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Chapter Text

I am at the beach again.

The night is dark, though the stars are bright. I watch them wheel overhead, my hair in the waves, my back on the sand. I must be made of salt water; so many tears have I cried. The waves are fiercer, the ocean overflowing, I am sure; so soundly have I wept.

My mother comes to me sometimes, when I lie here. She used to offer words to me once, platitudes, assurances, but she does not try anymore. She knows there is no comfort she can give me, my will is gone, this world bears no lustre for me. So, she simply sits, watching over me, watching the sky with me, mourning me, though she will not mourn with me.

No one will mourn with me, not anymore. It has been too long, and war moves fast. The sun sets red every evening; men are cut down like river reeds every day.

Yet I am still here, tears in my hair, blood on my hands, salt in my mouth, so still I’d take myself for dead.

But I am not dead; I know this, from the way my own heart pounds in my ears, from the way my spear arm aches, from the way my feet throb from running.

Hades on Earth, I am not dead. For all my efforts, I am not dead.

It used to frustrate me when my grief was fresh, but it has since ceased to bother me.

I know the prophecy will hold, as prophecies tend to do, as the one my mother told me about right here on these shores held.

The best of the Myrmidons—while you live—will fall at Trojan hands and leave the light of day.

How distant that night seems, how large the moon had seemed in the sky.

But no more silver light now, nothing to dance on the waves as they crash into themselves, ebb and flow around me. Only stars.

Do they make swans? Crosses? Heroes mid-battle?

I do not know; I do not remember. I did not pay much attention when Chiron explained them.

I wonder if he thinks of me, sometimes, as he thought of Heracles, of Jason.

I laugh without meaning to. I think I have failed him, without meaning to, just as they did.

It is not funny, but I laugh all the same. It has been a while since I laughed, so I laugh for a long time. Then I choke, then I cough, and it is back to crying with me.

I think the last time I cried this much I was a baby.

Phoenix would know; I should ask him. Though he will not look me in the eyes as he used to. He thinks me fragile I think, just as he thinks me cruel. Can a person be both?

I wonder sometimes if he remains in my service because my father bid him to. He said he loves me as his own son, but he had said it before I fought the river, so I cannot be certain now. I know he follows me into battle, just as the rest of the Myrmidons do, but I do not look behind me when I leave the camp anymore.

I will fight whether they follow me or not, whether I am their prince or not, whether I am Aristos Achaion or not.

Chiron warned me about that name, counselled me not to let that title fill my head so full that my better sense leaked out of my ears. But he was too late; I was already deaf. My ears were already full of my mother’s doting, my father’s stories, the clamours of those armies he put at my back.

I was going to be a hero, the best of my generation, the greatest of them all.

And I suppose I am. I am certainly weeping more than the others did, more than Heracles, more than Jason.

Though I did not know I would then, in the prow of the first ship that left Phthia.

I did not even look back when we set sail, not even for a moment.

But you did.

You waved goodbye, to your father and mine, as we pulled away from the shore. You spent hours mapping the sky as we sailed, kept a record of all the constellations you saw just as Chiron taught us to do. Even at camp, you cooked all our childhood favourites, everything we were scolded for stealing from the royal kitchens for a midnight snack.

Do you remember, Patroclus?

Do you remember that ship, our cabin, how the air tasted when we laughed into the wind? Do you remember Mount Pelion, sparring in the grass, swimming in the river, sleeping by the fire wrapped in the same pelt? Do you remember mathematics, Patroclus? Mathematics, and poetry and military strategy; medicine and politics and language and everything we learned together, you and I?

Do you remember my skin, Patroclus? You said you loved the way the sun warmed it.

Do you remember my voice? You said you loved to hear me sing, lyre in my hands, furs over my feet, you in my eyes, always, always, you in my eyes.

Do you remember my hands, the way I clung to you after we made love? You’d say I was spoiled; I’d say you spoiled me; you’d say you couldn’t bring yourself to regret it.

Do you remember me, Patroclus? Do you think of me, so far beneath the earth? If I lie here against the ground, will you come to the surface and touch me again?

Because I remember you, Patroclus.

I remember you, as you were in my father’s stables, taming even the wildest horses. I remember you, as you were on Pelion, dressing your first wound to perfection. I remember you, as you were in my armour, as you were on your knees begging me to fight, as you were on our bed, your eyes closed, drenched in blood, covered in dust, with that smile on your face.

I remember you, my love. I always will, as long as I walk the earth.

They say the dead forget their dead in the Underworld, but I will remember you, even there.

When I sleep, if sleep can find me, I will dream of you. When I eat, if I can lift my arms to cut my meat, I will cut a share for you. When I drink, if I can keep my wine down, I will toast to you.

And tonight, when I find the wherewithal to rise and return to our tent, I will wipe down my lyre and I will sing of you.

These are the solemn honours owed the dead.

Chapter Text

I am restless.

I always have been; my mother told me so, as did old Phoenix.

I came screaming into this world, kicking, beating down the air as if I could fly if I tried long and hard enough. I was insulted, I think, to not have wings, to not be able to chase the birds on the beach that carried off my meat and bread into the sky.

Where was this place they could go, that I was not allowed to? The heavens dared deny me?

I think that is why I began to run. I think that is why I like it best.

When I ran, the ground felt unbroken, and I could leave it behind. The wind felt cool, and it whipped the hair from my face. Down by the beaches of Phthia, it was full of ocean, that wind, but it did not sting my skin.

A gift of my birth, a blessing from my grandfather, the Old Man of the Sea.

Only one gift of many.

Blisters from racing barefoot in the sand, that appeared at sunset and disappeared by sunrise. Fine linens and furs, tutors and servants; a king’s wealth to bask in. An uncommon steadiness in my hands, a special strength in my arms; a goddess’ blood to boast of.

And you.

You, Patroclus, whose love was the only gift I was not given simply for being Achilles, demigod son of Thetis and crown prince of Phthia.

No, I had to earn that.

I remember the day you came to us. I was restless; it was the first time my father had bid me to sit in the throne to his side. Eight summers old, my feet dangling off the edge of that marble chair, wet sand still stuck to the soles, reeking of sweat and seaweed.

It was boring.

My father said we were to receive an old friend—an Argonaut, the king of Opus, no less—but it was boring to be seated there when the beaches beckoned outside, the sun high in the sky.

I knew not why my presence was necessary, and I did not care to know. I only knew that I had taken advantage of my tutor’s hobbling and tenderness, darted past him and out of my lessons, and sped off to the beach, not one hour ago. And now, clearly, I was being punished, by being forced to attend a dreary exchange that had absolutely nothing to do with me.

Childish, fickle mind of mine. That day decided our entire lives.

I did not see you when you entered; your father was a mighty man and took up the room with his presence. He walked as if he would not be diminished no matter who and what stood before him. There was an agedness to him that my father did not have, an opacity to his eyes that did not soften, even when my father greeted him with warmth and smiles.

“Menoetius, my old friend, what is the matter? What troubles you?”

“It is my son, Peleus,” he replied, and his voice was clay. “I must banish my son from my lands.”

And that was when you came out from behind him and bowed deeply.

You were tall as well, long bones and broad shoulders, though you stood as if crumpled. No fineries on you, no gold nor silver, nothing radiant against your dark skin. Not like your father.

It was as if you were already forfeit, no longer his own, no prince of his kingdom. I thought it cruel.

“Banished? Gods, why would you do such a thing?” my father gasped. His eyes fell to mine, and I knew this was something he could not fathom.

“He has killed Amphidamas’ son,” Menoetius said, and his voice was steel.

I watched you wring your hands, then hide them behind your back. I did not know then that you were older than I. You did not show your face.

I took it for fear, for diffidence. But when your father spoke, when he spat, “One of my most powerful nobles, and my son has killed his heir over a dice game,” I knew it was shame that lowered your gaze, a deep regret.

My father looked between the two of you, scarcely believing. “A child’s folly, surely? A mistake?”

“A mistake,” Menoetius agreed. “But it is a costly one. Amphidamas will not yield in this; the only reason my boy still breathes is because he is the king’s son.”

“Do you fear Amphidamas will mount armies against you? Lead a coup?”

“I fear nothing,” your father declared, and his voice was gravel. “But I will not have my kingdom ripped apart and the royal coffers emptied over a children’s tussle gone awry. No, Peleus, my mind is made up in this. My son cannot stay. If that is the price for peace in Opus, I will pay it.”

My father shook his head, and I knew he did not understand. My dear father, there was little in the world that could harden his heart to me. “What would you have me do then?”

“Give my son a place here, old friend. He is only in his tenth summer, but his strength will grow, and he will work hard. I am sure he will make a fine warrior for your armies one day. Do me this kindness, Peleus; in the name of our friendship, do not leave my son without a home.”

Menoetius said it as if his kingdom was not your home, as if he was right in driving you from it. I decided then that I would only pay my respects to this man because my father had told me he fought like a Titan reborn, and because he managed to beg while still putting on airs, but I would not like him ever, and would not look for mercy in his eyes.

Now that Menoetius had made his case, the hall fell silent, and we all waited for my father’s verdict. He was no longer looking at his friend; his eyes were now on you, and you squirmed as they weighed you. It unsettled me, to see one who shrank from appraising eyes as much as you did.

I have never felt the need to shy away, not then, even less so now.

“Come here, child. Look at me.” My father beckoned to you, and it was then that your head snapped up. Your eyes were deep and brown, dry of tears yet doleful all the same. When you came forward, he placed a hand on your shoulder. “What is your name?”

You looked back at your father, nervous, questioning. And when he nodded, weary and withering with every step you took away from him, you said, “Patroclus, my lord. My name is Patroclus.”

“Patroclus,” my father repeated. “Welcome to Phthia. Have you met my son, Achilles?”

Our eyes met and I thought, what a pair we must make.

You, Patroclus, the glory of your father, exiled. Me, Achilles, the grief of my mother, venerated.

Looking back now, it is no wonder we ended up as we did.

Chapter Text

I am capricious.

I always have been; old Phoenix told me so, as did my father.

I was always sitting up in my lessons, always listening till I wasn’t, because wasn’t that line of ants disappearing into the walls just there simply fascinating? Wasn’t this cloud outside the window shaped like a hippocampus? Wasn’t it wondrous the way all the shapes on the wall mosaic fit together, like each had been cut with the others in mind?

My tutors never knew what to do with me when I would interrupt them to ask my questions.

“We are learning our letters today, my prince. We will look at the ants some other day.”

“There will be time later for hippocampi, my prince.”

“It would do you good to pay attention, my prince. You must pay attention when we talk of ethic so that you may rule your father’s kingdom justly when you come of age.”

They always smiled at me in this peculiar way when they said these things, like they had just swallowed a lizard, but it was refusing to die in their throat.

Like they were afraid, like they were amused, like they were annoyed, like they were sorry.

Only eight summers old, and already they were spinning their words in circles just so they didn’t have to tell me ‘No.’

I never understood it.

I have always spoken plainly, honestly. I see no merit in burying my thoughts inside ten polite words and twenty platitudes and thirty well-meaning expressions, when the truth will do.

It never did for anyone else, but the truth has always done for me.

It always did for us. You were the only one who ever told me the truth, Patroclus.

I remember the day you first confided in me. I had Phoenix tutoring me that day; he was my favourite, because I never had to interrupt him. He always knew when I had stopped listening.

“Shall I send for your lyre, my prince?” he would offer. “Or perhaps you’d like to practice your spear throw for a little while?”

Both fine options, both almost guaranteed to refocus my attention. I chose the spear that day; it was a good morning: the sun was bright without burning, the breeze was dancing a merry waltz through the olive trees, and I was tired of being shut inside.

By the time I arrived on the grounds, my targets were already set up for me. I had no drillmaster, not like the foster boys did, only kindly old Phoenix to watch over me, to fix my form from afar and praise me when I hit the target.

It was lonely.

While a servant brought out the practice spears, I watched the foster boys train on the other side of the grounds. They were working on their swordsmanship today, the younger ones hacking at each other with wooden blades and the older ones learning to parry with blunt bronze. They whooped and celebrated when they landed a hit, knocked each other over just as quickly as they helped each other up, snickered and rolled their eyes when the drill-master’s back was turned.

You were not there.

I didn’t know why it was on that day that this thought struck me. You had been at Phthia for a few months by this point, and after our introduction in the throne room, we had not spoken, you and I. I always fought apart from the foster boys by order of my mother, but even during mealtimes you sat apart from me.

It surprised me on your first night in Phthia, but when I thought about it, it made sense. You were no longer a prince, neither were you a lordling or heir, and only the sons of the most prominent of my father’s noblemen sat at my table. They never let me see very far past them if they could help it.

I do not know how calculated it all was; we were only boys after all. But I took their flattery for sincerity, because all that they said rang true enough to me.

I was stronger than all others; of course I was, I was goddess-born. I was very clever; of course I was, I did so well at my lessons that I would be excused early more often than not. I was the funniest of them all; of course I was, I could juggle, and tell limericks, and I made up the best games.

Of course it was all true, everybody said these things, and who would dare to lie to me?

Everyone, it turns out. All the time.

My favour, and by extension my father’s favour, it seems, was worth the price of their honesty; it was worth their deference and their compliance, their silence and their humouring.

I would not find this out until you had taken their place; until your wry wit had deafened their cloying commentary.

But even before then, I noticed you. I was capricious, and their idle chatter could not hold my attention for long.

You were quiet, always quiet, even with the boys who sat around you. You laughed at jokes and shared your bread, but you were party to no mischief and did not speak unless spoken to.

It irked me.

You were a head taller than all in your company, but startled like a deer when someone clapped you a little too hard on the back. You did as you were told, but never as you liked. You smiled well enough for everyone but did not seem happy.

My father had promised you a home, a new life, and you did not seem happy, only resigned.

It irked me. Was Phthia not a lovely place? How could it not be to your liking?

I wanted to demand answers of you, sometimes. But you always disappeared. You only stayed at the table long enough to clear your plate, and by the time I’d look your way again you’d already be on your way to the foster boys’ quarters over in the—

The…uh…

Erm…

How strange. I don’t know where the foster boys’ quarters were. Thirteen years of my life I was at Phthia, thirteen years of being able to go where I pleased, and I have…I have not the faintest idea where you’d go off to when you were not before my eyes.

But…I supposed I never needed to know. You always came to me.

Even that day, it was you who came to me.

I can recall throwing my spears clear as day. I’d distracted the foster boys with how well I was doing, hitting the target dead centre every time. Even the drillmaster had not minded when they’d thrown down their weapons just to watch and cheer. Phoenix merely stood by, smiling that coin-purse smile of his as I showed off for them, throwing the spears so they would make a shape, now a square, now a circle, now a star.

I liked it. Being admired, marvelled at, even envied.

And why shouldn’t I? I was the best of them. It was only the truth.

So elated, so lost was I, that I did not notice the crack of splintering wood from the stables behind us; I did not notice when the shouts of encouragement and reverence morphed into surprise and alarm.

No, I only noticed something was wrong when there was a snatch of grey and black in my periphery, dull thudding like hooves on sand. From above me I heard a hysterical neighing, and before I knew it, there was a young horse rearing up in front of me, its front legs lifted high and less than a foot from my face.

I darted away on instinct, but I’d never run with a spear in my hand before and stumbled to the ground.

One more moment and those legs would have kicked my skull in on the way down. One more second and the way the horse tossed its head, its reigns would have whipped me across the cheeks.

That is, if someone hadn’t pulled on those reigns, steered the beast away from me with a sharp tug and a firm voice.

And when I pushed the hair out of my eyes and got to my feet, I saw that it was you.

You, Patroclus, standing before the horse as it nearly reared up again, its reign slack but still wrapped tightly around one of your palms, while the other remained open and placating as you tried to get close.

I could hear your voice, crooning as you spoke to the creature. “It’s alright. It’s alright; you’re alright. Come now, no one will hurt you. No one will hurt you.”

It was the first I’d heard you speak, since you told Father your name. Then, you had sounded like broken glass. Now you sounded like a flute, a secret flute no one was meant to hear.

I looked on, spell-bound, suspended as if in resin as the horse grunted, jerking away from you, still distrustful. Distantly I was aware of Phoenix rushing towards me, the other boys close behind him, their eyes wide and fearful.

But you did not even look over your shoulder.

No, your eyes saw nothing but the skittish creature before you. Petulant and un-cooperative, but somehow worthy of your patience still, worthy of the whispers of comfort that spilled like a waterfall from your lips. Worthy of the way in which you held out your hand for it to sniff, so bold, so trusting.

“Here, girl. Come now, it’s done. Hello. Hello, there. That’s good. You’re doing so well. Come here, girl.”

“My prince, are you hurt anywhere?” Phoenix asked, fretful as he held me by my shoulders and looked me over.

So I was, my elbow skinned, and my palms scratched up, but the grazes would disappear before the candles were blown out tonight. It was hardly of consequence.

“No,” I brushed him off and peered around him; he was blocking what view I had of you over the heads of the other boys, and I didn’t want to miss a moment.

