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The fire was nearly out, more heat than light at this point. Should she add another log to it? Would Her Highness- would Ajax want that? She always ran hot, she probably wouldn't be grateful for the extra warmth. But good Lord did Cleon need something to do. She shouldn't be here, wasting time wearing down the silk carpet. She should have been haunting the edges of a ballroom decked out for a party that had cost more than Cleon's entire inheritance, a shadow in lockstep with Ajax on the dancefloor. That was kind of like dancing, to keep Ajax in her line of sight. It was as good as either of them were ever going to get, anyways.
But Ajax had put her face in Cleon's neck and said, If you've ever wanted to do anything for me. Had said, I don't want you to be there. I can't do it if you're watching.
So Cleon was pretending to be sick and hiding in Ajax's bedroom while the music floated up through the floorboards and the fire burned low, while uselessness burned like shame in her throat.
Ajax slammed through the door three minutes after the party had officially ended, which meant—accounting for goodbyes and curtsies and excuses to her parents—she had probably run to get here. But that was only the second thing Cleon noticed about her when she came in. The first was that she was shaking.
She was wearing the dress her mother had shipped in a dressmaker from France for. It was beautiful. She looked perfect. There were orange blossoms all over it. That was the Queen's flower. Once upon a time, when Cleon had been very young and very foolish, she had looked at the orange blossoms in vases all over the palace and imagined that when she and Ajax were older she would plant an orange tree in the garden of the house they would share.
"Your Highness," Cleon said quietly.
"Don't," Ajax said. She'd picked up her skirts to run up the stairs, her fingers gripping the fabric so tightly they were white. The fine tremors in her body were only evidence of how hard she was trying to be still. "Don't- I can't- I just can't right now."
Angry, then. Ajax dropped her skirts and threw the door shut hard enough that the wall around it shook.
"Your Highness, your mother-"
"Has more important things to do than yell at me for slamming doors," Ajax gritted out. She stalked across the room to her vanity, collapsing in an unhappy pouf of taffeta and lace. She hauled her skirts up into her lap to try and get at her delicate dancing shoes, but she couldn't quite reach them past all the layers of organza.
"Your Highness-"
"Don't fucking call me that!" Ajax snapped. When she looked at Cleon—it was the first time she had looked at Cleon all day—there were tears in her eyes.
Slowly, like she would with a wounded animal, Cleon rounded the bed and crouched in front of her. "Let me do that for you."
Ajax took an unsteady breath, flopping back in her chair like she was fine and she didn't care.
Cleon knew better. It was her job to know better. It wasn't her job to kneel there on the silk carpet and be gentle with the satin ribbons of Ajax's shoes, but she did it anyways.
When she was done, she put a hand on Ajax's ankle to—what? To try and offer some comfort? They both knew she couldn't help. Ajax flinched away from it with her whole body.
She shoved Cleon out of the way to yank off her stockings and started fumbling with the pins on her stomacher.
"Careful, my Lady-"
"Don't say that!" Ajax's voice broke. The pins made small sounds on the vanity where Ajax tossed them down, and the stomacher thudded into the wall just shy of the fireplace when Ajax threw it over Cleon's head. "Just- stop talking."
She put her face in her hands, heaving with the edge of furious sobs. Cleon sat with her in the quiet, listening to the faraway rumble of the servants beginning to cart away the food and tables.
It had been so long since they'd sat like this, and it felt like they'd spent their whole lives sitting like this. "Ajax," Cleon said softly.
Ajax stood abruptly. "What's the fucking point," she hissed. Her skirt brushed against Cleon's shoulder as she passed to begin to pace around the room.
"I play the stupid fucking game- I follow the stupid rules- I did everything right and-" she stopped dead in the center of the room. When she turned around to look at Cleon she looked - raw. Like the exposed laces of her dress over her stays was a ribcage broken open.
"Cleon," she said, and she hadn't sounded like that since they were children. Since before Cleon realized there was never going to be a house and never going to be a garden. "Cleon, everyone can tell."
