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The camera pans up from the ranks of assembled onlookers to a platform draped in imperial insignia. The Apokine, flanked by ministers and attendants, begins their oration, invoking the eidolons of family and celebration to sanctify the occasion, and Cass scrubs through the video feed to speed past it.
Even back then, this had, in a way, been the most familiar version of their parent. All steely, public-facing surface, all authority untempered by tenderness. There was no stir of nostalgia in this. This is not what Cass had come looking for.
The camera sweeps across the platform to show the Apokine's three scions seated in a row, obediently silent, and here Cass slows the feed.
In lieu of a family album, they have this. The footage held in the archives of the Golden Demarchy, a public record of the empire’s fall, of House Pelagios’s slow dissolution.
Their own smallness in the image takes them by surprise. The round face and wide eyes, mouth downturned in a young child's approximation of solemnity. Then Sokrates, strangely fragile in their adolescent awkwardness, and finally Euanthe, straight-backed and striking, stepping forward to dutifully accept the heir’s sash from the Apokine as the crowd applauds.
Children, Cass thought, as though confirming something they had merely suspected before now. Only children.
*****
It had been one of Cass’s earliest definite memories: Euanthe’s hands reaching down to button the high collar of their jacket, the material stiff and coarse against their throat. Clothing for a state occasion, meant to project militarist precision and authority. Even made to children’s sizes, there seemed to be a certain hostility in its design, a deliberate disregard for the wearer’s comfort.
“Sit straight, Cassander. Be still.”
Euanthe had been prematurely tall back then, and Cass so small as to barely reach their waist. They knelt to push a hand through Cass's curls, valiantly striving to force them into a more orderly shape. A wave of their own carefully arranged hair fell out of place as they wrangled against Cass’s squirming.
The servants had already dressed Cass once, but their first attempt rarely met Euanthe’s exacting standards. Cass had grown accustomed to this routine of grooming, critique, adjustment at the hands of their eldest sibling before each public appearance.
This time, though, Euanthe seemed particularly on edge. Fearful, almost.
“I don’t want to go,” Cass complained. “I have a stomachache.”
“No you don’t,” Euanthe replied levelly. “And you have to go. The Apokine said so.”
“If I go, I’ll be sick.” Cass raised their voice indignantly. “In front of everybody.”
“It will only be a few hours,” Sokrates reassured them with a sympathetic look, leaning an elbow over the back of their chair. “It’ll be alright, Cass. We just have to get through it.”
At a few years younger than Euanthe, Sokrates was less graceful than their older sibling, quieter and more watchful, restless in a way that suggested an inability to ever quite get comfortable in their own skin. They picked at a button on their sleeve with a slightly defiant air.
“At least we don’t have to do anything," they added. "We just have to be there so that everything looks good and official when they name Euanthe the heir.”
Euanthe’s eyes darted toward Sokrates. “It isn’t about me,” they said quietly, working to brush the wrinkles from Cass’s uniform. “It’s an important day for Apostolos.”
Sokrates shrugged a shoulder doubtfully. “It’s not like everyone didn’t know it’d be you already. You’re the oldest, you’re the Apokine’s favorite. It’s not some great mystery.”
Cass peered up at Sokrates. It was the first time they had heard their sibling put a name to it, to this thing they had always intuitively known: that their parent loved Euanthe best. And Sokrates was not angry about it, not exactly, but - something else.
Euanthe went still for a moment, brows lowering, gaze distant. They finished adjusting Cass’s jacket and straightened.
“It’s not about favorites, either,” they answered with a frown. “It’s about showing people that the empire is strong, and united.”
Sokrates scoffed. "You always just repeat whatever you think the Apokine would say," they muttered.
But Cass heard that unfamiliar note in their sibling's voice, again. Not angry, they thought. Sad. And the knot of worry in their gut grew harder and more painful.
"And why not? You would do well to sound more like them," Euanthe shot back, sharp and brittle. "Don't say it like it's an insult."
"I'm just saying - you - shouldn't have to," Sokrates mumbled in confusion. “You’re allowed to have your own thoughts.” Their eyes turned back to the button on their sleeve.
“I’m hungry,” Cass interrupted, attempting a new tactic. A new way of putting the thing into words.
“You just said that you were feeling sick.” Euanthe shook their head sternly as they adjusted their own uniform in the mirror. “And if you eat now, you’ll get your clothes all messy.”
“But I’m really hungry,” Cass wailed, their voice growing thick with approaching tears. As though the awful, gnawing feeling inside them really might crawl up and out through their throat.
“There'll be a banquet afterward, and you can eat then.” Euanthe exhaled, then turned toward Cass and Sokrates. “Come on, you two. It’s time to go.”
Cass sniffled as they moved to follow Euanthe out of the room, down to the palace’s main level, where the crowd, the cameras, and their parent would await. But they did not cry. They were old enough to know that this would be against the rules, to have their face red and tearstained in public.
And, even back then, even carrying that tight ball of childlike dread and resentment in their chest, there was a part of them that understood this much: that the rules they feared breaking were not Euanthe’s, but the Apokine's. That Euanthe was, in their merciless way, shielding them from their parent's disapproval.
