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She is playing in a restaurant when Cerydra finds her this time. Her fingers dance across the strings as she weaves together a melody that hangs limply in the mildewed air. Cerydra’s eyes, however, seem to capture the spark Hysilens had put into it that's lost to everyone else in the room.
It's a lament she's playing, one she composed herself. It's even less suited to this place than Cerydra is, but the people don't seem to mind either the music or the Demigod.
The song ends. Nobody notices besides the two of them. Hysilens gently pulls off her shoulder rest, and sets about laying her violin back in its case.
Cerydra starts to make her way across the room. Hysilens pretends not to watch her. She hadn't thought she would come here– the Imperator does not exactly frequently lowly places.
“Hysilens,” she says, her voice somewhat clipped, “I've been looking for you.”
“What business would the great Imperator have with a musician?”
“You're a Chrysos Heir,” she says. “I would have you join the Flame Chase.”
Hysilens shuts her violin case, ensures the instrument is secure, and then finally turns around. Cerydra is as she remembers, if with sharper eyes.
“I would have a feast,” she says, as she has said every time. “If, at the end of this journey, you can promise me a night of revelry, I will join you.”
“I assure you, we shall have a feast like no other,” she promises.
Hysilens smiles.
~
She has seen the flowers exactly once– water hyacinth, in a delicate light purple. Cerydra hadn't noticed her there, and would not have given in to her own weakness if she had. She would have held the cough in if it killed her.
Hysilens thought about talking to her about it, but by the next time they met Cerydra had already gotten the surgery. The lovely purple flowers choking her lungs were gone, right alongside all her memories of her.
Hysilens is used to it by now. Their endless first meetings have become routine.
~
“We throw these after every battle,” Cerydra explains. She has forgotten that she started them for her.
“It's a lovely party,” Hysilens says. She is telling the truth. “I would be glad to sharpen my sword on the black tide, if this awaits me at the end.”
“Then you'll fight?”
“Yes,” she says. “I believe in your vision.”
Cerydra smiles. Her eyes are just a touch softer than they were in the restaurant.
~
The next battle is a rough one. All of them in the campaign against Phagousa are, of course, but they don't always drag on for days with the casualties to match. Hysilens had ended up doing a lot of the work, either fighting herself or singing a melody to help her allies, and so collapses into her bed as soon as she arrives in the Holy City. She gets a glimpse of Cerydra on her way in, but nothing more.
The next morning, she wakes to a knock at her door.
“You're Hysilens, correct? I heard you helped my forces in their last battle.”
Her eyes are sharp again. Hysilens curtsies as well as she can.
“As a Chrysos Heir, it is my duty to aid the Flame Chase,” she replies. There is a hurricane over the sea and in her chest.
“Then you'll join me?”
“Under one condition,” she says. “Promise me that, when this ends, there will be a feast.”
Hysilens has been dreaming of that feast for a long, long time. She needs to hear the promise every time, to know that one day she and Cerydra and everyone else will laugh and drink honey brew like water, or else she cannot muster the strength to survive another first meeting.
“It will be a grander feast than Amphoreus has ever seen,” Cerydra assures her.
“Then I will fight for you,” she promises, as she has before.
~
Her mad mother grows closer. Hysilens can hear her infected rantings every time she ventures near the water. They cannot put off reclaiming the Coreflame for much longer.
But– for that campaign to succeed, the Imperator must choose to remember that the heir who will inherit Phagousa’s flame is already her loyal subject. Hysilens knows why Cerydra chooses to forget every time– a leader and the law must be unsullied by emotions to best lead her people– but this time, for their sake, she must tread down a different path. She wonders if she will.
She looks forward to it, too, though she can't help but wonder if the razor sharp, ruthless Cerydra, the one who commands troops like chess pieces and who Hysilens so adores, will survive the feelings that make her flowers bloom. A Cerydra who's in love with her– what is that person like?
