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Chapter Text

The war, technically speaking, was over.

Gaia – mountainous, ancient, and temperamentally unsuited to losing – had collapsed in a manner suggestive of a badly repaired statue.

Her final cry, Percy thought, was loud enough to make cartographers redraw their wind patterns. The sky obligingly bled for effect.

The Argo II had not survived the victory with any dignity. What remained of its hull suggested a ship that had gone through a meat grinder designed for giants. Festus, once a cheerful bronze dragon, now resembled a dying coal furnace attempting yoga.

Percy lay on the battlefield’s cracked stone, ribs protesting, legs apparently on strike. His sword was somewhere behind him, perhaps intact, perhaps now a conversation piece for future archaeologists.

Annabeth’s voice reached him: urgent, distorted, as though shouted through the ocean floor.

Somewhere to his left, Festus wheezed open a compartment, revealing a single vial: the Physician’s Cure.

A gift from Asclepius, just one dose, one life. A tedious sort of arithmetic.

There is a choice to be made, Percy Jackson. Only Death may pay for Life.

Who? What choice? A shiver went through his spine as he looked up. FuckFuckFuckItHurts

Leo staggered not far from him, half-dead, his hands shaking, blood running from a gash on his head. There was so much blood. His friend fell on his knees beside Percy, eyes wide and horrified. “Bro..” Leo choked out. “You..you need to take it,”

Choose.

“No,” Percy managed, with the stubbornness of a man fully committed to bad personal outcomes. Which he did.

Jason landed hard beside them, armour dented, face smeared with ash. “What are you talking about? Percy, don’t be stupid, you’re–you’re dying.”

Percy replied with the verbal equivalent of a shrug in Leo’s direction. “Yeah, so is he..’nd he’s ‘till got somethin’ to build.”

Leo’s lips trembled, “But you…”

“Use it,” Percy whispered. His body was getting stiff and cold. “Please..build somethin’ for me, ‘kay?”

Annabeth reached them too late. Her knees hit the ground beside him with a crack. “No. No. No.. don’t you dare..” She grabbed his hand. It was already cold. “Seaweed Brain, look at me,” she begged. “Please, stay with me.”

His best friend wanted him to stay, well, he definitely wasn’t moving anywhere else.

He informed her – truthfully – that he was staying. Technically, he did not specify in what capacity.

The others stood about in various states of horror, which was fair enough.

Festus made the decision for them, delivering the cure to Leo, who revived with all the abruptness of an unmuted trumpet.

Light flared in Leo’s chest, who was already looking lifeless. His spine arched, breath surged quickly into his lungs as his bones reset. His skin knitted together, like it hadn’t been touched.

Percy smiled. It had been, in his mind, a good use of resources.

Annabeth clutched him tightly, her face buried in his shoulder. “No no no, stay with us. Please–“

He wanted to. Di immortales, he wanted to.

The rest was an unremarkable descent.

His heartbeat thinned to nothing, and his thoughts sifted themselves into a seaside miscellany: his mom’s biscuits, Grover’s music, Tyson’s hugs, and the faint salt-smell of home. The sea was gone from him, and that was the worst part.

He let go without fuss.

Annabeth did not, she kept saying his name until her voice broke. Even the gods – usually so eager to make an entrance – remained politely absent.

Elsewhere, the Moirai hesitated, a thread having gone missing under their noses. Another, unfamiliar, was already winding itself back into the weave, as though it had never left. 

One of them observed, with professional curiosity, “Not done yet, it seems.”

There was, in fact, no tunnel, no boat, certainly no robed figure with a set of scales.

Silence surrounded him, which Percy – always inconveniently opinionated – found less ominous than advertised and far more boring.

For someone promised an official escort by Hermês, the god of death seemed to have misplaced his appointment.

A blink, and then: nothingness.

Not darkness, that would require light to contrast it, nor light, but simple absence. A kind of metaphysical shrug, came to his mind.

Percy couldn’t determine whether he was floating, falling, or had simply been misfiled by the cosmos. Time, always so linear in life, unspooled here like thread from an inattentive weaver’s loom. He tried to speak, then noticed the minor inconvenience of no longer possessing a mouth, or indeed, a body.

All that remained was Percy: a ripple of self in a sea of nothing.

And yet – because the Void is never content to remain merely void – he was not alone.

Something vast lingered at the periphery. Not warm, not cold, not cruel, not kind.

Just old.. archetypally old.

Older than Olympians, Titans, or even that first memory when someone thought to name “memory.” It did not speak, speech was beneath it, but Percy understood anyway.

Do you wish to go back?

The question arrived not as sound but as a tremor across what passed for his essence. Understanding seemed less like comprehension and more like osmosis. The Void stirred, a shimmer of non-light rippling into form, and Percy was subjected to the sort of unsolicited vision so common in divine company.

Jason.

Older now, visibly scarred, airborne with all the tragic poise of a doomed hero.

Sword flashing, lightning in his grip, hair performing quite well under the narrative pressure. Enemies swarmed below, indistinct yet sufficiently menacing.

Arrows answered. Three, bronze, unerring. They struck – chest, side, back – with such efficiency one suspected Fate had commissioned them wholesale. Jason did not cry out. He simply fell, silent, like a feather falling from the sky.

Balance, Percy realised, was annoyingly diligent. The so-called “Cure” had never been more than a loan with very heavy interest rates.

He thought briefly of his mother, of the wars, plural, irritatingly so, of Leo, alive, and of himself, very much the opposite.

His conclusion was unromantic but firm: no return. The ending had been earned.

Another pause from around him. Silence filling the time.

And forward?

That question proved trickier. Forward was not a place; it was the lack of one. No promise of Elysium, or tidy conclusion. Simply continuation without guarantee.

Which, Percy decided, was still preferable to repetition.

“Yes,” he thought – if “thought” was even the right verb here. “Forward.”

No judgment. No applause. Only acceptance. The presence – Khaos, though names were beside the point – shifted around him, enfolding without touching, like a collapsing star.

And then, they let him fall.

He fell through light, hearing – if “hearing” applies without ears – the song of stars.

The sensation was akin to sunlight refracted on water, or perhaps memory pretending to be sensation.

He fell towards something, surrendering himself: through the ache of letting go, toward something older than death. There was no body. Only the residue of one. A memory perhaps? An impression.

Percy Jackson’s soul – characterised by a stubborn salinity, as if even dissolution could not wash away the sea – tumbled between worlds. He was unmoored, unshaped. No lungs, no bones, no sword, no name. Only the echo of a choice freely made, a heartbeat traded for a friend, and the cumbersome archive of what he had been.

And yet – retention. Something vast held him, not chained, but cradled, with care. It was an ancient intelligence, neither impersonal nor personal, simply present: a tide that embraced rather than pulled, a breath drawn by the universe itself. Its message arrived not in phonemes but in certainty:

Forward, child of mine.

Ignition followed, not agony, but repurposing.

He neither rose nor fell but entered transformation: a forge of divine fire unraveling mortality’s scaffolding, then bending the raw material into a shape not yet named. His memories fractured like pottery shards sinking into marrow that did not exist, preserved but inaccessible. His name thinned into obscurity; his will persisted intact.

Rebirth commenced. Not as demigod or as a god, but as anomaly. Wilder than either, less legible than both. The soul flared bright, then strategically dimmed. It contracted, cocooned, encrypted itself. A defence mechanism: secrecy as survival. The gods could not know.

The world could not yet accommodate. Neither could she.

So the essence clothed itself in frailty: soft, miniature, absurdly mortal. The body of a child – barely ambulatory, but sufficient for survival.

A girl.

The sea greeted her as mother, the sun pressed upon her brow with paternal benediction. The world itself adjusted – time unfurling not as distance but as current. Past Rome’s rise, past empire’s first sparks, past the births of languages not yet dreamt. Until the Aegean shimmered beneath her, and Naxos lay sleeping in its cradle of waves.

Below, a storm without clouds began to stir; waves shifted without wind.

The tide came strange and warm. Upon its back drifted a small form, dark-haired, salt-streaked, curled inside a cocoon of seaweed.

A child of perhaps three summers. She did not cry. The water deposited her onto the sand with gentleness. She opened her eyes, bright and questioning, already haunted by fragments of what she could not name.

And somewhere in the wind, laughter rang: wine-sweet, wild, and promising debts not yet contracted.

The sky above Olympus was gold, too bright for mourning. The sun had not yet noticed someone was missing. Inside the Hall of the Gods, the survivors of war stood scattered, like the remnants of a battle no one dared name.

Annabeth sat on the lowest step of Zeus’s empty throne. That she still breathed was a surprise to everyone; the throne was not known for its tolerance.

Her fingers clenched around a jagged shard of bronze – the last fragment of Riptide, Nico held the rest.

Hazel knelt at the far edge of the dais, whispering prayers into her cupped hands. Jason leaned against a pillar, his posture collapsed, gaze fixed on the marble floor. Piper stood rigid, arms crossed too tightly, as if she were holding something in, or holding something back. Nico lingered in the shadows, as if carved from them, his silence sharper than any blade.

Leo had not moved.

The burns on his hands had stopped stinging hours ago. He wasn’t supposed to burn. He wasn’t supposed to feel this hollow. Festus was gone, slag and smoke scattered to nothing, and Leo had not spoken.

Not since he had woken with a gasp.

Not since he realised he had returned and Percy had not.

Piper’s voice cracked like a dry branch. “Why were we called here, if the gods aren’t coming?”

Annabeth did not look up. “Because someone else wanted us here.”

As if her words were summons, the torches guttered. Flames dimmed to silver. The air thinned, a hush descended like falling snow. From the far end of the hall, three shadows emerged; unannounced, unhurried.

They were pale, their skin the grey of ash, their eyes glowing violet. They wore black robes and grey shawls threaded with pale, intricate patterns.

The eldest hunched, her fingers tangled in threads without end. The tallest gleamed like starlight, her shears flashing with a chill beyond steel. The youngest cradled a spool of thread, reverent and cruel all at once. Their eyes – all six of them – were heavy, all-seeing.

The Moirai had arrived.

They needed no heralds, for their presence was enough. The hall itself seemed to hold its breath.

“You came through in your defeat of the Earth Mother,” murmured Lakhesis.

“And you came through scathed, but alive,” added Klotho, her voice as old.

“But not all who stand now were meant to rise.” Atropos’s gaze settled on Leo. Silence cinched the air tight.

Annabeth rose to her feet, slow and unsteady. “Then say it.”

The Moirai regarded her as one might regard a stubborn child demanding a truth she already knew and feared.

“You want truth,” Lakhesis said.

Nico’s voice was low, but it carried. “I think at this point, it’s what we deserve.”

Atropos stepped forward. In her hands the thread shimmered – fine as breath, sharp as inevitability they served.

“One soul returned from the brink: the fire-born child, Leo Valdez. His flame reignited by the Physician’s Cure.” Her fingers lifted the thread. “But nothing returns untraded.”

Jason’s brow furrowed. “It was a gift. Asclepius gave it to us. Leo just used it–”

Klotho’s gaze pinned him. “He used it, and balance broke.”

Hazel’s voice trembled, barely audible. “But… he lived.”

“So another didn’t,” Lakhesis replied. “His free will guaranteed it. The future is constant motion. Outcomes are always in flux.”

Breath caught in every throat. Leo finally lifted his head. His eyes were hollow. “It was him, wasn’t it? Percy. He was the price.”

Annabeth’s voice cracked, jagged with grief. “You’re saying Percy – Percy died because Leo came back?”

Lakhesis inclined her head, unreadable. “There was a choice to be made. In that moment, he made it for you.”

“He didn’t choose to die!” The words broke out of her, raw. “He couldn’t have. He just – he told Festus to save Leo.. because that’s what he does. He saves people!”

“He gave his place,” Atropos said, cool and final. “And the world accepted the offering.”

“One death for another,” intoned Klotho. “A tide turned to buy one breath of fire.”

“A price paid in full,” whispered Lakhesis.

Jason’s fists curled. “You’re The Three Whom personify destiny and who control the thread of life, the Parcae. Couldn’t you – shouldn’t you have stopped it?”

“We do not shape,” said Atropos.

Klotho’s fingers smoothed the thread. “We measure.”

“And we cut,” finished Lakhesis, “when the soul is ready.”

Annabeth lowered her gaze, her hands shook. The broken hilt of Riptide dug into her palm. “He was supposed to live.”

Klotho’s voice softened, almost kind. “And he did. Longer than most heroes.”

“He earned his ending,” said Lakhesis.

“And he chose it freely,” said Atropos. “Few ever do.”

Piper’s voice came ragged. “Then where is he?”

The Moirai did not answer at once. The thread in their hands glowed; not gold, not silver, but something sea-deep and moonlit. It shimmered like sunlight over water. Alive.

“He did not go where others go,” said Klotho.

“He was not judged,” said Lakhesis.

“He was claimed,” said Atropos, “by something older than Olympus.”

Nico stiffened. “The Underworld doesn’t have him?”

Their reply was one voice. “No.”

“He passed the gates,” Atropos added. “But did not cross.”

Annabeth took a shaky step forward. “Then he’s not… gone?”

Klotho’s eyes glimmered with pity. “He is not lost.”

A silence fell; dense, fragile. Then Leo whispered, his voice hoarse and breaking: “Will we ever see him again?”

The Moirai gave no answer. Klotho bent and placed the coil of thread at her feet: incomplete, unfinished, its circle open.

“Remember him,” she said. “Remember his sacrifice. For he has lost more than most.”

And then they were gone, the silver light collapsing in on itself like a breath unbreathed.

What remained was not silence but absence. Jason dropped his gaze. Piper’s arms fell to her sides. Hazel found Frank’s hand and held on, tight, as though release might undo something too fragile to name. Nico crossed to the hearth of Olympus, laid the fragments of Riptide in the flames, and Annabeth joined him, placing the last shard beside them.

An offering, not to Olympus, they would never.

But to whomever now held Percy’s soul.

Done in honour of a boy Nico had once called cousin, a boy who had given him light in endless dark.

Nico exhaled and sat down.

Annabeth did not move. Her knuckles were white. Her eyes fixed on a future without Percy.

And Leo–

Leo whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Not to the Moirai, not to the gods, but to the hollow space Percy had left behind.

To everyone else.

Chapter Text

1400 BCE, City of Kekropeia, Akropolis

Long before Persía Soteira, the gods contested over cities and mortals.

One such contest shaped the fate of Kekropeia.

The Akropolis became the stage for two claimants: Poseidôn, god of the sea, and Athênê, goddess of wisdom. The terms were simple. Each would present a gift; the city would choose which better served mortal life.

The people assembled in solemn silence.

At their head stood King Kekrops, his serpentine lower body hidden beneath long robes. His role was to judge, though impartiality was more posture than truth.

Poseidôn struck the rock with his trident. The earth split, and water rose in a sharp, violent jet. The crowd murmured with awe until Kekrops cupped his hands to taste. He spat it out at once. The water was from the sea.

Poseidôn declared it holy, a symbol of the sea’s healing power. Yet for the people gathered – farmers, artisans, mothers – its utility was doubtful.

Athênê advanced without spectacle.

She placed her hand upon the ground, and a tree emerged, its trunk strong, its branches silver-green, heavy with olives. Kekrops tasted the fruit. Oil, nourishment, wood, shade: practical, enduring.

The decision was made at once. Athênê’s gift was chosen.

Poseidôn’s face darkened. His loss was not easily borne. The sea itself seemed to answer his wounded pride: waters withdrew, then surged inland, reshaping coasts and drowning harbours.

The Aegean was altered in a single act of divine resentment.

In the upheaval, a branch broke from Athênê’s tree.

Wind carried it to Poseidôn’s fountain, where it settled on the saltwater surface. For a time it drifted unnoticed. Then the sun touched it, a shaft of light piercing the water.

Something took form in that meeting of essences – wisdom and healing, sea and light.

Not quite god, but not mortal either, yet carrying within it the residue of both. It was not something that had bed named. 

It was a seed of being set adrift, awaiting its time.

1300 BCE, Island of Naxos, Outskirts of the Capital

The wave rolled in softly.

Naxos, quiet and sun-kissed, bore no witness to the metaphysical hissy fit that birthed it.

A little girl, no older than three, washed up on the shore in a cloth, tangled in seaweed and light. Her skin shimmered with salt. Her chocolate brown hair clung to her cheeks. She didn’t cry. She blinked up at the sun with bright sea-green eyes full of unanswered questions.

A group of women gathering reeds near the sea  saw her first. One of them gasped and dropped her basket, another clutched her neckpiece, third whispered, “Dôron apò tōn theôn?”  A what now? 

Percy moved in her little bundle as they took her in. She felt so warm, like the first rays of sunlight after a freezing night.

They named her Persía after she tried to say Percy, failing miserably, which they took as Persí. You try to say your own name with a lisp, not that easy now is it?

Fitting, in all honesty. Similar to her old name. Persía couldn’t speak more, didn’t for weeks. All she could do was sleep and eat, she was too tired to do anything else.

But when she finally did, the first thing she asked was:

“Where the fuck am I?”

The first thing Persía learned in her new life was this: Nobody spoke English. Not a surprise there.

The second thing: She understood them anyway. HowHowHow

It wasn’t fluent. More like… brain lag. Subtitles arriving a beat too late, occasionally mistranslated by the universe’s worst intern, but every time someone in the village on Naxos muttered something in Ancient Greek, her thoughts scrambled into order.

As if someone had installed the “Ancient Greek for Traumatised Bilingual Orphans”-expansion pack while she was busy being reborn. 

It was deeply unsettling.

She was three years old. Toddler-sized. Soft, small and squishy in a way Percy Jackson never had time to be. Everyone assumed she was just a quiet little girl who liked sitting outside all night, staring at the stars. Which, fair. She did that. A lot.

But mostly, her brain was screaming.

Not in words, exactly, more like flashes. Disjointed. Shards of something half-remembered and already slipping.

A sky scattered with stars, but one of them was missing: a pattern that should’ve been there. Should’ve been shaped like a girl with a bow.

Someone calling out:

Lieutenant—

Who? Of what?

It vanished before the answer came.

Another flicker: cold metal, the screech of a train, a platform smeared with gum. The rush of underground wind against her face.

Subway, her mind whispered. She didn’t know what that meant. But she missed it.

After that, one last flicker, her hand on a round metal knob, turning it with ease. She looked down at herself now, and had to stand on tiptoe just to reach the latch.

It all blinked out like embers.

Di immortales, it hurt.

The worst part? She knew who she was, her thoughts still sounded like her own. Her memories, too; except they didn’t feel solid anymore. They were fading at the edges, turning abstract. Like dreams half-remembered. She couldn’t recall her mother’s face without focusing. Couldn’t remember the exact moment she had been kissed for the first time. Had she ever been kissed?  That memory was the colour of sunlight and the taste of sea-salt, nothing more.

Her old name was now gone. She had known it just a few weeks ago. It was not lost, more like disappeared, like the whole thing had left for a weekend trip.

And the sea? Oh, the sea knew her. It tugged at her like a forgotten song, like a mother’s hum in the dark. That should’ve been comforting.

Instead, it made her cry. Quietly. Alone. She tried to tell herself it was just the salt in her eyes. I mean..she was three. Nobody believed her tears were about existential displacement and a growing suspicion that she might never see her old world again.

They thought she just didn’t like olives.

Gods, she hated olives. As a concept that is. They reminded her of someone. Who?

Also: no demigod shenanigans, no ambrosia, no Kheirôn, no camp. What are those? 

Biggest shock so far was the night sky which was full of stars she didn’t recognise.

ZöeZöeZöeZöe

When she tried to remember why that was a sharp pain went through her head before she blacked out.

Manhattan felt like a fever dream. 

What’s Manhattan?

When she came to her senses again, there was darkness, at first.

Not the kind that smothered or swallowed. Not the kind that frightened. This was the kind of dark that came before music, before light. The kind that waited patiently, like a breath held between worlds.

Then, she noticed a ripple.  Soft silver spilled beneath her feet. It was not water, nor a sky. Something stranger, deeper. Like moonlight turned liquid and memory all at once.

Persía stood barefoot on a mirrored plane. She looked at the reflection and noticed that she was far older. Her hair still dark, on a loose braid and far curlier than when she was Percy Jackson.

Around her, constellations blinked in and out of existence like thoughts too shy to stay. Deep down she knew what this was. MyMindMyMindButNot?

She turned slowly, noticing a big glass globe on the far distance, its smooth surface was  flawless,  but inside it had something moving.

“This isn’t mine,” she said. Her voice echoed like something uninvited. “This place. It’s too clean.”  Her mind should have destroyed cities and debris everywhere, scars and smoke. Not this.

A voice behind her answered, calm and kind:

“It is still yours, just being borrowed for this meeting, so we cleaned it up. For you are being visited.”

She turned and saw him: Morpheus, the God of Dreams. Skin like velvet shadow. Eyes ringed in sleep’s pale silver. His robes moved like ink spilled in water.

Next to him, sprawled across an invisible chaise that hadn’t existed a second ago, lay Zagreus; barefoot, crowned in ivy and pomegranate seeds, one fang visible in his lazy grin. God of Rebirth. He’s supposed to be dead. How did she know this? How?

“Do not worry,” he said, twirling a wine cup that never spilled. “You are still asleep. We just got a foot in the door while your head was cracked open a little. Thank you for that.”

Persía blinked. “…Cracked open?” It sounded accurate, felt even more so.

Zagreus made a vague gesture with two fingers, and with the motion, blooming pomegranates unfurled midair. They bled seeds like rubies into the void.

“Metaphorically,” he said. “Your mind is in scrambles right now, it will straighten itself out within few years.”

Morpheus stepped forward, the quiet gravity in his presence grounding her more than the unreal floor beneath them. “You died. You passed the gates, but you did not finish crossing.”

Persía’s face hardened. “That wasn’t a choice, not really. I was an offering because of the Cure, for Leo, for Jason..”

“Exactly, one Death for one Life,” Zagreus said, more serious now. “That is why you are here.”

Her fists clenched. “So who chose a rebirth for me?”

Morpheus’s voice gentled even further. “Lord Khaos did.” At the name, the stars above shifted. The darkness listened. “The first and last,” Morpheus went on. “Before Kronos, before Gaia, before Titans or Primordials. From when only Time, Necessity and The Void existed. They do not speak in words. However They oversee everything and take notice. And They noticed you.”

Zagreus nodded, rising to walk forward. “You were fractured in all the right ways.”

A flicker of pain crossed Persía’s face. “So I was recycled, to be used, again.” Would she ever know peace?

Zagreus stopped a few feet from her, something aching in his eyes. “No,” he said softly. “You were given something very few souls ever get: a second chance.”

Persía looked down. “Why? What could I possibly be worth to Them?”

Morpheus replied first. “Persons worthiness is not measured only from their deeds, but also from their soul and heart. That is Why. Because you remember.”

Zagreus added, “Because you care.”

Morpheus moved slightly to her right, “Because you do not bend to the wills of others.”

The Sea does not like to be restrained.

Zagreus stepped even closer on her left, the shadows of his eyes filled with every betrayal she’d ever endured. “Because you were never just a tool, even when everyone else treated you like one.”

There was silence. Then Persía whispered, “So what do I do now?”

Zagreus smiled, but it was a quiet, grounded thing. “Live. Change things. Your presence is already enough to tilt the world off-axis. There will be no Great Prophecies that involve you.”

Morpheus placed a hand on her shoulder. “You are not a piece in someone else’s game anymore, Persía. You may choose for yourself this time.”

Ethan. Me. All the unclaimed. Don't let it... Don't let it happen again.

“And do not worry about Olympus,” Zagreus added, voice amused again. “They will notice you eventually. Lord Khaos has bound your powers for now, so you get to live your youth as you wish, but when King of Gods finds you, he and the Queen will make you swear to them.”

“That’s not comforting.”

“Was not meant to be. But you will be ready.” That sound more like a threat than an advice. She just might like this one.

From somewhere in his robe, he pulled something and pressed it into her hand.

A coin.

Obsidian on one side, a burning sunburst on the other. It thrummed like memory, like life and sleep combined.

“For the next door you break open.” Morpheus’s voice turned firm, anchoring. “And Persía?”

She looked up, weary but present. “What?”

“You will be happy this time,” he said. “You deserve to be. Do not forget that.”

A gentle warmth settled in her chest, like a hearth being lit. And just before the stars began to dissolve and light returned––

Zagreus leaned in and said with a grin: “Tell Dionysos I said hi.”

Oh, for the love of–

1296 BCE, Chora, Naxos

Her new home Chora, was less a city she was used to in modern era and more of a town full of villas and houses near the coast, where elderly people thought they ruled the world and everything smelled like sea breeze, flowers, and animals. Otherwise it was a calm city for a New Yorker, but there was this noise every morning that made her impulsively try to suffocate herself on her own pillow.

It was the gaggle of children, screaming in public. What were they screaming out for anyway. They didn’t even have real problems, it should be her screaming. Her.

As a whole though, the city was quite nice.

They weren’t exactly family, the Naxosians. More like… enthusiastic bystanders. Kind in the way you’re kind to a stray animal that keeps showing up and looks vaguely pitiful. It takes a village, indeed. They fed her, dressed her in handwoven linen that was always slightly itchy, and gave her a name.

She hated how much she liked it.

It was dangerous, how fast she’d started to expect warm food and lullabies in Ancient Greek from her newly anointed guardian Euphemia. Her memories were a wreck,  like glass shards in a tidepool,  but sometimes, strange things rose to the surface. Words she didn’t understand, but at the same time she did.

Like electricity. And modern medicine and healthcare.

Especially that time when their healer smeared a weird green paste on her scraped knee and just wiped her hands on her tunic. No soap or water. Do they seriously not wash their hands? Di immortales. Viruses and diseases are real, right?

She would’ve cried if she hadn’t been so busy calculating how many different infections could kill a three-year-old in one leg. Probably too many.

Later, she found out the village did have soap. Lots of it, actually. They just didn’t feel the need to panic about such things as microbes.

And then there was the familiarity.

This morning, she and her new guardians were off to break their fast with a neighborhood elder, an old woman who’d looked her up and down four months ago and declared, “You will call me Mamme.”

Apparently, that was what kids called grandmothers here. And saying no to a sharp-eyed woman who smelled like bath oils and fresh thyme was not an option.

So now, she had a Mamme.

What else could she do? Argue? That was the kind of woman who’d swat you with a broom for blinking too loud and then stuff you full of cake.

Mamme’s house sat between a fig orchard and a claymaker’s shop. The air smelled like sea salt and baking bread. Persia's chlamys, dark red and still a bit too big, flared behind her like a cape as she rode on Euphemia’s hip.

Her guardians weren’t quite parents, but close enough.

The city was so old. Not just in years but in soul. People swapped jars and stories like it was nothing. She’d seen a man walk into a neighbor’s home, trade pickled onions for barley, and leave without a word.

“So… everyone just trusts each other?” she’d whispered.

Euphemia smiled. “Why wouldn’t we?”

Because this is how people die, Persía had thought. She still slept with a rock under her pillow. Just in case.

New York didn’t do open doors or quiet nights. She’d grown up in a place where safety was earned, not assumed. Here, someone had left her a handmade doll. No one said anything.

She wasn’t sure what to do with that kind of kindness. Here, no one expected her to fight or lead or break. She could just… be.

Her memories were still mostly fog. The Pit, blood on the sand and drowning. Always drowning.

Be honoured, little demigods.

But this city asked nothing of her except to rest.

I can do that, she thought.

Even if she kept the rock under her pillow a little longer.

She watched the next day as Euphemia dunked a jug into a communal well and handed it to Persía without boiling, filtering, or even sniffing it first.

Persía stared at the jug like it owed her money. If I get dysentery from this water and die, I’m haunting everyone.

She drank anyway. Her thirst was stronger than her will to survive.

Which might have not been her smartest decision as she did find out that she could get sick a lot. Her ancient, very nonexistent, immune system wasn’t ready for the modern shit she pulled off. So, she threw up, she got fevers, she fainted once from eating a particularly sketchy goat cheese.

Still, she survived and got stronger for it. In her honest opinion, it might have been because she was half mortal. She had no powers yet, at least she couldn’t feel anything special instinctively. She was very young however, so it wasn’t really surprising.

But as the years went by, Persía began to notice some things.

The sea always came in a little closer when she was near. Sunbeams felt softer on her skin than they did on others. Against her tanned skin it felt like a warm hug. How some of things she saw, she shouldn’t know.

Most of her memories had come back over the years, which made her deeply relieved. But it really made her wonder who her godly-parent was this time around. 

By the time she was eight, Persía had finally worked up the nerve to say, “Could we cut it? Then we don’t have to put so much oil into it.” In her opinion, she could do with less, her hair was so long already.

Did that stop Euphemia? No. Of course not.

Formidable woman that she was, Euphemia had only said, “You would spend all your time swimming in the ocean, from órthros to hespéra, if you could. As much as you wish it, my little seashell, you are not a fish. The salt makes your hair dry. So oil it is,” and proceeded to pour more. Maybe she was right, probably, but that didn’t mean Persía had to like it. “And your hair is lovely, it would a shame to cut it.”

She was already hot, temperature-wise, emotionally, spiritually,  didn’t matter. Add oil to the mix and she felt like someone was trying to deep fry her head.

So, instead of arguing, she pivoted. If she couldn’t stop the oil, she could at least choose the style.

Her hair, which used to be tied simply or shoved into a single bun, was now braided every morning into the most elaborate styles she could dream up: twists and weaves and knots with names she didn’t even know.

She scavenged pearls, jewellery and hair ornaments. Somehow there was always one more hairpin tucked into her sash or left by her sleeping mat.

Euphemia never complained. In fact, she took it as a personal mission. Her eyes lit up at every new challenge.

“There’s a festival’s worth of braids in this head,” she’d murmur fondly, working with gentle, practiced hands.

Persía would roll her eyes, but she never pulled away.

It wasn’t much of a protest. In truth, both of them ended up happy.

1294 BCE, Harbour, Chora, Outsider POV

Everyone at the port had seen Euphemia’s girl before.

She was strange, for a child, yes, but in the way an owl is strange to the mice it watches. Quiet one moment, fierce the next. Far too intelligent for that age, and too still when she listened. Like the tide, waiting.

That morning, she’d perched herself on an old shipping crate like it was a stage, knees tucked up, eyes on the sea. A few of the littler ones trailed around her like ducklings, drawn in without knowing why.

Then she started to sing.

It was a soft, lilting tune; half-forgotten, something older than human memory.

“My bright moon, shine for me to walk…”

No one had sung that in public for years. Maybe decades and yet the words came as if they’d been waiting in her mouth all along, the melody curling through the salty morning like mist. Low and sweet and slightly wrong, in the way a dream feels wrong once you wake.

The children didn’t notice. They clapped along in rhythm, sang off-key and laughing like satyrs at a feast but the sailors nearby paused mid-tie, and even one of the older merchants tilted her head, brow creased.

There was something in that voice. Something tugging. Something deep.

She didn’t notice. She was smiling faintly, unaware her fingers moved like she was strumming a lyre she didn’t have.

It passed quickly. But the sound of it clung to the air like salt.

And for the rest of the day, a few people found themselves humming a tune they didn’t quite remember learning.

Then it happened.

Old Kyría Eleni, gods bless her, had just finished buying fish, coin pouch swinging from her wrist, when a boy no one recognised got a little too close. The kind of boy who didn’t belong in a town where everyone left their doors open. He reached for the pouch––

–the little girl moved, quick and quiet, going for the kill.

One moment, she was singing with the children. The next, she’d crossed the square in three bounding steps and yanked the thief’s tunic like a battle-hardened soldier. She spun, tripped, threw him right into a fisherman’s crate full of angry octopuses.

Gasps and laughter could be heard from all around the market. A single fish hit the ground with a slap.

The boy scrambled off, drenched and smelling of salt and shame, and Persía just stood there being fussed over by Old Eleni. Calm as can be, like she hadn’t just tackled someone twice her size and launched them into a cephalopod ambush.

“She fights like a wolf pup,” someone muttered.

“No. More like a child of Sparta,” came the answer.

“Far too smart to be one of them,” third pointed out.

By sunset, ten more children had asked her to teach them. By week’s end, even the older ones were sparring in the dirt with practice swords until dusk.

She never bragged to others. Never asked for thanks from the help she offered.  Just hummed songs nobody recognised, taught children her ways of stealing, and walked younger kids home safely and had that same unreadable expression: half world-weary, half child, like she didn’t know what she was herself.

No one knew who she really was. But the stories had started. And stories, once they start, tend to grow.

Unfortunately for Persía, a week later, they had more ammo for their rumours, for a goat had eaten her only pair of sandals.

She chased it for three miles. She was no child of Hermês and that fucker was fast.

When she returned, holding her chewed-up shoe like a war prize, the town’s children started calling her “Aigalókrotos”– Goat Beater.

She hated it.

By the time she turned nine, the rumours had made it down the coast: ‘That girl, Persía, must be a daughter of Arês. No child fights like that so she must be.’ An exaggeration in her opinion.

But, she let them talk.

Better a god of war than the truth – that she used to be in one. War that is. That she’d fought and died in a world of asphalt and monsters and grief, and woke up small and alive with her mind full of holes like Swiss cheese.

Arís, though? Really? Of all gods? Anyone but him. Well…maybe not Zeus. Definitely not Zeus. Gross.

Still, she tied red threads around her belt, honouring Arês. If they wanted theater, she’d give them a front-row seat.

As for the other children, she wasn’t particularly close to anyone. How could she be?

But there were kids she trained with, sang songs to, ate with, ran barefoot alongside through vineyards, sticky with other berries and stolen grapes. They laughed at her weird jokes, even when they didn’t understand them. Especially when they didn’t.

She wasn’t lonely, exactly. Just… apart. Like her edges were tuned to a different frequency.

They didn’t call her strange anymore. They called her lucky.

She didn’t feel very lucky.

Not when she woke up screaming from dreams where the sea swallowed whole cities or when she jolted upright remembering names no one here had ever heard: Luke. Grover. Leo. Jason. Mom.

Her memories were coming back now, clearer every day, like a wave drawing back to reveal wreckage. She didn’t tell anyone. How could she explain having PTSD as a child in Ancient Greece?

So instead, she trained harder. Fought longer. Her smile grew more fake.

She wouldn’t be weak and useless anymore, she refused. And sometimes, when no one was looking, she counted the stars and repeated names of her lost ones.

Sometimes it sounded like a prayer.

Promise me, Seaweed Brain. Promise.

In some ways it was.

Chapter Text

1293 BCE, Chora 

She’d more or less adjusted to the modesty standards in the Dark Ages. Which was to say – she’d given up.

Everyone wore chitons or less. Which was fine, but the laundry days were particularly lawless. Modesty, as far as she could tell, was more about context than coverage and absolutely no one knocked before entering, not in their household.

Not even once.

She tied her chiton a little tighter and exhaled. One more unannounced entrance while she was changing and, swear to all the gods, she would join the Maiˈnades. If they were even a thing yet.

Truth be told, she didn’t even mind the lack of pants anymore. The breeze was nice, the linen breathed, but the constant communal living grated at her. No locking the doors, no boundaries, no please-don’t-barge-in-while-I’m-spiraling moments.

Still, she was getting used to it. Mostly.

If her math was right, she’d been born long before the Trojan War, at least that’s what she’d gathered from her constant snooping.

Which was… grating on her nerves a little bit. The constant state of unknown. Why couldn’t her memory come back already. It felt like there was a little Roomba in her brain bonking into the corner again and again instead of going around and cleaning up the useless shit to make room for the important information.

Well, anyways, that meant no Theseus or Minotaur yet, no Odysseus, no Romans and their drama. Maybe even Mr. D was still the new kid on Olympus? Here’s hoping.

“I really need a timeline,” she grumbled, adjusting the fold of her dress. “Annabeth would’ve made one by now.”

Her throat tightened. Annabeth would’ve already charted the stars and figured out what century they were in. She would’ve kept her grounded. Di immortales, she missed her. She missed her so much it ached behind her ribs.

“I hope you made it,” she whispered. Annabeth had wanted to live in New Rome, study architecture, grow old and die peacefully. Persía really hoped she had made it.

The hearth crackled beside her.

She blinked at it, then knelt slowly. From a stitched pocket hidden in her wrap. One of the few comforts she’d managed to sneak into her daily wear – she pulled out a small twist of barley bread. A bit flatt, but still warm from the oven.

“For the Goddess of the Hearth,” she murmured. “I thank you for the warmth, Lady Hestia. For not letting the roof fall in. For the weird peace I keep finding here, even if I don’t feel like I deserve it.”

She tossed it into the fire. The flames flared, then shifted.

The world tilted.

Persía’s breath caught mid-motion, the room fell away.

The air thickened into water, light pulled taut like honey. The fire on the hearth flickered, then slowed, stilling.

And she Saw.

She stood on the shore alone.

White sands stretched quiet and endless, scattered with overturned bowls, abandoned sandals, salt-dried blood that painted doors like someone meant to come back but never did. Homes yawned open to the sea. The sky was cloudless. The wind carried no voices.

Only the sound of something rising. Then the scene shifted. Water, dark and endless. Beneath it: a face, it was familiar. Eyes wide from fear, mouth parted in a breath that would never come, their hair floating like seaweed. No one around to save them.

I’m so sorry, please forgive me, my lady!

The tide pulled harder. She reached, but her arms did not move. They sank to the bottom.

The vision snapped again.

Now she was underground.

Stone walls breathed, like they moved and cried. They pulsed like a heartbeat, damp with something too warm to be water. A corridor stretched ahead, then split, then split again, and again. She turned – there was no turning back. From the walls came voices, not speaking but sobbing, chanting, whispering her name with voices she didn’t know.

Some laughed maniacally, some begged for mercy of release, some just screamed.

Sacrifices that would never know peace.

Never able to leave.

A shadow passed her shoulder. She ran – but her feet didn’t move. The ground swallowed all sound. The deeper she went, the louder they became. Faces bloomed in the walls like mold. Mouths without bodies. Hands that reached, then vanished.

She was sitting on sand.

She looked down on a face she couldn’t see, a hand touching her own. It was pale, streaked in blood. A woman’s. Their fingertips intertwined. She held them closer, so gently.

Then everything slowed, the woman was not breathing anymore.

Her own tear slid down her cheek. Dropped onto the woman’s skin. The sea stilled behind them.

And then – another shape. Another woman beside her, lying so near their shoulders brushed.

She was young, no more than her first bloom of adulthood, her skin waxen and damp with sweat. Her belly curved round, heavy with a child who would never be born.

The bedding beneath them – sand that shifted into cloth, was drenched in red from the waist down, soaking, spreading, unending.

The young woman’s chest rose shallowly, then stuttered still.

Her lips parted on a sound that wasn’t breath, only silence.

Persía reached for her, but the moment shattered, blurred – sand, salt, blood, cloth, all bleeding into one another – until only the weight of absence pressed down on her chest.

Persía, you’re safe. Deep breath, margarítēs mou. That’s it, slower.

Deep breaths, in and out. She felt a hand touching her shoulder. Firm and human, bringing her presence back to reality. Her head was thrumming with pain. 

“Persía,” Euphemia said, crouched beside her.  It sounded muffled, but low and even, her touch steady.

Persía blinked, trying to not throw up.

The vision snapped like a thread. Time returned as fire crackled in her ears again. People moved in the corners of her sight, their household.
She was laying down on the floor. She hadn’t realised she’d moved at all. Her fingers had dug into her own arms.

“I–” she exhaled. “That one was… strange. Longer than most.”

Euphemia gave a small nod, brushing a lock of damp brown hair behind Persía’s ear.

“You’re safe,” she said. “You’re here.”

Persía looked down. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry or scream or simply vanish for a while, but instead, she took a shaky breath and nodded.

“Let’s give thanks to the gods together,” she was told, and was handed more slivers of bread. They offered it to the fire together, going through the pantheon.

Lastly, they prayed to Lady Hestia again. “Thank you, Lady of the Hearth,” Euphemia said simply. “For the peace you lend and the walls that keep us warm.”

The flames danced brighter. Calmer.

And then the smell of roasted fish drifted in from the kitchen.

“Dinner,” came her husband’s, Thales’, voice from across the room. “And before you ask, yes, we marinated the eel in advance first.”

Euphemia laughed quietly. She rose, taking Persía’s hand as they joined him at the low table. Plates of fruits, vegetables, fish, a sauce and warm barley flatbread – nothing too fancy, but everything was fresh and delicious.

They ate in companionable silence for a while, the kind that only comes from people who’ve lived together long enough to know when words aren’t needed.

