Beautiful women drifted about the throne room, throwing fawning gazes in his direction with their shoulders bared just so, their voices soft and musical, and all he could focus on was this man’s teeth. One tooth, in particular. It jutted out, desperate to be noticed among the rest of the otherwise unremarkable set. The aged advisor’s upper lip hardly managed to close and Stephanos found himself waiting between every syllable to see if the man’s lips would come together, or if the errant tooth would force the man’s lisp to continue to dizzying new levels.

“Thank you, your majesthy,” the old man creaked into a bow before straightening what he could of his back. Stephanos blinked.

“You’re welcome,” the response was almost mechanical.

The advisor had once been a tall man but already old at Stephanos’s birth. Now, as he stood hobbled and bent before the throne, leaning on a lacquered black cane with his blue chiton hanging from his thin shoulders as though they were curtain rods, Stephanos wondered if he’d wither and die right there. The man’s skin was wrinkled parchment and blue veins were visible over his temples as though he was starting to become translucent.

“It’sth not often that I have thutch attenthion lavisthed on me from the young,” the old man smiled indulgently. Stephanos shifted, jerking his eyes away from the tooth and up as far as the man’s veiny, bulbous nose. “And I do sthay young, your majesthy. You probably don’t feel it.” He placed his bony hand over his heart while Stephanos unconsciously brushed his fingers against his own nose. “Not with our dearesth king’sth passthing...and your brother missthing. Godsth know he musth be wandering the banksth of Hadesth right now…”

“Thank you, Sisyphius,” he jumped up from the throne and clamped his hand on the round of the old man’s shoulder. “I think about it all the time.”

“I’m sthure, my king, I’m sthure,” Sisyphius peered at him through milky blue eyes and a wide smile, as though they were discussing his endearing mother, rather than the real possibility that Zacharias would wait a hundred years or more to cross the Styx. No body meant no coins and no coins meant no way to pay the ferryman.

“Well...if there’s nothing more,” he said firmly, wholly ignoring anything else the man was trying say. With one arm around Sisyphius’s shoulders and the other hand making sure that the advisor’s hand remained on his cane, Stephanos half carried him out of the throne room at speeds the old man hadn’t been able to do in twenty years. “Have a nice afternoon!” he deposited the old man in the hallway, facing the front gates. All his advisor would have to do was shuffle the last 300 yards or so toward the entrance and he’d find his litter ready to take him home.

Court was done for the afternoon. Through the doorway he thought he could see a few glances thrown his way but he couldn’t bear to go back into that nest of vipers. Pia had mentioned something about riding and he wasn’t about to spend another second in this marble cage. He hadn’t been able to leave or to ride since the circus. From morning until night, his entire day was planned for him by either himself, Irakles, or the kingdom’s needs. Obviously his father had found time to enjoy life but whatever shortcuts his father had, he’d yet to learn them.

He moved into the breezy corridor with its one side an open balcony running the length of the hall and its other side sharing a wall with the throne room. From here he could see the roof of the stables. Excitement he hadn’t dared to entertain bloomed and he started walking faster. A woman fluttered into his path, her gown swishing about her legs and both arms held wide for him.

“Mother,” he said, side stepping her and continuing on his way.


“Stephanos, wait a moment,” Elise called, hurrying after him. “Irakles wants to discuss the financial state of the southern district-”

“Look,” he whipped around, catching her by surprise. She nearly collided with him but he took her by her upper arms and held her out. Her jeweled hands grasped air as she tried to reach for him. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do? I really do. But I need to go.”

All at once, Elise’s vapid expression rearranged itself to alarm. “Go? Go where? N-no. No, my son, you stay in the palace. Where it’s safe. Where is there to go?”

“I’m just taking a ride with Olympia,” he said gently, not sure whether or not it was safe to release her. She pressed against his hands as though she wanted to embrace him and this told him to tighten his grip.

“She needs to stay inside! The baby!” Elise broke free with surprising force and he found himself nearly bowled over as she flung herself against his chest. “No, Stephanos. Stay here. It’s going to rain. See?” His gaze followed her shaking finger at the ominous cloud bank on the horizon. He wanted to argue with her and remind her that the palace wasn’t safe either. But that seemed a little cruel. Instead, he patted her back and held her away from him again, planting a kiss on her forehead.

“We’ll be back before the storm.”

“If you love me you won’t go!” she all but screamed.

He stopped in his tracks. Slowly he turned around, both hands balling into fists. Elise did not quail under the icy gaze he leveled upon her. Instead she squared up her shoulders and raised her chin. “We’re not going to play those games anymore,” he said evenly, attempting to keep his temper in check. “I’m already being manipulated by so many. I don’t need it from you too.”

