Series Synopsis: When the husband you’ve never met returns from the war you’ve never understood, he comes bearing a strange and inexplicable gift — a prince in chains who he refuses to kill.
Series Masterlist
Pairing: Mydei x F!Reader
Chapter Word Count: 10.2k
Content Warnings: pls check the masterlist there is. a lot. and i’m not retyping all of that LOL
A/N: I AM SOO SCARED TO POST THIS NGL LMAOAO like i said in the warnings i literally. have not played amphoreus yet. idek anything about mydei SDKJH i am so worried i will disappoint everyone who's expressed interest in reading this HAHA i was also. not expecting anyone to do that tbh. BUT thank you all for your kind words on the masterlist and i hope this lives up to expectations at least a bit!!
You spent the day of your wedding with a man made of marble — a stand-in for your new husband, who was off fighting in a war of the kind which had neither cause nor, seemingly, end. The statue was carved in his image and sneered down at you as you whispered to it, swearing vows of duty and obedience and docility, but, in spite or maybe because of its detached lifelessness, you found its presence to be a kindness. What did it say of your husband, that you preferred the company of that dead stone to him? Perhaps very much, or perhaps very little.
He is a generous man, the servants assured you, giggling amongst themselves, exchanging knowing looks as they dragged you into the foreign palace where you would spend the rest of your days. You will want for nothing.
It was draftier than your home, the wind bouncing off of the white walls and nipping at you skin. You spent your time buried under seven-and-twenty layers of furs and fabrics, lying in an unfamiliar bed and flinching away from the shadows upon the ceiling. This was an idle and dull way to waste away your existence, and yet you could not bring yourself to do anything else, trapped in the mire of waiting and waiting for your husband’s return.
He came back in the third month, which was as auspicious as anything. They loved that number here, you had come to find: three, the symbol of fortune and fate, of magic and mischief, of power and punishment. Three vows sworn; three blessings granted; three months passed before you finally met the man you had married.
There was much fanfare about his arrival. When you peered out of the window, you saw that the streets were stuffed to the bursting with throngs of people shoving one another around, hissing and biting as they craned their necks. At first it surprised you — was he truly so loved here, even when he was elsewhere despised? — but then you realized that it was not your husband upon his charger that they were all lined up to meet. Rather, it was the procession following him which captured their interests, the spoils of war which he displayed with a juvenile, worthless pride.
A triad of elephants covered in finely wrought armor, their heads hung low and resigned, their plodding walks spiritless and lame. A herd of sheep with silver wool, dotting the dark cobblestones like a cluster of stars, stumbling along at the prodding of a soldier-turned-shepherd. A wagon filled with spears and swords, ostensibly once neatly stacked, now a matted mess of steel and bronze. Vases carried in the arms of the younger men, overflowing with coins that trailed after them like breadcrumbs, snatched up by the most daring of the onlookers, who did not fear rebuke. And, finally, in a place so honorable it could only have been mocking—
“Lady,” a soft voice said. You drew your coat tighter around you, although today was, by all accounts, warm for the season, and pretended like you did not hear the girl. She sighed and then tugged on your arm insistently; perhaps it was improper, but there wasn’t anyone who would chide her for it. “You have been summoned by his majesty.”
Hadn’t you known this would happen eventually? Hadn’t you expected it? You had had your time to come to terms with it, which was more than most got, and so there was no excuse for the reluctance which choked your throat and stilled your footsteps. This was your duty, this was what you had sworn, and so — and so you could not hesitate.
“Lady…” the girl said with another sigh. You pretended to be all-consumed with the action of closing the curtains, your back to her as you struggled to force a smile onto your face. When you deemed your expression acceptable, you spun around and nodded at her.
“It will not do to keep him waiting,” you said, motioning for her to lead the way. She did so without complaint, perhaps relieved that you were not giving her further trouble; even now, the servants did not know what to think of you, could not quite fathom what category of being you were. Some were fond of you, but most treated you with a careful distrust that you could not blame them for, even though you sometimes wanted to.
The grand entrance hall of the palace opened to the mouth of the road, which swelled out into a sprawling courtyard. Its centerpiece was an enormous fountain which sprayed a fine, cool mist into the air no matter the time of year, and it was by this fountain that you waited, wringing your hands as your husband drew nearer and nearer. Belatedly, you thought that you should try to conceal your distress, but there was nothing to be done about it now. The best you could do was say, if you were asked, that it was simply the joy of a bride faced with the prospect of a reunion with her beloved. Nobody would question that, although then again, nobody questioned you very much in general, so it was doubtful that you’d even have to use the quick excuse.