“Hang on.” Sokrates caught Cass gently by the arm as they approached the door, crouching down beside them. “Stand still for a moment. Open up.”
They unwrapped a small piece of candy and held it in front of Cass’s face, and when Cass complied, popped it into their mouth.
“I have a couple more in my pockets,” Sokrates confided with a small smile. “I’ll sneak you another one in a bit, alright?”
Euanthe had stopped at the threshold, and glanced back at the two of them with a reproachful frown. After a moment, they only sighed.
“Just make sure the Apokine doesn’t catch you,” they murmured.
Cass grasped tightly to Sokrates’s hand as they watched Euanthe square their shoulders, step out the door, and disappear beneath the lights.
*****
Cass queues up the next recording, a propaganda reel from the early days of the Golden War. Brief vignettes show this younger version of them, mid-twenties now, playing the medic in a staged field hospital, followed by Sokrates, heading a state tour of an arms manufacturing facility.
All the empire prepares for war, the narrator declares, and the Apokine's house is no exception.
Sokrates turns to say something to one of the attendants at their side, inaudible beneath the film’s ponderous score. But there is a familiar glint in their expression. Holding a straight face for the cameras, Cass guesses, while indulging in a private joke. Trying to set their companions more at ease.
At last, there is Euanthe, for whom the bulk of the film is reserved. Imposing in their officer's uniform, standing amidst ranks of soldiers preparing to be shipped to the front. This, too, is for show - of course the Apokine's heir will be held back from the most dangerous fighting. But it is Apostolosian tradition that they should represent their family in battle, so they do.
Sacrifice, the narrator intones. House Pelagios's offering to the war effort.
*****
There had been, perhaps, long ago, some small, secretive part of Cass that had dreamt of supplanting their sibling as the Apokine’s heir. That had desired the title, the attention. That had envied the rare glimmers of warmth Euanthe received from their parent, an approving nod or a steadying squeeze of the shoulder.
But Cass was no longer a child. They had seen enough of what that life had done to Euanthe, how it had exhausted them, hollowed them out, dulled them over the years. It had been a long time since they had coveted their sibling’s place.
Yet when Euanthe’s transport ship was shot down, when they failed to regain consciousness after months of their physicians’ best efforts, when Sokrates disappeared from their post and was branded a traitor, Cass was thrust into the role, with little to say in the matter. They were recalled from their medical assignment, endowed with the heir’s sash, and installed hastily at the Apokine’s side.
It was not to be a speaking role. They were meant to be a symbolic assurance of the empire's future - to be seen, Cass told themself, not heard, certainly not thought about too long or too carefully. And if any part of them had clung to the childish hope that this new role would open some untapped wellspring of parental affection in the Apokine, there, too, they were disappointed.
Then, in the waning days of the war, Euanthe woke up.
Cass found them in the palace wing that had been converted for their convalescence, the tubes of medical apparatus snaking from their bed.
Euanthe had been groomed and made up by the servants in preparation for this audience. They sat upright with their hands folded calmly in front of them. Even so, Cass found them nearly unrecognizable. Too thin and pale, too small for the sparse, cavernous chamber that Cass had, over the preceding year, come to regard as their tomb.
Cass pulled a chair to the side of their bed. The room smelled of wilted flowers and iodine.
“Cassander.” Euanthe gave them a restrained smile, though Cass thought there might be a trace of genuine warmth beneath it. “It’s good to see you.”
“Have they told you yet?” Cass began, fumbling the attempt to start the conversation in any other way. "About Sokrates."
Euanthe looked away and nodded. “They have.”
The flicker of pain in their expression caught Cass by surprise, and they swallowed back a sudden urge to cry. Feeling the weight of the impossible, truncated grief they had been carrying these past months, unable to properly mourn the loss of either sibling. Unable to grieve for Euanthe while they still lived. Unable to grieve for Sokrates, when they were now considered more enemy than kin.
"I haven't heard anything from them," Cass said slowly. "Not since we all parted ways at the beginning of the war."
"I suppose you wouldn't. Neither of you has ever been any good at keeping up a correspondence," Euanthe replied with another dim smile. "I wrote letters to you both for a while, and received nothing in response."
Cass suppressed a wince. They remembered the sort of letters Euanthe had sent. Overly formal, written in the verbiage of imperial propaganda, so rigidly correct that the censors had hardly bothered redacting them. The sole personal touch was to be found in Euanthe’s vague criticism, in reminders for Cass to honor the virtues of Apole, to practice obedience, to rein in their habitual impatience.
And Cass had not written back. Because how does one respond to a letter like that? And because, perhaps, some youthful, irresponsible part of them had believed that there was no need to write - that Euanthe would always be there when they returned, an irksome, indelible constant in their life -
"In any case, it's for the best you haven’t heard from them," Euanthe finished, smile fading. They rearranged themself slightly in the bed, then looked up gravely at Cass. “Any further contact with them would, of course, be impermissible."
The words were hardly unexpected. Cass had already been told as much by the Apokine. But on hearing it, now, from their sibling, Cass felt a stir of dread in the pit of their stomach.
They both sat in silence for some moments, the click and whir of medical machinery marking the passage of time.
