Throughout the rest of the day Iason was as quiet as the queen, though his own silence was borne more out of a bitterness and frustration than her own trauma. He didn't understand, couldn't understand why she wouldn't speak to him, why she insisted on maintaining her facade of cold perfection instead of feeling for once. He knew she was capable of it. He'd seen her face when he said her sister's name, remembered the feel of her lips on his that day he found her crying in the garden. She had to see by now it wasn't an embarrassment to feel things, and if she wasn't capable of it in such a time would he ever truly know her? Would she react if they wed? When they made love? When they had a child? He couldn't go through life married to stone.

Dinner was a silent affair, he deflected all of the questions his family peppered at him, taking the same tact as Persephone in this instance while she was in his presence, and after it was finished he left the women and servants to take his fiancee to her rooms. It was the first moment he could remember in which he behaved so petulantly toward her. Instead of escorting her like a gentleman and seeing to her comfort he left it to others who were more likely to gain her smiles and gratitude than him. He'd thrown himself on his back across the bed in his room that was so strange and familiar all at once, closing his eyes with a sigh and scraping at the beard on his chin in thought until his father and uncle entered.

It took him a moment to sit up, pushed to the brink of his patience and usual dutiful behavior even in the presence of the two men who'd raised him. With a heavy sigh, Iason pushed himself up and looked back at the other two with a shrug and shake of his head.

"It is. Or was. We didn't stay about to see how it resolved. Or if her sister was spared." For a moment he considered protesting his uncle's obvious hidden text in his tone but there was no point. She'd been like this for weeks. As his father began laying out the options Iason couldn't hide his grimace. Of course he'd thought of just that, freeing her from him and him from her now that there was no reason to keep the bargain. Had she shown him any kindness since the night they'd boarded the ship he might have been more inclined to argue for, but now he feared being trapped in a marriage of stone.

"She wasn't always. After it was announced she would be her father's heir, she kissed me. Then cried." He winced as he said it aloud, it sounded worse when he considered how it would sound to others. He hadn't thought he would be that bad at kissing, but who knew at this point. His father's hand on his shoulder brought him back to earth and he sighed again, staring at his feet and pondering seriously how to respond. He didn't want to abandon her after everything they had been through, but at the same time this was not the marriage he had been hoping for.

"I shall speak to her in the morning. Perhaps she was just waiting for me to say something. To release her from this."

"I shall. Though I am sure she will find our home wanting."

Until he had spoken to Persephone, Iason hadn't realized exactly how bitter he felt in regards to this match and how she had been treating him. When she had kissed him in the garden he'd felt hope that perhaps they could find in each other a good match, if not love than caring and respect and all of the rest that he had seen make a marriage work. Her tears it seemed had washed away any chance at that and as much as he had found himself attracted to her, it meant nothing if she had no good feeling for him.

The interruption of the storm and servant stole his attention from the memory of the garden contrasted with her expression when he'd just spoken to her not an hour ago. As if to prove the point of danger in this the storm shook the house once more with thunder as he looked to his father with mingled exasperation and panic in his eyes. Nodding at the older man's order to wait until the sealskins had been brought, Iason found himself on his feet and pacing, looking out the window as if he would be able to see her figure through the rain returning and show this worry all for naught.

As soon as the cloaks were brought in, the men donned them and moved as a unit throughout the house until the grounds were reached, splitting up silently they moved into packs that hunting on the Dimitrou lands had prepared them for. Iason had never been more relieved to have his father at his back than in this moment, and he kept silent as they walked through the thundering rain, listening for any small sound that might give them any kind of indication where she had gone. Torches were useless in such a downpour and it was only as his eyes fully adjusted to the darkness of the wood that he was able to make out any little details.

He couldn't tell how much time had passed, it felt both ages and seconds before something caught his eye. The color was wrong on the forest floor even in the moonlight and he lifted a hand to signal his father forward. For a moment he thought he was off and it was just a fawn seeking shelter from the storm but as he got closer Iason saw the prone figure at the foot of the tree. His betrothed, unconscious or asleep he couldn't tell but pale and thin and still as she was there was danger for her out in this weather in the wood.

