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“Make sure to kiss her head often, to be sure she's in the right place,” Eubelia’s father Primus tutted, fussing with the sling Cyril wore little Sosia in as though Cyril had never carried her in the three months since she'd been born. Pistra, Eubelia's sleek former racing dog, sat on her haunches to watch the whole production with one sharp ear cocked.
“Yes, father,” Cyril said obediently, anxious to be out of the house. Sosia had finally had her presentation at temple, which meant she and therefore Cyril could finally be seen out of the house, but he'd never hear the last of it if his father in law thought he wanted to go socializing. Sosia snuffled against his chest in her sling as though she was also anxious to be off.
“And you're sure you're carrying enough bottles?” Primus demanded, even though he'd checked the bag himself twice already.
“Yes, father,” Cyril said. “We'll just be walking in the park.” After meeting Marcus for coffee, but Cyril hadn't told his father in law that, even if he'd guiltily told Eubelia about his plans, desperate to see a face that wasn't family now that the baby's nonagintae was over. Cyril found the whole thing ridiculous; no one sequestered helot babies for ninety days, but it was the proper thing to do and he still had to prove he was a proper husband even after everything else, so he and Sosia endured their nonagintae.
Cyril worked to keep the annoyance off his face as Primus finally helped him on with his coat. Dressed only in his shirt and cravat with no waistcoat between him and Sosia in her sling, he felt ungainly putting his frock and winter coats on over the top of it all, but it was proper and there was no arguing with proper. Although Cyril thought he might forgo walking in the park and have Marcus help him off with his coat, so that he could go without proper in Kal's parlor for a bit while they had coffee.
“Don't be out too long,” Primus fussed as Cyril finally picked up the baby's satchel and Pistra’s lead and tried to flee out the front door. “And keep her bonnet on, it's too cold today.”
“Yes, father,” Cyril called over his shoulder as he took the front steps indecorously fast. He'd get scolded for it over supper, but by then Eubelia would be home for him to hide behind.
Finally having escaped with the dog at his side, Pistra nosed Sosia’s round bottom in her sling, checking to be sure she was still in there. It was too cold, mid March and bracing, but it felt good to finally be out from Primus’ watchful eye. Pistra kept pace beside him with her long nails clicking on the slate sidewalk, just as pleased to be out for the day. She'd broken her leg in a race and had been due to be put down until Eubelia's brother Tycho decided to take her in, just like he and Eubelia took in all sorts of other stray refuse. Pistra stood nearly as tall as the shoulder as Cyril's hip, and other than her tendency to lean against him heavily, he'd always found her to be much more pleasant than the hunting and guard dogs of his former acquaintance. Cyril pet her sleek head as they walked towards Kal and Marcus' together and smiled when she nosed Sosia again.
They paused for a moment at a street corner to cross, and Pistra took the opportunity for laziness to sit on the cold stone while they watched the traffic pass. Cyril scratched her ears affectionately; Eubelia thought he spoiled her, but it was all she deserved after being discarded for her life of hard work. He was about to heel her to cross the street when she suddenly stood with her ears back.
“Could you tell me how to find this address?” a familiar voice asked at Cyril's elbow, and he turned to find himself face to face with Julius for the first time in years.
Cyril blinked stupidly at the piece of paper Julius showed him, the sudden ringing in his ears drowning out all the other sounds of the street and Julius speaking. Julius had grown a beard and wore a shabby helot’s coat and hat but there was no doubt it was him; Cyril had spent too long anticipating his every breath to not know him.
Cyril spoke without hearing himself. The world quickly narrowed down as small as it had been when he'd worn Julius' collar, dizzy and terrifying as his vision blacked at the edges. He felt as though he might pass out standing there on the street corner giving directions with his dog and his baby but felt utterly rooted to the spot and unable to move. Pistra wedged herself between Cyril and Julius with her tail up and body rigid, one tooth barred. Cyril staggered back a step under the dog's weight as Julius thanked him and held out a hand. Very far away, Cyril watched himself shake Julius' hand and accept his thanks for giving him directions, feeling the rumble of Pistra's growl low in his bones where she leaned against him.