There would never be a house, and never be a garden, and no one would ever call Ajax by a man's name unless there was a Mrs. in front of it. And Cleon had thrown her heart into the closeness of a sword, the only closeness this world would give them—and she had learned enough in the years since to know Ajax didn't need her protection from most things, and that her protection wasn't enough when it really mattered.
Ajax retreated from her when she tried to follow, making a wounded animal noise, hands tangled in the lovely elaborate hairdo she'd spent hours enduring the creation of. "Cleon look at me. Everyone knows. I went out there and everyone was looking at me and it didn't matter how hard I tried because everyone fucking knows."
And Cleon couldn't lie to her. She had watched the careful construction of the girl Ajax was supposed to be over the past few weeks and hours and years, and amid the expanse of fine lacework and gracefully drooping sleeves Ajax could not more clearly be a creature out of place. She was awful to look at in her misery.
"Ajax," Cleon said, and sounded like she was begging. There was the uselessness again. The inability to shoulder the weight that was intent on crushing Ajax beneath it.
"No!" Ajax shouted, "No I don't want your fucking pity I just- I need to get someone to help me with my fucking hair, I can't even undo my own goddamned hair."
"Ajax," Cleon repeated, putting a hand on Ajax's wrist. "Let me."
And there was so much she couldn't say, and so much she couldn't give, but she could do this one thing. She could sit on Ajax's bed with her like they were children again and pull out the ribbons a maid had sewn her hair together with. They were fine and narrow and blush pink and the ends had been cleverly hidden and knotted and Cleon was too tired to bother with them. She was tired and she was angry and she was… she didn't know what.
Ajax had been the one to get the knife for her, after they were children and before they were whatever they were now. Ajax's parents would never have let their littlest princess have a knife, but Ajax could buy one for Cleon, and so it—like every other worn and sun-warmed corner of Cleon's soul—was more than half Ajax's. It made a soft sound parting a loop of ribbon into two fraying halves.
Ajax startled, and Cleon put a hand on the back of her neck. Getting the ribbon out of her hair was easier like this, when she could just cut it wherever it stuck and didn't want to pull through, but only as long as Ajax stayed still.
Under Cleon's hands, Ajax stayed still.
"I'm sorry," Cleon said as she worked. "I'm sorry I can't fix it for you."
Ajax laughed hollowly. "There's no fixing it," she said bitterly.
They were both quiet for a long time.
Slowly Ajax's hair returned to its fall down her back, braids no longer twisted and looped together to keep them up. Ajax shivered when Cleon drew them back to tie them with a scrap of the ribbon she'd discarded.
"Cleon-"
"Stand up."
"I can get the rest of it-"
"I didn't ask. Stand up."
"Cleon, you don't have to-"
Cleon didn't have to do anything. She'd never had to do anything. She could have gone back to her pretty little life and forgotten she'd ever really known Ajax like she was supposed to and laughed behind her fucking fan at the Queen's youngest daughter and how fucking ridiculous she looked in that dress. But she was here, in Ajax's bedroom, knife in hand, watching the savage slash of jealousy as it carved Ajax up in her beautiful dress next to Cleon in her plain shirt and trousers.
"I'll get someone else to help me-"
"I don't want someone else to help you," Cleon said, without meaning to, and Ajax finally stopped talking.
And she was standing there with the knife still, and she was too fucking tired to bother with knots, so she lifted her hands to the laces of Ajax's gown and cut through the lovely silk cord that was binding it to her body. Expensive even here, even where nobody would have seen it. It didn't have to be lovely, but it was, and that made it monstrous. She'd mostly used this knife for cutting fruit. It was too delicate, too beautiful for much else. The bite of the cord against the blade was obscene.
Ajax flinched a little at each soft slice, even through all the layers of linen and coutil between her skin and the knife. "Cleon-"
"You can afford new laces," she said, and she sounded angry. She was angry, and she was hungry, and she was realizing it now.
Ajax's parents could afford new laces, and she could cut Ajax out of this dress like a fish out of a net and they would buy new laces and tie her right back into it. It wasn't fair. The unfairness was colossal, it threatened to drown her in the bitter black expanse of it.
