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The wedding is the worst day of Mydei’s life.
Oh, the ceremony is fine. It’s as grand as any Kremnoan wedding, with food and wine and dancing and fighting and everything he’d always dreamed of having at a celebration. And his clothes are beautiful, and the food is delicious, and the crowd is happy. The war is over. His kingdom is his again. And yet Mydei hates it, hates it all, because—
“I’m not hungry,” Phainon repeats, for what must be the fifth time tonight. He pushes away the plate expressionlessly. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”
Mydei sits down next to him, on the raised platform looking out over the ballroom. “You know my name,” he says quietly, with eyes only for him. “Why don’t you use it?”
Phainon’s shoulders stiffen, just barely. If he hadn’t fought alongside him so closely, he might not have noticed.
“You used it before,” Mydei pushes, against his own better judgment. “You always called me by name, when we were—”
“That was different,” Phainon interrupts sharply. Mydei is so relieved to finally hear emotion in his voice that he doesn’t even mind that it’s anger. “I was under the impression we were equals. You never bothered to correct me.”
“We are equals. Was that not the point of getting married?”
Phainon’s eyes narrow and he actually turns to face Mydei for the first time all night. “That’s not—”
Mydei reaches out to touch his face. Phainon blinks, but lets him. They stare at each other in silence for a few moments, Mydei’s hand on his cheek and Phainon’s posture so uncomfortably stiff that it makes Mydei’s chest hurt.
At long last Mydei lets his hand fall back down without doing anything. “We should call it a night.”
Phainon makes half a frown.
“Is that not what you want?” Mydei asks, a little surprised. He thought Phainon would be eager to get away from the crowds. Clearly he’s uncomfortable out here, unused to all the attention.
Something odd happens on Phainon’s face, like he’s eaten something sour but wants to appear polite. Eventually he says, “I want whatever you want, Your Majesty.”
Mydei huffs a sigh. Back to his word games. But Phainon has had a long day—they both have—so maybe it can be forgiven. “Let’s head back, then. No one will miss us.”
Phainon’s mouth twitches. He follows Mydei out of the reception hall and down the castle corridors in silence.
“This is it,” Mydei says when they reach his chambers.
Phainon looks at him carefully, like he’s calculating something. Mydei has never been on the receiving end of that look; it unnerves him a little. “The king’s chambers are on the top floor.”
“I don’t want them,” Mydei admits. He’d tried walking into them, just once. The king’s chambers still smelled like his late father’s cigar smoke. He caught one whiff and walked right back out. “This is a duke’s suite, I think. But I liked it more, so it’s ours now.”
“Ours,” says Phainon quietly. The tension in his shoulders softens minutely.
Mydei could cry in relief. Finally, something is going right today. “Our quarters,” he says, grinning. “Reminds you of something, doesn’t it?”
Phainon makes a breathy half-laugh through his nose as he walks into the rooms, looking around. “Much nicer than the war camps, but it is very nostalgic, yes. How quickly do you think you’ll tire of me this time?”
“Never,” Mydei says softly. “I should hope I’ll never tire of you.”
Phainon looks at him skeptically, eyebrows raised in what looks like concealed amusement. “You’re awfully sweet today. What’s with you?”
“I can’t be sweet to you on our wedding night?”
The smile Phainon’s mouth moves into is glorious.
Encouraged by his reactions, Mydei leans in closer, enough to have his breath ghosting across Phainon’s mouth, and murmurs, “I’ll be even sweeter to you in our wedding bed, my consort.”
The instant their mouths touch, Phainon freezes.
Mydei pulls away. “Too much?”
“I’m—not feeling well,” Phainon says stiffly. “I might be sick.”
Mydei blinks. Phainon’s tone isn’t believable at all; he’s never been good at lying about his emotions. The panic in his eyes gives him away. “If you don’t want to have sex, you can just say so,” he says, moving to give him a few more inches of space. “I don’t mind.”
Phainon sits down on the left side of the bed and looks at a fixed point somewhere along the wall. “That’s not—well, you know. Not tonight, at least. I’m sorry, Your Majesty. It’s not an excuse. I really do feel unwell.”
“It’s fine,” Mydei says. “I really—well, it’s not like we need to have heirs anyway, so what does it matter? It doesn’t have to be now. I can wait.”
Phainon makes an agonized little choking sound.
Mydei is at his side instantly. That sound can’t be good—he already said he was ill, and now this? Has he been poisoned? But he barely ate anything all day. Was he already poisoned before the ceremony? He places one hand on Phainon’s back and asks, “Are you alright?”
“Fine,” Phainon says, brushing away his touch. “I think I’ll rest now, if that’s alright.”
He turns away. Something in Mydei’s chest aches sweetly, like a long-forgotten scar acting up with the rain. “I can help you undress.”
“No, thank you,” says Phainon, already reaching for the ties at his waist with his deft fingers. “I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Mydei says quietly to his new husband’s turned back. “Good night, Phainon.”
The soft shuffling of fabric is his only response.
***
Phainon was already a commander by the time Mydei joined the war. He was in Mydei’s first battle: some barren, icy plain near Aidonia. The royal forces there were weak. Mydei tore the battlefield apart nearly by himself. After the fact Phainon walked up to him in the middle of the wreckage, and said, “Impressive.”
Mydei, still high off adrenaline and burning for a challenge, turned on him like a ravenous vulture. “You’re calling me impressive?” he asked, crossing his arms. “I’ve yet to see you unsheathe that sword, Commander. Who says you’re in any position to judge?”
Every soldier on that battlefield backed away from him. Phainon, however, broke out into a sharp smile. “I was hoping you’d say that.” He drew his blade and held it steady. “Duel me, new recruit. And we’ll see who’s laughing afterwards.”
Mydei lunged.
They fought on that frozen wasteland for hours. Mydei had expected Phainon to be on the defensive, waiting for him to strike first, but Phainon didn’t hold back at all; he swung his claymore mercilessly, like he was facing a true opponent. Mydei kept up with him until he was so exhausted that all it took, in the end, was one blow from Phainon’s sword to knock him down into the snow.
Phainon’s shadow blocked out the light above him. He drew closer. For a second Mydei thought this would be his last moment alive. His heart raced.
“I was right,” Phainon said. “You’re impressive.”
Mydei looked up at him and saw snowflakes on his eyelashes. “You are too,” he said, a little dizzy. Maybe he was bleeding.
Phainon sheathed his sword again and held out one hand. “As payment for losing this duel, I demand that you tell me your name.”
And then Mydei had to make a choice.
Growing up, Mydei had no idea he was a prince. Princes lived in castles; he lived on the run. Princes owned everything they could lay eyes on; he had nothing to his name but his unfaltering heart and his petty pride. Besides, his earliest memory was being dunked in a river by Perdikkas and walking around in wet clothes until his mother finally noticed and laughed her head off. No one would do that to a prince. All his life he was just Mydei. Then the Amphorean Royal Guard murdered his mother, and suddenly he was royalty.
When he joined the war he wanted to be Mydei, the humble soldier leading the charge. If he told anyone about his heritage, he would undoubtedly become Mydeimos, the crown prince opposing his father. In twenty years Mydei’s heart had faltered from time to time, but his petty pride was still alive and kicking. He wanted to rise through the ranks on his own merit, not the merit of his name.
So the moment their hands touched, he made up his mind.
“Mydei,” he said, as Phainon pulled him to his feet again. “My name. Just Mydei.”
Phainon smiled. “Mydei,” he repeated. “I’m Phainon. Don’t bother calling me ‘Commander’—I want you to use my name, not my title. Besides…” Here he paused, giving Mydei a charmingly devious side glance. “If I have my way, you’ll be my equal soon. You should practice, right?”
“Your equal?” Mydei asked, stumbling over his own feet in the snow. “You think I’ll become a commander?”
Phainon tipped his head back to the bleak sky and laughed.
“It was a genuine question,” Mydei muttered.
“Don’t worry,” Phainon said, slinging his arm around Mydei’s shoulders. “I believe in you.”
Mydei hadn’t been touched at all since his mother died. He’d spent three months searching for the resistance army, alone on the road, with no physical contact. Phainon’s touch felt odd. It sent warmth spiraling through him.
They walked back together. Mydei stumbled a few times; each time, Phainon reached out to steady him. He didn’t apologize. Mydei wasn’t completely sure whether the leg injury was from the first battle or from their duel. He hoped it was the latter—he wanted to remember that fight, to keep a memento of it on his body. To stumble from the effort he expended fighting a worthy opponent. To let Phainon catch him whenever he faltered.
“Come spar with me again sometime,” Phainon told him, when they finally reached the war camp again. “I’ll go easier, if you like. Let you win a few times.”
“Not a chance, Commander.”
“Call me by my name.”
Mydei had forgotten about that. His throat caught a little. “Phainon,” he said, quieter than he intended.
“Mydei,” said Phainon, grinning at him. “I’ll go harder, then. You won’t know what’s hit you.”
Mydei realized, only then, that he’d been smiling the whole time. He leaned in a little and looked at Phainon on equal ground. “Bring it on.”
The next day Mydei was made into a commander, and that was that.
***
Mydei usually wakes up first. It comes as no surprise when he blinks his eyes open to see Phainon still sound asleep in their bed, his face peaceful save for the tiny crinkle between his brows. Mydei reaches over to smooth it away with his thumb, but the moment his hand leaves, it comes back again. He sighs and drags himself out of bed as quietly as possible. Phainon usually wakes not long after him, but he deserves the extra rest today.
To that end, he dresses quietly and slips out of their room. Mydei thinks back to the dinner Phainon didn’t eat and heads to the dining hall alone.
Few people are awake at this hour. But the early-morning light makes the castle halls look more pleasant, and Mydei doesn’t mind being the only one walking around. There are only two waitstaff in the dining hall, and no one who is actually dining. Mydei gives both staff a salute as he approaches.
Both of them bow their heads as he approaches. “Your Majesty,” says the woman with greying hair.
Mydei takes a second to process that she’s referring to him. “Morning,” he says, a little stiffly. “Whatever you’re already making is alright. Maybe some oat porridge too, with jam in it. I’ll take it back with me.”
The younger-looking staff gives him a small, knowing smile. “For the King Consort?”
“Yes,” Mydei says slowly, a little confused. Who else would he be bringing food to? There’s only one person in his quarters besides himself.
“Not planning to let him out of bed today, huh?”
Mydei frowns. Then he remembers that—last night, their wedding night, they were supposed to—
“He’s just feeling unwell,” Mydei says sharply, half with irritation and half with guilt. “Phainon is not a thing to be confined.”
The younger waiter bows to him, so deeply that they’re nearly parallel to the floor. “Your Majesty. I didn’t mean anything by it. Please forgive me.”
Mydei sighs. He can’t get the wrinkle between Phainon’s eyebrows off his mind. All the fight abruptly bleeds out of him. “It’s fine. I know you didn’t. Just bring me the breakfast, please.”
They give him a tray with spelt flour pancakes and fruits and the most beautiful bowl of oat porridge he’s ever seen. Mydei looks at the gorgeous food a little sadly, and wonders how much he would have given to have this back in the war camps. He walks back to his royal quarters in silence.
It’s been long enough that he figures Phainon will be awake, so he knocks twice on the door. No response.
Well, maybe he’s doing something else, like brushing his hair. He pushes open the door and says, “It’s me. I brought—”
But Phainon is still in bed.
Mydei frowns. He sets down the tray on the low table at the front of the room and walks over to the bed. Phainon sleeps facing the door, which means Mydei can see him fairly easily. The closer he draws, the worse he looks. His forehead is creased with heavy lines, his cheeks are flushed, and sweat is beading on his temples.
“Phainon,” he says softly, kneeling beside the bed. “Phainon? Are you alright?”
Phainon slowly blinks open his eyes. They’ve never been so clear blue, so vacant. “Morning,” he says thickly, blinking his way through what appears to be excruciating pain.
“Lay back down,” Mydei rushes to say, pressing a hand against his shoulder. “Don’t get up. You’re unwell.”
“I’m—” Phainon struggles weakly against his hand, gaining absolutely zero traction. “I’m fine,” he tries again, very unconvincingly.
“You’re feverish.”
“I’m not ill,” Phainon says, a little more firmly. “It’s nothing. I swear it’ll pass.”
“It must be something. I know what you’re like when you’re well, and this isn’t it.”
Phainon looks at him, then quickly tears his eyes away again. “It’s nothing,” he repeats. “Just stress.”
“Stress,” Mydei repeats. It makes sense. But in the year he’s known Phainon, he’s never once been this unwell. Never once made himself sick with worry. Even when they were fighting a war, when they were outnumbered ten to one, he was calm. Is marrying Mydei somehow worse than all of that?
“You brought something,” Phainon says, trying yet again to sit up. “Breakfast?”
“Only if you want it.” Mydei glances back over to the table, where the tray is still warm. “It can wait.”
Phainon frowns minutely. “Don’t we have a schedule?”
“Not for today. Aglaea said we should take the day off. For celebrating as newlyweds.”
“Oh,” Phainon says. If he wasn’t already flushed pink from his fever, he might have blushed.
“So you can rest. Whenever you’d like something, just call on me.”
Phainon looks at him like he doesn’t get it. “I can tend to myself. I’m not that weak. Just a bit dizzy is all.”
Mydei thinks he looks far more than a bit dizzy. “Like hell,” he says. “I’m staying here, and you’re going to tell me anything you need. You’ll be fine. The wedding is over—nothing went wrong—so you can stop being stressed.”
“You could summon one of the royal staff,” Phainon says weakly.
Mydei brushes a stray lock of Phainon’s hair from his face, tucking it behind his ear carefully. “Phainon, I want to do this.”
Phainon closes his eyes, like he can’t bear to look at him any longer.
“I want to take care of you,” Mydei tells him, sounding a little pathetic even to his own ears. “I’ve told you that a thousand times. Whether that means watching your back, or staying by your side to support you.”
Phainon sighs through his nose. He still doesn’t open his eyes. “I’m going back to sleep,” he says. “If you’re gone when I wake, I’ll be just fine.”
“I won’t be,” Mydei says.
Phainon rolls onto his other side, so that all Mydei can see is his back. Then he pulls the covers all the way over his shoulders, effectively reducing him to the splatter of pale hair on his pillow.
Mydei watches him while he eats breakfast alone. Then he sits by the side of the bed and waits.
And waits.
And waits.
Phainon doesn’t wake up.
Eventually, when the shadows start to stretch long across the floor, Mydei can’t stay any longer. He leaves a glass of water by the bedside and a note explaining that he won’t be gone long, only a few hours at most, just to the Kremnoan family library and then to the dining hall for dinner with his new advisors.
He’s only in the library for about thirty minutes. Aglaea told him he didn’t have to assume any practical responsibility of governing, that he’d be mostly ceremonial and that their council would make most of the decisions alongside him. But he asked to be involved, and she acquiesced. He wants to get the education he never had as a kid. So he picks out some books on geography—his most fatal weakness, having grown up without ever looking at a map—and takes them with him. Then he heads to dinner.
The new council of advisors is made of his former war comrades, Aglaea and Anaxa and Castorice and Mortis and Hyacine. By the time he arrives, all of them are already chatting amicably in the dining hall.
Mydei silently takes his seat at the head of the table. His father used to have an enormous table, long enough to fill the whole hall, but his replacement is much smaller. Mydei sits on the same level as all of them. It feels nicer this way. More even.
“King Mydeimos,” says Castorice, nodding to him in greeting.
“King Mydeimos,” says Hyacine, giving him a little wave and an enormous smile. “Hello!”
“Mydei,” says Anaxa, because he doesn’t give a fuck. Aglaea very obviously kicks him under the table. His smile only grows wider.
“Just ‘Mydei’ is fine in council meetings,” he clarifies. “As long as you all don’t mind being called by your names, too. I don’t want to feel too distant. We’re making the decisions together.”
“Mydei, then,” says Aglaea calmly, like she wasn’t just kicking Anaxa for saying the exact same thing. “I hope you’ve had a restful day. Our discussions were very fruitful. I expect that in the coming month or two, you’ll be working with Anaxa and Castorice to make decisions about the restructuring of the aid system to provinces and towns.”
“You’ve seen the east side of the country,” Castorice adds, in that quiet but eerily commanding way of hers. “Neither of us know much about the eastern territories, so we’ll need your assistance in representing their needs.”
Mydei is faintly surprised that he’s going to have input at all. He thought his role would be purely ceremonial. But if he gets to benefit the towns he visited with his mother in his childhood, he’s all for it. “I am honored to be working with you both.”
