Iris' pen stilled on the papyrus before her, her green gaze lifting very slowly to Gaios. For a single moment, her mind could not fathom the alert of danger that he had just lain at her feet. Nor the course of action. Nor what it would all mean if they were caught. The Lady of Aetaea was still under the impression that Queen Persephone's attendance of the Harvest Festival in the city had been a massive mistake and an even greater oversight. The fact that she and her cohorts had been discovered so easily and so quickly? That was bound to bring an increasing amount of danger to her little piece of the Kingdom.

Landlocked and at the very center of Athenia.

If Aetaea burned, as Iris supsected it would if Persephone's choices truly backfired on them, the entire Kingdom would know. The entire Kingdom would quickly find awareness in the fact that the forests of Athenia had chosen a side. One of the oldest and most loyal families to both Antonis and the Xanthos had chosen a side. And they would keep it.

In doing so, Iris had been in the arduous process of ensuring the safety and protection of those that she held closest to her own heart. Archontiko Demetra had been stripped of most of its tenants, with money pressed into weeping palms, and the wistful, saddened goodbyes spoken into ears and against cheeks. Lady Hanna, Lady Elpis, Lady Leda, and Lady Zoe had been removed from Aetaea. Sent into hiding to a location of Gaios' choosing. Iris had instructed him firmly that he was not to tell her of their location. He had ensured her that when all of the danger had blown over, they were in a location where information would travel quickly. Pleased with this, Iris had then began preparing her step-daughter for travel.

Taking all choice from Aimias in this decision, Iris had sent Phillipa and her own lady in waiting, Acantha, to Aimias' family. They had left that morning, early before the sun had fully risen. There were things that Iris would yield upon, but protecting her family was not one of them. The fewer people in the manor, the better. Now, the home had been stripped to the bare minimum of servants, none of Iris's family, and Aimias' young daughter safe from whatever trouble their choices were likely to bring them. That meant that Iris had dressed herself that morning, picking something modest but still to her status, instructing her husband to help her. Having done her own hair and the only slight bit of makeup she wore, she had tucked into some of her barony work with the hope of distracting herself.

With the hope of planning at least three steps ahead lest the worst were to happen.

But she hadn't planned for this. She hadn't planned for Elysia and Cicero and they so rarely attended on Aetaea that Iris was sure that one of them had an agenda. What had happened to her in recent weeks? She couldn't even trust her own flesh and blood? The people who had never steered her wrong? Iris was very aware that the hunt was on for the queen. She had not been blind to the rumors and the news that had come out of Athenia after Persephone had been discovered. It was only a matter of time before someone thought to tick them off the list of possible locations the queen could be hiding.

For the smallest moment, Iris truly wished that it wasn't the case. Then her mind twisted back to her duty and the vows she had made to the woman as both friend and loyalist. Both of her hands pressed to the top of her desk, "Fetch me my horse," she said calmly, walking beside Gaios only far enough for him to open the office door for her. "I'll try and head her off and direct her toward the city," she muttered under her breath. There was n odoubt in her mind that this would likely fail, but she couldn't do anything but try.

Within minutes, Iris was pulling herself up onto her mare, holding the reins with knuckles that had turned white with such a sharp grip. "Alert my husband to my dealings. Perhaps he can keep our guests out of sight, out of mind until I can get her to leave." And then she nudged her horse off, making the attempt to meet the carriage on the path before Elysia and Cicero got too much further. She stopped when she saw them a quarter of a mile out, pausing on the path to give herself a moment or two to come up with her excuses of why Elysia and Cicero couldn't come to the manor. Using Phillipa's illness would be a stretch without the girl there, but it was the best idea she had at the moment to buy herself time.

Putting a smile on her features, Iris lifted her chin in distant greeting of the familiar carriage and the occupants inside. "Well met, cousin," she said coolly once the carriage finally pulled up beside her. "What has brought you out all of this way?"