The horse was calming now, I could sense it in the way she edged towards you, more certain, drawn in by your voice and whatever assurance she’d gotten from scenting your fingers. Two more snorts in your face, a sulky sigh into your palm, and then the horse was whinnying, sweeter than a spoiled pet.

I felt a grin split my face, I’m sure I seemed mad, though I was only incredulous. I had never seen anything like it.

“What a crazed beast!”

“Have you no control over the wretched thing?”

“It nearly trampled us all into the sand!”

“The king will have your head; you see if he doesn’t! You put the prince in danger!”

My mood soured. So broke the spell: it would seem the foster boys had decided that I had been dishonoured, as had the just House of Aeacus, and they had now elected to scream about it in your face.

I found I did not like this version of their devotion. I thought it blind and senseless, empty and posturing.

Why were they outraged now? None of them had jumped in front to save me. None of them had even thought to pull the horse away.

They’d scattered like raindrops when she had charged them, cowered when it was dangerous; yet they were blustering now when it was safe, turning on you even though it was you that had made it so.

I cleared my throat; I was about to tell them just what I thought of all this caterwauling on my behalf, but you cut me off.

“Stop shouting,” you snapped as you glared at the rest of the boys, one palm sweeping over the horse’s mane as she regarded them with equal disdain. “She’s only just settled down; you’ll do well not to scare her, unless you’d like her to charge you again? I’ll pull her off the prince but not any other who thinks himself deathless just because he has never broken a bone.”

You weren’t even loud, but your voice then was so sharp every word seemed chipped off cliff-rocks. Their mouth shut with such resounding clicks I almost thought them clams.

The image was so silly that I had to bite the inside of my cheek just to keep from laughing.

I must have looked like I was scowling though, because when you caught my eyes, you bowed as if embarrassed by your own vitriol.

“Begging your pardon, my prince,” you said, and your voice was different again, level, formal, like a still lake, yet rippling with the accent of the eastern Locrians.

“Kleopatra is young, unhandled,” you explained, gesturing to the horse. “One of the stable boys frightened her during the haltering; she did not like the way he slammed the doors, you see. Poor thing bolted before anyone could move to stop her. With your leave, I will take her back at once, and see that the horse-master trains her in the forests until she is ready for the bustling in the stables.”

Already? You were going to leave already?

“I will walk with you,” I declared, drawing myself up to my full height.

It must have surprised the rest of the gathering, because the moment I moved a murmur struck up about how ‘there was really no need’ and how ‘Patroclus has really gone and done it now’.

Dingbats. They did not understand anything.

“I’m sure the boy can bring the creature back just as well by himself, can’t you, Patroclus?” Phoenix said, and I could hear the pacifying lilt in his voice that he used on disgruntled noblemen. “You needn’t trouble yourself, my prince.”

“But I must,” I insisted, irritated now. How could Phoenix not understand either? Had he not seen the magic you had worked before? “I must speak to the horse-master. About him.”

I pointed to you, and wished I hadn’t. Your face blanched, and the sun grew cold in the sky when you said, reedy and pleading, “I beg your pardon, my prince. It will not happen again.”

It was all wrong. I was not upset with you; not one bit, and yet you seemed to think so. Everybody seemed to think so, even though it was them grating on my nerves.

I did not like that look on your face at all, so damp and dreadful you’d think fruit was rotting in your veins with every passing second. I liked you better with that spark in your gaze, flints scraping against your words, embers in your voice. But I did not know how to make that look return, so I ignored Phoenix as he muttered something about restraint and pushed past them all, my sights set on the stables.

“Enough! Patroclus is going to take the horse back to the stables, and I am going with him,” I said, already walking. “Do you deny me, Phoenix?”

There was a moment’s silence, then a tired “No, my prince. But I think this matter worthy of your father’s ears.”

“Tell him what you will,” I said, my voice light as I heard you follow behind me, your feet dragging through the sand. “Come, Patroclus.”

So, you did, but you walked behind me, slow as if I were leading you to your doom.

“Please. It will not happen again,” you said after a while, when the commotion had become hazy behind us.

“It will not,” I agreed. “Because Kleopatra will be yours, and you will train her not to charge into crowds.”

All our years together, and I have never shocked you into a coughing fit such as the one you descended into that day. Nearly doubled over outside the stables, you choked on your own breath while the horse eyed you as if you’d lost your head and your sanity besides.

And I laughed at you; I laughed so much, so pleased was I to have caught you unawares, so glad to have brought you joy.

“Do you mean it?” you asked, grabbing onto both my wrists as if I would run away with this promise. “Do you really mean it?”

And I looked at my wrists that no one had ever dared to hold just so, at your eyes that crackled like a hearth just before it caught, and I thought—

Oh. This smile. This smile you’re smiling now; this one is the first one ever.

This one is real.

How I’d taken that twisting thing you did with your lips for a smile before, I did not know.

“I mean it,” I said, and felt molten amber in my chest when you beamed, a tear in the corner of your eye, a ‘thank you’ between your teeth. “I will tell the horse-master to give her to you, to train as your own.”

“Thank you, my prince. I—I am grateful…I thought I—that you were displeased.”

“Nonsense,” I scoffed. Surely you had felt my eyes on your back? Surely, you had seen that stupid grin on my face? “You were brilliant with her. I thought you one of Poseidon’s for a moment.”

The ocean crashed fierce far behind us and you shivered. “Blasphemy does not become you, my prince,” you said, though you could not hide your smile.

I waved your concern away. I did not fear the gods as you did.

“Where did you learn to do that?” I asked instead. “Were there many horses in Opus?”

You looked down at your feet, and it was as if a fog had wrapped itself around you. “My mother loved them. She did not live long enough to teach me much, but it was her memory that pushed me to pester the horse-master until he agreed to continue my lessons.”

Something sank to the pit of my stomach. I thought of my own mother, given to my father by Zeus himself like a trophy, so unable to bear the shores that she would not leave the sea, not even for me. But for all her absence, she came when I called, held me and soothed me, brought me trinkets from the sea: perfect shells and pearls, presents and well wishes from her sisters.

She was not with me, not truly, but I was not without her, not like you were without your mother. I could not imagine it; it would be like having hollow bones.

“My mother says she watches me fight. She says she can, from beneath the sea, because she’s a goddess,” I blurted.

You raised your eyebrows. “Yes, I know.”

“Don’t laugh at me,” I pouted, for you made no stellar work of hiding your giggles. “I am trying to comfort you. I mean to ask, do you think your mother watches over you, when you’re with the horses? Do you think that is why you like them so much?”

You regarded me a moment, almost as if I’d opened a hole in the night sky, as if I’d suggested something quite fanciful and unreal. Then you shrugged and said, “If the Underworld lets her, I hope she does. I should like to make her proud.”

“You will.”

A silence came over us. I knew you were waiting for me to walk into the stable and speak to the horse-master, but I did not want to leave you just yet.

So, I sat down on the ground, hoping you would too. And you did, bewildered though you were, Kleopatra’s reigns still in your hands, so she wouldn’t wander off. You did not say anything, but you were expectant, prepared, as if you knew I wanted to ask something.

So, I did. The question that had plagued me for so long. “Why won’t you come to drills with the other boys? Don’t you like them?”

You flinched, though I could see that you did not mean to. “It—it is not about them,” you said, your voice small again. “I am better suited for the stables. I cannot fight.”

“I do not believe it,” I said, and you looked at me as if I were growing a pineapple from my head. “Kleopatra may be young, but she is not a foal. Yet you were able to pull her away all by yourself. You have strength; do not deny it.”

“I do not deny it. I curse it,” you hissed, and now it was my turn to balk. “I curse my strength and the liberties I took not knowing what it would do.”

And then they struck me, Menoetius’ words from the day you first came to us.

“One of my most powerful nobles and my son has killed his heir over a dice game.”

“Every time I fight, I see him,” you confessed, grinding your thumb into the dirt as if the pebbles pushing against your skin would punish you somehow, forgive you somehow. “The boy, Clysonymus, I see him, in the other boys’ faces, every time I pick up a weapon. I cannot spar with them, not without being pummelled, because I see him lying there on the ground, blood spilling from his head because I threw him down like a rag doll. I just go limp. There is no air, and too much sun, and I…I fainted two weeks ago. The boys do not understand it; the drillmaster, he cannot understand it, because I cannot—I could not bear to speak of it. My father has already turned his back on me. I could not bear it if everyone else did too. I cannot—they will hate me; they will not trust me—how I can ever tell anyone—”

“Tell me. I already know, so you can tell me. Here, see, my back is not turned.”

Your gaze flitted to mine, and it was a broken thing, a butterfly with a lacerated wing and I held it there, I held it there because I did not like it, and I wanted it gone. You choked again, though this time it was on a sob, and I froze.

I did not know what to do. No one had ever cried in front of me.

I lifted my hands, then put them back down. I leaned forward a little, then sat back again. My eyes moved to your eyes, screwed shut and leaking tears, then down your hands as they shook. I was a little restless, a little helpless, and I didn’t like it at all, but I listened, because it felt like you were saying something you had never said before.

“It was so stupid; he was laughing so much, so smug because he’d won after losing five bouts in a row, except it wasn’t a real victory, because he cheated; he always cheated when he didn’t get his way and I just—I forgot myself and I just…”

You pushed the air with your hands, and I understood.

“I didn’t know there was a rock there. I didn’t mean to. He was selfish, and I hated him, but I did not want him to die. I only…I only wanted him to stop.”

This was when I remembered that my mother’s hands in my hair calmed me when I cried, and I decided it was something I should try too. I kneeled in front of your crossed legs, then did what I thought my mother always did.

And it worked for a while; you leaned into me. But your hair wasn’t as long as mine, and I think I had the wrong angle, because I only managed to rub circles into your skull, as if I were practicing my shapes in the sand, not consoling a weeping—

Friend?

Friend.

Were we friends, do you think, at this point, Patroclus?

Did you tell me all that because you wanted to be friends, or because you felt you owed it to your benevolent prince, who had just gifted you a horse? Did you laugh that wet, congested laugh and swat at my hand, croaking “What on earth are you doing? Polishing a vase?” because we were friends, or because you thought me stilted like a marble statue come to life and felt I needed instruction?

Did you placate me when I turned away in a huff and poke me in the side even though I protested— “I am not ticklish, Patroclus, and you’ll not get a peep out of me after that insolence!”—because we were friends, or because kindness was just instinct to you?

I don’t know. I thought I knew your mind, but I have been shown, quite painfully, that I knew nothing at all.

But I—I will not dwell on that. It ripped me apart to realize it, holding your corpse in our bed like you would come back to life. I cannot dwell on it, or I shall scream again, and I think the camp has had quite enough of that from me.

No, instead I’ll think of how you coaxed laughter from me, how you found that spot under my ribs that had it bubbling up from within me and exploding out, how you wiped your tears and wiggled away when I tried to have my revenge.

I’ll think of how the horse-master was forgotten, and Phoenix was forgotten, and it was just the two of us tickling each other in the dirt until we had laughed our tears and fears and loneliness into the wind.

“Do you feel better?” I asked, when we were lying on our backs, catching our breath.

“I do.”

“Will you go to the drills?”

“…Someday.”

My hopes splattered and I grasped for another chance. “What if I came with you? If I came with you, will you go tomorrow?”

Your eyes widened; I could not tell if you were aghast or uncertain.

“To the foster-boys’ drills? You will train alongside us?”

“Why not? When we are men, I will fight alongside you. Why not start now?”

You shook your head, and there was that quiet resignation again. “We will fight for you, not alongside you, my prince. It is not quite the same thing.”

I narrowed my eyes at you, trying to decide if I was going to be indignant. “Are you saying your prince is wrong?”

“I am saying the world does not quite turn the way my prince thinks it does, and sometimes that makes his ideas—”

“Speak plainly. I command it.”

You laughed then, like a stone skipping on a river, and something flickered in your eyes, sure and defiant, a trick of the sunlight, an imitation of lightning.

“Very well then. You are wrong, Achilles. Your mother will never have it, and your father will concede your argument but turn you down. It is not how things are done.”

I sat up then, my fists clenched. I would not have you deny me. Nobody did.

“Then things must change. I do what I please. I am the prince. And if I want to train with you, Patroclus, then I will. I will spar with you, and if you need to stop, we will, and I will make excuses to the drillmaster so that he will not be angry, and everything will be fine because nobody denies me, and—”

Oh. You were smiling again.

Like the coming of summer, like the tide in the morning, like stars on a string.

“What?” I demanded.

“Do you mean it?”

And the breath rushed into my lungs like a flood, and it was as if all the birds in the bushes had become a hundred times louder.

“I do. You know I do.”

Chapter Text

I am relentless.

I always have been; my father told me so, as did my mother.

Even tottering on unsteady toddler’s feet, I would run; if I fell face first into the sand then I would laugh and spit it out and try again. Even strumming the lyre with clumsy child’s fingers, I would sing; if I was hopelessly out of tune, then I would adjust and practice and repeat till the melody came together. I climbed trees until the branches could no longer hold my weight, vowed to bite back the mosquitoes that bit me, struck my practice targets until they disappeared under the litany of spears I had thrown.

If I catch, I burn until I am spent; I do not know how to quit, and I certainly do not know when to leave well enough alone.

I wish now that I did. It has not served me well, this habit of mine, here on these Trojan shores.

Perhaps if I knew when enough was enough, it would still be your chest I curled into at night, instead of a chiton that has long since lost your scent.

But how was I to know; how was I to learn when everything I have ever pushed back against has shattered like porcelain under the onslaught?

Because it was never less than an onslaught, no matter what or who opposed me.

Not even my father was immune. I remember the evening I went against him for the very first time.

It was the day I met you, Patroclus; and I did it because I wanted to train alongside the foster boys, to train alongside you.

I had resolved to go to my father before dinner, but I was summoned to his presence before my lessons ended. He received me in his quarters, though I felt as if I were before him in the throne room, especially with Phoenix standing pensively at his side.

“Good evening, Father,” I greeted. “You sent for me?”

“So, I did,” he said. There was a scratch in his voice, a bluntness I did not recognize. But I met his eyes, unwavering. I had not done anything to hang my head for.

“The horse-master says you made an interesting request of him today.”

“I made no request. I gave an order.” My father raised an unimpressed brow at me, but I did not take my words back. It was only the truth.

“You cannot order the horse-master to give away the pride of his stables to one of the foster boys, Achilles.”

I felt my face crumple. “Why not? Am I not the prince? Is the animal not mine?”

Phoenix blinked at me, perplexed, and my father sighed deeply. My face crumpled even further. I did not understand what I had done to warrant such exasperation.

“It is not yours to cast aside on a whim,” my father said at length.

“It was not a whim. You did not see him, Father.” A warmth crackled in my chest as I recounted the incident. “The creature was half-wild when she charged us on the training grounds; she nearly trampled us all. But Patroclus brought her to heel. Not the horse-master, not the other stable hands. Patroclus.”

My father looked to Phoenix, his voice little but shock and air. “Is this true?”

Phoenix’s robes swished as he shifted from foot to foot and I glanced at him, baffled. Why had he neglected to mention this?

“It is, my lord,” Phoenix said tentatively. “She broke out of the stables.”

“And the boy—Patroclus—tamed her? Single-handedly?”

“He certainly had a way with the animal, my lord.”

The only reason I didn’t scoff then was because Phoenix was my favourite tutor. Surely, you deserved better than such an understatement?

“She would have kicked me in the head if Patroclus hadn’t pulled her away in time, hadn’t calmed her down. We should be grateful,” I said, and my father’s face turned to stone; ash and soot in his eyes as he glared at Phoenix, who seemed to have gained a sudden appreciation for the swirling patterns on the floor.

For a moment, I thought my father would shout, but he took a deep breath instead, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “Phoenix.”

“My lord?”

“A generous expression of our gratitude for Patroclus, please. Clothes, furs, books, a weapon or two as well, if he desires them. And more vigilance from you, in the name of all the Gods, when my son is in your care.”

Phoenix scrambled into a bow. “Of course, my lord.”

“As for the horse, she remains with the horse-master. I give Patroclus leave to train her under the horse-master’s supervision, but unless the boy can make a war-horse of her and a warrior of himself, he may not lay any claim to her.”

The words splintered before they sank into me, drawing blood as they did. My fists balled where my hands were clasped behind my back. “But I promised her to him! You would have me break it?!”

“Perhaps this will teach you to think before you make promises,” my father said. “You may be a prince, Achilles, but there are powers greater than you at work in this world. And if you do not remember it yourself, rest assured you will be reminded.”

I took it for a scolding at the time, felt the guilt knot in my throat. But I know now that it was a warning. A desperate, earnest warning from my father, for his son who did not know how to do anything by halves.

Not that I had the ear for warnings at the time. No, all I could think about was that look in your eyes, all dismay and charred sheepskin. I had put it on your face once; I did not want to do so again.

“But Father—”

“Achilles. You will not move me on this. Go on now, dinner will be served soon. And tell Patroclus what his king has decided. It must be you to do this; it would not be honourable for another to tell him when it was you who gave the word.”

I shook my head; I would not go before you without any good news to deliver. “One more thing, Father.”

I saw him tense, but he motioned for me to speak. “What is it?”

“Starting tomorrow, I should like to train to fight alongside the foster boys.”

