a henhouse, “do continue.”
Dionys’ glare could melt stone. “No.”
He yanked Odrian up by his collar and shoved him toward Alessia. “Feed your damn paramour before she coughs up a lung,” He paused and looked away. “Not that I care.”
“Oh, I see how it is,” Odrian sing-songs—already unwrapping his bundle to reveal actual, honest-to-gods olives alongside the promised bread and fish. He popped one into his mouth with a smirk. “Too flustered to do it yourself, Dio?”
Then, mercifully, he tossed a few olives Alessia’s way before Dionys could actually commit regicide.
Stella, sensing the tension and deeply curious, tugged on Dionys’ sleeve.
“What’s ‘paramour’ mean?” she whispered, loud enough for everyone to hear.
Alessia, still recovering from her honey cake-induced near-death experience, flailed a hand toward Stella in a desperate abort mission motion.
Dionys, with the long-suffering air of a man who had lost all control of his life, picked Stella up by the back of her tunic like a misbehaving kitten and dropped her onto Odrian’s lap.
“Ask him,” he growled. “He’s the one with opinions.”
Odrian, trapped beneath a wiggling, interrogative five-year-old, had the nerve to look delighted by this turn of events. “Why, tiny terror! A paramour is—”
“—Odrian.” Dionys’ voice was lethally calm.
Odrian smirked but pivoted. “—someone very important,” he explained to Stella, tone conspiratorial. “Like…a royal pain in my ass.”
His grin turned downright wicked as he glanced between Alessia and Dionys. “Usually, you only get one. Your mother’s special.”
Alessia buried her face in her hands, torn between hysterical laughter and the urge to throw a bread roll at someone. Anyone.
But most likely Odrian.
“Oh gods,” she groaned, her voice muffled mainly by her palms. She peeked between her fingers at Dionys, eyes sparkling despite her horror. “You—you started this. You realize that, right?”
She didn’t mention the flutter in her chest at the idea—the sheer warmth of being claimed so boldly, so publicly. Even as a joke. Even as chaos.
Some things were too fragile to name.
Stella, oblivious to the emotional carnage she was wreaking, stared at Odrian with a curiosity that promised future interrogations.
Alessia reached blindly for the olives—if she was going to perish from sheer mortification, she was at least doing it on a full stomach.
Odrian took one look at her despair and tossed her the entire pouch, eyes alight with the kind of mischief that suggested he was just getting started. Then he leaned in to Stella with exaggerated gravity. “Now, Stellaki. Tell me—how exactly did you diagnose Uncle Dio with ‘butterflies’?”
“He flutters!” she announced, as if this were obvious. “An’-an’ his face does the…the thing.” She squinted up at Dionys, tiny fingers mimicking an explosion. “Boom. Red.”
Dionys walked out of the tent very calmly.
He would return, but not before committing several inevitable war crimes in the training yard.
Odrian watched him leave with unholy glee. “Oh, this is beautiful,” he whispered before turning back to Alessia and Stella with the expression of a man who had won the greatest of prizes.
“So…Paramour lessons after lunch?”
Alessia flung an olive at his smug face in an act of swift justice.
It bounced off his nose.
Stella clapped.
The next one Alessia throws, Odrian caught in his teeth, grinning around it like the bastard he was.
“Fine, fine,” he relented. “But only because you’re still bleeding onto my good bandages.”
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Dionys does, in fact, return—shirt streaked with sweat, knuckles bloodied, expression tranquil in a way that could only mean someone (or several someones) in the training yard deeply regretted their life choices.
“Olives?” he asked, gruff and expectant, as if the morning’s madness never happened.
(It did, they all knew it, but this was peace.)
Alessia chuckled and offered him some.
“Saved ‘em for you.”
Dionys took one, slow and deliberate, before flicking it back at her.
“Liar.”
He knew Odrian had handed her the whole pouch, but the fact that she tried to save him some was … something.
“Eat the rest, thief,” he said with a nod toward the leftovers. “You’re still alarmingly hollow.”
It was said like an insult.
It was meant like care.
Odrian, cradling a drowsy Stella, watched the exchange with deep satisfaction before mouthing at Alessia, “Butterflies.”
Dionys crunched an olive with his teeth while staring directly into Odrian’s soul.
Stella snored through the entire silent showdown.
Alessia huffed a laugh before popping an olive into her mouth with a grin. The salt burst on her tongue—good salt, the kind she hadn’t tasted in years.
She caught Odrian’s ‘butterflies’ mime and replied with an equally exaggerated eye roll.
She turned back to Dionys with a smile, nudging the olives toward him in a silent offer.
“…Stop being stubborn and eat,” she murmured. “You also look hollow.”
She was deflecting. He didn’t look hollow. But the words tasted sweeter than honey cake.
Dionys stared at her, hard, for a solid three seconds before he exhaled sharply through his nose and grabbed a handful.
“Fine.”
He eats them slower than usual—savoring each one like it were something rare and precious.
Odrian said nothing, just leaned back against the tent pole with a smirk that screamed I win.
Dionys exhaled—something perilously close to a laugh. For a long moment, he just sat there, the shared silence comfortable in a way that defied the chaos of earlier.
He glanced at Alessia from the corner of his eye.
“…You’re staying, right?”
Three words, a question masquerading as an order.
A plea wrapped in bronze.
Alessia went very still.
She hadn’t let herself think about it—about the possibility of staying, not just surviving. Not just taking shelter and moving on.
Her first instinct was to deflect, to laugh it off—but she looked at Stella, curled in Odrian’s arms, at the olives in Dionys’ rough, calloused hands, at the tent that smelled of herbs and safety…
The lie wouldn’t come.
“I want to,” she admitted. “Stella is happy here.”
Which was far from the only reason she wanted to stay, but was the easiest to talk about.
Dionys’ thumb brushed over her knuckles—quick, barely there—before he nodded. “Good.”
No grand speeches, no poetic declarations.
Just … good.
It’s enough.
“…And the olives had nothing to do with it,” he teased.
“Mmm,” Alessia hummed as she ate another one, “No comment.”
Odrian, who had absolutely been eavesdropping, piped up from the other side of the tent.
“Liar.”
The smirk in his voice was audible.
Dionys pinched the bridge of his nose—the long-suffering martyrdom of a man surrounded by children.
“I regret everything.”
Odrian snorted, low and amused, before stealing an olive for himself.
Alessia just grinned, unrepentant, before she stole another olive from the pouch herself.
She nudged her shoulder against Dionys’ as she did.
He didn’t pull away. Didn’t even glare. Just exhaled—half exasperation, half something softer—and nudged her back.
Later, there would be strategy to discuss—threats to address.
Ten days to survive.
But for now, there were olives and quiet and the warmth of stolen kinship.
Odrian said nothing.
He’d tease later.
He was too busy watching them—Alessia’s tired but real smile, Dionys’ quiet contentment, and Stella’s peaceful weight against his chest—and thinking, with startling clarity.
This was worth keeping.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
The raven reached the villa as the sun kissed the horizon.
Walus, the Butcher of Ellun, unrolled the scrap of parchment with hands still flecked with blood. His lips peeled back from his teeth as he read the terse message.
She’s still alive.
His fist slammed down onto the war table, scattering markers. Across the room, his lieutenants froze.“Find my wife,” he growled—soft, almost giddy with fury. “Before the Aureans remember what she’s worth.”
Alessia drifted in and out of consciousness. The pain was a dull, throbbing constant, the damage deep. Every breath was a struggle, every movement sent pulses of agony through her.
By midday, she was afire with fever.
Odrian and Dionys did everything right—cleaning and stitching the wounds, keeping her warm and hydrated, making sure Stella was cared for and close by.
But already weakened by starvation, exhaustion, and her previous wound, Alessia’s body had had enough.
Her breaths came fast and shallow as she burned, tossing weakly despite Dionys’ steadying hands as he forced water between her lips. She babbled in her feverish ravings—half Tharon, half-Aurean—voiced fragments of pain and fear and loss spilling from her unbidden.
She cried for her mother, sounding young and afraid. A child again in her delirium.
She whined Dolos’ name, regretful for her hand in his death. Pleading with him to forgive her.
She begged Walus for mercy, repeating apologies like a chant.
Mostly, when her fingers scrabbled weakly at the blankets, she whispered Stella’s name like a prayer.
Askarion returned, grumbling about foolish warriors and stubborn women, to dose her with another draught of willow bark and feverfew.
Dionys didn’t leave her side—not even when the fever worsened, when her skin grew flushed and slick with sweat, when her delirious cries fractured the quiet of the tent. He propped her up carefully, her back against his chest, holding the cup of willow tea to her lips.
“Drink,” he murmured, firm—a command from someone used to being obeyed.
Her cracked lips parted weakly, choking down the medicine even as she whimpered against the taste.
Later, when she thrashes, whimpering Walus’ name in terror, Dionys’ arms tighten around her—not restraining, but grounding.
“No one’s taking her from you,” he growled, half to Alessia, half to whatever unseen demons haunted her fever dreams. “You hear me? Not him, not Nomaros. Nobody.”
Stella, wide-eyed and silent, clutched her mother’s limp hand like a lifeline. Dionys didn’t tell her to let go.
Askarion watched—grudging respect beneath his usual gruffness—before he pressed a damp cloth to Alessia’s forehead.
“She’s too damn stubborn to die,” he muttered.
Dionys didn’t argue, just shifting his grip—careful of her wounds—and waited.
Outside, the world moved on.
Inside, they held the line.
And Alessia burned.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Her fever broke slowly. Her cries and whimpers fading, her writhing calming, the heat of her cooling.
When she woke, she found herself sitting, reclined, with the warmth of another person behind her, their arms around her, as if trying to keep her anchored. Exhausted, she turned her head and was surprised to see Dionys there, leaning against a tent post, apparently asleep.
Alessia blinked, disoriented—half expecting that this was another fever dream. But no, his arm was solid around her ribs—careful of the wound—his breathing slow and even before she shifted.
Her throat burned. Her body felt hollowed out, wrung dry. But she felt alive.
Stella was curled against her hip, fast asleep, tiny fingers tangled in the fabric of the borrowed chiton Alessia wore. The little girl’s cheeks were tear-stained but peaceful.
Dionys stirred as she shifted, his grip tightening reflexively before he blinked himself awake. For a brief, unguarded moment—before his usual stoicism rushed back in—he looked relieved.
“Welcome back,” he muttered, voice graveled with exhaustion. He didn’t let go, didn’t explain why he was propping her up like human scaffolding instead of letting her lie flat.
(Maybe it was because the wound drained better upright. Maybe because every time she had slumped sideways in her delirium, she’d whimpered.)
A waterskin appeared in front of her face, held by Odrian, who she hadn’t noticed sitting nearby.
“Drink,” he ordered, voice rough and frayed beneath the briskness. “Slowly, or you’ll vomit, and Askarion will actually murder me for wasting his medicines.”
His free hand hovered near her elbow to catch her should she slide, but he didn’t touch, not yet.
There were shadows under his eyes, a dent in the dirt where he’d clearly been sitting vigil.
Alessia doesn’t remember much of the fever—just flashes of hands, voices, pain—but the evidence surrounds her.
They’d stayed.
Dionys shifts behind her, rolling his stiff shoulders.
“You cursed me in three languages,” he informed her flatly. “One of them I didn’t even recognize.”
“Huh,” Alessia said softly as she reached for the waterskin. “Weird, I only know two.” She paused as she straightened, “… Unless … did it sound like … really weird Tharon? Disjointed, like the words didn’t make sense together?” She paused again before switching to Tharon to ask, “‘Wasing of the it with the doing and sounding’?”
She wouldn’t even try to translate the question into Aurean faithfully.
Dionys stared at her blankly for a long, long moment before pinching the bridge of his nose. “Gods help me,” he said. A pause, and then grudgingly, “… Yes.”
Odrian, meanwhile, looked horrified.
“What in Hades’ name kind of Tharon dialect is that?” he demanded—half genuine confusion, half exaggerated affront. “Did you just rearrange the words at random? Is that how you actually speak? Am I the one who’s been saying it wrong this whole time—?”
Dionys kicked him in the shin. Hard.
“Water,” he reminded them both pointedly, nodding to the forgotten skin still in Odrian’s hand.
“It’s Ellun’s dockside slums street slang. We called it Mother Tongue,” Alessia said as she reached for the waterskin again. “Hasing the purpose to confuse it wasings.”
Dionys closed his eyes—just for a second—as if praying for strength.
“I refuse,” he declared to the tent at large, “to pretend that was a sentence.”
Alessia chuckled. “The first thing I asked was basically ‘Did it sound like this?’ The second was saying, ‘It’s confusing on purpose.’”
“No,” Dionys muttered, shaking his head like he was trying to dislodge the absurdity from his ears. “I’m done. I draw the line at cryptic fever riddles.” He shifted, carefully adjusting Alessia’s weight against him. “Next time, just cough like a normal person.”
There was no real irritation in the words—just a gruff sort of relief that she was awake to annoy him at all.
Odrian, though, studied her with keen interest—the same way he would examine a new battle tactic, or an unfamiliar weapon. “Ellun’s slums, you say…so a pidgin? Trade tongue?” His fingers tapped against his knee, already turning the puzzle over in his mind.