Persía took the container of dry crated cheese into her hand and tried to drizzle the rest of it onto her food, it did not come, so she had to spank its little ass to get it out.

She tore a piece of flatbread and dipped it into the olive oil, eyes flicking between Euphemia and Thales as they passed plates and shared the kind of quiet smiles that didn’t need translating.

It had been… strange, at first. Not bad, just different.

This household was wealthier than what she’d grown up with as Percy. There were always clean linens, fresh fish, ripe fruit, and cool water drawn before the sun rose. The walls were thick and cool in summer, warm in winter. There was a small servant staff, not many, just enough to keep the house humming gently, like a lyre string always tuned just right.

Euphemia, despite being someone who clearly had the means to stay aloof, never treated her like a guest or a responsibility.

She treated her like a daughter, without saying so.

Persía hadn’t known how much that would matter until it started feeling like home.

Not the kind of survival-heavy home she remembered with Sally: working nights, counting every coin, keeping one eye on the shadows. Her mom had loved her fiercely, no question, but love didn’t soften the way worry had carved into Sally’s face. That life had been all strain and sharp edges and cheap meals warmed over twice.

This life was quieter and gentler. Even the air felt less hostile.

She had her own space now, her own place at the table. No monster-hunting, no war councils, no gods dictating how she lived her own life.

Just a warm hearth, a woman who never asked too much, and a man who always made too much food.

Persía glanced at Euphemia, who was gently slicing a mango and placing the ripest bit on Persía’s plate without saying a word, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

And maybe, she thought, for once, it was.

She leaned back, letting herself breathe. Not in preparation for something, not in defense, just breathing. In and out.

She wasn’t sure what would come next. Having visions as your demigod powers is not a good sign. The whole thing gave her dread.

Her powers were definitely stirring, but that would be tomorrow’s problem.

Tonight she was going to enjoy the warmth and comforts of home.

1292 BCE, Road to Mt. Zeus

The sky burned rust-red above the olive groves, an omen no villager could name. Crows fled inland. The air turned to iron, sharp and dry.

In the dusty grove just beyond the edge of the village: where thornbushes tore at tunics and wild hares made fools of grown men, a small girl crouched low behind a fig tree, eyes locked on her prey.

Then she lunged. A flutter of wings and a startled coo could be heard before the dove met an unfortunate end beneath the snap of a jaw.

Persía stood with a dove between her teeth.

She hadn’t meant to go all Lupa on the poor thing, but she was hungry after swimming for so long and, well, hunting spears were expensive, bows were too tall, and no one had invented peanut butter yet.

A rustle in the trees made her ears twitch, she saw a shape. Who’s the clown?

That’s when she recognised him. Sight that made her growl.

Arês, presumably the God of War and definitely the patron of schoolyard bullies. He stood like a bronze statue come to life: blood-stained armour, eyes like wildfire, taller than any man had a right to be. The kind of divine presence that made grown men wet themselves and lie about it.

Oh, the sight of him made her want to bite.

She wanted to bleed him dry.

He would probably be the one thing she would never forget.

Every time you raise your blade in battle, every time you hope for success, you will feel my curse.

She might not have that curse anymore but she would not forget what he had done.

Never.

Arês POV

He hadn’t been planning to stop. Arês was only in the area to visit some old battlegrounds, sharpen his axe on mortal conflict, maybe hurl a spear for fun, but definitely just passing through. That was until a divine hum had snagged him like a loose thread around the ribs.

Something here was… off.

It didn’t reek of war, not exactly. Not like the carnage he loved best: loud and bloody, with teeth and drums. No, this was smaller. Humming with old instincts, like a dagger glinting under a cloak. Survival.

He stepped between two trees and spotted the girl. Small and dirty, her wild hair tangled in a braid, salt and sand sticking in it, knees scraped, and a dead dove hanging from her teeth like a threat. She looked like she’d been to Tartaros and back.

He blinked once. This… was the one they were whispering about?

This half-feral gremlin-child with no sword, no shield, not even a bronze hairpin to stab someone with?

Arês frowned.

No battle-lust rolled off her. No aura of his own divine inheritance. No scent of fury. Nothing that marked her as one of his. She didn’t even flinch when she spotted him – just glared like he’d interrupted something sacred.

   ɢ ᴏ ᴅ ᴅ ᴇ ꜱ ꜱ   

She looked more like a drowned rat than a demigod. A twitchy little thing with the stubborn posture of a cornered mongoose.

The girl stood slowly, spat out the bird, and cocked her head. “What are you looking at, archaîos?”

He stared. Did this cub just call him an old man?

“…Hmph.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re definitely not mine, kiddo.”

She rolled her eyes. “Obviously not, dingus, but I admire your commitment to misunderstanding. Your father must weep at the legacy“

That struck deeper than he’d admit. Arês bristled slightly.

The girl sighed –fucking sighed– and tipped her head. “I’m not for sale. Go buy your entertainment from somewhere else, pedo.”

What in the name of Olympus–

She bared her teeth. Not metaphorical teeth, not some cutesy mortal ones in defiance.

Fangs. Real fucking fangs. Fangs that only Old Barnacle-beards spawn had.

Arês took a half-step back on pure instinct. This was no child, or maybe it was, but one born of all the wrong elements that didn’t belong to him. She looked at him like she was calculating his weight in weaknesses, like she’d actually drop a boulder on him from a cliff without hesitation.

Not his kid, that much was clear. His wouldn’t talk like that. His wouldn’t bite doves, they were his girlfriend’s birds and hunting them was a big No-No.

“Not like that, you brat!” he snapped, stepping forward and lightly thwacking her on the head. Bonk. “You’re far too young for my taste. ”

“Ow!” she yelped, rubbing her head. “Watch it, you wanker! Touch me again and your knees will be the newest addition to the local farmland.”

Arês snorted, he couldn’t help it. Such foul little language, swearing like a sailor in her young age.

He chuckled once, short and sharp. “You’ve got teeth. Like literally. I’ll give you that.” He leaned in, squinting. “Aphroditê would love you. Feral little terror.”

Definitely not one of his cubs. He’d remember making something this suicidal. Still, he liked her spirit. It was stupid and dangerous, and in this day-and-age probably terminal, but it was hilarious to see.

“Not my offspring,” he muttered to himself. “No way one of mine would say such things to me. But I like your spunk, so I’ll let you live this time.”

He turned and stalked off through the trees, already bored, already thinking about picking a fight with a monster. “Hope you don’t die, twerp,” he called over his shoulder.

“Go die in a ditch!” came her screeching and unflinching answer.

He didn’t look back as he snapped his fingers.

He felt the shift behind him. The stillness of his divine power, and though he never saw it, he knew: where she’d held a stick earlier today, she now held a blade of celestial bronze. Balanced and cool in her hand like it had always belonged there. He could feel the girls surprise.

Arês left the island grinning.

1291 BCE, Chora, The Market

The market smelled like salt and heat and too many fishes in the sun.

I hate you!

No, No, No. Please, Nico!

Persía shook off the memories as she walked a pace behind Euphemia, the hem of her dark red chiton sweeping softly against the dust. It was linen, dyed with crushed madder root and trimmed with faded gold thread. The fabric felt like silk and moved like water against her skin.
A handful of gold armbands gleamed dully on her upper arms, and her neck bore a simple twist of bronze wire. It definitely didn’t scream poor but not showy either, just enough to say: someone loves this girl enough to dress her well.

And gods, someone did.

She caught her reflection briefly in a polished bronze tray at one stall, then looked away. Her face was older now. Not the little sharp-chinned waif she’d been when she’d first washed ashore in this world. She’s twelve years old. A full year since that encounter with Arês. Nine long years since she saw how much violence the world could hold, and how much power slept beneath her own skin.

And yet… here she was, picking through vegetables at a market. Without a worry.

Her thoughts drifted like smoke in her skull. She still didn’t know what to make of herself. Half memories sloshed around her head like seawater. Battlefields that never existed here. Names she no longer said aloud. An old life lived fast, burnt down, and buried.

She adjusted her chiton over her shoulder and glanced at Euphemia’s back as the woman haggled with the seller. Strong shoulders, her dark brown hair on thick braids tucked under her kredemnon. Skin sun-warmed, youthful and soft. Her voice rose in fond irritation as the lady tried to pass off an older cucumber as fresh.

That woman. That one.

She’d never said mine, not out loud. Not daughter, not mother, but she’d made space. Given Persía clothes, a variety she’d never seen before, a room.. a name. Her whole life.

She gave her freedom – and in doing so, gave her everything.

They moved on to the fruit stall next. The seller was a new one, a stout man with a papery laugh and too many apricots, handed over a small basket of figs and grinned at Euphemia. His face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. “You’re a lucky one,” he said, eyes flicking to Persía. “That girl could be a daughter of Aphroditê, with that hair and those eyes.”

Euphemia smiled as she passed over the coin. “She’s a blessing, that’s what she is.”

Persía looked up sharply. Her chest squeezed.

She means it. She’s not just saying it. She chose me.

The world blurred at the edges for a second. Her feet were dusty, her back ached from practice that morning, and the sun was trying to melt the entire Aegean, but none of that mattered.

She reached out and grabbed a fold of Euphemia’s chiton. “My mammá is the most beautiful in the city,” she said, voice as steady as she could make it. “So anything good in me, it’s from her.”

The fruit seller laughed, deep and bright. “Sharp as a blade too and just as double-edged. That one’s bound to be both a gift and a headache.”

Euphemia froze, breath hitching. Then she laughed, but the sound cracked halfway through. She bent down, pulled Persía close, and kissed the crown of her head soundly.

“My beloved child,” she whispered.

Persía didn’t say anything else. She didn’t need to.

She just held on tighter.

The sun was brutal overhead, baking the training ground into a pan of dust and frayed tempers. Persía was grinning like a lunatic, swept her leg beneath her opponent just as he lunged. He went down hard with a wheeze, flat on his back, the wooden training sword flying from his grip.

“Remember to drink water,” she called out as her new opponent staggered toward her, sweat-slicked and overconfident.

“No thanks,” he grunted.

Persía tilted her head. “Then become the dirt I walk on.”

She didn’t waste the moment. In one smooth motion, she planted a foot on his chest and lowered her own blade – dull, but not without bite – until it rested theatrically at his throat.

Persía might be a bit rotten on the inside but she’s not a cheater, at least not yet.

“Hydrate or fall,” she said sweetly.

The fallen boy groaned but took it well, holding up a hand in surrender.

Fear and respect, honestly, she’d take either.

Eventually, they all collapsed into shade like felled soldiers. The sun had baked them to near delirium, and the only thing left to do was retreat beneath the olive trees and survive on snacks.

A jug of barley water passed from hand to hand, warm but welcome. Someone tossed Persía a fig, which she caught lazily and accepted with a pleased hum.

Leontios took a pastry out and some cabbage, sitting next to Persía. “There’s a little process that I like to do, if you open up a little pocket and put some cabbage into it–”

“Cabbage in a pastry?! You filthy pervert!”

“No it’s good I swear!”

Back and forth they went until Ione shoved an apple to each mouth, shutting them up.

Both happily started to eat the offering.

“Ugh, I’m too tired to move,” Kimon groaned, flopping onto his back like a dropped fish. “This is what dying feels like.”

“No,” Persía said, licking apple juice from her fingers. “Dying feels colder. The blood stops moving, so your skin goes waxy. Then it bloats. After a while, it smells sweet – until it doesn’t.”

The group stared at her.

“Also,” she added calmly, “your jaw locks up first. People always forget that.”

Silence.

Kimon slowly sat up. “…Are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she hold up the half eaten apple.

A cicada buzzed in the tree above. Someone swatted at it halfheartedly, as if that might clear the tension too.

Soon, they pulled out the carved Petteia board. Nothing fancy, just a flat slab of clay with chiseled lines and worn wooden pieces in two shades: ochre and ash. They played while lounging, some half-reclining, others leaning on elbows.

Persía arranged her soldiers with one foot tucked under her leg, eyes sharp and lazy at the same time.

“In my opinion, Petteia is mostly luck,” muttered Leontios, to another who had whined that the game was too stimulating to play after sparring, as he flicking one of her pieces off the board.

“Unless I win,” Persía replied coolly, setting another down. “Then it’s a masterclass in military strategy and I’m a genius.”

Two moves later, Leontios frowned at the board. “Wait, how are you surrounding me already?”

Persía didn’t answer. She just smiled, unblinking. 

They were mid-match when one of the boys, young and suntanned and too curious for his own good, asked, “Persía, you’ve talked about it before, but do you really not care about dying? Like… at all?”

The air shifted, not with gloom, more like the pause before thunder. Persía tapped her lip with a game piece, then blinked.

“No. No, I don’t.”

That got her several side-eyes and a raised eyebrow or two.

“Well, I don’t care about being dead,” she clarified, voice casual, as if she were commenting on the heat. “Because you don’t know about it.”

“You… don’t know you’re dead?” the boy echoed, like he was trying to follow a star map as a blind man.

“Exactly!” she said, placing another piece down with a little click. “That’s the best part. You don’t know you’re dead. It’s like being stupid. Only painful for everyone else.”

Someone snorted, coughed, and pretended it didn’t happen.

Persía popped a grape into her mouth and chewed happily. Delicious, tasted like existential dread. She can’t explain why she’s so despicable sometimes, mountains of therapists have tried and failed. Just kidding, she’s never seen a single therapist. I probably should.

“Uh… what about the Fields?” a girl, Ione, asked as she nudged her game piece forward. “Like Elysium? Isn’t that supposed to be, you know, a paradise for the worthy?”

Persía scoffed and swiped a ripe apple from the open sack beside her. “That’s what they want you to think. Government propaganda, and not even good propaganda. ‘Paradise,’ my ass. There’s no variety of food, no parties, no gambling, no real purpose. Just eternal boredom in a glorified wheat field.”

“You’ve never been there,” someone muttered.

“Exactly,” she said, biting into the apple. “And I’m already unimpressed.”

She chewed for a moment, then added, “Besides, mortals usually don’t make it to Elysium. That’s for demigods and so-called ‘heroes’ – people who fought for glory. But what is glory, really? Honour?” She snorted softly. “Glory is just honour rebranded by people selfish enough to desire it. It doesn’t mean you were good. It just means people remembered you… preferably with a statue.”

The group was silent yet again.

“Okay,” a boy whispered. “That’s definitely going in the scroll.”

Persía froze mid-bite. “What scroll?”

No one answered, somewhere a cricket chirped. Someone suddenly found the grain of the Petteia board very interesting.

Persía narrowed her eyes and turned her head slowly. “Suspicious.”

Leontios cleared his throat. “Your turn.”

She flicked one of her soldiers into his with surgical precision. “Checkmate. Oh wait – wrong game. Still counts.”

“You made up that rule.”

“Did not. It’s in the scroll.”

“What scroll–”

“You tell me!”

1290 BCE, Chora 

The wedding feast was still going strong, even as the sun dipped beneath the sea and left the sky painted in rose wine and fire. Clay lamps flickered like fireflies around the courtyard, casting warm shadows over laughing faces, spilled wine, and half-finished songs. Somewhere, someone was trying to play the lyre. Somewhere else, someone was butchering a dance.

It was Euphemia’s oldest friend Callianeira, who was marrying a merchant from Athens, and the entire village had gathered for the occasion. In Persía’s opinion, she could have done better. Oh, well.

Tables groaned beneath roasted goat, olives, grapes, flatbreads, figs, and enough honey cakes to tempt the gods themselves.

Persía had not been invited to the kids’ table.

Officially, she was thirteen now. Old enough to spar with grown men and carry her own water jar. Old enough to sew without stabbing herself. Old enough, supposedly, to sit among the women or apprentices and speak about “serious” things like linen dyes or livestock pricing.

Might start booing people during conversation I’m not interested in. For she currently sat wedged between a quiet girl who smelled like sheep and a bearded man explaining fishing knots to no one in particular, chewing a too-tough piece of lamb and contemplating the possibility of stabbing herself just to liven things up.

People always said ‘I’m here for a good time, not a long time,’ which was weird because she was having a bad time and this was taking forever.

She cast a longing glance at the kids’ table.

They were playing some kind of olive pit flicking game and had clearly been given the better cakes. So many different verities. Rude. Just because she could recite Homer didn’t mean she’d stopped loving sugar.

Maybe if she timed it right, she could swipe two or three without anyone noticing. Four, if she weaponised guilt and looked particularly tragic.

Ridiculous.

She drifted instead, a blur of golden light in a borrowed chiton and dark sandals, until she found herself conveniently loitering near the edge of the children’s table. The best snacks were always here. Sticky-sweet and made with love, not obligation. No olives and no bitter herbs. Just sugar, flour, and joy.

It wasn’t her fault the kids’ table had the best treats. Especially now that she wasn’t technically counted among them anymore.

Thirteen is an adult? Don’t make her laugh.

As it stood, Persía was not above swiping three honey cakes in one confident pass and biting into all of them at once. The energy Taylor Swift fans have for her music, she had for Mamme’s cakes.

A splutter of laughter broke from behind her.

“You do realize those are for the children,” said Leontios, her occasional sparring partner. She actually liked this one. He was technically a teenager, practically a nephew, and definitely a menace. He watched her commit dessert crimes like a witness.

“I am a child,” Persía said, her mouth full, voice muffled and sticky. “I’m just an apex version.” It might be the honey and lemon cakes talking, but she really really really loved cake.

Leontios squinted at her. “I don’t know what that means.” Oh, you poor soul. What will you do when I teach you about tax-evasion.

“It means I’m a more powerful child. Evolution’s peak.”

“You can’t live off sugar and gambling”

“Says who? You know, Lord Hermês might appreciate my endeavors.” She delicately picked another honey cake off the platter, tucked it into her tunic like contraband, and grinned.

“Persía–”

But she was already gone, sprinting across the courtyard like a tiny, sugar-slicked war criminal, leaving only crumbs and a scandalised shout behind.

She darted between dancers and older women chatting over grape leaves, nearly colliding with Euphemia, who caught her by the back of the tunic with one hand and sighed deeply into the other.

Her cobalt teal eyes locked in on her brown. “Out with it,” Euphemia muttered, inspecting her like she was a feral cat.

A hand was in front of her, waiting something to be dropped there.“You shouldn’t run with your mouth full.”

“Is that the law?” she tried to ask but it was muffled by the cakes in her mouth.

“It is now.”

Persía opened her mouth and all three cakes fell out to the expecting hand. She soon wriggled free from her air jail. 

Somewhere behind her, someone was starting up a lyre again, this time a professional one, and soon the crowd would be stomping and clapping to the beat of the next island tune.

For now, she leaned against her mammá, sticky-fingered and entirely pleased with herself, as she was fed the cakes one by one, watching the orange firelight catch in Euphemia’s smile, the mingling laughter, the children weaving through grown-ups like minnows in a river.

She’d never liked weddings before. This one was the first. 

Many of her Firsts.

The sea was calm that morning, the kind of silver-blue stillness that made you feel like the whole world was holding its breath. The sail snapped gently in the wind as the boat cut through the water, sun glinting off its surface like scattered coins.

Thales manned the rudder with easy familiarity, his skin bronzed from years on the water. “Tighter on the net,” he called back.

“Aye, captain,” Persía said, grinning as she leaned over the side of the boat, chlamys fluttering in the sea breeze. Her new chiton: light blue with stitched waves near the hem, caught a few stray drops of salt water, but she didn’t mind. Over it, she wore a dark blue and white chlamys tied at the shoulder, a twin to Thales’s own. The crew joked she was the smallest sailor in the known sea. She preferred “first mate.”

They cast the fishing nets wide, weighted with stones and prayers. And the sea… responded.

Fish swarmed in numbers too high for the season. Mackerel. Eel. Even a few silver squid danced through the waves and caught themselves willingly in the mesh.

Thales gave her that look again, the one that said he saw more than he let on. She looked away, feigning interest in the net rope coiled at her feet.

She hadn’t meant to stir the tide. But sometimes, when she was calm, or excited, or anything at all, really – the sea listened. And it brought her gifts.

She hated that it felt like a betrayal.

Back when she was Percy Jackson, seafood had been a hard no, not just a moral choice, it had felt wrong. The ocean spoke to him, some fish did too, and once you’d had a conversation with a crab about climate change, it kind of ruined shrimp cocktail forever.

This life wasn’t the same. Now, she was the captain’s daughter and the sea fed them.

The first time Euphemia served her grilled squid, she’d cried. Tried to hide it by claiming she’d bitten her tongue.

It had taken months to choke it down without guilt, and years to accept it. She still didn’t like it, but Ancient Greece didn’t care much for dietary restrictions –ethical or otherwise. There were no Beyond Fish options.

At least now, she was part of the work. Hauling nets, scraping scales, gutting catches, she was learning, living again. Thales hadn’t said anything when she first froze holding a fish in her hands. Just handed her a sharp knife and nodded once. “You don’t have to like it,” he’d said. “But you do have to learn.”

So she did.

And somewhere in the quiet crests of wave and wind, it became easier.

“It’s a good haul,” Thales said, squinting at the sky. “We’ll have enough for the house, and still plenty to trade.”

Persía looked at him. His hair was going silver at the temples. His nose had clearly been broken at least twice. He was steady, patient and kind in a way that didn’t draw attention to itself. She wondered, not for the first time, how someone like him had ended up with someone as radiant and quietly fierce as Euphemia.

He caught her staring and raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

She shrugged. “Just thinking.”

“Dangerous habit,” he said mildly. “Best to keep your head in the wind and your hands on the line.” But he was smiling. She smiled back, then turned her face into the breeze. Salt and sun and memory.

She might not understand this life yet, or why she had it, but when she was out here; sails full, deck rocking beneath her feet, the ocean humming like a heartbeat she almost remembered, it didn’t feel so impossible.

1289 BCE, Chora, the Beach 

She swam alone that evening, far beyond the sun-warmed shallows, into the quiet pulse of the deep. The sky had begun to darken, stained indigo and mulberry at the edges, stars pressing gently through the thinning clouds like cautious pearls. The sea reflected it all: silver-blue and glasslike, rippling only where she broke it.

Hold fast, Perseus. Brave the storm that was made to break us, for we are unbreakable.

Her strokes were steady, unhurried. She didn’t dive or test the depth. Didn’t reach out to feel what the water might do if she asked.

She knew it would answer. She just didn’t want it to.

Not tonight. Not when everything was so quiet. Not when she didn’t know how much would be too much, and who might feel it.

Somewhere down in the dark, Poseidôn could be watching or one of the ancient, salt-bitten titans she hadn’t learned the names of yet. If the sea remembered her, truly remembered her, it might mean no more peace. No more walking through the village as just Persía. No more calm.

And she loved the calm, the not-knowing, the in-between. Seeing Arês that day was more than enough, offering bread to Hestia before meal was enough. She didn’t need the ocean’s voice in her head, not yet.

A shape stirred beneath her, long and smooth. For a moment, she thought it might be something ancient, something with too many teeth and a name no sailor said out loud.

But then it surfaced: a dolphin. Silently watching her, it didn’t chirp or leap, it simply circled her once, slow and deliberate, as though checking a boundary.

Then it dove deep, vanishing like a thought she didn’t want to follow.

By the time she stepped onto the beach, the stars had fully broken through the clouds and the wind had cooled. She wrung water from her braid as she padded barefoot across the pebbles, sea-slick and thoughtful.

An old fisherman looked up from mending his net beside a flickering clay lamp. He squinted at her, then toward the sea.

“No dolphin behaves like that,” he said, voice low and worn. “Not ‘less it smells one of its own.”

Well shit. Persía blinked, saltwater in her lashes. “Cool,” she said, without missing a beat. Not cool, not really. “Tell it to bring snacks next time.”

He chuckled, half-dazed by her, or maybe the moon.

She walked off with the sea behind her, and a silence in her bones that wasn’t empty at all.

Soon. Soon.

Chapter Text

1288 BCE, Chora, Persía’s Home

Embarrassment was a rare emotion for Persía.

She could throw a spear in the middle of a crowded agora, beat up strangers left and right at the fish market, and threaten gods with cheerful ease, but this? This was new, and she was mildly panicking. How could she forget a small but a very important detail of being a girl.

She stared down at the blood-stained sheets between her legs with a resigned sort of calm, lips pursed. She’d known it would happen eventually. It wasn’t a mystery. She’d read enough, heard enough, understood enough. She had just forgotten. FuckFuckFuck.

It felt… strange. Final, in a way, as if her body had stamped a seal on something she hadn’t fully agreed to. In all sense, she would be fine.. but really? Why did it have to make a such a mess. Not to mention the constant pain too.

She just knew that the Moirai were laughing at her, that was for sure.

“Is everything alright?” her mother called from the other room, voice light but alert in that way mothers get when they sense a disturbance in the Force – or whatever was the saying.

Persía exhaled through her nose. “Nai, mammá.. I am just bleeding.”

A beat. “From where?”

“From..hmm, from there.”

Bless your heart, 10/10 performance, Jackson.  She facepalmed and tried to pray to Khaos for some brain cells. She swore that not a single neuron has fired since she was reborn. Unbelievable. It’s a fucking vagina, the blood comes from your uterus, call it what it is! 

There was a pause, and then Euphemia bustled in, skirts swishing, expression caught between alarm and maternal efficiency. She took one look at the scene, sighed with an odd mix of sympathy and relief. At least someone around this villa had their shit together, because it sure as Tartaros was not Persía.

The servants arrived into the room and started to change the sheets.

She made her way to the baths after her mother, where a scorching water was waiting for her. As she relaxed in, her mother brought a sponge and some soaps to wash with.

“Well,” she said gently, “it’s about time. I was starting to wonder if you had already bled and not just told me.”

“I kinda forgot,” Persía muttered, rubbing her skin red with a grim face of someone not terribly keen on being in this situation. 

Euphemia chuckled softly and scooped water onto her hair, then rubbing lavender soap into it, making her hair smell lovely. “It’s not a curse. It’s just part of woman’s natural history.”

“It feels like a curse.” That you can die from.

“You’ll get used to it.”

“I don’t know if I want to.” Please, kill me.

“Mmhmm.” Is all her mother answered.

Persía sat still for a moment while her mother worked her magic on her hair. She didn’t cry, didn’t flinch, but something in her chest twisted: not in panic, but in a kind of quiet, rational grief. A metaphorical door had closed. Childhood, maybe, or something even older she hadn’t been able to name.

“Do you know what’s happening?” Euphemia asked after a moment, watching her.

“Yes,” Persía said. Unfortunately she did. “It’s the uterine lining shedding. Happens when there’s no fertilized egg. Bleeding lasts three to seven days, can include cramping, nausea, mood swings. Can stop around age fifty. Some variance depending on health, activity, and stress. It’s part of the hormonal cycle linked to ovulation.” Take that 6th Grade Health teacher! 

Euphemia blinked. “Well.. That’s definitely more than I knew when I first bled.” She washed the soap away with clean water and kissed Persía on top of her head.

Persía gave her a small, crooked smile. “I read a lot.”

“That much is clear.” Euphemia smiled, she was humouring her a little, her mother knew it was more than that. Can’t bullshit my way through with mammá. She gave Persía a towel to dry herself with, then hesitated. “Would you like to talk about it?”

Persía considered while coming out of the water, drying herself. “Not really, I knew it was coming. I guess I just thought I had more time.”

They sat down together on the nearby pillows. The candlelight flickered gently against the walls. Outside, the crickets chirped and the sea sighed in the morning hue.

Then, quietly, Persía said, “Will you teach me?”

Euphemia looked over, taking coconut smelling hair oil from the tiles and started to hand comb through the wet hair with it. “Teach you what?”

“How to be a woman. Not just natural side of things, but also how live as one. The power women can hold. You know how people look at you, mammá. How they listen when you talk, they’re captivated by you. How you make them want to agree with you. They give you their time because they trust you and desire you.”

Her mother’s lips lifted in a sly, knowing smile. “Ah, that.” 

“You do it without raising your voice. You make them agree with your ideologies,” Persía said. “You’re never cruel. You just… win the unspoken contest, like there never was an argument.” Eloquently put..

“That,” Euphemia said softly, “took years of training, but yes, I will teach you.”

Persía nodded slowly. “I want to learn. All of it. How to speak, how to move, how to be believed, how to be a woman that is desired.”

“Then we’ll begin today,” Euphemia said. “With tea, posture, and the Kama Sutra.”

Persía blinked. “Wait, what?” No way she heard that correctly.

Euphemia laughed. “The Kama Sutra, it’s about power, knowing people, knowing yourself. It is about courtship, persuasion, behaviour, how to keep your dignity even when everyone else is trying to take it from you.”

Persía’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully. She had heard correctly. That book was not Greek. “You’re not from here, are you?”

“Technically no,” Euphemia said with a little tilt of her head. “My mḗter was from the Indus Valley. She married a wealthy Greek merchant, your pappos, and moved here. I’ve never seen her homeland, but I remember the stories she told me, the traditions and the ways of Kama Sutra.”

Persía sat back against the wall, absorbing this, as she took the clothes her mother offered her, all fabrics colourful. “That explains a lot.”

A lot would be an understatement.  No wonder their clothes were with finer details, all the jewellery her mother wore, the makeup, everything that differed from other people in Naxos.  She had thought it was because of wealth differences, but it wasn’t just that.

Now that she thought about it, it made so much sense that she was of Indian descent. Di immortales, I am stupid.

Her mother had wanted to keep alive her own family’s traditions, but in a very minimalistic manner.

Euphemia reached out, brushing her fingers through Persía’s curls. “And you, asteraki, have always been more like me in that sense, curious, reaching for more knowledge. So if you want to learn, I’ll teach you everything I know.”

Persía nodded slowly and for the first time that day, her mouth curved into a small, real smile. “Estō. Can I also learn the dances?”

Euphemia laughed. “Of course you can.”

Persía then proceeded to become partially lifeless for the next three days whenever her mother wasn’t teaching her.

She even might have cried herself asleep once.

She will deny doing so vehemently.

Atlantis, Pavilion

“…Naxos, of all places,” Rhodê was saying, her tone smooth as still water, but with a faint curl of disbelief. She idly traced the lip of her sea-glass goblet, watching the currents twist lazily around the coral pillars. “You’d expect nothing from there but farmers and fishermen, and yet – she’s quite striking, I’ve heard.”

Benthesikymê perked up, eyes gentle as always. “A sea-nymph?”

“That’s what Niva claims. One of the dolphins followed her for days.” Rhodê paused, swirling the last of her wine. “Said she moved like she belonged in the sea.  Hair like the curliest of seaweeds. Eyes like – ”

“The sunniest of beaches. More importantly, cobalt teal. Father’s eyes, if we want to be precise,” Benthesikymê finished softly. “I heard that, too.”

Tritôn didn’t look up from his scroll. His voice was flat, vaguely disinterested. “We’re quoting gossip now?”

“Keep your crabs in their shells, brother,” Rhodê replied. “Don’t listen if you care for no gossip. We do. It’s so boring these days, gossip is all we have.”

Benthesikymê giggled softly, then turned toward Tritôn. “She’s not marked by any court. No known lineage nor any possible sea-pact has been made. Just a young woman, who happens to have our Sea King’s eyes.”

“A very pretty one too,” Rhodê added, her smile not quite reaching her eyes. “Or so the dolphin says. Not that I trust anything male to tell the truth.”

Tritôn sighed, finally flicking his gaze up. “And we care because…?”

Benthesikymê’s brow furrowed. “She might be our sibling for one, Father is known to go around. She could be, um… dangerous. She is unclaimed, which is a shame on its own. Though I heard she’s almost two decades, being unclaimed for so long is – ten letters, sort of like ‘astonish’–”

“Surprising,” Rhodê filled in dryly.

“Yes! That.” Benthesikymê smiled, pleased.

Tritôn stood, rolling the scroll closed with one hand, his other resting at the hilt of the ceremonial dagger at his hip. “That matter is not for us to deal with, if she is a sea-nymph sired by our Father, then he shall deal with it.”

“But–” Benthesikymê began, looking faintly worried.

He cut her off, though not unkindly. “We don’t collect strays, sister. We have enough problems without chasing idle gossip.”

Rhodê watched him turn and stride down the corridor, his two tails jerking slightly for being so stiff. She leaned back in her chair, mouth quirked.

“He’s curious, I can tell,” she murmured.

Benthesikymê tilted her head. “He just doesn’t like things that are, hmmm – thirteen letters, it’s when something is sudden, and you didn’t plan for it…”

“Unpredictable,” Rhodê said, more gently this time.

Benthesikymê nodded. “Exactly.”

Naxos, Chora, the Beach 

A week later, the evening sun spilled gold over the cliffs of Naxos, and the sea was warm enough to tempt even the most reluctant fisherman.

After all the pain, bleeding, and brooding she’d endured, Persía had had enough. She needed the sea. She needed to move, to stretch her body hard enough to shake the ache from her muscles and the noise from her mind.

She stripped down without ceremony, leaving her chest wrapped in a faded linen bandeau and her usual loincloth tied snug at the hips. The rest of her clothes landed in a lazy pile near the rocks.

She stepped into the water like she belonged to it – because, in some strange way, she did. Each step was slow and certain, full of the quiet confidence of someone who knew the sea would not harm her.

I can’t breathe. The poison – please, I’m drowning – help! I can’t–

Persía jerked upright, shaking off the memory with a gasp. She took a few steadying breaths.

Why now? Why not on land? Fucking Tartaros.

She exhaled hard and began to feel out the sea around her, trying to calm herself as her power reached instinctively outward. Come on, Persía. Don’t pussy out now. She flexed her fingers, shook her arms, as though the water touching them were suddenly ice.

Happy memories, she told herself. Find one.

Hadn’t she beaten up a grown man with a dusty broom just last week? She had. And gods, she was proud of it.

The drunk had picked a fight with poor Kimon, who was just standing there minding his own business. Persía had ended it before the man could even finish his threat.

“A woman never starts a fight,” her mammá had told her when she was younger, “but she damn well finishes one.”

Persía had taken that as one of her new life’s laws.

From a driftwood log nearby, Leontios and Kimon both stopped mid-conversation. Their heads snapped toward her like two startled cats who were caught doing something naughty on the kitchen counter.

Persía, now waist-deep, turned slowly to face them, one brow rising, nose scrunching.

Seriously?

She understood curiosity. They were fifteen – technically so was she – and mortal hormones were a plague on everyone. But still, the way their eyes dragged over her made something twist in her stomach. Not shame, exactly, but something adjacent. Uneasy recognition.

She rolled her shoulders and called out flatly, “You two pervs done gawking, or should I send a sketch artist?” She shook her head and murmured to herself: “Eyeballing me like a rump roast.”

Kimon nearly dislocated his neck looking away. “I was admiring the scenery – i mean the sea!”

She used a tiny bit of her powers and scooped water in her hands, hurling it in their general direction, waterboarding them, making them absolutely drenched. “Go write an ode and get it over with.”

Leontios groaned and slapped a wet hand over his eyes. “I’m blind. The gods have smote me for my sins.”

“Good,” Persía muttered, floating on her back with a blissful sigh. “May your next erection be haunted by the sound of your mother calling out your name.”

“Now, that’s just unnecessary cruel..”

“I have to agree with my friend, Leontios, here.”

“Suck it,” came the reply.

“Such unwomanly behaviour, my Lady.”

“I agree– hey! Stop with the water!”

From up the hill, Ione sauntered into view with a satchel bouncing against her hip, her braid half-undone and a sun-warmed glow across her nose. She plopped down beside the two wet boys, popped an apple into her mouth, and blinked at the aquatic chaos next to her.

“What’s the life expectancy for a potential sea-nymph again?” Leontios asked, squinting.

“She’ll outlive us all,” Ione said, licking fruit juice from her fingers.

“Yeah,” Kimon muttered. “The spiteful ones always do.”

Still chewing, Ione slapped the back of his head.

“Ouch!”

“She just might curse you to constantly smell like ass, if you continue.”

“In our defense,” Leontios added, “she is not much of a sea deity, if all she does is nap in the sun and threaten the precious lives of seagulls for coming too close.”

“I do not!” Persía yelled from the water. Then muttered, “It wanted to gobble up my food.”

Ione snorted and, to everyone’s surprise, stood, yanked off her tunic, and jogged toward the water in her shift.

Persía perked up. “Finally! Someone who’s not a complete coward!”

“I’m not scared,” Kimon muttered pathetically.

“You screamed like you were dying when a seaweed brushed your leg,” Leontios reminded him.

“I swear those seaweeds weren’t there when I went in,” Kimon grumbled.

Below, Ione dove cleanly into the surf, cutting through the water like she’d been born there. She surfaced beside Persía, who grinned with obvious delight.

“Come on!” Persía called to the boys. “Or are you both afraid something down here might nibble on your dicks?”

“I’m trying to keep mine,” Leontios called back.

Kimon, already laughing, peeled off his tunic and jogged toward the water.

“Oh, fine– if I get eaten by a sea-cow, I’m blaming you,” Leontios said and followed Kimon into the water.

“They’re called Hippokampoi, not a sea-cows.”

“I just don’t see a difference.”

They splashed, shouted, and laughed, a pack of sun-warmed teenagers in the sea. Persía ducked under the water, sleek as a seal, and grabbed Kimon’s ankle with a practiced tug.

“She’s got me! I’m going to die!”

“Relax,” she said, surfacing beside him with a shark-like grin. “If I wanted you dead, you’d already be bubbling.”

Kimon flailed backward, regaining his footing.

Laughter rippled over the water. For a brief, golden moment, nothing else existed but the joy of being young and alive.

Then Persía swam out farther, cutting clean strokes through the water like she belonged to it. The sea curled around her like a second skin – effortless, graceful, completely at home. She flipped onto her back, let the waves carry her, and closed her eyes like she could sleep there.

Leontios watched her, brows knitting.

“Gods,” he muttered. “She might actually be a sea-nymph.”

Ione, eyes still on Persía, murmured, “Told you.”

The sun dipped low over the horizon, bleeding amber and rose into the sea.

All four of them now lounged in the water like sleepy seals, eyes half-lidded, the waves rocking them gently against the rocks.  Salt crusted their skin, their fingers pruned – all except Persia's.

It was quiet, blissfully so, the kind of quiet that made you forget the world could ever be loud.

Persía lay floating, arms outstretched, half-dozing, until a shadow passed over her face.

“Damn,” she muttered without opening her eyes, assuming Ione had stood up. “Is it time to go already?” The shadow however did not move.

Then a voice, soft and sea-soaked, like the hush of waves on the beach: “Hiii.”

Persía’s eyes snapped open. It was not Ione. She screamed like someone had lit her on fire.

Which, given the situation was probably an overreaction.

It definitely was.

Water splashed violently as she scrambled back and half-climbed onto Kimon, who also started screaming because he didn’t know why they were screaming, only that they were.

Leontios flailed and the poor bastard fell under.

Ione calmly wiped sea foam out of her eyes and flatly said, “Well, that’s not normal.” Talking about the sight in front of her.

A woman hovered just above the water, not standing on it – not quite floating either – as if the sea itself held her there. Her hair was long and white with a greenish sheen, cascading around her like kelp in a current. This woman’s ears tapered into delicate fins, catching the last sunlight like glass. Her skin was pale as moonlight, glowing faintly, and dusted with pearly shimmer.

Her eyes – Persía’s breath caught – were the same eyes she saw in her own reflection sometimes. The cobalt teal, but hers were ancient, heavy-lidded, like born from the deep sea itself. Still, underneath, they were the same eyes, Poseidôn’s eyes.

She wore a dress like foam made solid, soft blue at the hems but mostly white, and shifting slightly with the breeze, as if it still remembered being sea spray.

Her lips were parted in a smile too wide for comfort, and her teeth: not monstrous, but not human either, same as hers.

Persía’s heart was punching at her ribs. Fuck. She fucked up. They know, they must.

Her gaze stayed locked on the glowing woman.   Was she Amphitritê?  No,  she probably wouldn’t come alone or otherwise.  At least she hoped not,  so who else?

“I–” she blinked and cleared her throat, trying to get a hold of herself. “Lady Benthesikymê?”

The woman’s face lit up. Oh, thank fuck.

“Princess, if you’re holding to formalities.” Her voice lilted like music underwater. “You know who I am? Oh, I do love being recognised.”

Persía swallowed. “I’ve… heard of you. The second daughter of the King of the Sea. Queen of waves, of the western shallows, the woman who… drowned her first suitor?”

Benthesikymê’s smile didn’t falter. “He was rude.” Then, she added sweetly, “You don’t strike me as rude.”