“Enough of that,” Anaxa says, waving his hand with a slight grimace. He’s sitting a little awkwardly, like his leg is still dysfunctional from his injury in the coup. Mydei didn’t even see how it happened; he has no idea how severe it is. No idea if he’ll ever recover. Maybe Anaxa will be using a cane forever. “Formal praise makes me sick. Let’s stop—it’s time for dinner.”
And just as the final dish is placed on the table, Mydei feels a hand land on his shoulder.
“Sorry I’m late,” Phainon says, sounding charmingly sheepish as usual. He slides another chair over to Mydei’s side, sitting next to him at the head of the table like he’d always intended to be there. “It’s not easy, dragging yourself out of bed after your own wedding night.”
The grin he turns on the table is blinding. It’s almost bright enough that Mydei doesn’t see the tension at the corner of his eyes, the strain in his cheeks. As it is, he only sees them because he’s searching so hard.
“Your Highness,” says Hyacine, the only one among them who’s proper enough to actually use his title.
Anaxa barks out a laugh. “You’re lucky I even remember your name, boy,” he says drily. “You’re not getting a title out of me. Not when that one’s opted out.” He points at Mydei here.
Phainon looks over at him, the smile melting away into surprise. “You asked to drop the title?”
“Yes,” Mydei says, holding eye contact with him. “I told them just Mydei is fine. Same as I did when I met you for the first time.”
Phainon looks at him oddly for another few seconds. Then, as though nothing had happened at all, he turns back to the table and says, “Shall we eat?”
To Mydei’s relief, Phainon actually does eat this time. He serves himself fish and vegetables and rice and eats everything on his plate, beaming all the while. He keeps up the idle chatter all throughout dinner, flashing disarming smiles and keeping his impeccable white shirt spotless.
By the time dessert is served, even Mydei is starting to believe that his smile is genuine.
“So,” says Aglaea, as she scoops panna cotta for herself. “Phainon, as you may know, Mydei’s role as king is mainly ceremonial, and so is yours as consort.”
Phainon takes the serving dish from her when she passes it. “I’m on it, General,” he says brightly. “You know me—I’ll be just fine at sitting there and looking pretty.”
“It’s a diplomatic role as well,” Aglaea says, her eyebrows sternly set. “Whenever there are guests to host, including nobles who escaped the coup, you’ll be responsible on paper for receiving them. All you really need to do is show your face and say a few nice things, and then be on your way. You can choose how much responsibility to take on.”
“Don’t worry,” Phainon says, taking the second scoop of panna cotta and placing it on Mydei’s dish. It’s a much bigger slice, almost twice the size of his own. “When have I ever failed you before?”
He passes the dish to Anaxa on his other side, and Aglaea looks satisfied with his response.
The panna cotta really is excellent. Mydei isn’t used to such things, and neither is Phainon, he expects. Aglaea and Anaxa and Hyacine all grew up in relative luxury, so they probably remember eating dishes like this. But Mydei never had them to begin with. If they had lost, he never would have tried anything like this in his whole life. The richness is almost too much for him. Even though he loves sweets, he can’t finish the portion Phainon gives him. He leaves half of it on his plate and hopes it won’t just be wasted.
When he sets down his spoon, Phainon leans in and whispers, “Carry me.”
Mydei turns to him, confused, and opens his mouth. Before he can ask, Phainon faints dramatically into his arms.
“Your Majesty,” he cries, throwing a hand over his eyes. “Please take this weak one back to your rooms. I’ve grown too tired to walk back all by myself.”
At the other end of the table, Mortis giggles.
Phainon looks at him, just briefly, through the gap in his fingers. Suddenly Mydei understands.
“Of course,” he sighs, fake exasperated, and picks Phainon up, one hand under his knees and the other at his back. “Good night, everyone,” he says to the table. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“Or afternoon,” says Aglaea, so neutrally that one might almost assume she didn’t know what she was implying.
Mydei feels his face heat up vaguely when Hyacine laughs. “We’ll see,” he mutters.
He carries Phainon out of the dining hall, all the way to their shared quarters. The door is closed when he reaches it, so he sets Phainon down to open it again.
“Thank you,” Phainon rasps, sounding completely wrecked. “I’m—I’m going to be alright. Just a bit…”
He lurches unsteadily. Mydei catches him with one hand around his waist. He throws open the door and gets Phainon inside as fast as he can. “What do you need?” he asks, once the door is shut again. “Just say the word.”
“Just…” Phainon grimaces. “Help me to the bathroom?”
Mydei puts one hand on Phainon’s back and helps guide him over to the bathroom. “I’ll just be out here,” he says, and then moves to leave.
Phainon holds on to his wrist.
Mydei’s heart catches in his throat. Does he want help undressing? Does he forgive him for whatever unforgivable sin he committed between winning the war and marrying him?
Phainon guides his hands up. “Hold my hair.”
Mydei takes hold of his hair and puts it into a loose ponytail with his hands. “What’s going on?” he asks. “Is everything alright? Is it a headache?”
“It’s no big deal,” Phainon tells him, and then he throws up the entire contents of his stomach.
So much for getting better, Mydei thinks, with a fresh wave of guilt. He holds Phainon’s hair back with one hand and uses the other to brace his lower back, doing his best to offer comfort.
When he’s done Phainon stands up again like nothing ever happened. “Well,” he says quite pleasantly. “Good night, Your Majesty.”
Mydei holds onto his wrist. “Phainon,” he says, unsure what he’s asking for. “Phainon. You can’t just go to bed after that.”
“I’ll change clothes and wash up before I get in. Don’t worry.”
“You know that isn’t what I meant.”
Phainon sighs through his nose. “I told you, I’m fine. Don’t waste your energy worrying about me. I’ll get it done. I always do.”
“You can’t just get done with me. You’re my husband.”
Phainon doesn’t laugh. If anything, his expression grows darker. “And I’m going to fill that role,” he says. “I did a fine job filling it tonight, didn’t I?”
Mydei’s heart sinks. He was acting? Filling a role? All of his good humor and cheery demeanor was a performance? “Phainon…”
“I told you,” Phainon says, turning away from him. “Stop worrying about me.”
“Stop giving me reason to worry, then.”
“Your Majesty.”
“You can call me Mydei,” he pleads, still holding onto his hands. “Like you always do.”
A long pause. Phainon slips his hands free of Mydei’s grasp. “Go to sleep,” he says quietly. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
Any good warrior knows how to recognize defeat. Mydei has rarely ever had to face it before, and yet he knows when Phainon turns away from him that he has lost. He changes into his bedclothes quietly and slips into the right side of the bed and waits.
From the bathroom, he thinks he hears the sound of Phainon dry heaving again. His chest aches.
When Phainon joins him in bed, he rolls over to face away from Mydei. His breathing is so quiet that Mydei can’t tell when he falls asleep, or if he even rests at all.
***
Fighting was the easy part. He was from the Kremnoan line; he had been raised to fight. He had signed up to join an army. He knew what he was getting into. No, the hard part was everything else. And the waiting.
Mydei was fine on the battlefield. He could kill like nobody’s business. Even commanding his soldiers was alright, once he got the hang of it. Most of them were self-sufficient enough to follow his lead. But the rebellion group was in hiding, and the battles were inconsistent. And Mydei was only one of several commanders, so not every battle was his to fight.
That day there was a skirmish close to the edge of their base. Too close for comfort. They would have to move again. Phainon had been sent out that morning to head up the charge and he hadn’t returned yet. Mydei didn’t want to admit that he was worried, so instead of pacing around the camp uselessly, he went to the main quarters.
“Tell me what I can help with,” he demanded, not even bothering to put on a pleasant expression.
The head logistical expert, Castorice, didn’t even blink. “Commander,” she greeted him, all business. This was why Mydei liked her; she wasn’t put off by his prickly appearance or his standoffishness. “Most people are packing up their supplies. We’re moving in three hours, if all goes well.”
Mydei had very few possessions to his name, and had long finished gathering everything of his together. “Give me another task.”
“Okay,” said Castorice, making a note on her clipboard. “If you really have nothing to do, you can help clean our cookware.”
So Mydei, one of the highest-ranked commanders of the war effort, went to wash dishes.
It was actually, he discovered, quite peaceful. There were only three full-time food staff for their entire camp. They were grateful for another pair of hands, and didn’t seem to care much whose hands they were. Mydei stood over the hot water and washed the pans and his mind went pleasantly blank.
He was so absorbed in the task that he barely even noticed when someone else entered the kitchen.
“Evening,” said one of the chefs, looking up from the bag he was packing with non-perishable ingredients. “Back from the fight, Commander?”
Upon hearing the title, Mydei glanced up. He hadn’t fought at all today. The only one fighting was—
“Chef Kyros, Miss Hegesia, good evening,” said a familiar voice, lacking its usual humor and good spirit. Mydei barely recognized the sound of him; he was so exhausted that it nearly made him sound like someone else. “Don’t lecture me again; I’ll be off to see Hyacine soon. Just one minute, please.”
The chef, who must have been Kyros, sighed in faint disappointment but moved over. “Go ahead.”
Mydei glanced over his shoulder. Phainon was holding something in both hands as he approached Kyros's fire. The playful glint in his eye was gone entirely, replaced with a sort of steely resolve that lit his ice-blue eyes a dull orange. Phainon dipped the end of the bundle into the fire and watched with dark apathy as the flames climbed up, burning the entire thing away.
As the bundle unfurled, Mydei finally got a good look at it. He realized, with an odd feeling in his stomach, that it was a uniform. An Amphorean royal guard uniform, stained with blood at the heart.
The fabric burned quickly, all the way up to Phainon’s hand. He was so absorbed in watching it be destroyed in his grasp that he didn’t even seem to notice as the fire crept up and touched his skin.
“Phainon,” Mydei blurted.
Phainon’s intense eye contact with the burning cloth broke. He dropped the uniform into the fire. It fizzled away pitifully into black ash. “Mydei,” he breathed, with an odd, stiff laugh. “Didn’t expect to see you here. What, did you get assigned dish duty as punishment?”
“I asked for it.” Mydei crossed his arms. “You think washing dishes is below me?”
Phainon’s laugh this time was a little more natural. “Your words, not mine.” He walked over to where Mydei was still elbow-deep in the washbasin and leaned over, propping his chin on Mydei’s shoulder. The sharp bones of his jaw dug in a little, but Mydei was so distracted by the sound of Phainon’s breath and the warmth of his body that he hardly noticed.
“Phainon,” he said quietly.
“Mm-hmm?”
Mydei had no idea why he’d said his name. He had a thousand burning questions and yet he couldn’t articulate a single one of them. “How was the battle?” he asked, for lack of anything else to say.
Phainon sighed heavily. “We won quite handily. We’ll have a big celebration before we move.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.” Mydei tried to turn around to look at him, but it didn’t quite work when Phainon was already right behind him. Instead he settled for saying, “Did something go wrong? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine,” Phainon said, a little too sharply. “I’ll go to Hyacine after this. I just—” He lifted his chin from Mydei’s shoulder, and the warmth vanished from behind him. Mydei barely stopped himself from turning around to look at him. “I just have to do this,” he said eventually, quieter than usual. “It’s nothing special.”
Mydei had no idea what he meant. Was it some sort of war tradition that Mydei was as of yet unaware of? If it was, no one had mentioned it to him. No one had told him to collect the uniforms of their defeated royal opponents; in fact, most people in the rebellion wished to respect their bodies by burying them or leaving them where they lay. He tried not to think about the stab wound on the uniform’s chest, exactly the size of the point of Phainon’s claymore. Like he’d stood above them and driven his sword down without remorse.
Who was he kidding? This was a war. Phainon was as much a soldier as any of them. Of course he had killed people. Mydei himself had killed hundreds over the course of his life. It shouldn’t bother him.
Why, then, did Phainon have that haunting look in his eye as he watched the cloth burn?
“I’ll go,” Phainon said softly. “Sorry. I didn’t mean—well, whatever.”
Mydei realized he had been quiet for too long. “Let me come with,” he said, before he could think it through. He pulled his hands from the washbin and wiped them off on his pants. “If you’re hurt, you shouldn’t walk on your own.”
Phainon raised an eyebrow, his mouth quirking up just slightly. “I walked all the way here on my own, didn’t I? I’m not helpless, Mydei.”
“I know,” Mydei muttered. His face felt warm. “Let me walk you there anyway.”
“Ah. You’re making sure I really go.”
Mydei said nothing.
“So mean,” Phainon sighed dramatically. “Why must you assume the worst of me? If I say I’ll go, then I’ll go. No need to babysit me.”
“I’m not babysitting you.”
“Uh huh,” said Phainon drily. Still, he made space for Mydei beside him as he walked to the medical tent. Halfway there, he reached over for his hand, and didn’t let go until Hyacine was ready to treat him.
Phainon was right; the celebration that night was especially grand. Not only had the battle been won handily with few casualties, there was no fear of being discovered, since they were already moving the following day. So their camp of soldiers all gathered together around a massive fire and drank their hearts out on kegs of mead and barrels of Anaxa’s pear wine.
And Mydei sat as far away as he could, alone.
He had been with the rebellion army for one month—thirty days exactly. He had been a commander for twenty-nine. He had fought and won four battles. Five, counting that first one on the tundra. He was well-respected and well-recognized around camp. Yet he had very few, if any, friends.
Truthfully, Mydei had no idea how to go about making friends. His upbringing had been strange, in that he only knew about ten people, and he was around them constantly. It was him and his mother and the few people loyal to them against the world. He didn’t have to try, with them. They were his friends, his companions, his family, his most precious people. There was never a trial phase. There was never another option.
But here, there were thousands of options. Mydei thought, oddly enough, of Phainon. He was the ideal friend—social, bright, talented, beautiful. No one would look at someone like Phainon and then choose him.
The thought was a little depressing. Mydei looked at the untouched cup of mead in his hands and wondered if he ought to choke it down anyway, just to drown his sorrows.
He was so distracted staring idly into the cup that he nearly jumped when someone slid into the seat next to him.
“Drinking all by yourself, handsome?” said Phainon, wearing his customary grin.
He really was beautiful, Mydei thought, out of nowhere. “No,” Mydei told him, holding up the cup. “Not drinking. It’s still full.”
Phainon laughed. “That might actually be worse.” He slid a little closer along the log Mydei was sitting on. It was outside of the camp proper, and hard to find. Phainon must have gone searching for him. His chest felt warm at the thought. Phainon had sought him out. Had wanted more of his company.
“Not going to celebrate?” Mydei asked, motioning vaguely towards the roaring fire in the middle of their soon-to-be-demolished camp.
Phainon raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re one to talk, all alone out here. I must say, I was a little scared when I caught a glimpse of you in the woods. Thought you’d brought a lover out here to do your own little victory celebration.”
Mydei looked at him, thoroughly unimpressed.
“Okay, okay,” Phainon conceded, grinning. “I didn’t really think that. I was just curious how you’d react. Stop looking at me like that, would you?”
“A lover,” Mydei deadpanned. “And who, exactly, would I have taken out here? The only people I know are my own soldiers—which would be a clear power imbalance—the kitchen staff—whom I just met today—and you.”
For some reason this seemed to please Phainon greatly. He leaned even closer, so that their thighs were touching. “You never know,” he said. “Maybe the chemistry was undeniable.”
Mydei couldn't seem to get his mind off the points where they were touching. “Ridiculous,” he said, more at his own thoughts than at Phainon.
“It’s not ridiculous. Weren’t you ever told stories of true love? Fairytale knights and beautiful princesses and all that?”
Princesses. Mydei swallowed thickly. He’d nearly forgotten that he was royalty, if only by blood. That the reason his mother had fled, the reason he’d been on the run his entire childhood, was because he was the Crown Prince of Amphoreus, the last of the Kremnoan line.
“Perhaps not princesses,” Phainon said eventually, with a small sigh. “Falling for royalty would be a terrible omen when one is fighting the royal regime.”
“Hm,” said Mydei. He felt sick to his stomach.
“The only options would be to join the royal court yourself, thus becoming one with the problem, or to be apart forever, resigning yourself to heartbreak.”
Mydei didn’t quite know what to say. He looked at his drink again. Before he could contemplate actually trying it, Phainon had pulled the cup from his hands and taken a long sip.
“I know you don’t want it,” Phainon explained as he lowered the cup from his lips. “Trying to stay sober before moving day? That’s probably a good idea. Wish I’d thought of it.”