Alessia nodded. “More or less. It’s slang on top of various dialects layered onto sailor-speak and merchant pidgin, all shaken up in a barrel and left to ferment in the heat of the slums for however long.”
Odrian perked up—suddenly looking far too awake for a man who had been dead on his feet moments ago.
“So it’s a code.” His grin was all teeth. “Fascinating.”
“Why the fuck do you know thieves’ cant?” Dionys muttered—genuinely baffled now—as Stella stirred slightly against Alessia’s side before settling again.
His tone says ‘this is outrageous.’
His arms around Alessia said, ‘I will murder whoever made this necessary.’
“I learned it from another kid, a few years older than me,” Alessia said. “He picked it up by virtue of being a street rat.”
“You’ll have to teach me sometime,” Odrian said. Quieter, he added: “Might be useful.”
A joke.
A promise.
A silent acknowledgment that she would recover enough for ‘sometime’ to exist.
Alessia tilted her head before nodding, “I can teach you. Or…I can try.”
She had learned from Dolos, who had also taught her a version of rhyming slang, making her particular variant of Mother Tongue nearly incomprehensible to anyone who didn’t know both.
Odrian’s grin sharpened. “Challenge accepted,” he declared—already eyeing her like she was a particularly tricky passage in a scroll. “And when I’m fluent, you’ll be the one suffering.”
He didn’t say ‘Stay alive long enough to teach me.’ The intensity in his gaze said it for him.
Dionys’ arm tightened around Alessia, just slightly, as his voice dropped to a low growl.
“How old were you?”
The question was a blade wrapped in silk.
Odrian had been too busy mentally dissecting the linguistic labyrinth Alessia had described, and he blinked at Dionys’ tone. Then he stiffened as he caught up.
His fingers twitched toward Alessia’s hand, stopping just short of contact. “You said another child taught you,” he said carefully. “Which implies you were…?”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to. The answer was in the too-old look in her eyes.
“Six, maybe seven,” Alessia said, her voice soft. “He couldn’t have been older than eleven.”
Dionys’ exhale was sharp, violent, through his nose. His grip on Alessia tightened—just for a heartbeat—before he forced himself to relax.
There was rage in that silence.
She’d been six.
Six years old and already fluent in a language born of desperation and stolen crusts. Already knowing how to hide, how to lie, how to survive.
He didn’t ask where her parents were. He didn’t need to—the answer was written in her scars.
Alessia swallowed hard, her eyes flickering away to focus on the tent wall. She didn’t elaborate—didn’t mention the years before Dolos, before thieves’ cant. The months spent darting between alleyways like a feral cat, surviving on theft and scraps of luck.
She didn’t explain that she had been one of the lucky ones, with a home to return to and a mother who cared.
Odrian’s fingers finally closed around hers—careful, deliberate—as if he could compress over a decade’s worth of stolen safety into a single touch.
His voice was deceptively light when he spoke again.
“So. Wasing the it. Teach me.”
Not a demand to tell him about the scars or the streets, just a request. Teach me the code: a distraction and an offering. A way to keep her here, present, instead of there.
And if his thumb stroked over her knuckles, well. That was between them and the setting sun.
Before Alessia could respond, Stella shifted again in her sleep, her tiny fingers tightening instinctively on Alessia’s clothing. The touch seemed to ground her, pulling her back from the edge of memory. She exhaled slowly, forcing the tension from her shoulders.
Stella blinked awake with sleep-mussed hair and whispered a quiet, hopeful, “Mama?”
“Hey, Starlight,” Alessia said.
Stella unfurled like a little flower reaching for the sun—pushing upright with sleep-clumsy hands to pat at Alessia’s cheeks, her collar, the bandages underneath the chiton. Checking, verifying. Her lower lip wobbled dangerously.
“You stayed.”
An accusation, a plea, a five-year-old’s fragile thank you.
Then she promptly burst into tears.
Dionys froze like a man who had just been handed a live asp. His grip on Alessia tightened just enough to scream his sheer panic before he locked eyes with Odrian—wordlessly demanding, ‘What do I do?!’
(Six years of siege warfare couldn’t prepare him for a single, sobbing child.)
Alessia let Stella cry for a moment, rubbing her back and whispering words of comfort, knowing the child needed the catharsis. Then, as Stella’s tears began to ease, she grinned mischievously.
“Odrian wants me to teach him Mother Tongue.”
The distraction worked—Stella’s tears screech to a halt as her head whips toward him, eyes wide and gleaming with mischief.
“You’ll be bad at it,” she informed him with devastating certainty, still hiccuping from crying.
There was snot on her face. She was radiant.
Dionys—still rigid with ‘What is happening?’—blinks at the sudden shift in mood.
“…Children are terrifying,” he muttered.
Odrian, delighted by both the insult and the distraction, pressed a dramatic hand to his chest. “Betrayal. From my own little ally!” He leaned in conspiratorially. “I’ll have you know I’m excellent at languages. Ask anyone. Anyone.”
(No one would corroborate it. He didn’t care.)
Alessia exhaled—half-laugh, half-relief—and ruffled Stella’s hair. “You wanna show him some?”
Stella lit up like a festival lantern—sniffling once more for good measure before clearing her throat with exaggerated gravitas.
“Uncle Ody,” she announced, pointing at him with all the solemnity of a queen bestowing a title, “is…a…” she paused, blinked, and then, with perfect comedic timing, “…goat cheese.”
It makes zero sense.
It’s also flawlessly delivered in the gnarled, rhythmic cant of Tharos’ slums.
Odrian gasped—genuinely delighted—and immediately turned his widest, most shit-eating grin toward Dionys. “Did you hear that? I’ve been blessed.”
He had no idea what it meant.
He would treasure it forever.
Dionys snorted—sharp and sudden—before immediately attempting to school his face back into stoic disapproval. (He failed.)
“You taught her this?” He asked, his voice flat but holding the faintest edge of something almost like admiration.
Alessia failed to hold back her own quiet, exhausted little giggle—until she realized exactly what Stella said.
‘Uncle?’
Stella hadn’t used that term before, and she couldn’t have learned it from Alessia’s example. She’d never referred to either of the kings that way.
More than that, she wasn’t sure what to do with the warmth that curled in her chest at the sound of it. So she didn’t do anything; instead, she let it sit there, quiet and unnamed.
For now, maybe forever.
“She came by it naturally, as far as I know,” Alessia explained. “I spent my free time talking to her in Aurean, not Mother Tongue. Then one day, about a year ago, she came up to me, called me an ‘empty-headed rabbit’, and demanded breakfast.”
She turned to Odrian with a devious smirk. “And I’ll teach you just enough so you’re stuck able to hear us mocking you, but not enough to fire back.”
“Empty-headed rabbit,” Dionys repeated—clearly committing the phrase to memory for future use. His smirk was vicious. “I’m starting to like this language.”
He paused before asking, “How do you say ‘stop licking rocks’?”
“Depends on the intent,” Alessia said with a tired, amused huff. “Polite, rude, ‘stop licking rocks or I’m telling your mother’…”
She paused, realizing she had fallen into teaching without meaning to.
Maybe she really was an empty-headed rabbit.
“The first step is you probably shouldn’t bother learning it. Outside of the slums, Mother Tongue doesn’t have much use. It has no consistent grammatical rules; it’s based entirely on context and cadence. It can’t be translated into Aurean because half of it is tonal shifts and sentence symmetry that just … doesn’t exist in Aurean.
“Like…’Wasing not the why of the wanting of the mawing of rocks’technically translates to ‘Why do you want to lick rocks’ but it could mean anything from a fundamental question to ‘Stop licking rocks, you little weirdo.’”
Dionys looked deeply skeptical—like she had just explained that rain fell up—but Odrian was riveted.
“Symmetry,” the king echoed, as if it were the most fascinating tactical puzzle he had ever encountered. “So if I wanted to say ‘give me that honey cake or I’ll turn your hair green’—”
“No!” Stella interrupted, visibly alarmed. She smacked his arm with all the force of a vengeful sparrow. “Bad uncle!”
Alessia blinked—there it was again, ‘Uncle’, this time in Aurean—effortless and unthinking, as if she had always called him that.
She was too tired to hide her grin at Stella’s antics—or her quiet amusement at Odrian’s enthusiasm.
Then, in her own dialect of Mother Tongue, “Ey, listen, Comet. If th’man wants t’learn, let him suffer it proper—I’ll not have y’wastin’ yer time tryna hammer sense into a codfish.”
Stella giggled and smothered her face against Alessia’s side—clearly catching the gist, even if the exact words were lost in Alessia’s thick accent.
Dionys squinted at Alessia like she had just spoken in dolphin. “…Is that still Mother Tongue? Or did you just have a seizure?”
Alessia dropped her head back against Dionys’ shoulder, unable to help the exhausted but warm laugh that escaped her.
Something about all of it—Stella giggling, Odrian playing along, Dionys’ solid presence behind her—washed through her like a slow, golden tide. And for the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt …
…Like she belonged.
…Like she was home.
“Mother Tongue,” she confirmed with a tired smirk. “Just … my version of it. Like I said, it all has to do with context and cadence.” She gestured vaguely around them, as though they were on Ellun’s streets. “Put three kids in a room and they’ll each walk out with a different version of Mother Tongue—Often incomprehensible to outsiders. Stella understood the gist of what I said, but she wouldn’t be able to tell you the exact meaning.”
“Mama called Uncle Ody a codfish!” Stella said, helpfully.
Odrian, alarmingly, looked enchanted by this. “A living language. Fluid, adaptable, perfect for spies.” His grin bordered on unholy. “We’re keeping it.”
Dionys pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’re keeping the child,” he corrected, voice flat. “You are keeping the linguistic nightmare.”
“I like goat cheese,” Stella said—entirely unprompted—before flopping dramatically across Alessia’s lap with the air of someone who had decided the conversation had been won.
Alessia smiled down at her.
“Yeah, it’s pretty good,” she said with a nod.
Odrian didn’t bother hiding his laughter, his voice rough with exhaustion but bright with something dangerously close to joy.
“You,” he informed Stella solemnly, “are a menace.” The warmth in his eyes betrayed him. “She must get it from her mother.”
Alessia grinned at him, “We do our best.”
Dionys barked out a laugh. Short, sharp, and utterly unexpected. Then, as if startled by his own reaction, he glared at the tent wall as if it had personally offended him.
No one commented on it, but Odrian grinned as he filed the moment away for future blackmail. His eyes gleamed—just for a heartbeat—before he schooled his expression back into something appropriately wounded.
“Betrayal,” he declared, pressing a dramatic hand to his chest. “And after I personally guarded your bedside like a particularly handsome, sleep-deprived sentinel—”
He paused, glanced at Dionys, who was still pointedly avoiding eye contact, then flicked his gaze back to Alessia.
“Wait,” Odrian said after a quiet moment. “You just woke up from nearly dying, and your first instinct was to tease me about linguistics—?”
He sounded … impressed.
“No, my first instinct was to explain the weird rambling,” Alessia corrected. “My second instinct was to tease you about linguistics.”
Odrian’s grin widened, sharp and delighted.
“Gods, you’re perfect,” he murmured, so low only she (and maybe Dionys, who rolled his eyes but didn’t comment) could hear it.
Then, equally as soft, “Never change.”
“Don’t plan to,” Alessia said.
“Any other hidden talents we should know about?” Odrian asked.
Alessia considered the question before shooting him a wicked grin. “And ruin the surprise? If I tell you, they won’t be hidden anymore.”
“I loathe you,” Odrian informed her with the same tone one might use to compliment a particularly fine wine. He was beaming.
Dionys exhaled through his nose—something perilously close to a laugh hidden in the sound—but otherwise he remained stoically silent.
Officially, he was not amused.
Anyone who knew him would notice the way his grip on Alessia’s side loosened slightly—careful not to jostle her wound, but unmistakably for.
Stella looked like a cat who had just succeeded in breaking a very expensive amphora, yawned, and blinked sleepily before burying her face against Alessia’s hip again.
Things were normal. Things were safe.
Odrian rolled his eyes, but there was no real irritation behind it. Instead, he offered the waterskin again,
“Drink,” he insisted, softer now. “You lost more blood than you had to spare. And if you actually want to keep shocking us with your vast underworld dialect, you’ll need to stay upright long enough to do it.”
The jest is light, but his gaze lingered, checking for signs of dizziness or weakness, anything that might mean she was still in danger without admitting it.
He’d never say he spent the last day gnawing on his own worry like a dog with a bone. Some things were better left unsaid.
Dionys, meanwhile, remained steadfast behind her, his warmth solid and grounding. He didn’t say it, but his presence itself was a promise.
We’re here. You made it. Now stay.
And between the teasing, the care, the sheer stubborn refusal to let her slip away—Alessia realized something quiet and undeniable.
They fought for her.
She took the waterskin. Sipped.
And she breathed.
Odrian exhaled—long and slow—as she drank, some unbearable tension unspooling from his shoulders. His fingers twitched toward her before he thought better of it, settling for a smirk instead.
Then, because the moment was teetering dangerously close to sentiment, he flicked her forehead.