Persía blinked again, to her that kind of sounded like threat. “Hopefully not. What are you doing here?”

Please don’t say killing little old me.

Benthesikymê stepped – or more like floated – closer. The sea didn’t stir under her weight. She tilted her head as she looked at Persía, eyes full of gentle wonder.

“I had to see for myself,” she said. “There’s talk beneath the surface, you see, of a girl with our Father’s eyes, a nymph who is of the sea but is born of land. But you–”

Her gaze swept Persía from head to toe. “–are no sea-nymph.”

Persía might just have a heart attack. So, they know of her now. It had to be that damn dolphin from few weeks ago. That snitch.

“A girl,” Benthesikymê went on, “who may be my sister.” A stunned silence fell over the water, even the sea hushed.

Leontios, resurfacing just behind her, whispered hoarsely, “What is she talking about? Persía?”

Persía didn’t answer, she couldn’t, for she was still silently staring.

Benthesikymê smiled, softer now. Almost shy. “May I talk with you, little sister?”

“Yup–I mean, of course.” Persía tried to sound calm, even as her mind raced. She kept her posture relaxed, but didn’t lower her guard. “Why have you come now?”

“To see,” Benthesikymê said, tilting her head as in question.“To weigh truth, or measure the salt as we say. You’ve stirred whispers, you know – dolphins carrying gossip, the court has started asking questions. Father hasn’t heard yet, or he might’ve come himself.”

She swam a slow circle around Persía, never quite touching. “You smell like him. But your scent carries others, it’s dissimilar to us royal children, not of the sea, not completely.”

“Huh, you mean I am also a legacy?” Persía asked, wondering what other scents she had. “I’ve seen some things that haven’t happened yet if that narrows it down?”

Benthesikymê paused, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “Hmm… maybe, however, Prophecy was Father’s domain long before it was our cousin’s, so that may come from him too, but there’s something else. My thoughts say demigod…”

She pressed a webbed hand lightly to her chest. “…but the sea in me says kin. A goddess – but not quite. I can’t say for certain.”

“I’ve always felt like I’m in between. Between demigod and god I mean,” Persía said, simply. “Not one or the other, not fully.”

Benthesikymê smiled, not wide this time, but warm. “Ah, like a sandbar. Half-sea, half-shore. Useful, but dangerous. Ignored until you wreck a ship.”

Kimon blinked. “That’s… oddly poetic.”

Benthesikymê leaned closer, voice soft but not secret: “You’re still shaping, still choosing, I think. That’s rare. It would take more time to know for certain.”

Persía hesitated, then said, “You can visit, if you want.”

Benthesikymê’s eyes crinkled. “You would invite – eight letters, someone you’ve never met?”

”A stranger?” Persía guessed. Benthesikymê clapped once, delighted. What an intriguing way to speak. Persía sure was quite baffled by the whole encounter.

”Yes! You would invite a stranger into your tide-pool?”

“You’re not a stranger,” Persía said. “Not really. If we share a father, then I’d be inviting family.”

Benthesikymê looked genuinely pleased. “Indeed we are. I’m glad you think so.”

With a slight tilt of her head, she added: “I could come back. Atlantis is close, I’m staying there a few years. Drift by, now and then… If you like, I can keep this quiet.”

Persía nodded. “Please. I’d rather you didn’t tell your parents, or anyone really.”

Benthesikymê giggled, soft and unbothered. “I don’t owe them anything. Not even a breath. I keep many things secret. One more lie won’t sink me.”

The sea stirred as she turned to leave, the waves seemingly eager to follow her,  pausing,  she looked back with a mischievous wink. “I’ll see you soon, little sister.”

“I’ll see you then,” Persía replied, barely above a whisper.

Benthesikymê smiled wide, all teeth and moonlight, and vanished into the foam.

Silence settled in her wake.

Ione exhaled first. “Well. That happened.”

“A demigod? I knew it.” Leontios snorted.

Kimon turned to Persía. “So… she wasn’t joking? You’re really you-know-who’s daughter?”

Persía didn’t answer right away. She just kept floating, her eyes fixed on the empty sea.

“…I think I’m starting to wish I wasn’t.” That trident swinging biological inconvenience–

Fuck, she was so screwed.

Chora, Persía’s Bedroom

The next evening, Persía lay on her bed, arms folded behind her head, staring at the ceiling. Her body ached, not from training or sickness, but from something deeper, some kind of soul-tiredness.

There were too many signs to ignore. I mean, she had tried to live in ignorance, but look where that got her.

She had known the day would come when she couldn’t pretend to be just mortal anymore. She’d known it immediately when the visions started.. when Arês showed up.

And when Benthesikymê came drifting out of the sea, calling her sister.

That had been the final nail in the coffin.

Her time as a mortal girl was ending.

She didn’t know what was coming or when. Only that it was coming. She exhaled slowly, pressing her palms to her eyes.

“Just let me sleep,” she muttered. “No dreams. Please.”

The gods, of course, didn’t listen.

They never did. Assholes.

Sleep came softly at first. Then the dream took her.

A tarp snapped in the wind, stretched over a cart. Beneath it, something shifted, something human. Somewhere else bare feet scraped across dry earth, a child stumbled, ankle caught in a frayed rope.

A high, muffled voice whispered, trembling: “Don’t cry. Don’t let them hear.” Woman trying to kick and fight, it didn’t matter when the blow landed. She went still as she fell unconscious.

The sea loomed, dark and patient, ship rocked at the shoreline, oars drawn in like wings at rest. A hand raised and the whip cracked once, loud and final. Then the dream went silent and black.

She shot upright in bed, gasping.

Sweat clung to her skin. Her hair stuck to her neck.

A demigod dream, again.

It was the same one. Night after night, like some cosmic tv-show rerun nobody asked for.

“Fantastic,” she muttered, wiping her face. “Love that for me.”

Something shifted outside her door. Candlelight flickered faintly down the hall.

She rose quickly and crept barefoot toward the glow. It led to her father’s office: light spilling under the door, voices soft but urgent.

She stopped just before the threshold.

“…twelve missing,” Thales was saying. His voice was low, tired. “A few children. The rest were workers, quiet types. Nobody noticed right away.”

“No trail?” Euphemia asked, her voice sharp beneath the calm.

“Only marks in the sand. The tide erased the rest.” Papers rustled. “I think I know where they’re headed. I’ll have to follow them.”

“You said we’d stay out of this,” Euphemia murmured.

“I said that when it wasn’t our people.”

A pause, heavy with meaning.

“I’ll take a fast ship,” Thales continued. “Leave before dawn. My men know how to fight, if it comes to it.”

“And our daughter?”

Persía held her breath.

“She’s not coming,” he said firmly. “She’s fifteen. I don’t care if she fights like Arês himself – she’s still my daughter.”

That was enough eavesdropping.

Persía slipped silently back down the hall, faster now and by the time she made it back to her bedroom, she already had a plan. 

If the ship left before dawn, there wasn’t much time. And if her father wouldn’t take her…

Well, she’d go in a way he wouldn’t have any other choice.

Also: he said no, which meant obviously she had to do it. That was just basic logic teenagers used, right?

First things first, she had to tell the others.

Chapter Text

1288 BCE, Ikaria, the Entertainment district of Evdilos

They’d docked in Ikaria just after sundown. Thales still thought Persía was safe at home – not renting a room for the evening in a brothel.

The room was clean, but stank of perfume, sweat, and camphor.

Beneath them, the floor creaked with every shift of weight: footsteps, laughter, muffled cries. Downstairs, girls whispered behind beaded curtains while men shouted over each other, hungry for bodies they’d never see again.

The air was heavy, rank with wine and sex.

Persía didn’t flinch from the cold air that hit her as she opened the windows.

She sat near it, face half-lit by lamplight, bronze glinting faintly on her jaw. She looked still, almost statuesque, except for her thumb rubbing slow, methodical circles against the hilt of her dagger.

The others had fallen quiet, orbiting her like planets around the sun.

Below, the pirates who had stolen Naxians – children, workers, neighbours – were drunk in other people’s beds, laughing like they hadn’t sold lives for silver. Most wouldn’t wake after tonight, a bag of coins and the madam’s fury had ensured that.

That only left the captain and his core crew, still drinking in a kapeleia few streets down, still dangerous and armed even if half drunk.

Poison was their best shot at avoiding a massacre, they just had to persuade the owner of the place to their side first.

The door shut behind the madam, her pouch heavier, while Persía’s poison satchel was much lighter. Candlelight flickered across the cracked walls.

Leontios exhaled. “So that’s most of them out of the saga.”

“It felt like she would have strangled them even without payment,” Ione muttered and took Persía’s hand in hers. Yes, please hold me while I imagine every possible worst-case scenario.

“And the ones in the kapeleia?” Kimon asked.

“They’re next, we might have a chance of poisoning before they make it to bed.” Persía said, staring out the window at the faraway building.

“The barkeep’s the key,” Leontios said.

“If we get him and his staff on our side,” Kimon added, “we poison their drinks and walk out clean.”

“And if we don’t?” Leontios asked.

They looked at Persía, who didn’t blink.

“If it comes to blood,” she said, her voice quiet but sure, “we end it fast and hard. No theatrics. Leontios – you take the closest three.  Aim for joints and arteries: inside of the thigh, under the arm, between the ribs. Keep your left covered, you tend to overextend. Don’t get fancy.  Kill or disable, then pivot.”

Leontios gave a tight nod, jaw clenched.

Persía turned to Kimon. “You stay back unless I give the signal. Get the paperwork they might have on them: anything stamped, anything signed, names, maps, ledgers. Proof matters more than spilling blood.”

Then to Ione: “You’re our ghost. Upstairs and gone the second the noise starts. Get the manifests, the seal, especially anything marked for Samos. Prioritise intel over combat.”

Her eyes swept over them all once more, calm and calculating. “Make it fast. I don’t want anyone alive long enough to call for help twice.”

A long pause followed, not from horror but from a small acceptance, just stillness, the kind that comes when everyone in the room silently admits they’re crossing a line. There will be no going back now.

Ione’s throat moved as she swallowed. Kimon glanced at the floor. Only Leontios held her gaze, he was accepting her choice head on. 

Persía let her breath out slowly, she was feeling anxious. This was the line – not just the act, but what it would mean to live with it after. She’s never made them kill people before, but this pirates were working for slavers, and if she was honest with herself, she didn’t include them as people.

They’d made their choice, so now she’d made hers.

Still, something inside her stirred: not regret, exactly, but a dim, buried ache.

Something Annabeth would’ve said in this situation, something she didn’t want to remember.

A glass shattered in the distance, making Persía and others ready up.

Ione sighed and gave her the satchel. “Let’s not start with that immediately, let’s try the safest option first.”

“Agreed,” Persía said, sliding a vial into her belt. “But either way–”  her back straightening, eyes fixed on the window, stars were starting to appear on the sky. “we make it so that no one sails to Samos with those people.”

As if on cue, a raucous laugh rose from the kapeleia outside, followed by another crash and a slurred yell:

“You whore!”

Without missing a beat, Persía leaned casually out the open window, her voice sweet and bright. “Yes?”

Ione choked on a laugh, clapping a hand over her mouth. Kimon just groaned. “Gods, you’re going to get us killed.”

“Bah,” Persía said, stepping back inside. “To them, we look like a bunch of teenagers chasing some midnight thrill, not an actual threat.”

She gave her friends a quick once-over – boots laced, hair tied back, blades hidden. Kimon’s hands trembled slightly. Ione’s eyes burned with quiet fire. Leontios stood behind her, too close to be accidental. They all trusted her, maybe more than they should.

She adjusted the dagger at her waist, hidden beneath the fabrics. Her hands were shaking a little.

“Well,” she said, voice light but eyes steady, nodding them to go, “I guess it’s showtime.”

She lingered after the others had gone, their footsteps soft and fading down the hall. The door clicked shut behind them. Persía turned towards the table.

Bread, cheese, olives, a bowl of dates and a half-empty pitcher of wine. She could try it at least once right?

Simple, but it would do. Her hand hovered over the offerings for a moment before she swept them all into her arms.

Quickly, she thanked Hestia first, before whispering the name she never thought to give offerings to. Dionysos.

She laid the bread at the base of the flame, set the dates beside it, crumbled the cheese on top, poured out the oil and wine in long, dripping arcs.

The fire hissed. The scent turned thick; spiced fruit and charred herbs. She closed her eyes, breathing slower, letting the warmth surround her. Her voice came soft and steady, the way she’d been taught, but it felt more like whisper.

“O Dionysos, ivy-crowned, god of wine and frenzy, son of thunder –

I offer you this food, this drink, this warmth.

If I have ever praised your name in song or raised a cup to your madness,

Hear me now.
Let tonight be yours.

Make their vision swim. Make their tongues heavy. Make their limbs slow.

Let laughter be a trap and thirst be their end.

I will leave you all that I have. I will speak your name without shame.

And if you grant my wish –

I will dance in your name at the harvest. I will spill wine at every fire.

Only – be with me tonight.”

It wasn’t even a desperate prayer. She didn’t believe it would work anyway, they never did, unless you counted the times when she was still Percy Jackson.

Some days she wanted to reach out to her supposed father, she really wanted to. On the good days that is, but she never did, because what would she even say? ‘This is not the life I ordered, return to sender?’

Now that she’d been giving offerings every night since she was reborn, the gods hadn’t said a word. How predictable. To them she was a mortal, not worth their time.

So when the fire just popped and flickered and the shadows did nothing, she just sighed.

Typical.

She took the last mouthful of wine in her kylix, because might as well at this point. She swallowed the bitter drink down and then –

It hit.

Not the wine, but something else. It felt same as a rollercoaster ride.  Jeez, what the heck?  Was this the world essentially saying:  don’t do drugs kids?

The air around her thickened like syrup. Her skin crawled, not in fear, but in sensation, like the world was wrapping around her in velvet and smoke. What the fuck, that’s trippy. Her knees bent slightly as she almost lost her balance, grabbing the table to steady herself.

It felt like someone had touched the base of her spine with warm fingers, going down,  surrounding her like she was being hugged – intimately, confidently. Like he’d known her since birth and had simply been waiting for her to ask.

She sucked in a breath through her teeth.

It was too much. It wasn’t enough.

Something thrilled through her, she couldn’t recognise the feeling.

Her hair rose at the nape of her neck. Her whole body shivered once, deeply, and as she looked up over the hearth her sight caught her own reflection on the tarnished bronze mirror. Her eyes flashed. What the fuck. They glowed for a moment: not her usual colour, but pinkish purple.

A sharp, impossible shade, like someone directed a flashlight at an amethyst. Then it deepened into a murky violet, as if the colour had been drowned in smoke.

The presence began to slip away, like laughter echoing down a corridor, but a fragment of it clung to her. Nestled in her blood.

Persía stepped back from the fire, chest rising and falling fast. Fucking Tartaros’ ballsack.

Was this what it meant to be under the influence with Dionysos? ‘Cause whoo. They better call her Persía Escobar in the future, for she would be doing this again.

She looked down at the empty kylix in her hand, then set it gently on the hearthstone, with that, she turned and followed her friends.

The door creaked open on rusted hinges as Persía stepped out.

The brothel’s hallway was thick with scent and sound: overripe flowers, spilled wine, musk, incense.

Every emotion bloomed here, mostly it was ecstasy, rage, despair. The building vibrated with them.

An aggressive client came soon to her vision, red-faced and shouting at a girl barely old enough to be working, she was visibly uncomfortable and shaky. Together they were blocking the corridor ahead. The man reeked of sour wine and sweat all the way to Persía and her friends. Disgusting.

“Yeah, hello,” Persía called sweetly, catching his attention with a smile that did not reach her eyes. “Is there – and I’m guessing here – some kind of herbal remedy that you maybe need a lot of and took none of today? Or maybe took too much already?”

He blinked, confused by her tone, then scowled. “What did you just say?”

Behind her, Kimon muttered, “Oh no.”

Persía tilted her head. “I mean, are you always like this, or did your brain leak out of your ear when your mḗter pushed you out of her vagina, and you just never noticed?”

Ione laughed softly. Leontios groaned silently beside Kimon. “We said low profile.”

The man took a step forward. Persía didn’t flinch back. Her hand hovered near the blade, casual as ever.

The girl he’d been yelling at darted away.

“Walk away,” Persía said, voice flat now, stripped of humor. “Before I decide not to let you.”

The man looked between her and the boys, and something in her gaze made him think better of it. He shoved past, muttering under his breath.

Persía exhaled and turned to the others. “Well, that was diplomatic.” Men are such fucking children sometimes.

“You’re a menace,” Leontios said, fond and exasperated.

“Thank you,” she replied primly. “Shall we go?”

The kapeleia, Ione POV

Upstairs, the mood shifted.

The warmth and music of the kapeleia faded as Ione stepped onto the creaking stairwell. Every groan of wood was a warning.

The scent changed too. Less roasted meat and spilled wine but more sweat, mildew, smoke. The air hung damp and wrong.

A dim oil lamp flickered along the hallway, casting long, uncertain shadows. Ione moved quickly. She wasn’t a thief, not usually, okay maybe a sometimes. One enough to have quiet feet and even lighter hands. She just needed to calm her heart a bit.

First door had an empty room, second one was barkeep’s locked room, now the third one however–

She heard voices. She pressed her ear to the wall, breath shallow.

“–leave at first light.”

“–they want them alive. Mostly.”

“Samos, then onward. Just don’t draw attention. The buyer’s contact will be at the harbour.”

“Which harbour?”

“Vathi, we’ll have to go straight to the capital. They’ll have the silver.”

Wet laughter followed. The kind that made her stomach churn.

She moved forward creeping to the last room. It was unlocked. There was only few things inside, Ione went straight for the desk, some wine jugs and ledgers were on it. Wine droplets on the wood haven’t evaporated yet, someone had just been here.

She rifled fast.

There it was: “Merchandise Manifest: Naxos – Children (22), women (16), men (19). Final tally: 47. Bound for: S.”

Just one document, but it was thick. The amount of paper seemed astonishing to Ione. Paper was so expensive and to use it for this?

She stuffed the papers inside her chiton and turned, then promptly froze.

Heavy footsteps of two men. Which were getting closer. She had been carelessly too into her own thoughts. 

She had no time.

She dove into the cupboard, yanked the door shut. Darkness swallowed her. Through a sliver in the wood, she saw boots: travel-worn, stained with brine. The stink of salt, piss, and cheap leather filled her nose. Yuck.

One of them laughed. “The girl downstairs is nosy.”

“She’s busy flirting and fleecing,” the other said. Paper rustled. The desk creaked. “She’s not gonna hear anything useful.”

“I don’t like keeping records. Makes us look guilty while trying to hide them.” What kind of logic is that?! You are guilty, you spineless pigs.

A beat. Then footsteps, they were moving closer. Slower and heavy, making the wood groan underneath. One of them muttered something and walked to the cupboard.

Ione stopped breathing.

The crack of light narrowed, a sound of hand brushing against wood.

“She’d be prettier with her mouth shut,” the man closest said. “I could later go show her how good it would really look when it’s too busy to speak.” He chuckled and turned away.

“Leave it,” the other snapped. “You think too much into it.”

They walked out and the door shut with a dull click.

Ten breaths. Twenty. Thirty.

Silence continued.

She stayed curled in the dark, shaking now – not with fear, not exactly, but with the wild rush of survival, some might have been anger.
That was close. Too close.

One more second and she might’ve been another name in a tally. And the things they were saying about her friend. She almost left her hideout just so she could stab them herself.

She emerged, knees weak. Her whole body hummed with nervous energy, but her hands moved with purpose. She swept every ledger, scroll, and record into her chiton – thank the gods for pleats – and turned toward the final room.

There, under a cot: a small chest. Only a small lock, a very easy to open too. Smuggler’s stash. She lock picked it easily. By the Gods Persía, what else do you know.

Inside she found gold rings, a lots of silver coins, a silver idol and some jewels. All glinting like bait and Ione was going to swallow it, yes sir.

She dragged it to the window. Below, Kimon loitered near the nets, trying to look casual. He flicked his fingers once, a signal to proceed.

She tossed him a rope. He climbed fast, grumbling, “When Persía said ‘Get the shiny stuff,’ I didn’t think she meant actual robbery.”

Ione helped him over the ledge, smirking. “What else would she have meant? It’s Persía. Do you think it’s shiny enough?”

They wrapped the chest and lowered it down. Kimon turned, looked at her chiton – now stuffed, bulging with documents.

“…You climbing?”

“No. I’ll let myself fall.”

“I’ll catch you, because if something happens to you, she would send me to the afterlife,” he said. “I fear Persía more than I fear you.”

She hesitated, but trusted him.

She smiled while slipping over the edge, half-slid, and landed in his arms, he looked very proud of himself.

Kimon set her down, shaking his head as he looked at their newfound treasure. “Wow, look all of this, nice work Ione.”

“I learned from the best,” she muttered, still clutching the papers, showing them to him. “We know where they’re going. We know who they are.”

Kimon let out a low whistle.

Inside the ground floor of kapeleia, it was all warmth and noise.

Persía sat at the central of it, glowing like a second hearth.

Not literally, but she knew the effect lamplight had on her. It gilded her hair and carved her cheekbones into something older than usual youth she had.

On the inside however, now that was a different story: this was a social interaction, and Persía had never been that great with those in the begin with.

In normal circumstances, she would very much be in the corner by herself, or if she had known someone in this place beforehand, that would be the person she would be talking to for the entire evening. In a way that is definitely a burden on them.

Now though, she needed to fake it until she made it. She was technically thriving, definitely surviving and occasionally crying.

Gods, she had one of those Mood rings, it would probably burst into flames.

She rolled her dice slowly, fingers poised and elegant, watching not the board but the men across it. Watching their drinks, their hands, and sometimes she had her eye on the barkeep.

To her right, Leontios lounged in a way that reminded her of a boy who’d misquote Oscar Wilde at a funeral, get away with it and call it emotional depth.

Longer she watched him, quicker she realised that he was a walking symposium tragedy in the making. Persía wanted to bang her head against the table, unfortunately to everyone involved, she couldn’t.

He was supposed to be pretending to be drunk. Unfortunately, the line between method acting and self-sabotage was thinning by the sip it seemed. Fuck.

She wasn’t supposed to keep tabs on him.

But now that she had to, she noticed it in the small things. The half-second lag before he laughed. The tight grip on the stem of his kylix, like it was the only stable thing in the room. The flicker of his throat as he swallowed too hard. The kind of details no one else would catch, or bother to.

She closed her eyes, a quiet mental sigh left her lips. Currently accepting applications for someone else to deal with this shit.

Brilliant. They were minutes from starting an ambush, and her right flank was losing a drinking contest he started with himself.

Or, someone had forced him to drink the wine. A double fuck.

Behind her, the barkeep moved filling a pitcher of wine, wiped the rim, turned his back to the room. From her vantage, Persía saw it: the quick flick of a vial tipped into the wine, the swirl of hand to stir it in. The poison made its way to everybody’s kylix.

A pirate barked a name. The maid responded with studied casualness, pouring and delivering.

Good. All the pieces were moving.

Upstairs, Ione would be digging through records: contracts, manifests, anything that would give these deaths meaning, and here downstairs, Persía just had to keep the pirates busy long enough for the poison to work.

Her dice clattered again. She lost this time. Oh, woe is me. She pouted, passed over two denarii with a smile sharp enough to slice through coin.

“Lady Luck seems to hates me tonight,” she said, chin resting in her palm. A hand came down from her chair to her hip. She wanted to heave in disgust.

All she could think is that even though she had memories of another life, she still was a teenager, a minor.

The grizzled man across from her chuckled, more teeth than mirth, but thoroughly charmed. His breath smelled like blood and pickled onions. Ah, the poison was working and quickly too. Good because if she had to endure this much longer, she would start swinging.

He reached for the dice again. The man kept toying with a ring on his finger that Persía guessed wasn’t his to begin with.

These men had sold people, but soon they would be free again. She reminded herself of that with every laugh, every glance, every touch she allowed, for to keep her anger in check.

The moment was coming, the tipping point.

She could feel it in the charge under her skin.

The way the kapeleia‘s rhythm began to slip out of time, a hiccup turning into a wet cough. A stutter in the revelry.

And then the quiet one slammed his hand on the table, coughing again, this time rasping. His face had turned red. A small drip on wood.

Another pirate stood, confused. “You good?”

Blood leaked from the first man’s nose. Then his ears.

The second pirate backed away, swearing. His hand went to his blade, but he doubled over, retching black.

A small silence surrounded the room, then came the chaos.

Scream tore through the area. Chairs groaned and fell as cups shattered. Someone vomited onto their boots and collapsed.

A blade hissed from a sheath, and Persía’s dagger made its way between a rib cage, straight to the heart of the man who had been touching and fondling her.

One of the pirates lunged at Persía, roaring, knife drawn, foam flecking his mouth. She turned without thought, catching his wrist mid-swing and slamming it down on the table. The blade clattered. In the same breath, she wrenched it free and buried it in his throat.

Warm blood burst across her chest. She didn’t care.

Behind her, another man was screaming. Persía jerked sideways making him stumble and she took something heavy off the table, it was a frying pan. She smashed it onto the head of the man, cutting off the cursing. He dropped like a stone.

It seemed that not only were they fighting Persía, Leontios and the barkeep, they were infighting too. Damn, is this what they call a mutiny. 

The hairy pirate had given up fighting entirely and was instead clinging to one of the kapeleia‘s central beams like it was a mast in a storm, his beard and tunic drenched in his own bile.

If his eyes hadn’t been hidden under a forest of bushy brows, she was sure she’d see pure sea-sick green.

Across the room, curses and crockery flew with equal grace – meaning not at all. Leontios, ducking wildly, flung a stool at someone’s head and missed by a country mile, nearly clocking the barmaid instead. She threw a frying pan back at him, shrieking, “Learn to aim, you newborn foal!”

The owner, crouched behind the counter, popped up only long enough to hurl a clay jug at a pirate’s head– “That’s for bleeding on my floor, you shit-licking bastard!”– before ducking again as a dagger embedded itself in the wood where his face had been.

Persía weaved between overturned chairs and falling bodies, her blade drawn but barely used. She didn’t need it yet, chaos was doing the work for her.

One pirate was trying to fight while simultaneously vomiting into a tankard. Another staggered toward her like he was about to propose marriage; she kicked him in the knee and sent him howling into a table.

“Throw faster, you old witch!” yelled someone behind her.

She turned. It was the owner again – this time shouting at his own maid who was crouching in the corner, using her fresh market produce as weapons. Eggs sailed through the air like divine judgment. A fruit exploded against a pirate’s face with holy precision.

“Use the old food!” the owner cried again.

Persía ducked just in time to avoid a flying moldy onion.

To her left, Leontios had engaged with a pirate twice his size, both of them grappling like rabid dogs. “Try hitting him, not hugging him!” she called, but it was hard to tell if he heard. He was laughing or choking.

A bottle shattered near her foot.

The room reeked of blood, sour wine, smoke, and piss. Someone screamed. Somewhere, a man sang off-key, a bard? Here? Why hadn’t they left?

The floor tilted – nopenope, no, that was just her own dizziness.

One pirate collapsed mid-swing, poison catching up to him at last. Another stumbled to his knees, foaming and cursing in a forgotten dialect.

And amid the carnage, Persía stood, half-laughing, half-shaking, a girl half of the size of these men, wondering why this still felt easier than remembering her own damned past.

She looked to her right. Leontios was still upright, still breathing. Thank fuck.

More coughing, bodies were hitting the ground all around.

Persía ducked as a chair shattered over the head of the pirate behind her – he blinked twice, then dropped like a sack of potatoes. She didn’t see who threw it, but a cackling from the corner suggested the elderly maid was now using furniture along with produce.

“Argh! Screw you all!” Leontios bellowed, as he flung a half-full wine jug like it was a discus. It clipped a pirate’s ear and sent him spiralling into the soup cauldron behind the bar. Steam rose and someone screamed. Possibly the man who fell into it, but who knows.

“Nice arm,” Persía muttered, slashing at a blade that came too close to her hip.

“Thanks!” Leontios started to grin, just as an egg exploded against his nose. He reeled back in sputtering disbelief. “Who’s throwing akratisma?!”

“I am!” the old woman hollered, hurling another onion. It hit one of the pirates in the crotch. He went down instantly, clutching himself and making high-pitched whale noises.

“I swear to the Moirai,” Persía growled, ducking a jug, “this was supposed to be clean!”

“Clean?!” Leontios wiped yolk from his eyes. “We poisoned them! You thought they’d just lie down and die, what did you say it was, like gentlemen?” She should stop teaching him all of that modern shit.

“Well they’re taking their sweet time about it!”

Another pirate lunged at her, blade flashing. She parried, kicked him in the groin, and shoved him headfirst into a wine barrel. He didn’t come out.

Persía took a breath and froze.

Leontios was on his knees. Not from a hit. He was pale, sweating and shaking. 

Persía stared at the carnage, at the way the poison worked, slow and brutal, dragging men down like anchors into red water. Her skin prickled. Her ears rang.

She turned to Leontios.

He looked at her, eyes bloody, and then he folded in on himself.

“No–!”

She caught him before his skull cracked against the floor, his body hot and heavy in her arms like a fever dream. His kylix rolled, spun once, and bled across the ground like an ill omen.

“No, no, no,” she whispered, her voice fraying. “You weren’t – this wasn’t supposed to–”

His chest stuttered, limbs jerking.

Then nothing.

She gripped his face with both hands, her fingers trembling. “Leontios, breathe. Breathe, you idiot–”

Nothing.

She dropped lower, pressing her ear to his chest, desperate for a sound. Any sound, a twitch or a pulse. The faintest spark of anything.

His body jolted, a tiny shiver beneath his ribs, as if the body remembered how to fight. Her hands moved instinctively, finding the right pressure below his sternum. She pushed.

Once. Twice.

“Come on.”

A third time –and he choked.

A vile retch clawed up his throat, and he twisted in her arms, coughing and gagging until a wave of thick, bitter liquid splattered onto the floor beside them. Wine-tainted, laced with something that stank of death. His whole body spasmed like it was trying to expel something it couldn’t understand.

Persía didn’t hesitate. She moved her hand to his chest and pushed inward with more than muscle.

She reached, not with her hands or thoughts, but with her own will. With her Hunger. 

She could feel it: the poison still inside him, coiling through his blood like a serpent. She seized it as her own.

A power she barely understood surged through her fingers, alive and seething. It wrapped around the poison like a noose, tightened, dragged. She grit her teeth as it fought her, snapping and shrieking through invisible veins, but she was stronger.

She would not lose him. Not again.

The poison came screaming out in its wake, a thread of rot yanked from the heart of him.

And became a part of her.

Leontios lurched up, eyes wide, chest heaving. LeoLeoLeo.

Alive. Alive.

Persía reeled backward, blood roaring in her ears.  She touched her face, disoriented – and her fingers came away slick.

Blood, but not mortal red, it was golden, the amount had tripled.

More than a few flecks this time. More than anything she’d ever bled before, even as Percy. It trickled down her philtrum, warm and otherworldly, catching the light like molten amber.

“Ichor,” she whispered.

Her vision swam. Her skull felt like it had been split with an axe.

Then, as if on cue–

You have to promise me, Seaweed Brain.

A voice, so familiar.. her voice.

Annabeth.

A memory slid sideways into her. Not like a thought, but like a blade, piercing and sharp with grief.

You’ll keep going. Even if it’s without me. Promise.

“I promise,” he had said. He – she. Percy. And then it was all coming back. Everything.

Floodwaters rising against the cliffs, faces coming to her mind, with names that belong to them. Now she could See. Knowledge of things that have happened, are happening, and yet to happen.

The sound of the Styx roaring overhead. Camp Half-Blood, Bianca’s ghost, Kalypsô’s island, Tartaros, the heat of Mount Etna, Luke’s broken body, Annabeth’s fingers digging into his shoulder as they fell–fell–

Her breath hitched.

Some things aren't meant to be controlled. Do not do it again. Promise me.

So many promises.

Her body felt like marble as the cracks spiderwebbed through it, prison made not of stone but of memory, cracking beneath the pressure.

She wasn’t in Ikaria anymore. She was falling, screaming, buried in the river Phlegethon, her lungs blistering with heat. Annabeth’s hand in hers, blood in her mouth, stones against her knees.

She saw herself as a boy still, being dragged through Tartaros, soul peeling away in raw shreds, screaming for someone to save them, anyone, and the only answer had been silence.

Until The Cure, right then and there she had traded everything.

Take me instead.

And they had. The Moirai. Whatever existed beyond Olympus. Khaos. They’d taken her name and her shape and her story, and buried it beneath skin.

But it was still there: splintered, radiant, divine.

Something reached back through her. Far older than living. The divine tore through her like a scream.

The poison lifted from the ground like smoke, screaming, reluctant to go, but it went. She made it go.

Leontios’ coughed and breathed heavily. Leo looked so peaceful like this. Leo? No, it’s Leontios. Persía looked at him more closely before her eyes started to close.

They look identical.

But they can’t, right? She would have noticed.

“Persía?! Can you hear me? Breathe, daughter.”

Papâs? She swore she could hear him just now, but she was so tired. A ghost of a touch on her cheek.

The whiteness surrounded everything, the voices echoed – startled, crying out, all talking at once, but Persía only heard the silence left behind.

That delicate, stunned silence in her own body.

Something newly opened, something she could never again lock away.

She breathed once, and let go.

Chapter Text

1288 BCE, Ikaria, Thales POV

Thales had captained half the Aegean blindfolded, outdrunk a Minoan wedding fleet, and once negotiated with a Mycenaean ghost who wouldn’t shut up about some godly cows – he thought he’d seen everything.

Until Ikaria that is.

He’d only just finished bartering for some food for the crew in the early órthros when he caught the tail end of a theft happening right into his own ship. He had to stop in the mid-goodbye and go straight back to his ship. The sight that caught him by surprise was interesting to say the least.

Ione and Kimon were elbow-deep in his cargo hold, trying to stash a suspiciously glittering hoard of treasure like it wouldn’t weigh down the entire hull.

Ione’s face had that particular stillness that meant she was calculating how much time it would take to bolt.

It didn’t work.

Obviously.

They spilled the whole story in fragments: names they had gathered, clues to the whereabouts of their people, dead ends and finally their success.

What followed was a blur of haste and dread for him. He now knew for a fact that a brothel full of pirates were possibly dead by now.

His daughter was most likely gambling at this moment, surrounded by pirates, his teenaged daughter was surrounded by human scum who took refusal as challenge. 

He quickly gathered his men and started running.

It didn’t take them much time to get there but by the time they reached kapeleia, Helios had only just begun to rise over the lands and the air tasted of iron. Something had happened already, he needed to be quick.

Before he could even get an arm’s reach from the door to the courtyard, a wild earthquake shook the ground and started ripping the landscape, making them all fall down. What was that?!

When the tremor eased, he rouse and helped the kids back to their feet.

The building had looked untouched from the outside. Quiet and harmless, smoke curled from the chimney like it was any other morning, however inside it was carnage.

Upturned tables, splintered chairs, wine pooled like blood – or blood pooled like wine – it was hard to tell. Dead people littered the floor, some with mouths open in final shock, others with eyes staring straight through the beams above. The stench of sweat, bile, and shattered bodies stuck in the back of the throat.

And at the centre of it all–

Leontios lay sprawled on the floor, pale, breath thin but steady, a pools of blood surrounding him. His skin was clammy, his lips tinged with blue.

However it was Persía who held every eye.

She was crumpled beside him, not even conscious. Thales surged forward, “Persía?! Can you hear me? Breathe, daughter.”

Her body convulsed once, then again, hard enough to rattle the floorboards. Her hands twitched, fingers curled like claws. Golden veins flickered beneath her skin, visible even in the kapeleia‘s dim morning light. The tremors came with her breathing: low, rhythmic, dangerous. The very floor beneath them was rumbling.

“What in Haidês…” Thales whispered.

Ione froze, her arm shooting out instinctively. She caught Kimon by the wrist before he could rush forward.

The maid came forward from behind the pillar. “She’s doing that,” she said, voice quiet and shaken. “The shaking started when she passed out.”

A crack formed in the wall behind the bar. Dust trickled from the ceiling.

Thales didn’t move. He’d once seen a god rise out of the sea during a storm: terrible, beautiful, uncontainable. This was the same. Power trying to claw its way through a body too human to hold it.

A cage breaking open.

“Kimon, help me. We lay her on her side. Carefully.” He moved quickly, crouching beside her but not touching her right away. “Keep her breathing clear.”

They shifted Persía gently, careful not to press against her spine or limbs as they jerked.

Kimon fetched a rolled-up cloth and wedged it between her teeth so she wouldn’t bite her tongue. Ione knelt near her head, whispering nonsense – soothing syllables from a childhood prayer neither of them truly believed in, but needed anyway.

“Get Leontios to the healer,” Thales said tightly to his men, eyes still locked on Persía. “Now.”

He crouched beside her again, still not touching, just watching for now.

The faint tremble in her fingers. The heat rising from her skin. The way those golden veins pulsed – steady but unnatural.

The globe sat where she had left it years ago, still and trembling faintly, as though its heart beat in tandem with her own. Its glass was no longer flawless – cracks branched across its surface like veins of lightning caught mid-strike. Inside, something serpentine twisted and shimmered, coiled light straining against the prison’s thinning edge.

Persía almost couldn’t stop staring.

When she finally looked away, it was toward Zagreus, reclined on a worn but elegant couch beside a brazier that glowed like the sun. The shadows softened his sharp features, but the silver in his gaze remained unnervingly clear, as if he knew what she would ask before she even opened her mouth. Bastard had the gall to look this good while she was a whole-ass mess.

She crossed the room and sat beside him, carefully. The heat of the brazier was comforting. The truth she was about to drag from her chest, less so.

“Where’s Morpheus?” she asked quietly.

Zagreus didn’t move, only tilted his head as though listening to something distant, the ivy leaves moving on his crown.

“Last time, when we needed to speak with you, both Morpheus and Hypnos were present – though you didn’t see the latter, but this time, you’ve come here on your own. Which is why it’s only me.”

She nodded, her eyes flickering back to the fractured globe. “I see… And that? What is it?”

“A cage,” Zagreus said, “but also a gift. You received it when you were reborn, by the will of Khaos.”

“My godly side?” The words left her before she could question how she knew them. She just did.

“Yes,” he said, gently. “Khaos sealed it when you were born into mortality again. So you could live a remotely normal life. One you never truly had, not in your former existence.” Oof. I mean he’s right but…

“But how do you know all this?” she asked. “It feels like you know everything about me. Honestly, it’s kinda creepy.” And that’s putting it mildly.

Zagreus laughed, low and dry, but not unkind. “I know because it is my duty. My domain. When a soul chooses rebirth, I am what awaits on the other side. When they take my hand, I know all there is to know. That is how I met you – though you were… a peculiar case.”

Fan-fucking-tastic. She died, got resurrected, and now she’s apparently a sentient philosophical paradox. Just what I fucking wanted.

“How so?” Her brow creased.

“Not only were you chosen by the Creator to be reborn,” Zagreus said, “but instead of moving forward in time like the others, you were sent backward.”

She blinked. Oh yeah, she was anomaly. Why her though? Why not give this headache to someone emotionally stable, like… oh wait, nobody’s emotionally stable in this pantheon, especially, including those three hags.

That reminds her. “Is it weird because of the canvas?”

“Yes, exactly. We do not remake the canvas, none of us younger gods. Not even the Moirai. They weave in the moment, reacting, adjusting, but if they ever tried to undo the weave, it would all unravel, and then Tekmôr would be furious.”

“Tekmôr?”

“The primordial of limits, endings, and finality. Perhaps you know them better by another name: Anankê. While the Moirai govern fate’s thread, Anankê governs the path itself: deciding what will happen, from beginning onwards, and then Tekmôr arrives at the conclusion, the end.”

She wishes she could tell Anankê that she respectfully declines their bullshit, and maybe if she prays hard enough Tekmôr would remove her from existence.

Persía shook her head, muttering, “Why do they have so many names?”

“Many gods do,” Zagreus replied. “Some names are born from mortals and their beliefs. Others from within us, from the shapes our domains take. Especially the primordials, they are often the same being and not, depending on who calls and what is needed.”

She considered this, face shadowed in thought. “So… Tekmôr’s – let’s say at least miffed – that I exist, but Anankê’s happy about it?”

“In a way, yes. Your existence is… complicated. Reality rarely handles complications well.” Great, just great.. If you can hear me Khaos, your walking ontological error says ‘Hello and fuck you’.