"Here! Alert the others, she's here." Yanking off the sealskin cloak, the young baron knelt beside her in the mud and puddles without a thought for his own well being, the survival instincts his father had bred into them from a young age taking over as he covered her in the cloak and lifted her close to his chest. Her skin felt like ice and he did his best to wrap her up in warmth as he moved with his father back to the mansion. "Wake up, your majesty. This is no place for you to rest."

It felt as if it took much longer to get back inside, the rain no longer at their backs was almost blinding and he stumbled along close to his father, allowing Gavriil to leave as slowly other members of the household emerged from the trees and joined them on their return. Only once they were safely in the entry hall once again did Iason check to see if she had stirred, too focused on returning to notice in the wood, and he called for servants to prepare heated baths to help her recover her warmth and strength.

If Persephone had been in control; of her mind, of her actions - there was no way in all of Hades that she would have ever intentionally put pressures or difficulties onto the Dimitrou family. They had been kindness and benevolence itself and while Persephone's apologies and thanks to them since her arrival had not been passion fuelled or particularly emotive, they had been genuine. As was her complete ignorance of considering the issues that would befall the family, were she to leave the manor and enter into the storm.

It had been as if her feet had not been connected to her mind. Or as if her mind had not been there at all. Like she had been sleep walking. All she had known in those moments, minutes, hours, out under the deluge of the heavens, were the physical pains it caused and a feeling of satisfaction in them. The harsh, biting roughness of stones, sticks and dirt under her feet. The harsh and heavy droplets of water and hail hammering down onto her skin. The rough discomfort and chaffing of the sodden dress as it fused to her skin and refused to let go as she moved, rubbing her limbs raw. Her eyes stung from the rain water, her eyelashes morphed into spiky clumps. Her hair was drenched and flat to her skin, her scalp, her neck and impeded movement. The locks around her neck and shoulders fell down and stuck to her chest too and made her feel suffocated and confined. Every time she opened her mouth to breath, the rain water broke in past her lips and started to fill her mouth. It felt like she was drowning.

By the time she had found the hollow amongst the roots of a tree, Persephone had lost all feeling in her torso. Her limbs each felt a hundred pounds and her extremities had passed behold numbness into the territory of a biting, stabbing pain. Like they were burning with the cold.

She had shivered at first, drenched through and frozen. But after a while the cold had sunk in so deep and her muscles had tightened so hard against the chill that it wasn't long before she was curled into the tightest ball her bones would allow and her muscles had paralysed into stone, holding her in place. She hurt from head to foot, the tightness of her muscles so intense, she could no longer shiver.

It was as if her physical body were trying to shy away from everything all at once. The rain, the temperature... the twigs beneath her hip and shoulder, the dirt on the side of her face and trying to inch into her mouth, the branches that had tangled with her hair and refused to let go... Even her very existence and circumstance. The mess that resided back in Athenia. The hollow mess that no longer had anything left for her in it... She wanted to escape it all.

Not that she was consciously thinking it. Her mind was still far away - perhaps back in Athenia where she felt like she had left it - and her actions were entirely driven by an instinctive fear. A primal need to avoid that which hurt.

From this point onwards, Persephone's time outside was hard for her to recall in great detail. Looking back later she would only be able to assume that she had fallen asleep or lost consciousness. But how one slipped out of conscious knowledge when being constantly hammered by the heavens above, with the rain a roar in your ears and everything around you smelling damp and toxic, she had no idea. However it happened, nonetheless, it did. For Persephone could only remember moments from then until her return to the Dimitrou manor.

The first was the sound of footsteps. They made a dull thump, thump that would have been hidden entirely by the loud rushing noise of the rain if it hadn't been for Persephone being able to hear the steps through the earth, her ear already to the ground. Perhaps the noise was what drew her into consciousness the first time.

She didn't react to it though. She heard it, registered it... somewhere in her mind, her brain told her that the dull thump was rhythmic enough to be footsteps rather than anything more random. She couldn't hear any calls or voices over the rain, but the steps she heard. But she didn't seem able to move.

