She gave him no warning as she burst through the door. He glared at her, thinking at first that she was Aphaea returning but his anger transformed into mild alarm. What his wife was doing here, at this hour, looking pale and flushed only meant trouble. Surging to his feet, he took two steps toward her before her accusation nailed him to the spot.

"How could you. Someone like that...leaving your rooms."

There was no time to respond. She looked away from him and he knew what she was going to do before her hand closed around the goblet. The goblet sailed past his ear as he ducked sideways. A clang resounded behind him from the cup hitting the column and then a dull thud as it came to land on the cushion he’d been sitting on.

He whirled around to find wine seeping onto the scroll. “Are you insane?” he growled and bent to retrieve it. Red seeped into the papyrus scroll. He set his jaw and glared at her. “Do you realize what this is?”

It didn’t matter that she’d been aiming for his head and not the scroll. The damage was done and he was more worried about the ink bleeding and obscuring the words than he was about his wife’s fury. On the table beside her lay some fabric. It could have been a towel or a chiton, he couldn’t tell and didn’t care. He snatched it up and dabbed at the paper’s surface and breathed a sigh of relief as it looked like it would be at least legible. Still, it would have to be recopied.

"Am I not enough for you? Your majesty. As I prepare to bring your son into the world, preserve your line, you take whores."

“She’s no more a whore than you are,” he snarled. “Do you understand what you could have done?”

He reached out and took hold of her upper arm in much the same way she’d done to Aphaea out in the corridor, though decidedly less tight, and drug her over to the table. “Look at this.” His hand was on the back of her neck in case she had any notion of looking anywhere else. “I am going to lead a small army to exterminate my father’s butchers. I don't need anyone, or anything distracting me from that task.”

“She is no concern of yours,” he added.

Perhaps he should have felt something - anything. The way she was looking at him, the blatant hurt and betrayal would certainly have touched him if she hadn’t started the fight by throwing things at him the way Elise sometimes did. It brought to the surface too many fights he’d already had lately. Fights he was tired of.

Olympia was supposed to be the one person he didn’t fight with. She was, or should have been, his safe place. But he knew by the heat in her stare that his right to that part of her was over.

“You didn’t mind before,” he took his hands off her completely and picking the scroll back up. It needed somewhere safe to dry. Somewhere it wouldn’t come to further harm. Perhaps the balcony? The wind would help. “Or was that because you didn’t have a crown yet?”

It was low to call her a whore. Or at least to insinuate that she was one. In truth, he didn’t consider her, or any of the women he slept with to be less respectable than a woman who didn’t. Only when any of the women came at him, grasping for monetary gain, or for titles, land, legitimacy for their infants, a marriage to hide the pregnancy - that was when they became whores, or, in the case of the infants or marriages, just grasping. He understood perfectly well that they needed a husband. In every case, the woman in question, to his mind, would be better situated elsewhere, than with himself.

As for his wife? She’d been teetering in and out of this frame of reference for the entirety of their marriage. He couldn’t quite reconcile the woman he’d started to know her as, with the social climber reputation that had preceded her. No doubt her mother had put Pia in his path. Just as Selene was thrown into Zach’s. The difference was he’d liked what he saw. It seemed his brother did not.

Until Olympia had burst through the door in white hot fury, she’d held his respect. Nothing in either her appearance or mannerisms had done anything thus far to tell him or anyone else that he’d made the wrong choice. It was as if she, and not her sister Selene, had been raised to be queen. Her bearing, her tone of voice, her topics of discussion were all above reproach. The only glaringly obvious sin was her growing stomach and the new prince heir inside.

But when she came at him in the way that she did, with her accusations, hurling them like stones; it rankled him in just the wrong way. ‘Whore’ was an ugly word. It was for prostitutes. Common women. Not the highborn ladies of court that he took when it suited him. For her to imply that he would debase himself with peasants and prostitutes? It was a little too much. Especially coming from her. She, who was no different, no matter what she liked to pretend now.

She wasn’t even a virgin when they’d first fallen into bed together. He knew could tell that immediately by her behavior. There was no blushing, no hand holding or coddling. It was simply one person finding pleasure for a time with another. They just happened to be unusually good with each other. With her, he’d found a sort of synchronicity that was fairly rare until lovers learned each other. But it was as if she could read his mind like few people could.