Her voice lowered. “Then why did Khaos do this to me?”

“Because you asked them to.”

“No, I didn’t.” She shook her head. “I never–”

Zagreus interrupted gently. “Are you sure?”

She could almost smell the gaslighting.  Faltering, her lips parted. “No, I…” Her shoulders sagged. She took few minutes to herself.

She had done this to herself, hadn’t she. “Deep down, I wanted to be happy. To have a moment of rest.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice softer now. “Khaos knew this. They know all their creations, and right now… you’re more theirs than you’ve ever been.”

“What does that mean?”

Zagreus had been watching her in silence, his presence steady and unreal beside her, like a figure carved from the dark itself.

“Can’t you feel it?” he said softly. “Not emptiness, but its opposite – repleteness. You are becoming. You won’t need worship to exist. Other gods fade without it, but you–” he gave her a quiet, mournful smile, “–you will continue.”

“Other gods? What are you talking about?” Persía’s head snapped toward him, her brows pulling tight. Something behind her ribs shifted, cold and coiling. “Why do you sound like you’re calling me one of the gods?”

“Because you will be.”

“No,” she breathed. “No, no. I refuse. I turned down immortality. Twice.”

“I don’t think you’ll have much of a choice this time.”

Her fists clenched. “No! This is unfair! I did everything they wanted. In the end I obeyed. I sacrificed myself for them, I gave my life for it! I was good.”

Zagreus didn’t move. His expression, when it came, wasn’t pity, it was grief. “I’m sorry, Percy.”

As the tears came, she didn’t speak for a long time after that.

The silence stretched thin and taut, like a rope fraying between worlds. Around her, the dreamscape pulsed with colour: too vivid, too alive. The sea shimmered with molten light. Stars floated like ash above them, somewhere beneath her bare feet, the earth breathed.

She sank towards herself, slowly. She hugged her knees in surrender.

“I just wanted to rest,” she whispered, muffled by her legs.

It came out so quietly she wasn’t sure he heard her.

“I thought – I thought maybe this time, if I just stayed quiet, if I didn’t fight, if I lived like anyone else… I could grow old. I could hold someone’s hand when we’re both wrinkled and half-blind. I could die in bed, with someone beside me, just once. I could die the normal way.”

Zagreus didn’t interrupt. His silence was a kindness.

She let her head drop into her hands, voice hoarse: “But even now, after all that, I’m still not free.”

She let out a breath, her voice cracked on it: “Am I?”

Zagreus moved then, wordless, and sat beside her. The cloak of shadows and gold he wore pooled around them like dusk. He didn’t say anything. He just opened his arms.

And to her own surprise, she let herself lean in. Let herself be held.

There were no grand promises. No divine interventions. Just the steady, gentle weight of someone who knew what it meant to be made of both divinity and grief.

Silent tears slid down her face, disappearing into his shoulder. Her breathing slowed. Her fingers curled in the fabric of his robes. If she was becoming a god, she would be a very fucking uncooperative one.

The stars shifted overhead.

“So.. It– It sounded like you were saying that I don’t need followers or demigods?” she asked later, voice soft but steady again. Her eyes were still distant, red-rimmed but dry now. “But I thought… I thought that was what sustained divinity. So the gods wouldn’t be forgotten. So they wouldn’t fade.”

Zagreus turned his head slightly, his voice low, “Not quite,” the god said. “But not wrong either.”

She frowned. Well that answered nothing.

“Persía wasn’t meant to exist,” he continued. “Not as you do now. Not in your old time, not like this. Your spark was made new from the new gods. Khaos created it – raw, bright, impossible, but even they needed help. So came Anankê and Khronos Aiôn. All three re-wove the canvas and moved your soul through time.”

Her jaw parted in disbelief. “Grandpa Kronos?!”

Zagreus actually laughed, soft and warm. “Not the Titan king, not the devourer of his children. I mean Khronos Aiôn, the primordial of eternal time. The one who emerged self-formed with Khaos and Anankê at the beginning of all things.”

Persía let out a long breath. “Oh thank fuck. I would definitely have a few chosen words about that Kronos being my divine midwife.” Then, blinking– “Wait… wait, you said I was more like them, as in Khaos? And ‘from the new gods’, plural, not one god and mortal.”

“You’re not really a demigod,” Zagreus said simply. “Though you may appear as one to others. Divine instincts knows better, those with it will look at you twice.”

He looked at her, steady. “Your blood may have been red, but you were an immortal already. You have now touched one of your future domains and soon you will start connecting with others.”

A beat passed. Her body didn’t move, but her expression cracked, barely, but just enough.

“…That’s not what I wanted,” she said hoarsely. She felt like she couldn’t wrap her head around it. “I turned it down. I chose to be mortal. I just wanted to live, and now I’m– a what? Another god who’ll linger forever while everyone else dies?”

She rubbed at her face, fingers trembling. “I don’t want to exist forever. That’s not life. That’s… inertia. That’s watching the world rot around you and pretending you’re still real.”

Zagreus’ gaze softened.

“You asked why I said you were like Khaos,” he said gently. “It’s because you won’t fade; not with time, not with the loss of followers nor with forgetfulness. You’ll remain – until the last breath of the last soul in the last corner of existence.”

The weight of it struck her like a wave to the chest. “Let me get this straight: the universe could implode, and I’d still be out here, petting dust it left behind? That’s not– That sounds like a punishment.” What the fuck.

What. The. Fuck.

He’s telling her that she’s the divine equivalent of a cockroach? Survive anything, live forever, never die – ugh, somebody kill her now.

Except nobody can, hah! She might start crying again.

“It can be,” Zagreus admitted. “Or it can be something else.”

“How?” She turned to him slowly, voice splintered. “How do I live, Zagreus? Not just exist, not just… endure forever. How do I live like this?”

He hesitated only a moment before answering. “You love,” he said. “As hard and as often as you can. You hold people close. You let them in. You mourn them, when you must, but you let yourself be changed by their presence while they’re here.” He says it like it’s a blessing. Like eternity could ever be soft.

His voice grew quieter. More human.

“You build family around you. Over and over again. In every age, every shore. And you let them love you in return. That’s how you live.”

Something in her buckled. She hiccupped, just once, and looked at him as if he’d peeled the sky back and offered her air.

She wanted to believe him. She did.. but forever still sounds like a death sentence, just one stretched out so long you forget it’s killing you.

“And what about you?” she whispered. “Are you just here for this one talk, or…?”

“I will be with you,” Zagreus said, voice firm now. “If you want me, I’ll stand beside you. Not as a god, but as family. As a friend.”

She gave a ragged little laugh, half-choked. “Even when I’m dramatic, childish and difficult?”

“Especially then,” he said, and opened his arms again.

This time she didn’t hesitate. She folded into him, burying her face against his shoulder, breath hitching as the tears began again, not sharp, not broken, but slow and quiet. The way grief trickles when it’s shared.

For the first time, Persía held still – not out of fear, but because she was being held.

“What about my blood…” She frowned. “You said, it was red.”

“Yes, there might be some colour changes in the makings right now. The reason it was red was for the appearances, that has always been a lie. Your mortality is an illusion and it is being washed away.”

She swallowed. “So what’s happening to me?”

“To my knowledge,” he said, “you’d call it Ascension.”

What he had described did not sound like an ascension, if she had to put a name to it, it would be called existential conscription.

Persía exhaled slowly. Deep breaths girl. “Well, fuck. That’s gonna hurt like a bitch.” She could feel the vibrations of his laughter, the fucker.

She glanced down at her hands, quiet for a long moment. “So what now? What am I supposed to do, before I’m ya’know… a god?”

Zagreus leaned back. “Your godhood is unavoidable, but enjoy the last years of your mortality. Isn’t that why you’re here?”

“Yeah,” she murmured. “I guess so…”

Her eyes clouded. “About my memory… I think I remember everything now. It’s coming back so fast. My mom, Sally. Camp, both of them. Tartaros. Leo…”

She winced and clutched her temple. A flicker of pain passed through her eyes. A rebirth, who would have thought. “Leontios. When I first saw him, I think I recognised him, but then I forgot. I looked him in the eye for years and didn’t know him. My own heart didn’t recognise him. I let him walk around me like a stranger.”

Zagreus’s voice was soft. “Your heart did know. That’s why you’re friends now. That’s why you saved him, why you broke your promise to Annabeth. Because you love him, no matter what lives you’re both in. He is your dearest friend. Your heart remembered, even when your mind did not.”

“You mean I made myself forget?” she whispered. “Because I would’ve been sad?”

Zagreus raised an eyebrow. “Your mind did only what was necessary. Reborn souls aren’t meant to remember their past lives. Deep down, you knew that. So your mind did what it thought best.”

Persía glanced down, flushed with shame. “I–I got my memories back… gradually. Until today.”

“And there you have it.”

A low hum stirred the air. The globe trembled again. A sliver of glass snapped off and fell to the floor with a sound like breaking frost. From the fracture, a glowing tendril slipped free, curling toward her hand.

Zagreus’s expression shifted, wry. “Seems it’s time to go. Your friends are getting… angsty.”

“Has it been that long?”

“Not out there. Just a few – what do you call them? Minutes?”

She laughed quietly. “Yeah. That’s what we call them.”

She leaned in, voice mock-serious. “Any more wisdom before I take my leave? ”

He blinked. “I’m not as old and wise as some of our kin,” Zagreus said, “but I do recommend wording your prayers more carefully in the future.”

“Huh? Wait–what–?”

The whiteness rose like surf behind her eyes, and then she was gone.

The Harbour, Ione POV

By the time they returned back from the harbour, the air had shifted.

It wasn’t just the aftermath of chaos – the scent of scorched wood or the sea salt clinging sharp in her throat. No, this was deeper, older. The ground itself still thrummed in faint pulses, like something vast and buried had stirred.

The tavern still stood, though just barely, its doors broken, shutters hanging loose, furniture wrecked and slick with blood. Ione stepped inside just long enough to lay a few heavy coins on the barkeep’s counter, nodding solemnly. Payment for the destruction Persía hadn’t meant to cause, but still had.

Then they were moving again. Kimon helped Thales read the seized documents while Leontios was stretchered aboard, still unconscious. The others followed quickly. Only five pirates had been left guarding the human cargo, it made easy kills. By midday, every captive from Naxos was freed, bundled in cloaks, given food and water. Three pirate ships and Thales’s own now bore them home.

It wasn’t until the sea had calmed and Naxos shimmered on the horizon that Persía stirred again.

Ione had been sleeping on the floor between the two cots; one for Leontios, still breathing but pale, and one for Persía, finally still. She woke to an emptiness where a body should’ve been. The blanket tossed back, warm.

She rose, rubbed the sleep from her eyes, and slipped above deck.

The wind was soft, almost reverent.

Persía stood alone near the prow, lit by the sun and the slow, green approach of their island. Her curls rippled in the sea breeze, but she didn’t shiver. Her spine was straight, her hands slack at her sides. She looked like a statue, a vessel not carved by human hands.

Ione stopped.

There was something ancient in that posture. Something sacred. Not the girl she grew up with – the sarcastic, stubborn, sugar-hungry mess who always had a scrapes all over her and too many crude opinions to say in civilised company. No, this was something more. Something other.

And Ione felt it in her chest, not fear, not quite, but something close to reverence. A bone-deep stillness, like she shouldn’t speak, shouldn’t move, just watch silently.

Persía looked like she didn’t belong to the world she stood in anymore. So tragically beautiful, so divine.

And part of Ione – some deep forgotten instinct – wanted to kneel.

Then Persía turned, sharp, like she’d felt her presence behind her.

“What?”

It wasn’t angry. It was raw: edges frayed, voice low, cracked from exhaustion. She looked like she was holding herself together by will alone.

Ione swallowed, stepped forward.

“You almost destroyed the whole port with the earthquake,” she said quietly. “It was… jarring.”

Persía’s jaw tensed. Her eyes darted away to the waves.

“It took me four minutes,” she said, voice shaking, “to do what should’ve taken four seconds. And if Leontios dies because I was too slow–”

Her hands gripped the wood so hard it looked like it was going to splinter underneath the pressure.

“–I’ll be throwing around a lot more than earthquakes.”

Ione didn’t respond. There was nothing she could say to that kind of fury; not righteous, not heroic, just human. 

She watched Persía’s shoulders rise and fall in silence, every breath too controlled. The girl was unraveling from the seams, just slowly enough to hide it from the others.

And yet, all Ione could feel was deeply rooted loyalty and love, as she wrapped her hands around Persía, embracing her tightly from behind, taking her hands and cradled them with her own.

Persía took her hand and kissed it. 

Time seemed insignificant as they stood there.

Naxos, Chora, the Harbour 

The sun hadn’t yet dipped behind the hills when the ships came into view: four dark sails stitched across a peach-hazed horizon, where once there had only been one.

Recognising Thales’ ship, the word spread like fire through dry grass: They’re back.

Fishermen froze mid-net-haul. Children tore down the hill. Families crowded the rocky shore, hearts clenched in brittle hope. Even the harbor held its breath, thick with salt and anticipation.

And then they docked. Cheers erupted all around.

From the first ship came the missing: boys and girls, neighbours, cousins. Led gently down by Thales’ crew, they were gaunt and wide-eyed. Some limped, some sobbed from relief. Names were called, arms wrapped tight. The sound of weeping became a kind of music.

On the second ship, Persía stood still. Not radiant and definitely not triumphant. Just standing there. Ione and Kimon had left her side to meet with their own families.

Her dark hair was a matted snarl, barely holding together in what once was a braid. Her white chiton, was stained in red and brown and something faintly amber that clung to her skin like rust. Her hands were streaked with dried blood beneath the nails. Her tan-kissed skin had gone pale and ashen, not with fear, but with something stranger. A sickness, or maybe the shedding of something mortal. Her eyes, once too sharp for her age, now looked centuries old.

No one spoke to her, not yet.

She stepped down from the ship with the grace of an elephant inside a glass shop.

“Persía!”

The shout cracked the spell.

Euphemia crashed into her daughter with a force that nearly knocked her back into the sea. Her arms wrapped tight around her shoulders, lips kissing forehead, temple, cheek – as if afraid to find her daughter incorporeal.

“You reckless, radiant korí mou,” she gasped. “What did I say about leaving notes like a proper human? And these clothes; they’re so dirty and ruined! And gods, look at you, you’re dead on your feet – Holy Hera’s left tit, you look like you clawed your way out of the underworld–”

“Mammá!” Persía croaked, scandalised, but unable not to laugh. “You’re swearing – in public!”

“And for a good reason!” Euphemia snapped, voice already thick with tears. “I haven’t spoken such loidoríai since my wedding night, Persía – may Hestia forgive me, but what in the name of all the Gods were you thinking?”

She kissed Persía’s brow again, holding her like she might disappear any moment. It made her heart squeeze. “You look like you’ve been gone for years.”

“…Feels like it,” Persía murmured, muffled by Euphemia’s neck.

Thales approached then, his usual frown deeper than ever. She felt bad, he hadn’t known the they were aboard until Ikaria. Hadn’t known Persía had come against his wishes, had not known until he caught Ione and Kimon red handed.

Now, he looked at her as one might regard a deadly hurricane they’d survived by accident.

“She definitely looks the worst of us,” he muttered, reaching out to ruffle her curls gently. “But Gods damn me, she and her friends saved them all.”

Persía smiled, weak and grateful.

The three of them, mother, father and daughter, wrapped briefly into one lopsided embrace.

It was then, while still being held, that Persía glanced back toward the harbour.

The light fractured the water like broken glass.

And there – between ships – something watched her.

Half-submerged and motionless.

Hair dark blue, skin tan but few shades lighter tan hers. Gills fluttered faintly along his neck.

But it was the eyes that rooted her, eyes that mirrored her own, but colder, more ancient. Eyes that she thought would not be seen by her in a long time.

Tritôn.

He didn’t move, didn’t blink. He only watched, and then – he was gone, with a flick from his dark tails, a ripple in the sea, and nothing but water remained.

Persía blinked once, eyes stiff. Fuck.

The next morning, Persía stepped into the room just as the sunlight caught the shimmer of gold.

Euphemia was kneeling on a woven mat, her back to the doorway, surrounded by open wooden boxes. They looked new: lacquered smooth, hinges still gleaming. Inside, velvet-lined compartments held a glittering array of jewelry. Heavy gold chokers encrusted with rubies and emeralds. Delicate anklets laced with tiny bells. Stacked bangles. Nose rings. Ear cuffs shaped like serpents and peacocks. Strands of pearls knotted with colored stones.

Persía paused in the doorway, momentarily stunned.

“Mammá… what are you doing?”

Euphemia turned at the sound of her voice, a soft smile already blooming. The sunlight caught in her greying hair, and for a moment, Persía could almost see the girl she must have once been: quick, clever and so so very young.

“These were my mētēr’s,” Euphemia said, lifting one of the boxes toward the light. “She kept them in a trunk lined with cedar and camphor. We only ever opened it for festivals, weddings… births.”

Her hands moved gently over the jewellery, not picking pieces at random but with practiced reverence, like a priestess preparing for a rite.

Persía stepped closer, eyes catching the fine filigree on a pair of jhumkas – bell-shaped earrings that swayed even while still. “What is all of this for…?”

“A gift,” Euphemia said simply. “From your mētēr. These will make you look very beautiful.”

Then, slowly, she reached out and cradled Persía’s face in her palm. Her hand was warm, calloused, scented faintly of turmeric and sandalwood. The touch was reverent, almost apologetic; like she was trying to smooth something back into place that had been broken long ago.

“These are part of who you are too,” she added more quietly, thumbing a curl from Persía’s brow. “Let me dress you, little star.”

Persía didn’t move. The weight of it – of lineage, of memory, of being wanted – settled over her shoulders like silk. This was her inheritance. 

She could see the unshed tears in her mother’s eyes before she kissed her forehead.

Chapter Text

Island of Naxos, Chora, Three days later

The house was too quiet, which meant something dangerous was about to happen.

Persía sat curled on her bedding, ankles crossed half beneath her, a half-eaten orange cake balanced precariously on her knee. A linen scroll lay open in her lap, On Offerings, Invocations, and the Proper Appeasement of Olympians, and while the ink was neat and the prose oddly lyrical, her eyes kept drifting toward the door. Her ears listened the noise from down the hall, toward the kitchen.

Anywhere but the page, really..

If she had to read the phrase “libation of barley wine” one more time she might offer herself to Khaos just to make it stop. Would that even work? They’re the one who put her on this earth anyway, so it should work.

Outside the door, she could hear the distinctive rhythm of cupboards slamming open and shut. Wooden drawers dragged violently along their grooves. The occasional smack of a broom handle hitting the ground like it owed Euphemia drachma.

Persía sighed. Her mother was cleaning again.

Not regular cleaning either, there were people paid handsomely to do that each day, armed with verity of soaps and polishes.

No, this was Euphemia’s personal ritual. The kind of frenetic scrubbing that meant something had unsettled her spirit so badly, only cleansing the mortal plane would help. There had been a time she’d swept through grief like this – after her father’s death, and another time when Thales had come back bloody from the sea.

Now it was because Persía had nearly died in a scuffle with pirates. Technically not just died, more like… broke the fabric of reality with a light seizure and turned temporarily radioactive.. but yes. “Scuffle.” Let’s call it that.

A quiet knock preceded the door creaking open. Only the left panel moved, never both, because one of the hinges always stuck. Thales stepped inside with the air of a man sneaking past Kerberos.

“Your mḗter’s in one of her moods,” he said without preamble, walking straight past her to the balcony. “It’s everyone for themselves.”

Persía blinked up at him. “What are you doing?”

“Evacuating,” Thales replied grimly.

He reached for the basket of cushions by the door and hoisted them onto the balcony like a seasoned fugitive. Persía didn’t need to ask twice. She gathered her scroll, her snack plate with fruits, nuts and pastries, and followed him out into the safer sanctuary of sun-dappled shade.

The balcony overlooked the fruit grove behind their home, flanked by the sea’s hush in the far distance. A woven mat already lay there, soft and sun-warmed. They both dropped onto it without ceremony, Thales settling with a groan of someone whose knees had seen many hard decades. Which they had, let’s be honest.

“You’re grounded for a moon cycle,” he said after a moment, mostly to the wind.

“I know,” Persía said, mouth full of honey roasted figs.

“And you think that’s fair?”

“I do.”

Thales raised a brow, clearly not expecting that.

“I mean… I vanished in the middle of the night, climbed aboard your ship, nearly started a war with Ikaria, got my friend poisoned, and almost levelled a port,” she listed, ticking off each crime with a crumb-covered finger. “Seems pretty generous to me, honestly.” And let’s not forget: she also opened a new realm of metaphysical horror and caused at least one pirate to cry from existential crisis. Busy week.

He chuckled, low and surprised. “Your mḗter thought you’d argue.”

Persía shrugged, unfurling her scroll again. She probably would have if she was really fifteen. “Mammá’s right to be mad, I mean, she was scared for me, but despite that, she’s still letting me visit Leontios. Every three days, with cakes too.”

“Your favourite cakes,” he noted dryly.

“Well, he needs the energy, I might as well enjoy them too.” Watching him eat cake like the world’s not on fire is the closest she’s come to emotional stability all week. When he smiled it reminded her of Leo so, so much. Fuck, she needs to stop thinking him as Leo, it’s not fair to him, or to her, to cling onto someone who she’ll never see again.

They both went quiet for a while.

Thales shifted to lie back fully, pulling out a scroll of his own, the documents Ione had stolen from the kapeleia in Ikaria before the poison chaos unfolded.

The ink was smudged in places, but the information was clear. Names, routes, transactions, a whole network laid bare. She wouldn’t be able to touch any of the papers before her father and mother gave permission. Which was fair.

Beside him, Persía was halfway through a prayer guide. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for, only that ever since Zagreus had warned her about the weight of prayers, she knew he wasn’t kidding. So that meant Gods took things more seriously in this era and she hadn’t even noticed. 

Now as she prayed every day, she didn’t dare speak them without care. 

Turns out prayer is just summoning with extra consequences. Who knew? Besides everyone around her – and in this scroll, it seems.

A breeze brushed over them. Orange-trees rustled. Below, the sounds of Euphemia’s cleaning continued from the open windows and doors: pots clanged, sandals thudded across floors, someone was definitely telling the lady of the house that they were already overpaid, so they should be allowed to clean. It seemed to fall on deaf ears. 

“Do you think she’s calming down?” Persía asked, not looking up.

“I think she’s still on phase two.”

“What’s phase three?”

“Buying all the new soaps.”

“Oh,” Persía winced. “We’re safe up here, right?”

“For now.”

They read like that in silence for some time, side by side, father and daughter beneath a fading summer sky. Both just laying there, enjoying the warm ocean breeze for a small moment, pretending it was a normal afternoon.

Maybe if she sits very still and doesn’t make eye contact with destiny, maybe it’ll forget she exists.  

At least until she’s finished with this cake.

Chora, Euphemia’s Garden

It began, as many things in Persía’s life did lately, with attempted gardening and unwanted attention.

She was in Euphemia’s garden, watering the herbs – badly. Her coordination was failing, her temples pulsing, and she couldn’t bend down without the horizon lurching like a poorly built boat. Which was just excellent.. either she was dehydrated, dying, or about to unlock a new horrifying PTSD-episode. Place your bets.

Naturally, that meant he appeared again.

Not dramatically. Tritôn didn’t do dramatic. He simply was, suddenly behind her, posture immaculate, arms folded like a statue installed for disapproval.

It was the third or fourth time he’d shown up like this: silent, vaguely ethereal, and always watching her as if cataloguing symptoms. Sometimes it seemed as if he was watching her but seeing someone else on her face. How familiar.

As if hearing her musings, he walked forward.

She didn’t bother to hide the flinch.

Ah yes. Mr. Moist Glower, back for another thrilling round of ‘You Seem Unstable: Let’s Discuss.’

The last time he’d approached, he had looked her dead in the eye, said the word “sister” with such a weirdly constipated expression that she’d made a full strategic retreat before he could finish the sentence. Her exact words had been “Nope. Not today, Satan.” Immediately sprinting off. 

So, now here they were, again.

”My name is Tritôn, and you are my–”

“No,” she said preemptively, still facing the herbs.

“Yes,” he replied, perfectly composed despite the interruption 

“I said no.”

“And I am telling you yes. Why do you persist in denying it?”

She straightened, painfully slowly, squinting at him through the glare of sun rays. She enjoyed denying reality on a spiritual level, obviously. “Because your divine tingle is faulty.”

“It is not a tingle. You possess the essence of my father.”

There was a beat. She blinked. “Okay. No. Don’t say it like that.”

He frowned, confused. “How else should I phrase it?”

“I don’t know – maybe something less… horrifying? Say it’s familiar. That you sense your father’s power in me. Anything but that.”

“It conveys the same meaning.”

“It does not,” she said, tone brittle. “Because the phrasing you used makes it sound like your father has been – oh, how shall I put this delicately – having sex with me, and I am now infused with his, uh, contribution.”

Tritôn recoiled slightly, like when you accidentally touch wet food in a kitchen sink. “That is not remotely what I implied.”

“Yeah, well. Humans use ‘essence’ to mean… other things. Bodily things, it’s slang, like jizz. You know – dick juice, semen..”

“I see,” he said, though clearly he did not. However there was a slight redness on his cheeks.

Oh. Oh.

She would have fun ruining this god.

He coughed into his fist. “Still, you are mistaken. I can sense it. His presence lingers in you.”

“Could be your mḗter’s.”

“Unlikely. Queen Mother Amphitritê does not consort with others. That is beneath her.”

Who calls their own mother by a full title and name? For some reason, this guy right here. So stuffy..

“How comforting. Alrighty then..”

He nodded, entirely missing the sarcasm. “I am glad we agree.”

“We don’t.”

His brow furrowed. “Then why say yes?”

“I didn’t. I said ‘alrighty then.’ That is not legally binding.”

Tritôn looked momentarily adrift. “What does ‘alrighty then’ mean?”

Not like she could tell him about the legendary Jim Carrey and his impact on modern society, so a substitute would do.

“It means ‘I’m ending this conversation while pretending to be polite.’” She gestured vaguely at her watering can, which was now on its side and contributing nothing to the basil. Honestly, same.  “And as you can see, I’m incredibly busy faking horticultural responsibility.”

“But I must speak with you about my father’s–”

“Nope,” she interrupted, holding up a hand like a traffic barrier. “Let’s not traumatize the neighbors with any more divine bodily fluids, shall we?”

“I must finish what I came to say. A hand will not stop me.”

She raised the hand higher, palm stiff and imperious. Behold. The sacred ‘Shut Up’ gesture. She was the wielder of ancient power. First of her name and all that.

He hesitated. “Oh. Hm.”

“Indeed,” she said sweetly. “Toodle-oo.”

“No. Wait–”

“Listen, Tri– can I call you Tri? Or Ton? Actually, you look like a Trito. Which unfortunately makes me think of Doritos. Holy Khaos, I miss those.” I really fucking do.

Tritôn said nothing, he seemed confused.

“Anyway,” she continued, waving a lazy hand. “Whatever grand speech you brought with you, I promise you don’t have to waste it on me. Go do princely things. Posture in front of all the highborn ladies, pose for the people. Procure pearls for the loved ones.”

“I cannot. I have been assigned to train you.”

She blinked. “Yes, yes, I’ll be–wait. What?”

“You have gone two decades without formal instruction. This is unacceptable. As your designated trainer, I must begin immediately.”

She stared. Oh good. Sea-Herakles wants to teach her how to hold a trident. Something smells fishy. “Why in the name of all that is rational would you train me?”

“You may be illegitimate,” he said, solemnly, “but my honour demands you be properly equipped to defend yourself.”

“I can defend myself.”

“Then how do you explain the incident in Ikaria?”

Her mouth twitched. This cunt. “That was a panic attack, you sea-flavoured broomstick. I broke a promise. I felt unsafe. It happens.”

“To mortals,” he said. “Not to children of the sea.” Wow, okay. 

She groaned. “I swear by every fish in your kingdom, I can protect myself. You can go home. Tell your dad you tried. He’ll give you a shiny trident and move on.”

“My father does not know I am here.”

That shut her up fast. Okay. Cool, she was a secret still, that’s good. Small miracles.

Persía’s brows climbed. “What.”

“I am acting on behalf of Atlantis, yes. But not under his orders. I do not believe he knows of your existence.”

“If he did?”

“I suspect he would have come himself.”

Persía’s mouth opened, then closed. She shook her head slightly, recalibrating.

“Okay,” she said slowly. “Then why are you here?”

Tritôn drew himself up, all oceanic nobility. “As much as I find you underwhelming–”

Dickhead. “Excellent start.”

“–I also find you brave. You risked your life for your friend. For the captives. For the sea.”

She blinked. “You… felt that?”

“I did. And the sea is the domain of protectors. You acted with honour.”

There was a pause. Something warm and painful flickered in her chest. She wasn’t sure what to do with it.

“…Thanks?” she managed, voice dry.

“You are welcome,” he said gravely.

Chora, the Beach, Four months later

“Get up,” Tritôn said. His shadow cut across her like a sundial no one asked for.

“No,” Persía replied, in the voice of someone deeply committed to horizontal living. “I’ve been possessed by Hypnos. If you want me to train, you’ll need to perform an exorcism. Preferably with Kykeon. And a goat as a blood sacrifice, I don’t know if Hypnos likes getting them but I do.” Loud sadistic bastards.

There is, regrettably, no myth in which divine exhaustion is considered a valid excuse, yet. This feels like a structural flaw in ancient theology.

He crouched beside her, all golden restraint and battle-readiness, trident slung across his back like a sculptural threat. Someone’s been rehearsing in front of reflective water again.

“You are not possessed. You are malingering.”

“I am conserving energy,” she corrected. “For war.”

“What war.”

“Against you,” she said pleasantly. “I’ve been attempting interdimensional dream warfare. Early results are inconclusive, but promising. There may be diagrams.”

Tritôn blinked. “That sounds like a threat.”

“It’s a promise. I’m surprisingly organised about it.”

He exhaled like a man slowly coming to terms with a long sentence. “Get up, so I can knock you down again.”

She rolled onto her stomach with the drama of a woman auditioning for her own tragic myth.  Though, in this version of the myth, the heroine perishes of light cardio and terminal ennui.

“Do you ever wonder if you were adopted?”

“Frequently.”

“It would explain a lot. The social stiffness. The complete absence of timing. The inability to understand jokes longer than five words.”

“I was thinking the same about you.”

She sat up with theatrical reluctance, hand on her forehead. “Touché.”

They began again. This time with movement: fluid, reluctant, sand-gritted. He led her through controlled drills, all slow arcs and balance testing. She was improving – statistically speaking, her likelihood of accidental dismemberment had decreased.

When she faltered, he stepped back – not critically, but as if cataloguing her.

“You know,” he said, tone shifting gears without warning, “what you did in Ikaria… it mattered.”

Persía tilted her head. “Was that… earnestness?”

“I’m afraid so,” Tritôn replied, undeterred. “The sea is the domain of protectors. And you acted as one. It was honourable. We were… proud.”

She blinked, visibly ambushed by sincerity. Unexpected praise from an ancient aquatic authority figure. Not currently listed under ‘Things I Know How to Process.’

“Oh. Well. Thanks, I guess.”

“You’re welcome.”

The tide lapped politely at their ankles, as if applauding the attempt at emotional progress.

She cleared her throat, face suspiciously burning. Fucking sun. “You do know I’m still going to insult you. Possibly more now.”

“I would be disappointed if you didn’t.”

Maybe he wasn’t that bad.

Naxos, Chora, The Villa

“I do have to ask,” Tritôn said, as if broaching a topic of minor academic interest rather than existential origin. It was a bit funny to Persía, who was pretending to be asleep on the ground. “How did you meet my father?”

Euphemia blinked once, slowly. “I didn’t.”

He tilted his head. “But Persía– she must’ve had a mortal parent as a demigod, or a… liaison of some kind.”

“There was no father,” Euphemia said, calm as a still sea. “Yours or anyone’s. I didn’t give birth to her. She just arrived one day.”

Tritôn narrowed his eyes. “Arrived..?”

“With the tide,” she clarified. “One morning she was just there, floating around, with no note, no basket. Just… the child. Breathing underwater like it was natural. We ladies took her in, until I decided I wanted a sole privilege of raising her as my own.”

He sat back, the way philosophers do when the evidence refuses to cooperate. “No villagers saw anything? No sailors?”

“Just the sea.” Euphemia folded her arms. “If someone did leave her, they did so without witnesses, ceremony, or plausible deniability.”

He was quiet a moment. “And she was breathing in the water.”

“Like a very small and mildly agitated fish,” Euphemia confirmed.

Tritôn’s eyes went distant. “Huh.”

Euphemia arched an eyebrow. “That’s it? All that scrutiny and your conclusion is ‘huh’?”

“I’m recalibrating my hypotheses.”

“Right. You do that.”

Euphemia stirred the lentils with deliberate calm. “Are you staying for dinner?” Persía roused from her resting place.

Tritôn glanced down at himself – regal royal blue chiton, silver cuffs, sea-glass pendant glowing faintly like a distress beacon. “I’m not exactly dressed for it.”

Both women looked at him.

To them, he was dressed like a high-born diplomatic envoy which screamed that Atlantis didn’t believe in subtlety.

Persía tilted her head, smiling sarcastically. “I doubt Mammá will fault you for your fashion choices.”

So he stayed, even as he didn’t enjoy the food himself, Persía made sure to sacrifice every other bite to him.

As she tossed half of her roasted meat into the fire, Tritôn casually remarked that the Athenians had relocated Poseidôn’s sacred fountain underground – ostensibly for preservation, but unmistakably as a slight.

The information landed like flint on dry grass.

Persía, already predisposed toward grievance, took immediate interest. By the second course, she had mapped potential access points. By dessert, it was no longer a passing comment but a sanctioned reclamation.

Her brother offered weak objections, which she strategically ignored.

In the end, she framed the plan as a service to heritage. It was, she insisted, not theft – merely asset recovery.

Athens, Akrópolis, the Next Day

They landed in an alley just outside the Athenian agora, the air thick with incense and opportunism. Tritôn straightened first, unbothered by the laws of motion or modesty. Persía, less graceful, stumbled against a wall.

The teleportation left her mildly nauseous and existentially offended. Motion sickness, she could accept. Being shown up by her brother’s seamless landing? Unforgivable.

She glanced up, and up. Surely he hadn’t been that tall yesterday. 

“…Are you genuinely that tall,” she asked, blinking, “or did the teleportation stretch you out?”

Tritôn glanced down, the embodiment of accidental intimidation. “No. This is my standard height.”

She squinted at his feet. “Fascinating. I assumed stilts..”

He didn’t answer, a stray leaf rolled between them as if laughing at her.

After fetching those juicy-ass documents, they made their way where their lovely fountain should be stored.

Tritôn examined the courtyard ahead, jaw tight. “We could eliminate the guards. Quietly, leaving no witnesses.”

Persía gave him a look usually her mother reserved for her.  “Just because someone is a useless pest doesn’t mean they deserve to die.”

Right on cue, a voice rang out behind them: “My prince!”

Tritôn winced. Persía closed her eyes.

Nireus, his personal servant from Atlantis, resplendently overdressed for espionage, came trotting across the marble like a swan with shin splints.

Of course the servant would arrive. No espionage attempt is complete without a walking liability. Nireus, in his ornamental glory, was proof that not all Atlanteans evolved from functional species.

Persía, still watching her brother, leaned in and said, perfectly deadpan: “Of course, that’s not written in stone.”

Tritôn sighed. “You may follow us, Nireus.”

Nireus beamed.

Oh boy.

Persía wiped grime from her brow and looked back just in time to see Tritôn wriggle gracelessly through the jagged hole in the temple wall.

“I hate this plan,” he muttered, catching a shoulder on the stone wall.

“You’re a skinny little dude without your massive tails,” she whispered. “What’s the worst that could happen – your bony ass develops some texture?”

Crawling through temple debris was a dignified way to die, she supposed. She had always imagined her end coming from divine wrath or hubris, not from mocking her brother’s clavicle-to-hip ratio while spelunking through rubble.

Nireus arrived moments later, resplendent in silk and outrage. “My prince, the hem of my cloak–”

“Not now, Nireus,” Tritôn and Persía said in unison.

They descended into the ruins – crumbled columns, sacrilege, the faint pulse of festival drums overhead. The chamber was cold, wrong. At its center stood the fountain: cracked, half-buried, but still breathing salt into the air.

Tritôn approached it slowly. Touched the rim. Looked at Persía. Then at the fountain. Then back again, as if something wasn’t quite aligning in the schema.

He said nothing.

It was quiet, too quiet.

Persía knelt beside the fountain’s base as Tritôn stilled beside her.

“I have a weird feeling,” he muttered.

She didn’t look up. “Oh gods. Do your delicate fins sense something, my prince?”

He gave her a look of long-suffering patience.

“Are we getting The Tingles?” she continued. “Should I prepare for divine smiting or a tragic villain monologue?”

“I am unsure if I like it.”

Persía wrapped both arms around him suddenly, clinging like an octopus.“Hold me, brother. Just in case.”

He peeled her off like wet spaghetti. “Go away.”

A lock clicked behind all three. Silence followed – not mere quiet, but something heavier, deliberate. The scent of cypress and honey drifted in, uninvited. Shadows curved, as though the geometry of the room had revised itself mid-thought.

They turned.

A figure stood in the archway, robes travel-worn, sandals winged and so was their hat, eyes too amused to be safe. A scroll dangled lazily from one hand. His eyes. They reminded her of only one person.

Of course it was Hermês. Of course it was that grin – familiar in the worst way.

LukeLukeLuke.

Her body remembered before her mind had time to reassert its authority. Grief, guilt, and recognition tangled in her chest like deadly vines.

That smile wasn’t just charming. It was dangerous. 

“Ah,” Hermês said. “Found you.”

Tritôn inhaled like a man watching his escape tunnel collapse. “Dear Primordials underground..”

Persía blinked. Shit, she had been staring for far too long for it not to be weird. She saluted crisply. “Hello, sir.”

Hermês beamed. “Well aren’t you a gorgeous one, darling. How did dear old cousin probe you into this debacle? I mean, stealing Athenian records and sacred property? Charming work.”

Persía elbowed Tritôn. Help me. “You know this guy?”

“No idea. Possibly a delusional local. Time to go.” He had caught on. Thank fuck.

Nireus, who had been trailing them with spectacular uselessness, straightened. “That is Hermês Akakêsios, Herald of the Gods, Lord of Thieves, and–”

“Thank you, Nireus,” Tritôn said sharply.

Behind them, the vault door slammed shut. They could hear shouting from the ground floor.

“Yup,” Persía said, eyes already glowing. “We should definitely leave now.”

Fortunately, Tritôn still had divine sea credentials. One breath, and they all vanished – the whole fountain, stolen documents, and one overdressed liability included.

She took a one last look back.

Hermês, naturally, was still smiling.

Her composure cracked like poor pottery. Not visibly, not yet, but internally, she was already spiralling through time – campfires, betrayal, the shape of loss.

And that thought. That stupid, traitorous, aching thought. 

Goodbye Percy, there is a new golden age coming. You won't be a part of it.

Her heart constricted like a pulled net.

Oh, Luke.

I just can’t forget about you, can I?

Atlantis, Pavilion 

The current curled lazily through the marble arches, slow and warm with the summer tide. Pearlescent light danced across the mosaic floor, catching the gold threads in Rhodê’s gown as she reclined, one foot brushing the water’s edge. Benthesikymê stood nearby, arms crossed, a sliver of kelp tangled in her hair.

Tritôn entered, shedding both droplets and posture. He looked like a man expecting praise but braced for judgment.

Rhodê arched a brow. “You’ve been suspiciously absent.”

“And less salty than usual,” Benthesikymê added.

“I’ve been training someone,” Tritôn replied smoothly, settling against a coral pillar like he hadn’t just ignored twenty diplomatic summons. “A girl.”

Both goddesses turned sharply. Rhodê’s tone cooled. “You’ve taken on a student? After all these centuries? You haven’t trained anyone else than Father’s troops since… Pallas died.”

“She’s not a student, exactly,” he said, scratching the back of his neck. “More like… a long-term investment.”

Rhodê narrowed her eyes. “Does this investment have a name?”

“Persía.”

Benthesikymê lit up with recognition. “Our little sister? That Persía?”

Tritôn nodded once.

Rhodê scoffed. “She’s a mortal child. Why waste your time on one of Father’s bastards?”