She wanted to break from her little, curled up ball and call out. To wave a hand, put her head outside of the hollow and call to those who were nearby. She wanted to stop being so cold. But even as she thought the desire, there was no rush of energy to her limbs, no simmering flame to dart along her muscles and make thought become practice. Instead, it was as if her body were a cage. Something she was confined within and could not control. She simply lay there, on her side in the dirt, with her knees curled up to her chest, half hoping that the stranger that approached would see and help her and partially hoping that she would remain entirely hidden so that she could continue to suffer the cold and unusual punishment her mind seemed to have contrived for her.

It turned out she didn't have to call in the end. Whether she lost consciousness again and the shoes that she suddenly noticed level with her head arrived hours after the sound of footsteps, or if both steps and boots belonged to the same person, Persephone had no idea. All she knew was that, in that moment, Iason was crouching before her. He said something, called something to others. Then he was touching and moving her.

She tried to help but it was next to useless. She told her hands to reach up and take ahold of him, they just flopped to the floor like dead weights. She tried to uncurl her frame so it would be easier for Iason to take ahold of her but they refused to move and Iason had to secure his grip on her upper half and then pull her out to naturally unfold her before he could take her in his arms.

There was a rush and a feeling of sharp disorientation that turned her stomach and then Persephone was being carried, as if she were a mere babe. She was still curled, with one of Iason's arms beneath her knees and the other around her shoulders, her entire frame bundled in a heavy cloak that set the rain drops into a patter instead of a thrum. Whatever the skin or material was for the cloaks, it was keeping the rain away. With her face not covered and now free from her hidden hollow and - more significantly - pointed up towards the sky, Persephone's face was now exposed to the rainfall and, as if she were a small animal seeking shelter, she naturally turned her face into the hollow beside Iason's left pectoral muscle. There her face met shirt which was dry from his cloak but rapidly dampening and Persephone found herself huddling closer, her fingers gripping at the front of his clothes and her cheek pressing against the material. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut and her breathing was a little rough and bubbly.

She wondered how... in all the wind and rain and cold... Iason's skin could still feel so warm...

The journey back to the manor was another passage of time that Persephone was mostly unconscious of. She wasn't sure if she actually passed out for that duration or if she was so focused on that one patch of shirt - the small section of clothing, the same size as her cheek that remained dry the whole time because of Persephone's protection of it - that she just didn't notice the walk back...

The next thing she was more fully aware of were the cries and calls of Lord Gavriil as he ordered the servants around for provisions and heat. Persephone tried not to listen. Her brain was protecting her again. Closing off that which was painful. To hear Lord Gavriil's orders, to hear the servants scurry, only highlighted the difficulties and expense of effort she had forced upon the Dimitrou's with her actions. To cause these people such hassle had been the last thing she had wanted, and the only thing her mind had seemed able to make her do.

When the Lord Dorotheos asked outright if she was alright, genuine concern for her welfare in his tone, Persephone actually felt herself move for the first time as she curled into a still tighter ball and shifted to lean closer into the figure that held her. As if she were physically avoiding the conversation or question. Humiliation and perfectly appropriate fear of chastisement and embarrassment were controlling her actions.

When the Lord Gavriil ordered Iason on how best to proceed, Persephone's fiancé (for he was still technically that) didn't waste time in performing the appropriate duties. His steps were confident and assured and Persephone noted even breathing but a heavy and hard heartbeat against the side of her face.

She opened her eyes a small fraction for just a moment when she was confident that Iason was distracted with navigating the stairs and noticed that she had left dirt on his shirt where her cheek had been pressed - which meant her face was half covered in mud and that the tips of her fingers had turned an eerie blue. She also noticed the thick column of Iason's neck, the line of his collarbones flaring out on either side of it, and the fact that every inch of skin was shiny from being soaked through. Apart from the little patch that Persephone's hold had protected from the water, Iason's clothing was completely drenched and curls of damp hair could be seen from her perspective, just in the opening of the shirt, there on his chest.

She closed her eyes quickly.

It was only then that she registered the fact that Iason didn't smell as he normally did.