My father looked at me as I were speaking in a tongue he did not understand. “Tell me you have a reason to give, son.”

I smiled, confident now that I had not been dismissed out of hand. This part I had prepared for. “How much will I learn about combat with no opponent to pit my skills against? How much respect will the foster boys offer me when they become men if they cannot witness my strength first-hand?”

“They see you fight, my prince.” Phoenix protested quietly. “They can recognize your greatness from afar.”

“But there is no trust between us,” I insisted. “No real loyalty. I do not know if I can count on them; if they will follow me anywhere.” I turned to my father, imploring him with that wide-eyed look that always compelled him to look the other way when I wanted to play on the beach past sundown. “Will their devotion not be twofold if they saw me as both prince and soldier, Father? Will our armies not be stronger if I led by example?”

My father huffed, falling back on the cushions of his chair. He seemed for all the world like I was ripping him limb from limb by asking this of him. “Your intentions are noble, my son, and I applaud you for them. But I cannot disregard your mother’s wishes. She decreed you learn to fight by yourself not long after you were born, as you well know.”

I heard your voice then, in the back of my mind.

Your father will concede your argument but turn you down.

How had you known when I had not? What had you seen that I could not?

My temper crested like a wave, throbbing in my skull. I would not be denied. Not again. Not in this.

“But you are the king, and my father besides! Does your opinion count for nothing?”

“She is a goddess, Achilles—”

“So what?! What does it matter?!”

My father opened his mouth to say something, then closed it as if it were a fruitless endeavour. His shoulders drooped: Atlas long-suffering, Icarus drowned. “Enough. I’d advise you to let this go but take your request to your mother if you simply cannot. If she permits you, then I will allow it.”

I exhaled, and the thrumming in my blood ceased at the same time a smile spread across my face. “I will visit her after dinner. Thank you, Father.”

---

Moonlight rode high on the sea-swell as I raced down to the beach, the foaming crowns winking and fracturing around me as I waded into the water. I was buzzing, ants under my skin, the taste of grapes still sour in my mouth as I remembered how I had scarfed down my meal in my haste to come down here, how I had not even looked in your direction once.

It was not my intention to be rude. But I told you, I could not bring myself to put that world-battered look in your eyes.

So here I stood, knee deep in the ocean, calling out as loud as I could, “Mother! Mother, I have need of you!”

For a moment, there was naught but the tide and its everlasting symphony. Then the surf churned, and she rose up like mist, a tower of dark robes clinging to pale skin that rarely ever saw the sun. Her eyes like ink gleamed when they settled on me, twin starlight pinpricks in their void.

“Achilles, my son, what brings you here so late?”

She reached her arms out to me, and I went. Her embrace was cold, but when she kissed the top of my head I thawed. “There is something I would like to do,” I explained, “but Father says I cannot without your say so.”

She scowled, gristle and salt clinging to her voice as her eyes went to the glittering lights of the palace up the shore behind me. “He would deign to deny you, my child? What could you possibly have asked for?”

“To fight alongside the foster boys, as one of them.”

And just like that I was met with a yawning stare of silver and whirlpools, a frown like shards of seashell digging into my mother’s face.

“Absolutely not, Achilles. You are not one of them.”

“But Mother—”

“Not one of them,” she repeated, leaning into my space now, the words escaping from her clenched teeth like a serpent’s hiss.

I looked back at her as she heaved at the insinuation, at a loss for what to say. She had never glared at me this way, as if what I had said had caused her grave offense.

She must have read the confusion in my expression, because she pulled away with a soft grunt. Then she offered me her hand. “Come. Swim with me, and I will show you.”

I took it, uncertain about her intentions but determined to see this to its end. She led me forward till the bottom of the ocean fell away from under my feet, and then we swam straight for the horizon, as if we were going to the moon.

I felt awkward at first, but the ocean had a way of easing my troubles.

There was something about it that lured me. It never surrendered to me, but it was never cruel, and always folded me into its depths as if it would keep me safe even if I sank. I loved to dip my head below the surface and open my eyes, watch the small fish scatter as my arms parted the water. I could always see those fish, the dancing weeds and little crabs that rode the current even if it were night, even if there were nothing but stars in the sky.

I did it now, holding my breath and hunting the fish, chasing after them, weaving between fronds of seaweed as I went, my mother at my side. But I am relentless, and I do not know when to stop, and before I knew it, I had left my mother behind.

It wasn’t until she called my name that I even realized I had gone past her, and that she was not following.

I burst out from under the water. “Mother,” I sputtered, combing my hair back. “Why did we stop?”

My mother pointed to the shoreline behind us, the barest wisp of grey to show the sand, the lights of the palace no larger than flecks of fire. “Look at how far we have come, my son.”

I paddled in place, dumbfounded as she quickly swam back to a spot close to the coast, just where the water’s colour deepened. “This,” she said, “is where those foster-boys’ legs would begin to ache with the strain.”

She swam forward a bit, then splashed the surface with an idle swat of her hand. “This is where they would become afraid.”

A few more feet, another splash. “This is where their breathing would labour dangerously. And this,” she said, returning to the spot she’d originally stopped in, the spot that was still an arm’s length from me, “this is where they would drown. And you? You, my son, have gone farther, and you are not even tired.”

I looked down, at the way the moonlight coalesced around my body. I thought of you, of the way we tickled each other till we were out of breath. You were laughing then, as you gasped. You would not laugh like that if you fought for air here, as the ocean filled your lungs. It would be a horrid choking sound, like your sobs.

And it would be my fault.

“Do you understand now, Achilles?” my mother’s voice came to me as if from far away, though I felt her palm on my cheek, knew she was right next to me. “You are not like them, and they will only hold you back.”

I did not answer. She was saying something I did not want to swallow.

That lonely training ground, those solitary lessons, the hurt in your eyes that she was telling me to accept, that my father was telling me to cause…is this what it felt like to be denied?

What a rotten feeling.

“Would you like to swim some more, my child? We can go to that lagoon you like.”

“No, Mother. I think I would like to go to bed now. I…I am tired.”

---

The sky was wan and icy when I peered out of the window the next morning, and in a roundabout way I was rather pleased about it. Why should the sun climb high and light up the Phthian shores when I was in such a foul mood?

I sat with my head slumped over the marble table in my lesson room, waiting for my first tutor of the day. I had risen before I was meant to and had taken my meal in my room. I did not want to face anybody, but this tutor I would not be able to escape, so there I stayed, chewing an errant piece of my hair so much it was a wonder it didn’t fall off.

That was, until I heard the drill gong sound, summoning all the foster boys for training. Usually, it was this gong that woke me up in the morning; on any other day I would groan and roll over in my bed and try to go back to sleep. But today I was wide awake; wide awake and rueful and drumming my fingers on the windowsill with my hair still in my mouth as I watched the swathe of foster boys make their way to the training grounds.

The ones at the head of the pack ran, dashing past each other, playing games. Those on their heels walked, talking amongst themselves, doling out the last of their breakfast bread. Following them there were some who ambled, nursing bruises from the day before, rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

And behind them all, there was you. You.

Striding apprehensive, striding decisive.

Suddenly, there was no impossible choice to make, no advice to heed, no deference to give. I was up and bolting through the door, murmuring thanks to the air for my tutor’s tardiness, for his age. For he would not be able to catch me. He would not even see me, me with my fingers fumbling behind my head, tying my hair, me with my smile blazing like a bonfire, warming my cheeks.

I built into an inferno as I hurtled out of the palace, kicked up sand as I sprinted down the beach. I wanted to call your name, but my voice wouldn’t cooperate; I was that glad. But you heard me approaching over your shoulder and turned around.

“Achilles.” You smiled, and sparks jumped in your eyes like they were being hammered out of a just-formed sword. “You came.”

I jogged past you; I couldn’t slow down fast enough, but I twisted around to meet your gaze as it tracked me. “I said I would. I meant it.”

You caught up to me, fell into step beside me. “What about your parents?”

We were threading through the throng of the foster boys now; they were gawking at me, bowing for me, making way so I could go to the front. I grinned at you. “I don’t care.”

You seemed alarmed for a moment, then laughed as if a great bird trapped within the cage of your chest was finally being allowed to sing. I did not understand it, but I liked it.

The things I like blind me.

They blind me to the world, deafen me to the Gods, dull me to common sense. You should know, Patroclus.

…You do know, don’t you, Patroclus?

Have…have I shown it well enough, on this forsaken battlefield, on these beaches that look nothing like our home? Can you see how true it is, under the earth?

Because I mean it, Patroclus. I am blinded by the things I like, I always have been, just like I was that day when we went up against each other for the first time.

I remember the mix of horror and reverence on the drill-master’s face when he caught sight of me among his pupils. He didn’t know what to do when I demanded to join training. But it was as I told you; I was the prince, I did what I pleased, and I was beloved enough by my father’s staff that I would get my way before my father would hear of it.

You gaped as I was hesitantly bid to line up with the others for spear drills. It was as if you could not fathom how I was doing it. It bewildered me then, for you had been a prince too once. Surely you were used to all and sundry moulding themselves to your will?

I did not know then what I know now, what I love now, of how absolute power had always manacled your hands so heavy that you could never bring yourself to wield it.

Then, I was content to wink at you as I stood next to you with the training spear, content to watch you roll your eyes at me as we shifted into the first stance we were meant to practice.

No one had ever rolled their eyes at me. Disrespect on every other face; but it was nothing but mirth on yours.

Did you know how your eyes laughed, Patroclus? How they have always laughed in such predicaments?

I don’t think I ever told you. I…I should have.

Because your eyes laughed, Patroclus, molten gold treading tart wine, every time one of the boys stopped to marvel at my perfect form, praised me for my skill with the sword as we thrust and slashed at nothing to hone our stances, clapped delightedly when I overtook all others as we ran in circles around the training grounds.

It was confounding; your face held its focus, but your eyes laughed as you watched the others clamour around me when we sat on the sand, drinking water.

It was confounding; the sun was crossing the sky, the clouds were dispersing, my spirits were lifting as admiration dripped steadily from the voices of thirty different boys.

And yet, there was an itch under my skin. You had not said anything.

You only watched me, careful, thorough; you listened intently to the others, to the drill-master; gaze ricocheting between us all, a sunbeam dance in a house of mirrors.

I snuck glances at you where you sat next to me. So solemn, a painting, a mosaic, opaque. Opaque, with cipher eyes; I did not know what you thought of me at all.

It irked me; it urged me.

“Right, you lazy lot have warmed your rumps on the sand long enough! Come, now! On your feet! We will spar!”

The drill-master’s voice corralled us all into a wrestling circle, though he cast me an apologetic look when he remembered that I was in the audience as well. I did not think anything of it, I was far too excited. I had never sparred with anyone before; never struck anything more solid than dummies full of straw.

The older boys seemed to have fixed sparring partners and they broke off to wage their competitions in rings drawn with chalk. We who had not seen an eleventh summer yet stayed in a flock as the drill-master slowly demonstrated attacks for us to practice with one of the older boys. When he was finished, I was startled to find him assigning partners.

I was given another boy of eight to pit myself against, and you were directed to someone who had your ten summers.

I had not anticipated this, though I should have. Even amongst others of your age you were tall; of course, the drill-master would not give you leave to fight someone younger. Nevertheless, I opened my mouth to reject the partner I was given; all rules were malleable if I took my sharp voice to them.

But you placed a firm hand on my shoulder, and I shut up instantly.

“Leave it alone,” you told me, like you expected me to listen. “I think I will be alright. Having you here has made this better already. I would come back tomorrow, if you were here, even if Alcimedon beats me to the ground today.”

I only nodded. What could I have said? You have always given more than you got, my love, and that was the first day you did so for me.

We turned away from each other, and my eyes trailed my sparring partner as he took up a defensive stance before me. If I’d had the wherewithal to see it then, I would have seen the trepidation in his eyes, the reluctance to strike the golden prince of Phthia.

But I was only eight summers old then, I saw nothing but my first opponent, and I struck out with my best kick because I had been taught that the first blow decided the fate of the battle.

And so it did; the boy went down with a reedy cut-off cry and yielded immediately.

“You hit hard, my prince,” he said to me, when he stood back up, though there was no awe in his voice now. Only fear.

He shook where he planted his feet, but I took it for adrenaline, that jittery feeling I liked to pursue when I met a challenge. So, I struck him again, this time between the ribs.

And down he went again. And again. And again.

After the eighth time, the drill-master herded the boy away from me.

At first, I thought it was because I was starting to look angry, angry because I had no use for an opponent who did not hit back, angry because I was given no fight, only a target. But when my eyes swept over the clusters of the other boys as they gathered around my limping partner, I saw that it was because the boy could take no more of my hits.

“Goodness! Did Ares take him for a moment there?”

“It’s a miracle he didn’t break anything!”

“Someone ought to remind the prince that it is not a real fight.”

The whispers went down like sour milk, but ceased from my awareness when I was given a new partner, this time a boy of nine. He stood taller than me, though not enough to deter me. His eyes were shrewd, and he assumed no defensive position when he stepped into our ring of chalk. Instead, he attacked me first, lunging at me with a closed fist.

Not that it connected to my jaw as he planned. I simply dodged it.

He lurched forward, off-kilter, and his momentum took him to the ground the moment I stepped out of the way.

He tried twelve more times, and with every attempt he became more impatient, sloppier. His stance gave him away constantly, and I did not even have to brace a forearm to guard. It was enough to skip to the side and push him into the sand whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Eventually the boy tired and decided he did not want to compete anymore. He looked upset, though I couldn’t think why. I was the one who was being led in a merry dance around the ring when I’d asked for a fight.

What displeasure he was experiencing that was severe enough to let it show on his face in my presence when I was being no more than curt was beyond me. But the drill-master did not admonish the sullen boy, merely waved him away, inviting the other boys to try their luck against me next.

Four others came forward one by one, and fell to my feet one by one.

They hit nothing but empty space when they attacked, and weathered no blows standing up.

Too slow, too cocky, too fragile, too predictable, all of them winded and wounded in the dust, when I had not even broken a sweat.

By the time the last of them yielded, I had deflated completely, bored with an ugly understanding curdling in my stomach.

Not like them. Not one of them.

“Surely you can do better than that for your prince! Who’s next?”

Nobody answered the drill-master for a long time. I looked over at the boys, but none met my eyes. They only exchanged glances with each other, embarrassed and disheartened, irritated and terrified.

The drill-master barked again, as if he were on his last nerve. “Cowards! Is there really no other?”

Ten more excruciating seconds, then a voice.

“I’ll challenge him.”

Your voice.

My head snapped towards you as you pushed past the younger boys, who stared up at you like you’d cracked your way out of a marble egg, cringed like you’d put your head in a lion’s mouth. You paid them no mind though, your gaze held only my own. It was like you did not care to be stopped.

My lips twitched into a smile I fought to school when the drill-master welcomed you into the ring, landing an exhausted smack for luck on your back as he retreated to spectate. At this point, he seemed to have accepted that his age-class rule was falling to pieces in my wake.

You took your place before me, and I bounced on the balls of my feet, my interest piqued yet again as you wound yourself up to attack. I wondered where you would aim your strike.

Shoulder? Gut? Back of the knees?

None of the above, you went for my left side, just above my hip, full of surprises, my love; I had not read that in your footwork.

But my eyes saw your arm as it cut through the coarse air well enough, and I darted out of the way. And there, you were close to me with no way to guard, so I went to elbow you in the collarbone, just above your heart.

The hit connected, but you did not go down.

I was suspended again, time sluggish around us. Your breath was knocked out; I felt you reverberate with the force of the blow where our bodies touched; I heard your knee thump into the sand as you bent.

But then, your fingers closed around my arm and my mistake became clear to me.

You were not the one who was too close to guard against a hit. I was the one who was too close to dodge a counterattack, especially not with you on my left like this.

I yelped as you leveraged your weight against me and hurled me to the ground. I caught my balance just in time, stumbling before I fell, righting myself with an outstretched arm. And when I looked up at you, half-stunned, half-incensed, your smile glittered smug and fierce, a pearl with claws.

“You knew my left was weak,” I accused, grinning wildly. “You were watching me. You noticed.”

You winked at me then, impudent, playful. “I did. Now try harder, my prince. Unless you’d like to disappoint your adoring audience?”

I growled something jubilant and leapt at you without moderating my strength. What was this feeling, here in the pit of my stomach, in my chest, zigzagging in my veins?

You defended in a way I did not know how to break. It was not like you did not guard, but you seemed to know when you could take a hit. Your bulk absorbed my strikes, and it did not help that I was able to dodge yours, because the moment I got close enough to attack you, you just turned the proximity against me.

Frustrating; I was landing my hits, but you would not yield. I got no satisfaction from hitting my target; it wasn’t target practice.

Taxing; I was avoiding you just fine, but you threw me around easily when you did catch me. I could not waltz out of your grip effortlessly; it wasn’t a dance.

It was combat.

It was breathless and thrilling and difficult, and it dawned on me then that I had never known a rush like this.

It was overwhelming, and I found myself fighting without thinking as we went at each other. I could give myself to raw instinct, move with abandon. Because you met me where I was at, every bit as adamant as me not to lose.