“I don’t care about her legitimacy, I, too, was trained from a very young age,” Tritôn said firmly. “And I turned out alright.”

The silence that followed was immediate, and long.

Rhodê turned to Benthesikymê. Benthesikymê turned to Rhodê. Neither spoke, they didn’t need to.

Tritôn shifted, uneasy. “…Right?”

Benthesikymê, dry as sand, murmured, “’Alright’ is a generous term.”

Naxos, Chora

The sun had begun to dip, dyeing the square in honeyed light as flutes and drums tangled lazily in the air.

Market stalls glittered with citrus and honey; petals clung to everyone’s feet; someone had already set a table on fire trying to fry cheese in wine.

Persía leaned against a column, chewing dried figs. She was technically grounded, but Euphemia had relented for the festival, on the strict condition that she stayed out of trouble. Technically.

In hindsight, the shrine incident could be viewed not as sacrilege but as a case study in ritual overstimulation. The variables were numerous: heat, incense, posture, mild intoxication, and the perennially destabilising influence of Dionysos. A convergence of stimuli, really – not unlike a theological seizure.

The physiological response, though abrupt, was not without precedent. The body, when placed in conditions of heightened sensory awareness, occasionally behaves with a kind of chaotic wisdom. Still, the acoustics of the shrine had not done her any favours.

A sharp spark, like a nerve firing in the wrong direction, or the exactly right one. Her body had jolted, breath caught. A sound escaped her she would never admit to making.

She hadn’t even been trying to do anything. She’d just… shifted her weight, and it had hit her clitoris so good.

The whole shrine had shook and she had broken great-grandmother’s statues. Not out of spite just pelvic misalignment.

The aftermath was swift and deeply mortifying.

She finished the rite with suspicious haste, cleaned, fled to her room, and took a cold bath.

For days, she refused to eat grapes. Seeing them alone was enough to bring it all rushing back.

She never spoke of it to anyone, but for weeks, whenever someone mentioned the words ‘ritual’ and ‘ecstasy,’ her left eye twitched, and she changed the subject with the finesse of a politician under siege.

It hadn’t meant anything. It couldn’t have. A fluke, surely. A brief and unfortunate overlap between mysticism and muscular reflex. Theologically unremarkable, if anatomically inconvenient.

Still, there remained the question of what to do about this body. This specific body, one with unfamiliar thresholds and unmapped sensitivities. She suspected her mother might possess some texts, or, worse, pictures.

Of course, one did not simply begin that conversation: ‘Hello Mammá, I had an orgasm during liturgy.’ That would be a hard segue even for their family.

Ione elbowed her lightly. “That face again, you look morally opposed to your own emotions.”

She was, at present, morally opposed to her own emotions. Not on principle. Merely as an act of self-preservation.

Persía shrugged. “You suck one cock and you’re cocksucker for life.”

Ione promptly choked on her wine. “Gods. The mouth on you sometimes–”

“You mean always?”

“Mmm.” Ione narrowed her eyes. “You get like this when something’s bothering you.”

The problem with Ione was her habit of noticing things. Things one had not given permission to be noticed. How unfair. “Perhaps.”

“It’s since Ikaria, isn’t it? Leontios?” Who else?

Persía looked away. The music made it easy to pretend she wasn’t blinking too much.

“I’m not really feeling good.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Ione said softly, gently taking a hold of her hands. “I was there. You passed out. Whatever happened next, it wasn’t something you chose to happen.”

Control was, as always, the crux of it. She had lost it. Briefly but catastrophically. The problem with power was how little it asked for consent when it chose to arrive.

Persía could see Ione’s eyes tracking her veins in her wrist, like waiting for them to glow gold.

“It doesn’t feel that way.” Persía’s voice dropped. “I lost control. People could’ve died.”

Ione frowned. “You’re allowed to. You hardly use your powers – no one expects you to have perfect control, especially under duress.”

She appreciated Ione’s concern. She did. But moral support always felt like being given a woollen blanket while on fire.

The moment held in silence, poised and unresolved, until something else caught her attention.

The cloud of perfume announced them five seconds before their sandals did. The scent was floral, violent, and somehow accusatory.  

Ah. Aunties. Nature’s way of reminding her that shame could still evolve.

Three women emerged, unmistakably aunties in bearing and temperament: overdressed in seasonally inappropriate linen, over-scented with something floral and overly in-your-face kind of scent, and already they were speaking far too loud even in a event like this.

Persía inclined her head toward them. “Speaking of unimpressive performances in life.”

Ione made a noise like a dying lemur and attempted to vanish behind her kylix.

The aunties descended like harpies to their dinner. Their hair was elaborately braided, their expressions vaguely carnivorous. Harpies was a fitting description.

They made the rounds with brittle smiles and the kind of cheek-pinching affection that makes you want to hurl. 

Eventually, they found their prey. Them.

“Oh, it’s you,” said the eldest, pausing with the air of someone delivering a benediction. “Still no announcements, dears? I’d have thought this little friend circle might’ve produced at least one engagement by now.”

Ione’s smile was blade-thin. “We’ve been… busy.”

“Yes,” the youngest replied, in the tone of someone generously allowing for idiocy. “But busy isn’t the same as serious, is it? A good man wants a home, not a sword on the table.”

Their conversational tactics remained unchanged, it seems: lead with passive aggression, follow up with reproductive concern, and finish with unsubstantiated facts.

All three women turned to Persía.

She blinked slowly, like a cat: relaxed and unbothered.“And your husband cries after he ejaculates,” she said evenly. Then, to the other: “And yours should see a physician about that burning sensation he keeps complaining about. Shall we talk about that instead, or is gossiping about other people’s business still more fulfilling?”

If the shoe fits, or burns, perhaps it should be treated.

There was a silence, a delicious one too. The kind that made people lean in with their ears with undisguised glee.

Then, like the tide turning, Euphemia arrived with Kimon in tow.

Her sari, deep maroon edged in gold, caught the breeze as she walked, and she moved toward them with the calm of inevitability – a sharp contrast to Kimon’s dark blue chiton.

“Ladies,” she said, voice gentle, gaze glacial. “Is there a reason we’re discussing my daughter’s marriage instead of enjoying the festival?”

There wasn’t.

The women went quiet, mumbled something polite, and excused themselves. Their sandals clicked away in rhythm.

There was a unique flavour of victory that came from winning an argument without saying a word. Her mother was fluent in it.

As soon as they were gone, Ione groaned and sagged against a stall pole. “What do I have to do to please anyone around this city?”

Kimon gave Persía a look – half challenge, half dare.

Euphemia raised an eyebrow and didn’t miss a beat. “Daughter…”

Persía folded her hands in mock innocence. “But Mammá… a fish’s gotta swim.” And Persía, to be clear, was amphibious.

“We are in public.”

“Oh, very well.”

Leontios, who had just arrived carrying drinks with lemon slices and looking far too smug for someone so broad-shouldered, grinned at her.

Persía took a lemon slice from her drink and smiled sweetly to her friend. “Lemon?”

She offered the lemon without malice. What happened next was, frankly, his own fault.

Before he could answer, she squeezed it directly toward his face. The juice caught him in the eye.

“Agh–!”

A direct hit – possibly assisted by karma. Kimon’s ensuing laughter was an added bonus, especially when the poor bastard began choking on his drink, though she would, of course, pretend not to find it delightful.

Euphemia, already prepared, gave his back a brisk thump. “Sip, not inhale.”

They returned to the villa with the purposeful air of revellers determined to end the night on their own terms. Ione, unveiling her stolen prize with theatrical flourish, produced a pouch of cannabis resin – pilfered from her mother’s stash. The audacity and skill slightly impressed her.

Persía, in possession of anachronistic expertise, undertook the role of instructor, guiding them through the process.

Hours later, the room had thinned in both energy and consciousness. Kimon and Leontios, victims of both intoxication and ill-advised creativity, had been dressed in drag, complete with jewellery which did not fit together – truly a questionable taste– and subsequently abandoned in the hydrangeas as if offerings to some floral deity.

Retrieval proved neither dignified nor quiet; Persía and Ione half-dragged, half-carried them indoors, depositing them unceremoniously on her bed.

Freed from further responsibility, the girls retreated to the roof. There, amid the cool tiles, they sat side by side, legs dangling, watching the festival lights scatter across the dark like fragments of a fallen constellation. The music drifted faintly upward, blurred by distance and cannabis, as they settled into that rarest of states: companionable silence.

Grilled vegetables and garlic drifted in from the street as Persía exhaled. Her eyes moved to her best friend. “What’s wrong?”

Ione leaned back. “I’ve been thinking a lot for the past year or so. And I think, in two years’ time, I will be married. I swear it.”

Persía blinked. “Why?”

“I want a home, and a family. Maybe little ones on the way.”

“You do not need a partner for that.”

“I know. I want one anyway.” She glanced at Persía. “Some of us are hopeless romantics.”

Persía chewed a piece of garlic bread, slowly. “That’s fair.”

Ione sighed. “I’ve been closer to death than a stable relationship, but I still believe I have a small chance to get one.”

Persía snorted. “When you’re in your thirties and on your second separation, we’ll see who gets the last laugh.”

They burst into laughter, loud and unguarded. It was the kind that came too rarely.

She regarded her friend through the drifting haze, the faint glow of the festival casting Ione’s profile in soft gold.

The declaration of impending matrimony was both unsurprising and, in its way, alarming. That Ione longed for a partner, a home, and a brood was not in itself a flaw; it was the unabashed hope with which she said it – like a child announcing their intention to catch the moon in a jar – that tugged at something deeper.

Romantic idealism was charming, yes, but it was also a blade with two edges, and Persía knew how easily such dreams could bleed you.

Still, she could no more fault Ione for wanting love than fault the sea for wanting the shore. If it made her happy, Persía would not try to change her.

She would simply be there, quietly and without condition, to steady her when the world was not as kind as she deserved.

The table was full – grapes, barley bread, roasted chickpeas, and enough olive oil for bread to drown in. Persía sat with her cheek squished into her hand, eyes half-lidded and vaguely pained. Her hair was freshly combed, her mother had insisted on a bath, but she was clearly not built for sunlight or conversation just yet.

Thales leaned back, eyeing her over his wine cup with a smirk. “Ah! I heard you had fun last night with the house empty. So what did you get up to?”

Persía blinked slowly. “We took cannabis and had an orgy.” 

It was a calculated strike – nothing fatal, merely enough to elicit the desired choking fit from her father. The joke’s veracity was irrelevant; its value lay in the precision of its impact.

Euphemia didn’t even look up from slicing the bread. “Not at the dinner table.”

“Nai, Mammá.”

Her mother’s calm tolerance was, as always, equal parts comforting and disarming. Euphemia’s dry endorsement of her “rebellion” only underscored the familial truth: in this household, decorum was negotiable, but timing was not.

Thales was still coughing. 

Euphemia handed him a cloth to wipe with, still unbothered. “Let her have her rebellion, at least she’s acting her age.”

Persía groaned into her plate. “I never would have guessed Ione’s mḗter having her own spice and alcohol drawer.”

When Thales mused aloud on the misfortune awaiting any potential spouse, and Euphemia predicted their early demise, Persía found herself inclined toward a more optimistic alternative. Mortality, after all, could be sweetened with proper effort. Black widow-style death.

Euphemia gently thwacked her daughter’s shoulder.

Thales raised his cup to his lips. “What have I always told you?”

“I think it was something like, ‘Let them follow me to the house of pleasures – so long as none whisper what they saw by lamplight,’ right?”

The look Euphemia cast him was a gift. In this house, no one escaped judgement – least of all the patriarch.

Thales shook his head vehemently. She’d just said the ancient equivalent of ‘I take all you hoes to the hotel – if your hoes don’t tell.’

By the time she raised her cup in silent solidarity, her eyes half-closed and body already drifting toward sleep, the conclusion was obvious: the domestic battlefield was best navigated with equal parts wit, audacity, and mutual incrimination.

It was good to be home.

Chapter Text

1286 BCE, Island of Naxos, Chora 

Persía ground the ochre against the stone, the slow, circular motion staining her fingertips with red dust.

She could have bought it ready-made – had, in fact, a box of finely milled powders from Rhodes – but there was something steadying about making her own.

Manual labour, it turned out, was excellent for the soul, or at least for distracting it. It was not however scientifically proven. Likely placebo.

The pestle scraped, a sound like the passing of time.

A year passes in the way years often do: slowly for those waiting, swiftly for those not paying attention.

In Naxos, the festivals came and went, the harbor shifted with each season’s tide, and Persía’s life edged further from the illusions of youth.

She was seventeen now, almost eighteen, poised uneasily between girlhood and the shadow of womanhood.

Whatever softness the year offered was cut against harder truths, ones she could not ignore.

This, she suspected, was how adulthood began: not with grand choices, but with the slow erosion of a child’s certainties – erosion being notably less cinematic than the poets would have you believe. Not to mention her soul’s real age.

Much of her time was divided between training with Tritôn, whose patience she tested as often as his techniques, and long swims or sunlit conversations with Benthesikymê.

This afternoon, she swept the last traces of crushed pigment into its jar, capped the kohl pot, and pushed the bronze mirror aside. Her hands, still faintly red from ochre, moved to the whetstone, setting her dagger’s edge to a low, steady rasp.

The latter she was beginning to think of as kin, though she wondered idly about the sisters she had yet to meet – Rhodê, Kymopoleia – imagining their temperaments as one imagines the weather in far-off ports.

Rhodê sounded calm from what she had heard so far.

Kymopoleia did not.

If she had to bet on which would try to kill her first, her coin was already cast – and, knowing her luck, already halfway to the ferryman.

The sword Arês had given her years ago lay next in line, dulled by months of neglect. She began to polish the blade’s fuller, watching her own faint reflection shimmer in steel. 

Hermês, on the other hand, had not shown himself since the fountain incident. She knew the creeper was watching; the absence had the weight of deliberate presence.

He was probably the sort of man who believed lurking counted as romance.

Is that how he bagged May Castellan? Who knows.

She slid the oiled rag across her blade one last time, the metal catching the sun in a clean, golden flash.

The sword went back into its wrappings; the oil jar was stoppered and set aside.

A quick bath; salt still on her skin, hair still damp, and she was out the door before the water had fully dried.

On days like this, Euphemia always taught in the garden, where the shade of the great tamarisk tree reached almost to the sea wall. Pillows and woven blankets waited in its shadow, the blue of the Aegean spilling wide behind them.

Persía settled cross-legged with the worn pages of the Kama Sutra in her lap, the expensive paper smelling faintly of sandalwood.

Euphemia moved through the grass barefoot, speaking of the book’s choreography of touch and trust, showing how devotion and pleasure might breathe together without rivalry. Her hands shaped stories older than the Greek tongue, her steps carried rituals from the far Indus coast, and Persía, listening, learned the balance of reverence and defiance – how to hold both in the same breath. 

A lesson, she noted, transferable to both warfare and surviving family dinners.

After the kapeleia night and the prayers to Dionysos that had accompanied it, her mother had sat her down and asked – gently, but with an expression suggesting she already knew the answer – exactly what Persía had promised the god.

Upon hearing that her daughter had, in a moment of poetic zeal, offered a lifetime of service, Euphemia laughed so hard she had to hold her ribs.

When she noticed Persía’s mortified silence, she consoled her, explaining that promises to gods were rarely as literal as mortals feared, unless the god in question decided otherwise.

Persía filed this away as one of those theological loopholes one never noticed until one had already stepped into it.

Comparable, she thought, to reading the terms and conditions only after hitting “agree.”

Still, Persía added a short dance at every feast to her daily prayer, keeping the letter of her vow if not its priestly implications.

It was a small price, she told herself, to keep a god amused, and herself alive.

She reasoned, that it was the devotional equivalent of paying rent in compliments: cheap, performative, but technically binding.

Euphemia’s Garden, the Next Day

Persía sat cross-legged in the garden, tucking figs and barley bread into the basket, the smell of Euphemia’s rosemary bushes pressing close in the afternoon heat.

Jars of different snacks went in next, padded by vine leaves, then a folded cloth for the grass.

Footsteps crunched on the path – Leontios first, balancing a wineskin, followed by Ione with her usual basket of sowing materials, and Kimon carrying more than enough cheese for them to eat, and then some.

This had begun a year and couple of months ago, when she’d visited Leontios daily after the poisoning, checking his pulse and pushing food into his hands.

He hadn’t needed help for a long time now, but the habit had hardened into something else: a picnic every three days, without fail.

They greeted each other like soldiers sharing leave, not warm exactly, but aware of the same shadow at their backs. They had connected on a deeper level but neither knew what to do with this newfound bond.

Persía watched Leontios with the same quiet understanding she always had.

At home, he bent to the weather of his family’s tempers: deference, distraction, or sly defiance as needed. Here, in the dappled shade with wine in his hand, he seemed lighter, but the ice beneath him was never far.

Survival took many forms, some looked like endurance, some, like Leontios’, looked very much like charm. 

She only wondered how far such charm could carry him if the ice ever cracked for real.

Kimon set out his tools and a leg-sized block of stone, the kind he could turn into a likeness before sunset. He worked the chisel like it was an extension of his sketching hand: quick, precise, coaxing shape out of grain.

His statues were never perfect, but they had a stubborn aliveness that made people keep them. Persía’s own miniature sat on her nightstand, silently judging her dreams and morning hair.

There is nothing like waking to see your own carved likeness frowning at you.

It’s like living with a very quiet, very judgmental roommate.

Leontios dropped down beside her without asking, a pillow appearing from somewhere, his head finding her lap like it always had.

The space between them still held Ikaria’s cold shadow, but habit was stronger than discomfort. He shut his eyes; she didn’t push him away.

They posed in the shade as Kimon worked, the steady chip of stone filling the silence. Ione sat cross-legged nearby with her embroidery, the thread flashing gold in the light.

At some point, Kimon slid a borrowed scroll toward Persía, giving her the expectant look that meant read to me.

He claimed it helped him think while he worked, and she, being cursed with the inability to refuse his puppy-eyed requests, obliged.

Politics again. Her throat went dry by paragraph three, and she could practically hear her past self groaning: of all the things to do with an afternoon… but she kept going.

He said her voice helped him think, and she suspected he meant it.

Ancient Greece’s version of an audiobook: herself, unpaid, unabridged, and entirely at the mercy of the author’s sentence length.

Persía set her scrolls aside, swallowing a mouthful of bread before taking the comb to Leontios’ hair.

“You’ve gone quiet,” she said, tugging gently at a knot. “Is this about the merchant again?”

Ione’s face brightened on cue. “Nikandros. He’s been staying with us while he arranges a house in town.”

“Arranges fast, doesn’t he?” Persía glanced at Kimon, who didn’t look up from the marble block he was shaping. He only grunted in the way that could mean yes or still thinking about it.

Ione ignored them both. “He’s serious. He says he wants to marry.”

Persía sipped water, studied her friend over the rim. “And your parents?”

“They’re fine with it.” Ione’s tone was airy, but too quick. “They like him well enough.”

“Because he’s charming,” Persía said – or maybe because he was rich. She didn’t add that part, just smoothed Leontios’ hair back with her palm.

Men’s charm is like an imported spice – rare, expensive, and almost entirely a product of imagination.

Leontios looked up at her from his hooded eyes, clearly catching the thought anyway.

Kimon murmured, still carving, “Or because they don’t care enough to object.”

Ione’s smile didn’t falter, but she fiddled with her chiton.

Persía let the moment hang, the comb catching in another knot. She worked it loose, thinking how easily something pulled too fast could snap.

Chora, Persía’s Bedroom 

The Aegean’s new calendar no longer measured time by harvests or storms, but by the rhythm of slave raids. Seasonal misfortunes had become year-round inevitabilities.

Convenient, really, if you were in the business of calling atrocities “market forces.”

From her perch on the windowsill, Persía spread Ione’s stolen papers across her knees, ink-stained evidence smelling faintly of oil and brine. The perfume of empire: rot, salt, and just enough bureaucracy to feel respectable. Hah, as if.

Samos, according to the records, had developed an inexplicable appetite for human cargo – demand up, prices steady.

Except, the island’s population figures hadn’t moved in years.

Either they’d invented invisible servants, or someone was recycling people like amphorae.

A paradox, unless, the slaves weren’t staying. Then where are they going?

She traced trade routes with her thumb, noting how the ships’ appearances were never random but almost, though not quite, predictable. If she could name the pattern, she could break it. If, if, if, always if. She needed to figure this out.

A small trip to Samos wouldn’t hurt, it’s technically her civic duty, right?

Which is, of course, how people end up dead, but – academic curiosity, civic duty, to-may-to, to-mah-to.

Her nights offered no reprieve either. The dream persisted: a face she knew vanishing beneath black water, stone corridors breathing like lungs, weeping like widows, hands reaching through the dark.

A pale, blood-streaked hand clasping hers. Behind them, the sea stood unnaturally still.

She always woke with the same salt taste in her mouth, though whether it came from tears or memory, she refused to test.

Scientific method only goes so far when the lab is your own skull.

Naxos, Chora, Three months later

The morning of Ione’s wedding began in a silence too deliberate for chance. The harbour lay still, salt-heavy air clinging to the skin, and the sky had not yet decided whether it would be grey or gold.

Inside, the small oil lamp cast Euphemia’s face in warm shadow as she coaxed the comb through Persía’s curls.

She worked in sections, fingers first to loosen the knots, then the comb to shape and smooth, pausing now and then to add oil where the hair drank it up.

It was slow, deliberate work, but her mother had nothing but patience.

On the stool beside them, Persía’s attire to the wedding waited: a light-blue lehenga choli with pearl embroidery that spilled from blouse to skirt like frost melting into water, and a sheer dupatta that caught the lamplight like a veil of mist. Silver bangles and rings sat ready, quiet and bright.

“You’ve met him now,” Euphemia said, not looking away from the braid she was shaping. “This Nikandros.”

Persía made a sound that was neither agreement nor enthusiasm. The diplomatic murmur: universally recognised as ‘I have opinions but am currently too polite to ruin whole morning with them.’

“I don’t see it. He’s not–” she searched for the word, “–remarkable. And she’s always said she wanted love, real love. Why settle for someone who treats her like… an occasional diversion?”

Field note to herself: The ‘occasional diversion’ man – observed most often at weddings, funerals, and other events where commitment is implied but never confirmed.

Euphemia hummed, winding the braid into a knot and pinning it. “Perhaps she thinks this is love. Or perhaps she wants something she cannot name yet, and he fits the shape for now.” She set down the comb, fingers warm on Persía’s cheek. “Sometimes a woman learns what she needs by trying on what she doesn’t. Your task isn’t to choose for her – it’s to be there when she chooses again.”

Persía held her gaze for a moment, then nodded. “I’ll be there.” She will bear witness and possibly mutter ‘told you so’ in five to seven months.

From the courtyard came the faint sound of a krater being set down and the clink of dishes for the breakfast.

Soon, she would be standing beside Ione in front of the whole island, watching her bind herself to a man who, to Persía’s eyes, offered her nothing she deserved. Which, statistically speaking, puts him in the same category as most men.

For now, she sat still and let her mother finish the last coil of gold beads in her hair.

Chora, Ione’s Family Home 

By mid-morning, Naxos’ streets were dressed for ceremony.

The annual practice of attempting urban perfection via strategic bunting and seasonal herbs. Bread and marjoram in the air, the neighbours leaned in doorways to watch guests file toward Ione’s house.

Euphemia and Thales vanished toward the front room; Persía slipped down the hall.

Through Ione’s half-open door, she caught a glimpse of Nikandros – oiled hair, himation folded with the precision of a man who knew people noticed – speaking with Ione’s younger sister.

Ugh, you could exhibit him next to a bronze krater and no one would notice the difference.

His voice was pitched low, as if the subject was a private joke. The conversation ended as her hand braced lightly on the doorframe, making it creak. They both turned towards the door.

Nikandros’ hand graced Ilena‘s, the kind of gesture that could mean nothing at all.

When she appeared before them, he straightened with polite efficiency, offering a nod before stepping aside.

She nodded to them both and continued her way to Ione’s bed chamber.

Persía found the door ajar, voices gone, only the faint echo of water dripping from the eaves.

Inside, Ione sat on the edge of her low couch, her hair damp and unbound, her chiton half-slipped from one shoulder as though she had been interrupted mid-dressing.

The bathing basin in the corner still steamed faintly. She looked freshly washed, yes, but there was a brittle stillness about her. Her eyes were glassy, her lips trembling just enough to betray her.

Ione looked less the radiant bride she thought she would find and more like the archaeological find midway through its conservation process. Which, for obvious reasons, was not good.

“What’s wrong, love?” Persía asked softly, stepping in and shutting the door quickly before the sound of the household could intrude. “Why haven’t you gotten ready yet?”

Ione’s mouth trembled. “I don’t know. They’ve been arguing for hours over which peplos colour makes me look most ‘modest yet fertile’–”

Fertility as a colour scheme, huh, the patriarchy really does have range.

“–as if I’m a cow prized for auction, and then they all left to get themselves ready. Helios is already tilting toward the horizon and I have so little time, and–” Her breath caught, then escaped in a shaky laugh.

“And you… you look gorgeous, as always. Now more so, somehow, and I just–” She broke off with a shudder and hid her face in both palms.

Persía crossed the room in three strides, setting down the wedding gift basket she’d carried in.

“Enough of that.” She spoke lightly, but her hands were already moving, opening drawers, laying out hairpins and combs with the calm decisiveness. “We’ll handle this. My mother can fix anything I ruin before she comes for us. Until then, you’re mine.”

A watery laugh escaped Ione, small but genuine. “Okay,” she whispered.

Persía set to work. She fetched the small alabastron of oil. Myrrh – the ancient world’s version of saying “you’re important,” except it also doubles as a magical anti-jealousy charm. We really were a multi-tasking species before capitalism flattened everything into scented candles.

She poured a trickle into her palms and began smoothing it over Ione’s arms and shoulders.

The oil caught the lamplight, turning skin into gold leaf. “There. Like the sun’s blessing,” Persía murmured, twisting Ione’s hair into a temporary knot to keep it off her back.

They chose colours together: soft amber and deep wine-red for the eyes, the former to draw in prosperity and ward off evil, the latter to signify life’s blood and passion.

Amber was especially auspicious for a bride; it was said to be the sun’s tears, solidified into a charm against misfortune.

Persía plucked stray hairs from Ione’s brows with quick, practised motions, trimming just enough to frame her face. “Hold still or I’ll make you look like an angry bunny,” she teased, earning another laugh.

She dusted a fine powder of ground iris root over the cheeks for fragrance, then added a thin line of crushed malachite at the lids for depth—a touch Euphemia had taught her was irresistible at dusk.

Next came the hair: a complex bridal braid, thick and gleaming from the oil, woven with strands of myrtle and fresh white lilies.

Myrtle was sacred to Aphroditê, promising love and fertility; lilies, pure and white, were for renewal. Persía’s fingers worked with speed and care, winding amber beads through the plaits so that each turn caught the fire of the lamplight.

A real test of neck strength, this one.

By the time the braiding was done, the door creaked, and Euphemia entered, already dressed in her own finery.

She took in the scene: the gleam of Ione’s skin, the careful braids, the flowers, and smiled with quiet pride.

Without a word, she helped ease the heavy woven wedding garment over Ione’s head, fastening it at the shoulders with gold pins in the shape of swans.

Persía leaned in to dab a final drop of rose and saffron oil at the hollow of Ione’s throat; the most prized bridal scent of the age. Rose for beauty, saffron for joy and fertility, basically the olfactory equivalent of writing “please work out” on a post-it and sticking it to the universe.

“There,” Persía said, stepping back. “Now you look like the sort of woman the poets exaggerate about for centuries.”

”I think the poets might disagree.” 

”Well, I am not a poet, but I do know a beautiful woman when I see one.”

Ione laughed, and this time there was no trace of tears.

The singing had tapered into a warm hum as the bride and groom were led toward the altar for the final blessing.

Oil lamps flickered, their wicks perfumed with myrrh and bay, throwing light over the wreaths of fresh myrtle and yellow crocus strung above the couple’s heads.

Amber beads rattled softly on Ione’s neck as she turned toward her new husband – amber for protection, amber for a long life, amber so no wandering spirit would find its way into the bridal chamber.

The priest called for the kiss, and the crowd leaned forward like the crest of a wave.

Ione and her husband met lips: soft at first, before Nikandros started taking liberties, and long enough for the women in the front row to exchange knowing glances.

Somewhere in the press of guests, someone muttered, “No wonder they wouldn’t wait until winter.”

It was followed by another voice, sharper, “Quick courtships don’t happen without quickened bellies.”

And then, lower still but no less audible to her, “Her father must be glad to be rid of the shame before it starts showing.”

The words spread through the air like lamp-oil spilled over coals, catching and leaping from one mouth to another.

Persía’s jaw went tight. Her nails dug crescents into her palm.

She picked out the accents, half from the groom’s kin, half from Ione’s own aunts, uncles and cousins.

Her blood hummed with a heat that had nothing to do with the brazier’s flames.

Her gaze cut through the crowd like a thrown spear, marking each mouth that had ever dared curl Ione’s name into something ugly.

Not just here – every whisperer, every smirker, past and present – dragged into the open by some unseen tide, their tongues stilled, their teeth counted like coin.

A part of her; a deep, salt-dark current, suggested she could make it so. The thought was warm in her mind, the way lamp-oil is warm before it’s lit. She could silence them all, once and for all, and call it justice.

She could silence them forever.

A small growl left her throat, which couldn’t be heard by the gossipers, but her family around her heard it clearly.

“Daughter,” Euphemia’s voice slid into her ear, warm and even, but with the weight of a hand on the back of her neck. “Do not cause too much trouble, and no fires.” But mother, I crave violence.

From the corner of her eye, Persía caught Kimon and Leontios exchanging a look: half warning, half amusement.

Leontios raised his cup in her direction as if to say not today, and Kimon’s eyebrow tilted in the way that meant unless you want the whole island talking about you next.

Persía unclenched her fists. Barely.

Kimon was the first to recover his voice after the altar spectacle. “Well,” he said, with the brittle brightness of someone announcing a weather report during a funeral, “congratulations on your wedding.”

“Yes – congratulations,” Leontios added, a beat too late. “And… whatever that was on the altar.”

“It’s tradition,” Ione said, cheeks flushed with post-ceremonial glow, oblivious to the fact that her husband’s hand was welded to her waist like he’d paid for the privilege by the hour.

“Tradition?” Persía echoed. “Ah. Of course. The unbroken lineage of ceremonial germ-sharing..” An anthropologist’s field day, if not a physician’s. “How remiss of me not to recognise it.”

Ione laughed, missing the sarcasm entirely. “Nikandros is just very… enthusiastic.”

Persía decided against voicing her mental comparison to a Facehugger. Instead, she rearranged her expression into something almost pleasant; an expression which, unfortunately, made Kimon and Leontios stiffen on sight.

Even Ione, flushed with the glow of the day, faltered just enough to betray a flicker of concern.

She knew Persía too well; this was the sort of face that promised trouble.

Persía, however, was busy thinking – which might have been the problem in the first place.

All she could hear was her mother’s voice telling her not to cause too much trouble. That didn’t mean no trouble.

Which, by her personal metric, meant she still had a reasonable degree of free rein.

“I love you dearly,” she said.

“And I love you,” Ione replied with the well-trained reflex of someone who’d never been given reason not to, watching her as though waiting for a schematic to reveal itself.

Persía leaned in and kissed her cheek. “Keep that part in mind.”

“What do you–?”

But Persía was already pivoting toward her new destination, silk skirts whispering at her heels.

Hopefully, Ione wouldn’t hate her too much after this.

“Oh, you’re Persía. We’ve heard a great deal about you from Ione’s side of the family.” She wonders which cousin embellished the tale this time.

“How flattering. And from the groom’s side?”

A pause. “…Not… quite as much.”

“Understandable. They’re a discreet lot. Except when they’re gambling away their real estate – though Ione did rescue the one nearest my house. Paid the debt herself, insisted I not mention it.”

“She did?”

No one can resist a morsel of scandal.

Persía smiled warmly. “Oh yes. Modesty is her worst vice.”

“Yes, Ione and I grew up together. Met at sword practice. Two streets from my house, three from hers.”

“Oh! You’re that Persía? Forgive me, you’re… shorter than advertised. On our voyage from Ikaria they swore you were the finest swordsman in Greece. Difficult to reconcile rumour with reality, you do have the muscle mass to back it up.”

“I see. Perhaps you’d prefer to speak with my parents? Confirm whether they, too, are in on the grand deception?” Do try to wriggle out of this one. 

“I–”

“Or are you suggesting they’ve been lying all these years?”

“I’m sor–”

“All forgiven. It’s a harmless sport to me. Yes, I trained her, our friends, later half the island’s youth. We even visited Ikaria – eradicated a nest of pirates dabbling in slavery. Quaint little island, really.”

“I… recently moved back there.”

“How lovely. One must find one’s people, as they say.”

Persía stood across from Philomache; Ione’s great-aunt, a woman far too old to be alive. Persía was fairly certain she lied about her age to gain sympathy.

“You’ve grown since I last saw you,” Philomache said, her eyes narrowing in polite criticism as they swept over Persía’s muscles. This was clearly not a woman accustomed to seeing females in fighting form.

“Possibly,” Persía replied. “Or perhaps you’ve simply shrunk.”

The woman blinked. “I beg your pardon?” It seemed she couldn’t believe her ears that Persía had the audacity to say it aloud.

“Nothing personal,” Persía said, smoothing her voice into innocence. “I’ve just noticed – on both sides of the family, really – people seem to fold inward with age. Stress, I suppose. Managing household finances with men who think commerce is selling last year’s wine at half-price… it seems poor Ione is following in your footsteps with that. I dearly hope she saves the family reputation.”

Yes, she had just done that.

She had implied not only that they couldn’t control their spouses, but also that their said spouses were halfwits.

Philomache’s nostrils flared delicately. “That sounds dreadful.”

“Indeed. Ione once balanced three households’ ledgers over a single winter, because her family couldn’t do theirs. You’d never hear it from her, though.”

Persía smiled with polite warmth, letting the silence linger just long enough for the comment to seed itself like an invasive vine.

Somewhere behind them, the laughter from the bridal room swelled – unaware, for now, that the air in the courtyard had acquired a faint but irreversible frost.

“Mmm. These honey-cakes are… a bit dry, aren’t they?”

“I made them myself.”

“Oh dear, that explains it. But don’t look so stricken – it’s not your fault. No one was helping you with the flavour choices anyway. Lemon, dill, and date is… ambitious to say the least.”

“It’s an old recipe.”

“From how far back? You do realise there may have been translation issues, because this tastes like something lifted directly from the Minoan funeral rites. I can’t imagine the bride approved – she has far too refined a palate to have inflicted this willingly. Still,” Persía added with a pleasant smile, “if you ever need help with future baking, I know an excellent baker I could recommend.”

Nikandros’ mother was speechless to put it lightly.

“Oh? Married as well? Did your husband make the journey tonight?”

“No, he’s in Athens.”

“Splendid. Our work keeps us travelling, but Ione will continue with us after the wedding – or I shall be insufferable if she doesn’t. And your husband’s trade?”

“He’s an advisor.”

“Hm.”

Which in polite society means “occupationally vague but somehow lucrative,” much like the professions of most people who own more than three tunics without visible mending.

”So, he’s away from home a lot?”

“Yes, but I don’t get lonely.”

“Of course not. Tell me, do the potters of Ittica still send apprentices to deliver water-jars to the housewives?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“To simplify household provisioning, naturally.”

It is, after all, the polite phrasing for wondering whether one’s social isolation has been pre-emptively outsourced to another man with reliable calves and early-morning availability.

“Lovely evening,” Persía said to the stranger beside her, both staring at the courtyard with its mismatched columns.

“Yes… though the hall feels a little tired, don’t you think?”

“Oh, certainly. You can tell it’s been used before. Three, perhaps four weddings this year alone. Poor bride – to have such… frugal parents.”

The stranger chuckled.

A sharp voice drifted from just behind them. “Frugal, you say?”

Persía turned to face Ione’s mother, innocent face on, her voice sugar-smooth. “Ah, but only with the venue! In all other things they’ve been most generous – especially in allowing the groom to spend so freely on himself.”

A statement which was technically positive, but in this case? Practically radioactive.

“What a stunning necklace the bride is wearing,” a guest murmured.

“Yes,” Persía said, “and not easy to obtain, she had to negotiate with her own mother for it.”

“Oh?”

“Well, you know how families can be with heirlooms. They guard them as though keeping them in a box forever somehow honours the dead more than letting the living wear them. But Ione’s persuasive. She can make even the most stubborn uncle unclench a purse string.”

”But her own mother?”

”Oh yes, she’s know for being jealous of her daughter for the longest time.”

”Poor girl.”

Over the course of the banquet, Persía moved easily from guest to guest, a glass in hand and a practiced air of idle observation.

She let fall, in just the right company, that the evening’s lively table arrangements were only possible because Ione had intervened – rescinding her parents’ plan to seat everyone by birth order, which would have condemned estranged cousins to silent, frosty standoffs over cold and stale fish.

Likewise, she noted that the fine wine presently being praised had been Ione’s doing as well, replacing her father’s cheaper choice – better suited to stripping paint than entertaining guests – at her own expense.

By the time the last platter was cleared, the room’s conversational current had shifted.

Ione had been quietly canonised into a figure of patience and good sense; both families were regarded with new, discreet suspicion; and Nikandros, by unfortunate association, was not far behind.

Persía, surveying the ripples she had set in motion, felt entirely pleased with herself.

The man sniffled and wiped his eyes. “You’re so easy to talk to.”

“Thank you,” Persía said brightly. “Always happy to listen.”

She had not been listening.

She had no idea who this crying man is.

Euphemia appeared beside her, resting a gentle hand on the man’s shoulder. “My condolences,” she murmured, her voice soft with genuine sympathy.

Persía froze. Condolences? Oh no. This man has been pouring his heart out and she’s been inside her own head for – Dear Khaos, how long?

Euphemia steered her away from the crowd, not letting go until they were safely out of earshot. She raised an eyebrow.

“What?” Persía asked, clearing her throat.

“You think I haven’t noticed what you’ve been doing this whole celebration, young lady?”

“Of course you have, mammá. You’re smart.”

“Hm. I should have told you not to cause any problems.” Her mother should know to word her rules more carefully at this point.

She hummed as her mother tilted her head.

“You need to let it go, daughter.”

Did she look like Elsa to these people? She never lets go.

Though this was her mother, so she probably should listen.

Hmph, fine.

“Well, I’m already done with my conspiracies,” Persía said innocently. She had, after all, just saved Ione’s reputation.

Euphemia hummed in that unreadable way of hers. “It seems so. Ione has already made her way toward her new husband’s house. We’ll be heading home as well. Will you join us?”

Persía shook her head. “Not yet. I’ll have some alone time after I leave an offering to Lord Dionysos.”

“Alright. Stay safe, margarítēs mou.” Euphemia kissed the side of her head.

“Yes, mammá.”

Her mother left with Thales, and Persía sighed. What am I going to do with my life? Everyone seemed to be moving forward and here she is.. just stuck.

She stood there for a moment before burning an offering to Dionysos. Then she poured herself a full kylix of wine and walked away from the city.

The path led her to a small waterfall, its pond glowing faintly in the moonlight. She lay back on the grass, staring at the stars.

Once, she’d read, or maybe overheard, that the ancients looked to the constellations for astrological wisdom.

To Persía, they seemed to say she was utterly, irrevocably fucked.

She closed her eyes. Sleep quickly claimed her, or so she thought.

She blinked, trying to feel the grass beneath her. Wait… no. This wasn’t grass. The cool, hard texture under her palms was tile.

Persía stood and glanced around. She was on a balcony, an elegant one, by the looks of it.

Damn, she must have been truly out of her mind.

Alcohol had never done that to her before. Perks, perhaps, of technically being a priest of Dionysos.

Looking down at herself, she was relieved to see she still had the same amount of clothing on.

After brushing off the dust, she started toward the interior.

One might assume she had simply wandered indoors; however, the scent of crushed mint and warm stone clung to her skin in a way that felt uncomfortably like déjà vu.

Somewhere beyond the colonnade, a celebration is in progress – bright flutes, languid drums, and the distinct percussion of kyathos meeting the rims of kylixes.

The air is thick with laughter, shouts, and the kind of cheering that implies the participants have been drinking for some time and intend to continue.

Persía moves forward, bare feet making no sound on the mosaics.

Myrrh and honeyed smoke coil in the air, while gilded light drapes itself over carved arches in a performance of architectural vanity.

