‘I’m not asking you to denounce your father. I’m asking you to question your father. But I know. That’s too hard.’

That had him half-turn, his face in profile as her words cracked across the room like a whip and Achilleas’ jaw tensed, his teeth set because she had no idea what she was talking about. He had….he had questioned everything over and over until it made him dizzy and twisted his stomach up in knots to think such things of his own kin.

“You have no idea what I have and haven’t questioned” he managed after a moment, speaking past the tight feeling in his throat. And when she moved to stand near him, Achilleas turned, his own gaze no more forgiving as he met her defiant glare.

‘And I suggest that you don’t tell me what I ought and ought not to do. I have my own mind, and I intend to use it.’

That took him by surprise that she would speak back to him in such a way, and Achilleas’ gaze narrowed a touch, the Aegean blue of his eyes bright with anger as she pushed past him.

“Don’t walk away from me Theodora” he warned, but the words met her back, his wife already doing just that. He had to bite his tongue on calling her back when the steps he took across the room to follow her were aborted at the doorway. In the halls outside the servants still stood and he’d be damned if he was going to chase after her.

Instead, Achilleas glanced from the departing figure of his wife to the guards who manned the doorway. They - sensibly- kept their eyes staring ahead and so the King said nothing but spun on his heel and closed the door sharply behind him, hands curled into fists at his sides as he paced the room Theodora had so sleeky departed.She’d just….left. He could scarcely comprehend it, but it was infuriating because now he was trapped in here with the ill-conceived breakfast and a thousand things he wanted to set her straight on.

His eyes strayed to that letter that had prompted such a fight and Achilleas drew in a breath, moved to pick it up and read it once more. The words tumbled over on the page, still as damning and he dropped it, ran an agitated hand through his hair.

It hurt to hear his cousin so scathing, and moreso to realise that Theodora thought him so unmoved as to turn a blind eye to the situation. Before...the wedding it had all but consumed his thoughts, and he had done as much as he could, hadn’t he?

Achilleas stepped out onto the terrace that wrapped the room they had been in, let some of the winter wind cool the heat of his anger, though it failed to blow away the self-doubt he felt now. If to all and sundry it appeared as though he didn’t care - if Theodora thought that, then maybe he hadn’t done enough.

And it was true that outwardly he had been trying to keep the peace with his father...he’d had to bite his tongue so much in those last days… perhaps to others, it seemed as though he was content with how all of this had gone. The thought made him feel vaguely nauseous.
Swallowing back that and the simmering frustration with how simplistic a view Theodora seemed content to take, Achilleas moved back inside, snatched up the letter from his cousin and strode out of the solar room, not sparing a glance for the guards nor the maids who quietly went in and began to remove the almost untouched breakfast.

Achilleas went to a room in the palati that he’d avoided thus far, squared his shoulders and walked into what had been his father’s study. He closed the door in the guard’s faces and stood for a moment, orientating himself in the space he’d been in so many times before and yet now felt so alien.


Some of his father’s things had already been moved; he knew this, and yet it didn’t stop it jolting him to see the trunks and boxes stacked by the wall. Pieces of the man being tucked away out of sight. He blew out a breath and moved around the wide oaken desk, tracing the edge with his finger as he went. And he paused before he sat in the klismos that had been his father’s, leaning forward to pick up the papers that were still sat on the desk before him.

He didn’t know what he was looking for...he knew better than to think it would be so simple as stumbling across some conveniently written document that might answer all of the questions he had. But there had to be something, didn’t there? Flicking through the parchment, he ignored the thick feeling in his throat at the seeing man’s familiar handwriting, swallowed and concentrated on making sense of the words on the page.

When he found nothing of note there, he moved to the first of the trunks, forgetting whatever obligations he might for the morning and sinking to his knees so he might look through what was there. He didn’t know if he was hoping he would find something or hoping he would not.