If you fell, you stood again. If you were hit, you hit back. And if you were taunted, you taunted back.

Enduring where I was relentless. Immovable where I was unstoppable.

And when we tumbled to the ground in an ungainly heap, your arm pinning me down as you loomed over me, I knew I had shed the gilded husk of prince, the haughty self-assurance of demigod.

I lay there not as my parents’ son, but as Achilles. The basest version of myself: feral, competitive, proud—

Someone who would not be denied.

I toppled you before your weight immobilized me; straddled you and pushed your wrists into the sand before you could react.

“Do you yield?” I panted, burning as if ten suns nested in the inches between our faces.

I felt you strain frantically against my grip for a moment, then wilt with a bemused nod. The drill-master called the victory in my name as the foster boys cheered and I relaxed my hold on you. For once, I did not hear what they were saying though, I was transfixed by the laughter fluttering out of you like drunk butterflies.

 “I yield. For now,” you said when I clambered off you in a daze, the wonder and sweat lustrous on your skin as I pulled you to your feet. “You’re not half bad, Achilles.”

No ambrosia has ever passed my lips, but I could swear I tasted it on the tip of my tongue that day.

And you know what, my love, if it doesn’t taste like the exhilaration you gifted me in that moment, then I can die knowing I give up nothing by spurning godhood.

---

“Mother. You sent for me?”

“You have disobeyed me, Achilles.”

“I have.”

“Are you sorry?”

“No, Mother. I cannot be.”

“Are you hurt?”

“I will heal, Mother.”

“What of the other boy? Is he hurt?”

“He is bruised but he does not bleed. His name is Patroclus.”

“Menoetides?”

“The same.”

“It appears he fights well.”

“He does. I should like to go against him again.”

“Why do you smile so, Mother?”

“It is nothing at all, my child, only that—well, it would seem that I am learning something new about mortals.”

“What is that?”

“You seem to find joy in the unlikeliest of places.”

“…I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Do not trouble yourself about it, my son. Rest easy instead with the knowledge that you have my blessing to continue training with the foster boys, for as long as it makes you this happy.”

Chapter Text

I am meteoric.

I always have been; you told me so, bite in your voice, indulgence in your eyes.

Racing me up the beach to the palace doors. Yanking me underwater every time I splashed your eyes closed. Undoing my armour in the twilight hours, blood and conquest still clinging to our skin.

Some persist through their lives, chipping yet remaining whole. Others coast as if atop a perpetual breeze. Still lesser stumble through it, skinning knees, eating sand, carving no paths, but moving forward, nonetheless.

For my part, I have hurtled.

As an avalanche, as celestial blaze streaking across the sky.

Ever since I can remember, I have lived as if touched by a flame that had not enough air to burn slow and steady. Greedy and gulping, flashing and crackling, spewing out charred remains of what could not be consumed fully.

It did not occur to me, until I looked upon your unseeing eyes, just how much I have scorched unrecognizable.

It hadn’t mattered to me, before then, how I made my light.

I was Aristos Achaion, and I would be etched eternal into the fabric of the world, singularly undefeated, with an aristeia that defied the Fates.

I have lived as if tunnelling towards that moment, convinced of its majesty, spinning all manner of fanciful daydreams of the aftermath.

But…But I have found my shame now, Patroclus.

I have found my shame for coveting that moment so intensely, for—for insinuating in the afterglow of our love that there would be no greater satisfaction than in that moment, for thinking that that moment would be the part of my tale where the story finally got good.

Naïve, treacherous mind of mine. I have doomed myself to death, and no memories of days gone by survive to comfort me. All my life is a blur, a feathered haze, stamped into the dust by hastening feet.

All that is clear now; all that is stark and sharp is every moment with you.

And why wouldn’t it be? How arresting you were, how painstaking, how patient.

Even when we were children, you pulled the ground out from under me, tumbled me sheepish and dazed through fog and circumstance, plucked at my inevitabilities till they quivered like lyre strings.

Do you remember, Patroclus, that one waning afternoon at the beach, when we saw Pegasi in the sky?

It stands out in my mind as a poppy in the snow.

The drill-master had taken ill that day and all the foster boys had run down gleefully to play in the sea. So many swimming races, so much shrieking from slipping on cold seaweed, so much thrashing reckless in the waves, then sunning ourselves further up the coast just to barrel down the incline and back into the ocean again.

It went on forever, that day, so long that I almost forgot that winter was but a few moons away.

I remember laying there on the soft-baked sand, soaking up its warmth as the light began to thin. The foster boys had long gone, peeling off in twos and threes, exhausted and so pruned and prickled by the water that they were quite literally itching for a bath. But I did not want to leave just yet, not while the sun still remained, not while the water still shimmered temptingly blue. There was no dinner to be had, not yet, and I had not the appetite for my lessons.

So there I lay, clothes heaped to the side, watching the clouds cross the sky.

“They look like Pegasi. Don’t you think?”

How deafening those waves were, yet you somehow made yourself heard behind me. I sat up to look back at you, and I saw that there was not a footprint marring this stretch of the sand that wasn’t ours.

No one had been here but us.

It was a victorious feeling, like finding treasure. I didn’t know why, then.

No, then, all I could do was tease. “You think everything is about horses.”

As if I couldn’t see perfectly well how the wings unfolded from the cloud on the left and how the cloud on the right bent its forelegs.

Your gaze grew jagged, earth and dew turning to stone. “It is better than thinking everything is about lions.”

You made your way towards me, both hands behind your back, and I craned my neck to see what you carried. A needless exertion, for as soon as you were beside me, you brought forth one hand with a flourish.

It was as a pomegranate, split open in wedges to expose the seeds inside.

“Here. Eat.” You held it out to me, a cut to your grin like fresh-hewn marble. “It would be most humiliating if my prince were to keel over and faint walking halfway up the beach just because he has been chasing his tail all day without a care for food or drink.”

I swatted at your open palm the moment the fruit moved from your hand to mine. “Do you think using my titles will spare you punishment, Menoetides?”

“You will not punish me,” you scoffed. “You are wilting like leaves in a stew. Now eat.”

There was nothing I could say to that; the moment I brought the fruit close enough I felt hunger yawn in my stomach. So, I ate, first one wedge, then another, and another, and another. I couldn’t help it; I had gotten so swept up in the excitement before that I hadn’t even noticed that I had forgone the midday meal.

But you had. You always did.

“Where did you get a pomegranate anyway?” I asked, wiping the pomegranate juice from my lips.

You winked, soft and fast, whisper of a wing. “Cook gave it to me.”

“Where in her skirts did Cook find such benevolence? Dinner is not for hours!”

“I brought her a seashell,” you said, sitting down. “Best one on the beach.”

It was the first time that day your eyes were level with mine, and it was only because you were folded in on yourself, your knees hugged to your chest. I had seen my ninth summer by then, but you had only grown taller since you’d come to us.

“What will Cook do with a seashell?" I wondered out loud as you brought out something else packaged in cloth from behind your back.

“She’ll make a necklace. She likes making necklaces,” you said, as if this was clearer than the birds silhouetted crisp against the sky, wing-to-wing with the cloud-formed Pegasi.

I did not understand it at all. Not the trade, neither the gesture. “How do you know?”

“I never know,” you replied with raised brows, as if you could not quite fathom what I was asking. “I just…pay attention.”

I thought back to how you had known before I did, what my parents would say when I suggested training with the foster boys.

“Your mother will never have it, and your father will concede your argument but turn you down. It is not how things are done.”

I considered the reason the drill-master decreed that you would be my permanent sparring partner.

“It is as if you can parse the swiftness of the prince’s movements. There is no other who can anticipate him as you do, Patroclus.”

My eyes went to the horizon, to the sand-palace you had crafted while I had shown the other boys how to swim while floating on their back. It was a replica of the Phthian palace, with not a column, door or window out of place.

There was nothing I had committed to mind as intently then, besides how to fight. Nothing else drew me so. But you…

You, my love, felt the world as the ground feels both roots and running, both rain and sun, both seeds and carcasses.

You didn’t need to be drawn, didn’t need reward or enticement. Your eyes opened for all, whether humble or grand, your ears lent themselves to all, whether melody or noise.

It was the first thing I loved, I think, about you.

But I wasn’t to know it then. My world was small, and there was nothing in it but practice spears, tales of glory and pomegranates.

So, I continued to eat, even as you unwrapped whatever was concealed in the cloth.

“Are those honey-cakes?!” I demanded, scarcely believing that the two pieces sitting before me were real.

“Well-spotted.” Somehow you managed a smirk even with a full mouth.

“I know you did not get that from Cook!” I cried, punching your shoulder. “Even she would not give out honey-cakes before mealtime, seashells or no seashells! Where did you get it?”

You leaned into me something reflexive, a sunflower at sunrise. “Must you have all my secrets?”

“I must,” I insisted. Now that the notion had been spoken into existence, it was as if it had anchored in me and stuck fast. “Henceforth there will be none between us; I command it.”

You chewed thoughtfully, as if pondering this; finished one piece of cake. Then you dusted the crumbs off your hands and said, “Some truths we take to the pyre, my prince.”

The way you smiled. It lured me as moonlight lures seafoam, tidal and automatic.

It is all the explanation I have, all that I can blame for the way I lunged at you, discontent and exhilaration all knotted up inside me like a great rope.

“Patroclus!”

“What in the name of the Gods—Achilles, get off me!” you complained, your giggles choked off as I pushed you into the sand, tickling you for all I was worth.

“Tell me!” I ordered, though it came out far too feeble.

You shook your head, convulsing as you laughed, half in tears though valiant in your efforts to squirm away from me. “You are meteoric, Achilles!”

“I don’t know that word!” I said, petulant even to my own ears. “I’ll not have you call me it!”

“Achilles—”

I grasped your wrists and held them down, and you stilled at last. “Tell me,” I panted as the air returned to our bodies.

Your eyes opened, and your face was candle-bright when you spoke. “The stable hands bought the cake this morning, to bring to our poor indisposed drill-master. I told them Kleopatra knocked these two pieces over.”

I rolled off you, cackling maniacally, as if all of summer were distilled into a single point beneath my beating heart that would not calm. “You would dare?”

“It’s only fair,” you defended, mischief dimpling your cheeks. “They made me clean out the stables twice in a row.”

A new feeling washed over me, descended from thrill, making eyes at captivation.

“They’re not nearly frightened enough of you around here.”

“And that is how I like it.”

We did not leave that stretch of the beach till night fell, you and I, trudging in just as dinner was being served. It was the first time we sat apart.

Me, apart from the nobles’ sons, you apart from the foster boys.

Huddled together at a corner table, talking behind our palms, we were as sugar to wine, temper to tempest, abandon to divinity.

Inextricable.

I do not think I meant to do that, that first time. But your company…was just that: company, real, good company, and I could not settle for anything less after.

I had no companion before you, Patroclus. Every other that had surrounded me in Phthia before you had been either audience or judge; tutor or parent. Eyes on my skin, applause at every turn, I was never alone, but I was never alone in the same way a player on a stage never is, the way a priceless relic on a pedestal never is.

Many gathered to look, and marvel and gossip in disbelief. But none cared to come close, none ventured to interrupt, denounce, touch.

The distinction between scrutiny and attention. I might have never learned it, without you by my side.

A state of affairs that I think displeased many, but none so much as the sons of my father’s nobles. They soured and fell away from me like so many leaves off a dying tree, and by the time the sun rose on my tenth summer, there was no separation in my mind between them and the foster boys.

In my mind, there was you, and then there was everybody else.

I do not think they liked it, those highborn boys, how I trained with the foster boys just so I could train with you. How I bounded into the halls for meals, sweat and dust and shrubbery in my hair, dishevelled from the fighting, unpresentable for any audience but that which was already at my heels. How I pulled you along behind me, how you clapped a hand over my mouth when I talked too long, how we made jokes that no one understood, how we bore no bruises except those we gave each other in the sparring circle.

Yes, now that I am thinking of them, I do not think those noble boys liked that at all.

But no lion may die of a rodent’s curse. I was happy, and I am…justly known, I suppose…for winning no prizes for being able to see beyond that.

Your friendship was the difference between gilding and gold; it was as though I had been gale all my days before, piercing through leaves, unsettling them, making them chatter. Only to collide with a tree trunk, into a presence I felt just as solidly as it felt me.

A crude approximation of what you meant to me, but it was the first one I made, the first words I ever put to song.

If I cast my mind back, I can feel myself there, sluggish in the early sunset, perched on the window ledge of my rooms with my lyre balanced on my thigh. Plucking the strings tonelessly, my last tutor of the day departing behind me, grumbling as always. Something about the other great Greek houses and changing winds, something about a golden head with a squirrel-brain inside it.

I offered no response as the door slammed shut. I was busy watching you, a ways away on the training grounds, Kleopatra’s reins twined deftly around your hand as her training commenced.

A war-horse, my father had bidden you make her, and so you were, admonishing the stable hands, coaxing her to jump over tapering trenches, talking to her all the while. You wore amusement and exasperation like dignity on your face, rather like a tree, I thought.

A tree that could not keep the squirrels off its thinnest branches, a tree that could only watch as they struggled and fell, spindly wood breaking under their weight, ‘I told you so’ whirled into every groove in its bark.

It was an odd thought, so ludicrous and evocative that it begged for a melody. Strong and skipping, I decided, my fingers strumming with purpose, layering one tongue-in-cheek harmony upon another, mixing in lovely little highs that burst silvery and sure.

Fragments of meaning came to me, moulded themselves to the rhythm, and soon one verse was hot on the heels of the next, the words dipping and rising, brisk as morning and twice the revelation.

A song, stitching itself as the wild thing trammelled by my ribs escaped.

I had never sung loud enough for any ears but my own before, but when you hushed Kleopatra and halted all activities as if bewitched by it, I knew I wanted you to hear, and know it was me.

I sang louder, and the music swelled with my elation as our eyes met. I rearranged myself, my lyre, so that I might look painted on, frozen in elegance like all my favourite mosaics were.

I wanted your incredulity, your lightning-struck appreciation. I did not think there would be anything better.

I was wrong.

For in that moment a smile dazzling enough to delay the night flashed across your face, and in one effortless movement you mounted Kleopatra and urged her forward, straight for my window.

How you glowed, ember parting dusk, amber scattering dawn, as you wove her expertly around the undergrowth hedging the palace. There was an upheaval in you, a calamity in your pace.

Before then, I had only ever stunned, but in that moment, I discovered what it felt like to move.

Few blisses are as lush as that one, Patroclus. How like you, to be the one to gift it to me.

“You have some skill with the thing,” you praised, gesturing to my lyre as Kleopatra slowed to a trot beneath my window. “A few more years and you’ll be second only to Orpheus.”

I waited for the flood under my skin to abate. “Orpheus?” I repeated, mock-insulted, posing exaggeratedly as if before a sculptor. “Not Apollo?”

The clouds obscuring the dimming sun evaporated, and the heat shimmered menacingly, just for a moment.

“Careful,” you scolded good-naturedly. “For all the sun’s warmth it is still made of fire, and has not forgotten how to burn.”

“I have no need to worry. I am meteoric, am I not?”

“You’re using it wrong, Achilles,” you said, hardly impressed.

“Ugh. Return to your horse training,” I sniffed. “I’ve tired of you.”

You rolled your eyes, pulling on Kleopatra’s reigns as she snorted at us both.

“It will not diminish my prince any further in my eyes if he admits his errors!” you yelled after me, all cheek, as I hoisted myself off the window ledge and into my rooms.

“As it is, he stands shorter than me!”

“Patroclus!”

From then on, I began to bring my lyre to training with the foster boys. Whenever we stopped for food and rest, I would play, and sing, and you would sit across from me, knees drawn up under your chin, face half-hidden behind your crossed arms, listening with wide pensive eyes, like it’d anguish you to miss a single second. When I played a lively enough tune, the other boys would join us, but I was hardly bothered; I desired no more than my audience of one.

I would rather have you, I caught myself thinking one day, when you whispered, “Play that one again. I think it’s the best one yet,” for the first time.

I would rather have your praise, than the commemoration of all the world, I thought that day.

.

.

.

.

…Gods above. How vile he’d think me, that boy of eleven, if he saw me now.

How he would take one look at this revolting empty tent that I no longer share with anyone at all, and hold me in the highest of contempt.

Of course he would, for we were never separate for long, you and I, in those days we had at my father’s house. Barring sleep, my dreary formal lessons on statesmanship and your training with the war-horses, we were never without each other.

I showed you my favourite lagoon; you taught me how to climb up to the roof of the palace to watch the stars come out. You brought midnight snacks to my rooms after all the palace was asleep, dates and grapes and honey-cakes; I shared with you all the poetry that I was too proud to admit brought tears to my eyes.

How eager we were then, to grow up, so that we may not be bound by bedtimes and drill-gongs and the kindnesses of Cook and the horse-master and old Phoenix.

Would that we had gone slower, would that I had realized it was not a vase I held in my careless hands, that would be safe so long as I did not drop it, but rain, rain that no palms can cup forever.

But the jubilation of coming into your power…I cannot deny that even now, it stirs something within me, an old feeling slumbering in my heart like a griffin over a hoard of wealth.

