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There would be a royal wedding with all the pomp and frivolity that implied, of course, but the night Hector proposed was much quieter, softer, more intimate. He laughed as his new betrothed glued a convincing fake mustache to his upper lip, and she laughed and fake protested when he leaned in to kiss her, rubbing the prickly boar bristles over her cheek. They dressed in their finest rags and slipped into the night, her leading him by her clever thieving fingers locked tight around his, toward a sunset bonfire to mark the end of Alyta’s season, the rainy mountain spring easing into summer. There was food and wine and dancing, and the wild revelry of a small town that even then had some divine prescience that something was coming for them. A quiet murmur of dread reaching pustule-spotted arms up from the Sea of Olives, mingling with the joy and abandon of an old, old holiday. None of the locals noticed the prince or the priestess among them, even as they joined hands and spun them into the dance. They weren’t the only couple celebrating, nor the only out of towners; what were two more celebrants for the goddess?
From the darkened tree line the Thief watched, his frown growing roots on his face, the pads of his fingers tracing over the head side of a coin.
The musicians ended a song and the small crowd broke into cheers. Late spring flowers bound into chains and circlets and bracelets covered most of the revelers, the perfume of the dying blossoms mingling with wood smoke, reaching even the Thief leaning against a pine tree, out of sight. He watched the Hector try to give a laughing refusal as he was festooned himself and listened to the quiet pad of leather boots approaching from his blind side. Quiet, but never silent. “Spying, old man?”
He could hear the tiniest spark of frustration in her voice at his lack of reaction. “Iphigenia.”
The Thief kept his eyes trained on Hector, tugged into a circle dance by an ambitious child. Iphigenia kept her eyes on the Thief. She folded her own arms across her chest and leaned on a tree close by, an odd inverse of her father. “I hope you’re here to congratulate me.”
“I’ve learned not to bother spending more breath trying to warn you off your own mistakes,” he said, his voice grumbling in his ribcage, an old bear’s rasp.
She huffed out a puff of air and stuck out a leg to kick his shin. “Hector isn’t a mistake.”
“Hector’s brother is heir apparent.”
“He’s not his brother.”
“And did you stop grasping for the throne because you couldn’t reach that high with him already married, or because you have any kind of genuine feeling for that poor wretch?” Eugenides asked, tilting his head toward Hector. The milky-silver of his blind eye glinted at her with the movement, in the dim light of the fire and the dying sun.
Anger, hot and sweet, flooded her. “I do care for him, father,” she spat. “I love him. Not that you’d understand a thing like that.”
“Child—”
“I am not a child.”
“You are acting like one, scrambling about in the playroom for toys that are not yours,” Eugenides hissed.
Iphigenia let out a short, quiet bark of laughter. “Oh, bold words coming from you.”
“That is different. This isn’t a game.”
“It isn’t, no. It never has been.” She stared at him, tracing out the shiny scars around his eye, barely visible in the dying sun. One line beginning at the eyebrow and curving into the socket, through the eye, and swooping under it on one cheek, the lid heavy with it, a couple matching and crisscrossed ones on his cheek under it.
He told people it had been an animal attack, but Iphigenia knew a woman had done it, gouging into his face with her nails while he strangled her to death. She’d seen it in a dream.
“I never wanted this for you,” her father said, mournful, though it wasn’t obvious unless he was known well. “For any of my children.”
She shook her head. “You never accepted that this was what I chose, myself. Eugenides is my god too.”
“It isn’t the same. You could have been anything—”
“And I chose to be a thief. And I am a good one.” She huffed and looked away, toward the dancers whirling close by, blissful, deer unaware of the lions watching them. “Just never good enough for you.”
Eugenides looked at her sharply. “You are my daughter, Iphigenia. You are always good enough for me.”
“Then why won’t you see me for what I am?” Her fists clenched, and she pushed off from her tree to back her father against his. “I have stolen fibula pins from foreign dignitaries. I have stolen jewels from the fingers of barons—”
“Iphigenia,” he warned, rumbling again.
“Laughter from the queen’s mouth!”
“It isn’t the same.”
“Why, because I don’t have our god’s personal favor?” Iphigenia laughed, bitter, bitter. “He has danced with me, too.”
“He can dance with you and not guide your hand. He can speak to you and still say nothing, child.”
“He doesn’t need to guide my hand! Father, you are the first true Thief born in a hundred years. No one but you believes there’ll be another. Traditions change. This is how we move forward. This is what we are now.”
“It is what you are,” he growled, grabbing her biceps and giving her a stern shake. “A particularly acrobatic fool, performing for the court’s favor, passing gossip to the minister of intelligence, swallowing knives instead of throwing them to prove you are safe, when a true Thief never is, and the gods haven’t asked anything of you. And now, do you think they’ll still adore you, having stolen a prince and a place in the royal line? Do you even understand the danger--”
She broke easily from his grip, taking a step backward. “You are afraid--
“I am afraid that if you continue to tout yourself as a new thief, our god might choose to hold you to it!” he snapped, finally raising his voice. “You don’t know what you’re asking for, Iphigenia! You never did!”
They both fell silent, staring at each other. Backs straight. Matching chins raised. Iphigenia’s gold-flecked eyes, furious, pouring into Eugenides’, one cloudy, the other dark as the night drawing close around them. Applause broke out by the bonfire, catching both of their attention. They both easily found Hector, scratching absently at his fake mustache, a crown of mountain daisies falling around one ear as he looked around the ring.
Iphigenia huffed. “He’s looking for me,” she said, stepping away from the Thief, one of only a few people willing to put her back to him without so much as a thought.
“Iphigenia,” he said with a weary sigh, and she paused. “I love you, my girl. But your ambition will be the death of you, and I am afraid I will have to watch.”
“Don’t come to the wedding, then,” she said haughtily, looking over her shoulder before sighing and turning away.
Where he had stood was only pine bark and shadow. She never heard him leave.