Of course, that was the Olympia from before the coronation. The woman in his grip now was one he’d never met. This woman lied to him. She claimed she’d been with no other. He didn’t contradict her because now wasn’t the time. His mind was on other matters, on the lord who’d heckled him, on Irakles’s smug face. It would be incredibly stupid to burst into that gorge without some sort of plan which was why it was so vitally important to be reading the scroll spread out before her on the desk. Why it mattered that the wine already stained it like blood. Why he didn’t want to give into Aphaea’s plea or Olympia’s challenge.

He just wanted to plan. For once, he just needed the women in his life to leave him alone. However, he could perceive signs from the gods like anyone else. She was the second woman to come through that door. If he sent her away now without speaking, then there would be a third, and worse woman to come in. Potentially with a curse.

Pia fought his hold but at last, she froze, staring down at the scroll. The skin of his hand stung where she’d ground her nails. Four crescent moons dotted in a ragged line below his knuckles and up onto his wrist. He hadn’t even noticed when she’d been doing it. He’d been too set on making her look at what she could have ruined, on forcing her to understand the importance of what he was doing.

At last, she seemed a little calmer. He relaxed his hold on her neck. She responded by jerking her hair free. It had been trapped. Another thing he hadn’t noticed.

“No concern of mine? Tell me, how can she be no concern of mine if she leaves your rooms at night? What would I have found if I opened the door any earlier?”

In the position in which they stood, she pushed against the desk, bracing herself, and he pressed hard against her, he could not see her tears. At any other time, he would have one arm hugging her waist while using his other hand to brush her hair aside. He would have trailed languid kisses down the back of her neck.

The image was fleeting and unwelcome. A fresh wave of irritation rolled over him as she strained to get away from the table but he didn’t move. He was attempting to rein in his temper which spiked with every accusation she made. Rather than address her first two questions, he focused on the last. It was more easily answered and wouldn’t lead to more arguments he’d rather not have with her. Ever.

“If you’d opened the door, you’d have seen me order her out,” his attempt at an even tone was commendable but it was forced. “I did not call for her, and I won’t call for her again.” Usually he liked to keep any mistress he took around longer than a few days but Aphaea turned out to be less than pleasant company when she’d had the leisure to speak. Her head was empty and her experience limited. She offered nothing in the way of interesting topics to discuss. And while she could sing, he was used to Xene’s unparalleled ability to perform music. Aphaea could not compete with any woman in his world in any way, save that she was unusually beautiful. But beauty didn’t hold much weight when he was surrounded with it wherever he looked.

For Olympia to even bring up the girl he’d banished from his sight not five minutes ago brought up even more ill feelings. It was yet another failure. He couldn’t even seem to get the right mistress anymore. Possibly he was cursed already and didn’t even need to fear a third woman tonight if Olympia left. Or, more likely, Irakles had so shaken any confidence he had left after the unavenged deaths of his father and brother had sapped most of it.

“We weren’t married before. Hadn’t said vows before,” she continued. Tears made her hard to understand. He frowned and inclined his head, listening intently as she spoke. “I wasn’t risking my neck to be married and carrying your child before.”

“Thank you for risking life and limb.” The acidic bite to his words seemed to snap her out of her thoughts because she fought his hold again. He let go just as she was about to break free. Though he was angry, he had no desire to cause her physical harm. This was nowhere near the height of his temper and he was in command of himself. She appeared to be less so.

He snatched the scroll from the table, not even bothering to throw a glare in her direction. She was being childish. If other women did not concern her prior to marriage, when the possibility of ousting her from her high perch was much more likely, then they need not concern her now. The way she was acting, he could almost feel the control she was attempting to exert. Another person telling him that they knew better. That she knew how best to act in this area of his life. That if she was him, she would not be making the same mistake.

It was enough to make his blood boil.

In what he now thought of as his Former Life, he could look back and see that nothing was truly different between his mother and himself. The way she was acting, attempting to direct, or get someone else to direct him was not new. It wasn’t until she started to use Irakles as the means to get him to act in the way she wished that the problem arose.