Cicero was a man who had made a career out of reading people and situations. It was what he excelled at, was where his brilliance lay, what had saved him from ending on the wrong end of a blade for his sometimes scathing demeanour. It was what made him valuable.

For Cicero, observation was life, and he was quick to create a picture of a person based on how they presented themselves whether it were a first meeting or any other time. Of course, it became easier the better acquainted he was with an individual. It meant that Elysia’s discomfort was as clear to him as if she had scrawled it across her forehead in ink, and likewise that he was almost insulted that her cousin would see fit to even try and play false with them. But as the carriage rolled to a halt and Iris of Argyis appeared in the window, he had a horrible feeling that she was going to try and do exactly that.

How droll.

With only a press-lipped smile directed at their soon to be host, Cicero left it for Elysia to speak with her cousin, and when she promptly slid the window shut to cut off the woman before even really offering her an answer there was a definite twitch of amusement in the otherwise impassive face.

It was gone almost as quickly as it had manifested, and the man made a point of not looking out of the window again, just rapping on the roof of the carriage to signal the driver to continue before he fixed his gaze upon his wife.

“A treasure, as always” he intoned dryly. His brows lifted at Elysia’s uncertainty, and the man took a long slow breath in, keeping his eyes fixed steadily upon her. “It would only matter if she thought for some reason we were doing what we are doing for anything other than the betterment of the Kingdom.” Cicero replied. It was not phrased as a question, and yet such it was. He knew his own motivations in this, but there was something sharp and jittery about his wife that made him wonder if they were entirely aligned in this. It wouldn’t change his course, he had a job to do, but there were some...adjustments he might need to make when they returned to the city, some people he would need to speak to if the suspicions he was beginning to build around what Elysia was up to took greater hold.

Not that they were his main concern. For though Iris’ frankly odd behaviour was almost confirmation enough, there was a need to be thorough, and until he had done what he had travelled all the way out to this backwater province to do, then there was not much point thinking ahead.

“And you say I have no manners” he observed, casting his eyes briefly toward the window where he fully expected to see an irate Lady Iris of Argyis riding alongside them.

Iris could have killed Elysia for the way in which she closed the window in her face. She had to take a single moment, a single breath to compose herself, needing her cousin and her husband not to notice how... ruffled she was about them being there. For all that the two of them knew, the lady of the house could have been out hunting. That had been a temptation earlier in the day, though her work had kept her from taking to the forest in the way that she would have in order to breathe properly.

But now she struggled to keep herself grounded. Because someone was heading in the direction of her very much ill-kept secret. Though not for her lack of trying, the queen had made her own bed by getting herself caught at the Harvest Festival in Athenia. If there was any signal of guilt at all, it was that Iris had let the woman go at all. Her sending her family off had been only a direct reaction to the rumors and outpouring of searching individuals and gossip that was still able to reach Aetaea in record time. Because the queen had been spotted and Iris had no doubt in her mind at all that the Argyris would be the first suspects of probing eyes and ears.

If not for Aimias' connection to the Xanthos family, but also for Iris' own connection to the Queen. The blatant friendship and the public support that Lord takis had down at the senate meeting for the queen herself. Things fell haphazardly because Iris had never sought out any redemption for her own actions nor her relationship with Persephone. And she would never apologize, but she would at least try to make sure that the queen was in safe hands. As much as Iris was familiar with Cicero, she still would not trust him to keep quiet if he was the one to find Persephone here.

To Iris, her cousin could do no wrong. She wasn't even suspect to what could end up being a bitter betrayal. If anything, Elysia could be being pushed by her own husband and that didn't sit well with Iris.

Not wanting to appear too frazzled, Iris did something very in character for her. She raced ahead upon the back of her horse. The lady had always been one to enjoy the way that a horse ran and the comfort she had upon the back of a magnificent beast such as her own white mare, but inwardly she was panicking and asserting to herself that Persephone should have been told by now that she needed to make herself and her entourage scarce.