“If you’re quite done flirting with death,” he said after a quiet moment, “Maybe we can actually let you rest now.”
Dionys doesn’t flick her; he doesn’t tease. His arm, still braced around her, tightened briefly. Not enough to hurt, just enough to remind her: You’re here. With us. Safe.
Stella, already half-asleep and stubbornly clinging to Alessia’s side, mumbled something unintelligible.
Alessia winced at the flick, more out of mock offense than actual pain, but didn’t argue. She leaned back a little heavier against Dionys’ support—just enough to let him feel the weight of her exhaustion and her trust.
“Next time,” she murmured, amusement lacing her words through the rasp of thirst and fatigue, “I’ll try to schedule my near-death experiences at a more convenient time for you.”
Then, softer, so low she wasn’t sure Odrian would catch it, she murmured, “Thank you.”
(For the water. For caring. For helping her. For everything.)
Dionys heard it, his grip tightening another fraction—more acknowledgement than she’d ever get out loud—before he pointedly turned his head to stare at the tent wall like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.
His thumb brushed once, absently, against her ribcage.
Odrian rolled his eyes dramatically, waving a hand as if swatting away her gratitude like an irritating fly.
“Spare me,” he groaned, voice thick with exaggerated disdain. Next, you’ll be weeping into my tunic and composing odes to my generosity.”
But his fingers brushed hers briefly as he took back the waterskin—a flicker of warmth from the contact, there and gone again before she could think to blink.
“I’ll make sure they’re all in Mother Tongue,” Alessia said, her words slurring slightly as her energy flagged again, but her grin remained bright and mischievous. “Jus’ t’be annoyin.”
Odrian gasped—clutching his chest like she had just lodged a knife in it—and whirled to Dionys,
“Did you hear that? Straight to threats! After all my kindness!” His voice was pure theatrics, and a grin tugged at the corner of his mouth. “This is how she repays us, Dionys. Vile street-slang odes.”
Dionys snorted—an inelegant, undignified sound. His grip on Alessia remained steady, but his stern facade wavered for just a moment.
“Tragic.”
With the faintest upward twitch of his lips—almost smirking—he added, “I’ll take first watch. You can suffer through the odes when she’s conscious enough to compose them properly.”
Alessia chuckled, snuggling closer to Dionys, mostly unconsciously.
“Y’make an unreasonably comfortable pillow, by the way,” she muttered as she fell back asleep. “Thassa compliment,” she added, in case it was in doubt.
Dionys stilled—like a statue carved from startled annoyance and reluctant fondness. His grip tightened just enough to let her know he was glaring at her, even if she couldn’t see it.
“I am not a pillow,” he informed the air above her head with grave dignity—as if addressing an invisible tribunal of utterly unimpressed judges. “You don’t just declare things like that without the proper paperwork. Protocol.”
A pause, then quieter and mostly to Odrian, “…Is this how all thieves are?”
Odrian—gleeful—opened his mouth to answer before closing it again with an audible click of his teeth, his eyes narrowing as he finally processed the phrasing.
Somewhere in the back of his mind is the quiet thought, Good. Rest.
“‘Unreasonably comfortable’,” he echoed, suddenly suspicious. “How many other pillows have you—? You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to know.” He pointedly glared at Dionys. “You deal with her.”
Stella, still curled against Alessia’s side, blinked up at them both with big, suspicious eyes.
Dionys’ eye twitched. “I am. By throwing her into the Ashurak River.”
He didn’t. Not even a little bit.
In fact, he adjusted his arm to support her head better.
Odrian saw it. Dionys knew he saw it. The ensuing stare-off was legendary until Stella, half-asleep against Alessia’s him, mumbled, “…Uncle Dio’s the best pillow…”
Alessia forced herself to remain still, as her heart hammered in her chest, flooding her veins with adrenaline. The urge to force herself up into a defensive stance was nearly overwhelming.
She knew damn well that moving could bring fatal consequences for both herself and Stella.
The little girl curled tighter into Dionys’ side, going completely still and silent even as her breath hitches in palpable terror. She recognized the cadence and tone of the newcomer’s words too well. Her knuckles turned white as she gripped Dionys’ tunic like a lifeline.
Dionys clenched his jaw, his free hand drifting toward the dagger at his belt. He didn’t stand—refused to jostle Stella—but his posture shifted into something protective and predatory.
High King Nomaros loomed in the entrance, his gaze sweeping over the scene with slow, deliberate appraisal until it landed on Alessia’s blooded form—then it flicked up to meet Odrian’s glare.
“Explain to me why there’s a Tharon whore stinking up my war camp?” he demanded, his voice is eerily measured.
The words hang in the air like a noose.
Odrian’s jaw clenched as he slowly turned to face Nomaros. His grip on Alessia’s hand never faltered.
“Your Highness,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. The word tasted like poison. “We’re treating an injured civilian.”
The High King stepped fully into the tent, his gilded armor clinking softly. His posture was rigid, eyes scanning the scene with disapproval.
“An injured civilian?” he repeated, his tone dripping with skepticism. “Is that what we’re calling enemy spies now?”
The air turned heavy, the threat unmistakable.
Behind Nomaros, two of his personal guard shifted uncomfortably, hands resting on their sword hilts.
Dionys’ grip tightened on Stella.
“She’s a child,” he growled.
“She isn’t,” Nomaros countered smoothly, his gaze flicking to Alessia’s bandaged torso and bloodied face. He arched a brow. “And yet she bleeds like one of ours.”
Alessia was panicking—beneath the surface, in a place where years of war and agony had carved instinct so deep she couldn’t forget it if she tried. It screamed at her to defend herself, to shield Stella, to do something—
Then Nomaros dared to imply her blood meant nothing. And that scrap of arrogance was enough to make her vision go red.
She turned her head—slow and deliberate—to face him, her expression deathly calm despite the blood streaking her face.
But Odrian spoke before she could.
“An interesting accusation,” he interjected smoothly, shifting to block Nomaros’ line of sight to Alessia. “Especially from a woman who hasn’t been near our lines until two nights ago, and has been unconscious for most of that time.”
Then softer, deceptively casual, he asked, “Unless, of course, you have proof she’s a spy?”
The High King’s lips thinned in displeasure. His eyes didn’t leave Alessia, even with Odrian in the way. Coldly assessing her, weighing her worth—and finding her wanting. “Your concern is touching, Odrian. She’s Tharon.”
Patrian, who had been quietly gathering up the tools he and Askarion had been using, sighed loudly. He stood, stepping into Nomaros’ line of sight beside Odrian.
“She’s a mother,” he said, pointedly bland. “And currently under our care.” A pause, then as sweet as honey and as sharp as Dionys’ dagger, “Or shall we assume you enjoy watching women bleed?”
Dionys shifted, placing himself more firmly between Nomaros and Stella, one hand casually resting on her head as if to shield her from even hearing the venom being spat at her mother.
One of the guards steps up from behind Nomaros, eyeing the situation like a vulture circling carrion.
“Forgive my interruption, High King,” he said. “But didn’t Commander Luther report an incident with a Tharon woman weeks ago? Brown haired, blue eyed, freckled?”
His eyes flicked meaningfully toward Alessia.
“Aquila,” Odrian said, voice dripping with false cheer and venom. “Still doing your master’s bidding, I see.”
“And still talking out your ass,” Dionys added under his breath—just loud enough to carry. Stella giggled at his words.
Nomaros’ eyes flicked to the small form hidden against Dionys, then back at Odrian. A slow, venomous smile spread across his face.
“Ah, now it makes sense.” He stepped closer. “Tell me, King of Othara—how long have you been fucking the enemy?”
Something in Odrian broke and in a single, fluid motion he closed the distance between them, his unsheathed dagger pressed to the High King’s throat.
“Say that again,” he murmured, voice eerily calm. “I dare you.”
And in that moment, the Owl of Othara looked every inch the ruthless strategist who burned entire fleets to ash.
Nomaros’ breath hitched, just slightly, at the blade’s kiss. But he didn’t back down.
“You draw steel on your King?” he asked, disbelief warring with rage. “For her?”
The dagger doesn’t waver. “For justice.” Odrian’s smile was all teeth as he tilted his head slightly. “Unless you’d prefer to discuss your men’s violation of the Truce of Healers? Or do war crimes only count when Tharos commits them?”
“Stand down, Odrian,” Nomaros said, each syllable grating. “This isn’t worth starting a war over.”
“THERE’S ALREADY A WAR!” Odrian roared, shoving Nomaros back with enough force to send him stumbling several steps. His hands shook from adrenaline and fury. “One you started over your brother’s stolen bride!” He spun, gesturing sharply at Alessia with a bloodied hand. “And now you want me to stand by while your men do the same?”
His voice cracked under the weight of unspeakable implication as he turned his glare back onto the High King.
Dionys went rigid, Stella clutched tightly against him, as Odrian’s words landed.
The same.
His grip on his dagger tightened as understanding dawned.
Not just threatened. Not just wounded. Violated.
For the first time since entering the tent, Nomaros looked uncertain. His gaze flickered from Odrian’s enraged face to Alessia’s battered form to the child trembling in Dionys’ arms.
“You have proof of this?” The question was quiet. Less accusation—something dangerously close to shame.
“Check the knife,” Dionys growled, jerking his chin toward the blade that was still on the ground beside Askarion. “That blade reeks of half the noble houses in Aurel.”
Patrian helped Alessia sit up so she could drink. “Upward thrust. Angled to maim. They wanted her to suffer.”
Nomaros’ breath stuttered before his expression was schooled back into stern objectivity.
“This matter will be investigated. If what you say is true, the men responsible will answer for it.” A moment of silence before he continued, grudgingly, “You have my word.”
His gaze narrowed at Patrian, then Dionys, before landing back on Odrian.
“But that doesn’t change that you let this into our camp,” he murmured. “And you expect me to believe you’ve not gone mad? Or is it your dick doing the thinking now?”
Odrian’s lips curled into a slow, dangerous smile. “Is that why you’re here, Nomaros? Concerned about my dick?” He knelt beside Alessia, taking her hand again. “Because if you’re offering to inspect it personally, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline. You’re not my type.”
Patrian made a sound suspiciously like a snort masquerading as a cough. Askarion, miraculously, kept his focus entirely on Alessia’s bandages.
His shoulders twitched with what might have been laughter.
Dionys, shielding Stella, rolled his eyes skyward as if begging the gods for patience.
“For fuck’s sake,” he muttered. “Now he decides to be funny?”
For a heartbeat the air itself grew thick with tension, then Nomaros broke it.
“You always did mistake recklessness for wit,” he said, his voice a lash. “But make no mistake—this indiscretion will not go unanswered.” A final glance at Alessia—barely more than a flicker—but the contempt is scalding. “Expect my summons by dawn.”
Outside the tent his voice rang sharp with command. “Double the watch. No one leaves this camp without my seal.”
Alessia counted ten breaths before breathing a sigh of relief. “That … could’ve gone worse.”
She and Stella were still alive, after all.
“He’s not comin’ back, yeah?” she slurred at Odrian, the words nearly unintelligible. She needed to know she wasn’t going to lie to Stella before she tried to comfort the little girl.
Odrian’s fingers tensed around hers—just slightly—before squeezing back.
“Not today,” he murmured—too low for anyone but her to hear. “If he tries, he’ll find me blocking the way.”
His gaze flicked to where Stella huddled against Dionys—her tiny frame trembling. An unspoken promise hung between them.
Lie to her all you need. I’ll make it true.
Alessia sighed in gratitude and relief.
“Stellaki,” she said gently, as clearly as she could. A code, for Stella alone—a name only used to signal the end of peril.
The danger is gone. We’re safe now.
She held out her hand in the direction of the little girl.
Stella didn’t need to hear another word. At Alessia’s outstretched hand and that name, she scrambled forward—abandoning Dionys’ protective bulk to fling herself against her mother’s uninjured side.
Her fingers fisted in the bloody fabric of Alessia’s ruined peplos, but she didn’t cry. Not yet. She just held on—as if her sheer stubbornness could knit skin back together.
“You said,” she whispered against Alessia’s shoulder, her voice small but fierce. “You said ‘not goin’ anywhere.”
A reminder.
A challenge.
A plea.
“M’still here, Starlight,” Alessia said gently. “Still here.”
Odrian’s breath caught at the exchange—something fragile and unnamed tightening in his chest. For once, the ever-ready quip died on his tongue. He met Dionys’ gaze over Stella’s head—silent understanding passing between them before he turned back to Askarion.
“Anything else?” he asked, his voice rough with exhaustion and edged with command.
What more can we do? lingered beneath his question, unspoken.
“The wounds are both clean and stitched,” Askarion said as he wiped his hands on a cloth. “But she’s lost a lot of blood—too much. She needs rest. Clean water, if she can keep it down.” He sighed before grudgingly adding, “She’s stubborn. That helps.”
Odrian nodded, looking down at Alessia with an expression that would have been exasperated if it weren’t so relieved.
“Stubborn,” he echoed dryly, his thumb brushing the back of her hand. “What a shocking revelation.”
Dionys stepped closer as Patrian gathered the last of the soil bandages.