“Well,” Cass said at last, “I came to say goodbye.”
“I know,” Euanthe replied, quiet but steady.
“And you don’t have anything to say about that?” Cass heard the unintended rawness, the edge of bitterness surface in their voice.
There was a pause, Euanthe’s head drooping, shoulders hunched. They must still be quite weak, Cass thought.
“What is there to say, Cassander? The Apokine has made their decision. And you know why.”
“Sure,” Cass replied flatly. “It’s embarrassing for them, to have named me heir and to have to take it back. So they’re hoping if I go into exile, if I leave quietly and never come back, then people will forget it ever happened.”
Cass knew that it was unjust, to lay this at Euanthe’s feet. They were still recovering, they could hardly be blamed for any of this. And yet -
And yet, Cass realized with a twinge of guilt, it was a relief to be able to speak with them like this. To be able to speak openly, to anyone. On equal terms. Without pretense.
“You’re not a child anymore, Cassander.” Euanthe’s tone was reproachful now, mirroring Cass’s annoyance. “You understand that this isn’t personal. This is about the unity of Apostolos. We’re at war - we can’t afford the appearance of being divided.”
“Right. So you'll be the heir again, the Apokine's only recognized scion," Cass said, control over their tone again slipping away from them. "Practically an only child. And Sokrates and I will be cut out. Removed from the narrative.”
“Don’t compare yourself to them.” The tremor of anger in Euanthe’s voice took Cass by surprise. “Your situation is regrettable, but - Sokrates is a traitor. They have taken up the cause of our enemies. If they ever return here -”
But their voice broke and failed, and Cass was relieved that they were unable to finish the thought.
“They - messed up,” Cass replied weakly, with a sick feeling. “But it’s still Sokrates. You know how they are. How they've always been."
They looked up at Euanthe intently, realizing this was something they still hoped their sibling could give them. An opportunity to speak about this. To try to make sense, together, of what had happened.
"You remember, don’t you, when we were younger," Cass pressed on, “when one of the servants had been stealing, and Sokrates lied to protect them, to keep them from being punished? And even though you saw what had happened, you didn't say anything to the Apokine. Because you understood what Sokrates was trying to do, I think. You understood, at least, that it couldn’t be helped - that this was just in their nature. So -"
Cass floundered, shook their head.
"Maybe - this is like that. They probably started off following an idea, letting their sympathies get the better of them, and things just got out of hand. I’m sure they never meant for it to go this far. And once the war ends - once this is all over -”
“Cassander,” Euanthe interrupted. They had managed to pull their posture upright, though Cass could see the tremble beneath it, the residual muscle weakness of their long convalescence. They looked Cass in the eyes and spoke very deliberately, as if afraid a single word might be missed. “This is - a child's way of thinking. This war is coming to an end, yes. But there will be no forgiveness for what Sokrates has done.”
"We don't even know what happened," Cass protested helplessly. "Don't you at least want to know their side of it?"
"There is no other side. The Apokine has issued their judgment. And when I am Apokine -" Euanthe faltered, seemed to lose their breath for a moment, then regained it - "it will be my duty to carry out that judgment faithfully.”
Cass looked away in dismay. Wanted to look anywhere but at them, anywhere but at the cold, smooth lines of their face as they said it. Carved in the image of their parent, the resemblance as faithful, and as inhuman, as the marble statue that stood amid the five other eidolons in Apostolos's throne room.
“You don't have to follow them in everything,” Cass murmured, the hot sting of frustration burning their eyes and the back of their throat. “You could be - better than that. Better than them.”
“You're beginning to sound like Sokrates, to speak of your Apokine that way,” Euanthe responded quietly. “You should be careful not to let it become a habit.”
But the coldness seemed to have fled from them, and their shoulders sank slowly inward once more. They looked defeated, like this. Vulnerable. A wounded person, Cass’s medical instincts told them, in need of rest, and care.
“You have to understand, Cassander." Euanthe shook their head, dropping their voice low. "Sokrates has made their choice. This is simply how things are now. How they must be. Each of us has our duty, and none of us chooses what it is. Not even the Apokine.”
Not even you, Cass thought, with a brief, involuntary pang of sympathy.
Euanthe was not yet able to hold the commanding posture, the fixed expression, that would be required before they were allowed to appear on camera, before a public of any kind. Yet they were already being asked to perform this role. The heir of House Pelagios, the favorite, the loyal scion. Their parent’s proxy. Already asked to tolerate Cass’s resentment, as though it had been Cass who had suffered the worse injury between them, who had been asked to sacrifice the most for the sake of this family -
Cass felt suddenly very tired. They leaned forward against their knees and rubbed a hand across their eyes. They had come to say goodbye, and this was not at all how they had wanted to end things.
"I'm glad that you're well. That you're - doing better," Cass said eventually. "But I should go."
Euanthe reached out to lay a hand over Cass's head, brushing a stray curl into place.
“Be good, Cassander. You, at least, I would still like to think of as my sibling. Even if we don't see each other, I want to know that we’ll still be connected. That wherever you go after this, you’ll still be loyal to Apostolos.”