Elise had the grace to blush. “Well. I’m not going to just stand by and let the two of you make silly decisions. Give me your arm, Stephanos. I’m coming with you.”

“Coming where?” he asked sharply, stepping just out of her reach.

“Wherever you’re going. I’m going to talk some sense into Olympia. You were meeting her, I assume?” Elise adopted an imperious tone she reserved for when she was angry. She eyed him until his shoulders sagged and he allowed her to take his arm. “There,” she said, patting him. “Now. Lead on.”

“Pia is a match for you,” he warned.

“We’ll see,” Elise said cheerfully.

Together they walked through the palace toward the stables. He was not uneasy about his mother’s chances at convincing Olympia not to ride, but he didn’t want Pia flustered either. This was supposed to be a pleasant diversion that was quickly turning into a fight to do what he pleased.

Elise floated along beside him, blithely sure that she would be able to keep her daughter in law, and thereby her son, indoors. When they made it to the stables, she let go of Stephanos’s arm and wandered into the stables. “Olympia, my love. Don’t you look darling today? You’re glowing.” She was at Pia’s side quicker than Stephanos had assumed she could move. Her hand was splayed out possessively on Olympia’s belly and her head rested on the girl’s shoulder.

Stephanos stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head and watching Olympia with a ‘I swear to god, I didn’t want her here’ expression on his face.

Elise waved off Olympia’s words when she was invited to ride. “No, no, you misunderstand. I’m not going to ride.” She patted her own hair as she looked her daughter in law over. “I came to implore you to help me convince Stephanos that the two of you - the three of you,” she smiled down at Olympia’s belly, “Really shouldn’t go.”

Stephanos smirked as Pia glanced at him. He’d known how it would turn out which was why he’d finally yielded to his mother’s demand of coming along. There was no way that either he or his wife would give up this rare opportunity for freedom. A freedom both of them had enjoyed until now. Whether she had known what being queen would entail or not, he’d known for himself how it would be once king; his days of leisure were gone.

"I assure you, all will be well. Stephanos will take great care of us and we won't go far or be gone long."

Elise frowned and stepped back. She whirled around to Stephanos and then looked back at Olympia, clearly at a loss. “But it’s going to rain!” she huffed.

“We’re not going far,” Stephanos reminded her, the easy smile returning. “Here. I promise you’ll be the first to know when we arrive back.” He took hold of her shoulders and pulled her to him, hugging her. A month or so ago, before the travesty that had befallen them all, she would have shoved away from him in a fit of temper equal to his own - Elise was where the violent outbursts originated in her children - but now she simply clung to him.

“Well,” she mumbled, her voice watery. “If you have no care for your mother’s concern.” He let go as she wiped at her eyes. “I won’t be at dinner tonight.” It was her way of punishing her errant children for their disobedience; depriving them of her illustrious presence. With a last look at Olympia and at the swell of her stomach, Elise strode away in a flurry of fluttering fabric and self righteous irritation.

“Good for you,” he said to Pia, though his gaze was on his mother’s retreating form. “She likes to cry to get her way.”

At last, when he was sure that Elise was truly gone, he turned back to Pia. Aside from the slaves mucking out horse stalls several paces away, they were alone. He walked over to the horse she’d been petting and looked it over. “Taking that one?” he asked and waited for her response before he looked around for his own horse. There were several that he owned; Achnos, a proud, terribly fast horse with a gorgeous pale coat was the prize of his collection. But today there was no call for speed and he knew his horse’s temperament; the beast would not be satisfied to walk.

Instead he chose a mild roan mare that had been used for Gianna at one time. Rather than track down one of the servants, he led the horse out of the stall himself and readied it with the ease of one used to working with horses. This was not uncommon. He hardly knew of a Taengean who did not know how to outfit their own horse for a ride.

He waited until she was ready, offered to help her onto her horse, and waited until she was situated before mounting his own. Though they were, for all intents and purposes, alone, they were followed at a distance by guards. This could not be helped. And as they rode through the city on the way to the forests outside of Vasilidon, he was glad for their presence. However, as soon as he was clear of other people, he intended to lose the guards as fast as possible and he was sure his wife wouldn’t mind if they did.

While they were stuck with them, he would make the best of the situation. Reining up beside her, he looked her over. “How are you adjusting?” he asked. “To...everything.” He wanted to know not only about the baby but about the palace in general. “Is everyone treating you well? The way they should? Court can be a snake den. But you know that.” He added quickly, remembering she was not a novice to court intrigue.