I can recall the face of the moon in the morning sky the day the drill-master determined that we were ready to spar with short wooden staffs, and I can recall the smell of flowers in the air the day he swapped out our children’s swords for blunt bronze and supple leather, our first taste of weaponry and armour.

No boy twelve summers green had been given these, but I was made an exception of, because you were my duelling partner and had fourteen summers behind you already, and because I—

I was Aristos Achaion.

I can picture it so clearly, the day when the first inkling of my fate was revealed to me.

A dissonant day, full of screeching metal. Me in the centre of it all, practicing my shield-work while three other boys took turns slashing at me with their short swords. They fought brash, both their exertion and frustration apparent, but they did not drown you out to my ears as you spoke to a cluster of younger boys a few paces away. The drill-master had intended them to be charioteers, and as such had declared that you initiate them into horse-handling.

Never mind that this would bereave me of my sparring partner.

So, there I was, veritably idling as I guarded against the boys charging at me, sneaking glances at you all the while. Kleopatra stood tall and regal at your side, no longer the spirited suspicious creature she’d been, appraising the shaking specimens before her as you showed them how to yoke and bridle, lead and let.

A vastly entertaining sight, but there were erratic swords and brooding opponents to reckon with where I was, so soon enough my eyes were drawn away.

Though my tedium did not last long, for a few minutes later there was a great big commotion behind me, scurrying and raucous clanging. The next thing I knew the swords flying at me veered out of arc, flailed and made themselves scarce.

I turned, only to find that it was my father who had arrived at the training grounds, inspecting the proceedings as he traversed them. It was his first time visiting us like this; he usually took his reports from the drill-master and Phoenix.

He spotted me and strolled up, motioning to the other boys who’d stopped to gawk at him to resume their efforts.

“Good afternoon, Father,” I greeted, laying down my shield as he approached.

“Your footwork is infallible, my son,” he complimented, laying a hand on my head.

In that moment he did not sound like the Peleus that quelled huge conflicting courts with a single word. He sounded as he did when he regaled me with stories of the Argo and its journey late into the night, vulnerable and misty-eyed.

“How fast you have grown.”

“Thank you, Father,” I grinned, immeasurably glad. I had never been able to do wrong enough in my father’s eyes, but it was a different thing entirely, to have done so right.

He looked then from me to all the others who’d been training with me, boys who regarded him with a degree of veneration that could not decide if it would rather name itself fear.

“How fast you all have grown,” he commended, his voice booming, kingly once more. “I am pleased with your skill. May you become as fearsome as you are unflinching, worthy of the mantle of Myrmidon.”

“Thank you, my lord!” they chorused.

My father muttered a prayer for their good fortune, then sent them along to Phoenix, who was overseeing archery lessons that day. For a second, his eyes cast about around me, as if searching for something, then halted when the voices drifted to us from further down the grounds.

“Come now, Patroclus!”

“Ready when you are, Patroclus!”

“Ah. There he is,” my father said, catching sight of you, now astride Kleopatra while the rest of the stable hands backed away from the makeshift obstacle course they’d constructed before you. “I wondered why you were by yourself.”

Three others there’d been around me, and yet my father was absolutely right.

If I was not with you, I was by myself, even in the midst of a crowd.

We continued to observe as final adjustments were made to the course, rendered as accurate to the dense chaos of battle as could be managed, lofty bales of hay serving as bodies and skirmishes to avoid; logs and deep trenches serving as cruelties of terrain and fallen arms. When all was in order, you whispered something to Kleopatra, patted her mane, and off you both were, building speed at a smooth clip.

I stared, breath bated, heart pounding in my ears as the thud of hooves on the ground reverberated through me, made the pebbles at my feet jump. How easily you held the reigns; the slightest pull and Kleopatra was swerving without losing footing, leaping in fluid curves over anything in her path, snuffling happily every time you graced her with an encouraging word.

You were a force, a river, thundering like a typhoon in a bottle, and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

My father was amazed enough that it showed on his face, pitched his voice. “Is that—”

“Kleopatra. Pride of the stables,” I informed proudly, peeking up at him. “Patroclus has trained her well, has he not?”

“He carries the fewest bruises of them all,” he noted, his eyes darting to and from the other boys.

I folded my arms, nose upturned at the reminder. “Not for long,” I said, half-impatient. “We are sparring later, and I do not plan to be merciful. He felled me yesterday like a year-old ash tree, and I will have my revenge.”

My father barked out a laugh, surveying me most amused by something I could not name. “He felled you, did he?”

“I do not remain unthwarted for long when we fight,” My voice was bladed when I said it, though my insides were effervescent with delight. “It is what makes sparring with Patroclus the most fun. I brook no other opponent.”

“Hm. I see.” My father cocked his head, as if considering something, then gazed back out to where you had brought Kleopatra to a canter, returned her to the starting point of the finished course.

“Patroclus!” he called.

Your head snapped in our direction, and my father beckoned you to where we were standing. Your unabashed joy sobered some, and dutifully, you stalled Kleopatra and dismounted. Quickly handing her off to one of the stable boys, you jogged up to us. I expected that you would bow before my father as was proper, but I did not expect that you would smile at me first, vivid and sweet, as if it mattered more to acknowledge me than him.

It was a hysterical feeling, like striking luck.

“My lord? You summoned me?”

My father studied us knowingly, then jerked his head towards me. “Tell him, Achilles,” he said. “It must be you, for it was you who gave the word, all those years ago.”

I was confused only for a moment. Then my mind found the memory, caught my father’s meaning.

“You have upheld your end of bargain, given Phthia both warrior and war-horse,” I beamed at you. I wanted to say it with more solemnity, but I was so breathless; happy to get my way at last, happier to see you honoured as you deserved. “Kleopatra is yours.”

You stared at me, your mouth hanging open. It was the half-glazed stare of someone on the verge of tears, but you composed yourself before that happened.

“Thank you,” you said to me, stars exploding in your eyes. Then you found your well-worn manners, cleared your throat, and bowed again before my father. “Thank you, my lord.”

“Not at all. It is an honour rightfully conferred,” my father said, tousling your hair just as he would mine, before my hair had grown to my shoulders. “You have shown yourself to be most capable; we are fortunate to have you.”

“You are too kind, my lord.”

My father waggled a finger. “Don’t speak too soon. Come, I have a task for you.”

He began to walk, indicating for us to follow. We traded a glance, equally baffled, then trailed after him without a word. He led us to a part of the woodlands just beyond the stables, a part I had never seen before.

And from the look of your face, neither had you.

“The horse-master lets us nowhere near that thicket,” you relayed when I tugged on your arm. “He says we’re not to disturb it.”

“He cautions with good reason,” my father agreed. “Neither of you are to tell the other boys of this place, nor are you to come hither without telling the horse-master.”

Parting the ferns and foliage, we shuffled through, until we came upon a clearing. And in it we saw such splendour, the likes of which we had never seen before.

Two horses, one with a coat as dark as the eye of a whirlpool, dappled as if blanketed by ocean froth, its mane flaring out behind it like fronds swaying in the shallows. And another, grazing beside it, coloured pale and rich, glossy like soil in the noonday sun, curls in its mane like sprouting grape vines.

Questions coalesced on the tip of my tongue, though I could not choose which to ask first. Next to me, you made a half-strangled noise, too overwhelmed to do more than grab my wrist to collect yourself. “My—my lord?” you asked, for want of something to say.

“Xanthus and Balius,” my father explained, pointing first to the chestnut creature, then the charcoal one. “Immortal children of the West Wind, bestowed upon me by Poseidon himself when Achilles’ mother was given to me in marriage.”

“They are…most exquisite,” you said, all other words failing you.

“And all the more untameable for it,” my father warned, growing grim. “None in the stables have been able to bridle them, much less ride them; not even the horse-master.”

He weighed that gleam like reverence in your eyes that bore in them not an ounce of fear. “What do you say? Will you take on this challenge?”

“Me, my lord?” you stammered. “You would afford me such a privilege?”

“You have a gift,” my father said. “I should be a fool to deny it, and an even greater one to leave it untested, to wither and stale.”

He sighed, and for the first time it occurred to me that he was an old man, who was only getting older. “Besides, my warring days are behind me. In the years to come, it will be my son who will lead my armies, and you who will fight in them. Do you know what they say, child, of my son?”

Your eyes met mine, as if the answer was there, but I was just as ignorant as you, so we both shook our heads, shifted closer to hear.

“The prophecy was spoken when Thetis came of age,” he said, doleful and crumbling. “That her son would rise to greater heights than his father.” He stroked my cheek, cleared my hair from my eyes.

“He will be the greatest warrior of this generation. Aristos Achaion.”

Best of the Greeks.

They burrowed into my bones, those words, and I felt bronze and iron in them. Clashes and clamouring in my blood, fangs for teeth and claws for fingernails, battle roaring in my lungs as every breath I drew in suddenly became more.

As I became more, more than goddess-born, more than prince of a land, more than mortal.

Legend. Myth. Hero.

Aristos Achaion. The Muses would sing of my feats. I would live forever.

It was known.

It was a feeling so buoyant and fierce, for a moment I saw myself in the stars, amongst Orion and Perseus and Heracles, even in broad daylight. And when the vision cleared you were right there with me, seeing it just as plain.

“I fight him every day,” you said, your voice a wisp, your gaze firm and fond upon me. “It comes as no surprise.”

That broke the spell over my father as well, and he directed our attention back towards the horses.

“When you are men, I would have none other than these fine creatures bear you into battle. But they answer to no one, save to slake their hunger and thirst, and I should like to change that. So, Menoetides? Will you try your hand?”

You straightened, resolute already. “I will not disappoint, my lord. Not you, and—” your eyes on me then were as kindling into a gasping fire, “—my prince least of all.”

You made to move towards the horses, but both bellowed so threateningly that it forced me and my father several steps back.

Not you.

You stood your ground, mildly startled, then smiled at them as if apologetic. You sat down right there before them, inviting their incisive glares, returning them without the malice.

“Come, Achilles,” my father said, patting my back. “We must allow him peace to work his magic.”

“But we were supposed to spar!” I whined, looking back at you as I came away on leaden feet.

“Half an hour!” you ensured, not turning around.

I harrumphed and stomped off, and when we did spar, made sure to defeat you four times most thoroughly for the slight.

…I have always been like this, haven’t I?

Petty and punishing, a deluge unleashed in reply for a mistimed drizzle.

You were the only one who did not begrudge me for it, laughing and lenient, calling me names.

Perhaps because you saw it for what it was.

Not the anger it looked like, but the envy I buried in my heart, envy for what else existed upon this earth that would steal your attention from me.

It was a fraught time, that, those months between twelve and thirteen.

The things I felt for you, all those aches and rushes, all that calm and craving, I understood those well enough to name separately, but not taken together. They were part of something bigger, tangled like so much ivy, tendrils of some greater host that had taken root.

But what it was, I wasn’t to know until that day we raced each other near the woodlands.

I do not even remember how it started, only that after three victories one after another, I had suffered the first loss of the day in the sparring circle. You were nowhere near as smug with your wins as I was, but this day your smile stung me like a jellyfish, a barb veiled in ephemera that prodded at my scratched elbows every time I glanced in your direction.

“Don’t make that face,” I huffed as you hauled me to my feet. “My left heel is weak. It is not so surprising that I should lose if you turn me round on it and force it to bear my weight.”

“What, am I not permitted to use an opponent’s known weaknesses against them?” you smirked, retrieving our waterskins from the edge of the circle and throwing one at my chest.

“It is not known,” I snapped, catching the waterskin before it hit me. “None have lasted long enough against me to know about it.”

You met my eyes, dubious, your lips just parted, waterskin tipped up to drink. “I know.”

I stalked over to you; pushed at your temple with one finger. “You don’t count,” I said haughtily.

You snickered, then set down your waterskin and flicked my cheek. “Well, isn’t that convenient?”

I could have moved out of the way.

I saw your fingers coming and I could have moved out of the way, but I didn’t.

You never put your hands on my face, except to flick my cheeks when you thought I was being particularly unreasonable. And there, in that melting light I ached again—as if my ribs were labouring to contain tremor upon tremor—and questioned if it was reasonable to want those fingers to touch my cheeks softer.

Pandemonium somersaulted through every inch of me, yet my skin was placid. But when you brushed past me, returning to the sparring circle, the graze of your shoulder was as a hammer to an eggshell.

I don’t know what came over me; perhaps it was the loss, perhaps it was how you blithely you breathed when it felt like my own insides were running away with themselves into an abyss.

Either way, I thought it had come time for you to answer for the things your owlish eyes and the timbre of your voice did to me.

So, I dumped what remained of the contents of my waterskin on your head.

“Achilles!” you spluttered. “In the name of the Gods, learn to lose, would you?”

“Must I? You are ever so forgiving of me!” I doubled over, laughing endless at the way your hair plastered to your forehead, the way you rubbed your eyes with the back of your wrist.

“Achilles,” you scowled, hard-set like waterfall-rock in a drought, and some belligerent part of me soared.

Good. That was better.

Now you knew how I felt, always floundering in your presence, always off-kilter and half-blind and able to say nothing at all in response but your name, all while smiling as if all of the fig trees had borne fruit in the dead of winter.

“You’re going to pay for that,” you promised.

“And who will make me?” I goaded, circling you, well out of range.

Sunrays sliced your gaze, both bait and snare. “Don’t start things you don’t want finished for you, Pelides.”

…I hear those words again and again now.

The shores are Anatolian, but the surf speaks Greek, and wails them at me while I weep.

But at that time, they fell upon my ears as a different kind of echo. The air between us stretched taut, heavy and palpable; not even a stray bird disrupted it.

And how could it? The game was mine, and so it stood to reason that the first move would be mine too.

“Catch me then, if you can!” I grinned, taking off running.

“Oh, come now, that’s not fair!” you groaned.

Dust tailed me like smoke, my bare feet near blistering the earth as I beat it backward with every step. Ducking into the woodland, I propped myself up against the first tree I saw and faced you, where you still stood sullen in the middle of the sparring circle.

“What’s the matter, Menoetides?” I sang. “Is a splash of water all it takes to break your spirit so fully that you won’t even try?”

You smacked a palm upon your forehead. “You are meteoric, Achilles!”

Thirteen summers smart, I knew that word. I liked when you called me it.

“Sounds like excuses to me!” I shrugged.

“Alright, that’s it; you asked for it!”

You tore up the incline after me, and I was off like a flurry, an arrogance in my voice most deserved as I said, “Do your worst! I am uncatchable!”

For strength you had in abundance, my love, but speed? We both know that has always been my weapon to wield.

So onwards I sprinted through the woodlands, sliding under sagging boughs, sailing over bushes in a single leap. Your footsteps thumped like war drums behind me, dodging every lumbering obstacle that was to me no obstacle at all. The flora closed dense and humid around us, and the way our playful shouts bounced off every plant I nearly convinced myself we’d run into a world all our own.

That was until I burst back out on the beach, of course.

The ocean air whipped cool and fresh into my face, salting my eyes. I took in great lungfuls, peered over my shoulder to tease you, only—

You weren’t there.

Not a footstep on that stretch of sand that wasn’t mine. I’d crossed it in scarcely a moment and yet—

It sprawled like a desert now.

No one here but me.

It was a ruinous feeling, like splitting a lyre string.

I was running too fast to stop without falling face first, so I twisted my body as far as it would go, squinting at the trees beyond for a tell-tale rustle, the crack of a twig, the swishing of feet on the woodland floor.

Nothing.

“Patroclus?”

.

.

.

“Behind you!”

I jolted like a prey beast stuck with an arrow, facing forward once more. All the world came back into focus, leeched colour and dead sound revived and smashed vibrant into my senses.

Horse hooves on the ground, just shy of earthquaking. A whinny, gentle like springtime breeze, resounding like the sea. And you most of all, radiant in the sunlight, barrelling towards me astride Xanthus.

Not Kleopatra, not any other horse in the stables. Xanthus.

To think that that’s where you’d disappeared off to during our race. We must have wandered close to the immortal horses’ thicket as we ran, and you had noticed, as usual, what I had not.

You, who never resented me my talents as all others seemed to do, simply thought around them, with yours.

Oh, I could see now.

The empty space on the creature’s muzzle where a bridle should be, your hands that needed no reigns flat on its mane, how frenziedly glad the animal appeared to be, running the way it was meant to at last.

Mad. Countenance splintered in two like a doomed mirror, dashing straight for a galloping horse and scream-laughing, I must have looked absolutely mad.

But I could not help it. All the months before danced in the back of my mind, months of you doing no more than staring back at those immortal beasts, months of you refusing both bridle and whip when you went out to their thicket, months of you grooming them, washing them, anointing them with oil.

“Patience, Achilles,” you told me then, when I sulked and sulked about us not being able to spar for as long as I liked. “Neither love nor trust is owed, and fealty is made of both. It must be earned to be true, and earning takes time.”

Months of you deferring to those horses, speaking to them so kindly and soothing before you ever tried to control them, to make them listen.

And now, now they had chosen you for their rider.

What a vision you made, fit for a mosaic, fit for lyric poetry.