She emerges into a courtyard so over-embellished it could have been painted by someone paid by the tile: dark brown walls inlaid with amber, windows casting warm lamplight into twilight’s blue-pink hush.

Fountains glitter in the centre, their ripples catching the glow of tall chandeliers which sway with a certain tipsy elegance.

The celebration does not invite her so much as claim her outright, like the tide dragging the moon by its hair.

A cup is pressed into her hand. She drinks.

It tastes like fruit left too long on the branch – sweet to the point of suspicion, but dangerously moreish.

Time becomes untrustworthy. She dances with strangers whose faces blur between blinks, laughs with voices she could swear she has never heard, kisses people whose names she will never know.

Wine pools ruby-dark in the kylixes, and she toys with its surface until the ripples mimic flame.

The heat in the air is not merely temperature but pulse, threading itself through her own until, quite without her permission, she feels at home.

Another tug – quieter, more insistent – draws her away from the cushions. She steps over discarded garlands, parts purple curtains fat with incense, and exchanges a brief smile with a woman carrying an amphora.

And then she sees him.

A man reclines ahead, surrounded by the scent of crushed grapes and that faint mineral coolness one gets after rain on stone.

He wears purple and gold, the embroidery of his robe catching each flicker of lamplight. Leopard-patterned fur is slung over his shoulders in a manner both casual and calculated.

His skin is deep bronze; his hair, dark in the roots, is mostly pale as ripened barley, braided over one shoulder. His eyes are purple – an inconveniently theatrical colour – made sharper by kohl lines that lend him the air of a cat who knows precisely which bird you were planning to eat for supper. Predatory.

In his hand, a gold kylix holds a foam-topped drink of improbable pinkness, adorned with ripe grapes.

Gold proliferates across his person: bracelets, chains, pendants, and the elaborate leafwork of gladiator sandals laced high on his bare thighs.

He is, in the strictest sense, ridiculous.

He is also, regrettably, magnificent.

Persía feels something she has never truly experienced: envy, sharp enough to taste. Here is a man who could pass as a woman without so much as adjusting his posture, and a woman who could pass as a man without breaking stride – both, neither, and entirely unbothered by the question.

She does not know him. She has never seen him.

But he looks at her as though he has been expecting her, which is frankly unsettling.

The air between them compresses into a private room. Goosebumps rise along her arms. She is warm – no, hot. She takes a step forward and their eyes meet across the room.

Persía blinks and everything goes black.

She wakes on grass damp with morning. The pond and waterfall from the previous day’s walk lie exactly where she left them. The sky is clear.

What the fuck just happened? Was that a dream?

Dream or otherwise, it had felt inconveniently real.

Chapter Text

1285 BCE, Samos, Vathy

The courtyard was all shadow and jasmine, quiet but for the rasp of crickets and the faint clatter of amphorae settling as the night cooled.

Persía sat cross-legged on the worn stone steps, wringing the day’s soap from her fingers.

Strange, how fast a life unspools. 

All the letters Persía received after leaving Naxos came through Euphemia, wrapped inside Tritôn’s gruff delivery. Ione was living her married life now and was delighted – or at least trying to be. Delight, in this context, seemed to mean the art of rationalising entrapment by hoarding small victories like a magpie. She was, in effect, composing a domestic thesis one sweep of the broom at a time.

She wrote of new responsibilities: tending her home, keeping accounts, learning how to impress her husband – yet also of her little triumphs. Even her younger sister had begun helping around the house, which Ione declared a minor miracle.

It seemed to her that Ione was lonely in her new house and Ilena made things brighter.

Kimon’s name had appeared in the same message, paired with knowledge that he was now an apprentice to a sculptor.

Persía had read that line twice, imagining him squinting at marble with that patient frown he reserved for everything, including her. She had known he would do great things in life and was proud of her youngest friend.

Unfortunately, there had been no news since.

And Leontios – oh, Leontios. His words were simple, almost painfully so: I miss you. It feels wrong without you here.

As if a single sentence could stretch across the miles and bind her bones back together. She felt the same ache, only sharper, deeper; like she’d misplaced half her own skin. Sometimes, she swore she could sense him breathing, laughing, cursing somewhere far off, and the thread between them pulled taut, keeping her from unraveling completely.

He wrote, too, of his new craft: apprenticed now to the master-builders, learning how to draft temples, arches, and tools with a precision that turned sweat into permanence.

His hands, once calloused from nets and oars, had grown steadier, sharper, fit for compass and chisel. He called it work; she thought of it as architecture stitched into eternity, and still, beneath the talk of lines and columns, his words circled back to her, to absence, to longing – as if life itself could not fill the hollow she had left.

Her gaze drifted past the colonnade to the dark courtyard pool, its surface broken by moonlight and the lazy curl of a water beetle. And now here I am, she thought, someone else’s property.

She remembered arriving in Samos, wrists chafed raw from the voyage, body aching from the ship’s stale heat.

The slavers had lined them up like meat for market, and then he had stepped forward; Damasos.

Wealth was oozing out of him and so was the hunger in his eyes.

He’d chosen her without a word, only a smile and the slow brush of his hand across her cheek.

Even now, the memory made her stomach seize, a phantom nausea coiled under her ribs.

Persía was so deep in the recollection that she didn’t flinch when the waters and shadows behind the oleander stirred. Tritôn peeled himself from the darkness. Water beaded on his shoulders, silver in the lamplight, dripping from his hair in quiet rivulets. The smell of river and salt trailed after him like a second skin.

Oh good. The peanut gallery arrives.

“Scrubbing floors,” he muttered, each syllable harder than one before. “Fetching wine for a mortal. A daughter of the sea, reduced to this – humiliation. To a slave.”

Yes, thank you, Captain Obvious. What would she do without his insights? Cry harder, maybe?

Persía lifted her gaze slowly, like someone indulging a very tedious lecture. “Yes,” she said, voice bone-dry. “Tragic. The ocean itself will surely weep. But consider this: while I refill their cups, they gossip and boast. Every drunk merchant, every soldier boasting of raids – guess who’s listening? Spoiler: it’s not you.”

He blinked, then frowned as if she’d just started speaking Phoenician. “You’re… using this to your advantage?” Well what else could she be doing?! It’s not like people enjoyed being slaves. Not this kind of slave-play at least.

“Yes, obviously! Give me some credit.” She rose, dusting her hands. “Damasos’ household is the doorway forward. He’s tied to the disappearances. Being his property” – her mouth twisted on the word – “puts me close enough to see and hear everything.”

For a moment, Tritôn said nothing. His expression hovered between reluctant admiration and the kind of rage that made waves crack cliffs. “You’re going to get yourself killed,” he muttered finally, jaw tight. “I should tell your mḗter.”

Persía’s smile was all teeth. “You tell my mammá and I’m literally going to kill you.”

His lips curved into a slow, cruel grin. “Should I fetch you a step stool first, so you can look me in the eyes while you threaten me?”

“Oh, fuck you!” Persía shot back, kicking at his ankle. “You’re just saying that because you’re more than two meters tall! Everyone’s shorter than you!”

He chuckled low, like deep water rumbling over rocks, and for a heartbeat she hated him almost as much as she loved him. That’s the sibling love for you.

Then his smile thinned. “I won’t be here every day now.”

Persía tilted her head, suspicion sharpening her gaze. “You’re breaking up with me?”

“Political business,” he said flatly. “An envoy from Olympus. Discussions I can’t avoid.”

“How long?”

“A few weeks. Maybe more.” He folded his arms, towering like a marble statue carved specifically to irritate her. “And I don’t like leaving you alone on this island. You like beckoning trouble.”

Persía smirked. “I prefer to think of it as trouble being magnetically drawn to greatness.”

“Don’t romanticise your bad decisions,” Tritôn snapped. “This Damasos–”

“–is exactly where I need him to be, as am I,” she cut in. “If you want to help me, stop hovering like an overprotective jellyfish.”

He stared, jaw ticking, the sea in his eyes gone storm-dark. “If something happens–”

“It won’t,” she said, a little too fast.

“And if it does, and I’m not here…” He broke off, exhaled hard. “Don’t make me regret trusting you.” That’s the cruelest part – he actually does trust me. And I… I don’t know if I deserve it. But gods help me, I can’t let him see the cracks.

Persía leaned back against the stone, hiding the quick throb of guilt under a mask of mockery. “Relax, big brother. I’ll be fine.” 

Lie, lie, lie. Keep lying until it feels true.

Keep lying until you’ve survived.

Persía was not fine, she was alive of course, but tired. So very tired.

The days blurred into one another, measured not by hours but by tasks – endless, menial, designed to reduce a person into a pair of hands.

Persía learned quickly: rise before the light spilled over the courtyard, wash in water so cold it burned, braid her hair neat so no one had excuse to tug it for disorder. Then the work began.

Sometimes it was the loom – thread after thread stretched taut until her shoulders screamed, fingers stung raw.

Other times the amphorae: clay jars heavy enough to bruise her hips as she hauled them across the stone floors, the wine sloshing inside like laughter at her expense.

Always, there was sweeping, scrubbing, fetching, the labor of keeping a house running without leaving a trace of herself in it. That was the rule of a good slave, after all; be useful, be silent, be invisible. She was useful, yes. Silent, almost. Invisible? Never.

Damasos saw to that.

He liked her visible, perched on the stool with the harp across her lap, voice pouring like honey into his long afternoons.

She learned to shape her tones to his moods: bright and airy when the symposium dragged, sultry when his temper bristled, soothing when wine sharpened his tongue. She learned to bow her head just so, to let her lashes cast a shadow over eyes that saw far too much.

Euphemia had once told her: Words can be dangerous or calming. You decide which ones to use. Persía decided every day, every hour. She buttered lies with sweetness, dressed truths in ribbons, and sold the illusion of devotion so well she nearly believed it herself. Nearly.

Does she mess up? Oh, constantly. The eyebrow twitch alone is a war crime, but apparently sarcasm isn’t on the approved list of slave behaviours. Who knew?

The first time, it was over nothing: a missed note in a song, barely noticeable.

But Damasos noticed everything of course.

She had been working for few months already when one of those failures the steward with a very round face, like a vegetable, brought the rod. A polished length of wood, broad enough to sting without breaking bone.

They told her to hold out her hands. She stared at her fingers – slender, calloused from harp strings – and thought, absurdly, these were her only weapons here.

The blow cracked across her knuckles, bright and hot as lightning. Pain shot up her arm, and she bit down on sound, nails digging into her palms until they nearly drew blood. Another strike. Another. Her hands throbbed from pain. Listen here Turnip, kindly take your “discipline” and stick it where Helios doesn’t shine.

Until she heard a voice, it was low and dangerous.

“Enough.”

She froze, breath snagging. Damasos stood in the doorway, a robe slung careless over his shoulder, his face carved in something colder than marble. His gaze slid from her to the steward, lingering with a stillness that made the air feel sharp.

“If Neaera has no working hands,” he said, his voice soft but had a dangerous tint to it, “then what will you offer to play the harp at my evening dinners? Your own tongue?”

The steward blanched. The rod slipped from his grasp and clattered against the tiles.

Damasos crossed the room, slow and deliberate, and took her hands in his, so gently it made her stomach twist.

He examined the swelling, the rising welts, as if they were cracks in a prized kylix. Then he turned and struck the steward across the jaw, a blow so sudden it echoed off the walls. Not just any kind of bitch slap, this made her want to yell ‘I like your cut G!’ That probably wasn’t the best idea, however.

“Touch her again without my word,” he said, voice smooth as oil, “and I’ll have you skinned.”

That was the first time Persía understood what she truly was to him – not a servant, not a girl maid, but an instrument, an inanimate object. That was what a slave was, a possession.

That night, when she sat by the brazier, flexing her fingers in the dim glow, she stared at the faint bruises blooming like violets and thought: Songbird, he calls me.

Pretty cage, gilded rotten bars.

When she got out, she was going to pluck his motherfucking eyeballs out. 

The boy’s scream carried across the yard like a pig’s cry while it was being slaughtered.

Persía’s head snapped toward the sound just in time to see him break from the line of slaves, legs pumping, terror cracking his face open like plaster.

Nothing like watching a boy get hunted like artisanal ham to really kickstart the day.

For a heartbeat, she almost believed he might reach the river – a silver thread in the distance, promising freedom.

He did not.

Damasos’ men were quicker, and crueler.

One darted left to cut him off, another flicked his whip across the boy’s path, laughing as leather kissed his cheeks.

They played him like a boar in the hunt, herding him back and forth, cracking lashes in his face until his feet faltered. When his breath broke into sobs and his body trembled with exhaustion, one man hooked the boy’s ankle with a whip, yanked, and sent him sprawling into the dust.

He crawled, still trying for the water, but they were bored now.

The game ended with a sword sliding through his back like a stick through clay.

He twitched once, twice – then stilled.

Persía felt her teeth grind. She made herself keep walking. She had learned, too well, what happened to the ones who lingered. They’re all monsters.

Kleio was waiting by the shattered gate, a clay jug balanced on her hip, wearing the dull green chiton Damasos favoured for his household slaves – wool so coarse it bit the skin. Her bare feet were streaked with dust, her dark hair braided back tight.

“Come,” she murmured, eyes flicking toward the courtyard. “He wants you seen.” Of course he does.

They slipped inside, past the gate where ivy clung to it.

The courtyard boiled with new slaves, fresh from the market or claimed from debts unpaid. Had one of the masters died?

Persía smelled sweat, blood, and something bitter; fear clinging to skin.

Damasos stood at the central, tall in his wine-dark himation, assessing his acquisitions like cattle. Which in a way they were, to him that is.

He is merciful as a master compared to the rest.

Which is like saying an owl is a kind and sweet pet. Which is a complete lie, people shouldn’t believe those videos they see on the internet, those flying fuckers are mean.

Still, she’ll take it.

Assessing the moment she realised that he definitely had not paid for these lives; fortune had delivered them to him.

The death of a slaver meant profit for the living: Damasos collected what was owed in grain, gold, and flesh.

“My little songbird,” Damasos called when he saw her, his tone slick with the pride he showed, “Neaera has some bruises and wounds on her hands. Who among you can tend her?”

It was not truly a question. It was a command, his voice cutting through the murmur of the slaves. The courtyard fell silent.

“Great Kyrios Damasos,” a voice answered from behind Persía, low and deliberate, “I can help the young Neaera with her hurts.”

Persía turned. The speaker moved forward: a heavy, broad-faced woman with deep-set eyes the colour of charred bronze.

Her hair was bound in a thick plait, threaded with a strip of ragged red cloth, and she wore the same drab green chiton as the others, but there was nothing meek in the way she carried herself.

Her gaze held an old, unflinching knowledge, and when it fell on Persía, it lingered like a knife laid flat against her skin.

“I have herbs,” the woman added, bowing just enough to show respect without surrender. “And hands that know how to mend flesh of any kind.”

Damasos studied the woman for a long moment, then flicked his jewelled fingers.

“Know this, slave,” he said, his voice carrying through the courtyard. “Do more harm than good to my Neaera, and you will suffer a fate worse than death.”

“My Kyrios,” Persía said before she could stop herself, steady though her pulse stuttered, “I believe she will do no harm to me.”

The woman’s dark eyes flicked toward her, measuring.

Damasos’ brows rose a fraction. He was a man who liked being amused, and Persía, somehow, often amused him.

“Do you now?” A pause, heavy with dangerous intent. “Then she is yours to command.”

A ripple of laughter broke among his men, sharp and incredulous. How ridiculous. Slaves did not command slaves. The very notion was an obscenity, and yet, here it was, spoken by the man who owned them all.

Persía felt the heat rise to her face, not from pride but from the bafflement that coiled in her gut. Yours to command? What did that even mean for someone in chains?

Damasos, bored of the jest already, flicked his hand toward the others.

“Take the rest for training,” he said, his voice snapping.

The courtyard dissolved into motion, men dragging the newest slaves toward the yard where they would be beaten, drilled, and possibly named again.

Persía stood rooted as the woman approached, slow and steady.

“Come, little nightingale,” she murmured, pitched for Persía’s ears alone. “We’ll keep those pretty fingers singing.”

The weight of that voice prickled Persía’s spine as she followed her into the shadowed colonnade.

The courtyard, with its bright laughter and cracking whips, seemed to shrink behind her.

Kleio slipped in at her side, sharp-eyed as ever, and asked, “What is your name, healer?”

“Thaleia, young one.” The woman’s tone softened – not much, but enough to suggest she wanted to seem harmless, almost kind, to the two girls. “And my lady.”

So it’s my lady now? Sweet, if you ignore the fact that I’m roughly functioning mostly as eye candy with a hint of agency. She should definitely correct her, but then again, why ruin the illusion? It’s not as if the concept of ‘lady’ comes with hazard pay.

“I’m no lady,” Persía said quickly, almost choking on a laugh. “I’m a slave, like the rest of you.”

Thaleia only inclined her head, slow as a tide, and Persía missed the glint of something unreadable in her eyes. 

They walked on, leaving the bright heat for the dim cool of the women’s quarters.

The women’s quarters glowed with low firelight, shadows bending long against mudbrick walls.

Outside, the house murmured with distant laughter and the faint thrum of a lyre; men feasting where oil lamps burned bright.

Here, in the hush behind the inner door, Persía sat with her hands submerged in a clay bowl of cool water, the surface clouded by crushed leaves. Her fingers throbbed in time with her heartbeat, knuckles red and swollen where the rod had kissed bone.

“They usually strike the hands, arms and back because they’re most useful,” Thaleia said, “It leaves no mark on the face, and the work goes on.”

Persía glanced up. Thaleia’s eyes gleamed in the firelight. In her lap rested a mortar streaked green and brown, the pestle rolling lazy circles beneath her fingers.

“What is that?” Persía asked, though she already guessed.

“Comfrey root, mashed fine,” Thaleia murmured. “For swelling. And this– ” she tipped a pinch of grey powder into the paste– “is willow bark. It eases pain, if you know the measure.” Her hands moved with precision. She definitely knew what she was doing. “Too much and you’ll bleed inside. Most men don’t know that, but most men don’t know much worth knowing.”

Ah, so apparently plants are basically ancient chemistry sets with optional homicide. She definitely liked that option.

She was glad men – bless their nonexistent brains – couldn’t distinguish comfrey from a salad.

Kleio leaned closer, sharp-eyed as a kestrel, watching the mix darken in the fire’s glow. “What else can it do?” she asked.

Thaleia’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “Depends what you want. The same bark that numbs pain can, given long enough, thin the blood so a man never wakes from his wine sleep. Laurel leaves can calm the mind – or still a child in the womb, and then there’s hemlock, but that’s no gentle friend.”

Persía stilled, the weight of those words sinking like a stone. There were whispers about Thaleia in the courtyard, Persía had ignored them at first.

Pharmakis, they called women like her. Witches. Followers of Hekátē, if one dared speak the name aloud. Persía wondered, for the first time, how much of that was rumour, and how much of it was the truth.

“Willow, laurel, hemlock…” Kleio’s voice trembled between awe and fear.

“They’re only plants,” Thaleia said softly, binding the poultice in a strip of linen before laying it cool and damp across Persía’s fingers. “What matters is knowing what to do with them.”

Her touch was steady, almost tender. The ointment felt cool on her hands. It made her finally relax. “Hold still. The comfrey will keep the flesh from bruising deep. And when the ache wakes you in the night, chew a sprig of myrrh. It sweetens the blood.”

On the edge of the hearth, Mêlitta began to hum; an old island lullaby, low and lilting.

It softened the air, dulled the iron taste of pain.

Persía let her eyes fall half-shut, watching firelight shiver over Thaleia’s hands, over herbs which names she would not forget.

Pain ebbed, little by little, replaced by something stranger: the sense that this woman carried a lot of useful hidden knowledge, where healing ended, and killing began, separated only by a whisper of intent. It was exiting in a way.

And she thought her philosophy textbooks were dark. This is like reading Aristotle if he were lowkey a serial killer with some type of botany degree.

The courtyard lay quiet but for the drone of cicadas, the kind of heat-heavy hush that pressed thoughts to the surface.

Persía had been oiling the amphorae, rubbing the clay until it gleamed, when her mind slipped where it should not.

In the market, she’d heard the talk often enough.

A good slave was like a well-bred horse – something to boast of, something to share when the wine ran sweet and the night turned long. Men laughed when they said it, clapping each other on the shoulder, bargaining with the same ease they haggled over amphorae of Chian wine.

If the price was right, even a man’s household was not his own.

She had seen it too, in the dark alleys near the harbour, where girls and boys with wrists like reeds were paraded for the coin of men who were not their masters.

Old customs lingered like mildew; some cities made laws against it, but laws wilted in heat and hunger. To many, a slave’s body was as common as bread, shared out to seal favours, ease debts, or sweeten an oath.

Persía counted herself fortunate that Damasos did not cling to those older cruelties.

She would never have endured being passed from hand to hand like a jug at the feast. Still, some households held shadows she could not charm away.

Old Parmenon, with his failing eyes and gentle speech, meant no harm. Slow enough that she could’ve grown a second head and he still wouldn’t notice.

Bless him, I think he’s trying, but also fuck him for being a slaver.

But the others; those were different.

There was Lysandros, hulking and mute as a stone idol, glowering.

And then Menekratês: cruel-eyed, quick-fingered, always reaching. His hands spoke where his tongue needn’t, leaving Helike mottled with bruises the colour of rotten fruits. Ianessa’s sobs leaked through the night like a cracked wineskin, and no one dared to stop him.

Even his own companions avoided his gaze, but debt binds tighter than iron, and they all owed Damasos too much to leave.

So Persía smiled when she must, kept her steps soft, her words softer still, and told herself that fear was only another mask she could wear.

For now.

The chamber reeked of cedar oil and honey. Thick enough to coat the back of Persía’s throat, clinging like resin, burning as it slid down like an unwatered draught of whisky.

Damasos reclined on a mound of embroidered cushions, the very picture of predation gone complacent: a lion grown fat in captivity, claws dulled by indulgence. At his side knelt a boy, feeding him sugared almond – imported, ostentatious, the sort of luxury paraded for prestige rather than palate.

That alone told her enough: Damasos’ coffers were not merely full, they were spilling.

He cracked one between his teeth with languid relish, eyes cutting toward her in a slow, predatory arc.

“Play for me,” he said, as he was requesting more wine.

Persía inclined her head in a bow so precise it could have been diagrammed. “Yes, Kyrios.”

The harp was light in her hands, its wood polished smooth by years of touch, strings stretched taut and faintly sour with age. She fitted it against her shoulder and drew the first notes, each one falling into the stillness like a single drop into an undisturbed pool.

Her voice followed – low, tempered, a ribbon of silk drawn taut.

Speak softly, love and hold me warm against your heart

Speak softly, love so no one hears us but the sky
The vows of love we make will live until we die

The words were tender to the point of fragility, yet Persía rendered them with precision, no excess flourish, nothing more than what he sought.

Wine-coloured days warmed by the Helios
Deep velvet nights when we are one

Beneath the calm cadence of her song, her mind was cataloguing him – how his lids drooped at the second refrain; how his hum deepened when the verse invoked devotion; how every fibre of him seemed to lean toward lyrics that framed love as possession.

So no one hears us but the sky.

Damasos exhaled in pleasure, his lips curving. “Ah… precisely like that, my songbird. You sing so beautifully.”

She bent her head in a gesture of meek assent, though the muscle along her jaw clenched as the harp’s last thrums evaporated, lingering like the ghost of something bittersweet.

When the song ebbed to silence, he dismissed the boy with a flick of his fingers and let his eyes fall shut, a smile ghosting across his lips – already slipping toward slumber under the narcotic haze of illusion.

The illusion that this voice, this presence, belonged wholly to him.

Persía set the harp down with meticulous care, her face as still and inscrutable as marble.

Within, however, her thoughts honed themselves to a cold, precise edge.

So this is what satiates him. Very well. She can perform devotion – flawless, unerring – until the day that piety becomes the instrument of his own demise.

Persía had been leaning against the colonnade, sunlight seeping into her spine, when the sound cut through the hall: a sharp crack, a grunt of pain, and then the dull, inevitable collapse of flesh on stone. She stilled. At the foot of the dais sprawled a krater – vast, ornate, and now ruinously fractured.

There goes a few centuries of someone’s inheritance. Tragic. Truly heartbreaking.

Not the man bleeding on the floor, no, the pottery.

Its culprit was already being dragged away, arms twisted cruelly behind him, blood threading from his temple. The crowd? Eyes lowered, mouths sealed in brittle composure. Not a soul moved.

Yes, everyone, do carry on. Nothing screams “civilisation” like ignoring violence in public while pretending your morals haven’t gone rancid.

Persía’s fists curled.

She was so close to auditioning for the role of “Local Martyr No. 3.” But unfortunately, she liked breathing, so… pass.

Intervention, she knew, was neither sanctioned nor survivable. The consequences promised to be… baroque, and yet.. every nerve in her ached to lunge forward, to speak with a voice honed like iron: Stop. This is wrong. You are all wrong.

Instead, she remained a statue. Watched as they pulled him beyond the bronze doors toward the flocks’ pens, his muffled struggles lingering like an aftertaste. Rage gathered in her gut – dense, bitter, volcanic.

Ah, yes. Bottled rage. My favourite emotional support beverage. Fuck.

Hours later, when the air was thick with wine, blood and sweat, she found him. Slumped in the shadow of a low wall, tunic clotted with blood and dust, head bowed.

“Hey.” Her voice cleaved the silence.

He flinched. “You… shouldn’t–”

“I know.” She crouched, ignoring the protest in her own muscles. Hands moved with unthinking fluency: untying rope, rinsing wounds with cool water, applying herbs, lavender, thyme, rue, bandaging with strips torn from her own hem. 

He hissed as the linen touched raw skin but offered no words. Persía required none. Her concentration was austere, her motions surprisingly precise.

“You could have died,” she murmured, studying the lacerations with the detached critique of a scholar. “Not that I’d have sanctioned it. Poor method. Dreadful execution.”

A+ for commitment, F- for technique. Do better.

A rasp of laughter escaped him, thin and incredulous. “You’re… mad.”

“I prefer systematic,” she corrected mildly. Not like he understood what that meant. “Madness suggests disorder. I use calibrated disorder. A specialty of mine, I’ve heard.”

When the final knot was tied, he raised his gaze; wary, clouded with pain. “Why?”

Persía’s pause was deliberate. She met his eyes, her own dark and unflinching. “Because someone ought to,” she said at last. “Because gods don’t, and mortals seldom bother. You’re welcome.”

Might start spouting on about divine absenteeism soon here. Spoiler: they flunk ethics.

His stare fractured into something almost human, a flicker of amusement, fragile as a reed.

Persía rose, brushing the grit from her skirts. “Next time,” she said over her shoulder, “try not to break priceless ceramics. My moral compass bends, but it does have a tensile limit.”

She walked away with that familiar, metallic thrum in her chest: the certainty that the world was not hers to mend – only to tilt, infinitesimally, toward mercy when the occasion allowed.

Sometimes, that was sufficient.

Right?

Samos, Vathy, Three Weeks Later

The darkness swallowed everything but the throb of her own pulse.

Persía lay curled into herself, knees tight against her chest, fists clutching nothing but air.

Why. Why. Why.

Today the overseers had made an example of an older man.

Persía’s body still shook with the memory – the whip’s crack, the wet rip of skin, the silence that followed when the man no longer had breath left to scream.

He had simply… stopped.

Stopped, as if pain had an off-switch. Neat little exit.. Except not neat at all, because I can still hear it. It echoes. I think it’s under my skin now.

All this – for what? The thought gnawed at her skull like a rat. She had traded freedom for chains. Endured Damasos’ hand on her cheek, smiled when her stomach lurched. She had told herself it was worth it, until tonight.

Until she’d seen what the books had omitted. The mutilated bodies, the discarded corpses of those deemed “useless.”

Ancient law had given masters terrifying freedom: a slave could be flogged, branded, even executed at whim.

Crucifixion was common; so was throwing men to the beasts in amphitheaters, or forcing poison down their throats. No trial, no appeal – just the simple fact of ownership.

Funny how “property rights” never make it onto the inspirational classroom posters. Strange, that.

The air shifted; a ripple in the void, like silk dragged through water. His voice arrived before his form. Smooth, calm, sharp enough to cut.

“Are you done?”

Persía flinched. A pair of bare feet padded into her vision, stopping just short of her curled frame. Zagreus stood over her, one hand braced on his hip, the other gesturing carelessly. His black hair shimmered like oil in candlelight that wasn’t really there.

“Because if this is your grand plan to get those missing people back – lying here being pitiful –it’s underwhelming,” he said.

She stared at the floor. “Go away.”

“No.” He crouched, elbows balanced on his knees, green eyes studying her as though she were a puzzle with half the pieces missing. “You dragged me in, little one. Now you get me.”

She hated him for calling her that. Hated how steady his voice was when hers kept breaking.

“You think I don’t see it?” His voice was soft but merciless. “You’re drowning yourself in nihilism so you can quit without admitting it. Why not be honest? End the farce. Go home.”

Persía’s throat tightened. “You don’t understand.” Her voice cracked, bitter as brine. “I came here to find out where the stolen ones went, grab the proof, and leave. Simple and clean, but now–” She pressed her palms into her eyes until sparks burst behind them. “Now I’ve seen it. The invisible chains. The rot. It’s worse than I imagined. History books barely touched it, and I can’t just… walk away. But if I stay – what then? Fix it? Burn it down? Is that even mine to do?”

Surprise twist: turns out changing the past is less “Doctor Who romp” and more “existential crisis with bonus bloodsport.”

Zagreus crouched closer, his eyes like old wine lit by fire. “And if you do? If you burn it all – what fills the vacuum you leave? Or do you stop thinking once the flames are pretty?”

Her laugh came jagged. “You think I haven’t asked that? What if I end it here, and it grows back worse? What if I make it worse?”

“Then,” Zagreus said, each syllable like a struck string, “you make damn sure it cannot come back. You carve it out – root and stem – until nothing remains to grow again.”

His words broke over her chest like a wave, dragging her sharp and broken pieces with it.

“You make it sound so easy.”

He leaned closer, smiling slow and wicked. “It isn’t. That’s why it’s worth doing.”

Something cracked; not sound but sense, a fault-line splitting. Far off, the globe that held her divinity flickered. Molten light hung fractured in the dark. Another shard splintered, bleeding gold and violet threads curling toward her like smoke, her stomach dropped.

Zagreus followed her gaze, jaw tight. “You feel it?”

“Yes.” Her whisper rasped. “It’s stronger.”

“And it’s breaking faster. The longer you wallow, the uglier your awakening gets. Khaos isn’t patient, little one.”

She buried her face in her knees. “I’m so tired.”

Silence pressed close until Zagreus moved. He slid an arm beneath her knees, another behind her shoulders, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. She didn’t fight him. Couldn’t.

A couch shimmered into being – deep red, soft as breath. He set her down and sat beside her, fingers drifting through her curls. The strands were frizzed, dulled from neglect. He twined one idly, something unspoken shadowing his eyes.

“You miss your family.”

Her throat worked. She nodded.

His hand moved slow, combing through her hair like he was untangling her soul. “Tell me.”

And she did. In fragments; the unwanted wedding, Euphemia’s lessons, the letters. The nausea when Damasos touched her. How the world now looked smeared with blood. Words spilled until her chest was hollow.

Finally, her voice broke. “I thought – I thought I could handle it. That if I suffered long enough, it would mean something.”

Zagreus tipped her chin, his eyes luminous. “It will, but only if you keep breathing.”

Her lips trembled. “What if eternity makes me like them?”

“The danger,” he said softly, “isn’t eternity. It’s despair and what it’s doing to you now.”

He brushed a curl behind her ear. “You’re not alone, Persía. Not while I can find you in the dark.”

For the first time in weeks, her chest eased enough to let breath in.

“Maybe,” Zagreus mused, conspiratorial, “you should ask for a little help next time you pray.”

“That’s ominous as fuck.”

“Yes. But what do you have to lose?”

Besides dignity, sanity, and a rapidly disintegrating soul-orb that keeps her semi-mortal? Nothing major.

She huffed. “Fine. But who do I even pray to?”

“You already have a connection. Don’t you?”

“Him?” she blinked. “You know what he was like when I was at Camp?”

“I’ve seen your memories.” His grin curved. “So, do you?”

Images flashed: Mr. D at the tree, complaining but never leaving. The darkness in his gaze when quests ended in coffins. The way he stayed, griping and snapping, but staying for them nonetheless.

“Oh.”

“Ah,” Zagreus hummed, smug.

“Why are you so sure he’d answer me?”

He smirked, withholding. “Figure it out.”

“You’re such an asshole.”

He laughed, low and dangerous. “Yes. Which is why you like me.”

She pinched his nipple.

“Ow. Stop being a child.” He flicked her forehead.

God of the Underworld, ladies and gentlemen. Truly terrifying.

For hours, they talked. He listened, and when silence grew too long, he filled it with stories – souls wandering, tyrants begging for rebirth, farmers who didn’t, mortals clawing toward light. His voice curled like smoke, heavy with eternity.

And for the first time in a long time, Persía felt something like peace.

Not because the world hurt less, but because someone else was carrying a corner of it with her.

Vathy, The Next Evening 

The brazier hissed as another log surrendered to flame, spitting resin that perfumed the chamber with smoke and pine.

Persía crouched before it, knees drawn close, arms wrapped tight around herself like a makeshift fortress. Firelight licked her face, staining her skin in molten orange, and for a moment she watched it the way sailors watch horizons; hungry for something beyond reach.

The letters lay beside her in a neat stack, edges softened from too many readings. She could recite them by heart now: Euphemia’s bright lines, Leontios’ carefully measured optimism, the thread of love binding every syllable.

Once, those words had warmed her like wool in winter. Now they felt like relics, tokens of a world paling in memory, like ink left too long in the sun.

Her throat ached with the weight of silence.

Zagreus’ voice still lingered at the edges of her mind, dark silk curling around her thoughts, and yet… when she blinked, she was alone again.

Alone in a house that smelled of blood, sweat and cruelty.

Alone in a skin that no longer felt like hers.

She bowed her head, fingers knotting together until the bones pressed white. Her lips parted. The invocation faltered, then steadied, shaky but reverent:

“O’ Dionysos, Lord of Wine and Madness, twice-born to some, Liberator to many, He who lifts the weary from despair… receive this fire, this breath, this humble offering of my voice. You who comfort the grieving, who crown the broken with ivy, I beg you: turn your gaze toward me.”

The words scraped out raw, ragged at the edges. A silence stretched, brittle as glass. She swallowed hard, jaw clenching until it hurt, then cracked further, stone giving way under strain.

“Just… please.” The plea shuddered out of her. “I need something. Anything that feels like – like I’m not so–” Her voice broke, swallowed by breath. “I just feel so alone.”

The fire popped, scattering sparks against the brazier’s rim. She stared into it, as if the god might rise laughing from the embers. Nothing. Only the slow collapse of wood into ash.

Right. Of course. Even the gods are busy. Guess I’ll just marinate in despair until further notice.

Persía dragged a hand down her face, nails biting into her skin as though pain could anchor her. “Fuck,” she whispered.

The word came again, ragged, torn from somewhere deeper. “Fuck.”

Her head dropped to her knees. Shoulders shook, firelight casting her shadow long and brittle against the wall.

The world seemed to contract around her; breath, heat, despair.

Far away, beyond hearth or mortal sense, something stirred. A pulse, dark and sweet, like wine seeping through soil.

It did not speak. It did not move, but it listened.

And that, though she could not know it, was enough to shift the air between prayer and silence.

Vathy, Seven Days Later

Persía staggered across the courtyard, the sun low and sharp against her back. One hydria balanced awkwardly on her shoulder; the other refused all cooperation, slipping from her hip no matter how she wedged it there. Her fingers burned, her arms trembled, and the sweat at her hairline did little to improve morale.

Fantastic. Might as well audition for the role of ‘pack mule number three.’ Was theatre a thing yet?

“Why,” she muttered, teeth gritted, “wasn’t a plumbing a thing in ancient times, I would give anything for a plumbing system right now.”

The Minoans literally had flushing toilets and somehow humanity collectively said, ‘nah, let’s keep suffering.’ Peak civilisation.

The second jar lurched violently, threatening to topple. She cursed, fumbling for balance and nearly losing both.

And this is how I die. Not in battle, not facing monsters, not even in some grand poetic sacrifice – crushed by pottery like a Looney Tunes extra.

Then – almost imperceptibly – he was there.

A thin young man, his chiton dyed a deep, rich purple that somehow didn’t look absurd in a morning courtyard. It reminded her of Camp Jupiter.

His brown hair fell in soft disarray just above his ears, as though he had risen from sleep and left it be. Yet he moved with the easy, practiced grace of someone who knew how to make everything look effortless.

If she tried that, she’d look like a raccoon raiding trash cans. Life is unfair.

“Here,” he said lightly, almost teasing. Without ceremony, he slid the second jar into her arm, adjusting it as if it had always belonged there.

Persía froze, eyes wide. “Oh. Thank you, Master…?”

He shook his head, smiling faintly. “Not a master. But you may call me Evius.”

“Evius,” she repeated carefully, before ducking her head. “Thank you.”

The jars balanced now, they started toward the house. The courtyard lay still, save for the slap of sandals on stone and the soft clink of clay. Persía tightened her grip.

She didn’t normally enjoy company, not this close, not like this – and yet beside him she felt strangely at ease. Which was dangerous. Comfort always was. Great, body, thanks for the dopamine hit. No survival instincts left, huh?

However, this silence was getting awkward as fuck.

Say something, idiot. Literally anything but the first thing that comes to mind.

Her mouth betrayed her first. “So… which parent stunted your emotional growth?”

Her cheeks heated the moment the words escaped. Oh my Khaos. Not that. Girl, shut your mouth before you get us into more trouble.

But Evius laughed; bright, unguarded, making him surprisingly beautiful.

Oh good, he’s hot and emotionally available. Kill me now. Actually don’t, this is the best interaction I’ve had all week.

He covered his grin with a cough into his fist. “Apologies. You caught me off guard. To answer honestly: I have no mother, so I suppose the blame rests on my father. And you?”

Persía blinked. “Eh. I’ve got both parents, and they’re… good. So technically I don’t even have an excuse. Probably just trauma. People don’t really like me, especially here.” Accidental oversharing: my toxic trait. Freud would have a field day.

Evius tilted his head, eyes tracing her face. “And how do you sleep at night, knowing you’re disliked?”

“With no underwear,” Persía said without hesitation. “In case they want to kiss my ass.”

Evius snorted.

They fell into easier talk: how long each had been in Samos. Persía claimed almost a year, which wasn’t exactly a lie. She wondered if he’d noticed she was a slave – though truthfully, in Greece, it was often hard to tell at a glance. Clothing blurred lines, and not every slave bore marks. Sometimes all that set one apart was who answered when called.

“And you?” she asked.

“I’ll be here some time,” he said thoughtfully. “Not sure how long. No plans to leave in the near future.”

They shifted the heavy urns into the andrôn’s storage corner, where great pithoi already squatted in neat rows, earthen giants lined with resin to keep water cool.

Hmmm…If she fucks up more in the future, this is going to be her resting place, isn’t it. Roommate to ancient Tupperware.

Their jars emptied, they stepped out again toward the river.

Persía brushed sweat from her brow. “I should bake you something in return. For helping.”

Evius shook his head, smiling slightly. “Only if you eat them too. The help was my pleasure.”

She crouched by the water, dipping her hands. A stray strand of hair slipped down, tickling her cheek; she shoved it behind her ear, only for it to fall loose again. Slave-grown, uneven, stubborn as she was.

“I have something for that.”

Evius drew a simple bronze pin from his own dark curls and slid the strand neatly behind her ear, gathering it with the rest.

Persía touched it lightly. “Oh. Thank you.”

“Keep it. You need it more than I.” His gaze flicked downward, and only then did she notice his eyes fixed on her hands; red, battered, grotesque from beatings.

She instinctively crossed them over her chest, uncertain. Yes, hi, please don’t stare at my hands. They currently resemble a Jackson Pollock interpretation of pain.

Evius pulled a small flask from his robes. “May I?”

“Um… sure?”

“I’m accident-prone myself. I’ve it on good word this salve helps.”

He took her hands gently, turning them in his palms. All Persía could think was how unfairly good his hands looked.

Of course his hands are nice. Of course. Meanwhile hers looked like she tried to high-five a cheese grater.

They sat together on the rocks while he spread the ointment carefully over torn skin. The balm was cool, scent sharp with herbs, and the relief was immediate.