It’s strange, Cass thought, that you don't see that those are two different wants. But there was less irony in the thought than they had expected, and more straightforward pity.
"You should try writing me letters again," Cass said, glancing up at Euanthe with a sad, depleted little smile. "No promises. But maybe I'll even write back this time."
When Euanthe did not respond, Cass stood to leave. They had nearly reached the door before they heard Euanthe's voice behind them, so soft that it was difficult to make out the words.
"If you do hear from Sokrates -"
Cass turned to look at them curiously.
"Never mind," Euanthe finished. "Farewell, Cassander."
*****
At the moment when Cass had learned of their parent's death, there had been fireworks, music in the streets, a holiday atmosphere on Counterweight, a celebration of the tenth anniversary of the end of the Golden War. And Cass had seen none of it. They had stood amidst it all in stunned silence, reading the headlines from half a galaxy away:
An end to the Apostolosian Empire? Apokine killed in palace coup. Sokrates Artemisios declares establishment of the Golden Demarchy.
Back then, Cass had navigated with trembling hands through the mesh’s flood of reportage and rumor to find what they were looking for. Now, they retrace their steps, and find it with comparative ease in the Demarchy's digital archive.
They pause to study the photograph more carefully, this time, examining the uniformed soldiers in Euanthe's escort, the grief in their sibling’s eyes behind the careful mask of anger, the spindly limbs of Integrity faintly visible where Sokrates's neck and shoulder turn toward the camera.
But on that day, heart racing with terror and new possibility, Cass had cared about two things only.
Here was Euanthe, defeated and defiant in the wake of the coup, but still alive, and unharmed.
And here was Sokrates, the passage of time scrawled across their face in the lines near their eyes and the heavy crease between their brows, but still alert and watchful, still with a curve to their mouth that seemed perpetually on the verge of breaking into a grin. Still the sibling that Cass remembered.
*****
Years in exile on Counterweight had made plain all of the ways that Cass's life on Apostolos had been abnormal, at once too sheltered, too scrutinized, too privileged. They embarrassed themself more than once in those early days by falling back on old habits, expecting a clerk or service worker to make a special allowance for them, assuming their words would carry some particular weight beyond what could be backed by bribery or leverage.
Yet the loneliness of life in exile proved to be deeply familiar to Cass. Indeed, there were benefits, when becoming involved with the criminal underworld, to being so well acclimated to isolation. Benefits to expecting all of one’s connections to remain cagey, transactional, and with strings attached.
The truly disorienting thing was when Cass’s relationship with the Chime began to feel like more than that. More permanent. More comforting. Cass fell into it so naturally that they mistrusted it, at first. As though it might signal a dangerous naivety on their part, or the result of some colossal grift.
It was not only that they enjoyed the company of their three companions, individually and in tandem, although they did. Even in the moments when they found Mako exhausting, and Aria frustrating, and AuDy alarming, Cass liked them. But there was also an ease in conversation with them, a casual intimacy to their movements aboard the Kingdom Come, an effortless belonging, that Cass could not help but contrast with the strain they had always felt within their own family.
It had simply never occurred to Cass that it could come this easily, to be part of a unit, to entrust themself to others. And when they stopped to consider why that was, and what it might mean, it made their chest ache.
Cass rarely spoke about their family with the other members of the Chime - not beyond the broad outlines, at least. But after they had all delved together into the simulated history of the Golden War, after news arrived of Sokrates’s return to Apostolos, of the Apokine’s death, it quickly became clear that these two pieces of their life had collided, and could no longer be held apart.
The fact became undeniable when Cass returned from their parent’s funeral to find their three friends in the common area of the Kingdom Come, locked in a conversation about Apostolos.
“I mean, it must be a good thing, right?” Mako was saying, in the slightly too loud voice that denoted his enthusiasm.
“Why must it?” AuDy asked. “Why should a coup perpetrated by a non-inheriting scion of the dynasty help our situation in any way?”
“You saw them in the simulation. Anyone who would tell Ibex to fuck off like that can't be bad.”
"Mako -" Aria, noticing Cass's approach, made an effort to hush him with a warning gesture. But Mako merely turned in Cass’s direction and continued undeterred, eyes lighting up with renewed interest.
“Cass, you’d know better than anyone. Don’t you think it has to be a good thing, now that Sokrates is in charge?”
“Mako, please,” Aria broke in, voice quivering with mortification. “They’re just coming back from their parent’s funeral. Have, like, an ounce of tact, I’m begging you.”
“No, it’s - it’s alright,” Cass reassured her.
And it was. When all of this had first come to light, there had been a nauseating sensation of exposure - their family’s messy history put on public display, their friends suddenly becoming privy to all of the truths of their past that still made their stomach twist in discomfort. But it was all out in the open, now, and Cass recognized instinctively that it would be a relief to talk about it.
"The truth is," Cass went on, pulling out a chair from the common room table and slumping into it, "I don't really know. I haven't spoken to Sokrates for a long time. Years. To either of my siblings, really."
"They were both at the funeral, right?" Aria asked gently, leaning back against the curve of the ship’s doorframe. “Did everything - go okay?”