I watched you lean precariously to one side, extending an arm out to me. And it was as if my hand reached back on its own, an impulse raw and un-muddled by thought.

In those mere seconds, I was like the oak twig, just before Midas’ first golden touch.

Then your arm wrapped around my waist, and my fingers clamped onto your shoulder, and off the ground you lifted me, one sweeping, luxurious motion that ended in me seated just before you on the horse, safe in the circle of your arms.

“Uncatchable, he says,” you breathed, smooth and insolent, tucking what hair the wind blew in my face behind my ear.

“This doesn’t count. Xanthus helped you.”

“Does it matter? I have you now.”

And there, I caught myself: ruing the five-inch chasm between us, condemning the wind for threading through your curls, loathing the fading light for tracing the flex of your arms, cursing the barest of shadows for pooling in your collarbones just because they got to sit closer to you than I could and—

And I knew, Patroclus. In that moment I knew.

“Yes. Yes, you do.”

---

“A diadem. Gold to match your father’s.”

“No.”

“A new fur?”

“I have furs.”

“For the walls. For the floors.”

“…Intriguing. But no.”

“Pillows! Fluffy purple pillows for your chambers!”

“No. Guess again.”

“Your grandfather’s underwater kingdom then, since all else on this earth seems to distaste you.”

“It’s my thirteenth name day, not the fall of Olympus. Besides, that’s blasphemy.”

“It’s not blasphemy if it’s the truth.”

“A sword, you buffoon. I am asking my father for an engraved sword.”

“Oh, you’re ridiculous!”

“I beg your pardon?!”

“You don’t even like swords, Achilles.”

“So? I may have a use for them yet!”

“Pfft, spare me, with your spear arm? What enemy do you imagine is coming close enough to meet your blade, let alone—Oh. Of course.”

“What?”

“I might’ve known—”

“What?!”

“How obvious—”

“Patroclus!”

“It’s because of Theseus. You want a sword from your father because Theseus got one from his father.”

“It’s a hero’s weapon, Patroclus! For claiming kingdoms and slaying Gorgons!”

“And who does my prince imagine slaying? Queen of the Amazons?”

“Are you laughing at me?”

“Perish the thought, I don’t have the gall.”

“Oh, save your proprieties for someone who’ll believe them; I know you truer than—”

“Prince Achilles?”

We looked away from each other, your elbow still digging into my chest, my hand still slung around your neck, yanking you down awkwardly to my height.

Phoenix stood before us, having just turned into the corridor. I waited for him to speak, but he did not for many long seconds, eyeing us with a strange sort of grief, like a harbour watching new ships vanish into the unknown.

Then he heaved an enormous sigh, and whatever trance he’d put himself under shattered. He ushered me forth, poised as ever.

“Your father wishes to speak with you in his chambers, my prince.”

It was nothing out of the ordinary, but it was not what I had thought would be in store for me this evening. Only a little bewildered, I detached myself from you and started to walk.

But not before bumping your hip hard enough to knock you off balance. “Wait for me,” I said.

Righting yourself before you became overfamiliar with the marble floors, you smiled as if tearing a frown asunder. “As you like.”

Thus, off we went, old Phoenix and I, him plodding along at a pace that didn’t agree with him just to keep up with me. But when my father’s chamber doors came into view, he took my leave rather suddenly, as if he simply could not go any further than he already had.

I watched him retreat, thinking it most peculiar that such a prominent confidant of my father’s would flee from him like this. It was not enough to deter me though, and I announced myself before entering the chambers.

“Father!” I began, striding in. “To what do I owe—”

I froze right where I was. For there, standing by the bed where my father reclined, was my mother, towering and cold, dripping seawater, her elemental finery cheapening the temporal opulence that surrounded her.

I bumbled through my greetings to her, utterly lost. In all my life, I had seen my parents in the same room no more than twice. The only thing I understood in that moment was just what had driven Phoenix away.

To sustain the presence of a Nereid was to sustain the devastation of a rogue wave. Not for the unprepared.

“You—you’re both here,” I volunteered, eyes darting between them. “What’s the occasion?”

“Why, your upcoming name day of course!” my father said earnestly, even as my mother opened her arms to me.

“Thirteenth name day,” she said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head. “Your father tells me this one is important, to mortals.”

“Well. I am grateful, of course,” I replied, honest in this sentiment at least despite my scattered thoughts.

“Your father and I felt that this year we should bestow our present together,” my mother told me as I returned to where I had been standing before them.

I opened my mouth to say that I had not asked for anything yet, but my father spoke before I could.

“We know you have not made your usual request yet,” he conceded, “but…well, we both have been watching you, in our own ways, and we think you will like this news well enough for a name day present.”

I pouted, a little disappointed to be given news when I had wanted a sword. Nevertheless, I was curious. “What news?”

My parents exchanged glances, a silent debate between them as to who should tell me. Then my mother raised her chin in permission, and my father turned to me, most delighted.

“You are to be sent to Mount Pelion, to complete your education. The famed Chiron, wisest and most just of centaurs, tutor of heroes, has agreed to take you on as a pupil.”

I inhaled sharply, full-bodied, as if hungry for all the air in the room. Brimming with joy, as a volcano overflowing, I saw the vague portrait of grandeur that always flitted before my eyes gaining detail at last.

The great Chiron, he who had counselled Heracles, he who had mentored Jason. He would now teach me, and I, I would outdo all that had come before me.

There they were, in the thrumming of my veins, the cries of war, those chants unanimous in exaltation of Aristos Achaion.

My time was coming, all the forces of the world were willing it so, I was ecstatic, and yet—

There was a wrenching in my chest, a wound ripping open in some idyllic corner of me as I fully grasped what this news entailed.

“You will send…me?”

“Of course,” my mother assured, her face scrunching as she attempted to parse the numb shock on mine. “You are worthier than any he has taken on, my illustrious son.”

I shook my head violently; the wound in me growing teeth, beginning to gnaw. She did not understand, why didn’t she understand?

All that cavernous loneliness, that hollow bluster from before, dissolved at last, eroded by your companionship and now—

Now she would have me give it up?

“Just me? Alone?”

My mother blinked; her head tilted to one side as if I were a puzzle that had to be approached from another angle. “Naturally. Why?”

Why? Why did I have to choose?

I was the prince. Why could I not have both?

“What are you asking, Achilles?” my father pushed, dismay poorly masked by unease.

I looked pointedly at him. He had got my meaning, but he did not like it. Why? What was so heinous about it?

“What about Patroclus?”

The pallor of my mother’s face went from star-blessed to bone-bleached, and my father scrambled to speak before the grinding of her teeth got any more severe.

“Patroclus will remain here, my child,” he said. “To finish his training and take his rightful place as a Myrmidon. He is well-liked here and will be well-respected as he grows into a man. Don’t you want that for him?”

Oh, if it were anyone else but my parents before me, I might have howled with laughter.

Rightful place? With the Myrmidons? Preposterous.

We were as wrath to righteousness. Our rightful places were with each other.

It was only the truth.

“No,” I declared.

My father’s voice faltered. “No?”

“No.” The more I said it, the more my decision punctured into me, the talons of it hooking so deep that they would never be able to pry it away. “He will come with me.”

“Son—”

No, I would not hear it.

“To the mountain. Patroclus will come with me.”

“Achilles,” my mother huffed, all her pleasantness from before rotting and bitter now. “I understand that he is your favourite but—”

Favourite? What, as if you were some toy I was too attached to? No, I would not tolerate anyone speaking of you in so tawdry a manner, not even my own mother.

“He is my friend!” I corrected. “My dearest friend!”

“And one of the foster boys,” she reminded me, all too venomous now. “Who are pledged to Phthia’s armies, not to its prince.”

My anger blundered through me, cascading like a landslide. All my sensible arguments clattered away from me like so much loose shingle, my restraint sludge, my etiquettes mud. I had nothing to give, except the instinct that remained.

“I don’t care! I will not be parted from him!”

“But you must,” my father tried again, wringing his hands. “The centaur has agreed to train you, not him. What reason will you give for his presence upon the mountain?”

I racked my brain, hankering for some solution, some trick; surely there had to be some case I could make?

What did I know about centaurs? What did I know about traditions, about code, about—

Ah. The answer came to me, and I found at last my gratitude for the dullest of my tutors, he who had been charged with educating me about titles and hierarchies, customs of the court.

“I name him therapon!” I proclaimed, beyond triumphant. “I name Patroclus therapon! There!”

The light fled from my mother’s eyes, and she narrowed them shark-like at my father. “What does that mean?”

“Many things,” my father muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose with a finger and thumb. “Aide, advisor, comrade, attendant. Either way, it is our word for companion closest to the prince. Someone who may only leave his side in dismissal, or in death.”

“But he is a child! Achilles is a child; has he the authority—”

“It is granted to him, on his thirteenth name day.”

My mother’s gaze crashed upon me then, torrential, apocalyptic. “Achilles.”

But I matched it sterner, having nothing more to say. “I will not be parted from him. If I go, he will go with me.”

She made a sound like an enraged whale, eerie and haunting. Within a moment, she materialized an inch from my face.

“You will explain it to the centaur?” she hissed, her splintered-glass gaze boring into mine.

“I will.”

“And accept his consequences?”

“I will.”

“And where will you find the temerity to do so?” Her words gurgled low in the back of her throat, like it was excruciating for her to speak to me this way.

But I didn’t waver. I had no need to, not in this. “I don’t require temerity. I will be Aristos Achaion, with or without the centaur. It is known, is it not, Mother?”

She closed her eyes, resigned, a bizarre grimace distorting her face.

“Mortals,” she spat. “How invincible you all think you are.”

And with that she was gone, disintegrating into a mist of dark waters. A moment later, a faraway splatter disturbed the rumble of the ocean, then all was quiet once more.

“Father?” I pressed, looking to him.

“She would not have left like that, if she truly detested the idea,” he placated. How weary and scraped he sounded, but still he offered me a smile. “So be it, then. Take Patroclus with you, my most mulish son, if he wishes to go.”

The approval stoked within me a most ardent fire. “Thank you, Father.”

He said no more, and I took it as my cue to leave. Softly, I closed his door behind me, stepped into the corridor, only—

Only to be met with you, waiting outside in the shadow of a pillar, just as I had bid.

Fidgeting with your fingers, your eyes fixed on me, so tender, so searching, bleeding sweetness, like blackberries pricked with bramble.

I swallowed dryly, both my words and wit stolen away. I realized only then just how loudly I had been shouting, just how loudly we all had been shouting in that room.

“How much of that did you hear?”

A smile bloomed upon your face, more sacred than libation, more improbable than sunshine everlasting. “I heard you.”

Something surged in my soul, a climbing relief, a delirious want. “Does that mean you will go with me?”

You nodded. “Wherever you go.”

And then you crossed the distance between us in three certain steps and gathered me close in a searing embrace.

How my own legs held me up in that moment I will never know. It was as if the world had fractured around me, then remade itself, lined with garnet and pearl, infinitely more precious now than it had been before you had spoken those words, given shape to what I could have only hoped was in your heart.

I trembled with need; we had put our arms around each other, you and I, but you had never held me like this, and how I trembled to think that you would withdraw these arms soon, leave me with a starvation I had not known was afflicting me before now.

My palms started tentative on your waist, but I grew bolder as I sank into you, dragging them upwards till they rested against your shoulder blades, my heartbeat against yours.

“Thank you,” you rasped, your face buried in the crook of my neck. “For not turning your back on me.”

“Do not thank me as if I were doing you a favour,” I blurted, half-frantic at the thought. “I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t suffer any other by my side.”

You squeezed me even tighter, and I breathed deep, the tension draining already. It was tranquil for a moment, but then you giggled in that roguish way of yours and said, “This is true. And others would only suffer by your side.”

“They would not!” I protested, promptly shoving you off.

Your arms dropped from around me, but I did not miss them at all, for then, instead of flicking at my cheek like usual, you pulled on it, gentle enough to still allow me a smile.

“They would not. But I think…I think I would make them, if they tried to take my place.”

“Patroclus…” My voice broke over every syllable, but I could not find it in me to be embarrassed.

Because you agreed. Your place was with me, as mine was with you.

“Hm. I really would, wouldn’t I?” you murmured, more to yourself than me. “What a thing to realize, here of all places.”

And then you laughed, powerless and fleeting, petals in the wind. “Good night, Achilles.”

I watched you saunter down the corridor, staring till long after you had disappeared, arrested by how the air continued to hum and buzz.

Almost as if you were still there, on my skin, imbuing it with those flint-sparks in your eyes.

“Good night,” I said, my face pink, to no one at all.

Chapter Text

I am audacious.

Apparently. Chiron told me so, and I took it as a compliment.

I took everything as a compliment, those days. If I am being honest with myself, it is a habit only recently kicked. And even then, it wasn’t me who kicked it as much as it was The Fates who kicked it out of me.

…Audacious, Patroclus, can you believe it?

With all the respect that is due our teacher, I do not know where he could have possibly gotten that idea. I cannot remember being audacious at all, during our years on Pelion; can you?

Tell me you remember, Patroclus.

All else you can forget about; I wonder sometimes if it might be better that you did, but—

But tell me you remember Pelion. Say you remember our happiest years.

The mountain, so vibrant with life, those trickling streams that tripled into waterfalls after rain-soaked nights, bough upon leafy bough sagging with the bounty of fruit: pear, apple, and pomegranate—the snow!

The first snow of the season, powdery and twinkling at daybreak, as a pristine blanket upon the earth, as a sheet of glass upon the river.

To think I left it behind so easily. To think I delighted in making Troy my tomb.

Callous, thoughtless mind of mine. My life has been nothing but my youth, and all my youth has been, is folly.

To think I’ve doomed our memory here, to a mound of blood-soaked sand and the ruins of a dynasty; to the restless face of the Aegean; to be trampled over, again and again and again, as the wheels of war turn unending.

When we could’ve been attended by birdsong in a beech forest clearing, where the wildflowers bloomed brightest, on Pelion.

For our bones were never going to lie apart, my love. I would’ve charged you to keep me yours forever, as you have charged me, if…if it were you bereft upon the face of this world in my place.

What was it that I sought in Elysium?

I cannot remember now, Patroclus; all that survives is my ache for you.

Granted, I have never been without it, not since my thirteenth name day. It is a muscle of mine as much as my own heart, but it has not ached this much since our days on Pelion.

All the world is unfeeling bronze now, but it was hearth-golden then, when we embarked on our journey to the mountain.

The summer was still shy, the day still clung to springtime’s breeze, and dewdrops dripped from the weeds late into the morning.

We mounted our horses amidst great fanfare, a veritable crowd assembling to see us on our way. Phoenix wept openly, reminding me to take my meals at the proper times, and to always keep a fur close in the night. My father on the other hand seemed to be swallowing what words came to him, and plied me with encouragements like they were platitudes; diminished from king, his well-meaning smile struggling to keep its place.

I am grateful that I embraced him that day, told him how I loved him.

I did not even wave farewell to him when we parted next, the visions of conquest ahead of me too grand for the doting old bones that had cradled my childhood.

Your courtesies remained intact however, even as the horse-master and the stable-hands jested at your expense, the foster boys clapping you on the back and wishing you a fine forest nymph’s company in the cold months.

So smug were they with their own jokes that they did not notice me scowling at them.

The suggestion that you would prefer a nymph’s company to mine, wintertime or not, was distasteful to me. Bitter as dust, preposterous as dry water.

I would have commanded everyone to disperse immediately, but my mother rose up from the surf just then, and sent them scurrying regardless.

She did not come to us, gave no blessings. And I did not cry for her, pretended no sorrow.

To leave the Phthian shores spelled no loss of her to me; she was a goddess, and I knew she would find her way to the mountain if I needed her. Spectating the proceedings from a distance, her yawning gaze followed our steeds until we had disappeared into the Phthian heartland.

I had expected that she would be angry still, at my circumvention of her efforts, but her proud face was pinched, hope like futile tantrum in her eyes.

I did not understand it all. What was there to be so afraid of?

I tried to parse it when we stopped to take our midday meal, but there was a songbird about, tittering a pedestrian tune that I knew I could outdo. So, I brought out my lyre from my pack and began to play.

“Leave the bird be, my prince. It means no offence,” you quipped, interrupting before I could settle into a rhythm. You had taken our horses to a nearby watering hole while I rested under a great oak, and had now returned, the animals trailing behind you, fed and refreshed.

“Come, we must be on our way, if we are to reach the mountain before sunset.”

You extended your hand, and I plucked a lyre string petulantly in response. It was so comfortable under the tree; I rather thought you’d join me in the shade, bask in the sleepy afternoon quiet before we moved on.

“Sit a while,” I suggested. “I will play your favourite from last week.”

But you did not budge. “Achilles. We cannot delay if we want to arrive when we are expected.”

I frowned, intentions curdling in my chest.

What was the great rush, I wanted to ask. This was the first time we had been left to our own devices, no tutors or drill-masters or cooks to take issue, to tell us what to do, where to go, how long was long enough. Didn’t you want to savour every moment, before we were supervised again?

None of it wound up crossing my lips, only the approximation of an excuse. “Are these not our finest horses? We can gallop the rest of the way, can’t we?”