~
Hysilens sometimes wonders what flower would take root in her own chest. One of the land, surely. Perhaps a pansy– it is of humble roots, but cloaks itself in royal purple. She's always liked them, and doesn't think she would mind if they lit up her ribcage.
She would keep them, she thinks, for the novelty. If they interrupted her ability to act as Cerydra's sword, however, then just like her commander she would cut them loose. Nothing matters more than keeping her blade sharp for her.
That is why she does not hate Cerydra, though she hates the constant introductions. She gets it, really. It's a sacrifice she has to make for the sake of remaining the perfect, impartial law.
~
Cerydra looks at her with soft eyes. They glisten in the Grove's gentle starlight. Hysilens has seen it before, and has yet to grow tired of it.
“There are no stars in the sea,” she says, thinking she could pick out Aquilla in her eyes. The words come out in a low murmur, rolling against her lips like waves upon the shore. “They’re too dim to reach the bottom. Sunlight does better, but even that can't pierce the depths. That's why mother loved the surface, I think– revelry is better in the light.”
Cerydra traces the shape of her jaw with her velvet gaze, then looks down at her hands– dromas-blood red with the people she's killed to secure her rule– before shifting to look at nothing at all in particular.
“Your mother,” Cerydra muses, “Phagousa. Are you prepared to kill her?”
“For you? Anything.”
~
But would she betray Cerydra's own will? Hysilens doesn't know.
The thought of looking her in the eyes, and saying– you will fall in love with me as you have many times before, and you have always gotten the flowers removed for the sake of leading the Flame Chase, but this time you mustn’t, this time you must remember me– feels strange when she knows her own motives are impure.
Hysilens, though quite unlike her sisters, is still a sea siren. It is natural that she would want to revel in liquor and the gaze of someone who loves her.
~
Aglaea gives her an intentioned look. It is time, then, and up to her to break the endless cycle she's been trapped within.
~
She dreams of the sea and always has. Even when she was in it, splashing happily with her sisters, she always sort of imagined that there was some distant ocean where the water was clearer and the honey brew never stopped flowing. This imagined place felt, at the time, more like home than home itself.
Since she took to the land those dreams have grown more varied. She dreams of the ocean and blue chessboards, of the sparkle that appears on the water and in Cerydra's eyes. There was never any point to thinking too hard about any of this, but now she must acknowledge the whale in the room.
Which is, of course, that Cerydra’s Hanahaki was never going to kill her.
~
Hysilens has never been to the Twilight Courtyard. Her Imperator keeps her secrets here, and she has never been keen to betray her trust. Now, though, for the sake of all Amphoreus, she must stop the surgery.
The room she's in is cold and sterile, but smells ever so slightly of flowers, and of blood’s sharp tang. She wonders if this is the room Cerydra has come to every time, if she ever felt regret as she sat on the table and allowed her memories to be spirited away.
She steps through the door again now, betrayal blooming on her features when she notices she isn't alone.
“I know,” Hysilens says. “You've done this before.”
She stills. She must be thinking, factoring this into her grand master plan even Hysilens doesn't know the whole of.
“How many times?”
“I don't know. Countless.”
She wonders what it's like for Cerydra. Does she wake as if from any other sleep, or is she aware of her missing memories? She must have lost days at this point. Does she ever notice all that stolen time? Does she mourn it?
“So you mean to say that it's pointless to get the surgery, because I'll just get Hanahaki all over again.”
“I'm saying that, if we are to defeat Phagousa, you must remember that the heir to her Coreflame is already yours to command.”
“... Kneel, Dux Gladiorum.”
She does.
Cerydra comes closer, tucks her hand beneath her chin, and raises her gaze to once again meet hers.
“I will be biased,” she warns. “You must check me. You must fight against my will to save you. And– critically– my life is now in your hands. You must take responsibility for that.”
“There is no need,” Hysilens says softly. “You will not die. I have loved you since we met.”
Cerydra closes her eyes, a soft smile blooming on her face.
“That grand feast I promised you at the end of the war,” she says, “perhaps it will be a wedding.”