Cass nodded. “It was weird, but - yeah? The projection was pretty blurry. It was hard to make out much, and I couldn’t really hear anything. But Sokrates, at least, looked glad to see me. Euanthe -” They paused, shrugged. “I don’t know. They were always the closest to our parent. I think it’s been hard on them.”
Cass’s mind conjured the scene involuntarily - the throne room on Apostolos, the sound of a single shot, blood across the stone floor. With Sokrates now leading the Demarchy, it had evidently been judged discourteous to refer to them as their parent’s killer. And in any case, the best reports seemed to confirm that they had not been the one to pull the trigger. But Cass doubted that the technicality could matter much to Euanthe.
“I’m sure it’s been hard on all of you,” Aria responded with a worried frown. “In different ways.”
“But it seems like you don’t blame Sokrates for what happened,” Mako cut in, with characteristic bluntness, as though continuing the thread of Cass’s thoughts.
“I - no,” Cass said slowly. “I think - Sokrates did what they had to do.”
“See, this is what I’m saying,” Mako declared to the others. “I know the war happened a long time ago, but we all saw what Sokrates did back then. They didn’t back down. They actually, like, cared about making things better for people. Even though -”
“Even though they failed to actually accomplish anything,” AuDy stated calmly.
Cass let out a short laugh.
“I’m just saying - they seemed solid,” Mako finished with a shrug. “I’d trust them to do the right thing. Way more than the last Apokine - sorry, Cass, no offense.”
Cass looked up at Mako with surprise, and could not help a small, affectionate smile.
It made sense, in a way, that Mako would feel such an affinity for Sokrates. Mako's chaotic, irresponsible sort of kindness, the forthrightness that rendered him almost incapable of any real intrigue or deception, his equal capacity for flippancy as for righteous anger - Cass could see the resemblance, now.
And on the other side was AuDy. Determined, inflexible, bitter behind their veil of imperturbability. Unhesitating in a way that Cass admired as often as feared - that was all Euanthe.
Perhaps this was why Cass had always found friendship with Aria to come most easily, with the least complicated feeling attached to it. Aria was not like Cass, not exactly, but they shared this much: she was also trying to outrun her history, was also trying to scrape together what was left of her, what had not yet been swallowed up by her past and the people who owned it, into something like an identity, like a purpose. There was something imperfect, and selfish, and naive in this project, and Cass was forced to respect it, and to recognize the same impulse in themself.
Cass’s thoughts turned back to all that they had witnessed in the simulated history of the Golden War. This sudden addition of substance to a phase of Sokrates’s life that had previously been defined in their mind only by the word treason and a faint, unpleasant sense of shame. Even after the experience, stepping out of the memory farm into daylight, they still had felt it - the pain of Sokrates’s defeats and humiliations, their fleet stripped from them, their loyalty called into question. The vicarious anxiety of watching their sibling strive for peace, for unity, and fail.
But it was as if Mako’s words shook something loose for them. A question they had somehow never managed to formulate until now.
Why shouldn’t Cass be proud of what their sibling had done during the war? Why should they still carry this as though it were a shameful secret, when the empire that Sokrates had betrayed was one that Cass no longer believed in, when the family they had abandoned was one that Cass had fled as well? Why should they feel embarrassed by Sokrates’s failures, when Sokrates had been one of the few fighting for what was right in the first place?
Our parent’s way of thinking, Cass thought with a flash of clarity, and disgust. It’s all just their shame, their embarrassment - not mine. And they had been letting it live inside them. Had allowed it to color their opinion of their sibling, for years. For a decade.
“No,” Cass replied eventually, glancing up at Mako. “I think you’re right. Sokrates seems - more serious, now, I guess. But they’ve always been the way you saw, even when we were kids - thoughtful about other people. Intentional about doing the right thing. If someone has to be there to oversee the empire being dismantled, then, yeah - I’m glad it’s them.”
“And why not you?” AuDy asked, in that strangely level tone that made it difficult for Cass to distinguish teasing from deadly seriousness. “You have as much right to it as they do. Why not go back, and see that they do it right?”
“Aww, Cass,” Aria clasped her hands together in excitement. “You’d make such a good leader. You should ask Sokrates if you could like, do it together. Oh my god, that would be adorable…”
“What? Hell no,” Cass laughed. “I already got to play the figurehead once, remember? It was awful. And anyway, I don’t think that’s how it works anymore. There’s no more dynasty. Sokrates is just there long enough to phase themself out.”
“Well, you should’ve at least told us sooner that there was someone actually cool in your family,” Mako exclaimed, throwing an arm around their shoulder familiarly, squeezing them into an awkward half-embrace. “I always assumed that everyone other than you just sucked. But I guess that was mostly just based on your parent. Um, sorry, no offense again.”
“Yeah,” Cass replied, flushing slightly, “to be honest, I - kind of assumed the same thing.”
In the course of the following days, Cass thought back often to the conversation, to Mako’s words, to what they had seen with their own eyes in the history of the Golden War. It was a gift, in a way, to have been given this new perspective. To be able to admit, finally, that they loved Sokrates because of what they had done, and not in spite of it.