Not a woman to go around sniffing men - even her own fiancé - Persephone had only been in close proximity to the man a few times but each time he, just as everyone had, had his own scent about him that she had never really recognised until she was presented with its absence. The rain and damp forest had seen to Iason smelling of rainfall, dew, damp mud and fresh foliage. It was a bitter and cold scent that didn't match the man at all... Before he had always smelt… warm.

By the time the pair reached the room that had been assigned to Persephone, the chamber was bathed in light and warmth that, after so long in the cold, felt almost... itchy, as it came over to the two of them. Clearly the servants had been aware of what was happening and had prepared a fire so that it was already burning by the time the two of them returned. Three figures stood to one side whom Persephone vaguely noticed as being thin and waiflike - female - and had set up a large metal tub. Whilst she couldn't see from her position and couldn't seem to summon the enthusiasm to stretch and look, Persephone suspected there was a large cauldron of water boiling in the fire, ready to start filling the bath.

It was then that Persephone noticed the shaking and shivering had returned. Her fingers flittered as they shook and her lips trembled. She noticed a few strange noises - broken breaths - coming from her own mouth that she could do nothing to stop. The folds and joints in each of her fingers stung painfully because she was holding onto the front of Iason's shirt with a vice like grip that would not relent. Her hair was still plastered around her neck making her feel like she had been caught in a noose. The cloak was wrapped around her, restraining her limbs. Her whole frame was kept at the mercy of the man who held her but all Persephone seemed to want to do was curl in tighter and hold on harder until her hands started to shake.

She was pathetic.

She couldn't control her thoughts, nor her choices, nor her body's decision to go outside. Now, she couldn't control her shaking or the sound that was coming out of her mouth which had started out as heavy but broken exhalations and had now started to gain a little sound to them. Like a low groan in a higher than normal pitch, punching from between her lips on each exhale. Her cheeks were starting to dry with the heat of the room but Persephone finally registered two clear tracks down either side of her face where the moisture was being constantly replenished.

It was only then that she realised what the strange noise and damp cheeks were all about. For whilst her eyes had brimmed or she had teared up on several occasions in the last month or so... this was the first time in years that she had actually cried...

Fantastic. Now her humiliation was complete.

As if noticing the issue and her embarrassment, it was only a moment before the three girls in the room had been dismissed into the corridor – until they were needed.

Still in Iason’s arms, Persephone felt an unnatural and entirely foreign moment of doom and terror, as his hands seem to shift and loosen as if he wanted to set her down. Whilst she couldn’t claim deliberate control over any of her behaviour since arriving in Meganea, Persephone suddenly connected the man letting go with a rejection. The rejection of all the trouble she had caused since coming here. Trouble that she had neither wanted nor designed but knew she was responsible for anyway.

In a rush of motion – her first since arriving inside the manor – Persephone released Iason’s clothing, her left hand releasing for a moment before making another grab, this time for slightly higher on the garment. Her right hand followed. And then the pattern repeated – faster this time – as they looked for purchase around Iason’s neck. His skin was wet, her fingers slipped – she probably scratched him at one point in her haste. But she needed something. She was cold and numb and had zero control over anything. Her whole life had been taken out from under her feet. She needed to feel something…

After a slip of one hand and the scratching of another, her fingers hit around her betrothed’s neck and in a clumsy manner that had her accidentally tugging at his hair, Persephone’s torso lifted, as she pulled Iason’s head down.

Hazardously and with no finesse, Persephone’s desperation had her lips seeking that of Iason’s. Her first kiss was placed slightly off-centre, her actions taking the man by surprise so he didn’t move to make the connection easier. Her own lips – tinged blue with bold and trembling against his own – dry together into a kiss before opening again to find a better purchase. She kissed him again, this time fully on the mouth, her mouth untutored and her actions as her hands kept trying to find a good hold around his wet neck flighty and clumsy in need.