When he was a little over eighteen years old, he’d been training with Zacharias in the circus. It had been just he and his brother that day. They were not alone. Slaves worked the stables, servants stood watching from the entrances, and dozens of their friends from noble houses had come to watch the two princes race one another around the track.

The sun blazed overhead. Scorching wind whipped around the circus, trapped within its confines, and seething over his skin like dragon’s breath. Unless Zacharias cheated and pulled his team back, he’d never beaten his brother in a chariot race. They were nearly equals in sword training, neither one was a good archer, and it was always a toss up as to who would win a footrace. But in chariots, Zacharias was blessed. He did not lose. He did not fail. His chariot never overturned and his horse team never made a misstep.

This clear advantage had driven him to try and best his brother, blessed or not. They raced each other nearly every day and while he sometimes suffered injuries, it was never severe and never enough to dampen his thirst for victory. With each loss, he learned from his mistakes. The pounding of the horses’ hooves, each bump in the chariot, the ever present threat of tipping over; it was thrilling. Those races defined their days.

The race started out like any other. The horses surged forward, yanking him with them. He braced his feet on either side of the chariot, easily keeping pace. Zacharias’s team was ahead by a nose. In the stands, their friends cheered and shouted but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

The first two turns of the race were smooth. It was much like the last race in the circus before it burned. He’d been under the delusion that he might win this time. His team’s stride was nearly matching Zacharias’s team.

And then he felt the vibration under his feet. It rippled through the floor of the chariot before a loud crack shot fear down his spine. Before he had time to think, he was ripped out of the chariot. Airborne. All he could see was the rumps of his horses as they kept running and the pole dragging behind them.

The leather reins were wrapped once around each hand and he kept his fits clamped on them tight as he crashed against the blurred floor of the circus. Sand sprayed his face. Burning pain assailed him as the skin of his elbows and knees was scrubbed away. Sense and training told him to let go of the horses. In a real race, he’d be dead whatever he did, but this was training. There were no more chariots coming.

It was impossible to let go. His body locked. Holding on hurt. Letting go would hurt. He opened his hands and let the leather straps slither out of his grip. The pole he’d been laying on jerked out from beneath him. The horses thundered away and he lay bleeding and shaking in the hot sand.

Zacharias hadn’t noticed his absence immediately. It wasn’t his brother’s face that hovered over him, shadowed and haloed by the sun. A slave peered down at him, concerned but not in fear the way he would be if it was Zach lying there. The afternoon and the days that followed saw him stuck in his room, forced to allow himself to heal.

But it was afterward that his real recovery began. When his mother forbade him from racing in the circus. “To keep him safe.” To his teenage mind, she did it not because she cared, but because she didn’t think him man enough to climb back into a chariot. One mistake had relegated him to incompetent, in her mind. But his entire life had been that way.

It was that way now. Elise didn’t trust him to be king. Not without Irakles’s input. Not without the man who murdered a crucial part of their family. Even though Olympia had seen what he was doing, the importance of the words on the scroll, she couldn’t seem to make herself focus on it. He could feel her behind him but he refused to look at her. Instead, he searched the room, looking for weighted objects.

On the table, he found clasps and an empty ink pot that would serve enough. She hovered in his periphery. Her cheeks shone in the light of the braziers. More tears. The first tinges of something perilously close to guilt. But he shoved it away. Whatever he did with other women truly had nothing to do with her or how he felt about her. The two were totally separate.

He started across the room, holding out the wine soaked scroll. Already he was a good way into clearing her accusations from his mind when he felt her fingers wrap around the back of his arm. Her grip was surprisingly strong and though he could easily have shaken her off, he didn’t. She slipped in front of him, staring up into his face.

The earnestness of her expression kept him in place as she demanded he look at her. Look and call her a whore again. He did. His eyes roved her tear streaked cheeks. The way her eyes shone glassy and bright with yet more unshed tears. Her dark hair was in complete disarray from where she’d raked her fingers through it. She didn’t look like the composed, stately woman who’d been at the coronation. The mask was broken.

“Say I only did it for the crown, for the power, for the money, for the prestige. Say what everyone at court has been saying for the last few months since I married you. I know what you think of me, what they think. It’s not fair, but I am my mother’s daughter. So it’s expected.”