Spotting Persephone from the path as she came galloping up ahead of the carriage, Iris tried to shove the sick feeling in her stomach down. She dismounted without a word, "We have guests!" Iris called out to her family and her staff loud enough for the few people who serviced the home to throw themselves to work. Iris quietly hoped that the words themselves would send Persephone, wherever she was, running for cover in an effort not to be spotted by Elysia and Cicero on their impromptu and very much uninvited visit.

Cicero was not terribly interested in however Elysia chose to manage her hot-headed, stubborn cousin. Disembarking from the carriage, he left his wife to pacify their reluctant host and moved smoothly past the women into the manor house. Already, his gaze had scanned the windows upon their approach, looking for hastily drawn shutters, unusual movement. Now, as he approached the front door and tuned out the words being exchanged behind him, he looked over the maid standing ready to greet the visitors. Smile, slightly flustered, eyes darting nervously over her shoulder. Cicero allowed himself a small smile of his own.

Too many clues.

He didn’t pause to wait for Iris to catch up and show him in then, capitalising on the fact that she already thought him rude and stepping into the foyer. The layout of the house was familiar to him thanks to the previous visits Elysia had forced upon him and the man’s long stride was not even hurried as he crossed the space and took a sweeping appraisal, his gaze moving past and then just a rapidly returning to the stairwell where a flash of movement had caught his eye. Stopping, the man tilted his head and listened long enough to hear the footsteps of someone trying desperately hard not to be heard, and the gentle closing of an upstairs door.

There was some satisfaction to having his suspicions proven right, and at least it meant the time travelling here had not been wasted, but Cicero could not pretend that he was glad to be in possession of the information he thought he now was. By rights….by rights he should share it with the Crown. Or the shambolic illusion of a crown in the capital, balanced precariously with the younger sister, with greedy Stravos hands clutching at it. This confirmation would only make that more unstable: the Queen lived, was in Aetea. He would need to decide if, when and how he chose to share such information, and he needed to understand Elysia’s motivations in all of this.

He kept his expression free of anything that might hint to such revelations though, casually waited for his wife and her cousin to join him even as he made a quick calculation of the available exits from the manor. He was almost certain there was just the one staircase. In case it became pertinent.

“Ladies, are you done?” he asked as his wife and his wife’s cousin joined him. “ Lady Iris, always a pleasure. What are the chances of some wine? Parched-roads are dusty”

And with that, Cicero strode off into the receiving room leaving his wife, and their host, to follow suit.

“And you say I have no manners,” Cicero’s words had her staring primly out of the window with the faintest hint of a smile about her lips.

“There was a draft.” Was her only reply to that before Iris galloped off, in what Elysia presumed to be a totally justified huff. She didn’t like offending her cousin but needs being what they were, it couldn’t exactly be helped. he hadn’t missed Iris’s sharp look at the shutting of the window but she hadn’t lingered on her cousin’s face. That would be rude. The carriage rolled to a halt but not before Iris called out incredibly loudly that they had guests.

Elysia’s eyes found her husband’s. A thing like that could have been said softer and inside. She twisted a ring on her finger, becoming more sure by the second that they’d guessed right. Which she disliked. Mostly her dislike stemmed from not wanting Iris to be in any way involved. Already the pressure that Elysia had managed to get herself into was extreme and she mirrored Cicero’s previous tightlipped smile, thinking she wished he wasn’t tangentially involved either. Her and her clever ideas. If she hadn’t momentarily thought she was as clever as her husband across from her, she was pretty sure they could avoid the unpleasantness they were in now. But that wasn’t how life was now and she wasn’t about to cry over it, either. She’d weather the storm and see what survived after.