“No,” said Mydei. “I just hate the taste.”
“Of mead?”
Mydei nodded.
“Huh,” said Phainon, looking at him with his head tilted. “Really?”
“It’s not that strange,” Mydei said, crossing his arms. His face felt warm. “Lots of people don’t like alcohol.”
Phainon looked up at the sky and sighed. “What a cruel world. A man looking like that doesn’t like alcohol. How’s one supposed to get into your bed now? Have mercy, Mydei! Think of all the poor people trying to buy you drinks!”
“No one’s ever bought me a drink,” Mydei pointed out, though it was more from lack of opportunity than anything else.
“My point exactly.”
Mydei didn’t know what that meant. Phainon held eye contact with him and drank what looked like half the cup of mead in one large swig. Mydei watched, transfixed by the bob of his throat and the glisten of his mouth.
“You really don’t like alcohol at all?” Phainon asked suddenly.
Mydei blinked. He had forgotten they were having a conversation at all. “I don’t.”
“I think you wouldn’t mind this one.”
Mydei frowned. “It’s still alcohol.”
“Still,” said Phainon. “You never know until you try.” Then he tipped back the cup and drank the entire remains.
Mydei looked at him, perplexed. “There’s none left for me to try now.”
“Mydei,” Phainon said, exasperated. “Mydei, you are so lucky I like you. Take a goddamn hint, you buffoon.”
And then Phainon leaned in and kissed him, hot and open-mouthed and tasting like the mead he’d stolen from Mydei’s hands.
He broke off again after a few moments. Mydei sat there, a little dazed. He wasn’t entirely sure he remembered how to breathe.
“I still don’t like it,” he said at last. “The mead.”
Phainon looked crushed. He cleared his throat and stood up hastily. “I’m—so sorry. I’ll go. You know what? Just forget it happened. It isn’t—”
“But I want to kiss you again anyway,” Mydei interrupted. “Even if you taste fucking awful.”
Phainon blinked at him.
“Well?” said Mydei, looking at him expectantly. “What are your thoughts on the matter?”
Phainon broke out into giggles. He doubled over laughing, his eyes crinkling up. “Mydei,” he gasped. “Mydei, you idiot. My thoughts on the matter? What the hell are you talking about? Of course I want to kiss you again. Was it not obvious?”
“Then shut the fuck up and do it.”
“As you wish, Your Majesty,” Phainon drawled, like the title was the most ridiculous thing he could think of, and then he leaned in and fulfilled Mydei’s wish.
In the distance, the party went on.
***
Mydei quickly realizes, as the restructuring meetings start, that Castorice wasn’t joking about needing his help. He’s involved in nearly every discussion. It’s nice, knowing that his opinion is valued and wanted, but it’s exhausting, trying to keep up with the philosophy of everyone in his council.
“Can I skip the economic and geographical meetings?” he pleads to Aglaea one day. “I really don’t know anything about that.”
Aglaea looks mildly surprised, which is probably her equivalent of shock. “Of course you can. You can skip all of them if you like.”
“I’ll keep going with local government and power distribution,” Mydei decides, because those are things he actually cares about. Things he has opinions on and would have liked in his childhood. “With Castorice and Anaxa.”
Aglaea smiles slightly and places a bookmark at her spot to look up at him. “I thought you’d like working with them. How is that man treating you?”
Mydei has no idea what he’s supposed to say. “Fine,” he says, because it’s true. He thought Anaxa, as a highly respected intellectual and strategist, would look down on him for his lack of formal education. But he’s been surprisingly accommodating, recommending texts for Mydei to study and taking time to explain himself in their meetings. “They’re both alright.”
“Hm,” says Aglaea, her expression perfectly neutral. Then she looks back down at her book and says, “How is Phainon faring?”
Mydei swallows his pride and tells most of the truth. “He’s still adjusting. He’s been studying diplomacy and noble etiquette in preparation for hosting the dukes and duchesses who weren’t present for the battle or the coronation.”
Aglaea looks up at him, just briefly, then back down. “I’m sure he’ll be fine,” she says. “He’s got you to support him, after all.”
Mydei’s chest aches. “Yes,” he says. If only Phainon would let him. “Thank you, Aglaea.”
Then he takes his leave.
As usual, Phainon isn’t in their quarters. Mydei sits down on Phainon’s side of the bed and sighs out a heavy breath. He’s not so far gone as to press his face into his pillow, but he sits there for a long minute, just staring at the door, waiting for Phainon to come through it.
When he doesn’t, because he never does, Mydei gets up and washes his face. Then he puts on his more formal robes for dinner and heads to the library for his Anaxa-assigned reading.
The Kremnoan family library is Mydei’s favorite place in the entire castle. It was, he learned from one of the old librarians, built hundreds of years ago but fell into disrepair. His mother, Gorgo, had been the one to renovate it. She built these walls with her own hands at age sixteen, one of the old library staff had told him. Most people in the castle dismissed it as a teenage phase and expected that she’d give up on restoring the library within six months. But the library flourished under her care for years to come. When Eurypon sent out the order for her death, the library was locked up again, removing any trace of her.
Mydei, of course, had it reopened immediately on the day of his coronation. It’s a beautiful building, full of natural light and smooth stone walls that keep the library cool even on hot days. And its collection is expansive enough that even Anaxa, prickly scholar that he is, approves of it.
When Phainon told him he’d be throwing himself into studying for his role, Mydei was pleased. He expected that they’d run into each other every day at the library, when Mydei went to read about geography and social conditions and structures of power or whatever latest topic Anaxa and Castorice recommended. But it’s been almost two weeks of this, and he still hasn’t seen Phainon at all.
Still, Mydei is holding out hope. So he finds the most conspicuous lounge, in full view of the entire library, and sits there for his hour of reading.
Phainon doesn’t appear.
Eventually the hour grows too close to dinner to stay. Mydei casts one last longing glance toward the rest of the library, the dramatic shelves and the cool stone walls, and then leaves.
He hasn’t seen Phainon since that morning. He’d woken up and pressed a kiss against the nape of his neck and then slipped out of bed before Phainon could notice. Phainon had stirred faintly, like he was about to get up, but by the time Mydei left for breakfast he was still in bed, like nothing had happened at all. He hadn’t made it to breakfast, either. Perhaps he had just been tired.
But he’ll be at dinner. He’s always at dinner. It’s the only time that most of the advisors see him at all—and sometimes the only time Mydei sees him, too.
The hallway ends. He should go left, toward the dining hall. Selfishly, Mydei decides to turn towards their quarters instead.
He’ll be late, he knows. But Phainon will be there.
Mydei opens the door as quietly as he can. Sure enough, Phainon is standing by his open closet, staring thoughtfully at two different shirts, one in each hand. His bare back is turned towards the bed, just enough for Mydei to see it when he moves his shoulders.
Mydei shuts the door silently. He makes his approach soft and slow, enough that Phainon doesn’t appear to notice. Then, when he’s close enough, he takes the last few steps as quickly as possible and wraps his arms around Phainon’s shoulders, tilting his head down so that his mouth brushes against that same spot on his neck, warm against his lips.
Phainon tenses, then relaxes minutely. “Your Majesty,” he says, sounding the tiniest bit relieved. “It was you this morning, wasn’t it?”
Mydei huffs a breathy laugh. “No idea what you’re talking about, Commander.”
Phainon shrugs his arms off and turns around to face him, smirking just a little. “Oh? So there happened to be a light breeze along my top vertebrae right as you were getting out of bed?”
“You were asleep,” Mydei says, raising one eyebrow. “How did you know about that?”
Phainon’s easy smirk falters.
“You didn’t get up until I was gone,” Mydei says slowly. “Maybe even later—you weren’t at breakfast.”
Phainon sighs, sounding tired already. “Your Majesty,” he says, the smile slipping away completely. “I wanted to go back to bed, that’s all.”
“Without saying anything to me?”
“Look,” says Phainon, a little desperately. “It’s just that when I wake up, I don’t—I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know where I am. I’m not ready to be—this.”
Mydei frowns. He notices, just then, that Phainon has successfully averted all of his touch; they aren’t in contact at all anymore. “To be what?”
Phainon closes his eyes for one measured inhale. “Nothing,” he says, once it’s over. “I don’t know what I’m talking about. Help me choose one of these—I can’t decide.”
He holds up the two shirts. They’re both cut in the Kremnoan style, with long draping side panels and ties at the chest. One is white, and the other is a dark wine-red. “Don’t you have any cut the way you prefer?” Mydei asks, looking into his closet. “You don’t like clothes that tie like this. You never wore them before.”
“I said,” says Phainon, “to help me choose.”
Mydei blinks. He didn’t know there was a nerve to strike there. Was it really so strange that Phainon might prefer clothes he was used to? During the war he always wore short shirts that tucked into his pants, and a coat with a slit in the back. None of his clothes here are even remotely similar.
“The white one,” he says, because it reminds him faintly of Phainon’s coat.
Phainon puts the red shirt back. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I didn’t mean to say that. Please forgive me.”
Mydei raises his eyebrows. Phainon never used to ask for his forgiveness; he just assumed it was given. “It’s fine. I know you didn’t. But don’t you have anything shorter? I liked the way you dressed before.”
Phainon turns back to him, only half-clothed still. His eyes are wide again, and nearly as clear as they were during his fever. “They weren’t nice enough for the castle.”
“I can have something commissioned for you.”
Phainon’s mouth quirks up, just on one side. “Only if you want to.”
Mydei takes this as a glowing endorsement. He’ll ask a tailor first thing tomorrow to make something for him. Something nice. A lighter version of his coat, something more suited to the warm weather in Castrum Kremnos. Something that would make him feel at home.
“Did you really like it?” Phainon asks quickly, like he can’t get the words out fast enough. “I mean, between the pants and the shirt and the coat, I was so covered up. These—” Here he motions vaguely at the shirt he’s wearing now. “—Are so much more exposing.”
And they are. The loose neckline and draping cap sleeves are nowhere close to the high collars and long sleeves he used to prefer. “I like you either way,” Mydei tells him. “It doesn’t really matter what you’re wearing.”
The other side of Phainon’s mouth finally moves up into a real smile. “Where did you learn to flatter like that?”
“It’s the truth,” Mydei says. “You look best in whatever clothes you feel comfortable in.”
Phainon shakes his head and smiles at the ground. He makes a sound that isn’t a laugh, but isn’t not a laugh, either. “Your Majesty,” he chides. “We’re already late for dinner. Don’t sweet talk me into making us even later.”
Mydei’s eyes widen. Phainon hasn’t been like this with him in weeks. Hasn’t initiated anything except for the occasional kiss to his cheek or hand in public. Hasn’t even alluded to their romantic entanglement. Mydei is so surprised by his sudden teasing that he just stands there, staring.
Phainon looks back at him, amused. “Is this all it takes to break you now? You used to be tougher, you know.”
Mydei wants to lean in and kiss him. Wants to pin him down against the bed and kiss his face until he laughs so hard his eyes are wet. Wants to tell him sweet things until the smile can’t be wiped off his face. Wants to fall asleep entangled with him and wake up to the smell of his hair. Wants to make love with him at the end of a long day until he feels like he’s finally come home, finally returned to the place he belongs.
“Let’s not keep everyone waiting,” he says instead.
Phainon finishes tying the shirt at his neck. Then he nods and follows Mydei out, walking two feet away from him, not even reaching for his hand.
After dinner he and Phainon head back together, because they always head back together. Phainon goes straight for the bathroom the minute they reach their quarters. Mydei stares after him, a little confused. Usually he asks if Mydei wants to bathe first, or if he needs to wash his face or anything. But maybe he’s in a hurry today. It wouldn’t be that unusual. He sits down by the low table and starts reading again.
Then the bathroom door slides open.
“You’re done already?” Mydei asks, glancing up. “That was—”
Then he cuts himself off.
Phainon is standing there in the doorway, completely nude.
“Did you need something?” Mydei asks, bewildered. They barely even change in front of each other anymore; he’s nearly forgotten the shape of him in the weeks they’ve been married.
“Join me,” Phainon says, like a commander’s order.
Mydei’s mouth goes dry.
Phainon turns around and retreats back into the bathroom. Nothing more needs to be said; Mydei follows him in without hesitation, already working at the fastenings of his pants.
Inside, Phainon has drawn them a bath. The bathtub isn’t ridiculously large, not like the monstrosity in the former king’s quarters, but it’s big enough that the two of them can lie in it together with a little maneuvering room left over.
Phainon wastes no time sinking into the water. The minute he immerses himself, he sighs like the tension of a hundred battles has been lifted. His shoulders soften so dramatically that it makes Mydei nearly ache just watching him.
Once Mydei has finished taking off his clothes—the nicer garments that make him look a little more like the king he supposedly is—Phainon moves over in a clear invitation, and Mydei joins him in the bath.
The hot water is fantastic. It smells nice, too, like Phainon has added some floral essential oil. It smells, he realizes, faintly like Phainon’s hair.
For a few minutes they sit there in silence. Mydei listens to him breathing and wonders why they don’t do this more. He listens for it, sometimes, when they’re in bed together, but Phainon is so quiet when he sleeps that sometimes Mydei thinks he’s dead. In the bath he’s close enough for Mydei to pick up the sound of his soft inhales and long exhales.
Eventually Phainon sits up on his hands and says, “Would you wash my hair?”
He sounds so unsure. Mydei’s heart cracks down the middle, just a hairline fracture. In the past he would have made a snarky comment here, something about Phainon being too lazy to do it himself, or perhaps something about Phainon just wanting to be touched. But now he doesn’t dare. “Yes,” he says, and runs his fingers through his hair as gently as he can.
Phainon lays in between his legs and lets his head float with the water while Mydei washes his hair. His eyes flutter closed and he looks so peaceful that even when Mydei is done washing, he keeps messing with his hair, untangling it and letting it billow out in the water.
They stay there until the water has cooled enough for Mydei to notice the temperature change. Only then does he glance down at Phainon and realize he’s fallen asleep.
He looks so tired all the time. Mydei doesn’t have the heart to wake him.
He lets Phainon sleep, keeping one hand under his head to support him. It’s hard to wash his own hair one-handed, but he manages as best he can, unwilling to let go of Phainon on the off chance it wakes him up. Once he’s finished cleaning himself off as efficiently as possible, he carefully slides one hand under Phainon’s legs and picks him up, carrying him out of the bath.
He blinks his eyes open as Mydei is toweling off his shoulders. “Hi,” he says, like they’ve been apart all day.
“…Hi,” says Mydei, a little amused.
Phainon looks at him. Then he tips his chin up and leans in to kiss him, like it’s second nature.
Mydei is so surprised that he nearly pushes him away. As it is, he just sits there, eyes wide, the towel useless in his hands.
“Not the time?” Phainon says, raising his eyebrows. “I thought you were a romantic.”
“A little,” Mydei breathes, too caught off guard to lie. “I always wanted to love someone.”
“Hm,” says Phainon. Then he cups Mydei’s face with both hands, still damp from the bath, and kisses him again, close-mouthed and short but achingly sweet. Then he moves to pull back.
“Wait,” Mydei says desperately, grabbing hold of his hands. He places them back on his own face. “…Just a little longer,” he pleads. “You don’t even have to kiss me. Just this.”
Phainon touches his nose against Mydei’s forehead and just stays there, close to him. His breathing is even and slow and so very audible and it makes Mydei want to stay here forever, listening to his breath until he breathes his last.
“Are you alright?” Phainon asks eventually, much softer than usual. “I never asked. I should have.”
Mydei closes his eyes. It’s easier, he finds, to say these things when he’s not thinking too hard. “Fine,” he says. “I’m doing fine. It’s just—a lot. You know. I’m sure it’s a lot for you, too.”
Phainon sighs out a long exhale. “Yeah,” he whispers. Then, even quieter, “Thank you.”
Mydei isn’t sure what he’s referring to. The hair-washing? The shirts? Something else entirely? It makes no sense. There’s nothing to thank him for. He feels like he’s done everything wrong since their marriage started. But maybe—his chest aches here, like he shouldn’t be thinking it—maybe this is where he finally does something right.
But he knows better than to push his luck.
“Let me finish drying you off,” he says, and Phainon opens his eyes and nods.
They’re both exhausted, so as soon as they’re dry they settle into bed. But this time, Phainon faces him. He’s close to Mydei’s half, now, lingering on the line down the middle of their bed, the line Mydei never crosses. “Hey,” he says, laying his head down so they’re looking parallel at each other. His eyes are colorless in the dark, like a blank slate. “If you’re having a hard time sleeping, I could help.”