“We’ll take shifts,” he said. Odrian opened his mouth to argue, but Dionys cut him off with a glance. “Shifts,” he repeated, firm and unyielding. “Rest. Or I’ll let Stella sit on you.”
Stella nodded solemnly in agreement with the threat.
“She’s too little,” Alessia said, words slurred with exhaustion. “Let’er pile her rocks on ‘im.”
Odrian stared at her, blinking once. Twice.
Then, absurdly, he laughed—quiet and rough with exhaustion, but real.
“Gods. I adore you,” he muttered before he could think better of it.
A heartbeat. Two.
His smile faltered—not with regret, but with something softer. “Which is terrible news for both of us.”
Patrian froze—then fixed Odrian with a look full of gleeful, impending torment. “Oh,” he murmured, viciously delighted. “This is gold.”
Dionys sighed—deep and long-suffering. “Please tell me you waited for that confession until after she had a blade in her, so at least she couldn’t run away.”
And Alessia froze—her mind racing for the right quip, the perfect deflection to bury whatever just cracked open between them under ten layers of sarcasm.
But she was tired.
And maybe, just this once, she didn’t want to deflect.
So instead she smiled—weak but genuine—as her fingers curled tighter around Odrian’s for just a second.
“Too bad,” she murmured, drowsy with blood loss and the weight of unspoken things. “Now I definitely gotta live.”
Her eyelids grew heavy, and slid closed despite her most valiant efforts. She wasn’t unconscious—not quite—but she was close. She squeezed Odrian’s hand one last time—gratitude and something else—before giving in and sinking into sleep’s embrace.
Odrian exhaled—sharp and shaking—as her grip slackened in sleep, his own fingers tightening once around hers before lifting her hand to press her palm to his lips in a gesture too tender for a king.
For a moment he just looked at her—hair matted with blood, cheeks too pale, but breathing.
Alive.
Then softly, only for himself, only to her he whispered, “Damn right you do.”
Later he’ll claim it was a threat. But now, in the quiet dark, it’s something else entirely.
Patrian and Dionys exchanged knowing smirks while pretending not to.
Askarion pointedly finished packing his supplies with excessive loudness.
“Goodnight, children,” he said as he pushed himself to his feet. “Try not to wake my patient with your pining.”
And then he was gone, back to his own tent to try to get another hour or two of sleep before the day truly began.
Dionys huffed as he turned to Odrian, “Go. Sleep. Or I will let her rocks be your pillow.”
The threat is real. The concern beneath it rare.
Odrian opened his mouth—and yawned. Because Dionys had a point. He shot Dionys a withering look.
“Fine. Four hour shifts. Wake me if anything changes. If you let her die on your watch, I’m throwing you into the Myrian.”
It’s a threat. It’s a plea. It’s the closest he would come to admitting how much this—she—mattered.
He doesn’t thank Dionys, doesn’t insist the other man tell him if Alessia so much as twitched. Dionys nodded anyway.
“And if Nomaros comes back…wake me first,” Odrian said.
“Sleep,” Dionys ordered gruffly. “You’re no use to anyone like this.”
Odrian didn’t argue, just dragged a hand down his face and staggered toward the spare bedroll—collapsing onto it with none of his usual grace.
Patrian lingered just long enough to lean down and murmur in Odrian’s ear, too soft to hear over the rustling of his cloak. His grin was dagger-sharp.
“You owe me so much wine for this.”
Then he slipped into the night before anyone could retaliate, leaving behind only the ghost of amusement in his wake—and the implication that the conversation was far from over.
Dionys took his turn at watch, his usual battle-hardened edges softened by the lateness of the hour and the vulnerability of those in his care. He fetched fresh water and a clean cloth, dipping it gently into the basin before wringing it out. His hands, so accustomed to gripping spears and twisting in combat, moved with surprising tenderness as he wiped the drying blood from Alessia’s temple, the hollow of her throat, the line of her jaw.
He hesitated a moment at the sight of her peplos, stiff and rusty with blood, before deciding that he wouldn’t leave her in that state—not when the linen had turned rough and cold, clinging to her sweat-damp skin. He found one of his own spare chitons, short but serviceable and soft from wear. Carefully, mindful of her wounds, he braced her upright enough to peel the ruined fabric from her shoulders. His fingers stilled when he saw the scars beneath—old stripes and burns, the cruel geometry of suffering laid bare. His jaw tightened.
He glanced at Stella, her small face pressed against Alessia’s side, and exhaled through his nose to focus on his task. He didn’t linger on what the marks might mean, doesn’t let himself dwell on the hands that put them there. Instead, he eased the fresh tunic over Alessia’s head, guiding it over her with quiet efficiency.
Then, with more care than most would credit him for, Dionys lifted her just enough to slide the bedroll beneath her, before settling her back into the furs. Stella, still stubbornly attached to her mother’s side, barely stirs. Dionys tucked the edges of the bedroll around them both before adding his own cloak as an extra layer against the night’s lingering chill.
“Stubborn women,” he whispered, barely more than a breath, the words full of affectionate exhaustion.
And for a moment, he just stared at them. A woman too small for the scars she carried, a child too young for the fear in her tight grip. His fingers brushed once over Stella’s hair before he forced himself back into the rigid posture of a sentry.
He had no taste for softness, no patience for sentiment,
(And yet … )
Dionys didn’t know that Odrian was still awake and watching him from behind half-lidded eyes. Odrian said nothing—doesn’t even shift to let Dionys know he saw.
Some truths are better left unspoken. Some moments are too private to intrude upon.
But when Dionys finally settled back into his watch, his spine rigid and his gaze unreadable again, Odrian exhaled and let his own eyes fall shut.
Because if Dionys—stoic, ruthless, unyielding Dionys—could shed his armor so completely for these two strangers, then maybe … maybe there was hope for the rest of them yet.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Nomaros summoned Odrian and Dionys to his tent with two of his personal guard flanking the entrance. The air reeked of myrrh and wet wool, undercut by thinly veiled ambition. Patrian and Askarion were already there when the other two arrived.
“Explain,” he demanded. “And save me your usual dramatics.”
Odrian barely managed to stifle a yawn as he stepped forward, exhaustion evident in the dark circles under his eyes. But his voice was steady as he spoke—no dramatics, no biting wit.
“She needed help. We gave it. That’s all there is to it.”
Nomaros scoffed—a harsh, dismissive sound. “Really? That’s how you justify harboring Tharon scum—”
“If by ‘scum’,” Dionys interrupted bluntly, his voice still rough from the long night, “you mean a five-year-old girl—then yes.” His expression darkened, a silent challenge. “We’re monsters, clearly.”
Nomaros’ jaw clenched, his fingers pausing mid-drum against the table. “We are at war, Dionys. Or have you forgotten?”
“War has rules,” Patrian countered softly. “Even Tharos’ rules forbid what was done to her.” His hands, still stained with Alessia’s blood, curled at his sides. “That wound was no accident. Neither of them were.”
Ever the pragmatist, Askarion finally spoke, his voice as measured as his sutures were precise.
“The angle, the depth. The delay in treatment—” A pause, heavy with implication. “Whoever did that wanted her to suffer. To die slow. That’s not war, that’s butchery. And I won’t stand for it.”
Not when it mirrors wounds he’s seen on other battlefields. On other bodies.
Odrian stepped forward again, his exhaustion burning away under the slow simmer of his anger.
“She came to us for help and we failed her—twice. Once when your men ran her through, and again when we didn’t realize the infection had set in.” His gaze flickered to the others, then back to Nomaros. “We don’t get to call ourselves honorable if we turn our backs on that.”
His voice is firm, leaving no room for argument.
Nomaros’ expression darkened, but he didn’t refute what they were saying. Instead he just exhaled sharply and turned to the maps sprawled across his table.
“You’ll have your ‘justice’,” he muttered—dismissive and begrudging. “But mark my words, Odrian: This creature you’ve taken in? She will be the death of you.” Then, so soft it was almost to himself, “And not quickly.”
Odrian smiled, cold and knife-sharp. “I’d like to see her try.”
His mind drifted, just for a heartbeat, to the way Alessia had looked at him in the tent, bloodied but unbroken.
Nomaros’ lips pressed into a thin line—something unsettling flitting across his face before vanishing again.
“You have ten days,” he said—calm as a judge pronouncing a death sentence. “Prove the Tharon woman’s use to me—or I send her back where she belongs.”
A pause. A cutting smile.
“Along with whatever blemishes she’s acquired in your care.”
The threat was clear. Alessia and Stella would be returned to Tharos—to Walus—alive enough for the Butcher to finish the job himself.
Odrian didn’t flinch.
“You’d trade a potential asset for petty spite?”
“‘Asset’?” Nomaros echoed as he leaned forward just enough for the lamplight to catch the silver in his beard. “If she’s who I think she is, the report says she’s Walus’ favorite punching bag. Not a spy, not a strategist. A broken toy.” His finger tapped the stolen missive on the table between them. “Ten days, Odrian. Don’t waste them on sentiment.”
Then, with a sharp glance at Odrian he added one more condition.
“She and the child will remain under guard at all times.” He cut off any protestation with a raised hand. “My guard.”
Odrian stiffened, instinct screaming danger. But Dionys interjects before he can argue.
“Will all due respect, Highness, absolutely not.”
Nomaros’ gaze snapped to Dionys, clearly unused to being interrupted—defied—by anyone outside his inner circle. “Excuse me?”
Dionys didn’t flinch. “You don’t have the men to spare from the siege lines. Ours already know the stakes.”
He didn’t say Your men might finish what they started, but the implication hung thick in the air.
Nomaros’ eyes narrowed—but surprisingly he didn’t press further. Instead he exhaled sharply through his nose and turned back to Odrian.
“Ten days,” he said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But if she so much as blinks suspiciously, you’ll answer for it with more than clever words.”
“Understood,” Odrian said through clenched teeth. He forced himself to nod.
And if Alessia was still too weak to face him? Odrian had broken oaths before.
Dionys clapped a hand on Odrian’s shoulder—brief but firm—before turning toward the exit. A silent Let’s go.
As they turned to leave, Nomaros added one last parting shot.
“Odrian?”
“Highness?” Odrian’s muscles were coiled tight beneath his tunic as he turned halfway toward Nomaros. He didn’t trust the quiet in the High King’s voice.
“Do not make me regret this.”
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
“Ten days? That’s barely enough time to mend a scratch, let alone—”
Askarion cut Patrian off with a look as they entered the healing tent.
“Lucky for us,” he declared, loud enough for any eavesdroppers outside to hear, “the patient’s injuries are far graver than we initially observed!”
He slammed a tray of tools down for emphasis. “Internal bleeding. High risk of putrefaction. She’ll need a month’s bedrest, at least.”
Patrian blinked in surprise. “… You lying bastard—” he said softly.
Askarion smiled—thin and razor-edged. “Tell the High King he’s welcome to examine her himself if he doubts my diagnosis.”
They both knew Nomaros would sooner lick a leper than step foot in a medical tent.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Odrian lifted the tent flap just as the first true sliver of morning light cut through the canvas. His posture was rigid, his jaw set—but his steps slow to near-silence the moment he sees her and Stella curled together, still asleep.
Instead of entering he stopped and turned toward Dionys.
“Ten days,” he muttered. “Ten godsdamned days to prove Alessia is more useful alive than as some … some bargaining chip.”
Dionys leaned against a tent post, arms crossed, as he watched Odrian wear a trench into the earth outside the tent.
“Should’ve asked for twenty,” he deadpanned. “He might’ve bargained down to fifteen.
Odrian stopped pacing long enough to shoot Dionys a look.
The other man shrugged. “What? You played that like a merchant, not a king. No leverage, no theatrics.” He tapped his temple. “Next time, tell him she’s got intel on Ellun’s grain stores. That’ll buy time.”
“He already knows she’s no spy,” Odrian scowled.
“Does he?” Dionys asked. “Or does he just think you think she isn’t one?”
A heartbeat, and then Odrian exhaled—slow and calculating. “You are infuriatingly good at this.”
Dionys smirked, “And you’re dead on your feet. Go sleep. I’ll wake you if she stirs.”
Odrian dragged a hand over his face—suddenly aware of how little he’d slept.
“Go,” Dionys repeated. “I’ve got watch.”
Odrian didn’t argue. He just collapsed onto the blankets, asleep before his head even hit the ground..
Odrian and Dionys were on their feet in an instant.
“Stella!” Odrian screamed.
Both men rushed toward the tent, their weapons drawn as they pushed past one another to reach the women first.
A shadow detached itself from the tent and fled into the darkness.
Dionys and Odrian exchanged one look—a single, wordless understanding—before Dionys bolted after the fleeing shadow, dagger already in hand.
Odrian doesn’t hesitate. He should follow, should help hunt down the threat, but—
Stella.
The tent flap was already torn, the fabric fluttering like a ragged wound. Odrian ducked inside, xiphos ready.
He was plunged into a nightmare.
Stella’s tiny form was curled up on her side near the back wall, hands over her ears as she rocked back and forth in terrified silence.
And Alessia …
Alessia was sprawled awkwardly across their shared bedroll and blankets. A nasty gash split her temple, oozing blood. Her mouth was slack with surprise, her lips parted as if she had been silenced mid-scream. Her eyes were partially closed.