But more and more, the feeling bled over into something else. Regret, that they had not been there for Sokrates during the war. Guilt, that they had not done more to stand up for them, to defend them from their parent, from Euanthe, from public disgrace. That in all the ensuing years they had never once reached out, never tried to reestablish contact. The unsettling thought occurred to Cass that perhaps they had been the one to abandon Sokrates, back then, and not the other way around.
The feeling snapped into focus on the day when Mako faced Ibex down aboard the Kingdom Come. Watching how fearless and furious, how brave and vulnerable, Mako was in that moment, Cass could not help picturing Sokrates in the same position, standing against Ibex all those years before. Could not help wishing to have been there, by their sibling’s side, to have done more and risked more for them. And if that feeling made them reckless, if the desire to get it right, this time, was part of what made them leap to Mako’s side, then that was something Cass would not regret.
There had always been this sense, with the Chime, that they'd been given an opportunity to do things better. A second chance at this - at family, whatever that might mean.
This is what we could have been for each other, Cass thought, if only -
If only what? If only there had been no dynasty, no empire. No Apokine.
Friends, maybe. Co-conspirators. Allies, fighting on the side of something good.
*****
The rituals of preparation are familiar, but this time Cass buttons their own collar, swaps out their military jacket for the one they'd been given in the Chime, pushes a hand through their own hair, now streaked with a gray that Aria insists makes them look distinguished.
Four years after the September incident, the headlines will read, Cassander Timaeus Berenice, Apokine of the Golden Demarchy, honors the Chime with a state dinner on Apostolos.
When the recording is broadcast over the mesh, Cass thinks, it will show this much: the crumbling facade of the old palace, only lightly renovated since its conversion into a governmental building of the Demarchy. The arrival of the members of the Chime, friendly embraces, a somewhat overzealous bear hug from Mako that nearly knocks Cass from their feet. A formal greeting from the assorted leaders of the Demarchy, all handshakes and pleasantries.
Then, at last, Euanthe and Sokrates. A solid clasp on the shoulder from one, a warmer version of their parent's gesture. And from the other a lopsided smile, a tight embrace, Cass taking care not to recoil in surprise from the steely touch of Integrity at the nape of their sibling's neck.
Beyond this initial reception, there will be no cameras permitted at the banquet. Cass has grown better, over the years, at drawing boundaries around their own privacy. More than that, they are wary of recreating the old trappings of royalty and celebrity, of feeding into the cult of imperial nostalgia that seems to have sprouted up around them despite their best efforts to contain it.
So it is better not to emphasize, perhaps, that this will be the first time in nearly fourteen years that the three scions of House Pelagios have set foot in their former family estate at the same time.
Cass closes the palace door behind them, and feels the immediate relief, the tension leaving the space between their shoulders.
Even without the cameras, there is position, and responsibility, and public opinion to consider, Cass knows. But it is a rare thing, to have so much of what is precious to them in the world squeezed under one roof.
Maybe, in spite of everything, some part of this evening might still belong to them.
*****
As soon as the final toast had concluded, Cass retreated from the banquet hall into the kitchen, waving away the catering staff with a murmured permission to begin their break early.
Cass tossed their jacket over the back of a chair and pushed up their shirtsleeves. In search of something to occupy their hands, they filled a sink with soapy water and began washing the stacks of dirty plates and utensils that had accumulated over the course of the meal. An old comfort, a meditative habit they had developed in their time on board the Kingdom Come.
They felt tired, physically sapped from the hours-long festivities, and their mind still whirred from the evening’s tense conversation. Their thoughts snagged on the moment of confrontation between AuDy and Sokrates. Your emperor demands service - the dismay those words had stirred up in them, the fear that this fragile alliance might still come apart over something so small. But thinking back to it now, they could not help but break into an abrupt laugh.
It was not funny, really. It was a bit of a disaster, all told.
Still, Cass thought - of course the two of them would clash. For AuDy to pick a fight with Sokrates on the subject of loyalty and empire, while Euanthe looked on silently with a raised eyebrow, sipping their wine, as though they had been spared the trouble - it was just too perfect.
Cass did feel terrible for AuDy. After everything that had happened to them, to stumble into the middle of this decades-old minefield, this unfinished family conversation, shaped as much by years of hurt and mutual disappointment as by principle - Cass would have to apologize to them for that.
But in place of frustration, Cass discovered an unexpected sense of peace in the thought.
Maybe it was simply this: that they were so far past the point of needing to perform for the Chime, to keep up appearances, that they could hardly feel embarrassed by what had happened. Instead there was a flood of relief, a feeling almost like intimacy, in allowing their friends to enter so fully into their life.
Welcome to my childhood home, Cass thought; welcome to the same fight my family has been having for thirty-plus years.
Sokrates stepped into the kitchen a minute or so behind them, stretching their shoulders and sloughing off their own dress coat in turn.
“I thought I might find you hiding in the pantry, like you used to after big dinner parties,” they said with a grin.
“I did that one time,” Cass protested.
“One time that you remember, maybe. You were pretty little. I think you liked being somewhere dark and quiet after so many people." Sokrates shook their head in amusement, pulling off their earrings and slipping them into a pocket. "Couldn't really blame you for that."