A soft whimper – somewhere between a plead and a sob - left her when she broke away for the second time, her mouth seeking his again almost instantly, as if trying to summon a response from a clearly startled Iason of Dimitrou…

Persephone found herself to enjoy the kiss, however brief it turned out to be. Whilst she had no idea why she had reacted as she had and reached out in the way that she had - clearly physical touch was some kind of coping mechanism for her - she could, in some part of her mind, enjoy the reality of the moment. Because that's what it felt like: reality. The softness of Iason's lips in stark contrast to the slight roughness of the beard he now wore... the heat of his mouth against the wet and cold sensation of his skin... The way she felt her eyes close but seemed still able to see... to see through her sense of touch; her fingertips, her lips... With her eyes closed her sense of smell heightened; the crisp foliage, the uncomfortable dampness, the bitter cold...

It was as if the kiss had sent all of her senses onto high alert. In a single moment and heartbeat, she was entirely focused, entirely aware and was having the world beat at her senses and brain to tell her it was still there. That it was still there waiting for her to engage in it.

Whether it was what she had aimed for or not, Persephone felt her mind starting to turn again... it seemed to grind at first, to bump and shift and fail to start itself up. She was just clumsily bumping her mouth into that of her betrothed's. There was no connection, no lifeline. There was desire and motivation to wake up but none of the help needed to do it.

And then, he had started to kiss her back.

It didn't matter if he was skilled in physical affection or not. Whether the kiss was a good one or a bad one. For one, Persephone was unlikely to know the difference as she had zero physical experience with men. For another, until Iason had started to respond, her mind wasn't even really interested in the kiss itself; just the desire to connect.

By the time Iason's mouth was moving against hers in a way that seemed eager at the very least, Persephone felt her thoughts starting to solidify, the speed of her mind increasing again and that heightened awareness starting to make her feel like she could, well... feel. Instead of just being numb.

It was almost the height of irony that the moment she was more cohesive and able to regulate her own thoughts and have some control over her own brain again - and would therefore be at a point where she could assess whether she was truly interesting and engaged in the kiss she had given the man that held her - that in that moment, he broke away and let her go.

Startlement, shock and a moment of rushing fear and adrenaline, had Persephone offer a sharp cry of surprise as her body was suddenly and unceremoniously dumped into the bathtub. A tub she hadn't even noticed they had approached. As if the shock had given all of that awareness and coherent thought a lightning strike of energy, Persephone found herself spluttering at the impact of water to the face as her own body caused a splash that flew back at her.

With Iason's words and her sudden awareness of the world now reignited, Persephone suddenly felt her face flame up.

Normally, she was able to resist the temptation to blush: to calm her breathing, still her body, hold herself a little differently to ensure the cooling of her skin... all talents she had been taught from a young age so that she would not give away her emotions and thoughts through a blooming in her cheeks.

Now, she might have had her own mental capacity back again, but she was still emotionally raw and her grasp on appropriate etiquette a little clumsy when she had just been dumped into neck deep water. Ergo, she was unable to stop the reaction and found herself blushing hard with awkward embarrassment.

Drawing her knees up in the water and sending her night gown swirling in a mystical swath of white around her limbs, Persephone immediately detached herself from Iason, offered a groan of regret and folded her arms over her knees, burying her face into them. The water broke over her chin but she was able to keep her face out of the water.

"Oh dear Gods." She commented, her first natural and instinctive words since she had left the palace in Athenia. "You must truly hate me." She groaned with a sense of resignation as she leaned further forward and dunked her face into the water, blowing bubbles up to the surface as if to hide from the awkwardness by drowning.

As if the flood gates had been opened, it was all coming free now. All that Iason had done for her. All that she had not done in return. All that she had done in return. What the hell had she been doing wandering around in a storm? What if Iason had been injured? What if his father became ill? What if their servants had been lost to the wrath of the wind? The Dimitrous had every right to kick her from their home just as soon as her life wasn't in danger from her own sheer stupidity.

Lifting her head and opening her eyes to witness trails of water running from her joined eyelashes and down onto the surface of the bathwater to create little ripples, Persephone knew out an unladylike exhale and sprayed still more little circles onto the water.