A knife protruded up under her ribs.
Her hand was still outstretched toward Stella, her fingers curled as if reaching to comfort her daughter, but never quite making it.
The only evidence she was alive was her chest moving with shallow, wet breaths.
Odrian’s breath left him in a ragged, mangled sound—a noise that should not come from a king, a warrior, a man who had seen battlefields painted red.
“ALESSIA—!” Odrian’s voice cracked with panic as his sword clattered to the ground.
He dropped to his knees beside her, hands already pressing against the wound in her ribs, her blood hot and slick between his fingers. His voice was a broken rasp, shattered with something too raw to name.
“No, no, NO—!”
He tore a strip from his own tunic, pressing it hard against the knife wound. The metal hilt was still warm from the assassin’s grip.
“Stay with me—” he pleads. “Don’t you dare—”
His other hand found her face, tilting her slack jaw up—begging her eyes to focus, to see him.
“You have to hold on—you promised—”
Somewhere behind him, Stella whimpered, but he couldn’t turn, couldn’t look. Not when Alessia’s blood is pooling beneath his knees, when her pulse flutters like a dying bird under his fingertips.
“Fuck,” he breathed out, his eyes flicking over her body before looking back at her face. “Alessia … please … please wake up … ”
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Dionys is fast. Faster than any man his size has a right to be.
He caught the fleeing shadow just beyond the firelight, tackling them into the dirt with a snarl. The assassin twisted, but Dioonys’ dagger was already at their throat.
“Who sent you?” he demanded, his voice low, lethal.
The figure laughed—wet and gurgling—before biting down.
Dionys wrenched their jaw open too late. Foam spilled from their lips.
Dead.
Dionys stared at the corpse—motionless—for less than a heartbeat before he whirled and sprinted back toward the tent.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
The moment he saw Alessia—the blood, the knife, Odrian’s shaking hands pressed to her ribs—his dagger clattered to the ground.
“Stella,” he snapped—not a request but a command—as he scooped the child into his arms without waiting for permission. His voice, for her alone, drops into something softer. “I’ve got you, little one.”
He moved away from the bedrolls, cradling Stella close as she buried her face against his shoulder, sobbing.
Dionys looked to Odrian, worry etched on his features.
“How bad?”
No panic, no hesitation. Just razor-sharp focus of a soldier aware of how little time they had.
Odrian didn’t look up from Alessia’s ashen face, his hands pressing harder against the wound as if sheer willpower could stitch her back together. His voice was stripped raw.
“Bad.”
A pause, the word hanging between them. Heavy. Final.
“Alessia, wake up,” he urged again as his fingers found a faint but present pulse at her neck.
He exhaled shakily in relief before looking back to Dionys.
“Right … we need … fuck I don’t know what we need.” He looked around wildly, his mind racing. “Bandages, clean water-”
A low groan interrupted his thoughts and he whipped his head toward the sound just as Alessia’s eyes fluttered open.
“O-Odri…?” she choked out before coughing wetly. Blood bubbled from the corner of her mouth, trickling down her chin to pool in the notch of her collarbone. “C-Can’t … breathe … ?”
For a moment she panicked, feeling like she was drowning. She knew she couldn’t be—she could speak, her head was above water—but the burn in her chest felt the same.
“Easy,” Odrian murmured—desperately working to keep the sheer terror out of his voice as he cupped her cheek with one trembling hand. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you—”
His other hand pressed gently against the wound in her side, applying just enough pressure to slow the bleeding without driving the knife deeper. He can feel the wrongness—the way each ragged breath made her shudder, the wet, gurgling hitch in her lungs.
“Breathe through it,” he ordered—soft but firm. “Slow and deep as you can. Look at me.”
His thumb stroked once over her clammy skin, grounding her in the present. Then—sharply—he turned to Dionys. “Get Askarion. Patrian. Now.”
The camp physician and one of their best healers. Men they could trust.
There was no room for argument, not when every second counted. Not when Alessia’s life flickered in the balance like a candle in a storm.
“On it,” Dionys said, and then he moved, shifting Stella to his hip with one arm while he holds his knife in the other, scanning the darkness beyond the tent for more threats. His eyes lock onto Odrian’s. For the first time in years there’s no jest, no deflection—just raw fear laid bare between them.
“Hold on,” he said to Alessia. “We’re going to get you through this.”
Promise made he sprinted off into the night toward the main camp where the healer tents stand, already calling for Askarion, Stella held tightly in his arms.
Odrian exhaled sharply—jaw clenched—before turning his attention back to Alessia. His hands were steady, practical, as he shoved a wad of fabric against the knife wound to staunch the bleeding.
But his voice …
His voice nearly breaks when he speaks again.
“Stay with me, Alessia,” he murmured, pressing his forehead to hers for just a heartbeat. “Please.”
He doesn’t say I can’t lose you, too. Doesn’t say you promised Stella stories. Doesn’t say I was supposed to keep you safe. But the words hang in the air, unspoken, between each labored breath.
Then he saw it.
Beneath Alessia’s hip, slowly turning red with her blood, a scrap of papyrus with a single word scrawled across it.
TRAITOR
“Hey,” his voice was soft as his fingers moved from her cheek to brush hair from her bloodied temple. He forced himself to look away from the papyrus. “Look at me.”
Her gaze meets his again—glassy eyed but clearer than moments ago.
“I need you to stay with us, okay? Don’t go to sleep.” His thumb rubbed gentle circles on her skin.
“We need stop … meetin’ like this … ” Alessia slurred in a whisper.
Odrian huffed—half-laugh, half-sob—before carefully gathering her into his arms, one hand still pressed firmly to her wound. Blood seeped between his fingers, but he refused to let go.
“You’re fine,” he lied, his voice ragged but stubbornly cheerful as he adjusted his grip. “Just a minor stabbing. A flesh wound! You’ll be back to stealing my rations by dawn.”
It might have been cruel for him to joke while she bled. But if terror could be fought with audacity, then by the gods he would fight.
Outside the tent, the first shouts of alarm began to ring out—Dionys’ voice cutting through the camp like a blade, rallying help. But Odrian didn’t look away from Alessia’s face.
He pressed a kiss to her forehead—quick, fierce, a promise more than a comfort.
“Next time? Next time, you’ll meet me in a tavern. Or a garden. Or literally anywhere that doesn’t involve impalement.”
“Issa date, King,” Alessia said. She frowned and tried to look around. “S-Stella?”
“Safe,” Odrian promised, his voice rough. “Dionys has her. No one is taking her from you.” His thumb swiped blood from her lip, gentler than the moonlight. “Not ever.”
His unspoken I won’t let them is etched into the way his hands trembled as they held her. The way his breath hitched when hers did.
Alessia sighed gratefully, some of her tension unspooling, until the motion jostled her ribs and another lance of pain shot through her. She whimpered.
“Easy, easy,” Odrian soothed, his fingers tightening just slightly against her ribs—a silent plea for her to stay still. His other hand brushed sweat-damp hair from her forehead. “Breathe through it. Slow.”
Outside the tent, the drumbeat of footsteps grew louder—help was coming. But until then…
Until then he pressed his lips to the crown of her head again and murmured, voice cracking, “Just hold on. Please.”
For Stella. For him. For the stories still left unwritten.
Alessia tried to breathe slowly, but ti hurt, and the deep breaths quickly became pained, whimpering gasps.
Her vision swims, Odrian’s face going in and out of focus.
This is bad…
She reached out, weakly, for his hand.
“I-I think I m-might need help…” she said with a pained smile. A weak joke, mocking her own inability to ask for help. She whined softly. “H-H-Help…?”
Somewhere in her mind she knew it wasn’t fair to Odrian for her to say such things. He was helping, or at least trying to. He was keeping her conscious.
But she was scared. And he’d said she was safe…
And she needed to know if that meant she was safe enough to ask. Even if it wasn’t fair, even if it was painful.
Could she be selfish? Just this once?
Odrian’s fingers tightened around hers before she could even finish the shaky request—holding onto her like she was the last solid thing in the world.
“Always,” he rasped, his voice raw. The word was half-snarl, half-plea. “Always. Just stay with me long enough to hear me say it again—”
Somewhere beyond the tent the distant shouts and running feet grew closer. Dionys’ voice boomed through the chaos.
“—they’re coming.” Odrian said as he pressed his forehead to her knuckles, a king’s prayer in the dark. “Hold on.”
For a few moments all Alessia can do is breathe.
And there was something in the corner of her vision that wasn’t there. That couldn’t be there.
A boy, only fifteen or so, with wide, dark eyes and messy hair escaping from where he had tied it back. He wasn’t smiling, not like he used to.
He looked sad.
Worried.
It looks wrong on him.
“‘m scared,” Alessia whispered as her hand tightened around Odrian’s—barely, as her strength failed.
His grip on her hand tightened instantly—a vice-like anchor before he cradled her cheek, forcing her gaze back to him. Forcing it away from whatever phantoms haunted the edges of her vision.
“Look at me,” he said, his voice breaking and rough as gravel. “Only me.”
A heartbeat.
Two.
His thumb dragged across her jaw, smearing blood and tears alike.
“You listen to me, Alessia of Tharos—” and it’s the first time he ever called her that. Not ‘thief’, not ‘princess’, but Alessia of Tharos in all her stubborn, twice-stabbed glory. “—you drag your stubborn ass back from that edge, or I swear, by every god in the sky, I will haunt you.”
“Tha’s backwards,” Alessia mumbled. Her eyes closed for a moment, exhaustion pulling her down, but she fought it. Forced her eyes open again. Forced herself to focus.
“I don’ wan’ die…” she whispered, her voice soft. “N-Not now that I met you ‘nd Dionys…” Not now that she had something building with them, something almost like family, nascent and unproven. “I don’t wanna die.”
She repeated it for emphasis, forcing the words to come out clearly. Like the very fact that she wanted to live was a new experience for her.
It was.
The fear of it, fear for herself—not just the fear of leaving Stella alone—was something she had never experienced before.
“Then don’t,” Odrian ordered—hoarse and furious and begging all at once. His forehead pressed to hers, bloody and desperate. “Live. Live to spite me. Live to steal my rations and mock my speeches and teach Stella how to fluster kings twice her size—”
Outside the clamor grew—Dionys barking orders, the camp roaring to life around them. A servant rushed in to light the braziers, lighting the tent in something more than moonlight.
“—Live,” Odrian breathed against Alessia’s skin. “Because I refuse to let go.”
“Listen to him, Skia. Live. It ain’t your time yet,” the ghost boy in the corner whispered in Tharon. “Y’still got stories t’tell that wild thing y’call a daughter, yeah?”
Alessia’s breath hitched at the sound of his voice. At that name. Not Alessia—Skia. A name no one had called her in years. A name only one person ever called her.
She tried to turn toward the sound, despite the agony the movement caused.
“D-Dol…?” she whispered, blood bubbling at her lips. Her fingers twitch in Odrian’s grip—not pulling away but reaching, searching for something only she can see.
But the corner was empty, just shadows and dust. Just the echoes of a boy long dead.
Her eyes fluttered shut for a perilous second before she forced them open again, locking onto Odrian’s face like it was the only thing anchoring her to the world.
(Maybe it was.)
“Don’…don’ let m’sleep,” she slurred, clinging to his hand with the last of her strength. “‘M scared I won’…won’ wake up.”
“Not a chance,” Odrian growled, low and fierce, cupping her face with his free hand to keep her gaze locked onto his. “Eyes open, Alessia. Look at me.” His thumb brushed her cheekbone, smearing blood and sweat and tears alike. “You don’t get to leave. Not today. Not like this.”
His voice cracked, just once, before he steeled it into something steadier, something commanding.
“Remember our deal? Tavern next time. No stabbings allowed.” A breath. “So stay.”
The ghost’s voice came again, distant as the world around Alessia seemed to slow.
“Y’made it further’n any of us thought ya would, Skia,” his voice was gentle. Proud. “Y’got outta Ellun for good—Y’got Stella away. Y’found kings who’d take y’both in—who’d burn the world for ya. Ya did good.” The shade laughed. “Don’t gimme that look, I ain’t lyin’. Y’ain’t done yet. Listen t’yer king. He’s bein’ real dramatic about it, but he’s gotta point—Y’got stories t’tell that little wildling of yers. So live t’tell ‘em. And when it’s actually yer time? I’ll be waitin’ t’hear ‘em. Promise.”
“I know you’re scared,” Odrian said softly, his voice overlapping with the ghost’s as his fingers tightened gently around hers. “You’re not going to die, Alessia…not tonight. Not ever if I can help it.”
He squeezed her hand just a little tighter.
“Promise,” the word is a quiet vow against her flesh. “You—“
A sudden commotion outside interrupted his words, abruptly cutting off whatever else he was about to say. The tent flap was thrown open with urgency as Dionys burst in, Askarion following close behind with two of his apprentices.
“I got him!” Dionys panted, slightly out of breath from his sprint through camp. “Askarion’s here! And Patrian is on his way.”
The physician looked harried but focused as he moved toward Alessia immediately.
Stella’s small voice broke through—shaky and insistent as she crawled over to kneel beside Odrian.