Mydei hasn’t been having an easy time of it, but then again he never has. “How so?” he asks, his heart pounding.
“Well,” says Phainon, leaning closer. His smile stretches like the slice of a blade. “I was thinking, whenever you’re really tired, I could sleep in my office.”
Mydei huffs a laugh.
“What?” Phainon says, smiling even wider. His voice is low with sleep, like he’s already halfway there. “I thought it might help. You know, get the little bedbug out from between your sheets.”
“You,” says Mydei, “are ridiculous,” and then he finally reaches across that invisible line separating their sides of the bed and drags a laughing Phainon into his arms.
They fall asleep like that, Phainon secure in his embrace and the sound of his breath quiet but faintly audible. The combination of exhaustion and relief and the lingering sweetness of the bath oil makes Mydei sleep better than he has in months.
***
“Please?” Phainon asked, making his eyes extra wide. “Pretty please with a cherry on top?”
Aglaea looked at him and visibly gave up. “Yes, alright,” she said, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.
Phainon beamed. “I knew you had a heart, General!”
“But you’ll be assigned to our riskiest operations,” she warned, looking at both of them. “Lower-stakes assignments only require one commander, so if you want to be paired together, you must understand that you’ll often be given our most complex tasks. You will be given more autonomy to command your troops, but you’ll be working in dangerous conditions.”
“I understand, General,” Mydei said, giving her his most professional nod to make up for whatever bullshit Phainon was presumably doing next to him. “I will fight whatever battles you choose to the best of my ability.”
But to his surprise, Phainon nodded too. “We are of the same mind. I won’t take this decision lightly.”
Aglaea looked appropriately impressed at their resolve. She pointed out their new quarters on the map and sent them on their way without any further questions.
“So you can be respectful,” Mydei said, grinning, as soon as they were outside.
Phainon laughed and nudged their shoulders together as they walked. “Just because I don’t act respectful to you—”
“—Hey—”
“—doesn’t mean I don’t know how to do it when I want to. The General was my mentor; of course I respect her.”
Mydei glanced over at him, surprised. “You were mentored by Aglaea herself?”
“‘Aglaea?’ Who’s disrespectful now?” Phainon asked, scoffing at him teasingly.
To his horror, Mydei felt his face heat up.
“But yes, I was,” Phainon continued. “When my hometown was burned, Aglaea came to recruit me. My education was spotty, so she had Anaxa tutor me, and then trained me in combat.”
“Your hometown was burned down?”
Phainon’s laugh was like sandpaper. “Never mind that. The General said we’ve got to move quarters, since we’re partners now. I think the new place is to the left.”
Mydei had never thought about why someone would want to join the war. His mother had taught him that fighting for your morals was glorious and honorable. He had joined the war to avenge her death and defend his pride. But Phainon fought for something else. Mydei could tell; it was in the way he held himself. He fought for neither pride nor glory nor even for his family name. He fought for revenge.
“You burn their uniforms,” Mydei recalled, with sudden clarity. Phainon’s expression had been so blank, so measured, when he set fire to the clothes of the dead royal soldiers. Mydei had mistaken it for apathy; in retrospect, it was probably cold, morbid satisfaction.
Something heavy settled in Phainon’s shoulders. “I know it’s not right. We don’t have to talk about it.”
“I want to,” Mydei said. “I want to know who you are.”
Phainon looked at him like he was an entirely new man. His eyes were wide and blue and they glimmered like the silver of his armor.
“I do,” Mydei said, a little helplessly. Phainon’s eyes felt like spotlights on him. He didn’t know what he was saying anymore. “You mean something to me. I want to know about the things that mean something to you.”
Phainon breathed a soft sigh through his nose. “Mydei,” he murmured, a faint smile on his mouth. “You’re something else.”
They walked in silence until they reached the new location of their quarters. By the time they’d finished setting up the full camp—their single tent and their individual possessions and their firepit and everything—the sun was nearly setting. Because they had a fire, Mydei cooked them some sausages and poached some pears in diluted pomegranate juice. He gave Phainon all of their remaining mead.
“Are you trying to get me drunk?” Phainon asked, sounding amused. “And what’s with the pears? I’m not some noble maiden you have to charm into your bed.”
Mydei stirred the simmering pears defensively. “They’re for me. I like sweets. And now you aren’t getting any.”
“Aw, Mydei…”
He must have been doing that pleading face. Mydei carefully avoided looking at him.
“Come on,” Phainon said sweetly, right next to his ear. “Just one half? You can have the other three, even—I only want to taste it.”
Mydei thought of the last time Phainon offered a taste of something—the sharp alcohol on his tongue and the warmth of his soft mouth—and before he could stop himself he said, “I made two halves for each of us.”
“Oh, sweetheart,” said Phainon. He had somehow gotten so close that his thigh was pressed against Mydei’s, and he was warm and solid at his side. “You do care.”
“Of course I do. I told you that just today.”
Phainon hummed. “I guess you did.” He paused, watching the pot with the pears simmer quietly over the fire. “So you like sweets?”
Mydei had never been embarrassed about his sweet tooth before, and yet under Phainon’s curious gaze he felt flustered. “Yes. Not common on the road. They make me think of good times.”
“See, I never would have known that if you hadn’t told me.” Phainon gestured vaguely at his body, mostly at his chest, like that explained everything. “Tell me something else I don’t know about you.”
Mydei leveled him a judgmental look. “This is just an excuse to talk all night.”
“Maybe a little,” Phainon said shamelessly. He leaned his chin on one elbow. “Come on—at least while the pears are still boiling. Just one thing.”
In that moment Mydei desperately wanted to tell him something impressive. Wanted to tell him that he had slain a dragon, or painted a grand masterpiece, or that he philosophized about the meaning of life in his spare time. But he had never done those things, so he stayed quiet.
“I’ll give you some persuasion, then,” Phainon said, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. “Here—you give me one fact about yourself, and I’ll give you something in return.”
Mydei looked at him skeptically. He had no idea what Phainon’s idea of a return gift was. “I’m twenty-one years old,” he said, because this was the most boring fact he could think of.
“A fine start,” Phainon said encouragingly. “We can work up to the more personal facts. For that, you get one reward.”
And Phainon turned his head by the chin and kissed him square on the mouth.
Mydei blinked in shock. Before it could even occur to him to kiss back, Phainon had pulled away again.
“Another,” Phainon said, like nothing had ever happened. “Give me another.”
Mydei’s lips felt wet. He parted them slightly. “My favorite color is pink.”
Phainon kissed him again, slower and more deliberate. His hand settled on the back of Mydei’s neck, right where his spine started, and lingered there, heavy, even after he pulled back.
The minute they separated, Mydei started talking again without thinking about it. “If I had to fight with a weapon, it would be a spear.”
“I would have thought you’d prefer a sword like mine. But to each their own.”
The kiss was longer this time. Phainon held him steady by the back of his neck and licked into his mouth until Mydei could taste the stupid mead on his tongue.
When Phainon pulled away, he dragged his thumb across Mydei’s jaw like he was thinking about biting it. “Another.”
Mydei was nearly dizzy with anticipation. “In my childhood I moved around the east side of Amphoreus. I’ve never been west before now.”
“Really?” Phainon tilted his head. “I’m the opposite. My hometown is in the southwest; I’ve never been east before. Too close to the castle.”
Mydei looked at him expectantly.
“What?” Phainon said, grinning. “Mydei, what are you looking at me like that for?”
“You know what.”
“I don’t think I do, actually.”
“Commander,” Mydei said slowly, looking up at him through his lashes.
Phainon’s eyes narrowed. He tipped Mydei’s head to the side and ran his fingers along the junction between his neck and shoulder, then followed the path with his lips. When he reached the edge of his collarbone he held Mydei’s head firmly in place and sucked hard enough to have him white-knuckling the ladle.
Then Phainon stopped completely. “One more,” he said, a ravenous look in his eyes.
“Fuck,” Mydei groaned, tipping his head back. “I hate you.”
Phainon grinned. “Really, now? And who suggested we become partners?”
Mydei rolled his eyes as he took the pears off the heat. He spooned two halves carefully into Phainon’s bowl, then the other two into his own.
“You can have one of mine,” Phainon said, pushing his bowl closer again. “If you like sweets, you ought to have as many as you want.”
Mydei glared at him. His face felt warm and his neck was still wet with Phainon’s spit. “Shut up and eat your pears.”
Phainon complied, so Mydei followed suit. The poached pears were decent; Mydei usually liked them with stronger flavoring in the syrup, but the fruits were sweet and warm and had a little bite to them. He devoured his entire bowl before Phainon had even finished one.
“You sure you don’t want mine?” Phainon asked, looking at him in amusement.
Mydei shook his head.
“I don’t want you feeling deprived.”
“I made them for you,” Mydei told him. His face was burning; maybe it was the residual heat of the fire. “So you should eat them.”
Phainon gave him a small smile. “In that case, thank you.”
When he was done he gave Mydei the bowl, where some poaching syrup was still left.
“Drink it,” Phainon said, in a tone that left little room for argument. “I know you like pomegranates. I’m done with the pears now—you can have it guilt-free.”
Mydei tipped back the bowl and drank the remaining juice in one go.
Phainon motioned vaguely at his neck, like this meant anything. “Some of it spilled. Not much; just a little.”
Mydei frowned and tried to mirror Phainon’s gestures. He found nothing.
“Let me help you,” Phainon said, and then he put his mouth on Mydei’s chest.
Mydei choked on nothing. “Phainon—”
“I’m helping,” Phainon murmured against his skin. Then he licked upwards, along his collarbone and up the side of his neck.
“Fuck,” Mydei hissed. Phainon laughed. His breath ghosted in little hot puffs against Mydei’s clavicle. His teeth dragged against the hard line of his jaw like he could sculpt him into something even more beautiful. “Did you—nnh—get it all—yet?”
“Not quite,” Phainon said, and crushed their mouths together. He tasted sweet this time, like pears and pomegranates and all the things Mydei liked. Mydei kissed him back so forcefully that Phainon nearly tumbled over backwards, only stopped by one hand that barely held him up.
Phainon broke away from the kiss laughing. He shoved at Mydei’s shoulder lightly. “Hey! You know I can’t stand up to you without a weapon. This isn’t an equal playing ground.”
“It doesn’t need to be,” Mydei said, and pushed him backwards until he was flat on the ground on their tarp. “You don’t mind giving me the advantage.”
Phainon looked up at him and grinned. “The view above me is extraordinarily beautiful tonight. Like the stars, only closer and even more radiant.”
“Shut up,” Mydei said, through a raging heat in his face. He wasn’t used to romantic words, and yet Phainon seemed to have a thousand of them to spare and no one else to foist them off on. He leaned down to kiss him quiet.
But Phainon covered his mouth with a hand and looked up at him with mischief. “Mydei, have you forgotten? That’s a reward, and you need to earn it.”
Mydei groaned.
“It’s not that hard,” Phainon reassured him, tucking a stray strand of Mydei’s hair behind his ear. “Just one thing. One thing I don’t know about you. That’s all.”
All the facts Mydei knew about himself suddenly vacated his brain. All that was left was Phainon beneath him and the press of their bodies and the sweetness in his mouth. He tried to say something, anything, and all he could think was, “I like kids.”
Phainon lifted the hand from his mouth. Mydei descended upon him like a vulture on a corpse, kissing from his mouth to his chin to his neck until Phainon was giggling with the ticklish press of his small kisses.
“Ah—Mydei, not so sharp—don’t leave marks,” Phainon gasped, rolling his hips up into the warm press of their bodies. “Kids, huh? You ever—shit—thought about having them?”
“No,” Mydei said, and then resumed mouthing along Phainon’s collarbones, doing his best not to dig his teeth in.
“Well,” said Phainon, tilting his head to give him better access. “Maybe I could—help with the— ah, the fun part of it… You know, like—knocking you up…”
Mydei broke off. He stared at Phainon in silence for a good twenty seconds. His heart was roaring in his ears. Before he knew it he had stripped off Phainon’s coat and torn open half the buttons of his shirt and was kissing down the center of his chest like a man on a mission.
“Mydei,” he sighed, like his name was the greatest power he could think to call. “Mydei, don’t stop—god, don’t stop—”
***
Mydei wakes up alone.
He whirls around, looking at the other side of the bed, the left side where Phainon always sleeps. The bed is completely undisturbed, without a trace of him. If he had just slipped out of Mydei’s arms in the night, that would be one thing, but this? This complete lack of evidence of him? Mydei’s heart sinks.
He’d thought Phainon was joking about sleeping in his office.
Mydei throws on the closest thing to a presentable robe that he can find. He does a terrible job of it; he bangs his foot into the dresser and slams the closet door shut on his own hand and curses, less at the pain and more at his own assumptions. Of course Phainon wasn’t making a joke. Of course his sense of humor wasn’t back. Stupid Mydei. Stupid fucking Mydei.
Phainon’s office is heartbreakingly close to the Kremnoan library. It was one of the few things Phainon asked for when they got married: his own office. Mydei gladly complied. He chose a room close to the library so that Phainon could visit him there, or retire to the library couches if he grew tired. And yet Phainon never makes the short trip.
It makes no sense, Mydei thinks, throwing open the door and rushing down the hall towards the library wing. Phainon can’t have grown to hate him in such a short time, not with how close they had been.
Foolishly, Mydei checks the library first, just in case. The library has fainting couches fit to sleep on, and even some equipped with blankets. He checks each one, even the secret one tucked away behind the mystery bookshelf. Phainon isn’t there. Of course he isn’t.
When he reaches Phainon’s office, he reaches for the door, but hesitates inches away from it.
Maybe this is why Phainon is so averse to him now. Maybe he’s been too overbearing. Maybe one night of sleeping in his chair won’t do him that much harm. Maybe Mydei ought to leave him to his own devices and stop being so worried all the damn time.
But maybe he’s in there waiting for Mydei to prove he cares.
Mydei stands there debating with himself for so long that he barely even notices when the door opens.
“My—ah, my king,” Phainon says, sounding baffled. His voice is lower than usual, thick with sleep. “I apologize. I lost track of time. I must say, I didn’t expect to see you waiting at my door like a lovesick puppy, though. So dedicated.” He offers a weak grin.
“Lovesick,” Mydei mutters. If he’s lovesick, it’s only one man’s fault. He can’t decide if he’s furious or just despondent. “Phainon, you know why I’m resorting to this.”
Phainon’s shoulders close in. He grips the binder in his hands closer to his chest. “It’s a busy job, being the king’s consort.”
“It doesn’t have to be,” Mydei says, reaching out for his shoulder. Phainon’s mouth twitches in a miniscule flinch when he makes contact. Mydei presses on regardless: “Phainon, you know it’s not all your responsibility. You’re not the only person in the palace; you can outsource the tasks you don’t enjoy. Don’t lie—I know you don’t like this type of diplomatic research.”
“It’s fine,” Phainon says stiffly. “It’s my job now, so I’ll manage.”
“Back in the war, you said you wanted to be an advisor—”
“But I’m not,” Phainon snaps, shoving his hand off. “I’m your consort. You should know damn well what that means.”
“It means that I love you,” Mydei says weakly.
Phainon closes his eyes and inhales. “Yes,” he says gently. “I know.”
Mydei doesn’t expect to hear him say it back, exactly, but it still stings. Still, there’s nothing he can do. “Come spar with me sometime, if you like,” he offers, as a neutral ground. Something they can do even if one of them doesn’t love the other. “Just a short spar. Thirty minutes.”
“Maybe someday,” Phainon says, with a wry smile.
Mydei doesn’t call out the obvious lie. Instead he bids Phainon farewell and kisses his hand and leaves him alone like he so clearly desires.
In the restructuring meetings, Mydei is barely present. He lets Anaxa and Castorice make most of the decisions, agreeing with them on nearly everything. Castorice shoots him a skeptical look, but doesn’t say anything. No one ever does. No one ever confronts Mydeimos, the new king of Amphoreus, the last descendant of the Kremnoan bloodline.
That night Phainon doesn’t join him for dinner. Mydei takes the meal back to their quarters and waits for him until both their meals grow cold. He eats his lukewarm soup in silence.
Usually eating alone doesn’t bother him. How could it, when he’d eaten alone for so many months of his life on the road? But in the wilderness he was surrounded by sound—crickets chirping and birds singing and wind whistling. In his empty chambers, the silence is loud enough that it chills him to the bone.