And then Julius was gone and Cyril turned around the way he'd come, walking without direction. His feet carried him to a bench some ways away where he sat without seeing. Pistra stood guard between him and the passing crowd for a long time until she began anxiously nosing Sosia in her sling.
Sosia, who was safe. Sosia, who had slept through Cyril nearly blacking out on a street corner. She'd woken up while he sat there looking at nothing, starting to shuffle in her little embroidered bonnet. Cyril fumbled with the satchel, hunting for a bottle for her. He couldn't quite manage it and his hands began to shake violently as Pistra whined.
“Young man, are you quite alright?” an older man asked, pausing with his grandchild. It must have showed on Cyril's face that he was not, in fact, alright. “Can I call you a carriage, my boy?” the man asked, more concerned now. “See you to your wife?”
Because Cyril had a wife, properly married, and could afford to call a carriage. Because Julius hadn't recognized him at all, dressed like a citizen out with his dog and his baby and not looking like a whore to be used and disposed of.
Cyril told the grandfather the address of Eubelia's office and allowed himself to be helped into the carriage. Once away, he kissed the top of Sosia's head and breathed in her warm baby smell.
Eubelia's secretary Damien helped Cyril off with his coat and sat him in her office while Damien went to fetch her and fix tea. Cyril, left alone in the quiet office, took Sosia out of her sling to give her her bottle. He slouched back in his chair with his eyes closed, baby laying on his chest and Pistra pressed heavily against his knee watching the door.
“Are you alright? Is the baby alright?” Eubelia asked, hurrying in. She knelt in front of him and stroked his face, peering at him with a worried look. She was so much more than he deserved, beautiful and concerned. Sosia rolled her head to look at her mother and held out one fat little hand. Eubelia kissed her little hand and then knelt up to cup Cyril's face and kiss him as well.
“I just–ran into Julius. Gave him directions to find Marcus,” Cyril said vaguely, uncertain of the details. He'd spoken without hearing because he'd given directions to where he was going. He sat with the strangeness of that for a moment, what it would have been like to be taking coffee in the parlor with Marcus when Julius showed up. He hoped Kal wasn't home.
“I'm going to kill him,” Eubelia said flatly, standing to cross to the door.
“Which one?” Cyril asked. He did not yet feel entirely himself again, floating somewhere away from the unreality of it all. The last time he'd seen Julius, he'd been certain he was going to die alone in a mine or a galley, nevermind marry or have a child.
“Marcus. Julius. Both, I haven't decided yet,” Eubelia said. She leaned out the door to speak to Damien. “Clear my meetings for the rest of the day, I'm going home.”
Cyril finally sat up, the seriousness of what he'd done finally arriving. Julius would have beaten him bloody til he couldn't walk for interrupting something important. “I'm sorry, Eubelia, I didn't mean to interrupt you–” he began packing up the baby's things, hands shaking again. He'd used the baby as a shield, pretending to be something he wasn't, a runaway all over again. “I didn't mean to bother you at work.” And over nothing, a handshake and a few words.
“It's not a bother,” Eubelia said, coming to brush a hand over his shoulders and kiss his head. Because he wasn't a runaway, he was married and she wasn't angry. She'd seen him flinch one of the first times they'd danced and been so careful until months later when he'd been able to pick through how he could and could not bear to be touched. Cyril hid his face in her dress and let her stroke his hair, the baby safe between them. “It's really not,” Eubelia said. “We'll go home, and I'll deal with Marcus. Let me take care of it.”
Cyril wanted to protest that he didn't need her to protect him, that he didn't need Marcus to be dealt with, but the truth of it was he wanted nothing more than to hide safely at home, proper and respectable and safe. So he allowed her to help him on with his coat and take the baby and shepherd them all back out to a carriage and home.