“…Mama?” she asked softly as she peered up at him with wide eyes full of fear and confusion. “Is Mama gonna be okay?”
Odrian’s eyes flicked briefly toward the child before looking back down into Alessia’s own gaze—unspoken communication passing between them in that single glance.
“…She will,” he said firmly after the moment of hesitation. His voice was soft but held an underlying conviction to his words.
We can’t lose her. The thought echoed through his mind, unbidden and unwelcome yet somehow undeniable.
“Starlight,” Alessia said softly, as she reached out to cup Stella’s cheek, stopping when she realized her hand was covered in blood.
Stella didn’t even flinch. She just leaned into Alessia’s touch with a tiny, hiccuping sob.
“Y-You gotta promise,” she whispered, gripping Alessia’s wrist with fierce, trembling fingers. “Like in the story. The—the sky family always waits—” her tiny voice cracked. “So promise.”
Dionys knelt beside Stella, his large hand settling on her tiny shoulder—steadying her without restraining. His other arm braced behind Alessia’s head, easing her into a better angle for Askarion to work. His voice, when it came, was rough but calm.
“She will keep her promise, firefly. But right now we need you to be very brave for her. Can you do that?”
“Still gotta bunch’ve stories t’tell ya, ‘member?” Alessia said as clearly, as strongly as she could, smiling through her pain. Knowing it probably looked more gruesome than comforting, with the blood in her mouth. “Not goin’ anywhere, Starlight. Yer stuck with me.”
Stella hiccuped—once, twice—before planting her tiny hands on either side of Alessia’s face with startling gentleness.
“Nose-touch promise,” she whispered with all the solemnity a five-year-old could muster as she pressed their foreheads together so hard it almost hurt. “No take-backs.”
She doesn’t let go. Not even when Askarion nudges her aside to begin working. Or when the first pained gasp escaped Alessia’s lips as the physician probed the wound.
Some oaths were stronger than fear.
“No take-backs,” Alessia echoed softly, her voice barely more than a whisper.
Then, with every ounce of strength she had left, she lifted her hand again—this time careful to use the back of it—to wipe away Stella’s tears. The gesture is slow and deliberate, a mother’s touch despite the blood, despite the pain.
“Love you more’n the stars love the sky, Stell,” she murmured.
Her eyelids were so heavy, too heavy. But she held onto consciousness, even if just for a single moment longer, for Stella.
Live, Odrian had said. Live just to spite me.
And she wasn’t going to let him down. Not now. Not after everything.
Stella wiped at her eyes with one tiny fist, smearing blood and tears while still clutching Alessia’s hand in the other.
She looked up at Askarion, clearly scared but trusting that he would help.
“P-please fix her,” the child whispered, her words broken.
“How bad is it?” Dionys asked quietly, eyes flicking between Alessia’s pale face and the physician’s grim expression.
Askarion exhales sharply through his nose, eyes narrowing as he continues his examination for several agonizing moments.
“Bad,” he said finally, voice grim yet clinical. “…But not necessarily fatal. Her lung’s nicked,” Askarion muttered, packing the wound with honey-soaked linen. “But not collapsed. She’ll be cursing us all by morning,” he muttered, already threading his needle.
Then softer, just for Stella, “Hold her hand tight, little one. She’ll need it.”
He turned to Odrian.
“We need more light.”
Odrian nodded immediately, shifting so he could place Stella down beside Dionys before standing to gather the nearby lamps—lighting them quickly with hands shaking from adrenaline.
“Here,” he murmured as he returned to crouch beside Askarion, handing the lit lantern to one of the apprentices.
The physician nodded curtly before returning his attention back to the wound—probing carefully around the knife hilt to assess the damage beneath the skin.
Odrian took Alessia’s hand again, his thumb rubbing slow circles over her knuckles, his voice barely above a whisper.
“Don’t you dare leave us,” he murmured, too low for anyone else to hear. “Not when you just agreed to that date.”
Askarion’s fingers ghosted lightly over the knife hilt—hesitating short of pulling it out to meet Alessia’s gaze.
“I need to remove this…and it will hurt like Hades itself.” The warning is blunt, but not unkind. “Do you understand.”
“Izzit bad if I pass out?” Alessia slurred in response.
“Yes,” Askarion’s answer was immediate and firm. “You need to stay awake.”
Odrian moved closer instinctively—hands hovering near Alessia’s shoulders as if physically willing her to stay conscious.
“Focus on me,” he urged softly, shifting so his face filled her wavering vision. “Count my freckles, argue with me about terrible jokes, whatever you need—just stay.”
Dionys turned Stella’s face gently against his shoulder—shielding her from the worst of what would come next.
Alessia looked up at Odrian, her thoughts swimming in a haze of pain and shock.
Stay awake.
She couldn’t sleep if she was talking …
“M’mom used t’sing a lull’by,” she slurred, voice soft. Uncertain if she was even understandable. “By the time I wanted t’use it, I forgot th’ words. I asked everyone I could if they recognized it.” She sighed, “Must’ve been Aurean, cuz nobody did.” She chuckled, “Or they were all lyin’ assholes.”
It wasn’t the right time to learn the words, but when she made it through—because she had to survive—Stella would hear them someday, too.
Odrian’s grip tightened unconsciously on her shoulders—grounding and steadying as if trying to channel strength directly into her failing body.
“Stubborn woman…” There was warmth beneath the exasperation. “You really pick now to tell me this?”
The knife shifts slightly beneath Askarion’s careful fingers and Odrian winced sympathetically at Alessia’s resulting gasp of pain.
“Hafta stay ‘wake,” she murmured. “Can’t sleep if I’m talkin’. Seemed good a time as any.”
“Keep talking then,” Odrian said, as his thumbs brushed gentle reassurances over her collarbone, just shy of her wounds. “Tell me … Tell me what words you do remember.”
His voice was steady despite the increasingly frantic rhythm of his own heart.
Stay awake. Stay with me. Stay alive.
The silent pleas repeated like a mantra in his mind as he met her gaze—willing them into truth through sheer stubborn resolve.
“Don’ remember th’ words,” Alessia said. “But the tune …”
She hummed a tune, trailing off partway through as she fought to stay conscious.
“Think the words were somethin’ ‘bout the waves an’ usin’ the stars as guides.” She chuckled weakly. “Waves’n’stars are kind’ve a runnin’ theme.”
The ring, the comb, Little Star…They were two constants in Alessia’s life. The predictable rhythm of the tide and the cold cycle of the stars wheeling above.
She realized how odd it was to find comfort in the waves, when she was terrified of the water.
Odrian’s fingers tightened imperceptibly at the mention of waves and guiding skies—a seafarer’s lullaby, then.
“Easy now,” he murmured as her humming faltered. “Just keep breathing. I’ll sing the rest for you.”
And in a voice that was rough but steady he wove her half-forgotten melody into something whole again.
“Sleep now little sailor,
The tide will bear you home…”
Alessia blinked at him with wide-eyed wonder, like she couldn’t believe he could sing at all.
“…Your voice is nice,” she slurred. “N-Not like you need th’confidence boost.”
His breath caught halfway through the next verse—part exasperation, part stunned relief that she was still her, even now. The corners of his mouth twitched upward despite the blood soaking both of their clothes.
“Insufferable woman,” he muttered—fondness bleeding through the insult as his fingers carefully skimmed along her jawline, checking for any signs of fading consciousness.
“You’ll have to live just to spite me further.”
Outside the tent, unseen by them, Patrian arrived at a run—still fastening on his healer’s belt as he skidded to a stop at the entrance. He paused—for half a heartbeat—to take in the scene. Then he was at Askarion’s side, pressing fresh bandages into the physician’s hands without needing to be asked.
The older healer muttered his thanks, moving with renewed focus.
“Hold her steady,” he instructed Odrian grimly as his fingers wrapped firmly around the knife hilt. “…This will be the worst part.”
His warning hangs heavy in the air for a single, stretched moment…Then with a sharp, practiced motion, he withdrew the blade.
The sound it made was wet and terrible.
Odrian’s hands braced Alessia’s shoulders the instant before Askarion pulled—anchoring her through the agony as he continued to sing.
“…Silver stars will light your way,
No matter where you roam…”
The blood welled up fast, but Patrian was there—pressing thick linen to the wound with both hands, his own voice joining Odrian’s in startling harmony.
“So close your eyes, but don’t you fear,
The dawn will find you safe—“
The last word cracked as the bandages bloomed crimson beneath his fingers. He swallowed hard and pressed down firmly.
“—safe right here.” Odrian finished, eyes locked onto Alessia’s face as if daring her to slip away now.
His pulse hammered loud enough that he can feel it in his ears, but outwardly he remained a steady presence by her side—one hand moving up to brush sweat-slick hair back from her forehead.
“Almost done,” he lied smoothly—because what was one more deception if it kept her fighting.
The pain was bright, searing hot, more intense than Alessia could have ever imagined—worse than when she was stabbed, worse than the infection. For a moment she was certain that she was going to die right there, with Stella watching. Panic fizzled through her veins at the thought.
But then their voices. Odrian’s rough, steady cadence. Patrian’s unexpected harmony.
The song.
It was familiar.
It wasn’t the same one her mother sang, but it was close. Close enough that it snagged on something deep inside Alessia, something primal and aching and alive.
Her fingers twitched—seeking, weak—toward Stella, toward Odrian, toward anything she could grab onto to anchor herself there, with them.
“…S’not how the song goes.”
Her voice is thready, her grip weak, but she’s present. Still fighting. Still stubborn.
The ghost in the corner smiled at her. At the proof of her fighting, the proof of her living.
“Told ya,” the boy said. “Ain’t your time yet, Skia.”
Then he laughed, bright as the sun and flashed her a final grin of the familiar mischief in his dark eyes before he faded like morning mist.
Nothing more than a trick of the light, an illusion of exhaustion and pain and desperate, wild hope.
But for a single, fleeting moment, he was there.
Odrian’s laugh is abrupt—half incredulous, half relieved—as his free hand came up to cup her cheek. His thumb brushed away a streak of blood with surprising gentleness.
“You,” he murmured, voice rough, “are going to be the death of me with that mouth of yours.”
But his expression—softening at the edges despite itself—told an entirely different story.
You’re staying. You’re fighting. Thank the gods.
Still pressing down hard on the wound Patrian snorted, eyes flicking up just long enough to give Odrian a dry look.
“Sounds like she’s in perfect hands,” he deadpanned.
Askarion nodded, picking up the threaded needle with steady hands. “Hold her still,” he instructed. “This part requires precision.”
Alessia exhaled harshly through her nose at the sight of the needle.
“Oh good, more pain,” she managed to choke out. “Mus’ be m’nameday.”
Stella whimpered and the sound forced Alessia still. She couldn’t bear the thought of letting Stella see her panicking and thrashing. So she grit her teeth and braced.
Askarion’s needle flashed silver in the lamplight before sinking into flesh with ruthless precision. He didn’t flinch at Alessia’s gasp, didn’t hesitate when her fingers crushed Odrian’s. His voice, when he spoke, was flat—like he was commenting on the weather and not sewing a woman back together.
“Head wound’s shallow. More blood than damage. This—” he pulls the suture tight. “This is the one that nearly killed her.”
Patrian kept pressure steady on the wound below Askarion’s working hands—but his gaze lingered on her face as he assessed her.
Mother. Thief. Survivor.
“Don’t suppose,” he mused lightly, “You’ve considered not getting stabbed?” His fingers pressed harder when she gasped, but his voice doesn’t waver. “It’s quite the revolutionary concept.”
There was something wary in his eyes when they flicked toward Odrian’s protective stance. Something calculating.
He needed to learn this woman’s name.
Alessia squeezed Odrian’s hand tighter—although she was so weak her grip was barely there. She breathed through the pain, her teeth gritted. Sweat beaded at her temple, her jaw clenched, but she stayed as still as she could.
She had tolerated worse, endured worse.
Survived worse.
Patrian’s dry comment startled a breathless, pained laugh ou of her.
“S’not like I went lookin’ for trouble,” she rasped. “I jus’ got a talent for it findin’ me.”
Odrian squeezed her hand right back—digging his thumb into the dip of her pal in silent solidarity as Askarion’s needle bit again. His other hand remained cupped around her cheek, anchoring.
“Trouble,” he muttered, dry as sun-bleached bone. “Clearly.” His eyes flicked to Patrian for the barest second, “She’s got a knack for being exactly where she shouldn’t.”
His tone was light, teasing, but beneath it was an unspoken warning—She’s mine to protect.
Patrian didn’t react beyond a faint quirk of his brow, but his next press against her wound was noticeably gentler.
Askarion tied off a mother stitch—quick, efficient—before reaching for a linen pad soaked in honey and herbs. “Four more,” he said to no one in particular as he packed the poultice against the wound. “Then we’ll address the head.”
His glare at Alessia was impressively flat for a man currently elbow-deep in her blood. “Try not to move this time.”
Stella buried her face deeper into Dionys’ shoulder before sniffling—loudly—and mumbling, “Mama never stays still.”
The indignation in her tiny voice is palpable.
“She says it’s ‘an occ’pational haz’rd.” The phrase was clearly parroted, but the gravitas it was delivered with was notable.