They were still in the city. With two guards leading the way and four behind, no one could get to either of them but that didn’t stop people from staring as he and Olympia rode passed. The expressions on most of his subject’s faces were open and pleased. Some eyes lingered on him, most were on his wife. From a few of the nobility though, there was scorn or outright distaste.

When he turned to look at her again, he smiled at the look of surprise but it faded a little when she admitted to having difficulty. They’d been married a few weeks and he hadn’t given a second’s thought to how she was coping with her sudden elevation. Instead he had been in a deadlock war with Irakles over everything to do with running the kingdom. There’d scarcely been time to think about anything else.

At the mention of rumors, he rolled his eyes and turned his gaze forward again. “But you have heard them,” he said drily. A deep sigh escaped him but he let it go to smile and give a short wave to a girl, jumping at her mother’s side and waving to them. It was to Olympia that the girl looked and Stephanos that the mother’s attention was caught by. “I heard one.” After a moment he looked back to his wife. “You’re carrying Zacharias’s baby and that I am covering for him.”

He forced out a short laugh but the rumor wasn’t funny. The only interesting part about it was that Stephanos was positive that his brother had no children at all. That rumor he paid no attention. Clearly the baby was his. A smile ghosted his face as the stray thought that he was at least better than his older brother at something crossed his mind.

“We don’t do anything in the proper way,” he smirked and reined his horse close enough so that he could brush her leg with his knee before moving away again. “We can be successful,” he lied. It was more that he wanted to be, rather than thought it would actually happen.

The city slipped away and trees began to surround them.

“I hope our son is healthy. But while Irakles lives, I will never be happy.” His expression darkened as he thought of his uncle; the man he had no doubt had a hand in his father and brother’s deaths. There just wasn’t proof. It was infuriating. “You know he smirks at me when he thinks no one is looking?” he complained. “Watch for it, next time you’re around him. And this ‘helpful’ thing he’s doing? It’s all horseshit. Well...I mean it is helpful but the way he goes about it just…” Stephanos choked the reins in his white knuckled fists.

“I’ll get him,” he said softly. Then he smiled malevolently, his eyes on something no one else could see. “When our son is born, he’ll act. And I’ll be ready.”

When she reached out, brushing her fingertips over his arm, he came back to himself and looked over at her. The mere thought of Irakles was enough to send him into something between rage and anxiety. His uncle was a problem that he was not allowed or able to deal with. Every day was a constant fight to be civil to the man while other people were around, and also not to fall prey to his uncle’s honeyed words. The more time passed, the more he found himself wanting to believe Irakles really did have nothing to do with the deaths. Except, he knew better. More than that, he knew that to try and broker peace with the murderer of his father besmirched Zenon’s memory.

While he knew his father prized peace, he could not imagine that his father would want him to stand by and make nice with his killer with no justice to be had.

"What is it that bothers you so? Do you really believe he would kill his own blood?"

His eyes fell to her stomach as she guarded it with her hand. Without consideration for her feelings, or even contemplating that it would make her more fearful, he said, “Yes. I think he’d bathe in it if it got him the throne.”

She didn’t believe him. Instead she went on to try and ease his mind, tell him that Irakles was a man who just needed power and control. He shook his head against the very notion. Irakles’s smirk at the funeral was an image branded into his mind. It was one he liked to think about every day; it helped keep the lies separated from the truth. No one who was innocent smiled like that.

When she told him to allow Irakles to think that he had the power behind the throne, he wanted to laugh but he bit the inside of his cheek instead. The truth, if he cared to admit it to himself, was that Irakles really did have control. Stephanos knew he was fighting an uphill battle to regain it but for every bit of ground he gained, either his mother or someone else swiped his feet out from underneath him and betrayed him to his uncle. It was all under the guise of ‘help’. From the people he loved most.

Instead of answering her, he forced out a smile and nodded. He was used to being alone in his theory that Irakles was the murderer by now.

They cleared the city as thunder rumbled distantly overhead. One of the guards asked about going back but Stephanos merely waved the man away. “It’s rain,” was all he said. What his wife had said back in the stables was right; there was no harm in getting a little wet from summer rain.

When they were completely cut off from the city by trees, Stephanos ordered all of the guards to stay at the tree’s edge. The head guard tried to reason with him but his will was iron. “There are no assassins in the trees,” he said. “No one knew we were riding today.” Ever since the circus, he’d tried to keep all his plans entirely secret; from the wedding to this ride, nothing that did not have to be common knowledge was kept private.

“Come on,” he said to Pia once the guards unhappily obeyed. “I’m in the mood to be lost for a while.”