“ What did you think you were doing, Marcus?” Eubelia demanded in the other room. Kal took Sosia from Cyril where they sat on the divan in the parlor together, bouncing the baby on his lap even as he raised his eyebrows at Eubelia's raised voice behind the closed door. It was odd sitting with only Kal in the parlor; usually it was Kal off talking business with the women after dinner while Marcus took coffee in the parlor with the rest of the husbands. “Why would you invite him when you knew Cyril was calling?”
“You know Marcus didn't invite him, don't you?” Kal asked Cyril in a low voice before Marcus answered.
Cyril frowned at that. He'd known that Marcus had a falling out with Julius over Kal, but they were married. It had never even crossed Cyril's mind that someone like Marcus would choose him over Julius if it came down to a choice between the two of them.
“I did not invite him, madam,” Marcus answered icily in the other room. Sosia reached for Kal's lapels but couldn't quite grasp them, not entirely sure of how to use her hands yet. “He had our address from a mutual friend; Kal went to fetch a constable when we realized.”
“He was skipping out on a warrant for rape,” Kal confirmed, watching Cyril even as he continued to bounce Sosia. “They're looking for a third, besides me and Marcus, to swear an affidavit who he is before they send him back on it. Since Julius denies it's him.”
“You don't have to do that,” Marcus said, on Eubelia's heels as she opened the door to the parlor. He had a livid purple bruise across his jaw and Cyril had to look away, queasy at the thought of all the times Julius had done that to him.
“You don't,” Kal agreed placidly. Cyril wondered not for the first time what it would be like to go through life with Kal's serene confidence that everything would work out how he wanted; that kind of confidence was dangerous for people like them, had ended up getting Cyril's nose broken before. “But it would help get him sentenced.” For doing to someone else what he'd been allowed to do to Cyril.
The courthouse where Julius was being held looked just like the one where Cyril had his ear clipped; all large, old stones fit to bury someone under. When Cyril's ear had been clipped he'd gone into the courthouse expecting to leave feeling new and remade, but he'd gone out exactly the way he'd gone in: tired and sore from doing his master's laundry, just with his ear throbbing.
Eubelia squeezed him as they went up the stairs together, her arm around his waist. It was the first time he'd left the house since meeting Julius and a wild, hysterical part of him wondered if Eubelia's father would find him doubly proper if he spent another nonagintae indoors because he was too coward to leave the house now.
Cyril let Eubelia speak for him to the ladies at the desk. Yes, he was there to give an affidavit; yes, as his wife she'd allow it; yes, she understood the consequences if he falsely testified.
Eubelia sat with him while he painfully wrote out the affidavit. He'd been acquainted with the accused Julius Paulus Caecinae, son of Aconia Paulina Caecinae, for six months. He'd met the accused at a brothel in Aesica twelve years prior, and again on the Via Aemiliae a few days ago. He would recognize the accused anywhere. It felt both very short and very sordid when he passed it to Eubelia to read over and sign on his behalf.
“You don't have to do this,” she said, taking his hand to stroke. “You don't have to see him alone, I can come with you.”
Cyril flexed his hands on the head of his walking stick, opening and then closing his fists. The walking stick, like so much of the rest of his life, had been an engagement gift from Eubelia. “I need to,” he said, voice thick. He needed to do something for himself for once.
The katabasis of the stairs down to the gaol nearly strangled him, the cold air a solid, heavy thing pressing down. When Cyril had his ear clipped, it had been a hot flash of pain in a courtroom full of light; there were no windows down in the gaol.
Julius was the only one in the large holding cell, still wearing his shabby disguise; Eubelia's father always said what a nice part of town they lived in, never any trouble at night even if he forbid Cyril from going out alone after dark.
“Who the fuck are you?” Julius demanded as the constable closed the door behind Cyril, leaving them alone. Julius stayed sitting on the broad bench, frowning. Thick bars cut the room in two, the large holding cell on one side and the locked door to the stairs in the other.