“ ‘Occupational hazard’s’ right, Starbeam,” Alessia said with a grin at Stella’s comment. Her slurring worsened as she became more and more exhausted. “Someone tell me when he’s done so I can start breathin’ again.
She tried to keep her focus on Odrian, on Stella, on anything but the needle. But her vision blurred at the edges, darkening with every stitch as her grip on Odrian’s hand slackened.
“Tell me…tell me about th’stars,” she mumbled. “Keep talkin’.”
Patrian spared a glance at Odrian, “First time meeting your newest stray and she’s already giving orders while bleeding out. Bold choice.”
His tone was dry but his hands remained steady—the hands of a man who had stitched comrades back together on battlefields far worse than this.
Odrian’s fingers twitched reflexively at the world stray—like it was a blade grazing too close to skin. But his voice is deceptively light.
“You have no idea,” he said. He waited a beat before deliberately—eyes locked on Alessia’s as if daring her to look away—“The North Star is fixed. Sailors use it to navigate when everything else is storm and chaos.”
His thumb traced her knuckles—once, twice—as Askarion’s needle flashed again.
“Steadiest light in the sky,” he murmured. “Just like you.”
A beat, just long enough for the words to land, then Patrian’s lips quirked, ever so slightly, as he ripped a fresh bandage with his teeth. “And here I thought Dionys was the only one you waxed poetic about.”
The jab was precise. The glance he flicked toward Alessia—still assessing, amused—even more so.
Dionys snorted from his post near the tent flap, “You’re jealous.”
He says it like it’s a joke, but his smirk is just a little too sharp.
Odrian doesn’t quite throw something at them, but his glare could melt bronze.
“Focus on the patient, you insufferable—”
He cuts himself off as Askarion ties off the last stitch with a sharp tug before immediately moving to assess the head wound. His fingers probe gently—assessing the damage, the swelling—before nodding to his assistants. “Boil me some catgut. And fetch the willow bark.”
Patrian peeled back the sodden bandages to inspect their work. “Good, clean job,” he muttered to Askarion. Then to Alessia—“You’ve got the pain tolerance of a warhorse.” He paused, then smirked. “And about as much sense.”
“Got plen’y’ve sense,” Alessia argued. “Jus’ got bad ideas about where t’store knives.”
Patrian’s fingers checked her pulse—lingering just a second longer than strictly necessary—before nodding to himself. “Strong, stubborn.” He glanced at Odrian, “Familiar.”
There was something knowing in his eyes, something that said he saw exactly what was unfolding and he was absolutely going to torment Odrian about it later.
Askarion snorted, focusing on Alessia’s head wound. “The blade glanced off,” he murmured. “Lucky. Another inch deeper and we’d be having a very different conversation.”
His fingers worked quickly, cleaning the gash with practiced efficiency before threading a smaller needle for the finer work
“This won’t need as many stitches,” he assured—although his tone suggested it wouldn’t be pleasant either. “But you’ll have a scar to match your charm.”
“Jus’ ‘nother one for the collection,” Alessia said offhanded. Most of her scars weren’t visible with her peplos on, but she was certain they had noticed some on her arms by this point.
Askarion huffed something between a sigh and a laugh, but he didn’t deny it.
Odrian exhaled sharply as well, something between exasperation and helpless admiration, as his fingers squeezed hers again. “Do you ever stop talking?”
But his thumb brushed her wrist—just once—checking her pulse. Still there. Still fighting.
Still his.
“Not when I’m s’posed to stay awake,” Alessia said.
Patrian raised an eyebrow, “This is what you’ve brought into our camp? A woman who backtalks healers mid-suture?”
He sounded appalled. He was also very clearly fascinated.
“She’s just getting started,” Odrian said with the kind of grin that preceded spectacularly bad ideas. His hand stays locked with hers, fingers tangled tight, even as the needle bit into her flesh again. “Wait ’til you hear her opinion on Aurean battle formations.”
“Or,” Dionys interjects from the corner, suddenly very invested in the ceiling, “her thoughts on honey cake theft.”
Stella, still half-hidden in Dionys’ arms, nods solemnly. “All the cakes,” she whispered, clearly feeling that this was the gravest of betrayals.
Patrian looked between them all for a long moment before snorting. “You are all ridiculous, and I’m the only sane one here.” He paused before adding, “Which is deeply concerning.”
Odrian opened his mouth, undoubtedly to argue, but was cut off by Askarion tying off the final stitch with a sharp tug and a clear, “Done.”
He sat back on his heels, wiping his bloodied hands on a clean rag. His glare was completely unimpressed. “If you must bicker like children, at least do it after my patient isn’t actively bleeding out.”
A beat, sterner – to Alessia. “No moving. No talking. Sleep. If you tear these stitches, I’m not redoing them.”
“Don’t do anythin’ but sleep,” Alessia said with a nod. “I can manage that.” She hesitated a moment before adding, “Prob’ly.”
Suddenly Stella peeled away from Dionys to scoot closer to Alessia, crawling right up to her face with the fearless determination of a child who decided that now is the time for serious negotiations.
“Mama,” she whispered, her tiny hands framing Alessia’s cheeks. “No more letting knives find you, okay?” Her lower lip wobbled, just once, before she added, “Or I’ll tell Dolos.”
Odrian stiffened at the name, but he didn’t say anything.
Alessia stiffened as well. She never spoke about Dolos, the wound too ragged, the scar too sensitive.
She wondered if she had mentioned him during a nightmare.
“Well,” she said as calmly as she could. “We wouldn’t wan’ that.”
Odrian exhaled sharply through his nose as he leaned in closer—his forehead nearly brushing Alessia’s temple.
“Tell me more about that song,” he murmurs, voice pitched low, just for her. Distraction, grounding, urgency, all woven into the words. “Where did your mother learn it? Was she from the islands?”
“Only ever knew she was from Aurel,” Alessia slurred as she started to drift off. “Never talked ‘bout where. Got a ring she gave me—silver, two bands intertwined like waves. She always said it’d ‘guide me home’. Comb, too—spine has waves carved in it. Wal-” She frowned, cutting herself off before continuing. “An asshole broke it. Still have it, though.”
Odrian’s breath caught at the detail—two bands like waves—too precise to be a coincidence. But before he can press further a boot scuffs outside the tent flap.
Then, crisp and cold as the winter surf, “What in Hades’ name is going on here?”
The voice sliced through the tension like a blade.
Every muscle in Odrian’s body locked up—his grip on Alessia’s hand tightening reflexively.
He doesn’t need to turn to know who stands behind him. The oppressive weight of command in those words could only belong to one man.
Later, Dionys returned to the tent to find that Alessia had moved just enough to grab Queen Dottie and her sewing kit from her satchel.
He paused just inside the entrance, taking in the scene: Alessia’s needle flashing, the doll’s limbs neatly pinned, thread reinforcing worn joints. He exhaled through his nose.
“Most wounded soldiers rest when ordered,” he said dryly.
Alessia hummed, “Good thing I’m not a soldier, then.” She looked up to meet his eyes. “But, this is resting, for me. I couldn’t sleep and if I don’t do something with my hands I’ll go crazy. Figured sewing wouldn’t pull at the injury too much … as long as I don’t move my left hand.”
Dionys leaned against the central tent post, arms crossed.
“Hmph. So you can sit still—just not quietly,” he said. His gaze flicked to the half-mended doll—its faded yarn hair, the careful stitches restoring its limbs. “That’s fine craftsmanship. Your design?”
He doesn’t comment on the way her hands rarely shake, the precision of each movement belying years of practice.
He also doesn’t comment on the scars on her knuckles, or the pale ring of old burns around her wrist.
“Yeah,” Alessia said with a nod. “Took me nearly two years to make her, started once I realized I was pregnant. Had to scrounge together scraps of ruined tunics.”
Dionys cocked his head curiously.
“Why fabric?” he asked abruptly—oddly intense for the subject of conversation. “With your skill, wood or clay would last longer.”
The question isn’t really about the doll. Any soldier worth his salt would recognize ingenuity. Would understand why a woman surrounded by enemies might choose materials that didn’t clatter, or that could be hidden quickly.
That could be torn apart and remade if discovered.
He didn’t say any of that.
Alessia snorted. “I’m a seamstress, not a carver or a sculptor. All of them use the hands, but the skills are vastly different. Also, she sleeps with it—and she sleeps with me. I’d rather not get smacked with a clay doll when she tosses and turns in the middle of the night.”
She’d already suffered enough of that with the rocks.
“And fabric was easier to get. He’s a soldier. There were always tunics that were going to be torn up for rags, or rags that were going to be burned. I didn’t have a steady source of clay or wood like I did fabric.” She looked at the doll in her hands. “The fact that I could repair her after one of his rages was a bonus.”
Dionys nodded—once, sharp—like she had just handed him the final piece of a puzzle.
“Practical.” A beat, then with something like approval,” You’d have made a fine Kerian soldier.”
The unspoken ‘You still could’ hung in the air between them, but he didn’t press. Instead he jerked his chin at the doll. “She got a name?”
“Queen Dottie,” Alessia said as she puppeted the doll to give a small bow.
Dionys’ lips twitched, just slightly. “Of course it’s a queen.” He looked at the doll critically. “… Her hair’s uneven.”
“I haven’t been able to replace the hair in a while,” Alessia admitted, “Stella … took a knife to it when she was four. She thought it would grow back.”
The corner of his mouth twitched before settling back into its usual stern line. He didn’t ask why a child that young would have access to a knife unsupervised
“Obviously it grows back,” he muttered, as if this was basic logic. “She just didn’t use the right knife. Wooden handles stunt the follicles.”
He paused and then jerked his chin at the doll. “Let me see.”
Alessia blinked, but held the doll out to him, curious.
Dionys took the doll with surprising gentleness, turning her in his hands with a healer’s precision, inspecting every seam. His eyebrows climbed incrementally higher the longer he looked.
“Your sutures are better than half the healers in the infirmary.” The admission drags out of him like pulling teeth. He gestured vaguely at the doll’s reinforced joints. “Who taught you?”
“My mother,” Alessia said. “She was a seamstress.”
Dionys’ hands pause mid-inspection. For once his face is utterly unguarded—just raw surprise. “A seamstress,” he repeated, flatly disbelieving. “That’s how you sewed up your own stab wound? With embroidery lessons?”
There was something almost offended in his tone—as if her mother’s perfectly respectable profession was a personal inconvenience.
“I used what I had,” Alessia said. “It wasn’t too different … aside from being more painful and harder to see what I was doing.”
Dionys exhaled sharply through his nose—half exasperation half incredulity—before tugging a small wooden case from his belt. Inside were proper surgical needles, waxed thread, and a vial of antiseptic.
“Next time,” he muttered as he slid the kit across to her, “use this. And ask for help.” He paused before begrudgingly adding, “Your mother would’ve made a decent field surgeon.”
The highest of praise.
Alessia blinked at the case before taking it with a nod.
“Thank you.”
Then she sighed. “I got stabbed trying to ask for help. Kinda put me off the idea.”
The sharp click of the needle case as it shipped shut was deafening in the sudden quiet. Diony didn’t look at Alessia when he spoke—he just started methodically stitching at Queen Dottie’s hairline.
“You asked the wrong people.”
Simple. Final. As if the distinction between those men ad his camp was all that needed to be said.
Then—in a voice that was deliberately flat—“And next time you do get stabbed? Come to me first. Not just because I’ll gut whichever idiot did it. But also because I’m better at this than you.”
He said it like an insult. It wasn’t one.
Alessia snorted, “I was hoping to not get stabbed again.”
“Hoping doesn’t stop blades,” he said dryly, not looking up from his meticulous stitching. “Neither does complaining about it afterward.”
He tied the thread off with a surgeon’s precision and tossed the doll back onto Alessia’s lap, her now suspiciously even.
“There. Now she’s battle-ready.” A breath and then, pointedly, “Unlike some people in this tent.”
“Ha.” Alessia said as she looked at the doll. “You’re going to have to teach me how you did that.”
Dionys scoffed—already turning back to his supplies—but paused when he realized she was serious. For a long moment he just stared at her, brow furrowed.
“…You want to learn.”
Disbelief. Then, grudgingly, “Fine. When your stitches heal. And if you promise not to—” he gestured vaguely at her shoulder. “Reenact your foolishness.”
“I promise to not stitch my own wounds again,” Alessia said solemnly.
Dionys snorted and nudged the antiseptic vial closer to her. “Liar.”
There’s no real heat in it—just the rough affection of a man who knew she’d break the vow the second necessity demanded it.
“Try not to die before I can teach you,” he said. Then, quieter, almost to himself he added, “Gods know I need one competent assistant in this camp.”
It’s the closest he would get to saying ‘I’d miss you.’
“I’ll do my best to stay alive until you can teach me,” Alessia said. “And then I’ll do my best to stay alive after, too.”
Dionys huffed—half exasperation, half reluctant amusement—but when he met her eyes his expression was oddly serious.
“Good.” Short, simple. As if her survival wasn’t up for debate. “I don’t waste my time on dead students.”
He crossed the tent to his supplies, before tossing a small, cloth-wrapped bundle onto her bedroll—soft linen, fresh needles, good thread—all of it finer than anything she had scavenged before. “For her majesty’s future repairs.”