So he heads to the kitchens.
Most of the palace staff was replaced with people known to be loyal to Mydei, but the kitchen staff had to be especially trustworthy. In fact, Mydei even recognizes two of them—the same two staff who were at the war camp back when Phainon brought the uniform to burn. He gives them a small nod.
“Your Majesty,” says Hegesia quietly, nodding back.
Mydei silently takes his place by one of the empty stoves. He isn’t sure how to feel. Few people called him by name at the war camps either—it was always ‘Commander’ from the soldiers. But somehow his royal title feels worse. Like a disambiguation from him.
The palace, naturally, has the finest ingredients in Amphoreus. He pours expensive red wine and high-quality pomegranate juice into the pot and grates half a cinnamon stick in alongside them. He slices the perfectly-ripe fall pears and poaches them with a polished wooden ladle. It takes him almost an hour to get everything just right. The dish is, by all measures, the perfect version of poached pears. It is, without a doubt, better than the poor imitation Mydei made back at their war camp.
He ladles two pear halves into each of the bowls and brings them to their quarters.
When he enters the room Phainon is there and he’s shirtless again, his gorgeous scarred back bared to the door. He hums some nameless, quiet tune to himself as he slips on a clean white shirt, one with longer sleeves and a higher neckline. One of the ones Mydei commissioned for him. Mydei watches him, his mouth dry. He looks so peaceful like this. So content. He never looks like that when Mydei is around anymore.
He waits until Phainon is fully dressed again to say, “I brought you something.”
Phainon whirls around like he’s been caught doing something illegal. “Your Majesty,” he says, buttoning up his shirt. He glances at the bowls in Mydei’s hands and his fingers stutter to a halt, leaving the last two buttons undone. “You made poached pears?”
“I thought you might like some.”
“…Thank you,” Phainon says at last. He takes the bowl and sits down on the edge of the bed to eat.
The pears taste fantastic. Mydei eats them like he hasn’t eaten in days. He drinks all the syrup and licks the spoon and everything.
But Phainon eats one of the pear halves and then says, “I’m finished.”
Mydei looks at him quizzically. “You skipped dinner, didn’t you?”
“I ate a late lunch. I’m not hungry.” Phainon pushes the bowl closer to him. “Don’t you like these? You ought to have them.”
“I made them for you,” Mydei says quietly.
Phainon’s eyes widen. “You made them?”
“You weren’t at dinner. I got worried.”
Phainon stares at him in silence with that unreadable look in his eyes again. Finally he eats the remaining half and tips his head back to drink all the syrup. The bowl is empty when he gives it back.
“Thank you,” says Phainon. Then, pulling his shirt closer to himself, “I think I’ll do more research tonight. In my office.”
Mydei’s heart cracks and shatters like sculpted glass. “You could bring your research materials back here,” he offers, sounding pathetic even to his own ears. “Or you could study in the library.”
“I don’t want to inconvenience you,” Phainon says, already at the door. He doesn’t even look at him as he takes his leave. “Good night, Your Majesty.”
The door shuts behind him quietly, like he’d shut it carefully to avoid disturbing him. Mydei wishes he’d slammed it, wishes he’d made a scene and shouted at him. It would have been fine if they were fighting. As it stands, Mydei has no idea what Phainon is thinking at all.
Mydei spends his night watching the closed door, waiting in vain for it to open again. He sleeps restlessly, if at all.
***
The days at war were hard. Mydei was fine with using his body as a weapon, and could command soldiers with plenty of authority, but Aglaea’s assignments seemed damn near impossible. Mydei spent hours staring at the plans for their first battle, a group of royal soldiers roaming the north in search of their camps.
“Two thousand,” Mydei muttered darkly, like this might somehow change the number. Phainon had just entered the tent and was stripping off his coat behind him. “Two thousand soldiers, against half the goddamn royal army.”
“Hm?” Phainon leaned over his shoulder. “Is this our first assignment? The General gave you the plans already?”
Mydei sighed and pushed the paper closer to him. “I think she’s sending us to die.”
Phainon slid off his shoulder and sat down next to him. His mouth twisted into a little frown of concentration as he studied the map of the northern contingent’s movements. “And we estimate that they have fifteen to twenty thousand?”
It wasn’t actually half the royal army, but it was a few too many for Mydei’s taste. “We should assume we’re outnumbered ten to one. Which means we should assume we’re dead.”
“Of course we’re not dead, Mydei. The General wouldn’t give me a mission I couldn't accomplish.”
Mydei looked at him, unimpressed. This seemed pretty damn impossible. He alone could only handle so many opponents, and the ordinary footsoldiers without his power or training or discipline couldn't hope to make it out of those odds unscathed. “She might have.”
“Here.” Phainon dragged his finger from the enemy’s placement down to where they were camped, a straight shot south. “We’re directly south of them, through the east side of the mountains. But they don’t know we’re here. This contingent is searching, not following.”
Mydei didn’t see how that helped. “So we’re not dead until they find us?”
“Well, yes,” said Phainon. “But look—have you ever been to the center of this mountain range?” He paused momentarily, then looked vaguely embarrassed. “Right, of course you haven’t. We’re on the east side because it’s sheltered against the weather. But the center of the mountain range isn’t. The sun there is brutal, because it’s so high up and unprotected.”
“…Right.”
Phainon looked at him in faint amusement. “Are you lost?”
“A little,” Mydei admitted. “I never looked at maps growing up. Geography is hard to process.”
“I’ll help, then,” Phainon said, and promptly took one of his hands. Mydei let him guide his finger to drag against the map, starting at the point where the contingent was currently located. “So they’re here now.” He moved Mydei’s hand left. “But if we set up fake camp signals to the west and draw them into the mountain range, they’ll end up searching those mountains for days without success.” Here he trailed their hands all around, like they were getting hopelessly lost. “And if we sabotage or obstruct their water supply, half their soldiers will have heatstroke by their second day in the range. By the time they finally realize they’re following a red herring, they’ll be weak enough that our two thousand won’t be in quite so much danger anymore.”
Mydei looked up from their joined hands and stared at him, reverent. “You’re not just a soldier,” he said. “You’re a strategist.”
Phainon’s mouth quirked up. He turned his hand in Mydei’s and intertwined their fingers. “Did you think Anaxa only taught me how to sit still and look pretty? It’s a war camp, Mydei. I learned to fight.”
As a roaming child Mydei had only ever had himself and his mother and their few companions. He never assumed he would have an army to lead one day, and so he never learned the strategy of a commander. Yet Phainon looked at hopeless battle plans and saw promise. “Teach me,” he demanded. “Teach me how to see a path to victory.”
Phainon grinned. “You don’t want to be my pretty meathead? I don’t mind. I’ll be the brains, and you’ll be the brawn.”
“You’re plenty of the brawn,” Mydei said, motioning vaguely at Phainon’s chest, his arms, his waist, everything. “Look at you. You’re not short on it.”
“You think so?” Phainon asked, his smile only growing. “Mydei, don’t tell me you’ve been staring at me. While I’m naked.”
“Phainon, we’ve had sex. Multiple times.”
“And you were looking,” Phainon said, like this was the ultimate victory.
“Ridiculous man,” Mydei muttered. “Of course I was looking. You’re gorgeous.”
This actually caused Phainon to stumble. His smile faltered and his cheeks turned faintly pink. “Thank you,” he said, reaching for Mydei’s other hand. “You’re not so bad, for a wartime romance.”
Mydei narrowed his eyes. “For a wartime romance?”
“Well, you know,” Phainon said, his smile returning in full force. “If I were in a big city, I’d have my pick of anyone I liked. Since I’m so dashing and intelligent and all.” Here he gave Mydei a devious little wink that should have looked stupid but was painfully endearing instead. “But you’ll do, I suppose.”
Mydei scoffed and leaned in closer over him. Phainon shuffled backwards until his back hit the table and he had nowhere left to retreat. “Tell me,” Mydei murmured, “what could possibly make someone a better choice than me?”
Phainon’s eyes were blown wide and he took longer than usual to process his words. “I mean… I don’t know,” he breathed. “Maybe if they were rich.”
Mydei sunk his teeth into the spot just above Phainon’s collarbone. Phainon yelped.
“Rich and powerful,” he amended quickly. “Enough to get me a job at the reformed palace, after all this is over.”
Mydei hummed against his skin. He dragged his teeth lightly as he went.
“As—as an advisor,” Phainon gasped. “They’d give me a job as an advisor for peacetime. Maybe an economist; I always liked math…”
Mydei bit into the muscle of his shoulder.
“Fuck,” Phainon sighed, shifting his hips against the table. “And handsome. Unbelievably handsome. With a body like a fucking—sculpture of a god. And beautiful eyes, and a deep voice.”
“Demanding,” Mydei said, and kissed down the inside of his elbow, until he reached the thin skin of his wrist, where his pulse was going wild.
“Mydei,” he said at last, looking up at him. “Take pity on me. I really can’t think of anything else. All I can picture is you.”
Mydei felt an unrepentant surge of triumph as he lifted Phainon’s wrist and turned his hand around. “You could have said so from the start.” And he kissed the back of Phainon’s hand delicately, like a formality at a diplomatic meeting.
“I could have,” he admitted, grinning. “But then you wouldn’t have done that. Jealous?”
“No,” Mydei lied through his goddamn teeth.
“Hm,” Phainon said, looking at him sideways. He took his hand back. “You know, if you ask me to marry you when all this is over, I’ll say yes.”
Mydei blinked. He hadn’t even imagined being married. Then again, he could barely imagine winning their next battle. It seemed presumptuous to think that far ahead. But perhaps it would help motivate him. Give him something to fight for. “Alright,” he said, because he liked the idea. “I’ll ask you, then, when all is said and done. And then we’ll get married.”
They sat by the table with the battle plans on them in silence. Mydei thought about the drag of their hands against the paper and wondered how Phainon was so brilliant. Wondered who he would have been if he hadn’t been made into a man during a civil war. He wasn’t built for battle, not the way Mydei was. He would have been at place in a peaceful world. He could have become an economist from the start and skipped all this nonsense.
“Maybe it’ll be terrible,” Phainon said eventually. “Maybe we’ll get married and then it’ll be terrible and we’ll get divorced in a year.”
Mydei said nothing.
“But I think I’d like it anyway,” Phainon said. “I want to know what it would be like, being Mydei’s husband. Even if it were terrible, I’d probably be glad I did it.”
“It won’t be terrible,” Mydei said, sitting up to look at him. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Right,” said Phainon, nodding very seriously. “How could it be terrible when the sex is so good?”
Mydei shoved his shoulder. Phainon’s laughter seemed endless, a sweet song that made his eyes light up and his shoulders shake. Mydei was hopeless against that laugh. He watched Phainon until the laughter began to die out and then, once it had run its course, he kissed him so hard that Phainon’s eyes went wide in surprise and he nearly crushed the map beneath his frantic hands.
***
“—And the three southern lords, and the western extension duchess, and the Struma river management chief,” Phainon rattles off, pacing across the room. “So I’ll need to add five places, and make sure the three southern lords are separate, not together. And the western extension has a resource conflict with the first northern quarter. And the western extension residents don’t eat fish—”
“Phainon,” says Mydei. “Slow down.”
Phainon stops pacing, though the cogs in his brain are clearly still grinding.
“Is this about the nobles’ conference?”
Phainon looks at him. “No,” he says drily. “No, it’s about the other enormously important event that I’m responsible for.”
Mydei didn’t think the conference was that big of a deal, really. It was usually just a time for celebration. Every year, just before winter fell, the nobles apparently all went to the castle to give their reports. Mydei’s plan had been to intimidate the shit out of everyone, and then send them packing.
But Phainon clearly has other ideas.
“You don’t have to be respectful,” Mydei tells him. “I don’t think Aglaea cares how we treat them. Most of them are implicated in the corruption—we’re going to be taking away their positions anyway.”
Phainon is quiet for a long moment. He sits down by the low table, tapping his fingers against his knee.
“Do you want to spar?” Mydei blurts.
Phainon stops tapping his fingers. He looks at him.
“To relieve some stress,” Mydei says hastily. “You seem out of sorts. I thought maybe a spar would help.”
He’s expecting Phainon to refuse. He always refuses—they haven’t sparred even once since the wedding. It’s been two months, and still, nothing. Back at the war camp they used to spar once every week or two. But back then they had to keep their fighting skills sharp, Mydei reminds himself. Now it isn’t the same. There’s no need to remember the weight of a sword when they’ve already won.
“Alright,” Phainon says. He stands up.
Mydei stares at him. He never thought he’d agree, let alone that easily. “Really?”
“Not a full duel,” Phainon says, stretching his hands over his head. “We don’t have time for that. I was thinking a hand-to-hand match? No weapons, no training grounds.” He glances over at Mydei through the corner of his eye. “No clothes.”
Mydei’s mouth feels paper-dry all of a sudden.
“We could do it right here,” Phainon says, so painfully matter-of-fact. Without waiting for an answer, he pushes aside the low table and the chair, clearing a space all the way from the door to their bed. Then he looks at Mydei expectalty. “Well?”
“You want me to strip?”
“Yes,” says Phainon, already unbuttoning his shirt.
Mydei is powerless against his wishes. He strips down to his underwear and turns to face Phainon.
Phainon’s eyes are dark in the last vestiges of the winter daylight. “I said no clothes.”
“Phainon.”
“What?” says Phainon, his mouth quirking up. “Giving up already?”
Mydei stands there staring into his eyes, this man he once knew, this man he married. “I’m not,” he says. “I’m not giving up.”
Then he takes them off, and Phainon crashes into him.
The fight starts, just like that. Phainon knocks him back enough that he stumbles, catching his balance on his back foot. He’s stable enough by the time Phainon retaliates that he can dodge; Phainon’s force sends him reeling forward when he doesn’t make contact, and Mydei uses the opportunity to go for his waist, trying to flip him. It’s too easy, he thinks, and he’s right—Phainon sees it coming and grabs one of his arms, flipping him back around to loop an arm around his neck. Mydei struggles against the pressure, not enough to cut off his air but enough to make him grit his teeth. He finally escapes the hold by kicking at Phainon’s shins until he has to catch himself with his hands for balance.
It’s exhilarating, finally dueling him again. Mydei hasn’t dueled anyone since he and Phainon last went at it, and that was before the war ended. Phainon puts up a real challenge—he’s strong enough to oppose him, and bold enough to use that strength against him without reservation. He’s relentless. He escapes every hold Mydei puts him in and uses every movement to push his advantage. Mydei watches the glorious muscles of his legs move and wonders, half-delirious, if he could convince Phainon to never wear pants around him again.
Eventually Phainon’s offensive grows so strong that all Mydei can do is retreat, retreat, retreat, until his legs hit the back of the bed. He’s out of space—he’s hit the boundary of their competition.
Then Phainon draws closer, close enough for one last punch, and—
Mydei doesn’t think about it. He throws himself backwards to avoid the blow.
Phainon stops entirely. He looks at him, a strange glint in his eye. Mydei looks back at him, catching his breath, and realizes abruptly where he’s ended up. Sweaty, panting, naked on their bed.
Fuck.
“Do you yield?” Phainon asks, taking that last step closer.
Mydei opens his mouth. He can’t quite form the words.
“I said,” Phainon murmurs, leaning in over him. “Do you yield?”
“No,” Mydei rasps, halfway to losing his mind. “I don’t.”
Phainon’s grin stretches wide across his face. “But you’re cornered,” he says, their faces only inches apart. “You can’t retaliate now. If you don’t yield, I have no choice but to keep going.”
“Do—your worst,” Mydei chokes out.
Phainon grabs Mydei by the hair and drags him to sit up. He looks into his eyes. He licks his lips. Then he punches him in the gut so hard that he nearly coughs up a lung.
“Okay,” Mydei gasps through the blinding, glorious pain. “I definitely yield.”
Phainon, breathing hard, makes a sound halfway to a laugh and flops down next to him. In the dying afternoon light he and Phainon lay there on their bed. Mydei stares at the ceiling and occasionally coughs out the last of his internal organs’ protests.
“Sorry,” Phainon says, not looking at him.
“For what?” Mydei asks, turning his head toward him. “I asked to spar with you. I can take it.”
“Still. I feel bad.”
Mydei raises his eyebrows, even though Phainon isn’t watching. “You do?”
Phainon wheezes out a laugh. “No,” he admits. “But I feel bad that I don’t feel bad.”