"I..." She what? She didn't know what she was doing? She had no control over what she was doing? She was grieving? All seemed accurate but none valid. "I'm so sorry, my Lord." She didn't even notice when her panic and fear over her own foolish actions had her addressing him with proprietary - and subservient - language. She wrapped her arms up and over her head and she pressed her brow to her knees. "Perhaps I am losing my mind."

There was a sense of elation and a loosening of the vice like grip on her heart when Iason confirmed he did not hate her. Persephone knew it was childish but physically she was able to react calmer, able to breathe easier, knowing that she hadn't reprehensibly damaged their acquaintance, friendship, whatever they had, by her foolish actions.

They sat together in almost the same position - her in the tub, and him at the side of it. There was a quiet that lingered over them for a few minutes after Iason's admittance to his reaction over his mother's death. The quiet was sad and sombre as Persephone felt her heart go out to him. She knew what it was like to lose a parent too - not just recently, of course, but at a younger age. It hit no less tragically but in a different way to a psyche still juvenile and delicate. She licked her lips uncertainly, the tiniest shifts in her movements making the water plop and shloosh in the tub, as they sat together in quiet for a moment.

With her mind now seeming to work, Persephone was able to process what he had said clearly and with a mind more objective than she had managed in the last few weeks...

"I don't think it’s a desire for the woods." She murmured in such a low voice it seemed almost meant for only her own ears. Yet, it was an answer to his words, so clearly, she was talking to him. "I think..." She paused for a moment, as if to assess her words before she spoke them. "It's easier to ignore loneliness when one is alone." She felt her brow wrinkle a little, her chin shudder. She still them both with a sharp inhale of emotion. She opened her mouth to speak, no sound came out. She tried again and the same result happened.

They sat quietly for a moment whilst she processed, chose her words, and then spoke again.

"Lord Iason I wish to thank you." She offered, her choice of title becoming more relaxed once more, but still not to the level of informality that would suggest the use of only his first name. "You have been... beyond words... since we left Athenia. And I haven't offered you appropriate thanks, nor the affection that you deserve from an intended - though, admittedly that fault goes back further than only this last week. I..." And here came the difficulty of admitting to it. To feelings she had always insisted that a monarch could not have... "I... I find it hard to express myself because I have been taught to never do so. I know that we discussed it before, but it is more than simple ideals or practices that silence my tongue on the subject of emotion. As a monarch I cannot feel. That lessons were taught to me so often that it has... become a part of me. It is no longer a conscious choice so... I find it hard to go against something so much a part of myself. But..." She paused to look around at the back of Iason's head before looking down at the water again. She was glad they were not looking at each other, or this would be infinitely harder... "-your... integrity the last week - and even before then - demands at least honesty on my part, in return so..." She took a deep and slow breath as if to steel herself.

"I have not been able to offer you true thanks for your actions, Lord Iason, because to offer thanks is to recognise the significance of an action. The significance of your action is... directly proportional to the risk and context of that action. And I..." Persephone suddenly made a growling noise in the back of her throat - a sound of frustration at herself. Her attempts at being candid were morphing into etiquette lessons; that which she was unfamiliar with steering back to what she knew. "Sorry... What I mean to say is... I could only give you a proper show of gratitude by accepting what had occurred in Athenia. And while I might not be particularly in tune with my personal feelings, I knew enough that..." She took another calming breath. "The second I acknowledged what had occurred, my mind would consider my potential future. And I knew enough to understand that I would not have been able to... hold myself together... if I came to consider that."

Persephone swallowed hard. Her voice kept cracking but she was determined to finish what she meant to say.

"It was worse after we arrived in Meganea. With... with your father, and your sister..." Her voice broke on the word "sister". Her father she had expected to lose, had accepted his death. Her sister's removal from this world had been something she could not be able to deal with properly yet. Not at all. "I knew that I had lost them, I knew it. But... It is not until you are presented with what you once had - and what others still have - that you truly realise your own loss. I..." She seemed to grasp at words again and fail.

Her search for vocabulary turned into an awkward noise and half laugh as she glanced at his head again - a head that had remained stock still. She didn't even know if he was listening or had fallen asleep with her long rambling diatribe.