Cyril hesitated between the door and the bars, too shaken to make himself close the distance. He couldn't tell Eubelia why he needed to do this because he couldn't say himself, and now his mouth felt ashen and his legs felt too uncertain to carry himself back up the steps.
He had his hat, and his walking stick, and his gloves. Upstairs he had his wife, and her carriage to take them home. He'd killed men like Julius in the bad days of the annexation, when his militia officers were no better than bandits and Cyril had done what he had to. There was no reason for him to be shaking so badly.
“You bought me,” Cyril said finally. “Twelve years ago, from the whorehouse on the Via Cyclopsiae. You don't remember me.”
Julius laughed, short and unkind. “Twelve years ago, fuck no I don't.” Julius sneered. The confirmation of it hit Cyril in the gut, threatened to take him off his feet just as surely as a bullet wound. “What's your name, sweetheart? Kallius? Fidelus? Casitus?” Beauty, loyalty, chastity. Names for dogs and horses and slaves.
“No,” Cyril said shakily. He'd backed away from the bars without realizing it.
“Did Marcus put you up to it?” Julius said, standing. “You another one of his whores?”
Cyril took another step back even as he knew he shouldn't from the look on Julius' face. Julius didn't even think Cyril could decide on his own to swear an affidavit.
“You really don't remember me,” Cyril said, more to himself than Julius. “You broke my nose.”
Julius walked to the bars, looming. He was just as tall as Cyril remembered him, just as tall as in his nightmares. “Did you think you were special?” he said, leaning his weight on the metal door to make it creak. “Get on your knees; see if I remember you then.”
Everything went very dark and bright all at once, the floor swooping away. The walls swung in arcs around him, drunk in the buzzing, angry light. Cyril swallowed convulsively, strangled by his cravat feeling Julius' hands around his throat.
“Sieur Philomachiae?” a constable said from the door. “Your wife–”
“Philomachiae?” Julius demanded far away. “Marcus and that cunt that ruined my life put you up to this–”
Cyril came back to himself all in a rush with Eubelia’s hand on his elbow pulling him back up the steps to daylight. He couldn't remember if he'd been on his knees.
Cyril lay on his back staring at the ceiling while Eubelia nursed Sosia in bed that night. Their ceiling was chased with gold plaster work around a painted sunrise sky; Cyril couldn't remember what the ceiling above Julius' bed looked like. Hadn't honestly thought about it in years.
"Do you think there's something wrong with me?” he asked the ceiling as Eubelia finished nursing and began bouncing Sosia on her lap to burp.
“Yes,” Eubelia said without hesitation, so awful and honest he had to laugh. He rolled his head to look at her and all the reasons he loved her, unashamed about all the things that were wrong with him. She gave him a wan smile and lay Sosia down between them. “But probably not what you're thinking about.”
Eubelia lay down, curled to face him, and Cyril rolled to face her with one arm under his head and the baby nestled safely between them. Sosia continued to nurse in her sleep, little pink mouth working with a frown of concentration that fluttered her dark lashes on her cheeks. When Cyril's father had visited during her nonagintae, he'd cried over her dark hair and how much she looked like Cyril, but Cyril didn't like to think of himself as that small, that fragile.
“I think you're the strongest person I know,” Eubelia said, reaching over the baby to brush hair out of Cyril's eyes.
He couldn't meet her look, impossible and unimaginably out of his reach. “I wanted him to remember me,” Cyril confessed.
Eubelia blinked at him. “Is that what you're tearing yourself up about?” she asked. “Why wouldn't you?”
Cyril frowned at that, turning it over in his head.
“Of course I would have,” Teunis said, frowning down at Sosia in his arms. They sat together in a quiet corner of the hortinaria, the weather not quite warm enough for it. Teunis rocked Sosia even though she was deeply asleep in the bunting Cyril had embroidered with gladiolus and marjoram for strength and joy. “If it had been Gaius and he'd told me to get on my knees, of course I would have,” Teunis said, looking at the baby but not looking at her. “Why haven't you asked Eubelia yet?”