His immediate reaction was to deny that he thought of her that way because he didn’t. But, in a paradoxical twist, he still thought of her as a social climber. When she’d told him that she loved him in the forest, more than half of him didn’t believe it. Those words were said often in the heat of the moment. It was why he hadn’t said it back. What he truly thought of her, felt for her, was complicated.

He’d called her a whore out of anger. Not because he truly thought it. Anymore.

But she was right. She was her mother’s daughter. He had never spoken more than two words to Lady Leventi but he was aware of her reputation. Zacharias had complained about the woman more than once. How she’d cornered him about Selene, all couched in the most benign of topics and silkiest language. Perhaps Pia was not that manipulative, but she was capable. She’d just admitted it.

When she reached up to take his face into his hands, he wanted nothing so much as to pull away. This was a little better than her throwing wine at him and so he allowed her cool fingers to touch his unshaved cheeks. She told him that when they’d first gotten together, she’d done it against her family’s wishes, which he found difficult to believe. A king and a prince for the Leventis? It was nothing short of amazing if she could swing it.

Except that her parents probably knew she couldn’t. That he was destined elsewhere. Olympia probably could have made a brilliant match with a rich baron. And here she was, telling him that she’d risked everything out of a desire to be with him. This was the most difficult part of anything she’d said for him to accept.

“I went to you out of desire. I stayed faithful out of love even when you didn’t feel the same for me.”

“I disagree. This great, enduring love for me is remarkably in line with what your mother would have wanted for you.” He took her wrist to pull it away. She let him go and stood aside. With one hand she wiped her tears and hugged herself with the other. An errant thought strayed into his mind. What if she or her mother had had something to do with all this? But he shoved it away as nonsense. Olympia could never murder someone.

He was being cold. He knew it but he had more weighing on him than her distress about who he took to bed. It wasn’t pathetic, the way she felt, but it was ill timed, as moments of personal crises often were. Prior to Aphaea’s uninvited presence, as well as his wife’s, he felt he was handling his promise of hunting down the Creed fairly well.

Though he’d had wine, he wasn’t drunk. It was the most clear headed he’d been at night in a long time. The point was to come to some sort of plan. He needed a brilliant strategy to bring to bear all that he’d promised in the hall. And yet, here they were, dealing with personal issues, rather than kingdom ones.

He looked her over once before moving onto the balcony. The little prickles of guilt were joining together to bring about something a little more solid. As much as he didn’t want them to, her tears were affecting him. Did it really bother her that badly that he slept with someone else? And he still didn’t understand the why now part. Was it simply because she’d actually seen Aphaea leave?

Pia was supposed to be different. She wasn’t supposed to be beholden to jealousy. She had already proved she could be what he needed, that she believed and supported him as far as Irakles was concerned. That she could handle both his mother and hers, that while court gossip clearly bothered her, she’d never showed it before now. In short, he’d been holding her to a high standard, up on a lofty pedestal of perfect behavior.

But with her silent tears, she was forcing him to come to terms with the truth. She was human. And he couldn’t treat her as though she was above the base cares and concerns of life. Somehow, he’d never given a single thought to how she supposed their relationship was supposed to go. Kings had mistresses. It didn’t mean they didn’t have some sort of amicable relation with their wife too.

His own father had had several mistresses. Zacharias would have too. ...Probably..His brother wasn’t a great lover of women. But Pia wasn’t an ignorant country girl. She knew how the court worked. How kings acted. This shouldn’t have been the surprise it apparently was.

The railing of the balcony was almost as wide as his hand was long. It was an adequate place to lay out the scroll. He placed it carefully and held it down with the ink pot and the clasps on three sides. Wind ruffled his hair and the ends of the scroll. It was still in danger of rolling off. Turning around, he scanned the floor for the goblet she’d thrown at him.

It lay in a lake of glittering red.

He stooped down to pick it up and rose back up at the same moment she flung her shoe. It landed with a smack against a wall but he turned his back on her. If she was going to start up tantrums again, their discussion, if it could be called such, was at an end. Carefully he positioned the goblet’s stem on one side of the scroll so that, if a strong gust did try to take it, it would be less likely to fall over the side.

Still, he didn’t feel completely comfortable leaving it out here on the railing, unsupervised. The palace scribe was already going to have a fit. Perhaps he should have just borrowed the vase detailing the whole thing.