The smile returns slowly to his face as he stares at the ceiling. Mydei watches him, his eyes tracing the freckles down his shoulder and his arm and across his back. They lie in silence until the last slivers of the sunset die a quiet death outside the window, when Phainon is forced to get up and light a candle to give them more light.
“We should get dressed,” Mydei says, as he strikes the match. “And go to dinner.”
Phainon sighs, hard enough that the candle flame flickers in the wake of it. “Should we really?”
He is so beautiful. Mydei would watch him catch his breath forever, until there was no more air left in the world for him to breathe. “We don’t have to,” he says. “I can have our dinner brought here instead.”
Phainon smiles.
Finally, Mydei thinks. Finally he has brought this man a fraction of the joy he deserves. He would pay any price for that. In the grand scheme of things, Aglaea cannot begrudge them one missed dinner.
***
It took six months for the war to turn around. The rebellion army had gathered enough public support that they had recruits from almost everywhere across the country. Then when they reached Janusopolis, the high priestess, Mortis, and her young daughters, Tribbie and Trianne and Trinnon, all promised themselves to their cause. When they announced it publicly, everyone else in the city scrambled to follow suit. Suddenly their forces were nearly twice as strong, and their prospects better than ever before.
There was a grand celebration that night. With the addition of the Janusopolis residents, their army was more than strong enough to put up a fight. Everyone knew the end of the war, one way or another, was on the horizon.
As with most celebrations, Mydei tried to retreat outside the camp. But just as he was leaving their tent, Phainon’s hand caught his elbow. “Where are you going?”
Mydei sighed through his nose. “You know where I’m going.”
“But whatever am I going to do without my arm candy?”
Mydei looked at him, unimpressed.
“Please?” Phainon asked, his smile not faltering even once. “Come with me. You won’t even have to talk to anyone—I’ll do all the talking for you. Just stand there and look pretty.”
Then, as if to sweeten the deal, he slipped his hand into Mydei’s and squeezed, just once.
“Fine,” Mydei blurted, like he couldn't get the word out fast enough. “Fine, I’ll come with you.”
There was something a little sad behind Phainon’s eyes, even as he smiled. “I hoped you’d say yes. It might be our last time celebrating together.”
“It always might be our last time,” Mydei pointed out as Phainon steered them towards the center of the celebrations. “That’s kind of the point of being at war.”
Phainon huffed a dry laugh. “You’re just a ray of sunshine, huh?”
“I’m realistic.”
Phainon rolled his eyes. Someone handed them two cups of wine. Mydei sniffed it, then immediately felt like an idiot because he knew nothing about wine, and discerned absolutely nothing from the smell.
“Muscat wine,” Phainon told him. “Anaxa likes pears best, but their season is short. He made this one in the summer. It ages pretty well, so he saved it for the fall.”
Mydei hummed. He discreetly handed Phainon his cup. Phainon laughed and took it without hesitating.
They wandered through the crowds, where everyone seemed to recognize them and wanted to wave and say hello. Phainon was clearly delighted by this, and waved back to every single person he saw. He toasted with people and wished them all good fortune and smiled like he would never get the chance again. Mydei had never seen him like this before; he was so serious on the battlefield, so determined. And when they were alone he was full of quiet joy. But here his joy was loud and overt. Mydei was bewitched.
Phainon’s effect was so strange. People just liked him. He had this undeniable charisma. Even Mydei wasn’t exempt—he was just the same, caught in Phainon’s magnetic orbit from the minute they met.
He wondered, just then, what Phainon would do with himself after all this was done. He could do anything he liked, he was certain. He could ask for any position in the world, and it would be his.
He could have had anyone in the world. And he wanted to marry Mydei of all people.
“You must be tired,” Phainon said, looking over at him with a soft smile. “I’ve been dragging you around for a while now. Come on—let’s sit down. I’ll get you some juice.”
He brought Mydei over to an empty table near the General’s tent. No one wanted to go near her quarters; there was a superstition or something. Apparently Anaxa had gone near her tent once and found himself nearly strangled by a clothesline he could have sworn wasn’t there two minutes ago. But Phainon assured him that the clothesline story had more to do with Aglaea and Anaxa’s antagonism than with the tent itself, so Mydei sat there and waited for Phainon to come back.
And then a small child plunked herself down next to him.
Mydei looked down at her, a little confused. She had bright red hair and a white dress with long sleeves. She must have been one of the priestess’s children. “Tribbie?” he guessed.
The little girl broke into giggles. “Nope! Trianne!”
Trianne sat there swinging her feet. Mydei looked at her and said, “Forgive me, Miss Trianne. I fear we have not met before.”
“You talk funny,” said Trianne, and then she cleared her throat and put on a slightly different voice. “I mean, thank you, Mister Commander. Fear not—we shall be introduced. I am Lady Trianne of Janusopolis.”
“Greetings, Lady Trianne. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”
She sprung up from the bench and bobbed into a little curtsy. Mydei watched her and fought back a smile with all his might.
“And you, Mister Commander?” she asked, as she sat back down.
“I am Lord Mydei.”
Trianne looked up at him eagerly. “Of?”
Mydei hesitated. He had no idea what to say. Of where? He wasn’t really of anywhere. Of the Kremnoan line, but he was keeping that a secret. Of Castrum Kremnos, but he had never even laid eyes on the palace before. Of Amphoreus, he supposed, but then again everyone was from Amphoreus.
“Of Aedes Elysiae,” said Phainon from behind him. He handed Mydei a glass. “Just like me.”
Trianne looked starstruck. She looked at Mydei. “Another one?”
“This, my fair lady, is Lord Phainon,” Mydei said. He lifted the glass to his lips and took a tiny, tentative sip, half-expecting it to be alcohol. But it wasn’t—it was juice, just as promised. Pomegranate juice. He was so relieved by the familiar taste that he drank a third of the glass in one go.
“Mama said not to drink too much,” Trianne told him, frowning. “She said adults always drink more than they should.”
Mydei leaned in slightly and showed her the glass. “Take a look, my lady,” he said. “This isn’t an adult drink. It’s pomegranate juice.”
Trianne tilted her head. “But you’re an adult.”
“I’m an adult,” Mydei agreed. “And I like juice.”
Trianne looked highly impressed.
“Lord Phainon had it brought for me specially.” He looked over at Phainon and held eye contact. “Because he cares for me so deeply.”
Phainon snorted. “Yes, yes, I care for him like the spring grass cares for the rain, et cetera, et cetera. It’s just juice.”
Mydei thought it was about much more than the juice. He didn’t say anything.
“Where’s Aedes Elodimae anyway?”
“Elysiae,” Phainon corrected, sitting down across from them. “Well, Lady Trianne, it’s long gone.”
She looked puzzled. “Then how are you both from there?”
Phainon’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Aedes Elysiae was my hometown. And then the bad guys came, and I had to leave. There was no more Aedes Elysiae after that.”
“Then how do you go home?” asked Trianne.
“Ah, that’s easy,” said Phainon. “See, there’s two of us—him and me.” He tapped his knee against Mydei’s under the table, three times in quick succession. “As long as we’re together, we’ll be just fine.”
“Oh!” said Trianne, her eyes lighting up. “Like me and my sisters and Mama?”
“Mm-hmm. Exactly.”
Trianne looked pleased. She turned back to Mydei. “Can I try your juice?”
“Of course, my lady,” said Mydei. He gave her the cup and helped her take a careful sip, then another, then another. Before he knew it, all of the pomegranate juice was gone. Trianne was so delighted that he didn’t even feel sad about it.
The two of them kept her company for a little while, until a slightly frazzled-looking Mortis rounded the corner and spotted her. “Trianne!” she cried, already holding her two other daughters in each arm. “There you are! You can’t run away, darling—Mama can’t look after you if you separate from each other.”
“It’s okay!” said Trianne, beaming. “Lord Mydei and Lord Phainon gave me some juice.”
Mortis looked at the glass on the table. She looked faintly horrified.
“Pomegranate juice,” Mydei said.
“He hates alcohol,” Phainon added.
Mortis slumped in relief. “Well, thank you both,” she said. “It’s harder than you’d think, having three of them to wrangle.” Then she picked up Trianne and slung her onto her back, her hands still full with Tribbie and Trinnon. “Have a good night!” Then she vanished again, presumably to her own quarters.
Phainon waited until they were out of view to say, “So you really do like kids.”
Mydei’s face felt warm. “You knew that already.”
“I had never seen it before,” Phainon said, grinning. “There’s a difference.”
Mydei huffed and crossed his arms.
“But why couldn't you say where you were from?” asked Phainon, tilting his head.
Mydei’s shoulders froze up. “It’s—not one place,” he said, which was close enough to the truth. “I grew up on the road.”
“Oh. I guess that’s hard to explain to a child.”
“You said I was from your hometown.”
Phainon sighed. His smile was wry. “Yes. Aedes Elysiae. I never told you its name, did I?” He propped his elbows on the table and leaned his chin in his hands. “It was beautiful. The most beautiful place I’ve ever seen. We had these orchards—giant orchards as far as the eye could see.” His smile turned wry. “They burned the fastest.”
Mydei sat there in silence. Eventually he said, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not like it’s your fault.”
“But it’s not something I can change,” Mydei said quietly. “It’s not something I can fix.”
Phainon sighed. “It’s not something that needs fixing. It burned. That’s all. In the grand scheme of things, it was inconsequential. No one else even remembers—I was the only survivor, as far as I know.”
Mydei supposed that, in that regard, they weren’t too different. He was the only survivor, too. Now that his mother was dead, he was the only blood Kremnoan left.
“It was by order of a duke,” Phainon continued. “One of the king’s right-hand men. He rode out one morning with twelve of his men and burned down the town. That’s all it took—thirteen people. Thirteen people took away my home. Thirteen people killed everyone I knew.”
Mydei stayed quiet. Phainon’s eyes were a little crazed, but after he blinked a few times the odd glint went away and they were back to being blue again.
“I’m wanted by the Amphorean Royal Guard,” he said eventually, with a little laugh. “Eighty million balance, dead or alive.”
“That makes two of us,” Mydei said drily, before he could stop himself. He had been wanted by the Amphorean Royal Guard practically since birth, though he never knew why as a child. All in all, eighty million wasn’t that much. His bounty was probably much more than that. He didn’t know.
Phainon glanced up at him. “Yeah,” he said, smiling slightly. “I guess we’re in this together.”
“We are,” Mydei said. “And we will be once this is all over, too.”
Phainon looked a little surprised. “You remembered?”
“How could I forget?” Mydei scoffed. “No one’s ever asked to marry me before. It’s not exactly an everyday occurrence.”
“I didn’t ask. I said if you asked, I’d say yes.”
“That’s the same thing.”
“It is not,” Phainon protested, his face flushed pink. “You have to ask.”
“I’m going to,” Mydei told him. It wasn’t the first time he had promised this, but it was the first time that it truly felt within reach. It was one thing to make promises when the end of the war was far off in the distance; it was another to make them when the end was so clearly around the corner.
Phainon’s laugh was breathy. “I won’t change my answer.”
“I would hope not.”
Phainon sighed and looked up at the sky. There weren’t many stars out; it was clouded over. “Who do you think they’ll put in charge, if we win? Aglaea, maybe? I don’t think she wants that power. Anaxa? Castorice? All of us? Or will there be something else entirely?”
Mydei had never given that much thought. Their goal was to overthrow the current king and replace his corrupt court. They had never defined whether that meant another monarch, or a council, or an election, or another thing altogether. “Focus on the present,” he said. “If we don’t win, there won’t be anything at all.”
Phainon looked back down from the sky. “Right. I was just thinking. Anaxa always wanted a monarchy with three lines instead of one. That's why Aglaea hates him so much—she thinks there should be one leader of a nation, someone to be the figurehead of Amphoreus.”
“Figurehead? The monarch doesn’t have real power?”
“Well, that’s what the council is for. That’s where the real corruption is—the council.” Phainon looked at him sideways, a slanted smile on his mouth. “They might make you and me council members, you know.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Phainon’s laugh this time was lighter, more genuine. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m just nervous.” He stood up and offered his hand. “Want me to walk you back?”
Mydei nodded. They walked back together, just like always. Phainon gave him a quick kiss and then went back outside, presumably to party for longer. He was sometimes out until sunrise, when the celebrations got really intense. He probably wouldn’t be back for hours.
Mydei laid down and tried to sleep. He kept circling back to Phainon’s question. What would happen after they won? The thought kept him up. He’d never given it much thought. He just knew that the new regime wouldn’t be the one that murdered his mother. If it could help bring justice to the people, all the better. He had never considered where he might fit into the new Amphoreus.
Privately, Mydei thought becoming a council member wasn’t an option for him. Once his bloodline status got out, no one would see him the same way. There were really only two possibilities: he could become king, or he could die. That was it.
He didn’t sleep that night. He spent the whole night mulling over the question in his mind. He kept envisioning becoming king, and dying, and becoming king, and dying, trapped in a loop in his mind. The minute one ended, the next began. He was king and then he was dead and then he was king again.
The crown on his head, or the knife in his back. Mydei almost couldn't decide which fate sounded worse.
***
The nobles’ winter conference marks its arrival by Phainon’s restlessness. The closer it grows, the darker the circles under his eyes grow. On the day their guests begin to arrive, he wakes up before Mydei to cover them, squinting at himself in the mirror by the light of a single candle.
“You can light more than one,” Mydei tells him, as he gets out of bed and rolls the tension from his shoulders. “I don’t mind.”
Phainon looks at his reflection in the mirror. “I didn’t want to wake you.”
“I’d rather lose half an hour of sleep than damage your eyes.”
Phainon smiles without crinkling his eyes. He’s only finished covering one of his eyes; the other is still dark underneath like the fragile half-healed press of a bruise. Mydei’s chest hurts when he looks at it. He turns away and goes to wash his face. By the time he looks back again Phainon’s eyes are bright like they were never tired to begin with.
That evening Phainon comes into the library to find him. Mydei is so surprised to see him in the library at all that it takes several moments of staring at him to realize that Phainon is waiting for him. He puts away his book. “Did you need something?” he asks.
“The dining hall,” Phainon says, then trails off. As they walk out of the library, he tries again: “I need you to be there.”
Mydei doesn’t know what he means. “I’m always there.”
“At the banquet,” Phainon says quickly, like he wants to get it over with. “Tomorrow afternoon and evening, I’m hosting the main reception banquet. I… would like you to be there. With me.”
Mydei looks over at him, at his perfect sleepless eyes. “Of course I will.”
“Really?” says Phainon, glancing at him with a tiny smile. “I would have thought it’d be a bit harder. You hate receiving guests, don’t you?”
“I don’t hate it,” Mydei lies through his teeth. “You never ask for anything. You can have this.”
For just a moment, the dry makeup around Phainon’s eyes cracks, letting the tiredness peek through. Then he smiles a little and looks steadily ahead of them. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I’ll do most of the talking. I just want you to be there for appearances.”
“Appearances,” Mydei repeats, crossing his arms with a smile. “You’re sure it’s not for moral support?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Phainon scoffs, and then he reaches over for Mydei’s hand and doesn’t let go until they reach their quarters again and he has to unlock the door.
It’s nice, Mydei thinks as he lays down to sleep. It’s nice being the one by his side.
By the next afternoon he is beginning to rethink this priority.
Being by Phainon’s side at the banquet is hell.
Mydei has always hated the stench of wealth. It’s not something he ran into much as a kid, but as an adult, he’s seen his fair share of apathetic rich people, and he has yet to meet a single one whose company was worth his time. None of their noble guests are exceptions. Every person Phainon greets is plainly terrified of them both, vying to keep their positions as best they can. Everyone employs different strategies. For example:
“I love what you’ve done with the place,” says a noblewoman from southern Amphoreus, gesturing at the reception hall. “It’s so lively and intimate now. Do you have plans to commission new artwork for the wall hanging spaces? I know the most wonderful portrait artist and she’d be delighted to paint one of each of you, and of your new advisors, of course, as war heroes they would naturally deserve a place as well—ah, but that’s not to say they’re of equal importance to the royal family, of course—”
“Thank you,” Phainon interrupts, giving her a smile with no humor in his eyes. “His Majesty and I were thinking of commissioning landscapes instead to feature all of Amphoreus’ timeless natural beauty.”
“Oh, of course, of course! Naturally,” she says, hiding a tittering laugh behind her fan. “What part of Amphoreus do you hail from, again? And which family?”
Phainon grips Mydei’s arm so hard it nearly cuts off his circulation.
“Does it matter?” Mydei asks sharply. “He’s part of my family now. The royal family.”