They both frowned across the hortinaria where Eubelia was pretending not to hover, playing ring toss with Phoebe, Elasus, and their toddler. Kallius and Marcus, forever wrapped up in each other, sat to the side too close to one another.
“What if she says I did?” Cyril said.
Teunis said nothing to that for a long while, rocking Sosia. “Then you know,” he said eventually, sounding uncertain. Which was why Cyril had told him about it, and not Kallius, who would have been serenely confident that he would neither kneel nor be bothered by it. Cyril liked Marcus, most of the time, but he couldn't fathom Kal's ease with him either. “I suppose you have to decide if it's worse knowing or not knowing.”
“Mind if I sit?” Thisbe interrupted, sitting herself down beside Teunis without waiting for an answer. Usually she and Cyril tried to pretend one another didn't exist; she was the first person Cyril had really allowed to see all of him, and she'd made sure he knew how very little any of it was worth. “I heard you ran into your–guy,” Thisbe said.
“His guy ,” Teunis echoed disdainfully.
“You know what I mean,” Thisbe said, rolling her eyes. She sighed, put up on, even though she'd invited herself, before fixing Cyril with a look. “Are you alright?”
That was the last thing he'd expected her to say. Cyril looked away, uncomfortable. Thought about pretending that the baby needed to be taken to Eubelia so he could escape. “He didn't touch me,” Cyril said finally.
Thisbe sighed, annoyed, and tossed her hair. “Domitia keeps sending me letters,” she said, also frowning at the baby. It was a wonder she didn't wake up under the weight of the three of them scowling at her. “She ordered me to come back when she heard about the exhibition, then she offered to pay me, now she's threatening to blacklist me with every gallery in Aesica because I won't write back. I'm not alright,” she finished, and gave Cyril a look like she was daring him to say different.
“I'm fine, thank you. Madam,” Cyril added, pointed. He'd begged for her sympathy when it mattered.
Thisbe scoffed and stood. “Still frigid,” she said with a toss of her hair, and stalked off to harass Kal. Served her right for trying to make nice.
Teunis watched her go, still rocking Sosia in the dim light. “I think I'd rather know, if it was me,” he said after a while.
Cyril lay on his back in bed that night with Sosia on his chest, a hot, humid little weight he felt with every breath. She slept with her mouth half open in a little smile, perfectly content with the world as Eubelia read to them. Cyril studied the painted ceiling and let the sound of her voice wash over them like the early days of their courtship. They'd gone walking in parks and along the river, away from the terrifying formality of her family and his boardinghouse, and she'd asked to read some of her favorite books to him when she realized he couldn't read. It had felt like such an impossible gift at the time, for her to accept all the ways he was lacking exactly as he was and simply meet him on a bench in the park with a book in hand like he was someone whose opinion on prose mattered. Cyril rubbed little circles on Sosia's back, the only part of him that felt whole.
Eubelia paused in her reading, book still open on her lap. “Are you alright? I can hear you thinking,” she said, and the lamplight behind her lit up her auburn hair flame red.
“No,” Cyril said after a while. Before seeing Julius again, Cyril had so rarely thought of him he thought he could count the times on one hand. He thought of the old man who'd bought him and clipped his ear after more, to wonder if he was still alive and if Cyril ought to write him. It felt stupid and unfair that Julius ought to take up so much more of his life now.
Eubelia lay the book aside, face down on the nightstand. She took his hand and stroked his knuckles, and all the little scars there. “Is there anything I can do?”
Cyril looked at the ceiling and thought about that. He'd only asked her for two things when they were courting; her patience, and her honesty. The first time they'd slept in this bed together Cyril had been so overwhelmed he couldn't finish and she'd kissed him until he promised to stay the night anyway despite his embarrassment.
“What do you think is wrong with me? What you said the other night.”