The room behind him was quiet and he glanced over his shoulder but he didn’t see Pia. She might have left for all he knew but he suspected she was still there. If she had gone, the door probably would have been slammed. He took a little more time than he needed to, arranging the scroll on the balcony floor, rather than its railing.

He was being a coward. Now that he was away from her and the scroll was taken care of as best as it was ever going to be, he was more cognisant of how cold he was being. To Pia, of all people. She, who had never so much as raised her voice to him before.

Guilt gnawed at him. Not for the deed itself, but that it made her cry. He came to the doorway where his cushion still sat. He could see Pia, huddling against the wall beside it. Her eyes were closed and she was quiet.

He watched her breast rise and fall in a steady rhythm. So. She wasn’t weeping. Absurdly, he found himself wanting to put his arms around her. To comfort her and tell her it would be alright. But he was the last person she would take that sort of gesture from. Especially since the sentiment would likely ring false.

Instead of sitting beside her, he sank down on the cushion and leaned his head back, the way he’d been doing when she entered the room. For a few seconds, they sat in complete silence. And then she spoke. Her voice was small. Watery.

“Desma told me. The morning of the coronation. She saw a pin, heard from other servants. She told me to keep my chin up. That it would be fine. I didn’t believe her. I was foolish. I came to ask you if it was true.”

At first he didn’t know what she was talking about and he turned in time to catch her wiping away more tears. And then he remembered. The pin his mother had found. The one he’d snatched from her hand and threw in a fit of anger and shame.

Elise had asked him who the pin belonged to. He’d been so hungover. Thinking hurt at the time. Now he remembered whose pin it was. That was the night he’d met Aphaea. He’d been with Emilios the afternoon before. As usually happened with his cousin, they got into mischief. Both of them were running from problems they didn’t want to face.

Perhaps he would have called Pia but she was busy with her sisters. And anyway, a pretty redhead and Aphaea crossed their path. The opportunity thrust itself upon them and before either he or his cousin thought twice about it, the four of them were in this room having a party of their own. It had meant nothing. It was nothing. And he hadn’t even thought about that night since the disaster of the coronation. There was too much else on his mind.

But what did Desma have to do with it? Any of it? How did she know? How did she find the pin?

“Does your nursemaid spy on me?” he demanded. Did the old woman presume to snoop in his room? How had she gotten it? He’d thrown the pin and immediately forgot its existence. Hadn’t once thought to go looking for it. She laughed bitterly and he stood up. This was a low he never thought she would stoop to.

“I have work to do.”

It was hypocritical in the extreme to expect her to stand by while he did as he pleased. If their situations were reversed, and he found out she was gracing the bed of other men, now that they were joined, their marriage would be over. In that instant. But that was the difference. She could become pregnant with another man’s child, whereas what he did mattered very little if offspring were produced or not. The offspring only became important if he legitimized them. As he had done with hers.

He was nearly to the door when her soft plea reached him. Fresh anger burned in his chest toward her. She was stirring emotions in him that he wanted left well alone. When he ignored her and put his hand on the door to pull it open, she called to him again. Something in her voice the second time made him pause and half turned to look at her.

She was still seated on the floor and staring at him as though in real anguish. He didn’t want to be here with her. But he found himself turning fully around and leaning on the door with this palms pressed against the wood grain. At first he’d thought that she meant him not to leave the room but she clarified herself without his having to ask. She meant for him not to go after the Creed.

“I have to,” he said quietly.

“What sense is there in going after them now? Your father and brother can be just as easily avenged when our child is born. When he has a brother. When they are old enough to fight with you. Just please don’t go now. Not when Irakles and the others are goading you so. What if this is exactly what he wants to get you out of the way? If you left do you think for a moment he would leave me and the baby alive? Even if you did come back victorious.”

His hands curled into fists. He clenched his jaw and stared at her. She really had lost her mind.

“Do you imagine that I would let those vermin live that long?” he spat out the words with venom. His heartbeat sped up as his blood pressure rose to dizzying heights. “If I wait until it’s safe for you, then we won’t have a throne for our sons to sit on. Or a kingdom to rule. I thought you wise but let me tell you a story you seem to have conveniently forgotten.”