The silk of Ajax's skirt was beautiful and blue and had been hand-painted with tiny flowers and was probably the most expensive thing in this whole damned room. The silk ribbons that tied it around Ajax's waist were pristine and white. They'd only been tied once.
Cleon's mother liked to wear amber jewelry. She had given Cleon an amber bracelet when she was little, and it was cheap because it was for a child, and one of the beads had the tiny smudge of a fly buried inside it. Cleon had asked about it, and her mom had said amber comes from trees, and sometimes bugs got stuck in it when it was soft, before it was amber.
She thought about that now, looking at the silk skirt and the gown hanging open and the stays with their pretty little flowers stitched over the end of every bone. How something that was soft once becomes stone, becomes a cage, becomes your death when you weren't looking.
Ajax opened her mouth to say something and Cleon was tired of hearing her make excuses and she was angry and she was still holding the knife. The silk was lovely, and it made a lovely sound as it tore. It was a sharp knife. The sound was an exhale, was electricity in her fingertips.
Cleon watched Ajax's breath catch in her throat. Finally, she went still.
Cleon led Ajax by the wrists out away from the bed so she could stand behind her. The gown didn't tear when she dragged it off Ajax's shoulders, but Ajax made a soft sound like it had. Ajax kicked her way out of the torn skirt and Cleon tossed the gown down on top of it, just the pathetic and luminous skin of some awful parasitic insect.
Ajax crossed her arms over her middle, over the raw skeleton of the woman's shape that had been built around her, fluffy white underskirt and elegant stays and all the posturing a royal upbringing could beat into her.
Cleon pressed her hand to the curve of her back, over laces and whalebone and the careful pleats pressed into white linen. How many men had put their hands there tonight? Had they found her waist pleasingly narrow and smooth, the swell of skirts over her hip enticingly soft?
The waistband of Ajax's petticoat made a neat, soft sound as she cut it, and the fabric screamed under her hands as it tore.
That was better to put her hands on, the real shape of muscle and bone of Ajax's hips beneath her chemise, the real hitch in her breathing and tilt of her head as Cleon pulled her flush against her front, the real smell of her skin underneath whatever fucking perfume it was this week.
This was the part where she should stop, if she was still pretending to be helping Ajax get undressed from the party. She pressed the side of her face to Ajax's neck, listening to the barely-controlled rise and fall of her breathing, and decided she was sick and fucking tired of pretending.
The laces on Ajax's stays were a sensible cotton, and they made satisfying little soft pops as they gave under her knife. Like they were part of Ajax's body, every infinitesimal twitch of her shoulders against Cleon's chest as the laces gave way and cut-off gasp at the flash of the blade against her back in between. This last layer didn't put up any more resistance than the others. Cleon put her arms around Ajax's waist and squeezed, dug her fingers into the butter-soft fabric of her chemise and the solid weight of her flesh beneath it.
Ajax's heart was pounding. Cleon could feel it in every part of her body. The raw pleasure of Ajax's body—the real, honest truth of her ribs under Cleon's hands and her shoulders against Cleon's chest—was breathtaking. Cleon was dizzy for a moment, no longer sure of up and down, only aware of in—in towards Ajax in her arms, in towards the soft sounds she was making.
And then Ajax was moving away. Cleon felt it as a reshaping of the body in her hands, the flex of muscle and shifting of bones, and couldn't understand away fast enough to stop it.
Ajax looked very small in that lush, dark room, in her loose white chemise. She staggered away a few steps, bracing herself on the bedpost, and when she looked back Cleon saw that she was weeping.
"Cleon, we can't-" Every drop of anger had bled from her. "I can't- Whatever you want from me, I can't be that for you."
"Ajax, what are you-"
But at every step Cleon took towards her, Ajax backed away.
"I'm not- I'm not anyone, Cleon." She looked broken. She looked like she believed it. If Cleon had thought the manicured Ajax in silk bindings was awful, this was worse.