Eubelia lay down with her head on his shoulder. She took a moment to arrange her lacy nightgown around her breasts as she tucked herself against him. She was so beautiful it had taken him weeks to look at her when he spoke, cupid's bow mouth and her horrible taste in jokes. He put his arm around her back to pull her close, selfish for the way her soft, heavy breasts pressed against his side.
Eubelia traced fingers over the back of his hand on Sosia's back, across his wedding ring and the crooked scar that ran under it. She and Sosia smelled the same, warm and safe. Both of them heavy, comfortable weights anchoring him to the present. “I think no one's ever been very kind to you, so you learned to stop being kind to yourself,” Eubelia said eventually. Her breath was warm and steady against his neck, like that first morning they'd woken up together and Cyril had the desperate thought that he didn't want to wake up without her again. “I think you wanted him to remember you because it's unfair if it only mattered to you.”
“Was I on my knees?” Cyril finally made himself say, before he lost the courage. Eubelia's hand went still on his. “When you came down the stairs at the gaol.”
“No,” Eubelia said, very quiet. “No. Did he–?”
“Yes,” Cyril said to the ceiling. He could feel how angry she was, holding herself very still where she was pressed up against him. She'd done that too the first time he'd told her he understood if she wouldn't marry him, that he knew what kind of refuse he was. “I don't–you’d tell me if I was?”
“You had your back pressed up against the door. I sent the constable down because I heard something; your walking stick against the door, I think. You were pale but you were standing.”
Cyril let out a shuddering breath and put a hand over his face. Eubelia let him, quiet and steady as she stroked his hair. Sosia remained deeply asleep despite it all, cozy and safe on his chest.
“Marcus thinks I ought to apologize to you,” Kal said without preamble, ambushing Cyril in the spot at the bathhouse where he usually met Marcus and Teunis for pasha. “For making you speak to Julius.” Kal sat himself in Marcus' place on the bench, Marcus nowhere in sight even though Kal never came to the bathhouse at that time of day without Marcus. Kal was usually busy as a woman.
“You didn't make me do anything,” Cyril said, deeply annoyed at everyone's coddling. Even Primus had begun to notice his reluctance to leave the house without Eubelia, and had tasked Eubelia's older brother Tycho with escorting Cyril to the bathhouse and other errands even though Tycho had actual business to be about.
Kal gave Cyril a look through his lashes that made Cyril want to throttle him. He'd given Cyril that look the first time they'd met, when Julius told Cyril to go suck off Marcus' boy and make it good. Kal had taken one look at Cyril and asked in a low voice if he wouldn't rather the other way around as if what either of them wanted mattered. Cyril had hated Kal so much then, for smiling at Marcus even when they weren't being watched, for making little jokes while they kissed, for not making it obvious that Cyril was too exhausted and too nervous to get it up. He'd hated Kal even more later, for giving him the money and making him think he could get away from Julius instead of just waiting for another chance to kill himself.
“Would you have gone to see him if I hadn't said anything?” Kal said, dropping his look. He'd been a cheap whore; Cyril knew exactly which dirty third-rate brothel Marcus had bought him out of because Cyril had hated him for that too, that Cyril had been so much more expensive than Kal and ended up with Julius anyway. Being expensive hadn't protected Cyril, worthless after all. He'd ended up in an even cheaper whorehouse than Kal after everything. “Marcus says you haven't been out much since.”
“Since when do you do what Marcus tells you?” Cyril said nastily. Maybe they weren't whores anymore but Cyril wasn't above reminding Kal. “Where is he?”
“Playing handball with Tycho,” Kal said, petulant. Teunis was right when he said Kal would be miserable to whore with, selfish and short-tempered and arrogant. Cyril had never met a Kallius who wasn't, and he'd hated Kal for that too.
They both glared across the tepidaria towards the ball courts. Cyril wished, not for the first time, that he could be as angry with Marcus as he was with Kal. But there was a small, miserable part of Cyril that was still proud of how expensive he'd been that wanted someone like Marcus to like him, even if he also knew that he’d hated Kal so much because it had never been safe to hate anyone like Marcus or Julius.