He crossed back over to her within four steps and knelt close enough that his chest was against her knees. As she had done to him, he reached out and took her face in his hands but there was no sweetness to the gesture. It was to ensure she was listening. His hold was gentle, as he did not wish to harm her, but it was firm. She would be looking nowhere else.

“70 years ago my grandfather had to ride out and do battle with ghosts. The Creed reigned terror over Taengea. I will not stand by and watch the same happen again. The longer I wait, the stronger their foothold. I have not acted before now because I only lack the correct plan. It’s something I’ve had to keep almost a secret from Irakles. He undermines me at every step. As we saw in the hall.”

“I know they’re goading me. And this is what he wants to get me out of the way. But I can turn this on its head. He’s an arrogant man. He thinks me weak and foolish. When I come back victorious, and I will, I’ll force him to eat the tongue and cheeks of the Creed leader.”

He let her go and backed away to stand up again. As to her question of whether or not Irakles would leave her and the baby alive? They both knew the answer. No. She wouldn’t be outright murdered. Some horrible accident would befall her and their little one.

“I will not fail you in this.” he answered instead. They held each other’s gaze for a moment before he turned away. Again he was going to leave the room but her voice slipped out again, quieter this time with a dreamlike quality. He heaved a sigh and went to sit on the edge of the bed. It was getting on toward midnight. He would do no work tonight and there was no use pretending otherwise.

He leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees and listening as she detailed a horrific dream. It never occurred to him as she spoke that she might be lying because he’d had similar nightmares. Ones where his head was on a pike, ones where he took his father’s head down. Or Zach’s, even though it was Zach’s cloak that had been recovered and not the body itself. But he did not put much store in his own dreams.

This one of hers, however...for two people to have almost the same dream? It was rare. Although the Creed were noticeably absent from his own nightmares for whatever reason. It was only Irakles who featured heavily in the worst of the dreams.

She awkwardly got to her feet and begged him again not to go. Told him she hated him but that she also loved him. He dropped his gaze to her feet and noticed with mild surprise that she was only wearing one sandal. Somehow he’d already forgotten that she’d thrown the other one in a sudden fit of anger.

Her plea of if he beared any affection for her was stung. Of course he cared. He’d shown her he cared, hadn’t he? He stood as she limped to get her sandal and watched as she sank onto the bed. She struggled with the sandal and he moved to help her but before he could she threw it against the wall again and did the same with the second.

She didn’t want or need help, it seemed. The first shoe had hid his bronze shield. It hung on the wall directly across from the bed. Her second attempt brought the whole thing crashing down. The magnificent metallic bang brought a guard within seconds. The man bust into the room but Stephanos held up his hand and the man slowly backed out.

When he turned back, he found Pia looking at him with grim determination. She told him that if he was choosing to go after the Creed, she wanted to go back to her father’s house. He stared at her and was on the point of telling her no, absolutely not, but he remained silent for a few seconds instead. In that time, she attempted to stand, successful on the second try.

He watched the color drain from her face as she moved slowly to the door. His mouth wouldn’t work to ask her to stay. It was usually easy to do but asking her not to go meant they’d likely have to discuss more things. However, as she paused by the door and whispered her apology, apparently to the room at large, he finally moved.

“Olympia, sit down.” He used her full name so as not to incite more anger by being too trivial with her. She was still angry but she didn’t look well. Nor did he want her in this room but he was half afraid to have her out of his sight. Leading her back to the bed, he gently forced her back down onto it and sat beside her.

“Stay here. Shall I send for your midwife?” He waited for her response and acted accordingly but he would not permit her to leave the room.

After a few minutes of him touching her forehead and them both ensuring that the baby was alright, and that she was alright, he moved up to the pillows beside her on ‘his side’ of the bed. As she’d been doing earlier, he found himself wishing she’d missed Aphaea altogether. Because then they would have had a much better evening. There would be no charade. He genuinely did enjoy her presence but it had taken until now for him to fully appreciate it. Now that there was very little chance of it ever happening again.

“I think you’re under a false impression,” he said, catching her eye. “You seem to think I hold you in no regard at all when the opposite is true. I have great affection for you. It would pain me if you were to remain in your father’s house when I return from the slaughtering Creed.” He put emphasis on the word ‘when’.

“But I will not force you to return.”