The Breaking

I've learned to enjoy the silence and stillness of solitude in the years I've worked this farmstead on my own. But now I must share my sanctuary with someone I despise. I must figure out what to do with you.

Now that your fever has broken, you spend the day deep in slumber, catching up on the rest you didn't get in delirium. The hut thrums with the threat of your presence. I keep my eyes on you and a hand near my knife whenever I have to

The gods are fickle. The gods are cruel. And yet there is one law they all agree on, the one that can't be broken. Xenia. Visitors must be welcomed with hospitality. A simple law, as such things go. But does xenia apply to an old enemy who appears

I take the papyrus that contains my freedom, the purse full of drachmae and jewels, and go home. Mykonos has changed in five years. The salt-stained docks creak under the weight of people and cargo, and the agora has spilled into the surrounding streets, its merchants offering honeyed wine, jewelry,

Sleep forsakes the damned. What good is slumber when the Underworld is filled with the eternally awake? Restlessly, I drift across the long hours of night, trapped in the grey mists between Erebos and the earth. Restlessly, I twist in bedsheets that entangle my limbs. You've abandoned me

You don't bring me a contract, but I am your wife. There's no announcement, no ceremonial greeting at the hearth, no feast. I've no family to give me away; you seem to have no family to welcome me. No need to sweep me into

We don't speak of that moment on the balcony. I act as if it never happened. I never took control, never made you so vulnerable—and you act as if that's the truth. But your moods swing like an anchor-stone at the end of a line,

That winter is one of cold clarity. Days of hard blue skies summon nights that gleam with frost. From you, I learn it's uncommon for Attika to find itself wrapped so tightly in Boreas's chill embrace. It's well beyond my own level of comfort

When I awaken the next morning, you're still Deimos Autokratōr. You're also still asleep, curled on your side with the blanket thrown carelessly over your body. A thick, ropy scar slashes across the outside of your arm at the shoulder, and silvery lines curve around your

That night's symposium isn't a grand spectacle in your megaron, or an opulent display in one of the homes of the aristoi. Instead, you bring me to a grove of trees rooted at the foot of the Akropolis.