I could swear both your Kleopatra and my Aella snorted most haughtily then, and you patted their manes as if in agreement. “No, this is a mountain, not a beach. And they are tired enough, from bearing us and our provisions all this way.”

“Chiron will not mind waiting a while,” I sniffed. “I am the prince.”

“Yes, you are. Prince of Phthia. And look, there it is behind you.” You pointed to the hazy outline of the palace, shimmering on the horizon. “A few hundred paces more and we will be in the centaur’s domain, and we risk his ire as it is.”

All my arms of debate now failed, I resorted to that which has never deserted me.

Sulking.

“Patroclus!” I complained, startling the horses anew.

There was dead silence for a moment, and then you laughed, surrendering and unafraid, as an autumn leaf just before the fall. “Alright. One song,” you said, joining me in the grass. “Let’s hear you contend with this bird.”

How you indulged me, before. I needed only ask, call your name just so.

Can’t you indulge me once more, my love? I have cried for you unrelenting, clawed at the ground till I am senseless; can’t you indulge me, and return to me now?

Grant this last wish, and I won’t ask for anything ever again.

Please?

.

.

.

…Oh, well. It was worth an ask.

The camp would think me mad if they heard me, asking impossible things of a shade.

But they do not know you as I do, Patroclus. They do not know your penchant for defiance.

Though I suppose, it has never blazed insolent from you, rampaging rabid like an animal. No, you were always modest about it, as a dull blade wiped with venom.

It glimmers like seafoam in my memory; the first time you wielded it true.

We had just arrived at the base of Mount Pelion, the well-trodden path thinning to nothing with every step, the sun behind us, watered weak, treetops rising on either side to blot the sky.

We entered what appeared to be a forest, and somewhere in its heart, a twig snapped, a beast groaned. Your head turned in the direction of the sound, and you led Kleopatra closer to my own horse. “You must be careful when you speak with the centaur,” you said, leaning towards me. “Ask, don’t order, please, Achilles.”

I huffed, certain that you were joking. “Are you calling your prince rude, Menoetides?”

“No, I am calling him spoiled,” you retorted, light as ever and whip-quick besides. “And he will forgive me for not wanting to be parted from my dearest friend just because the Phthian household loved him too much to remind him of his manners.”

“You were part of that household. You could have said something.”

“And what does my prince imagine I am doing now?”

I rolled my eyes. “Really, Patroclus, you are cursed in your good sense. It leaves you far too meek for your own good.”

“Heroes. How fondly you love your own courage.”

The voice boomed from the undergrowth, even-keeled like time, brine-scraped like the ocean.

“Though Thetis had warned me as much, when she came to request my tutelage.”

The horses whinnied, stuttering to a halt as a hulking form emerged from the trees. It was a bearded man above and a froth-grey horse below, a bow slung over one of his shoulders and a pair of dead hares strung on a branch slung over the other.

“Esteemed Chiron,” I greeted, so overawed that I did not bow as you did, when he approached us.

“Welcome Pelides,” he said warmly, waving his free arm to the lands beyond this threshold. “I open my home to you, as I did to your father, when he celebrated his union with your noble mother.”

He wore immortality differently from my mother, I noticed then. Grizzled with an ageless stoicism, weathered rather than immaculate, I could sense in Chiron neither the imperiousness nor the ennui of my previous tutors.

No, there was only a searching in his eyes, a keenness that was not cunning, a foresight that was not unmoored. The countenance of an explorer; I had not looked for it on a teacher’s face.

“I am honoured that you would accept me for a pupil,” I said.

That made Chiron regard me with mischief, of all things. “Are you, now? Why?”

“…I beg your pardon?” I spluttered.

“Why are you honoured? What can I teach a goddess-born prince that he could not learn in his father’s house?”

I narrowed my eyes, made into a child again as I tried to guess at his intent. “Is this a test?”

“It is a question. What do you want to learn from me, Achilles?”

“Whatever you taught Heracles, and Jason, and all the others,” I answered honestly. “And more, so that I may surpass them.”

Chiron inclined his head, paused purposeful: Daedalus appraising. “Are you certain? It will not be easy.”

“How do you know? I have not tried my hand at any of it yet. Perhaps I will take to it effortlessly, like a fish to water.”

“Achilles,” you chided nervously.

But Chiron did not seem to think I had said anything untoward. “Audacious,” he smiled. “Thetis did not mention that.”

His gaze left mine, as if satisfied, and chose you for its next victim. “She also did not mention a companion.”

I cleared my throat; I felt it only right that I assume responsibility. “This is my dearest friend, Patroclus, son of Menoetius.”

Chiron walked over to you, his hoof-clops echoing in the breathless forest. “And why is he here?”

“He is my therapon. And per our custom, must accompany me—”

“He is your therapon where you are prince, which is in Phthia, not here,” Chiron dismissed with a wave. “I cannot be bothered with the motley customs of lords and kings on my mountain.”

My heart dropped into my stomach, all my certainties and daydreams splattering against my insides like overripe fruit. Your eyes darted to mine, the malaise of leaden clouds crystal within them.

I wished to dispel it, reassure you somehow, but my mind was empty; I had not prepared to be denied.

“I can, however, be persuaded to take on another pupil.”

The words were as an earthquake upon us, our breaths shaking in the wake of our relief.

“Oh! Yes, you will find Patroclus a worthy student,” I began, hardly needing time to think. “He is the only one of the foster boys to ever get the better of me in the sparring circle, and he is exceptional with horses, and he—”

Chiron held up a hand before I could get much farther. “Thank you, Achilles. But I will not take the word of a dear friend.”

“Why not?” An edge crept into my voice; this was twice now that I not been permitted to finish a sentence. “Is friendship not important?”

“It is very important. But it can also be blinding, and forgiving, where it should not be,” Chiron said, severe enough that the rest of my outburst dissolved in my throat. He turned back to you, expectant. “Speak, child. Can you convince me that you are worthy?”

You stared down at your fingers for a moment, knuckles white over Kleopatra’s reigns. Then, your head held high, you declared, “I cannot.”

“Patroclus!” I hissed, panicked some and dismayed more.

“Do you mean to tell me you sense no value in yourself?”

There was neither disdain nor threat in Chiron’s voice, only something of a bemused curiosity, yet you affected a brave voice, a solemn tilt.

“Not at all. You did not ask me for what value I thought I had. You asked me to convince you that I was valuable. And I cannot do so, if I do not know what you value. For this is not a subject men are of one mind on. Our old drill-master thought me worthy for the strength of my build; the horse-master valued my patience; what you might prize, I do not know. As such, I am not in the habit of starting fights I cannot win with forces far stronger than myself, and I will not win if I do not know. Therefore, with respect, I cannot argue my case. You must reveal your criteria, or judge me for yourself.”

“So, I have,” Chiron laughed, great-hearted. “Welcome, Patroclus, son of Menoetius. I will teach you all that I know, as I teach Achilles.”

Your mouth fell open, and you looked to me to pinch you, to confirm what had been spoken, but I could only blink back, half-stunned myself.

Only you, my love, could hide the boldness of the dawn in such polite turn of phrase, only you could sharpen humility with such astuteness. How I have adored that about you. It is a wonder I kept it to myself, for as long as I did.

For even then, Chiron had to clap his hands to refocus my attention, saying “Come, both of you, we must get to the cave before nightfall.”

“I-Is that all?” you asked him, still disbelieving. “Have you no further questions?”

“No. You are worthy, both of you.”

“How so?” I was in agreement, to be sure, but felt owed an explanation, nevertheless.

Chiron winked, as if offering us a secret.

“When all is said and done, there are only two kinds of people you cannot teach. Those who do not want to learn, and those who think they know already. Everyone else is worthy.”

I recall a gleeful shout escaping me then, the birds in the bushes taking to the skies all aflutter, like an omen most favourable. It sat well with me that the world was as simple as that, and it was people who were too fragile for it.

You were smiling as well, though I could sense your reasons were different. We were both as hatchlings cracking through an egg, only I was thrilled by the sight of open sky, and you just seemed glad to escape.

Both our faces fell, however, when we were instructed to turn our horses free, along with all our possessions, save for food and clothing.

“Here you will bear your own burdens, and furnish your own luxuries, if you desire them,” Chiron said, as I bid forlorn goodbye to my lyre, and you tethered Aella to Kleopatra and softly directed them to return to Phthia.

“But how are we to travel?” I asked, as their silhouettes trotted away.

“You will learn to climb. But for tonight,” Chiron knelt, tail swishing, till he was level with us on the ground, and gestured to his back. “I will carry you.”

You were better balanced rein-less on horseback than I, still your palms found my hips when we sat down, just above the bone. Now and again, I would feel them pressing into me, steadying me when the path steepened, and Chiron veered around outcrops of rock.

All the while I told myself that you were only doing it because you did not want me to fall.

But who could blame me for shivering under a touch like yours, when it felt as if I were being adorned, not held, staunch as a vow sworn upon the Styx?

I’d only just found the name for the unruly want that you had sown in my storming heart.

Who could blame me for not having the will to school it?

We travelled for a long time, our route excavated into the heart of the mountain by both toil and age. I could not tell we were nearing a home until I spotted seats, carved from the rock, too ample even for a generous feast. No doubt they’d been created for a grander purpose, but now they bore only stores of herb and fruit, animal skins draped to dry, hunting bows and quivers aplenty.

No other arms, I noted with some surprise. I wondered how we were to progress in our weapons training, if we had none about.

A thought easily abandoned when we were lowered back to our feet by the mouth of a cave, for it boasted its own rarities.

Chief among them was a lyre, so pale that even moonbeams should resent its brightness, so elegant in its craftmanship that it rendered the memory of my own instrument gaudy by comparison.

My pack forgotten by the entrance, I padded towards it immediately.

“Would you like to borrow that, Achilles?”

I jumped at the sound of Chiron’s voice; I had not realized that he was watching.

“If I may,” I said, fixing Chiron with the guileless smile that I knew always worked on Phoenix. You shot me a scathing look for it as you hefted my pack alongside yours, but disappeared into the cave without a word.

Chiron had already busied himself with the firewood heap, collecting and arranging each piece carefully where he stood. “You may,” he allowed. “But only here in the cave, on nights when we have a full moon.”

“But that’s hardly any time at all!” I grumbled, and behind me, I heard the tell-tale smack of your palm on your forehead.

Chiron’s mirth was lost to the strikes of the flint-stones; I did not see the challenge on his face until the fire sputtered between us, leaping from the tinder like tongues. “If you would like to play more often, you are welcome to make your own lyre.”

I crossed my arms. “But why must I?”

“Because the music is sweeter when you make the instrument on your own,” Chiron said simply. Retrieving knives from an alcove, he set about skinning the hares he had caught. “Just like clothes are warmer, and food is more delicious, if you are the one to make them,” and here, he raised his voice a little. “Do you understand, Patroclus?”

There was a thump as you dropped both packs awkwardly, and I twisted round to grin at you, relishing that you were being told off too, if in a roundabout way.

“Yes, Chiron,” you said sheepishly, picking up your own things, and leaving mine where they’d fallen.

Chiron nodded approvingly, then turned back to me. “It’s a special kind of joy, to taste the fruits of your own labour. Not usually in the fortune of kings and princes, yet you have a chance to feel it. Will you deny yourself, Pelides?”

I took responsibility for my pack without another word. Chiron, I discovered then, could not be cowed as easily as my erstwhile tutors.

Staying close to the cavemouth, he tended the fire as the hares cooked, leaving us to explore the cave’s interiors. It was much larger than what we had thought it to be in the darkness, its ceiling high, its walls covered with writing, and art. Peering close, we were treated to scenes of great battles, maps of the night sky, intricate renderings of animals and herbs.

Even so, there was no bath, only a large bowl of water to wash with, stowed away in the furthest nook to keep it cool. There was no bedding to be seen either, only a large slab of rock which we had to prepare with furs, folding our spare clothes to serve as pillows.

It took longer than it had any right to, for I will not deny that I was made clumsy at the thought that we were meant to share it.

It was no small length of rock, but it was the only one, so it felt like we were sleeping in one bed.

Will you believe me, my love, if I say that I still blush now, as I did then, at the thought?

We have lain together many times since, yet still I am helpless to you.

Just as I promised to remain.

Is it enough, Patroclus? When we meet beneath the earth once more, will it be enough for you to—

Never mind. Don’t answer that, I…I cannot bear to hear otherwise.

Just come back with me, to that first night at Pelion. Watching the moonrise together, scarfing down our food, drifting off to the sound of Chiron’s humming as the fire died.

“Patroclus,” I whispered to you later, too excited to sleep.

“What?” Your voice clung to wakefulness by a cobweb, yet your eyes still opened when I spoke.

“We’re going to be heroes.”

Now that I am thinking of it, you had this smile on your face then, splintered as if from a seashell swept into the surf.

A remnant of something that was about to be lost forever.

For we shed the cushions of our childhood in the days to come, you and I, as we chipped into young men.

It began with foraging, long days in the summer that started before sunrise, when the light was still wan and blue. Chiron would show us around the mountain along meandering trails, pointing at this flower and that fruit, this leaf and that tree, explaining what could be eaten and used, and what was not even safe to touch.

On those days I would lead our company, chasing the hares, catching the insects. Until then, I had not wanted for more than the grandeur of the Phthian palace; the vastness of its beaches and the ocean beyond were, after all, all I had known. But once the tangled thickets of Pelion so teeming with strange and beautiful treasures became known to me, I began to want them too.

It was a singular sort of abandon, to be small in a great untamed land, free to wander.

If I were given my life to lead again, I should like to feel it forever. Not cast it aside so hastily, just to tower over others as lord and master, victor and conqueror.

A curse of my borrowed divinity, I reckon it is. The hunger to be undying.

As dim as earnest rustling before, it did not grate into a growl until Chiron set us about our first task.

Assured by then that we would not tumble headlong down a ravine or choke on a strange berry in his absence, he told us to scale the mountain and collect the medicinal herbs that grew at the very top.

That was the first expedition during which I did not run on ahead.

For you were always quiet when we travelled with Chiron, attentive to the questioning volleys we launched at each other, but speaking only when I stopped. Always restrained, with impassable dancing eyes that betrayed nothing of your mind.

But when it was just the two of us, you blossomed like spring triumphant, arguing and overflowing, every smile strong enough to taste.

And for my part I…I was tempered, molten, made thoughtful by your side, ever so rapt when you spoke, ever-ready to share my fruit, ever-willing to take your hands in mine and hoist you over tricky parts of the terrain.

I realize now that you were to me as kindling is to fire, whetstone is to blade, oath is to slaughter.

We were more together, better as one.

But destiny was yet to reveal that to me. I will be known for many things upon my death, but not for having the nous to keep from staring directly into the sun, as you did.

For even when we had clambered over the last ledge and onto the top of the mountain, I celebrated not that we had arrived at our destination, but rather that it was us alone at this glorious height, beyond which there were no mortal homes, just the domains of the gods.

“Look there, Patroclus!” I shouted to you, pointing to the sprawling settlements below us, that stretched out from the darkened hollow in which I was sure Chiron’s cave was nestled. “The lands of Chiron’s kin, and the home of the Lapiths beyond!”

The Aegean lay to one side of us, its colour deep and stark against the cloudless expanse of the sky, feigning tranquillity at this distance. And to the other, there was Mount Olympus, only its base visible to us, its great reaches veiled by a dense, taunting mist.

“Now this is a place for a hero!” I proclaimed, hands on my hips.

“Yes, for who else would be forgiven such ostentation, the Gods notwithstanding.”

I tore myself away from the splendour, and found your gaze fixed on the ground, inspecting the land for the herbs we were asked to procure.

“Blasphemy,” I mocked.

“Deference,” you corrected, eyes gleaming like pearls buried in wet earth. “If you mean to be undying, you ought to learn the difference.”

I pouted. “Smart-mouth.”

“Airhead.”

“Call it even, Patroclus.”

“Only if you’ll stop dithering and help,” you said, dragging me away from the mountain’s edge. “You can gawk all you like when our task is complete.”

I did not dispute any further; it was no miserable demand for me. Quite the opposite; I did so like watching your hands at work.

They’ve always been bigger than mine, not quite as thin in the fingers, yet all the gentler for it, spared my lyrist’s calluses. The leaves always fell off the herbs I pulled from the soil, scattering from the force, but you managed to pluck them with such care that they did not even tremble.

I think I was content to watch then, to just love you all by myself.

Bubbling effervescent, it built within me as a wave does, ever-cresting. All those years before, I’d thought the sprint in my step to be my consolation for flightlessness. But there you were, lifting me off the earth with every stifled laugh, floating me on the breeze with nothing but a jostled elbow, carrying me past the stars with a single look.

It’s strange. I never imagined a fall from that height, though waves are bound to break.

I cannot help but laugh at that boy now; thirteen summers old with already so robust a vanity that I thought I could hold up the mountain with my thumb, and yet I did not think for one moment that I could contain that feeling.

It escaped me most obviously when we sparred, in cut-off hoots and jibes, traded just as easily as we traded blows. Chiron cleared a forgiving patch of dirt for us, and studied us the first time, to gauge our abilities.