“Better?”

She exhaled, almost a laugh. “Much. Thank you.”

He smiled at her; quiet, warm. She found herself smiling back.

Maybe, Persía thought, she could hope to see him again. He seemed… nice.

Chapter Text

1285 BCE, Samos, Vathy

The air inside Damasos’ hall was thick with lamb fat and smoke, torches spitting resin against the walls. Three days into Boedromiōn, the fall month, even the marble floor shivered with sea-wind chill. Persía sat cross-legged with her kithara, strings gleaming amber in the firelight.

Her fingers shaped song, but her mind could not stay still. She saw again the old man with clouded eyes collapsing in the barley fields, never rising. The infant who followed him two nights later, his mother’s cries carrying until dawn, when both were gone.

Around her, the living thinned by the day; cheeks hollow, ribs like lattice beneath skin, coughs clinging to the air like cobwebs. They laboured more, ate less, drank scarcely at all.

Platters of lamb, pyramids of exotic fruits, jugs of honey-thick wine was before her. The masters full bellies and flushed faces was a sign of no shortage of coin or appetite.

Yes, truly a balanced economy: let the workers starve so the masters can field-test the carrying capacity of their gut linings with imported goods.

Persía plucked a chord, soft and golden.

At the table, Damasos lounged with wine brimming in his cup. Menekratês and Lysandros bent toward him, their words slithering beneath the harp’s song.

“…lost another ship in the Kritikó Sea.”

“Same here. Wasn’t even a storm, nor pirates. Gods-damned whirlpools – dragged the whole ship under.”

“And the cargo?”

“Gone. Dead on impact, they say. And dead don’t count toward the payment.”

“Enosikhthôn must be angry. Would be good to know why – we already sacrifice enough for safe passage. Still, fewer mouths left gnawing at the bread.”

“Idiot. That’s no gain for us. No slaves, no silver.”

“Hmm. We’ll need another route. Kritikó won’t do anymore,” Damasos muttered, rubbing his bare chin.

Persía’s hands did not falter on the strings, but her thoughts coiled tight, twisting sharper with every note. The Kritikó Sea. Whirlpools don’t simply appear overnight to one place – no sailor’s tale could explain it away.

Note to self: spontaneous whirlpools are not, in fact, a naturally occurring geographical feature.

Correlation with divine mood swings: highly probable.

Her mind leapt to Tritôn and there to the envoy he had told her about. If something was shifting there, then the whirlpools were no accident.

They were caused by Royal Family’s mood swings.

Ah yes, the Olympian elite – eternally consistent in their ability to treat the Aegean like a personal stress ball.

She played on, each plucked chord as smooth as silk, but inside a current pulled her deeper.

This was more than rumour, more than the drifting scraps she had gathered until now. This was a thread at last – something solid enough to grip.

A clue, a direction, a sign the all her hardships hadn’t been for nothing. Finally. Finally, she had something she could work with.

Damasos clapped once – sharp, like a crack of thunder – granting her permission to stop playing. The other two masters followed with applause, their hands sluggish with wine, their faces split in drunken approval.

Beckoning her forward, Damasos drew a small wooden box from the folds of his robe. The other masters smirked knowingly; he himself smiled, almost as though proud.

“Neaera,” he said, her false name cutting her free of her thoughts.

His smile gleamed, polished and practiced. “That reminds me. Come here, my songbird. I have something for you.”

She shifted closer, the kithara still heavy against her knees. He opened the box with a careful flourish: inside lay a hairpin of gold, tipped with garnet. With deliberate care, he lifted her braid and pinned it in place, as though securing a prize of his own.

His palm lingered – brushing her neck, sliding down to the swell of her breast. Only cloth separated skin from skin.

A master’s interest.

To them, it was honor. To her, it was the invisible chain tightening around her throat. She forced a smile, thanked him for the “great honour,” even as the corner of her eye caught the stares of the other slaves.

Wonderful.

A shiny trinket to accessorise her gradual dehumanisation.

If late-stage capitalism ever needed a historical precedent, here it is – just swap the lamb fat for Amazon Prime.

She sat still as marble, the jewelled pin reflecting the fire as it sat in her hair.

Ugh. This whole ordeal leaves a taste somewhere between rancid oil and cheap perfume.

Her options are to bake something or to commit murder.

Currently undecided. Might multitask.

1284 BCE, Vathy

The path curled through the olive groves, narrow and dusty, leaves whispering in the evening breeze.

Persía crouched at the roadside, squinting at a patch of green that looked vaguely medicinal. Her little stack of wax tablets, scrawled with rough descriptions Thaleia had written, was no help, every herb seemed to share the same smug resemblance. Truly groundbreaking research, Persía, you’ve discovered ‘plant’.

“I wish there were pictures,” she muttered. “At least with ancient greek I don’t have dyslexia anymore.” Still, to Persía they all looked like weeds; leafy, green, and utterly useless.

If only she had an IKEA manual for plants.

She was already PMSing and now this? She was one minor inconvenience away from cutting her own bangs and going home. Hmmm.. I’d have to hack at myself with a sacrificial dagger, of course.

A look, certainly, but not the vibe she was looking for.

A shadow fell across her shoulder.

“Having gardening problems?” The voice was smooth, warm.

Persía startled, clutching the tablets to her chest. “Dear Khaos down under – Evius! Do you sneak up on everyone, or just me?”

“Only those who look like they’re losing the battle against local greenery.” His grin tilted, easy and amused.

Excellent. I’m being negged by a man whose shoes show his toes. This is my life now.

“I was on my way to the market. But if you need help with your herbs, I can spare the time. I’m in no hurry today.”

She looked at him in surprise. “You can identify plants?”

He crouched beside her, fingertips brushing the soil as though reacquainting himself with an old friend. With a deft tug, he plucked a sprig from the ground, shaking loose the dust.

“Achillea,” he said. “Good for wounds. Smells bitter, but it stitches the skin from the inside out.”

Persía took the sprig, skeptical. “And you just…know that, just by looking at it?”

“Of course. Plants have been a study of mine for a decade now.” He moved along the path, pausing at clusters with practiced ease.

Great. He’s handsome, mysterious, and a functional Wikipedia page.

Absolutely no red flags here.

What began as a single lesson stretched into hours. Evius named each leaf and flower as though greeting kin: asphodel, used in funeral rites; oleander, beautiful but deadly, its sap burning the skin if handled carelessly; mandrake, its root brewed as a sleeping draught, or, in heavier doses, to still a body forever; willow bark, to soothe fevers and dull pain.

Persía listened raptly, prying for details, especially when the talk turned to poisons. Yes, tell me more about which herbs kill and which merely cause ‘tummy troubles.’ This is valuable life experience.

He never once faltered, reciting properties and remedies with the calm certainty of a man who had tested them all.

“You sound like a scholar,” she remarked.

He smiled faintly. “Part-time physician actually. When people fall ill, I help. Herbs can do a lot in times of need.”

Persía tucked the yarrow sprig into her tablet with unexpected care. “Your knowledge is very vast, it’s impressive.”

Translation: I am dangerously close to developing a crush on a man who can correctly identify different salads.

Please end me.

He inclined his head at the compliment but offered no reply. Instead, when the path curved, he led her on a detour to where a river widened, glassy and golden under the sinking sun.

For a long moment, silence stretched; cicadas buzzing, olive branches stirring in the dusk. Persía busied herself with the tablet again, unsure why the air seemed thicker, as if waiting.

Because what this day really needed was an ambience upgrade.

“Well, I do have to thank you,” she said finally, brisk to cover the heat in her throat. “You’ve given me a lot to think about. Maybe next time Thaleia sends me for herbs, I won’t come back with weeds and disgrace.”

She hesitated, then added with a wry tilt of her mouth, “Oh – I forgot to tell you my name. Neaera.” The lie slid out easily. Yes, let’s complicate matters with false identities. Historically, that always goes well.

“It’s nice to have a name to the face,” Evius echoed, his tone unreadable. He plucked a grape from the vine that had wound itself near the bank and held it out between his fingers. “Here. Try one. They’re at their sweetest this season.”

Persía hesitated, then leaned forward, biting into it. The taste surprised her – bursting with delicious sweetness, cloying and wild.

Of course it tastes like heaven. Food is always at its best when handed to you by an attractive stranger in a vaguely ominous setting.

When she looked up again, his eyes were already on her. He studied her with an unsettling patience, as though he could read more than she wanted him to. Yet she felt no fear beneath his gaze. Only a strange, sudden thrill, like she was being challenged by this man.

Fantastic. She’d walked straight into the ‘mysterious man by a river’ trope. Statistically, this ends in either marriage or murder.

Possibly both.

The women worked together in the low light of the kitchen, each bent to her task. Mêlitta sat with a knife and a bowl, slicing figs and drizzling them with honey so thick it stretched in golden threads.

Beside her, Thaleia separated sprigs of herbs Persía had brought, cutting and sorting them into neat clay jars, the crisp snap of stems punctuating the quiet.

From the doorway came Kleio, balancing a woven basket of dried lentils and barley, her bare feet soft on the stone floor. She had crossed the outer garden to fetch them – their path had taken her through sunlight and sea-breeze, past the doorway that opened directly to the water. Beyond it, the Aegean glittered blue and bright, the air humming with gulls and the restless rhythm of waves.

Persía herself had come only to linger with them, half-work, half-company, kneading soap paste in a basin of lye and ash, her wrists flecked white with powder.

Nothing says ‘domestic bliss’ quite like voluntarily burning your hands with corrosive ash-water. A spa day, Dark Age edition.

Thaleia’s gaze strayed to her, then sharpened. She reached out suddenly, catching Persía’s wrists in her herb-stained hands. She turned them over – palm up, then down – her thumb brushing across the thin scars etched pale-gold and silvery against Persía’s darker skin. “My herbs shouldn’t work this quickly. These cuts were deep.”

Persía only shrugged, as if it were nothing. “Maybe your herbs work better when paired with my natural healing?” The paste Evius has put on her hands had worked wonders in such a short time. Natural healing? Natural healing?! You daft bimbo! You were trained to lie better.

Mammá would be ashamed.

Thaleia narrowed her eyes, but released her. “Hmm. Maybe.”

“You have the kyrios’ interest,” Mêlitta said, dragging a smear of honey across a pear slice, her gaze catching on the jewelled pin in Persía’s braid. “That’s not the sort of attention to envy.”

“Not his favour?” Kleio wrinkled her nose, grinding chamomile and mint in her mortar until the leaves released a sharp, bitter fragrance.

“No.” Thaleia stacked jars of fennel into the cupboard, lids clinking as she spoke. She wrung out a cloth hard enough that water ran between her fingers. “You haven’t seen her step into his chambers, have you?”

Kleio tilted her head, pestle stilled mid-circle. “What does the chamber have to do with favour? I heard the others say she has it already.”

“Only a courtesan has his favour,” Mêlitta said flatly, laying down the knife for another slice. Her eyes flicked back to Persía. “And she’s not one. Not yet.. right?”

Persía pressed soap paste into its wooden mould, her hands smarting from the lye, and shook her head absently, lost in thought.

“Then why doesn’t he let anyone in?” Kleio asked, pouring her crushed herbs into a clay pot. The water hissed as steam curled upward. “What’s so secret about the chambers?”

“Kyrios trusts only a chosen few,” Thaleia muttered, shutting the cupboard with a snap she seemed to regret.

Paranoid bastard. Of course he does. And naturally, the answers I need will be hidden in the one place guarded like Fort Knox. Excellent.

Mêlitta gave a humorless little laugh, slicing into a fig with a sharp twist. “If Kyrios Damasos is anything like our old one, he won’t even let courtesans inside. That chamber belongs only to his wife and his Head Courtesan.”

Kleio frowned, stirring the brew so the steam fogged her face. “But how does he even choose the Head Courtesan? There’s so many.”

“You know as well as I,” Thaleia said, folding the damp cloth over her arm, her voice low.

“By pleasing him,” Mêlitta supplied, steady and unflinching, setting the knife aside.

“Correct.”

Persía’s hands moved, but her mind was elsewhere.

Only the wife or the Head Courtesan crossed the threshold into Damasos’ inner chambers.

She’d seen courtesans drift through the property before, apart from the common slaves, their meals served separately, their eyes were darkened with kohl, their hair perfumed, their silks finer than anything Persía had ever touched as privileged as she had been.

Unlike mere bed-slaves, courtesans were educated to entertain; trained in song, dance, and even in far cleverer manipulations than other were.

Persía pressed harder into the soap mould, lips curving faintly. Just like she was.

Well, shit.

She had all the qualifications. Brilliant.

Nothing like finding out you’re overqualified for indentured servitude.

All four women were busy working when the argument cracked the room open; sharp and sudden, like a whip snapping against skin.

“Enough. I said no.”

The voice came from the garden threshold. A slave girl, Myrrhinê, scarcely older than Persía, stood rigid, her bundle of leeks scattered at her feet. Her skin was weathered from sun, her eyes hollow with sleepless nights. One cheek burned red, the skin split and weeping where the overseer’s lash had struck.

The man’s face purpled with fury. “You’ll say yes, or you’ll bleed for it, wretch.”

Persía stilled, her fingers sinking into the soap dough. The garden air prickled with panic. Beside her, Kleio jerked her gaze downward, and Thaleia’s hand pressed her head lower, forcing her to pretend deafness. Even Mêlitta muttered under her breath, “Don’t watch, Neaera. It’s better if it’s over quick.”

Yes, nothing says ‘female solidarity’ quite like group-ignoring domestic terrorism in real time.

What did she mean look away? Her? How could she?

Her body was already moving before the thought was finished. If she didn’t stop it, no one would.

You carve it out – root and stem – until nothing remains.

Zagreus’ words pulsed through her skull.

The overseer’s arm lifted again. Myrrhinê flinched, but she did not bow.

Persía slipped from the shadow of the kitchen doorway – then the world lurched. One blink she was in the doorway, the next she was behind him, as if space itself had folded to let her through.

Before her mind caught up, her body was already moving. Her hand came down hard at the base of his skull, precise and merciless.

The overseer stiffened, eyes rolling wide, then crumpled like a cut string.

The whip clattered harmlessly against the stones.

Persía stood frozen, chest heaving. Her hands trembled, not from the strike, but from the impossible speed; the way she’d crossed the garden without crossing it at all.

Well. Either I’ve developed teleportation, or I’m concussed and hallucinating.

Ten drachma says it’s the former, given there’s a fully grown man face-planting at my feet.

For a long heartbeat, nothing moved.

Then Myrrhinê dropped to her knees before Persía. Her hands shook as she pressed them together, whispering with a fevered intensity, “I prayed so hard to the gods, and they answered. They sent you, my lady – sent you to me in my greatest need.” She bowed up and down, hysterical, tears streaking through the grime on her face. “Thank you, thank you.” She bent low, lips brushing the hem of Persía’s chiton: the coarse, undyed wool of slave’s garb, stiff with salt and dried soap.

Startled, Persía bent quickly, catching her wrists before she could lower further. She lifted her gently, firmly. “No. Don’t. Look at me.” Her voice was low, urgent. “I need you to do something for me, okay?”

Myrrhinê’s eyes burned with desperate devotion. “Anything, my lady.”

“Never tell anyone what happened here. No one can know. Swear it.”

“Yes, my lady. I swear.” She nodded so hard Persía feared her neck might snap. Then, gathering her scattered bundle of leeks as though they were the only thing keeping her tethered to the earth, she fled.

Fantastic. Witness silenced.

And all it cost me was accepting the title of “my lady,” which in this economy is about as believable as a free amphora of wine.

For a moment, Persía stood alone, the unconscious overseer at her feet, the crash of waves filling the garden’s silence. One by one, Thaleia crept closer, then Kleio, then Mêlitta; faces pale, eyes wide.

“What do you want to do, my lady?” Thaleia whispered.

What did she mean? Persía had ruined everything with this choice.

A year of torment, of torture, of scheming – only for it all to end like this? She had fucked it up.

Why. Why. Why.

Why had she done this, for a woman she didn’t even know? Why was she so fucking stupid?

Marvellous.

Swoop in like some half-rate superhero, only to realise I’ve traded plausible deniability for a front-row seat in the next murder trial.

Bravo, Persía, truly inspired.

Persía dragged a shaking hand down her face, shoving back the hair plastered to her cheek. She wanted to claw herself raw.

Her fingers trembled; until Thaleia, steady as bedrock, caught her wrist.

The older woman’s calm steadied her, and Persía drew a ragged breath, her heartbeat slowing at last.

“We can’t… we can’t leave him here like this,” she said at last, voice fraying at the edges. “The last thing he saw was Myrrhinê. She’ll be blamed. She’ll be punished.”

“I agree.” Thaleia’s tone was level, unyielding. “Tell us what you want to do.”

Persía swallowed, gathering herself, forcing her mind to cut through the haze of panic. Letting him live as he was, unbound, unchallenged, was no choice at all. Memory loss was never certain. He would wake, and when he did, he would hunt down Myrrhinê, and worse, he would hunt the others.

Think, Persía. Think!

Her voice hardened. “We need to make it look like an accident.”

Thaleia nodded once and jogged to the garden wall. She leaned over, scanning the drop to the rocks below where waves gnawed at the cliff’s base. “The sea will take him. That should be enough.”

Persía’s throat tightened. She turned to Kleio and Mêlitta, who still hovered by the kitchen steps like frightened sparrows. “Fetch me wine – and a kylix. Quickly.”

They darted off without a word, skirts whipping around their ankles.

When Persía looked back, Thaleia was still watching her, steady, unblinking. That gaze gave her strength she wasn’t sure she had.

“Help me carry him onto the stone wall,” Persía said.

Thaleia inclined her head, her voice almost formal: “As you wish, my lady.”

Together, they lifted him – Persía gripping beneath his arms, Thaleia hauling his legs. The overseer sagged between them like a butchered stag, dead weight pulling at their shoulders. He gave a low, guttural groan as they heaved him up, but did not wake.

He’s not just heavy, he’s also croaky.

This is less ‘disposal of evidence’ and more ‘team-building exercise from hell.’

Brick scraped their forearms as they laid him across the garden wall. The sea wind whipped at their hair, salt spray stinging their eyes.

Kleio and Mêlitta stumbled back into the garden, breathless, clutching an amphora of wine and a bronze kylix.

Persía took the vessel without a word. Tilting the amphora, she poured a stream of wine past the overseer’s slack lips. He choked, sputtered once, but never opened his eyes.

“Good,” Persía muttered, handing the amphora back with steady hands that belied the tremor in her chest. Then, with a single sharp motion, she pressed against his shoulder and sent him pitching over the edge.

The silence broke on the rocks below. A wet crack echoed up the cliffside; bones splintering, flesh tearing. The sound was undoubtedly disgusting.

Ten out of ten for impact, zero for subtlety.

Subtle deaths don’t sound like someone dropped a meat bag weighting around 100 kilograms down a cliff.

Just saying.

She needed to plan her next murder a bit better.

Kleio clapped both hands over her mouth, eyes wide with horror. Mêlitta turned her face away. Only Thaleia stood still beside Persía, her expression unreadable.

Persía reached for the kylix, cool metal against her palm. Mêlitta, still pale, obediently poured wine into it, the liquid sloshing dark and red like blood.

Persía tipped the kylix just enough to let it spill, a sweeping half-circle of wine soaking into the stone. She loosened her grip. The bronze cup slipped from her fingers and hit the ground with a harsh clang, rolling to rest by the garden’s edge.

It would be found there first, cold and empty: proof enough of a man’s drunken stumble. And when they followed the trail down, they would find what the sea had broken on the rocks.

Persía exhaled, tasting salt and wine on the air. They had just murdered a man.

No, she had murdered that man. Her alone.

Khaos save me. What have I done?

And why on Khaos’ multicoloured ass, of all possible career paths, am I apparently specialising in “crisis clean-up with light homicide”?

Oh, how she needed Leontios right now.

Where was her Emotional Support Animal when she needed him.

Vathy, The Next Day

Persía wrung a tunic over the basin, knuckles white, listening without really listening as the voices of the laundresses rippled around her. Laundry was always a hive of gossip – safer than the hearth, since it was out in the open, yet quieter than the yard – and today the whispers swelled louder than the splash of water.

She should have cared about nothing but soap and cloth, but her mind still pulsed with the memory of yesterday, panic knotted tight beneath her ribs.

Yet beneath the panic, another thought pressed harder: she had done the right thing. Myrrhinê was safe because of her. The overseer’s life meant nothing; less than nothing. Slavers were the true monsters, feeding on the misery of others, and she had learned long ago that monsters deserved no mercy.

Cue the moral philosophy lecture nobody asked for: Aristotle probably would have called it “justice.” She’d call it “manslaughter with benefits.”

At least one of us is getting something out of it.

She drew the linen taut, twisting until the last drops bled into the basin. Enough. She could not keep flinching at her own shadow, could not keep choking on guilt. Weakness had no place here.

If she wanted to survive, if she wanted to tear this rot out at its roots, then she had to stop shrinking back.

“Did you hear? One of the overseers is dead.”

The words sliced through the steam. Buckets stilled, fabric dripping; for a heartbeat, the only sound was the ringing in Persía’s ears, sharp and hollow, like a struck bronze gong. The room seemed to vanish around her – steam, stone, voices receding – until all that was left was the high-pitched tinnitus screaming inside her skull.

Well, congratulations, brain. You’ve achieved surround-sound panic. Dolby Atmos anxiety.

Somebody fetch me a participation medal.

Fuck. This was it. She’d been caught.

“Truly?” another woman breathed.

“Yes. Drank himself full of wine, they say, and toppled off the wall. Shattered on the rocks below. A gruesome sight.”

Soap slipped from Persía’s hand. She didn’t need to look to know Kleio’s eyes were fixed on her; she felt them, hot as a brand. Still, she lifted her head. There it was – Kleio’s face, pale as chalk, mouth set but trembling, mirroring Persía’s own nausea.

Yet Persía remembered last night, after the courtyard had emptied, when Kleio had come to her. The girl’s voice had quavered, but her words had been steady: she wished she’d been brave enough to do something. That she was glad Neaera had done what she hadn’t. Then, the hesitant question: why? Why risk punishment, when it could only end in pain?

Persía had told her the truth, as much as she dared: that it would never stop. Not unless they made it stop. Those in power would never care for them. The only way to cut out the rot was to burn it out, root and stem. Anything else would only let it grow back.

Yes, because nothing says “healthy coping mechanisms” like quoting agricultural metaphors at midnight while plotting homicide.

Move over, Hesiod, I’m the new Farmer’s Almanac.

Now, here in the steam and whispers, Kleio’s ashen face said she still believed her.

“Which one was it?”

“One of the crueler ones. That bastard – Theron.”

A ripple spread around the basin, soft and venomous, like oil across water.

Theron. Persía had never suffered under his hand herself, but looking at the women’s grim satisfaction, she was glad she hadn’t. Well. No matter now – he was dead.

“Well, good riddance.”

“Indeed.”

Relief flickered through her chest—brief, unsteady, gone as quickly as it came.

“But that’s not all.”

Persía’s spine stiffened.

“What do you mean?”

“Well… little Timôn saw it happen. Watched the body fall.”

Her chest seized tight. Shit. She hadn’t even noticed anyone else there. The boy must have been hidden, small enough to melt into the brush, unseen. She knew how easily a child could camouflage themselves. She had done it often enough herself, when she was up to mischief.

A witness.

Of course. Because my first foray into murder simply had to come with a child spectator.

Just perfect. Nothing screams “ethical grey area” like traumatising minors.

“A terrible thing for a boy so young,” one woman murmured.

“He said it was a sign from the gods.”

A scoff followed. “The gods? They don’t waste their gaze on us mortals.”

Correction: they waste it constantly. Exhibit A – my entire existence.

Imagine being so cosmically bored you tune into mortal gossip like it’s daytime television.

“I thought the same,” the first conceded, lowering her voice. “But children, when they see horror, they cling to miracles. I don’t blame him. Truly, it’s been hard in Samos. Something like this might look like divine mercy. But we know better. Coincidence, nothing more.”

“Yes. May things ease soon. Though I’ve heard Master Menekratês has been moving off the older and younger slaves. Said there was a buyer.”

“Who would buy those who can’t work? The old, the children, the sick?”

Persía had to agree. Every slaver she’d ever heard of weighed bodies like oxen: strength and usefulness above all.

“Exactly. But one of Lysandros’ women told me her master has done the same.”

The laundresses began to murmur again, anxious as starlings. Steam curled around them, dampening the air, as if the gossip itself thickened the room.

“Perhaps Athens has need of them.”

A brittle laugh. “Athens? The city of wisdom, with its Akropolis and Parthenôn? What would Athens want with the useless?”

Hmm, I don’t know, maybe start a sub-department in the Lyceum? “Athênê’s Retirement Home for the Functionally Redundant”?

Stranger things have happened.

Kleio edged closer, fingers slipping a bar of lavender soap from the stack. Her voice cut through the babble, soft but sharp:

“Is it true? That no one ever returns?”

The younger laundress stilled. Cloth dripped in her hands, water trailing down her forearm. At last she shook her head. “No, child. Not once. It’s been more than five years now. And lately… it has gotten worse. Hundreds taken in the dead of night. None have ever come back.”

A shiver passed through the circle, thin as a draft cutting through steam.

The older woman scoffed, scrubbing harder, hands rubbed raw. “Rumors, nothing more. Business is poor. Masters grow angry, so they sell faster. No superstitions, only the matter of coin.”

But Persía hardly heard her. Her gaze had found Kleio’s again; steady, knowing. Kleio remembered. She remembered what Persía had told her last night.

And Persía remembered too: the words she’d overheard at the masters’ table.

Even if Athens was the greatest slave market in Hellas, with Samos trailing behind, they weren’t the only buyers. She knew that for certain – she had seen the records herself, those ledgers she and Tritôn had stolen months ago in Athens.

No spike in numbers, no sudden influx of shipments. If anything, the ports had been quiet, the city already glutted with slaves.

So the truth had to lie elsewhere.

Slaves were being shipped farther, beyond the familiar routes, until they vanished into the whirlpools of the Kritikó Sea. That wasn’t a trip for Athens alone – not with no blockades to force detours.

So where, then? Where were they being taken?

Spoiler alert: nowhere good.

No one ever wakes up in “Surprise! You’re free and here’s a villa on the coast.” It’s always mines, galleys, or something that smells suspiciously of human sacrifice.

Fucking Tartaros’ Holy Balls, she had to follow one of those boats, didn’t she..

Vathy, The Next Evening 

Persía folded tunics into neat stacks, her fingers moving without thought. The day’s music still lingered faintly in her ears, the harpstrings and laughter of dinner blurring into the hum of her own restless mind. She barely noticed the tug at first: soft, insistent at the hem of her chiton.

She glanced down.

A boy stood there, small enough that his ribs pressed sharp beneath his skin, his dark hair matted, face smudged with dirt. His eyes – too large for his gaunt face – looked up at her with shy brightness.

“Um… hello?”

He smiled, ducking his head, shoulders curling as though he wasn’t sure if he was allowed to exist under her gaze.

Well, this is awkward.

Am I supposed to pat him on the head? Give him a sticker?

I don’t exactly carry around a ‘How to Entertain Dickensian Orphans’ manual.

Persía looked around automatically, searching for whoever he belonged to. No one, just the laundry, the half-folded tunics, the quiet of dusk. Dear Khaos. I’ve been drafted into childcare without notice. Bold strategy, considering I barely manage to keep plants alive. Children? Forget it. Wrong skillset entirely.

Her gaze dropped back to him. “What is it, little one?”

“You’re very pretty, my lady,” he said, the words lisping slightly between his teeth.

Despite herself, Persía smiled. “Thank you. You’re quite sweet.” She knelt so she was level with him and took his small hand in hers, startled by how thin and bird-boned it felt.

Then his question: soft, solemn.

“Were you sent by the gods to save us?”

The breath caught in her throat. She blinked rapidly, her mind blanking.

Ah yes, my favourite pastime: being casually mistaken for a divine saviour while folding laundry.

Marvellous.

Truly the glamorous afterlife career trajectory I’d envisioned. The boy needs a bedtime story, not a messiah complex.

That… sounded far too familiar. That word – save.

This boy–

“Timôn! Where are you? Timôn?”

A woman’s voice, sharp with panic, cut through the laundry. Moments later, an older woman appeared in the doorway, releasing a sigh when she saw him.

“Timôn, what did I tell you about running off?”

“Sorry, mammá,” he muttered, but not before throwing one last, wide-eyed look back at Persía.

The woman clasped his hand firmly and turned to Persía, bowing her head in apology. “I truly am sorry, my lady. I’ve told him not to bother people.”

Persía rose to her feet. “It’s quite alright. He was very well behaved. You’ve raised him well.”

The woman’s mouth trembled into a faint smile. “You’re far too kind. Truly… a miracle.”

Persía frowned. “What do you mean?”

The woman hesitated, then lowered her voice. “Not an insult, my lady. Only gratitude. Many of us have heard what you did yesterday. Myrrhinê is a dear friend of mine. She hasn’t spoken of it; but my son saw. He told me, and… you are a miracle to us all.”

At this rate someone’s going to start bottling my bathwater and selling it as holy relics.

“I – of course,” Persía stammered, forcing a smile. “It was something anyone would have done.”

The woman stepped closer. She reached out, hand trembling, waiting. Unsure, Persía lifted her own. Their palms met.

“No,” the woman said softly. “Not anyone.” She brought Persía’s hand to her lips, pressed a kiss to her knuckles, then touched them to her own forehead: a gesture of reverence, old and weighty.

When she lowered their joined hands, her eyes met Persía’s, glimmering with quiet sorrow and hope. “Thank you.”

Then, releasing her, she turned. “Come, Timôn. Your aunt Ianessa waits for us.”

The boy gave Persía one last look, half awe, half longing, before following his mother out into the dusk.

Persía stood in the laundry’s silence, the folded tunics forgotten on the table, watching them vanish.

Well, shit.

Chapter Text

1284 BCE, Samos, Vathy

The marketplace seethed with motion, heat shimmering in the air.

Bright awnings snapped in the breeze, though it did little to ease the weight of the sun – far too hot for Pyanepsion, in Persía’s opinion.

Thousands of years before climate change and she still gets the weather of a collapsing empire.

Is this what Pompeii victims felt like?

Donkeys brayed as boys tugged stubbornly at their reins, while traders shouted over one another, voices clashing like cymbals in the press of the crowd.

Bronze gleamed in the glare; baskets overflowed not only with figs and olives but with wriggling fish, octopus tentacles slick with brine, and crabs scrabbling at wicker edges.

Seafood section looking less like ‘delicacies of the Aegean’ and more like Poseidôn’s revenge buffet. She’ll definitely pass, thanks.

Spices blazed in heaps of colour: saffron and cumin gold, pepper black as ash, powders red and green and ochre, each a sharp scent tugging at the nose.

Sacks of wheat leaned in tidy rows, the dust of chaff rising whenever a hand plunged in to test the grain.

As Persía moved, she passed stalls hung with dyed cloths in deep indigos, rusts, and pale linens, and tables heavy with bracelets, earrings, and finely wrought pins that winked in the light.

She ignored them all, her stride sure and unhurried, eyes set not on the glittering wares but on the darker corners of the market

Persía’s head throbbed – not just from the relentless crush of bodies and the din of voices, but from the seller’s incompetence and her own gnawing headache.

Of course.

Sunstroke, screaming humanity, and dehydration; the holy trinity of ‘why did I bother leaving the house.’

The heat pressed down, the crowd jostled, and every sound seemed to dig like a chisel behind her eyes.

She wanted nothing more than to be gone from this stinking market, but she had one goal. Silphium.

She wanted it. Needed it, and this seller was being a stingy bitch.

The spice seller squinted at the coin in her palm, lips curling with disdain.

“Rare herb, worth thrice what you offer. You’d sooner find gold dust in the gutters than silphium at that price.” Yes, thank you, local economist, that’s exactly how it is.

He was saying a lot of pretty words for a man with a full basket of the stuff, trying to sell it before it wilts into salad garnish.

Persía, bone-weary and fraying at the edges, snapped back. The man was lying through his teeth, and she was far too wracked with pain to waste patience on civility.

“Then I’ll sweep gutters instead. The price is ridiculous. No way in Tartaros am I paying that much – are you shitting me right now?”

The merchant jolted, scandalised. “Dear lady! Such language!”

A shocker, isn’t it? A woman with vocabulary.

Quick, someone fetch the priests before I bring down civilisation with a couple of profanities. 

A shadow leaned against the stall, lazy as a cat. The voice that followed was velvet, edged in amusement, the one she heard almost every day this year.

“Careful, friend. Wouldn’t want to overcharge a lovely lady like her, now would we? If you do, you might find yourself… short of customers.”

The seller blanched. His hands fluttered, nervous. “No – no, of course not, honoured sir. Perhaps… half-price?” He thrust the pouch forward, desperate to be rid of both herb and problem.

Persía blinked. Half-price, just like that.

Fantastic.

She tries to use her overcooked brain to haggle and Prince Smugface shows up, and suddenly the whole thing collapses in her favour.

Unfair doesn’t even begin to cover it.

Misogynistic piece of shit.

They slipped from the stall into a slant of sunlight, the marketplace noise fading behind them. Evius slouched beside her, grin sharp.

“You should never bargain when tired,” he murmured. “Don’t let them smell fatigue. Merchants are predators – it’ll cost you more than coin if you let it.” 

Thank you, Sun Tzu of the spice rack.

Where would I be without this groundbreaking military intelligence?

Persía snorted, tucking the pouch into her cloak. “Maybe I’ll hire you to shop for me next time. It does help if you pass as a man in this patriarchal society. Of course, I don’t want to assume…?”

He tilted his head, grin widening. “Ah, I usually am a man, but I’ve dressed as a woman before. Don’t really mind either. Also, maybe you should hire me – my services come cheap.”

“Oh?” she teased, lifting a brow. “And what’s the fee?”

He let his gaze wander toward the harbour, where gulls wheeled and doves dipped their beaks in the water. “A pleasure of your company wouldn’t go amiss.”

Her throat tightened. She coughed into her fist, suddenly self-conscious.

“I do not see why you’d want my company. You’ve had enough of me for a lifetime already.”

He turned then, sunlight flashing off the waves and into his eyes. Purple, so deep they almost seemed black. “I’ve quite enjoyed it, actually.”

Something inside her stilled. His words were simple, but the weight of them was not.

She smiled; small, unguarded. “It’s a deal, then.” She tossed a scrap of bread toward the water, where birds squabbled greedily over the crumbs.

Evius only watched her, quiet and strangely gentle, as if the moment itself was meaningful.

“So what brings you here, lurking about the black markets of Vathy?” Persía asked, side-eyeing Evius while tucking one hand behind her back to keep hold of the basket.

“You could say shopping.” His grin was careless, but his eyes flicked toward the pouch hidden in her cloak. “Silphium? That’s no mild spice. Where do you need such strong medicine?”

Persía shrugged, tilting her head with studied nonchalance. “I’ve noticed I’ve had splitting headaches recently, more often than not.” She smirked faintly. “Besides, I need to prepare desserts with a touch of… persuasion. Silphium is as good as any for it. Two idiots with one stone, as they say.”

Evius chuckled, low in his throat. “Always inventive.” His gaze softened, though, worry glinting just beneath the amusement.

They walked on. The air smelled of brine and frying oil, of pressed olives and goat dung, all tangled together.

“The Thesmophoria is nearly here,” he said after a moment. “Will you be helping with the preparations?”

“Ah, yes.” Persía shifted the basket against her hip. “That’s when they’ll eat the first patch of those dessert bites. Honey, sesame, figs – enough sweetness to keep the married women happy obviously – with a little something hidden as surprise.” She paused, adding casually, “I might be set to fetch water in those days, or grind barley. Easy work, compared to most.”

“Sounds almost restful,” Evius mused. “I may spend that day cataloguing herbs. The ones we gathered the other week, most are pressed and ordered already, but the bundles hanging to dry still need sorting.”

They stopped at a fishmonger’s stall where a gleaming tunny lay displayed, its belly slashed open, meat thick and red.

Persía handed over Evadne’s coin and thanked the seller, accepting the fish wrapped in palm-woven reeds.

Evius, without asking, lifted the basket from her hands.

It weighed almost nothing to her, she could lift three grown men without strain, but she let him take it. 

Ever the gentleman, and she had appearances to keep.

“Generous of you,” she teased.

He only smirked, balancing the load with easy strength. “Let me play the gallant at least once.”

As they moved down the row of stalls, Evius paused to buy early-season figs.

He pulled one from the sack, split it with his thumb, and offered the larger half to her. Sticky sweetness burst on her tongue, juice trailing over her knuckle.

She’d grown used to this; him pressing food into her hand without ceremony, the easy rhythm of it.

Their path curved toward the port, where the noise of gulls and water gave way to a darker spectacle.

A row of bodies hung where the wind could strip them clean – punishment on display for all who passed. Persía’s gaze caught on a boy, his limbs slack, his skin filmed with dirt and old bruises.

Beside him, a woman swayed in the breeze, her thighs streaked with dried blood that left little doubt of what she had endured before death.

Both were little more than bone draped in skin, starvation carved into their frames.

Still, sometimes, when his eyes lingered too long, Persía wondered if he saw the truth: how thin her wrists had grown, how her body bore the quiet wasting of servitude.

Yes, very effective public policy: terrify the masses with swinging corpses. A real stable leadership here, decorating your town square with famine victims.

She looked away first, fixing her gaze on the ground, then back to Evius.

He was still watching the hanging dead. His face was composed, unreachable as ever, but his eyes told another story, one she almost dared to believe.

They were not indifferent eyes. They understood, like he wanted to help.

“Sounds relaxing,” she said at last, brushing fig seeds from her lips. “Herbs, catalogues, feasts. Almost enough to make me forget the world is cruel.”

Almost.

Because nothing says escapism like a man gently listing his favourite dried plants while you try not to think about dead teenagers hanging five feet away.

Sounds familiar.

But the cruelty never let her forget. It followed her even in sleep.

A woman beside her, lying so near their shoulders brushed.

She was young, no more than her first bloom of adulthood, her skin waxen and damp with sweat. Her belly curved round, heavy with a child who would never be born.

The bedding beneath them, sand that shifted into cloth, was drenched in red from the waist down, soaking, spreading, unending.

The young woman’s chest rose shallowly, then stuttered still.

Her lips parted on a sound that wasn’t breath, only silence.

Persía reached for her, desperate, but the moment shattered – sand, salt, blood, cloth, all bleeding into one another – until only the weight of absence pressed down on her chest.

She blinked, and the marketplace returned. Focus, woman.

Evius watched her a heartbeat too long, then smiled; gentle, inscrutable. “Yes, almost.”

Vathy, The Same Night

The torches in the courtyard gutters burned low, the change of guards not yet begun. The house slept in that fragile pause between one watch and the next.

Persía padded barefoot across the wet stone of the cliffside, the sea hissing below.

No guards here: the rocks rose sheer, jagged enough that no sane man would think a body could climb them. She was neither sane nor male.

Still, some quiet corner of her mind – cold, measured, infuriatingly reasonable – murmured that this was not wise. That cliff faces were not meant for scaling, not in the dark, not with guards above and jagged death below. The thought was sharp, precise, like a blade tucked somewhere in her skull. She ignored it. She always ignored it.

If common sense had a voice, mine would be Eeyore’s. ‘Oh, you’ll fall to your death, Persia. Probably in pieces. Wouldn’t that be inconvenient.’

Salt clung to her fingers, grit stung her knees, but she climbed, silent as she could ever be.

A shuttered window stood ajar. She slid through, breath shallow, and dropped into the cool dark of the chamber.

She could smell the lamp oil that had burned hours ago.

A single bed loomed against the far wall. On it, Damasos lay sprawled, his heavy chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of dreamless sleep. His face in the lamplight was soft, almost ordinary – no trace of the cruelty that dressed the square with corpses.

Strange, how the butcher looks almost human when he’s unconscious. Shame sleep wears off.

No courtesan curled at his side, no wife hovering close. Just him, alone.

Persía lingered only a moment, listening. Beyond the door: the muffled tread of four guards. More scattered through the halls, the balcony, the garden. Their positions had already been measured, counted, fixed in her mind.

She had time, but not much.

She turned from the bed and slipped into the adjoining office. The moonlight through the lattice caught on polished bronze and scattered papers. She moved quickly, opening drawers, sliding through ledgers and seals.

Here’s his household accounts.

There’s some payments to carpenters and merchants.

So, nothing she needed.