Cleon stood there and watched Ajax try to breathe. "I'm not- I can't give you anything. It's not that I don't want to, but I just can't-"
"Ajax." There was nothing to come after that sentence. Every traitorous corner of her heart was exposed already in that one word.
Another breath that sounded like it hurt to take. Ajax laughed, breathlessly and bitterly. "Cleon, I know you love me."
Against all odds, the world didn't end. Like she wasn't even worried about the ceiling caving in, Ajax continued, "You know I love you. You know I'm never going to love anyone else the way I love you."
The world continued to not end. Absurdly, the room seemed a little bit bigger, with the thing they didn't say out in the open with them.
Cleon reached out without thinking, and she and Ajax both just stared at her outstretched hand in the silence.
"I can't give you anything," Ajax repeated miserably, like anything else in the world mattered in that little room with the thing they didn't say out in the open with them. "I can't be- anything, Cleon."
She gestured at the pile of torn fabric Cleon had made. "That's what I am, that's all I am. That's Her Highness, the Princess, fourth in line to the throne. I'm nothing, Cleon, I'm just a fucking mannequin, you can't love me, you need to have a life, you need to find someone who's someone who can love you back-"
Cleon looked at the fabric and considered throwing the whole mess into the fire. Silk smelled awful when it burned. She'd been trained in swordcraft. Ajax was clever and brave and strong, but she'd never had a teacher. In the end it was easy to circle around her until she backed up against the bed, to put her where Cleon wanted her, where there was nowhere for her to run.
The knife made a soft little sound landing in the corpse of Her Highness, the Princess, fourth in line to the throne. When she moved an opponent or an animal by putting pressure on their bubble of space, Cleon could almost feel it humming in the air. When she had them pinned, when she pushed through it, she could feel the electricity on her skin. When she closed the distance Ajax had been keeping between them, it felt like the moment before a lightning strike.
Cleon reached out to take the fine fabric of Ajax's chemise in one hand. It was as lovely as the rest of it. Lace at the sleeves, at the hem, at the neck. Another little blush pink ribbon tied in a neat little bow at Ajax's throat to keep it all lying nicely around her collarbones. Ajax didn't move when Cleon untied it, when she hooked her fingers in the neck to pull it open again.
This was less lovely, the open neck hanging nearly off her shoulders. This was debauched, certainly, scandalous, very nearly ruined and ruinous. But not in any of the ways Cleon wanted. Cleon didn't do things by halves.
It was awfully convenient, that watching the neck of Ajax's chemise as it strained and stretched and finally tore with a sigh in Cleon's hands that she could also watch Ajax's chest and every hitch and stutter in her breathing.
Cleon tore the thing down to Ajax's stomach, and then pulled her away from the bed by it, just enough so that when she dropped it it fell to the ground in a useless heap.
She put a hand on the side of Ajax's face, thumb on her cheek and fingers on her pulse.
"I don't care about any of that," she said, quiet and sure, and she was a deadly weapon wasn't she? She was Ajax's deadly weapon.
"She's nothing, she's dead, I don't give a fuck about her." It felt good to curse out loud. The word felt in her mouth the way the fabric had in her hands. "I want you. I want you. I want you, I want you-"
Like a prayer, that lone truth beating at the heart of her being until she ran out of breath and the only thing left to do was lean in, like kissing Ajax was the only honest thing she'd ever done in her life. Ajax couldn't lie about this. She couldn't lie about the sound she made, or her hands on Cleon's face to cling to her, drag her closer. It was new and it was brilliant and it was all so familiar, the softness of Ajax's mouth and the kickdrum of her heart under Cleon's hands like this was the only moment of either of their lives that had ever been real.
"I want you," Cleon repeated, as she breathed, as Ajax whined and panted and stared back at her with all the brutal vulnerability of a sacrificial lamb.
"I want you." That wasn't enough. They both knew that. It had always been true.
"I see you," Cleon said. "I see you."
Ajax kissed her again, and dragged Cleon back on top of her as she fell back onto the bed, and everything else stopped mattering.