Summoned by her own uncannily impeccable timing, Stella burst into the tent, her arms laden with rocks.
“Look!” she declared, shoving one toward Dionys with all the gravitas of a general presenting battle plans. “*This* one’s called Captain Crunchbutt! He crunches things, with his butt.”
Alessia snorted.
“And how much of a pebble army have you amassed so far, Starlight? General Crunch, Captain Crunchbutt … do you have any lieutenants?”
Stella gasped, delighted, and immediately began digging through her rock pile with fervor.
“LieutenantPebblepants!” she announced as she produced a smooth stone with a streak of quartz that vaguely resembled trousers. “An’—and!—there’s SergeantSparklebelly—” a flecked granite pebble “—an’ Private Oopsie!” a particularly round river rock, suspiciously damp. “But only Captain Crunchbutt gets to come to the war meeting. ‘Cause he’s the smartest.”
Dionys’ eye twitched once as he stared down at ‘Captain Crunchbutt.’
“… Of course he is … Do I want to know how you determined that?”
“He tastes the smartest.”
Alessia sighed, “Stell, you need to stop licking rocks. You’re going to get sick.”
Stella gasped in pure betrayal before spinning to face Dionys with all the righteous fury of a five year old.
“YOU TOLD!” she accused, her tiny finger jabbing at him.
“No, he didn’t,” Alessia corrected gently. “You did.” The smile she gave her daughter was wry, “How else would you know that Captain Crunchbutt ‘tastes the smartest’?” She rolled her eyes, fond and exasperated. “And new rule: Any licked rocks don’t go in my satchel. All licked rocks are evicted. They can go in yours.”
No need to mention that Stella didn’t have a satchel.
Stella’s jaw dropped as she realized she had been trapped by her own tiny criminal logic. For a moment she gaped like a fish, utterly betrayed at the injustice of it all.
“Mama’s cheating,” she stage-whispered to Dionys, as if Alessia wasn’t right there. “She taught me all about loopholes. Now she’s using them against me.”
A pause as her eyes narrowed in sudden, terrifying calculation.
“… Guess I need a bigger loophole.”
“Go ask Odrian if you need help with that one,” Alessia said with a grin. She gestured vaguely to the tent entrance with her needle.
Damaging their lesson in loopholes was inevitable. At least she had the decency to do so in a way that also roped Odrian into the chaos.
But first, Stella took the time to shove Captain Crunchbutt into Dionys’ belt pouch without asking—loophole and petty revenge all in one tiny, rock-wielding package—before she scampered off to find Odrian.
“I’m going to regret that, aren’t I?” Alessia mused. She looked at Dionys, “And you’ve been promoted to rock general. Congratulations.”
Dionys stared down at his now occupied pouch as if deciding whether or not to chuck the entire thing into the river. After a long, long moment, he exhaled through his nose—the sigh of a man who has thoroughly lost control of his life.
“…I’ve fought in three sieges,” he muttered, resigning himself to his pebbly fate. “How is this the battle I’m losing?”
“That was your first mistake,” Alessia said. “You thought you were in a siege. Really, you’ve been fighting a war of attrition.” She glanced down at her hands—at the doll in her lap—and hesitated just a moment before adding, “…Kids are ruthless.”
Dionys barked a laugh—sharp and sudden.
“No shit,” he said. Quieter he added, “But they’re honest about it. Can’t say the same for kings.”
His gaze flicked to her hands—to the careful, deliberate mending—and for a heartbeat something in his expression softens.
“You’re good at this,” he says abruptly. “Not just the sewing. The mothering.” He paused. “She’s lucky to have you.”
Alessia looked up sharply—startled. Her first instinct was to deflect, to dismiss—but then Stella’s laughter rings out from somewhere beyond the tent, bright and unburdened, and the words stuck in her throat.
She thought of tiny hands pressing a damp, half-chewed crust of bread into hers when rations ran thin. A child’s voice insisting “Mama first” as her own stomach growled. A little girl who learned too fast how to be quiet, how to hide, how to endure—and yet still giggled when she stole extra honey cakes.
Still trusted enough to curl into Alessia’s arms every night.
“I’m lucky to have her,” she said. Soft, raw, and unshakable.
Dionys studied her—really studied her—before dipping his chin in a slow, respectful nod. No pity, no platitudes. Just a quiet acknowledgement of someone who understood exactly what survival cost.
He thought of Odrian’s son, left behind in Othara—of letters that took too long to arrive, a boy growing up without his father. How easy it was to forget laughter in the midst of war.
“Keep her close,” he said—gruff but not unkind. Then, with a pointed glance at Captain Crunchbutt’s smug, quartz-speckled face peeking from his belt, “And keep her damn rocks out of my boots.”
“I will,” Alessia said with a smile. She paused for a moment before asking, “Do I remember correctly that she called me a dumbass?”
Dionys—mid-stride—stopped dead. His shoulders tensed and with the slow, deliberate gravitas of a man delivering a eulogy said, “…Yes.”
Then a rare, full grin split his face—sharp and unrepentant. “She elaborated.” He folded his arms, adopting Stella’s tiny, imperious tone, “ ‘Mama is a dumbass who doesn’t eat her bread crusts or listen to kings!’” He shrugged, deadpan. “She’s not wrong.”
There was a flicker of pride in his eyes at Stella’s fierceness.
Alessia scrubbed her face with a hand—not just to keep a straight face.
“Yeah, I walked into that one.” She sighed, long suffering and fond. “She inherited that particular trait from her mother, poor thing.” She stilled as a realization hit her.
“Please tell me Odrian didn’t hear that.”
Dionys let out a bark of laughter—short, sharp, entirely too knowing. “Oh, he heard,” he said with a pointed look toward the tent flap—where he could hear the faintest crunching of pebbles under boots, suggesting someone lurking just out of sight. “He definitely heard.”
Then, quieter, with a smirk that bordered on triumphant, “And in my opinion? That particular trait is why you’re both still alive.”
No platitudes, just the blunt, battle-hardened truth: Stubbornness wins wars.
Alessia snorted, “I’m sure he’ll tell me exactly what he thought about it, too.” She held up the in-progress doll, examining Dionys’ mending. “Probably at length. He seems the type.”
Dionys—who had endured years of Odrian’s theatrics—actually snorted. “Oh, he’ll monologue.” He took a breath and mimicked Odrian’s dramatic cadence to perfection, “ ‘The sheer disrespect of being called out by a child—a rock eating child—in my own camp!’ ”
A beat before he continued, dry as salt-cured leather, “Five honey cakes says he commissions a bard to immortalize the insult.”
The tent flap whipped open—only for Odrian to freeze mid-step, ears reddening at being caught eavesdropping. For a single, glorious moment, he gaped at them—utterly betrayed.
“EXCUSE ME?!”
Alessia cracked up into giggles, looking almost young—not the battle-hardened thief with scars older than her daughter, but a young woman still capable of delight and mischief.
“Oh, hello, your Majesty!” she called out, layering her voice in faux innocence. “We were just discussing dolls and very important military logistics. Nothing treasonous. Nothing at all.”
She grinned at Dionys, an unspoken look what you dragged us into— before she turned back to her sewing, her shoulders still shaking with barely-suppressed laughter.
─ ·⋆˚☆˖°· ─
Later, when the campfire burned low and the others were asleep, Odrian sprawled beside Dionys—close enough that their shoulders brush—staring up at the stars. His voice was barely audible over the rustling leaves.
“Did you see her face?”
He didn’t specify which moment he meant—Alessia’s blush, the way she fought not to smile after he teased her, her unguarded laughter when Stella called him grumpy. It didn’t matter, he catalogued them all.
Dionys snorted softly—amused and fond in equal measure.
“Oh yes,” he said, his reply equally quiet as his finger traced idle circles on Odrian’s palm. “I saw.”
His eyes are closed but there’s no mistaking the humor in his voice.
“I think the little fox is starting to warm up to us.”
Odrian huffed—a sound caught somewhere between a sigh and an exasperated laugh.
“About damn time,” he grumbled, but there was no real bite behind it. If anything he leans just a little closer.
Dionys’ finger paused in its idle tracing for the barest moment before continuing on with renewed purpose.
“I still don’t understand why she was so desperate to approach the camp alone,” Odrian murmured, frowning. His eyes flick toward their tent, where Alessia and Stella slept. He knows he won’t see anything in the darkness, but he can’t help looking.
“Stella wasn’t even with her,” he said. He paused—a beat of quiet thought before he continued, “She wouldn’t have gone for herself, not unless … ”
His voice trailed off, as cold realization dawned behind his eyes.
A sharp intake of breath as Dionys went utterly still, his fingers freezing where they’d been tracing on Odrian’s palm.
“Unless she was already sick,” he finishes, voice rough. “Unless Alessia knew she wouldn’t last without medicine.”
The pieces click together with terrifying clarity. Stella’s fever, the stolen herbs, the way Alessia hadn’t flinched from Odrian’s blade.
His hand tightens around Odrian’s—not painfully, but firm. An anchor. A promise.
“That child is alive because her mother walked into a war camp full of men who hate her people—and let them stab her.”
A moment passes as the fire crackles quietly beside them before Dionys continues, “…What did you say to her when she woke up? You were in there a while.”
Odrian was quiet for several long moments. When he finally spoke again his voice was distant and raw.
“She sewed herself up with thread. Normal sewing thread.”
Dionys sat bolt upright, his eyes wide open in shock. “What?! Why would she-”
Odrian cut him off, his hands shaking where they dug into the sand beneath them.
“I demanded she tell me how she ended up with a Tharon dagger in her chest. She told me ‘It wasn’t Tharon.’” The words come out as a pained whisper.
Dionys’ breath hissed between his teeth—sharp and furious—as the full weight of the revelation sank in.
“Aurean steel,” he said. The words ground out like shards of glass.
It wasn’t a question.
How many times had he told his men to strike first? How many campfires had echoed with laughter about cutting down Tharon spies? How many had they—
He exhaled, long and slow, and pressed his forehead to Odrian’s shoulder.
“…She survived us, too.” He paused before continuing, quieter, “Fuck.”
The realization cut deeper than any blade.
Odrian’s breath left him in a shuddering exhale.
“Lion shield for one of the attackers,” he said with a voice as flat as death. “Rooster for the other.”
Dionys released a slow, controlled breath through his nose—the sound of a man barely holding back rage. His fingers flexed where they were still pressed to Odrian’s palm.
“Nomaros’ arrogance,” he murmured. “Lauthen’s cowardice.” Each word was a verdict. “Their men follow their lead.”
His thumb stroked once over Odrian’s knuckles—no longer absently, but like he needed the contact to stay grounded.
Odrian nodded grimly. “They saw a Tharon woman—alone and unarmed—and assumed she was a spy.” He looked over to the tent where Alessia slept. “She made it out alive, but only barely.”
“She shouldn’t have had to make it out at all,” Dionys growls, the tendons in his neck standing out like cables. His fingers twitched toward the spear lying beside him before he forced himself to still. “She came begging for help for a child.”
The hypocrisy of it burned like poison. The Aureans called themselves civilized—called Tharos barbaric—but it was their side that sent a woman home bleeding for the crime of pleading for her daughter’s life.
Odrian exhales sharply, raking a hand through his hair. “And we would have never known. She would have died in that shack and Stella—” his voice cracks. “Because our men—our allies—”
He can’t even finish the sentence. The realization settles like a weight in his chest:
If Alessia hadn’t stolen from them to survive, he never would have found her. He never would have known. That haunted him more than anything.
He turned his face toward the stars, jaw clenched so tight it creaked. “Gods, Dio. What kind of king doesn’t even notice when his army turns into butchers?”
Dionys catches Odrian’s wrist—not restraining, but grounding. His grip was firm, his voice quiet and intense.
“You didn’t give the order,” he said, each word deliberate. “You didn’t drive the blade in. And you sure as Hades didn’t leave her to rot.” He shook Odrian’s arm slightly, forcing the other man’s gaze back. “And now you know. And that? That makes you responsible for what happens next.”
A pause, then he continued, softer.
“Tomorrow,” he murmured, low enough that the fire would mask it from any listening ears. “We’ll talk to Eranor. He’ll know which men were stationed where. And then—” Another pause as his thumb brushed over Odrian’s pulse point. “—we’ll see which of those bastards accidentally trips onto our spears during the next skirmish.”
There’s no mistaking the promise in the words.
Odrian exhales before nodding once, sharp. His fingers curled around Dionys’ wrist, matching pressure for pressure.
“Good,” is all he says, but the word carried centuries of Otharan vengeance with it.
The quieter, almost lost beneath the crackle of the fire, “I’m keeping them.”
Chapter Notes: I’m doing two writing challenges this year – Novel November by ProWritingAid and Royal Road’s Writathon. NovNov is basically a renamed NaNoWriMo – 50,000 words in 30 days (done in November). The Writathon is a similar idea, 55,555 words in 35 days (From November 1 to December 5). Because I have to post the chapters on Royal Road to meet the challenge, I’ve decided I’ll post them here, as well. Any chapter done for the challenge will have an asterisk in the title. That means it’s a rough draft and is subject to change in the future.
Tiny Raven 