"It does sound pretty appealing right about now." Cass sighed, pausing to dry their hands on a towel and lean back against the countertop. "Though I have to say, you weren’t really making things any less stressful in there.”
Sokrates’s smile vanished. “I know,” they said. Then added, after a pause, “I apologized to your friend.”
“Good,” Cass said. “I was afraid I was going to have to give you a whole lecture. You know that AuDy has been trapped on September for the past four years, right? With that - thing?”
“Yes. It sounds like hell. I was wrong to speak to them like that. But Cass -” There was a strange intensity in Sokrates’s gaze now. It was a side of them Cass had still not grown used to - Integrity’s influence, they guessed. “What they said - those were dangerous words. And I didn’t hear you speak up to contradict them.”
“There’s a time and a place, you know?” Cass shrugged noncommittally. “Maybe I didn’t see the point in making my friends’ misunderstanding of Apostolos’s internal politics into a major public incident.”
“I get that I shouldn’t have brought your friends into it,” Sokrates replied. “I’m sorry for that. But you have to understand, too.” They sighed, leaning their elbows amidst the unwashed pots and pans on the kitchen island, and looked up at Cass with a troubled expression. “You have to understand that when you rip an empire out by the roots, you can’t leave any trace behind. Because its impulse is always to regrow.”
“I do understand that,” Cass said stiffly. Not wanting to admit that they worried about the same thing, incessantly. “I’ve tried to be careful.” Not wanting to admit that they knew they were failing.
“But it’s already happening.” Sokrates shook their head. “You know I supported you taking a leadership role in the Demarchy. Taking your turn at the helm. But this - this has gone too far.”
“My turn?” Cass asked in disbelief. “You say it like I’d been clamoring for the opportunity. Do you honestly think this has anything to do with me - with what I want? The only reason I’m here is because I feel like I have a responsibility. What you want, or what I want - none of that matters, next to the danger we’re up against.”
Even as the words left their mouth, Cass could hear it - how much they sounded like Euanthe. The way Euanthe had always spoken to them both when they were younger. Icy and aloof, appealing to the demands of duty, offering their trite justifications on behalf of power. And Sokrates evidently heard it too, because there was a quick flash of fury in their eyes.
“You can’t seriously be thinking of just letting this happen. Letting Apostolos slip back into empire. Not after everything - not after I -” Their voice quivered, pulled back from speaking aloud the awful end of that sentence. They shook their head. “Cass - I won’t allow it.”
“Don’t be foolish, Sokrates,” Euanthe’s voice, quiet and even, interjected from behind them. “It’s obvious Cassander has no intention of that.”
Euanthe entered with a half-filled wine glass in hand, still in full uniform, hair pinned up elaborately. Despite the shift between them in power and position, Cass even now found their presence imposing, authoritative. But time had rendered their careful poise looser and less rigid than it had once been, had softened their features without really aging them. And though their words for Sokrates carried reproach, there was also something else in their tone. Gentler, almost amused.
Sokrates turned to glance at them doubtfully, jaw still set. Yet there was no hostility in the gaze, only a sort of neutral curiosity. Cass wondered, not for the first time, what had passed between the two of them in the years since their parent’s death, to allow them to arrive at such an understanding.
But the truth was, since childhood, they had always understood one another. Even when they had fought, even when they had agreed on nothing, Cass thought, they had understood each other better than most people ever would.
“You can see for yourself that Cassander has not partnered,” Euanthe continued. “And you’ve seen, as well, that it’s not because they’ve lacked opportunities.” They turned their eyes appraisingly toward Cass. “They are deliberately avoiding it. They are avoiding any attachment that could generate a new imperial line, any name that could attract power to itself after they’re gone. Whether from principle, or consideration for our feelings, I’m not sure. But this much is obvious - they've given all of that up in order to prevent the exact outcome you fear."
Cass looked back at Euanthe with surprise, a slight flush rising in their face. They considered opening their mouth to deny it, but instead only marveled at how completely Euanthe had seen through them. How precisely they had put into words a thought that Cass had never spoken aloud to anyone.
But it made sense, didn’t it? That they would be the one to see this.
Cass had believed, for many years, that it was only slavish obedience to their parent, a desire to please and imitate them, that had lain behind Euanthe’s talk of duty. But they saw their eldest sibling better, now. Cass had learned from dreary, grinding experience how easy it was to convince yourself that everything rested on your efforts alone. To allow a belief in self-sacrifice to harden and isolate you. To let the hollow fear of not doing enough take hold of you, seep into your bones - the hungry need to always do more, to be more -
They remembered the faint, eerie prickle of recognition they had experienced on September, feeling Rigour’s screeching dissonance inside their mind. Yes, I remember this - this is what it was like when we were kids, this is what it was like in our parent's house, this is what it was like during the war. You've always known this, that there is always more to be done, and never enough of yourself to fill the void - always more, and never enough -
Cass did their best to shut off the thoughts. But part of them suspected that Euanthe felt it, too. That if anyone could recognize the danger, could put a name to the trap that Cass had stumbled into, it would be them.
They saw the understanding of Euanthe’s words register across Sokrates’s expression, a quick wince of pain.
