By the time Achilleas made it to Stephanos’s room, the prince lay sprawled on his back, jaw relaxed and slightly open, completely at his ease. He didn’t stir when the door opened and the scuffing of Achilleas’s sandals only caused the slightest movement behind his eyelids as he surfaced vaguely from sleep. He jerked fully awake at his cousin’s shrill “You’re still in bed?!” by sitting bolt upright, wincing, and then falling back into the pillows.

“In case you didn’t notice,” he groused. “I had a bit too much to drink at the festival.” Leave it to Achilleas to be completely unsympathetic to a man’s plight. He sighed longsufferingly, palm pressed to his temple with his eyes squeezed shut against the glare blazing in through the white, breezy curtains. His limbs felt like they had weights and with his head sagging against the pillow again, the warmth of the sun slanting across the bed, and the comfortable winds drifting into the room from the open balcony all served to lull him into a half doze. Achilleas’s curt words rudely cut into his mind and his eyes snapped open.

”You sent for me?”

“Eh?” he frowned and struggled to sit up. Squinting at Achilleas, he stared for a full three seconds before organized thoughts finally asserted themselves enough for him to grasp at. “Ah, yes. Where is it?” he blinked rapidly, clearing his vision and rubbing one eye with the heel of his left hand while his right fished around on the blankets. Where was that note?

His fingertips brushed crinkling paper and he snatched it up, holding it out for his cousin to take, and giving an impatient flick of his wrist. “What’s this?” Now that he was a little more awake, he had the distinct impression that he wasn’t going to like whatever it was that the other man was going to tell him. No one wrote a note like that unless it was bad news. “Out with it,” he said impatiently. “I feel like death warmed over and I have little patience this morning.”

So little, in fact, that he looked around for that servant from earlier, annoyed that no one was helping him wash or dress just now. “Where was that man? He was just here…” ‘man’ because Stephanos couldn’t remember the servant’s name or his face.

His gaze drifted from Achilleas to the edge of the bed where fresh clothes lay, ready and waiting. Apparently he’d have to dress himself. Throwing back the blankets, Stephanos clambered out of bed. Of any man in the world, he was most heedless of being naked around his cousin. He kept his back to Achilleas while he pulled the new chiton over his head. His tongue ran across his teeth which felt distinctly unclean. He needed to rinse his mouth out; it tasted like something had crawled into a wine cask, soaked there, and died. There was the lingering groggy, irritable moodiness that was leftover from the drugs he’d no doubt taken last night. He couldn’t remember much but he knew the effects enough to be familiar with them.