Fascinating, truly. I broke into Fort Knox and found… receipts for firewood. Somebody stop me before I hyperventilate from excitement.

Her gaze shifted to a great cedar closet opposite the desk. She eased it open.

Inside: neat shelves of wax tablets, amphorae of wine, boxes of incense, and jars of dried fruit. Ordinary things. Not something you would usually find in office though..

She ran her fingers along the wood. Something was wrong.

There; behind the lower shelf, a faint outline.

She pulled jars aside. A keyhole, cleanly cut into the panel. No handle, no seams. Just the lock, glinting faintly.

Her heart hammered. She crouched, drew out her picks, and worked. The tumblers resisted. She tried again, lips pressed tight, the silence in her ears loud as thunder. Nothing. The lock was too fine, or too used. Why won’t you open?

I found a secret treasure trove and I’m thwarted by IKEA’s early ancestor. Somewhere Daedalus is laughing his wings off.

She pressed her eye to the hole. A faint shimmer answered. Shelves upon shelves beyond, a hidden room stacked with scrolls, sealed jars, the unmistakable geometry of secrets.

Her frustration flared, sharp as hunger. She should be good enough for this. She should be. But the mechanism mocked her.

With a hissed curse, she pulled a strip of papyrus from her pouch and sketched the shape of the lock, the precise cuts of its teeth. At least she would not leave empty-handed.

The faint scrape of sandals in the corridor froze her.

The guards were shifting post. In moments, they would step inside.

Persía shoved the jars back, slid the shelf into place, smoothing every edge as if untouched. She cast one last look at the bedchamber, the steady rise and fall of Damasos’ chest, the man sleeping in the heart of his fortress, unaware.

Sleep deeply. Mercy doesn’t visit men like you, but perhaps nightmares will oblige.

Then she crossed to the window, put the piece of papyrus in her dry mouth, climbed barefoot into the night, and dropped soundlessly into the black water below.

The sea closed over her like she was never there.

Vathy, Front Yard, Next Day

Persía shifted the weight of her basket higher on her hip as she and Mêlitta wound their way back through the narrow path toward the kitchens.

The sun was sinking, low enough to throw long shadows, and the smell of olives and fish still clung to the marketplace air.

“Honestly,” Mêlitta huffed, balancing her own basket with practiced ease, “if whoever’s leaving their share in our pile doesn’t stop soon, I’ll start throwing their tunics back unwashed. Let them wear the stench for once.”

Persía grinned faintly. “We could always switch duties this week – put me on laundry, you take kitchen duty.”

Mêlitta shot her a sidelong look. “You’ve already made soap this month, you know the rules, no laundry duty. No, better we rope someone else into it. Maybe Kynthia – she owes me a favour anyway.”

Their chatter carried them into the kitchen, where Aglaia was bent over a board, slicing bread. She looked up at the sight of them and rolled her eyes in mock exasperation. “Drop those there, quickly. I don’t have time to coddle you two.”

Obediently, they set their baskets down.

As Aglaia began sorting through the goods, Mêlitta snatched two apples from the pile with a swift, guilty hand. She tossed one across the room, and Persía caught it neatly against her chest.

“Go, before someone sees!” Aglaia hissed, shooing them with the knife still in her hand.

“Thank you, Aglaia!” they called in unison, breaking into laughter as they jogged out into the yard. No one minded such small rebellions in the slave quarters, though they would never risk it beyond those walls.

They bit into their apples, juice sharp and sweet on their tongues. For a moment, there was ease.

Then Persía felt a tug at her hip. She looked down – her small leather pouch was sliding free, clenched in quick, dirty fingers. A flash of a skinny boy, darting away.

“Hey!” she snapped, eyes widening. She knew that shock of dark hair, that sharp little frame. Timôn.

“Shit,” Persía cursed, already moving. “That’s the rest of Evadne’s money – I can’t lose it!”

Mêlitta blinked, then gave a quick nod, her own apple forgotten in her hand. “He’s only eight. How fast can he be?”

Persía was already in pursuit. “We’ll see soon enough!”

Timôn bolted for the gate, bare feet kicking up dust, weaving between startled bodies. Persía sprinted after him, skirts hitched high, her sandals slapping the ground.

She might have hit a few boxes on the way, nothing new, she’ll probably one day just accidentally bump into too much furniture and that’s how she’ll die.

She clipped the edge of a box as she turned the corner. Yes, marvellous.

First casualty: someone’s cabbages.

Second casualty: her dignity.

Third, probably her face.

At least my epitaph will be honest– ‘Here lies Persía. She fought bravely against a small child and lost.’

Behind her, Mêlitta followed, less swift but determined, shouting apologies as they shoved past townsfolk in the narrow streets of Vathy.

“Slow down, you little bastard!” Persía yelled, lungs burning as the boy ducked into the next alley, but Timôn never looked back, only ran harder, the stolen pouch swinging at his side.

Oh yes, by all means, lad – make off with the wages of women who can barely keep bread on the table.

Truly heroic.

Next he’ll be liberating apples from orphans and shoving grandmothers into wells.

A proper career in villainy awaits.

They ran as if fire itself chased them, weaving through narrowing alleys until the streets gave way to the darker quarters of Vathy.

The air grew damp, sour with mildew, until Timôn ducked into a half-buried doorway that led down into some cellar-like chamber. Flickering torches lined the walls, their light quivering across packed stone.

“Gotcha!” Persía hissed triumphantly, fingers closing around the boy’s thin arm.

She bent double, one hand braced against her knee, dragging air into her burning lungs. Mêlitta stumbled in a moment later, clutching the wall like it was her last lifeline, gasping as though she’d run the marathon itself.

For a heartbeat, Persía basked in victory – until she realised Timôn wasn’t even struggling.

He just stood there, smug as a cat with cream, smiling at her like she’d performed for him on cue. Her stomach sank. Slowly, she became aware of the silence pressing in, the flicker of torchlight on faces. Dozens of them.

She straightened and turned her head. Fifty or sixty, perhaps more – men and women crowded the chamber, shoulder to shoulder, eyes fixed on her and Mêlitta.

Fifty people all deciding to stare at you in perfect silence is very natural occurrence.

No cult vibes whatsoever.

The air was thick with the hush of anticipation, with something that was not quite hostility, not quite welcome. Not before it drastically changed as if they suddenly realised who had entered.

“…Umm,” Persía muttered. She and Mêlitta exchanged a look, both of them acutely aware of the trap they’d walked into.

They weren’t townsfolk. Every face belonged to a slave. From the plain wool of their tunics to the scars lining their arms, it was unmistakable. She even recognised some – Ianessa, Helike, Thaleia – faces she had passed a hundred times in their master’s household. Ah, some familiar faces.

Because being outnumbered by strangers wasn’t stressful enough – let’s add the horror of small talk on top of imminent death.

A two-for-one special.

Then Kleio pushed forward through the press of bodies, her expression bright with relief. “Persía, Mêlitta – you made it!”

“Yes,” Persía said slowly, dry as Sahara Desert. “Indeed we did.”

And for my next trick, I’ll deliver more understatements while surrounded by people who could collectively strangle me with a washing line.

Don’t all rush at once.

She glanced down at Timôn, who beamed with diabolical pride and, with a flourish, offered her pouch back as though presenting a trophy, like the satan’s spawn he was.

Ianessa hurried up, taking her son by the shoulders. “Timôn – you didn’t…” Her voice was sharp with maternal outrage.

“But mammá, you told me to bring them!” he protested, lower lip trembling into a pout.

“With their free will, child, not like this!” she hissed, dragging him into the crowd by the ear.

Persía folded her arms, glaring after him. “Should have known. Let them have the money next time we’re robbed,” she muttered.

Because that’ll end well. Subsidise the local crime industry.

Next quarter’s figures will be spectacular.

Mêlitta raised her brows. “Seconded.”

Before Persía could press the matter, Thaleia stepped into the open space where the trio now stood, her expression taut, grave.

“What is this?” Mêlitta demanded, cutting in ahead of Persía, who still looked ready to strangle Timôn.

“A gathering,” Thaleia replied evenly. Her gaze swept the room, then returned to Persía. “We’ve come together to discuss certain matters – and what must change now that the Overseer Theron has been.. lost to us.”

The words hung heavy in the close air. Persía cleared her throat, suddenly feeling the weight of all the eyes on her and Mêlitta, or well, more on just her. This is just absolutely marvellous.

Kleio, blessedly unbothered by the tension, pressed forward and guided them to a low bench near the front. “Sit. You’ll want to hear this.”

So they sat, Persía wedged between Mêlitta and Kleio. From here she could see everyone – the torchlight flickering over scarred faces, tired eyes, and a hundred expressions hovering between hope and suspicion.

Thaleia moved into the open space at the centre. Her voice was calm, measured. “We all know why we’re here.”

Correction, Persía thought. You know. I do not. And by Mêlitta’s face, neither does she.

But yes, let’s all pretend this is common knowledge while I die of curiosity.

A restless murmur stirred through the group.

Thaleia went on, steady and unhurried, laying out the matter of Overseer Theron’s death; how it had unfolded, how it left a dangerous vacuum.

While Persía listened, older woman’s tone told her this was not the first such gathering. The words came with the rhythm of habit, of a speech delivered in rooms like this one many times before.

Then Ianessa rose, shifting her shawl over the shoulder that never quite healed. A ripple of recognition ran through the room – everyone knew what Menekratês had done to her.

She spoke anyway, voice raw but firm: how she had lain awake one night, pain burning through her arm, and seen it herself; guards pulling slaves from their quarters, dragging them half-conscious down to the waiting ship. Her master had stood and watched, and then the ship had gone, vanishing into the dark.

Angry voices flared at once. It was no longer a question of missing slaves or chance desertion, it was fact that they had been sold and bought.

Kleio added her own piece, eyes bright as she looked toward Persía. “She heard it too, at the master’s table.”

Dozens of heads turned, fixing Persía in place. Well that’s fucking wonderful.

Nothing like being volunteered as witness while strangers bore holes through your skull.

Kleio pressed on, relentless. “They spoke of it openly. The ships sail through the Kritikó Sea. Most never reach land. The ships sink from all the surrounding whirlpools. Most of them don’t reach the buyer.”

Gasps and curses broke from the crowd. The torchlight caught faces twisted in grief, in rage.

The unspoken truth landed hard: their families had been sold, their friends dying, swallowed by the sea.

For an hour they argued, grief spilling into anger, anger dulling into despair.

Problems piled one atop another, but every outcry was blunted by another voice insisting there was nothing to be done.

Collective despair: the cheapest anaesthetic on the market, administered freely, endlessly, and with no discernible side effects other than permanent paralysis.

“It has always been this way.”

 Ah yes, the great syllogism of the oppressed: ‘It exists, therefore it must.’ Aristotle would be proud.. or possibly appalled. Hard to tell with him.

“What power do we have? None.”

The fastest route from suffering to self-justification: downgrade your own agency until it fits neatly in a thimble, then declare it empty.

“My child died, and I could not even bury her.”

“The laws protect us from worse – surely they must.”

”Our kyrios’ are not the cruelest. It could be worse.”

The words turned in circles, chasing their own tails. Persía sat, listening, her jaw tightening with each round.

They weren’t debating a possibility of freedom; they were auditioning excuses.

A fine chorus of resignation, perfectly in tune.

Understandable, yes; they feared the unknown, they had never lived outside their enslavement but dear Khaos, it was suffocating.

Her patience snapped like a bowstring.

Before Persía could stop herself, words slipped sharp from her tongue:

“Shouldn’t we be asking whether slavery itself is right in the first place?”

That ought to land like a stone through glass.

Let’s see who flinches first.

A hush followed, broken only by the crackle of the fire. Someone from the back called, hesitant:

“What do you mean? It’s always been like this. Why would it be wrong now?”

Persía wanted to snap at the person, nothing delights the powerful more than that line of thought: oppression retroactively sanctified by repetition.

Bravo, truly revolutionary reasoning.

Her gaze swept the room. She let the silence stretch before answering.

“It has always been wrong, because it denies what you are; a human being.”

Sometimes the most radical thing is stating the obvious without apology.

Several heads tilted, uncertain. Most of these slaves had never left Vathy; their world was the harbour, the fields, the cramped quarters of their masters.

They did not know another way of life existed.

“You are not property,” she went on, voice low but firm. “Not a currency, not a tool to be used. Slavery strips you of choice, of dignity – of the very breath that makes you alive.”

An older man near the wall muttered, “But if that’s true, why does the law permit it?”

Because in these times the law is less a moral beacon than a cudgel politely engraved with civic symbols.

It’s meant to look noble while keeping you in place.

That probably was the case in modern times too, if you think about it.

Myrrhinê hugged her knees tighter, eyes fixed on Persía. “Yes, if it is so unjust, why would the city make it lawful?”

Persía’s lip curled into a bitter half-smile.

“Because the law is not measured by justice – it is measured by those in power.”

A stir ran through the crowd. Someone closer to the fire scoffed, “But aren’t laws made to protect us?”

“Sometimes,” Persía said evenly. Which is true.  “But not always. Laws are written by those who profit from them. Slavery fills the coffers of the wealthy, it supplies their armies, it sustains their households.”

She leaned forward slightly, eyes glinting.

“It is written down in laws does not make it just,  what you need to do is think everything critically, especially the laws that are supposed to govern your existence.”

Thaleia’s eyes narrowed – not from confusion, for she was far too sharp for that, but as if testing Persía, urging her to push further. “So… law itself can be corrupt?”

“Precisely,” Persía answered. “Legality is no guarantee of morality. Often, it is just a disguise for it.”

Mêlitta shifted uneasily beside her. “But they say society cannot survive without us. Who will do the work?”

A chorus of nods rose. Someone added, “The fields, the ships, the weaving – without slaves, wouldn’t everything collapse?”

Persía exhaled slowly, her shoulders loosening as though shaking off some invisible weight. She stretched out her legs, more at ease now.

“That is the lie they feed you. That without slavery, nothing can function, but that is simply not true.”

Ianessa’s voice cut in, rough with frustration. “Then who builds? Who tends the land?”

“Free people,” Persía replied. “Those who work because they choose, because they have reason to plant and harvest, to build homes for their children. We see it everywhere in Hellas, every day.”

A murmur swept through the crowd – doubt, but also a flicker of curiosity. It was like hope was shining in their eyes.

“Slaves work under threat,” Persía pressed. “Free people create. They invest in their future, and in turn, the city prospers. Slavery is not stability; it is a disease disguised as order.”

From the back, a man leaned forward. “But isn’t slavery what keeps chaos away? Without it, wouldn’t everything fall apart?”

Ha! If stability means propping up the system with human bones, perhaps chaos deserves its chance at the podium.

All eyes turned back to Persía. She met the man’s stare, unflinching.

“No. Systems built on fear are not secure; they are brittle. Authority maintained by violence is always on the edge of collapse. What appears orderly is in truth precarious, because it survives only through constant coercion. And such coercion cannot last forever. Understand this: slavery is not eternal. It persists only so long as obedience is given, and obedience can be taken away.”

The fire popped, which made few in the crowd flinch at the sound.

Mêlitta’s voice came next, low but urgent; she glanced around first, then leaned toward Persía though her words carried for all to hear. “And if… if we wanted to end it? How could we? We can’t take on all of Vathy.”

Myrrhinê scoffed softly, the sound brittle with years of hurt. “Most of us would not fight, even if we wished to. The masters will not simply let us go.”

A man near the hearth – calloused hands, a face folded by sun and toil – spoke with blunt honesty. “The only solution is to remove those who make us slaves, but how? They fund shields for themselves, and they have all the authority and money. How ever can we compare?”

A ripple of agreement passed through the room; a few voices muttered names, – masters, overseers, their households, the idea of their removal hung between them.

Helike, who had been quiet until then, pushed through the press of bodies and offered her own tactical thoughts on the matter, “We do not have to meet them in open battle,” she said. “There are other means, right? We are the ones who touch their linens, we prepare their food, we enter their rooms. We know their daily lives.”

Mêlitta’s eyes brightened, with resolve. “We are the ones who handle their baths and bread,” she said. “We know all their routines. We could exploit that knowledge.”

The phrase settled heavy in the air. One of the older women spat and whispered, “So, what? We are to become instruments of justice? Try to abolish all of slavery?” There was fear there, but also a hint of something Persía’s keen eye could see, it was like hungry relief.

You carve it out – root and stem – until nothing remains.

Persía listened all their arguments silently and then spoke, choosing words carefully. “We must be clear about ends before we choose means,” she said. “If our aim is only to slake rage, to slaughter for reprisal, the cycle will continue. If we slaughter the men who wield the whip but leave their power structures intact, new tyrants will rise. Our first imperative is practical: remove the cadres who actively maintain enslavement – kyrios’, overseers, the households that protect and profit from that trade – so that the instruments of coercion are gone. Only then can we replace the legal and economic scaffolding that made slavery possible.”

Hmmm.. revolution as architecture: first you demolish the old load-bearing walls, then you pray the new ones don’t collapse on your head.

A stunned silence followed. Nobody had probably said anything of the sort to them before.

The words were quite blunt; the moral calculus raw. Some faces even blanched. A dozen questions pressed at Persía at once, some were terrified, some furious, and some even hopeful.

“You mean kill them,” a voice said, Persía looked at her right where Timôn sat, in his mother’s lap.

“If that is what it takes to end the immediate threat,” Persía answered, better him to know the truth, “we must not pretend that our hands will stay clean, but know this: removing them is only the first, terrible step, there will be more to come.”

She moved her gaze towards everyone this time. “But if we stop there – if we only consume them with vengeance – nothing stops another tyrant from taking their place. So we pair removal with construction. We abolish the legal cover that made their acts lawful; we create economic alternatives so free labor sustains the city; we install public accountability so those who traffic human lives have no shelter under law or custom.”

Mêlitta’s fingers tightened around the cloth. “It is like tending a garden – you must pull the weed up by its roots, so the herb may grow and flower.”

“Yes, actually, that’s quite well put.” She smiled at her friend who answered in kind.

“First, we remove the active instruments of cruelty so the threat cannot quickly be reconstituted,” Persía said. “Then, build the civic machinery to prevent return: statutes, redistribution of resources, public witnesses, and spaces where freed people can sustain themselves and show the city a different model. That is the plan’s architecture.”

A woman near the fire – eyes rimmed with teara from mourning after her lost child – whispered, half to herself, “When you put it like that, it doesn’t sound so terrible but what’s necessary.”

“It is both,” Persía agreed. “We will not pretend purity, but we will refuse the cheap comfort of endless subjection. We will take the hard, decisive risks that uproot the trade in human beings and then stitch the wound with institutions so it does not fester.”

Questions came faster now, more practical: “How do we expose the trade?” “Who will enforce new edicts?” “If the magistrates are bought, who holds them to account?”

Persía answered patiently – expose ledgers, witness shipments, deny the market its secrecy, create local autonomy so freed labor is demonstrably viable, coax outside merchants to balk at tainted cargo – each reply deliberately non-operational, focused on leverage rather than technique.

Thaleia, who had watched as if weighing the idea, finally spoke with clarity that made the room still. “If the magistrates are bought,” she said, “we must make the city if not even the island itself unprofitable for that corruption. Commerce must see the cost. Shame and insolvency bend laws more certainly than petitions.”

Commerce, that fickle deity.

Nothing makes tyrants find their moral compass quite like a dip in quarterly profits.

Persía nodded, that would definitely work. “Economic pressure forces political choices. We turn profit into liability. We make slave-trading a danger to the city’s wealth and reputation until the ruling class pays a price greater than their appetite.”

Ianessa, voice rough, asked the question everyone feared to pose aloud: “And if we fail?”

“Then we survive. We hide, we learn, and we try again,” Persía said, her voice low but steady. “Failure is not final unless we stop resisting. Our duty is to persist: to hide fugitives, to spread testimony, to drag the trade into the light. Each small victory – one family freed, one chain broken, one law overturned – tilts the balance.”

“Are we truly doing this?” someone asked from the shadows, their voice trembling.

Kleio straightened, eyes burning. “If not us, then who?”

Persía let the question hang, then looked between them with a faint, almost mischievous smile.

“Your body fights every time it counters disease,” she said softly. “Why don’t you?”

Good closer.

Biology as pep talk: nothing like comparing tyranny to cholera to motivate an audience.

Few Hours Later


The summons came just before dusk.

Persía entered Damasos’ chambers with the kithara cradled in her arms, its strings catching the faint light of the oil lamps.

The chamber smelled of roasted lamb and honeyed figs, richer than anything she had eaten in years.

She took her place at his left, angled between him and the open archway that led to the inner garden just like she was always told to; the perfect position for a shield, if an assassin ever struck.

I am once again cast in the role of ornamental barricade.

Truly, nothing deters assassins quite like an underfed teenage girl with a harp. 

Like she ever would take a knife for him, hell nah.

Yet her stomach coiled tight. A single thought gnawed beneath her composure: had he found out? About the meeting with other household slaves, about the plan they guarded between them as if their lives were on the line, which, they were.

Every glance of his could be the moment he revealed it, every word a trap laid bare.

She plucked a soft melody, fingers steady though her thoughts seethed.

Under lowered lashes she studied him. How different he looked from his slaves.

Where their cheeks hollowed, his was filled with color; where their ribs jutted sharp, his frame was slim but healthy, the folds of his white-and-green chiton draped easily across a body well-fed.

His hair, smooth and faintly curling at the ends, gleamed in the light. At his wrists and arms, golden armbands glimmered.

And before him on the table: too much food for one man.

Potatoes, honey, bread slick with oil, fish draped in herbs.

Enough to feed a family nowadays. Enough to feed ten people. Ten.

Her grip on the kithara tightened until her knuckles went pale. Observe, if you will, the great ecological marvel: one man single-handedly consuming what could sustain a small village.

A fascinating case study in imbalance, though she suspects the conclusion will be ‘everyone else dies.’

Her gaze slid from the table upward, past the gleam of his rings, to the soft skin of his neck. She could almost see it – the small faint hairs, the throb of the artery just beneath, each pulse carrying blood that could be stopped with a thought.

You carve it out – until nothing remains.

Her focus sharpened, deadly.

As she was deeply in her own thoughts, Damasos choked. Once. Twice.

A third time, harder, a rasp in his throat as his face reddened.

Persía blinked, the haze breaking. She stopped playing at once, panic flooding in.

“Kyrios?” The kithara clattered softly to the floor as she knelt beside him, snatching up a kylix and filling it with water. She pressed it into his hands.

He drank greedily, coughing into his fist until the worst had passed. His breathing slowed, color returning to his face.

“I am alright, Neaera,” he rasped. “It felt as though I was choking on air itself. Hm. Well–” his eyes softened, almost amused, “–I am glad you were here, my Neaera.”

Her stomach plunged. She hadn’t touched him. She hadn’t moved, and yet… she had felt it. His blood, his breath, bending to her fury. She had nearly killed him. Unconsciously.

Fucking splendid.

My subconscious has developed homicidal tendencies and now moonlights as an air-strangling poltergeist. If only that counted as a marketable skill.

Fuck. Fuck. She had to get control of herself – now – or she would ruin everything. Again.

But his hand closed over hers, heavy and warm where it still rested on his forearm.

His gaze lingered on her face, searching. Then, slow as a serpent, his other hand rose to her cheek. The pad of his thumb brushed over her lips.

Persía froze. Her heart pounded, nausea coiling tight in her throat. He studied her, eyes hungry, as his thumb swept across her lower lip.

“Kyrios?” Her voice was a breath, soft, trembling with feigned shyness even as her insides writhed.

Their noses touched. Gooseflesh prickled her skin, fear like ice sinking into her veins. Instinctively, she lowered her gaze, lashes a veil of submission.

And then he kissed her.

The taste of muted wine, of hunger. 

Ah yes, the celebrated kiss: less romance, more attempted annexation of my face.

If this were a symposium, I’d be drafting notes on ‘male entitlement expressed via oral suction.’

Safe to say, he didn’t know about their plan.

He pressed harder, devouring, as though she were something rare and forbidden he had finally laid claim to. Persía endured it, bile rising, until she couldn’t anymore. Her jaw snapped shut and she bit his lower lip.

He jerked back, breath stilled, eyes flashing with shock.

For one frantic heartbeat she thought she’d doomed herself. At these times women were not allowed to be dominant.

Well, congratulations to me: I’ve pioneered the first feminist intervention executed entirely with incisors.

The methodology is unorthodox, but the results speak for themselves.

She was ready to bolt, every one of her muscles was coiled.

Until his lips curved, a smirk.

The bastard liked it. He leaned forward again, ready for more–

A knock rattled the door.

Both their heads turned. Damasos’ mouth tightened with annoyance. His wife Evadne entered, her gaze falling immediately, sharply, on Persía.

“What is it?” Damasos asked, irritation just audible.

“There is a new message from the south.” She held up a folded slip of parchment between her fingers. Then her eyes returned to Persía, cold. “Leave us, girl.”

Persía bowed her head, retrieved the kithara with calm fingers that belied the nausea rising in her chest, and slipped from the room.

After she closed the heavy doors behind her, the breath she had been holding broke into shards.

A few shaky steps, then her palm slapped against the cold stone wall, the kithara still clutched desperately in her other arm.

Her forehead pressed against the wall, her body trembling, her free hand clamped over her mouth as if she could keep the sickness in.

And thus concludes tonight’s instalment of ‘Things I Didn’t Consent To.’

Future scholars may note the physiological response: tremors, nausea, and an overwhelming desire to bleach one’s own soul.

Breathe. Breathe, damn you.

Her chest gave her nothing but shallow, tearing gasps. She staggered down the corridor, shadows swallowing her expression, until the lamps and marble gave way to night air.

Thaleia found her first.

Persía nearly collided with her in the corridor, jerking back so hard her kithara almost slipped from her arms. Her eyes were wide, wet with unshed tears, breath still sharp and shallow.

“Neaera,” Thaleia whispered, alarm flaring across her lined face. “My lady – what happened?”

Persía’s hand shook as she pointed back toward the chambers, words failing her. “I– he–”

She couldn’t say it. She didn’t need to.

She needed to congratulate herself, first time in years she was struck properly speechless, and of course it’s because some greasy aristocrat decided to shove his tongue down her throat. 

Thaleia’s expression hardened with understanding. She slipped her hand around Persía’s elbow; gentle, steady, but firm enough to anchor her. “Come. Not here.”

They walked quickly, skirts brushing the stone, until they reached the women’s quarters. The room was deserted, emptied by evening duties, the silence inside a small reprieve.

Thaleia shut the door with care, then steered Persía to the bed.

“Sit.”

Persía sank down, the kithara clutched like a shield across her knees. Thaleia crouched, pried it carefully from her grasp, and set it at the foot of the bed. Then she fetched a kylix of cold water, pressing it into Persía’s trembling hands.

“Drink.”

Persía obeyed, gulping it down, but even the water felt sour on her tongue – tainted by the ghost of his kiss. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, face twisting. “It won’t go away,” she whispered.

Imagine maybe being a child of Poseidôn, a budding sea-goddess in your own right, and still finding yourself polluted by one man’s saliva.

Thetis could turn into a literal fish to escape advances; I get the taste of stale wine and garlic lodged in my molars.

Divine heritage, my arse.

Thaleia sat beside her. Not too close, but close enough that Persía could feel her warmth. “These things… they never leave us,” she said softly, eyes fixed on the floor. “But you will endure, and in enduring, you may find doors open where once there were none.”

Persía’s throat worked. She lowered her gaze to the kylix in her hands, the water rippling with the faint tremor of her fingers. “So what? I should want better treatment for myself, when no one else has it?”

Thaleia’s eyes flicked toward her, sharp, assessing. A small pause, then, carefully: “If your path leads you to it… why refuse? A full belly, a softer bed – those things give strength. And strength, child…” she let the word hang, the faintest smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, “…strength allows choices where weakness does not. Have you wanted to give your friends something but couldn’t because you didn’t have a choice?”

Persía stilled. Rest, food and drinkable water. She wanted to give so much.

Gods, she’s right.

It isn’t about me – it never bloody is. It’s about keeping Kleio and Mêlitta alive, keeping Ianessa from getting hauled into another back room. 

Only thing she had left to parter with was her own body and dignity.

She thought of her mother’s lessons, unfinished but unforgettable. How Euphemia had taught her that masks were weapons in a way, mirrors in some cases, that only certain kind of patience could cut fracture.

she hadn’t really known what her mother was talking about. She understood now of course.

“I need him to take me to bed,” she said at last, the words tasting like ash.

Thaleia’s expression didn’t change but she inclined her head, slow and certain. “You are halfway there already. From what you’ve told me, his hunger is easy to see.”

Persía shuddered, bile still rising at the memory of his mouth, but she forced herself to nod. “Then his eyes will be on me, that’s the distraction we need.”

For the first time since entering the chamber, Thaleia truly looked at her. Her gaze was steady, unreadable, but there was the faintest flicker of approval buried deep.

She reached for Persía’s hand and gave it a single, grounding squeeze.

“Then play your part well,” she murmured. “And give only what you must.”

Pray the gods are taking notes.

Because if I survive this, someone’s going to owe me a bloody monument.

The hall shimmered with excess; lamps burning perfumed oil, silk hangings stirring in the draft, lyres weaving through drunken laughter.

Slave girls drifted between couches, their silence offset by the glitter of gold rings and goblets.

Persía moved among them with her tray, her poise too precise for anonymity. Hair crowned and bound in gold, sash knotted to emphasise her hips, her skirts slit high enough to invite stares.

She paused by Parmenon, who’s cheeks were coloured from wine. “Another taste, Little Neaera,” he slurred, savouring her, however false, name. She smiled softly. “Open your mouth, Kyrios Parmenon.” He chuckled, obeyed, and sighed obscenely as the morsel melted on his tongue.

There it is. A sound disturbingly similar to a man finding religion, though in this case his god is candied sesame.

If only Olympus were so easily bribed.

When he opened his eyes, she had already vanished into the crowd.

Past the women’s laughter, into shadowed pillars, she leaned briefly against cold marble, staring at the tray. Only his favourite can get close, Thaleia’s voice whispered. She lifted two sweets, their honey-spice scent sharp in her nose, and swallowed them both. Heat flushed through her veins.

Poison, seduction, performance anxiety. Truly the holy trinity of a Thursday evening.

When she opened her eyes, her gaze was steady.

At Damasos’ chamber she knocked. The door opened and Kleio slipped aside, incense thick in the air. He reclined on cushions, one arm draped around a painted courtesan. At the sight of Persía he brightened. “My little songbird.” A snap of fingers, and the courtesan and attendants melted away.

Yes, send away the witnesses.

Wouldn’t want anyone else to see the inevitable train wreck. Heaven forbid the scandalised silence drown out the lyres downstairs.

Silence surrounded them.

“I brought you something,” Persía said, voice low. The tray caught lamplight, sugared sweets like gilded embers.

“Come.” He gestured lazily. She approached, the slit of her skirts flashing as she stopped before him. He plucked a piece, but instead of eating, pressed it to her lips. She accepted slowly, her tongue brushing his fingers.

His gaze darkened – not from suspicion, but hunger.

He chose another sweet, placed it in his own mouth, and chewed with deliberate slowness. Then, without a word, he reached up, unpinned her crown, and let her hair spill down her shoulders. Gold slid against dark curls. His hands descended, loosening fabric, tugging knots, each layer of cloth falling soundlessly to the floor.

At last, only her bare skin remained. He stepped closer, his hand finding her hip, squeezing – not gently – as silence thickened around them and he brought himself on her.

Elsewhere, Outsider POV

As Persía distracted Damasos that evening and all the married women had gone to celebrate Thesmophoria, Mêlitta, Kleio, and Thaleia worked in the shadowed chamber with efficient precision.

Dried leaves were ground to powder, their acrid scent rising as oil absorbed the mixture, darkening into something potent.

Kleio portioned the liquid into small clay jars, while Thaleia bound each with cloth and cord.

Such preparations were common in antiquity: poisons concealed in food or drink, their strength preserved in oil, their doses divided into measures small enough to pass unnoticed.

One by one, the vessels passed into waiting hands.

The chosen slaves received them in silence – some with awe, others with fear. To hold such a jar was to carry both possibility and peril, uncertain whether it promised freedom or death.

They pressed the clay briefly to their chests before hiding it away.

Eyes met, only for an instant, and in that glance lay the unspoken understanding that this act was their own – neither granted by masters nor sanctioned by law.

It began in silence.

A dark abyss, the sea yawning endless and black. Bodies drifted downward, their limbs limp, hair unraveling in slow-motion currents until the deep swallowed them whole.

Light broke through – a sudden flare so bright it burned. The sun.

It cast its gaze not on peace, but on ruin.

The ground below burned with fire. Smoke curled into the sky. Screams rose, fractured and pleading, begging unseen gods for mercy.

Blood struck the wall like paint flung from a brush. It spattered across a bed where a figure thrashed, then gurgled their last breath, hand falling still over the sheets.

Red seeped down, dripping from the edge of the bedding until it struck marble.

A woman’s statue stood there, white marble a stark contrast in the darkness, it seemed as if it was just carved, not painted yet.

There it stood, unyielding. Blood traced her brow, slid along her cheek, down her detailed robes to the stone base where a single word was carved in gold: κάρμα.

A flash of wings; small, iridescent. A Velvet-Purple Coronet, a hummingbird, alighted on the statue. It hopped lightly, tilting its head, the blood reflected in its jewelled feathers.

Persía jolted upright, lungs dragging air in quick, shallow bursts.

The nightmare clung to her skin like cold seawater. She forced her breath steady, though her chest heaved, and blinked hard to remind herself where she was.

To her left, Damasos lay sprawled among pillows and linen, slack in sleep, his body still radiating the warmth of the night’s conquest.

Ah, yes, the asshole, collapsed in post-coitus slumber, while I’m relegated to the floor like discarded laundry.

A true metaphor for my life.

She, discarded, lay on the floor beneath a twisted heap of blankets.

Careful, Persía told herself. Careful.

She eased out from the covers, her body stiff and sore, and froze when she felt eyes on her.

Across the chamber, not five meters away, two guards watched.

Oh how lovely.

Nothing completes the survivor’s experience quite like an unsolicited audience.

The torchlight caught the steel of their spears, their gazes unflinching. They had seen her naked before, now again. Shall I curtsy, or will the nudity suffice? She gave them the smallest nod, neither shameful nor defiant, before looking away. 

Her hands moved automatically; collecting her garments from where they had been flung, one by one, slipping them on with deliberate quiet.

Every rustle of fabric seemed too loud.

A dull soreness throbbed low between her thighs, sharpest when she bent or shifted her weight. She tried to ignored it, the way one ignores a bruise or blister – acknowledged, then set aside.

Her body could complain; she would not, not yet. 

She needs to get out. Now.

When at last she was clothed, she padded to the heavy doors and slipped through.

The corridors seemed endless, each step echoing louder than the last. She walked at first, then faster, then ran, as though the dream itself were chasing her.

She didn’t remember the streets, only the blur of stone and torchlight until the river called her. Sand collapsed beneath her knees, water soaking her skirts as she fell onto her hands and knees, her breath wheezing raggedly.

Her skin crawled. His touch was still there – on her mouth, her cheek, her lips. He wasn’t touching her now, but the ghost of him clung like oil.

“No. No no no – ” she gasped, plunging her hands into the water, scrubbing her face, her neck, her arms until her skin burned red beneath her own touch. Rubbing, clawing, drowning herself in the river. Get it off. Get it off.

Why does rubbing salt water into one’s face feel like both purification and a low-budget exorcism? 

She couldn’t breathe. She was drowning in open air.

Then arms closed around her. Iron-strong. Steady. She was lifted from her collapse, her back pressed to a chest that did not yield.

“ – you to breathe, Persía. Come on. Breathe for me, okay?” The words came muffled through the roar in her ears.

She sucked in air but it shredded her throat, ripping out in convulsions.

Panic folded her body inward until, suddenly, the figure shifted.

He was before her now, kneeling in the water, catching her face in large, steady hands. His thumbs swept the river from her cheeks, smoothed strands of wet hair away from her eyes.

“That’s it,” the voice murmured, low, coaxing. “Nice and slow. Match your breathing with mine.”

‘Match my breathing,’ he says. Yes, thank you, I was planning on asphyxiating as a hobby, but your suggestion is duly noted.

Her vision blurred, caught on his mouth – close, too close – as it shaped the rhythm. In. Out. Steady. She tried. Failed. Tried again, shuddering as if every attempt was a war.

His gaze didn’t waver, dark and patient, stubborn enough to wait her out. That might be the worst part.. No lecture, no pity, just waiting. Which means I can’t even get angry to distract myself.

Little by little, her chest stopped seizing. The wheeze softened. Air reached deeper, steadier.

The river hushed against the bank, retreating into silence. Only her ragged breaths remained – and the strength of his grip, firm, grounding, unyielding as stone.

And then Persía realised who it was.

Evius.

Her panic faltered, confusion bleeding through in its place. His mortal features glowed pale in the moonlight, hair damp from the river spray, expression unreadable. Her friend. Her only true ally here.

He’s here. Of course he’s here. Of course the one competent person on the island shows up when I’m a mess.

His hands were still cradling her face, his eyes steady, waiting for her to come back to herself.

“Evius…?” Her voice rasped, more breath than sound.

“Yes,” he said at once, the word firm, grounding. “That’s right. I’m here with you. You’re safe.”

She exhaled shakily, a long, broken breath, and began to nod, more to convince herself than him. “Yeah. I’m… I’m okay. ’M okay.”

His eyes searched hers, unconvinced. He eased his hands from her face, only to catch her trembling fingers instead. The grip was gentle, cautious, as if he feared crossing a line, but it made her ache with the sudden absence of his touch.

“What do you need?” he asked quietly, the river whispering behind him. “Tell me, and I’ll do it. Anything.”

Persía swallowed, throat raw. The words dragged themselves out, fragile, stripped bare. “I don’t – just… stay.”

“You need me to stay?”

“Yes.” Her voice cracked, softer now. “Please.”

He nodded once, solemn, as if binding himself to an oath. “Alright. I’ll stay.”

And stay he did, kneeling there in the river beside her, his hand still wrapped around hers, not loosening even when her breath steadied and her body sagged with exhaustion.

When the air finally reached the bottom of her lungs and the rattling in her chest eased, the sound that came next surprised them both — first a hiccup, then an ugly, helpless cry.

Tears slid free and hot, streaking through the river on her cheeks. She let them come, each one a small, terrible surrender.

Evius folded himself around her as if to close the world out.

His arms were solid, an enclosing shelter; his shoulder pressed into the space between her shoulder blades, anchoring her. His arms are steady, immovable. Infuriatingly safe. Ugh, I could almost despise him for it if I weren’t so tired.

She buried her face against him and wept until the river’s rhythm in her ears matched the quieting of her heart.

After a long while he shifted, settling her more fully against his chest. His voice was low, close to her ear; careful, steady. “Can you tell me what happened?”

She drew in a few shuddering breaths, composure ragged but gathering. Nods came between words like surf between stones. “He–he touched me. I let him.” The sentence broke, furious and ashamed. “I didn’t want to, not really. I… I had to.” Her fingers twisted in his tunic. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you sooner.”

Evius waited, every inch of him patient. “Who touched you?”

“My kyrios.” The word hit the water. Her voice pinched with bitter humor. “I’m a slave, if you didn’t know–” She barked a laugh that was half hysteria. “You probably did, you clever bastard.”

Evius’ hand tightened once around her shoulders, not harshly, but with the kind of grip that said he understood the gravity without needing a parade. “Do you remember what you told me in the first weeks we knew each other? Didn’t you say ‘No take-backs?” he said simply.

She blinked through wet lashes. “I did.”

“So,” he went on, a faint smirk ghosting the corners of his mouth though his eyes remained grave, “no take-backs.”

Her laugh this time was smaller, incredulous. “Okay. Okay – no take-backs. You’re stuck with me, then.” She squeezed his hand, the gesture clumsy and human.

“Stuck,” he confirmed, voice soft. They sat like that for a long moment: two figures held in the moonlight and the river’s hush, the world narrowed to slow breath and the warmth between them.

She let out a ragged exhale and, feeling the steadiness of him for the first time since the chambers, allowed a little of the panic to leak away. “Thank you,” she whispered, the words small and real.

Evius tucked his chin against her hair. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “We’ll figure it. One step at a time.”

Below that promise; fragile but present, Persía felt, for the first time since she became a slave, since all her punishments, before the meeting, the forceful kiss, the unwanted hands and mouth on her tonight – a small possibility of being less alone.