"I... should stop talking." She changed her last statement to. "I had not meant to... go on in that manner. I just... I felt like you deserved an explanation for why I had failed to express my gratitude, respect and affection for your actions, Lord Iason."

And then, before the silence could stretch or the awkwardness that she assumed would come (for what could the man say, exactly, when she had just lost her babbling mind in front of him?), Persephone deliberately scooped a handful of water to splash at her face, breaking the spell of her emotional expunging with splashing sounds.

"Now..." She started again with a slightly awkward but industrious tone of voice as she shifted and worked to get herself up to standing in the tub. "I think it’s your turn in here. You'll catch your death if you stay so cold and then I'll only have more apologies to make to Lord Gavriil come morning." She gestured to the piles of clothes that had been brought in and set at the foot of the bed. "Would you please pass me a drying towel?"

When Persephone was handed the drying towel, Iason was oddly stiff and formal as he kept his eyes averted and his arms out at a high angle. It was only at that point that her drained emotions and her tired mind clicked another step into gear and she realised that she was entirely indecent. Whilst the night gown she had left the manor in was floor length and shapeless, the water had fused it to her skin, turned the white texture to an almost glass-like transparency and moulded to the lines and curves of her body. It was so thin the small, dark smear on her left hip was able to be seen through the fabric, let alone more obvious physical features.

Feeling her face flush and noticing a similar colour in the top edges of Iason's cheekbones, Persephone couldn't help a soft twitch at the corner of her mouth at the awkwardness of it all as she quickly snatched up the towel and then allowed the man to hold it in place whilst he lifted her from the tub.

Water sloshed over the wooden edge and onto the floorboards, a patter of noise and the darkening of the wood spreading across the grains. Persephone noted how pale and small her toes appeared against the mahogany tones and pulled the towel closer around her. At Iason's instruction she glanced across at the open fire where a thick bear skin rug lay inviting her to sit down. She stayed where she was standing at the foot of the bed, beside the tub, until Iason started to remove his shirt. Her eyes widening as she noted taut muscles in his lower abdomen and the small of his back, Persephone quickly spun on her heel, a free lock of wet hair spinning around to slap her in the chin as she went. She felt her face flush again.

Persephone had never seen a man naked and, more so even, never seen a man of her own class wearing less than a full chiton. There were labourers, slaves and gladiators that she had witnessed or passed when her carriage had moved through town or when she had opened the gladiator games, but she had been taught and trained to look over such nakedness. To allow her gaze to pass over it without attention.

Here, in a room that was now almost uncomfortably warm (or perhaps that was just her constant blushing), in an intimate setting with a man she had been due to marry, it was harder to adopt the objective and chaste mindset of a simple observer.

She had darted around before seeing much more than the dual lines of muscle that drew together into the small of his back and the mirrored set to his front. She had been surprised to note a line of hair down from his navel and now tried to eradicate the image from her mind.

She touched a hand to her neck in order to cool the skin against her damp palm.

Maybe talking was better than silence after all...

"Perhaps..." She answered in a noncommittal comment regarding his suggestion that they should get used to such intimacy. She glanced down at her hands as she fiddled with her towel's edge, listening to the shifting of the water as Iason lowered himself into the tub to warm up. She stayed where she was, her back to him, the toes of one foot curling up over the other. "You seem still very set on marrying me, Lord Iason." She responded, before swallowing. "I meant what I said before... Not in the way that it came out but... I meant that I did not wish to shackle you. You must know that you me-" On her last sentence she had turned to look over her shoulder with the vehemence of her words, but quickly turned back as if having forgotten what she would see. She cleared her throat. "You must know that you owe me nothing. Whilst your determination to carry on our arrangement is a sign of your integrity and generosity and is only commendable, I no longer have anything to give to you or your family. A family whom I now respect more for meeting them than I already did upon meeting you. I..." She pulled the towel tight around her. "I do not think that I have much to offer you without my title or home and had thought to speak with Lord Gavriil in the morning to end our arrangement." She gave a sound that might have been something like a soft laugh at the irony of the situation. "I find myself too fond of you to shackle you to a marriage without benefit to you or your loved ones."