“Right, right, of course—I do apologize, that was so insensitive, I meant no disrespect, of course—”
Mydei pulls them away from the conversation as fast as he can.
Phainon grits his teeth and puts on another smile. “Let’s go, then,” he says, his eyes steely. “More people await.”
Mydei looks at him out of the corner of his eye. The hand that isn’t on Mydei’s arm is shaking faintly. “Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Yes,” Phainon says flatly. “Now let’s go.”
And then:
“I never did like Old Eurypon,” says a nobleman with thinning black hair, turning up his nose. “Favored his own men too much. Left nothing for the rest of us. And now you. You’re his own flesh and blood—but of course you’ll be better, having grown up outside of his nonsense. And you’ve got this gentleman—a good western man, aren’t you? I can tell from the eyes. You look western. Maybe southwestern? One of the farming regions?”
Phainon looks like he’s going to be sick.
“My father didn’t deserve this crown,” Mydei says. “And frankly neither do I.”
“Oh, young man, don’t be so modest! We all heard of your exploits on the battlefield. Taking down those corrupt bastards like so many wild deer, eh? Say—do you like hunting? I’ve got a game reserve on my estate, and the most well-trained horses west of the castle.”
Mydei glares at him. “We’re still investigating those corrupt bastards.”
“But of course we’ll consider your generous offer,” Phainon cuts in, smiling like he’s swallowed nails. “Forgive him—I’m not a fan of horseback riding. It makes me feel ill. Sweetheart, you really can’t bear to be separated from me, hm?” He laughs, just once, too high-pitched.
The nobleman laughs with him. “Newlyweds,” he agrees, with a wink. “Gotta say, I’m surprised you let your poor consort walk! Everyone says you’re not just vicious on the battlefield, but—”
“That is private,” Mydei snaps, his face burning. “And I don’t let him do anything. Phainon is his own goddamn person.”
“Hah!” the man says. “Looks like the rumors were on the money, eh?”
Phainon just laughs again, covering his mouth with one hand like he’s embarrassed about it. “His Majesty just wants to keep my pride intact. But who wouldn’t be proud, married to someone like him?”
He looks at Mydei here, tilting his head up like he’s purposely made himself shorter just for the illusion. It’s strange. Mydei knows they’re the same height, and yet here Phainon is, making himself shorter with his purposely bad posture just to look up at him. His eyes are wide and his smile is sickening and the nobleman across from them is disgustingly overt in trying to gain their favor and Mydei is done with this—
“Excuse us for another glass of wine,” Phainon says, and drags Mydei away by his arm like they’re fleeing from a losing battle.
The minute they’re out of earshot Phainon leans in and whispers, “Don’t do that.”
Mydei glances at him, bewildered. “Do what? Defend you? You know those rumors are false. I don’t even top most of the t—”
“Your Majesty,” Phainon hisses, looking about two seconds away from slapping a hand over his mouth.
Mydei cuts himself off. It’s unlike Phainon to be embarrassed about this kind of thing. His reaction is so strong, so out of character, that it startles him into dropping the topic. “Have some water, at least,” he ends up saying instead. “You’ve been talking a lot.”
Phainon sighs, but gets himself a glass of water anyways.
And later, as the banquet meal is concluding:
“We all know you met fighting in the war,” says a middle-aged noblewoman with glasses dangling precariously on her nose. “You were soldiers together, correct? So poetic.”
“Commanders,” Mydei corrects. “Both commanders.”
“Right,” she says, clearly not caring. “Well, I’m sure the more intellectually-inclined of us are all curious. Do you have any tales to regale us with? Stories of your exploits? Romantic star-crossed moments on the battlefield?”
Mydei looks at her, appalled. Of all the things to ask for, war stories? And uplifting ones? Haven’t these people heard that the rebellion army was scrappy and underhanded and organized with the sole goal of surviving another day? How they barely made it through the first year or two of being attacked? And now she speaks as if their victory—the victory they fought tooth and nail for, the battles they were outmatched in and the losses they suffered—was a guarantee? Was never in question?
Mydei opens his mouth to tell her to go fuck herself, when—
“Of course we do,” Phainon says, through his widest smile yet. “Right, Your Majesty?”
And he elbows Mydei in the side so hard that he nearly wheezes with the force.
“…Yes,” Mydei says through gritted teeth. He racks his brain for something to say, and comes up with: “We met on a battlefield near Aidonia.”
“Right! How could I forget?” Phainon turns to him, smiling like nothing is the matter, and says, “He was so brilliant out there. I couldn't keep my eyes away. I never believed in love at first sight, and then I saw him.”
That isn’t at all what happened, Mydei wants to say. It wasn’t beautiful at all. It was horrific. He had been furious that day, so furious that he had killed people. Killed a hundred men in a frozen wasteland. Phainon was the only one who wasn’t terrified of him. Phainon had seen the anger in his eyes and instead of retreating, he had fought him until it all dissipated. Phainon had calmed him down from his rage and then carried him all the way back home. And he says he was the one who fell in love that day.
They’ve gathered a small crowd now, a circle of people listening to them. Everyone looks delighted with Phainon’s response. In fact, another young man leans in and says, “I heard you two were partners.”
“In two senses of the word,” Phainon replies. The crowd is even bigger now. “I couldn't bear to be apart from him, even in battle—so I asked our General to make me his partner. He was kind enough to agree to take me.” Here he pauses, and several people laugh politely, like he’s scripted it or something. It’s almost creepy. “We lived together and fought together and fell in love together.”
Another lie. Mydei was the one who brought up partnership. Phainon wasn’t unpopular at all; anyone would have wanted to be his partner, strategic or otherwise. Mydei was the one everyone was scared of. Mydei was the one with no friends.
“And did you ever fight against one another?”
“Well,” says Phainon, leaning in conspiratorially like he’s spilling a secret. Practically everyone in the reception hall is hanging on his every word. “We did, actually—the day we first met. I was so enchanted that I had to find a reason to talk to him. So we dueled.”
“And who won?” asks a noble with large, excitable eyes.
“His Majesty did, of course,” says Phainon.
“He won,” says Mydei, at the same time.
Phainon looks at him out of the corner of his eye. Then he looks back at the room, his smile not slipping for a second. “I suppose we tied. But he had just fought a battle practically by himself. It’s only natural that he would have less strength after that.”
“You knocked me to the ground like it was nothing,” Mydei protests, with eyes only for Phainon. “And you fought in that battle too. Don’t pretend you weren’t my equal.”
Phainon freezes.
There it is, Mydei thinks, with a sick sense of satisfaction. His weak point.
“Phainon won that fight,” Mydei says in the ensuing silence. His voice carries like it did that day when he won the final fight and made himself king in this very throne room. “He was my fellow commander and my partner. He was, and still is, my equal.”
The nobles are utterly silent at this. In the background, a single glass of wine clinks against a table.
And then Phainon turns to him, his smile slightly sharper than before. “You would say that, darling.”
Mydei frowns. What is that supposed to mean?
“But I suppose there’s one way to find out for ourselves,” Phainon says, turning back to their audience. Then he motions to the throne-less dais. “What do you say? Shall we have a duel?”
And their guests go wild.
Mydei should refuse. Should tell him no, because this is a terrible idea. He’s always hated dueling with an audience. “Yes,” he says anyway, because the steely glint in Phainon’s eye is too much for him to refuse. “Let’s duel.”
“No weapons,” Phainon says. “No training grounds.”
No clothes, Mydei recalls, and swallows thickly. He follows Phainon up onto the dais and takes his hand like they’re dancing.
And then they’re off.
Mydei starts off brutal. He aims for a low kick, trying to knock Phainon off his feet, and he dodges easily, slipping out of the way with grace.
But in the ensuing opening, where Mydei would usually expect him to retaliate with an offensive move, he does nothing.
It’s a little odd, but Mydei can’t let himself be bothered by it. He tries again, this time with a double punch to the chest—a fakeout with the left, and a real one with the right. Again, Phainon sees his real maneuver coming and grabs his right fist, twisting it around to negate the effects. He twirls around with the arm so that he ends up in Mydei’s arms, his back pressed to his chest.
Mydei braces himself to get elbowed in the gut. But nothing happens.
Phainon stays there in his arms, doing nothing, for a solid three seconds.
Eventually Mydei realizes he isn’t going to strike. He halfheartedly tries for a choke with his elbow; Phainon avoids it by dancing out of his arms, back into their starting positions.
And so it goes. Mydei pulls out all the stops on his offensive effort, and Phainon just dodges. Until about five minutes in, when Mydei tries his showiest move of all—a low-high sweeping roundhouse kick—and Phainon sees it coming, clearly sees it coming, makes eye contact with him and everything—
—And takes the hit directly to his face.
Mydei drops his leg immediately. He rushes over to Phainon, reaching for his face with both hands. “Show me,” he demands, tilting his head to the side to inspect it. There isn’t a bruise yet, but there are clearly some burst blood vessels in his cheek. No damage to his teeth or his jaw, though, which was his main worry. He sighs in relief. “It’ll just bruise,” he says quietly, rubbing his thumb carefully across the area. Phainon flinches slightly, but endures the touch. He even smiles at him with the gentlest eyes Mydei has ever seen. His heart skips a beat—is Phainon really—
Oh. Their audience.
Mydei should have fucking known.
“Well, as you can see,” Phainon says, smiling with one hand to his face, covering the worst of the blood vessels. “His Majesty is impressive in many respects, and makes for an incredibly talented duel partner.”
Then Phainon turns to him and bows.
It’s not just any bow, either. Mydei recognizes it, because the royal guards who killed his mother all did it to her just before they cut off her head. It’s the bow of servants to the royal family. The motion of utmost respect. Of subservience.
“Phainon,” Mydei says sharply. “I need to talk to you.”
Phainon looks genuinely caught off guard. He pastes on his smile again and says, “But we had more questions about the—”
“Please,” Mydei grits out.
Phainon’s expression slips. For a moment, he looks just as tired as he does in their bedroom, fixing his face in front of the mirror each morning. “Excuse us,” he says to the crowd. “Enjoy yourselves here in the meantime. We should have more wine brought out before dinner! And perhaps some appetizers?”
“Phainon.”
“Of course, darling,” Phainon says, beaming, and then he drags him out of the reception hall with a face so blank it would scare anyone shitless.
The minute they’re far enough away to get some semblance of privacy, Phainon turns on him. “What are you doing?”
“What am I doing?” Mydei asks, gaping at him. “What the fuck was that? You threw that match. I know you did. You didn’t try for a single punch.”
“So what?” Phainon says icily. “What does it matter?”
Mydei stares at him, baffled. “You threw. How could it not matter? You never throw against me.”
Phainon sighs through his nose. “It’s a terrible look for you to lose. I’m doing what’s best for you. For both of us.”
“How? I don’t care that we had an audience. You could have at least tried.”
Phainon looks at him without even anger. That’s the worst part—his face is completely blank. No emotion whatsoever. Like he isn’t even affected by all of this. “I know what I’m doing,” he says. “Why don’t you trust me?”
“You told me you would never go easy on me,” Mydei says weakly. “You promised.”
“That was then. And this is now.”
Mydei looks at him, but when he reaches for Phainon’s hands he retracts them before he can even try. “What changed?” he asks, barely above a whisper. “What changed between then and now that made us so different?”
Phainon stops walking. He takes a long, measured inhale.
“Phainon,” Mydei says quietly. “Who are you?”
And Phainon snaps.
“I’M YOUR GODDAMN CONSORT, MYDEIMOS!”
Mydei stands there, stunned into silence.
“I’m your goddamn consort,” Phainon says again, his eyes a little wild. “I’m the king’s pretty little trophy husband. I’m the castle’s event planner. I’m the fucking—the fucking ambassador to nobility. You know how terribly I’m suited to this? You know how badly I thought I’d fuck this up? You know how much I wanted to tell you no? That I wouldn’t do it? That you should choose someone else? Anyone else? I don’t give a fuck who—just—just not me. Marry some noble bastard for all I care. Anyone but me, Mydei, ANYONE BUT ME—”
“But you—you said yes,” Mydei says weakly. “When I asked, you said yes.”
Phainon barks out a laugh.
“You think I had a choice?” he asks, his grin sharper than his greatsword. “You thought I could have said anything else? When you were standing on the dais with the crown over your head, and you said, Phainon, marry me, in front of FUCKING EVERYONE?”
Mydei stays silent.
“You didn’t even give me time to think. I was fighting, and then there I was in the throne room, watching you take the crown from Eurypon’s head, and then…” Phainon takes a deep, shuddering breath. His eyes are red and shimmering, and the makeup beneath them is starting to run. “I can understand why Aglaea knew, okay? I get it. And Anaxa knowing was fine. And maybe Castorice makes sense. But—why did everyone know but me? Why was I the last to know that you were the fucking Crown Prince this whole time?”
“Phainon,” he pleads, not even sure what he’s asking for.
“Don’t give me that,” Phainon says coldly. “You had a hundred opportunities to tell me. And you know what? I wouldn’t have minded. I’d have gotten over it, Mydei, I really would have. I’d have been okay with it. And then if you’d asked me to marry you I’d have said yes and meant it. But—” His voice breaks here. His eye bags are showing through again, only in the streaks where the tears have trailed down his face. The bruise is starting to show on his cheek. “God, Mydei, I’d kill to be married to you, but—but not like this. Not like this.”
“We can take a break,” Mydei says desperately, hardly even daring to touch him. “We can—we can tell people you’re going on a diplomatic trip. You don’t have to be here. Or—or we can separate permanently. You can have your own quarters.”
Phainon looks at him through his damp eyes and laughs. “You don’t get it,” he says quietly. A smile slowly spreads across his mouth. “You still don’t get it.”
“You don’t have to ever see me again,” Mydei offers, hardly able to look at him. “If you don’t want to see me, you won’t. I’ll stay away if—”
“Do you know,” Phainon interrupts, stalking closer to him, “what the worst part is?”
Mydei is powerless against his approach. He just stands there, stock-still, as Phainon draws closer.
“The worst part isn’t that I loved you. The worst part is that I still fucking do.”
And then Phainon is kissing him like he hasn’t in months, with fury and passion and emotion and Mydei stands there dumbstruck in the hallway of his own castle with his eyes wide open and Phainon tangling his hands in his hair and their breath intertwined and he’s real, he’s real, and this is the person Mydei married but he’s insatiable, unstoppable, and his touch is infinite and he’s not letting go, he’s not letting go, why isn’t he letting go—
They don’t make it back to the party. They hardly make it to their bed before Phainon is tearing him apart with his teeth, all steel and iron and fire and he’s so beautiful, he’s the most beautiful thing Mydei has ever seen, and he’s inescapable.
Usually Phainon is a kind lover, the sort of man who likes to laugh and make idle conversation in the afterglow and brush Mydei’s hair after pulling it. But that was before, Mydei supposes. That was before all of this. Now he’s ruthless, excruciating. It’s like they’re fighting. It’s like Phainon is so pent up from purposely losing their duel in the reception hall that he’s dueling him now, dueling him with his back against the sheets in their own bedroom and winning.
Mydei can’t remember when he falls asleep but when he blinks his eyes open, daylight is streaming through the blinds. His clothes are folded on the chair. The sheets are perfectly neat around him. A glass of pomegranate juice sits on the nightstand on Phainon’s side of the bed.
There’s no one else in the room. Not even a note. No signs of his presence whatsoever.
Phainon is gone.
***
Three days before the coup, Mydei burst into Aglaea’s quarters and said, “I need to tell you something.”
Aglaea didn’t look surprised. She just motioned toward the spot next to her. “Come in. Take a seat.”
Mydei sat. He stared at the only decoration in her room—a fabric scroll painted with a field of golden wheat and a single solitary woman with her back turned. “It’s very beautiful,” he said. “The painting, I mean.”
“That man made it,” Aglaea said, rather distastefully. “I think it’s appallingly mediocre. Yet he insists that I keep it up.”
Mydei stared at the painting some more. The woman in the wheat field looked sort of like Aglaea herself, if she wore fine white silk instead of her armor. He wasn’t sure who ‘that man’ was, but then again Aglaea only ever talked about one man in that tone. Had Anaxa really painted a general in such beautiful peacetime clothes?
“You had something to tell me?”
Mydei shook himself out of his trance. “Right.” He took a deep breath in and gathered twenty-one years of courage and said, “My full name—”
“Mydeimos,” Aglaea said calmly. “Son of Gorgo, Crown Prince of Castrum Kremnos.”