But Kal knew what Julius was like and for all that he was a cheap whore, he never gossiped. “I thought that if I saw him I could be done with him,” Cyril finally said, wishing he could buy a cigarette for this conversation. He hadn't smoked since the engagement except for once, early in Sosia's nonagintae when he'd been exhausted and Primus had caught him at it in a far corner of the garden. Primus had scolded Cyril a bloody strip until he'd cried, and then Cyril had felt doubly stupid for it because hadn't he been beaten bloody for less and lived through that. “I never slept with Thisbe because I was afraid I couldn't, and then it happened with Eubelia. I thought if I saw him, in the gaol, he'd be just a stupid rich boy and not–” Cyril rubbed his face with both hands. “And then I saw him and he told me to get on my knees.”
Kal blew out a long breath and Cyril waited for him to say something foolish. Kal liked to hide behind his anger, and sometimes Cyril liked to hide behind Kal's anger too, but mostly he found it stupid and arrogant for people like them.
“I wouldn't have been able to,” Kal said. He was watching the handball courts when Cyril glanced at him, far away. Kal rubbed one hand over the other, a habit he'd picked up from Marcus. “Go see him, I mean. He surprised us at the theater last year, Marcus and me, and I tried to get on my knees before I even thought about it. He didn't even have to say anything.”
“You never told me that,” Cyril said. Kal had been incandescently angry; he'd begun conspiring with Eubelia to ruin Julius, but Cyril hadn't given any thought at the time to what he was hiding behind that anger. That maybe Kal wasn't as serenely confident as Cyril had always thought.
Kal shrugged tightly, his prickly usual. “It was embarrassing. I don't like knowing it about myself.”
Eubelia was waiting for him by the door when Cyril met her at the office for lunch, pretending she hadn't been watching for him in the window. Sosia screeched with happiness when she saw Eubelia, reaching fat little grabbing hands from her place wrapped against Cyril's chest. Pistra, lazy creature that she was, flopped herself down onto the rug in front of Eubelia's desk before Damien had even closed the door behind them.
“How was your walk? How's Marcus?” Eubelia said, fluttering as Cyril took out their lunch he'd packed in the baby's satchel. She was the one who'd talked Tycho and Primus out of escorting him everywhere, but she still fretted over Cyril's terribly unambitious plan to walk with Marcus in the park and meet Eubelia for lunch in her office. Cyril, for his part, felt lighter than he had in years since talking to Kal. Kal himself had never really apologized, not that Cyril would have let him, but Marcus had, and it had been enough to shock that small, miserable part of himself.
“We had a lovely walk, Sosia spit up on Marcus' waistcoat, he doesn't know why Kal won't let him buy a seaside cottage,” Cyril said, shucking off his coat and pulling Sosia out of her sling. He lay her on the carpet where she rolled side to side on her back holding her toes and screeching, pleased with the world.
Eubelia pursed her lips and watched Cyril lay out their picnic lunch on her carpet like they'd done when they were courting. It was still too cold for a picnic in the park, but it still made Cyril blush to think of the times she'd talked him into kissing and more on her office carpet. Eubelia sat across from him on the carpet, arranging her skirts around her. “Was it alright?” Eubelia asked, glancing at Cyril through her lashes as she held one of the baby's hands. “I worry about you.”
Cyril leaned across Sosia to kiss her. Eubelia smiled against his mouth as Sosia put her little socked toes in her mouth.
“I'm not alright, but I will be,” Cyril said, cheek to Eubelia's cheek. He wouldn't ever have Kal's serene confidence to hide behind but he'd faced his katabasis and come back from it to Eubelia; he wasn't alright, but he was with her, and their baby who would never be treated like he was, and their lazy dog who'd been thrown away like him and had a happily spoiled life anyway. Eubelia smelled of her citrus perfume and sweet cut grass, like their first summer laying on a blanket in the park as she read to him, and Sosia screeched her happiness safe in the present.