The carriage door opened and she stepped out, smoothing her dress and eyeing the house, wondering exactly where inside it Persephone was and how long she would have to look to suss her out. Several ideas of how to get away from Iris and into the nooks and crannies of the house she knew so well were already forming but they turned out not to even be necessary. Not that Elysia, herself, saw. She had smiled and pretended not to understand any of Iris’s flusters, and slid her arm around her cousin’s waist, practically dragging the other woman into the house with her.

“Ladies, are you done? Lady Iris, always a pleasure. What are the chances of some wine? Parched-roads are dusty” Cicero swept into the receiving room and Elysia had barely caught up with him before he was gone again. She let go of Iris, flashed an apologetic smile that she felt like she was always giving to Iris whenever Cicero was around, but Elysia’s eyes drifted up the stairs. She hadn’t seen Persephone, but her husband’s abrupt lack of interest in exploring tipped Elysia off that he had what he wanted, which meant that Elysia had what she needed.

Anxiety gone, Elysia laced her hands together and smiled for real this time at Iris. After all, it was done now. There was no sense looking back. “Yes, wine would be lovely, cousin,” she said smoothly. May as well drink to the end of Athenia.

It was then that Aimias appeared, speaking only to Cicero. Elysia rolled her eyes to Iris. Apparently the two of them were in possession of equally rude husbands. “Shall we?” she asked, not liking being ignored.

The nerve of both her cousin and her husband was the one thing, in this moment, that had Iris more furious than she thought she'd ever felt. She wondered if either of them realized that they were not of noble birth and that, while Athenian's were naturally welcoming to sudden guests, both Elysia and Cicero knew how to read and write. It was inherently rude for them to show up on absolutely no notice and expect the general hospitality of the Athenian people. Upon those above their own station, even. Adding Cicero's probing questions, and Iris was simmering with silent rage.

Graceful enough never to show it on her features, at least not in their present company. Bitterly, Iris was glad that Takis had never offered Elysia her nobility connected to her mother. Such behavior as of right now was unfitting of what her station would be, and Iris had absolutely no thought of offering it to Elysia now that her space was being invaded in the rudest of ways. Even without the company of the queen and her subjects within the large manor home, Iris would have been just as irritated with her cousin and Cicero. They were both well-trained enough in the arts of nobility that they knew what they were doing was both rude and ill-met.

Aimias seemed to be jovial about their arrival, but Iris couldn't find it in herself to be. Instead, she let herself pout just a little, willing to give the impression that Cicero and Elysia were interrupting something far more personal than they had the right to. Iris was not going to lift her own hands to sate the needs of her unwanted guests, so it was a relief that Aimias set the servants to preparing the refreshments for her family as she settled into one of the klines of the sitting room, fixing both Cicero and then Elysia with a firm stare after she pulled herself irritably from Elysia's hold. She would not be pulled from this room, and she would not allow Elysia to do so either. "Come and sit with me, cousin," Iris said almost peacefully.

Speaking up before Aimias could answer Cicero's first question, Iris put an actual smile on her features, "Little Phillipa has been ill. Such is the place of a father, of course, when a child is sick and potentially knocking on death's door, is it not?" Iris said for Aimias. That had been the initial reason that the both of them had been in Aetaea at all. Phillipa had taken ill and it had been a rough ride while Iris had sat beside her bed day in and day out in an effort to help curb the wheezing in her chest, the hard little coughs, and the general inability for the child to breathe properly. "Besides, is it not proper for a husband to spend nights in his marriage bed so soon after a wedding?"

They had never been able to have their solitude, their peace given to them after marriage, because the King had died so suddenly and so soon afterward. It was not out of the realm of possibility and reason that Aimias would be in his new home performing his husbandly duties to his new bride.

It was the question about the royal wedding plans that had Iris more attentive of the conversation rather than her grating irritation. She had heard word, but she hadn't really put much thought into it. Lifting an eyebrow at Cicero, Iris had the most peaceful and graceful response to that question as she could possibly give, "I pray that they find happiness together. Lord Stravos deserves someone who can handle his stark ambitions."