Mydei blinked at her, baffled.
“I was going to discuss this with you, in fact,” she continued, crossing one leg over the other. “Anaxa knows, of course, and so do Castorice and Mortis and Hyacine. We’ve been debating about the government structure after the war, should we emerge victorious.”
“I don’t see how my blood is relevant,” Mydei lied through gritted teeth. He saw perfectly well; he just didn’t feel like dying yet.
“You are the Crown Prince.”
Strange—no one had ever said that to him before. It was only his mother, killed by her own former guards, that had tipped him off. He had never heard the words spoken aloud. They sent shivers down his spine. “I don’t need the throne,” he said, a little desperately. “I can keep it a secret. And—and Phainon and I won’t have children. The bloodline will die with me. You don’t need to worry. Please.”
Aglaea looked up at him strangely.
“If I die in battle, it will be fine,” Mydei said quietly. “But to be killed by my own allies—”
“Mydei,” she interrupted. “I’m not asking to kill you.”
There was a long pause. Mydei thought back to Phainon’s words, how Aglaea always wanted a single ruler, a figurehead for their government, and he knew, suddenly, what she was going to ask. There were, after all, only two options.
“I’m asking you to become king.”
Mydei tipped his head back and laughed.
Aglaea waited for him to finish. She sat there in silence, looking at him expectantly.
The laughter died in his mouth. Mydei sat up straight. Thought of his mother and the crown she forfeited once upon a time. “It can’t be a long-term arrangement,” he said. “Just until we come to a conclusion on how to restructure Amphoreus.”
“I understand,” Aglaea said. “Our debates have been rather obstructed by the ongoing war we’re fighting, as I’m sure you can imagine.”
“And,” Mydei said, “I want to be the one to kill him.”
At this, Aglaea made an odd imitation of a laugh. It was a haunting sound, thick with irony and devoid of humor. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
That was that, Mydei supposed. His two choices, laid out before him: become king, or die.
Three days later they launched the coup. While everyone else fought, Mydei went directly to the throne room. It was just before noon—the sun streamed in through every window and lit the place bright enough to blind him. He walked in through the front doors, directly into his father’s private council meeting, and ascended the stairs to his father’s throne. Then he stabbed him in the throat.
Only then did he turn to the rest of his father’s closest advisors and say, “That was for my mother, Gorgo. Murdered by this man.”
There was absolute silence. Not one of his father’s advisors moved.
“My name,” he said, “is Mydeimos. And I am now your king.” He looked each of them in the eye and went down the row. “If any of you wish to defend the honor of your dead king, stand up now.”
None of them stood up.
“Cowards,” Mydei spat, and then the army rushed in, and not a single one of them was left alive.
At the end of the battle the throne room was completely filled with his allies. Aglaea had gotten out nearly unscathed, but Anaxa was leaning heavily on her for support. At least one of his legs was out of commission. Hyacine was holding up a faint-looking Castorice and offering everyone any magical healing she could spare. They all stood before the dais and looked up at him.
Mydei realized, all of a sudden, that he was alone. He was the only one on the dais. The only one close to the throne.
Aglaea looked at him with iron in her eyes. Mydei knew, then, what he had to do. This was their deal. It was this, or death.
“My name is Mydeimos, son of Gorgo,” he declared. “I am the rightful heir to the throne of Castrum Kremnos. And I will become the new King of Amphoreus.”
And he seized his father’s throne and held it above his own head like a trophy.
The soldiers roared with approval. The commotion had attracted more people—he was sure some of the people in the crowd were from the royal city. He couldn't see everyone. The sunlight was too bright. He had no idea what they were doing. Were they applauding? Were they screaming? He was going to rule this country. He was alone.
His eyes fell upon the General, standing in front of the dais. Everyone had joined her now—an exhausted-looking Mortis, a smiling Tribbie, a glowering Trinnon, and even Phainon. His allies. His new council. And his—
—His…
Phainon was holding eye contact with him.
…His what, exactly?
“It is time I made good on a promise,” Mydei said, stepping forward off the throne.
Phainon didn’t look away. As Mydei drew closer, his expression became progressively more unreadable. His eyes were wide.
“I swore that if we emerged victorious, I would ask this man for his hand.”
He stepped to the edge of the dais. Phainon looked up at him like he had never seen him before.
“Phainon,” he said, extending his hand down. “Commander, strategist, war hero, and the man I love. Will you marry me?”
The room erupted into cheers. Hyacine was beaming ear to ear. Even the ever-stoic Castorice had broken out into a slight smile. Every one of their soldiers was ecstatic.
And Phainon’s smile was frozen on his face.
“Phainon?” he asked quietly, barely above a whisper.
Phainon’s odd expression didn’t change. He reached up and took Mydei’s hand. Mydei pulled him onto the dais to stand next to him.
Phainon stood there with his frozen smile and his lightless eyes and his stiff posture. When the throne room eventually quieted from the raucous cheers, he finally looked at Mydei. The sliver of light in his eyes glimmered one last time before disappearing entirely.
Then he knelt to the bloodstained ground and said, “Of course I will, Your Majesty.”
***
It takes three days for Mydei to crack.
The first day is fine. He wakes up without Phainon there and it’s fine. It’s happened before. He can pretend, as he wakes up, that Phainon is just sleeping in his office. When he doesn’t see him at dinner that night, he tells himself that Phainon just isn’t feeling well, or that he’s too caught up in whatever he’s doing to remember to break for dinner. When Phainon still isn’t there as Mydei prepares for bed, he pretends Phainon is just burning the midnight oil.
The second day is worse. Phainon never spends two nights in a row away from him; he’s always careful to stay around enough that Mydei never gets too depressed about it. Thinking back, it seems an odd kindness to afford a man he hates. But then Mydei recalls his furious declaration of love and the voracious lovemaking and wonders if it was a kindness at all.
By the third day, Mydei is so despondent and sleepless that even Castorice notices when he walks into their meeting room. She takes one look at him and sighs through her nose. “Mydei,” she says, halfway to a reprimand already.
“Don’t start,” Mydei mutters, plunking himself down in his chair. He doesn’t think he slept at all the previous night. “He’ll come back when he’s ready. It was my fault, anyway.”
Castorice looks at him for a few moments in silence. Then, she says, “Are you sure he will come back on his own?”
Mydei looks up from the enormous, sketched-out map of Amphoreus they’ve been dividing into provinces and stares at her.
“For fuck’s sake,” says Anaxa, slamming his glasses down on the table with a dramatic clunk. “Go after him. Honestly, I don’t understand why you haven’t gone already.”
Mydei blinks. “But he left,” he says weakly. “Won’t he hate me if I—if I follow him now?”
“Put it this way,” Anaxa says. “Do you know where he’s gone?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“But do you know?”
Anaxa’s eyes flicker down to the map beneath their hands, just briefly. Mydei looks down at it, at the carefully-drawn regions of their country, at the places they’ve been trying to see clearly, and he understands.
“Yes,” he says quietly. “I know.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Anaxa says, exasperated. “Fucking leave already. Do I have to do everything around here?”
“But the—”
“The restructuring will wait,” Castorice says. “Phainon will not.”
Mydei looks between the two of them—his allies in the war, and now his brilliant advisors in peacetime—and wonders, just briefly, if they count as the first friends he’s ever made. “Thank you,” he says, softer than usual, almost hoping they won’t hear.
Then he takes his leave and gets ready to head southwest.
Mydei’s geography is, even with his study sessions, still terrible. He struggles with terrain indicators and gets the indicators for different populations of towns mixed up. He can’t quite wrap his head around the different colors of the flat, condensed land. And why is everything named? Who named the mountains and the grass? Who would dare? Every map he studies is like a bastardization of the world. A mockery of nature. He hates maps, and can’t read them for the life of him. But his sense of direction in the real world is unparalleled.
Phainon had told him, once, what Aedes Elysiae looked like. And Mydei remembers—the orchards, the dry grass, the late autumn wind and the mountains with flattened tops like they’d been stepped on by the gods. He doesn’t need a map. He just follows the world until he starts drawing closer, and closer, and closer.
He spends the full day and night traveling. By the time the sun is rising again, his surroundings look exactly right. The further the morning sun peeks above the horizon, the more certain he is that he’s in the right place.
Somewhere along the road, he stumbles across a woman stringing up haybales and pulls aside.
“Aedes Elysiae,” he says, instead of introducing himself. “I’m looking for a town called Aedes Elysiae. Am I near?”
The woman looks at him and narrows her eyes. “Are you with the royals again? The duke?”
Mydei blinks. “No…?” Technically he is, but he’s also the only royal left, so maybe he doesn’t count.
“It’s long gone,” she snaps, glaring at him. “You lot burnt it down well enough last time, don’t you think?”
“I’m just looking for someone,” he says. “My—my husband.” Only then does he realize he hasn’t actually called Phainon his husband before, not to anyone else.
She looks at him oddly, then sighs and sets down the string in her hands. “My boy, everyone in that town has been dead for years.”
Mydei looks at her. He bows his head.
“It’s not far,” she says, with a watery smile. “About half an hour west of here. Keep going as you were, then turn right at the fork.”
“Thank you,” Mydei says. He doesn’t have anything valuable on him, so he just gives her a commander’s salute.
“You’re welcome, Your Majesty.”
Mydei whirls around and looks back at her. She’s just standing there with a smile on her face. But maybe he imagined it. The words were quiet. Maybe he heard wrong. He just nods, and then sets off on his way. He’s almost there. Almost there. Almost there.
The first sign is the trees—or rather, the lack thereof. At some point along the road the trees just stop. Beautiful orchards to nothingness. Beautiful orchards to ash. Then, the remains of houses. Piles of charred wood long decayed. Crumbling stones. And then the time-worn dirt of what used to be a town square. A long, swaying flagpole, half-decayed in the dry air.
And Phainon, sitting underneath it.
Mydei feels such a strong rush of relief at seeing him that his knees nearly give out. The tiredness has been too distant to keep track of, but it all crashes into him now, the days without rest and nights without sleep.
“Phainon,” he says, his voice coming out quieter than he intended. “You’re here.”
Phainon looks up at him like he’s seen a ghost, then upon catching sight of his face, breathes out a sigh so heavy with relief that it floods through his entire body. “Yeah,” he says, sounding halfway between defeated and saved. “I’m here.”
On the way here Mydei came up with a thousand things to say to him, and yet upon actually seeing him none of them feel right. He sits down next to Phainon in silence.
“This town is so small,” Phainon says, barely above a whisper. “Isn’t it pathetic? Fighting a war for something this insignificant?”
“It’s not pathetic,” Mydei says. “It was your home.”
Phainon huffs out a breath halfway to a laugh. He looks up at the towering flagpole, the odd metal structure that looks almost out of place in the town. “I had a family. I had a best friend.”
Mydei stays silent. He had a family, too. He had friends. And he joined the war after their murders. There were so few of them—far fewer than lived in this town, surely.
“Her name was Cyrene,” Phainon says, still looking upwards. “When the duke and his twelve men came, they hung her on the flagpole and burned her clothes off of her.”
“Like the uniforms,” Mydei says slowly. He looks up at the flagpole and imagines watching someone he loved die on it.
“And then they set fire to the town,” Phainon says, smiling wryly at the sky. “They lined everyone up in the courtyard—right here, in a circle, facing outwards so they could watch it all go up in flames. And then they shot everyone.”
“Everyone but you,” Mydei fills in, finally looking over at him.
Phainon looks down at the ground, then at Mydei, and holds his gaze. “I killed him,” he says finally, his eyes gleaming blue in the light of the rising sun. “I killed the duke. Then I killed all twelve of his men. That was how Aglaea found me—standing right here, with thirteen dead bodies at my feet, and my whole town on fire behind me.”
The sunrise dyes the remains of the houses orange. Mydei imagines, just momentarily, that it’s the glow of a fire, the ruins of his home, the death of everyone he loves. And he looks at Phainon and understands.
If it makes him a bad person to have killed those thirteen people, to have sought his revenge for all these years, then Mydei is just as bad, if not worse.
“Why haven’t you changed?” Phainon asks at last. “Isn’t power supposed to change people? I thought you’d become terrible, once you became king. But you’re just the same as you always were. You’re so good to me. Why are you always so good to me?”
“Because I love you,” Mydei says simply, and finds that he has nothing more to add. It’s the whole truth.
Phainon looks at him with wet eyes and half a laugh caught in his throat. He just stares, like he’s taking Mydei in after not seeing him for so long. And in his eyes, somewhere behind the unshed tears and the reflection of the morning light, Mydei can see it there—Phainon knows it already. Knows that Mydei loves him, and that his husband the King of Amphoreus loves him, and knows that there is no division between them. That they’ve always been one and the same.
“How did you even get here?” Phainon asks, grinning at him through the tear tracks on his face. “Last I checked, you couldn't even read a map. Have you been—god forbid—learning something?”
Mydei scoffs. “Of course not,” he says. “I got here on my own. No map. Just my sense of direction.”
Phainon laughs. “Weirdo,” he says, so full of affection that it couldn't be mistaken for anything else. “You could have just asked Aglaea to take you. She knows where it is. She was the one who found me in the first place.”
Mydei hadn’t actually thought of that. In retrospect, that would have been a much better idea. “She was busy,” he mutters. “I didn’t want to bother her.”
Phainon’s smile widens. “Oh, and you weren’t busy? His Majesty, Mydeimos of Castrum Kremnos, the King of Amphoreus?”
“Mydei.”
Phainon looks at him, wide-eyed.
“You always called me that. I know it’s not the name I was born with, but I’d like it if you used it anyway.”
Phainon stares at him in silence. “Mydei,” he says eventually. Then, apropos of nothing, he blurts, “Phainon isn’t my real name either. But I’d like it if you called me Phainon anyway, too.”
“Phainon,” he says, and the name feels the same as it always does in his mouth. Like it belongs there. Like he was always meant to say it.
Phainon smiles again, smaller this time but no less real.
“I should have asked,” Mydei says in a rush, the words all cascading out at once. “I should have asked if you were okay with marrying me after you knew. Because you’re right—you’d make a terrible consort. You’re brash and loud and annoying and your sense of humor is terrible. You hate Castrum Kremnos clothing. And you can’t decorate rooms for shit.”
Phainon wheezes out a laugh. “Tell me what you really think, you bastard.”
“The point is, you never wanted to be a consort. You wanted to be an economist, right? You wanted to work with numbers and resources. You wanted to do something meaningful.”
Phainon’s smile looks a little sadder all of a sudden. “I’ll get used to being your consort. It’s not terrible, actually. Not as bad as I was expecting.”
“You’re missing the point.”
Phainon blinks, his smile giving way to wide eyes. “Aren’t you just here to bring me back?”
“No,” Mydei says, gathering twenty-one years of courage. “I’m here to recruit Amphoreus’ new lead economic advisor for the redistribution of resources to each province.”
Phainon’s mouth falls open. He actually grabs Mydei’s arm and turns him around to say, “Are you serious? You’re sure?”
Mydei nods.
“But—what about your consort’s jobs?” Phainon says, his voice higher than usual. “I can’t be doing two things at once. This is—this is a full-time position, right? Like Aglaea and Anaxa and Castorice and Hyacine have?”
“Mortis said she likes event planning. We can distribute those responsibilities to her. You’ll still have to make public appearances sometimes, but—”
“Mydei,” he says, a smile slowly stretching out across his face. “Of course I want to take it. Of fucking course I’ll be your advisor.”
“You’ll still live in the palace,” Mydei says quickly, just in case this is a dealbreaker. “You’ll still live with me. We’ll still be married.”
Phainon looks at him oddly. He raises his eyebrows.
“I know this place hasn’t been your home in years,” Mydei says. “But I hope that you’ll come back with me, even if Castrum Kremnos isn’t your home either.”
And Phainon laughs.
“Mydei, you idiot. My home is wherever the people I love are.”
Mydei’s heart stutters to a stop in his chest. Treacherous hope swells in his chest as Phainon stands up and brushes the dust and ash off of his coat.
“Come on, Mydei,” he says, extending his hand down. “Take me home.”
Mydei looks up at him—at his face illuminated by the morning sunlight, at the ruins of his once-beautiful town behind him, at the scars that have etched his life lessons into his hands—and some long-dead thing in his chest takes a final, impossible breath. He reaches up and takes Phainon’s hand.
“Alright,” he says, and then they set off, Phainon and Mydei and Mydei and Phainon, with their steps aligned and the whole world ahead of them.