“Shit,” Sokrates breathed. They raised their eyes to meet Cass’s. That unfamiliar manner, again, that peculiar intensity. “Cass. I didn't realize - I didn't think it through. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Cass shook their head wearily. “You’re right, of course. About everything.” They swallowed, then pushed through their hesitation to add, “You’ve always been so much better at this than me - able to see this stuff so much more clearly than I could. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying, you being right all the time - for as long as I can remember.”
It should be easier to just say the thing, Cass thought - You know that I admire you, right? That you’re my goddamn hero, for what you did during the war?
But they saw, from the corner of their eye, Sokrates’s sad little smile, a glimmer of understanding, of gratitude, and guessed that what they said had been close enough.
“Anyway, it’s not as big of a deal as Euanthe makes it sound,” Cass added weakly. “They were exaggerating, about the opportunities.”
“I was?” Euanthe asked curiously, expression betraying no specific emotion.
Cass shrugged, turning back to the dishes. “I’ve never been particularly close to that kind of relationship, with anyone.”
“Come on, Cass,” Sokrates replied, sounding almost offended. “We saw how happy he was to see you today. And the look on your face, when he put his arms around you… That could be something, if you wanted it to be - if you let it.”
“I’m - not sure who you’re referring to,” Cass replied unsteadily, fixing their eyes on the dishes in front of them, half-expecting to get away with it.
Euanthe broke into a laugh. They made an effort to hold their composure, but their shoulders shook with laughter until they were forced to set down their wine glass and dab tears from their eyes with the back of their hand.
“Cassander,” they gasped, “please. You’re still such a child.”
“Eh, alright,” Cass waved them off irritably. “You’ve made your point.”
“Wow, you poor thing,” Sokrates managed to say through their own laughter. “Have your other friends been pretending it isn’t obvious?”
“Well, I imagine they were trying to be sensitive to the fact that it would be unbelievably awkward if they brought it up,” Cass fumed helplessly. “But thank you, I’m so glad I could count on the two of you for this.”
"Of course," Sokrates answered with a broad smile, then added more thoughtfully, “You know, this is a perfect example of why we all ought to spend more time together.”
“You’re not exactly selling me on the idea,” Cass pointed out.
"No, listen - Euanthe and I can be here to remind you that you're allowed to have a life of your own - that the world won’t fall apart just because you let yourself get close to someone. And in return, you have to tell me whenever I say something awful, like tonight. And -” They glanced over at Euanthe. “And we can both agree to let Euanthe know when they're being insufferable."
"Absolutely not," Euanthe shook their head indignantly. "I never agreed to this arrangement."
Sokrates laughed again, and Cass was smiling now, too, though there was a peculiar ache that went along with it.
They had a sudden memory of what it had felt like to be small next to their siblings. That bewildering sense of admiration, almost awe, wishing for nothing more than to be a part of something alongside them. Recognizing, only in retrospect, how that feeling had been winnowed away over the years by everything else - by power, by hierarchy, by expectation, by their parent’s tightly rationed affections - leaving behind only a sense of absence. All of the places in their life that might have been filled with this, but were not.
Cass’s smile faded, and they allowed silence to fall for a few moments, filled only by sounds of the running water and the clatter of dishware.
“Do you ever think,” Cass began after a pause, “I don’t know. That this should have been easier?” They shrugged. “All of us being together, I guess.”
“Oh. All the time,” Sokrates responded, as though surprised.
"Like - we know each other so well," Cass pressed on. "And I'm not really sure whether that counts for anything. But sometimes it feels like it should."
"No, I know what you mean." Sokrates spoke more slowly now, their voice dipping low and careful. "I missed the hell out of both of you, during the war, and then after. But I also thought a lot about how things could have been different. How close we were to - something different, than the way things turned out."
Euanthe nodded, looking away. "I have often thought that I -”
They faltered, fell silent, then tried again.
“That we - should have been more to each other."
Cass saw them struggle to find the words. Euanthe had never been at ease with vulnerability in front of their siblings, and even less with admissions of failure. But Cass felt the tightening in their throat, the weight settling over their heart nonetheless.
Yes, they thought. We could have been more, together, than we were apart. And perhaps that was the point.
There had always been this sense that something had been broken between them, so long ago that none of them could remember what it meant for it to be whole. And maybe it was too much to ask for repair, for forgiveness, after all this time.
But Cass wondered if there was still value in what they were to each other now. A reminder of those other possibilities. Pieces of something larger.
"You know," Cass observed eventually, "if we manage to avoid making a complete mess of it, then this might be the first time in our lives that all three of us will be on the same side of a fight - the same side of anything, really."
"First time in history," Sokrates agreed, shaking their head solemnly. They carried another stack of dishes to the sink and handed them off to Cass. "With all of us pulling in the same direction for once, who knows what could happen?"
They tossed a hand towel to Euanthe, who caught it with a look of reluctance.
"It seems that Rigour will be the one to find out," Euanthe replied grimly.
They gingerly picked up a damp plate and made a few clumsy, unpracticed swipes of the towel across it, then glanced up at their siblings with a faint smile.
"Whatever happens, whether we win or lose," they said, "I don't envy it that."