I confess it did not take me long to forget about him entirely, consumed by the heat of your hands as they struck me, the thundering of your heart where you crashed into me, by the way I could fell you but never keep you down, by the way you could catch me but never keep me still.

No one won that bout, if memory serves. For Chiron stopped us when neither of us would yield, despite being locked in a tussle on the ground.

“Alright,” he said, motioning for us to separate. “I think I’ve seen enough.”

We collected ourselves, panting, and stood with our hands clasped behind our backs, eager to hear how we’d been judged. Chiron approached me first, placed a hand on my head just as my father would when he was pleased with me.

“Hawk-eyed, with precise, well-balanced movements and a swiftness that will be the envy of all of Achaea’s warriors,” he praised. “You will be a fine spearman, worthy of your father’s spear one day, hewn from Pelian ash to be the death of heroes.”

I beamed, overjoyed to have impressed him so. I knew the spear he spoke of, had eyed it many times where it was displayed with reverence in my father’s chambers. It had been his honoured wedding gift, but I decided then that I would make it my weapon to wield, to imbue with mythos and significance.

Chiron smiled like he could see this resolution plain in my eyes, then shook his head as if he was tired of it, tired of seeing it in other eyes, and hiding his unease.

It did not deter me. I was going to be Aristos Achaion, whether it was audacious of me or not.

There was something different in his gaze when he looked at you, and you grew taut and apprehensive under it. But then he squeezed your shoulder, comforting. “Sure, firm holds, a discerning sense of strategy, and a stubborn strength made to endure. The rearguard, I think, for you. The last line of defence, one that will never break.”

How right he was, in the end. This camp, all these Greek ships, all would have washed into the sea in clumps of cinder and soot if you had not—

They’d all have died, if you had not.

Prophecy, I’m convinced those words were. I wish now that they had never been spoken, had never put that idea in your head.

Though I should have suspected them, from Chiron. From our teacher who always seemed to have an answer for everything and laughed as if his throat were full of riddles, who before he was tutor to heroes was a student of Apollo.

Always veiled in his remarks, they’d ensnare me and leave me lost, feeling blindly for his point.

And…And I don’t think I was ever taking away quite the right lessons, from our conversations.

You were always better with his parables than I.

They were few and far between in the warmer months, all the spare daylight was channelled into lessons and chores, but the winters would banish us to the cave and light the stage for many deliberations.

Hour upon hour would pass with us around a crackling fire, Chiron carving fluid forms from olivewood, telling stories while you flaked new arrowheads from flint. I would lay close to you, on my back with my arms linked under my head, and rest my feet in your lap. Watching the sparks fly from the flames, strumming Chiron’s lyre if the moon showed its full face, it was the rare instance in which I was quiet, unanchored and at ease, and you were talkative, though still pensive and soft.

I did so cherish it, my love, that little world of ours, walled by wind and stone and season.

For in it your fingers would skim over my skin like sunrays and wild silk, drumming absently on my heels, tracing shapes on my ankles, as if I were something more sacred than a dear friend.

I found that I despised it horribly, when that illusion shattered.

It was during the thick of our first winter, the fog like a curtain upon the forest, the snow clouds hanging swollen above us. A sickly twilight covered all that we could see, the blaze roasting our deer for the evening meal the only thing glaring lively as we settled in for the night.

You and I were bickering over the last fur, as I recall. Ocean-sired, I have always been as cold to the touch as my mother, leeching warmth in the absence of sunshine. There’d been no dearth of sunshine in Phthia, but this far north, you were worried enough to insist that I keep the fur, even though I was smothered in two others already. I opposed this, of course, just as worried for you as you were for me, and obstinate enough to continue talking in circles about it.

It was an argument Chiron did not care to adjudicate, but when he heard a thin voice on the air, he promptly hushed us. We peered out of the cave mouth, and spotted a bobbing torch approaching, accompanied by the cries of an animal in distress.

“Who goes there?” Chiron called.

“Philena, my lord Chiron!” the voice replied, stumbling closer. “I come seeking aid!”

“One of the Lapith girls,” Chiron told us. “Her family herds goats.”

I thought it rather marvellous that he would know her by name, for surely there were many families in these lands, under his purview. They would know of him to be sure, but for them to feel emboldened enough to call on him at his abode…

“Reckless child!” Chiron scolded her, in much the same tone he took with us, hastening out to assist. “Whatever would possess you to journey up the mountain at this hour? We will have snow at any moment.”

We waited, fidgeting, uncertain as to what to make of it all. As Chiron brought her into the firelight, we saw that the girl did not look much older than us, though her cloth was poorer, and her eyes infinitely more hungry.

It shocked me. I did not think the winter had been that severe; we had not wanted for anything, in the cave.

“My…my doe,” the girl wept, hauling forth a wheezing goat, plump and unsteady enough on its feet that it was obvious it was with child. “She was birthing, but I think the poor creature is stuck. It has been too long, and she is exhausted, and I should—I cannot bear to lose her; I raised her from young, do you know, and—and the winter has thinned the herd more than Father will admit, and—”

“Come now, it’s alright,” Chiron said, taking the creature’s reins from her, and guiding it to a corner of the cave where the fire’s light could still reach it. “Let me see what I can do here.”

While Chiron examined the animal, you took the fur we had been fighting over from my hands, and draped it around the girl’s shoulders. For a brief moment, I felt a pang like scorpion sting in my blood; the fur would not smell of you after this night, but then the girl expressed her thanks through clacking teeth, and I noticed the faint blue of her fingers when she pulled it close. Sobered just as quickly as I’d been upset, I wrapped my hands in my own furs, guarding against their treacherous desire to yank the thing back.

Meanwhile, you made our introductions as pupils of Chiron, recently come to the mountain. I hadn’t the wherewithal for those graces, so arrested was I by the doe’s plight. I could not look away; the blood caking the backside of the animal, its laboured breaths and wobbling kicks were a picture of wretchedness that I had never seen before. There’d been no sheep or goats about the Phthian palace, not least where I could see them, and the subject of childbirth was not one that my tutors had ever spoken to me about.

I became even more alarmed when Chiron, after washing his hands and covering them with oil, proceeded to feel around inside the animal. I was rather proud of myself for not shrieking as I so wanted to do, especially because you had begun to look on as well, more concerned than fazed.

“Not to worry, it seems the little one’s legs are tucked under the body in an awkward position,” Chiron pronounced. “All it will take is a small adjustment.”

“What kind of adjustment?” you asked, sauntering over to see. I shuddered to think what had gone on in the palace stables, that you were able to stomach this turn of events. I myself elected to stay where I was, unwilling to move until I was bid to.

“Would you like to know, Patroclus?” Chiron beckoned you over, evidently glad that you were taking an interest. “Watch carefully now, and I will explain. You too, Philena; it will do you good to learn.”

What followed was an intricate lecture on feeling for legs inside a birth canal, and something about wombs, waters, and navel strings that I think I have wilfully forgotten. The girl and you were transfixed as Chiron spoke, observing the goat for signs of distress as the problem was corrected, and the babe was expelled. All that sticks in my mind is Chiron’s request to heat some water, since I’d seemed “to have put down roots by the fire,” and crush some herbs from our store into a healing salve.

“She will need to be cleaned and treated,” he said of the doe, amused that I’d grown somewhat green around the gills despite the distance I’d kept. “She may become ill yet, if she isn’t cared for properly after such an ordeal.”

I gulped and went about my tasks, thankful for the distraction. You settled the bloodied kid before the mother’s head, and returned to help me, even as the girl’s tears flowed again, though this time it was joy that wracked her frail body.

Chiron offered her a cut of our deer, and bread, while we waited for mother and child to recover, to feed and bond. She graciously took a seat by the fire, ever so moved by the kindness.

“And what tidings from the plains?” Chiron inquired as we ate. “There was thunder, a few moons ago, but no rain. A powerful oath has been sworn, has it not?”

Philena glanced around her, inched forward, as if she were about to tell us something she should not have heard. “Sparta celebrates a double joy. The last two sisters are wed.”

Chiron raised an eyebrow. “Helen is just come of age, but Icarius’ daughter has been marriageable for some time now. What suitor is this, that has matched her wit well enough to court her?”

“The young king of Ithaca, newly crowned. It was a strange affair, by all accounts. They say he arrived as a contender for Helen’s hand, but did not pay her any mind after meeting Penelope.”

“Ithaca boasts neither great wealth, nor much renown,” you mused aloud, incredulous. “Wherefrom did he manage bride-gifts worthy of a Spartan princess?”

“That’s what’s remarkable,” the girl said excitedly. “He gave none.”

Chiron laughed, fond in his surprise. “So, she marries for love.”

“The gods smile upon her.” Philena drew both knees to her chin, and rested her head upon them, wistful. “How many of us will be able to say the same?”

Her words rattled in my mind; I was perturbed by them. Though I believed myself soundly in love, I had not tied the fraying threads of its future with the eventuality of marriage.

Considering it then, I did not see why I should have to partake in it at all.

We had performed all the essential rituals already; you were my closest companion, pledged to me for life. What other bonds were necessary?

“…Helen least of all,” Chiron was saying pityingly, when my ponderings ceased enough for me to start listening again. “Luckless girl. Touted as the most beautiful woman to walk the earth, not to mention a union with her elects the new king of Sparta. Who did her father give her to?”

“It is rumoured that he charged the girl to choose,” Philena informed. “Menelaus, she decided.”

This name I knew, from my lessons in politics. Phoenix had always spoken very grimly about the Atreides, believed that there was a curse upon that House.

I know why, now. I have learned, at a terrible cost, why, now.

But then, all I’d memorized was that they had enough years behind them to have amassed a hoard of riches, and begun creaking under their weight.

“Is he not too old for her?” I scoffed. “Whatever will they talk about?”

“I doubt it matters. He was her brother-in-law, likely the only man she knew in a sea of strangers,” you pointed out. “A chance to remain close to her older sister, and strengthen the alliance between Mycenae and Sparta. It is not too farfetched to infer that they mean to take power in the Peloponnese. A sharp woman; she chooses well.”

I tugged playfully on your ear. You were so wonderfully clever about these things, my love, even then. “Listen to you. My statecraft tutor would’ve taken you over me, any day. Should I be jealous?”

You batted my hand away, then pulled my cheek, and just like that the furs felt cold and clammy; all that sparkled was where the traces of your fingers haunted.

“Not on your life,” you smiled diffidently. “My father always said it was the only thing I could do right.”

It was a coarse, sour thing, the thought of your father. It amazed me how much dislike I truly harboured for him, dislike that was buried only because you did not speak of him to me.

Chiron did not reveal his opinion outright, merely sighed, and stoked the fire. “Menoetius has the right of it less times than a blood moon rises. But he understands the price of power, and how great it is. Too few kings ever truly grasp it, princes even fewer so. They are accustomed to getting their way, without giving anything up.”

He met my eyes when he said this, and I instantly turned away, nose in the air. “I will not need to give anything up,” I announced, to no one in particular. “I am Aristos Achaion.”

Chiron stiffened, his eyes unseeing, as if charred from the inside. Then he blinked, and the dread was gone; all that remained was the crumple in his frame, the slouch of an immeasurably old man. “They’ve told you, then, have they?”

I tilted my head to the side, a bit thrown. “Were they not supposed to?”

Chiron shrugged, as if there were something on him that needed shaking off. His smile returned, though even that was gnarled, as an ill-treated tree. “It does not matter. It is your fate, and no one can defy fate, not even the gods.”

Outside the cave the air chattered with metal teeth, and for a moment, the night seemed to drip like dye.

We spoke no more of it, and finished our meal while watching the doe nurse for the first time. Once she was dozing, the newborn sheltered by her side, I ventured close to see it. Philena came too, crouching next to you while you cleaned up the blood and mess, and treated the animal as Chiron instructed.

“You have kind hands,” she said to you, a giggle tucked under her tongue. “I did not look for them in a hero.”

I did not like that.

“I am hardly a hero,” you protested. “Just a humble student, doing as I’m told.”

I did not like that, either.

It was as if there were a colony of rats scurrying about under my skin, raking their claws over everything. There was a look in her eyes that I knew the meaning of, for it was a mirror of what occupied my mind in your presence.

Only hers was cheap reflection, a shallow puddle, muddied and cloying and splashing cacophonous just from a pebble carelessly thrown. But my affections were a fathomless lake; clearer, and headier, and eternal, rippling in symphony always, to fill the silences between your breaths.

She didn’t even know you. I had learned you by heart.

I loved you more, I knew it; I was certain of it.

And yet she would not stop looking, and you would not stop her.

Oh, this is an ugly memory I’ve blundered into, my love.

Especially because you hadn’t even lifted your gaze long enough to notice any of this, when you spoke.

I have done much worse since, yet my behaviour that night still shames me.

It was darker than pitch beyond the circle of our fire, the wind whistled eerie and inauspicious, flecks of white tumbling through it, yet I was anxious for the girl to leave once she’d said those words. My eyes followed her about as she readied herself, yet Chiron interjected before she could utter a goodbye.

“Surely, you do not think you will be travelling home in this weather? There is not even a star to see by, and your doe is half-asleep.”

Philena shook her head politely. “She knows the mountain well, and I am a herder. I’m sure we can find our way.”

“Nonsense, you will be safer here till the morning. Leave at first light if you must.”

You were sweet with this invitation, as you were sweet with everything, but I took it to mean that you wanted her to stay. So great had my annoyance become; even that honey was spoiled poison to my ears.

“I wouldn’t want to impose—” the girl tried once more, but Chiron was already securing the reins of her doe so that she wouldn’t wander off.

“Not at all,” he said, nodding to us. “Make her comfortable, you two.”

“Of course,” you said, showing her to the washing bowl. “Clean up here; we’ll prepare a place for you to rest.”

And with that, you dragged another fur off me, and started towards our unmade bed.

I’m sure the most ungainly yelp loosed from my lips then, as I stared after you. It was a wrong, mangled feeling, like a snake coiling tail-first around my ribs, to feel insulted by you.

I stomped over before I could think better of it. “You’re giving her our bed?!”

I don’t think you heard it that time, the viciousness I was trying so hard to tamp down by whispering. I wasn’t prone to whispering.

“No, I am giving her the rock we sleep on,” you said, matter-of-factly.

“Without asking me?”

You stopped what you were doing to look up at me, baffled. “What is there to ask? It’s only for a night. Besides, it’s the warmest place in the cave, and the girl looks frozen enough to shatter.”

“Oh, so, you would rather me catch my death in a corner?” I snapped.

“Come, now; you’ve far too much ichor in your veins for that,” you teased. “You’ll be fine by the fire.”

And it occurred to me. You couldn’t hear it, the cracks in my voice that I couldn’t help, the hurt I could not justify. You wouldn’t tease otherwise, and it was the furthest I’d felt from you in years, as if I were scratching at impenetrable walls.

“Well, fine, then!”

I spun on my heel and made my way back to the fire. I could not look at you anymore, at the innocent bewilderment on your face.

“Achilles, where are you going? Won’t you help?”

Help? What, all for the sight of some strange girl in our bed, draped in your preferred fur, to sear into my mind and boil me in this ruinous feeling forever? I thought not.

“No,” I bit out. “I am cold, and I’ve tired of you.”

I didn’t mean that. I never have, and yet I’ve said it far too many times, haven’t I, in our years together?

You must forgive me, my love. I don’t know how you looked then, nor what happened after that.

Burrowing into my only fur, I leaned into the cave wall and responded to no more mentions of my name, stewing till the sounds behind me had died down, menacing the flames until my eyes grew heavy, and I fell asleep, spent from my own ire.

It was a fitful sleep, visionless, yet marred. Even so, I don’t know what possessed me to stir awake when I did.

Perhaps it was that the jagged surface of the cave wall was no longer digging into my skull. Perhaps it was that my toes were no longer cold, nor the pads of my fingers, nor the tip of my nose.

Or perhaps it was the way your arm folded around my shoulders, clinging like a vine, clinging like a vice.

Blearily, I discovered it was your body I was wilted against, bundled further in both our himations. The fire was still roaring, even though the embers usually tended to extinguish by this time of night.

My breath hiccupped when I realized it was the bare skin of your chest under my cheek, and your name fumbled out of my mouth.

“Patroclus?”

“What’s the matter? Are you cold?” you asked, and I knew from your voice you had not slept a wink. Wisped as if from altar-smoke, it found my bruised heart and swaddled it, prayer-safe.

“No, but—why are you still awake?” I shifted, wanting your eyes, wanting the way they’d flood and glow, just for me. But you gathered me close and rested your head on mine, hid half your face in my hair.

“I was the one who gave away our bed. The least I can do is keep the fire burning.”

“Patroclus…” I rasped, because you agreed.

It was our bed, and we didn’t need it to sleep as we always did, blurred together in a single pelt. How foolish I felt then, for throwing tantrums in front of a guest.

“Sleep,” you soothed. “I will keep you warm.”

And I found that I was frightfully undone by it, desperately discontent.

It was no longer enough to love you stealing, inside my own head. I wanted you to love me too, loudly, like this.

Always, without needing excuses to make it so.