A fat drop of rain splattered on his forearm into a thousand pieces. The little beads rolled along the contours of his muscle as the wind pushed against his skin. He hadn’t expected Pia to work up to a canter but he didn’t argue with the pace. Truth be told, he wanted to push his horse into a gallop but that would be dangerous and the last thing he wanted was for his pregnant wife to be in peril over something as silly as riding. Against advice, no less.

The dark of the storm was still a few minutes away. They were on borrowed time as they rode under the canopy, dry and comfortable. He breathed in deeply, loving the cleansing scent of rain. There was nothing he wanted so much as to be washed away-to forget everything and let it all go.

They brought the horses to a slower pace and walked beside each other for a minute or so before Pia spoke up. He glanced sharply over at her when she said she believed him. “You do?” he asked. A flood of affection for her welled up in his chest.

Though he was by no means a cold person, the feeling was an unfamiliar one when unconnected to family. For the women he slept with, there didn’t and usually wasn’t any sort of real attachment. She became something else to him in that moment - elevated above her ‘social climber’ status. And he believed, in that moment, that she really might be able to care for him. After all, there was nothing left for her to gain. He’d already given her everything she and her family had been grasping for.

Thunder broke and Stephanos laughed. “So does Zeus,” he said, in reference to her believing him as he looked up into the branches sliding by. A few stray rain drops splashed over his face and shoulders. Another roll of thunder and the rain began in earnest. Their protection would soon be gone.

“He hasn’t been bothering you, has he? Irakles, I mean,” he said. Reining his horse closer, he reached out and brushed a drop of rain slipping down her arm.

“Perhaps he thinks I'm too simple to be of much use."

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “Therein lies his mistake.” His gaze flicked to her stomach and a smile ghosted his lips. “Plans have been foiled by women before. And you’re clever.” A little too clever, if the truth were told. “But no more talk of Irakles. I came out here with you to get away from him. Not to bring his apparition with us.”

The partial protection of the tree canopy above was failing. Drops slid through the branches faster and harder. He barely noticed the rain starting to drench them both. They rode on and for a little while, it seemed like the rain might have already exhausted itself.

By the time the horses needed rest, there was little more than a drizzle coming through the boughs overhead. He dismounted his horse and tethered the beast to a low hanging branch before going over to her. Whether she needed the help or not, he was there to give it. His hands settled on her waist and he lifted her from the horse’s back. Once she was on the ground, he didn’t step away to give her space.

“I lied when I said we wouldn’t be gone long,” he told her. “Promise you won’t say anything?” he held up his hand for her to shake, arching his eyebrow at her. Another peel of thunder cracked over their heads. They were shielded from the lightning but if they moved much further in, they’d find a clearing that was quickly filling with water as the rain increased to a downpour.

Like her, he didn’t mind the rain; in fact, he enjoyed it. There was something purifying in it. As though the longer he stood under clouds sent by the gods, the more of his sins and worries might be washed away. And he wanted to be out here with her, she who he had married, knowing full well it would paint a target on her back.

“Walk with me?” he asked, his eyes lingering on her mouth as a grin crossed his.

He raised his eyebrows as she pressed a kiss to his cheek. It was the kind of playfulness they’d had before - something that had been lacking for what felt like eternity. She took his hand, lacing their fingers together, and told him to lead on. Well then.

Glancing around, he took stock of where they were. While he thought he’d been taking a random path, he must have unconsciously brought her this way; a place he’d been many times. Without a word, he tugged her along behind him and then drew her up so that they were walking side by side. The drizzle was gaining strength.

Fat raindrops splashed into his hair and onto his face and shoulders. By the time they saw the structure through the trees, they were soaked. Timeworn stone walls rose up, hinting at a once grand temple. Where a doorway had once been was now a cavernous hole, taking up half the wall.

Around the outside, weather beaten statues ringed the splintered portico. Some looked like they could have been dancing while others raised their arms toward the sky. More of them dotted the inner sanctum and were visible from a good ways away; white figures inside a shadowed little doll house. These were better preserved. Parts of the roof were gone, allowing waterfalls of rain to cascade down and create pools and little rivers at their feet.

He squeezed her hand, watching her take it in. They were stopped at the entrance, taking shelter under an overhang. The path before them into the temple’s interior would lead them into more rain before they’d find shelter again inside a large room with many windows and a leaf strewn floor. Once it had been bathed in sunlight but on days like today, its light was muted to a soft white.

“What do you think?” he asked. “Or have you been here before?” This place wasn’t so much a secret as mostly forgotten and certainly out of the way. “I think it used to be Apollo’s temple. Before the new one was built in the city. Go on,” he let go of her hand to press on her lower back, gently encouraging her to walk. “Look around. I think there’s a lyre around here somewhere. Unless Xene came back to get it.”