Your husband’s warhorse was a sprightly, slender beast, its coat the dappled grey of royalty, its face pretty and dished in the way of the Eastern breeds. When it paused in front of you, it shoved its black muzzle into your shoulder, nearly knocking you down, and then it stomped its hoof when your husband tightened the reins, pulling it back before dismounting and handing it off to a waiting stableboy.
“My apologies, dear lady,” he said, bowing before you with as much gallantry as you had been told he possessed. His voice was gentle and amused, his face even more handsome in flesh than it had been in stone; you should’ve, by all rights, felt pleased. You were married to this man. You belonged to him. How many women wished to be in your place? Yet all you could muster was fear, throttling and all-consuming. He was beautiful in the way of a snake, and you knew without knowing that he was poised, in some way, to strike.
“It is alright,” you said, disguising the tremble of your voice with a broad, false grin. “I am glad to finally make your acquaintance…my lord.”
The address was unfamiliar on your tongue. What would your younger self, that girl who had never known subservience nor strife, say if she saw you ducking your head in defeated compliance? How she would laugh! How she would pity you! My lord. But he was exactly that.
“The sentiment is returned in full,” he said, and then he extended his arms in a grand, sweeping motion. “Indeed, to celebrate this momentous occasion, I have arranged for you a gift!”
“A gift?” you repeated. Certainly, you had asked for no such thing, and you did not have the time to school your face into neutrality, naked surprise flashing across it. Your husband chuckled at the sight, nodding at you.
“I have brought the finest of plunders for you, dear lady,” he said, and your stomach twisted into knots at the familiarity with which he spoke to you, as if you were affable lovers instead of strangers. “Even your father’s treasures, vast and bountiful as they may be, cannot compare to this!”
The mention of your father stabbed at your heart, and hidden in the folds of your coat, you clenched your fists. Your father, the richest man in the world…and yet your husband dared compare his meager gift to that? You wanted to spit in his face that for your third birthday, your father had gifted you a villa made of gold, the walls inlaid with gemstones and painted with flowers. Indeed, you might’ve goaded him in such a way if you had the capabilities, but then you noticed what the army-men were bringing forth and your mouth suddenly refused to move.
It was the prisoner, the one kept in a place of honor by your husband and his soldiers, the one who the entire empire had ridiculed as he had been paraded through it like a champion hound. He was tall, towering over the army-men flanking him, and although his eyes drooped nearly shut, there was a heat to his demeanor, a severe, ferocious anger which shone through his exhaustion. He seemed like more of a half-tamed jungle cat than a man, and indeed when he halted before you, you half-expected him to snarl, to bare bloody fangs and lunge at your throat with fingers like claws, like swords, tearing through your neck as if it were paper.
“When he’s like this, you almost forget what a monster he can be,” your husband mused, reaching out and flicking the man on the forehead with a snicker. “Isn’t he all but lovely? Oh, don’t worry, dear lady, he can’t do anything to you. He’s under the influence of a sleeping draught at the moment, and anyways, those chains are thrice-blessed. It’s perfectly safe.”
The chains he spoke of were as gold as the man’s hair, looping around his wrists and forearms, curling over the red marks emblazoned on his shimmering skin, weaving in between his legs and around his torso. They were sturdy and gleamed with the power of their three blessings, and although you still understood little about this strange place with its strange power, you could tell that it would take a great force, greater than was possessed by any mere man or deity, to break them.
“He’s the prince of Kremnos,” your husband said when your shock stretched on. “A right beast, I’ll say. We almost fell to his efforts, but in the end, we bested him — as you can see. What do you think? Do you like him?”
“He’s — it’s — horrible,” you said, your skin crawling the longer and longer you stared at the prince, your words a jumble, your head spinning. You wanted to be anywhere but in this courtyard, in front of this fallen man, who was kept alive for — for what? For amusement? For play? As a gift?
“Isn’t he?” your husband said, patting you on the shoulder with a grim smile. “And now he is yours.”
The thrice-blessed chains flashed in the sun, and you shook your head, both in refusal and to clear your vision of the blinding, searing spots they left in it.
“I have no need of a prisoner,” you said, and although your tone remained ever-muted, you spoke as cuttingly as you could manage to. “What will I do with him? Why do you torture him so? You bested him; if he was as fierce an opponent as you claim, then the least you owe him is a death with dignity. Kill him and be done with the matter. Why have you brought him all this way? I don’t want him.”
“He will die, eventually,” my husband said. “I shall execute him myself when it comes to it, but the time is not yet right. I don’t expect you to understand such matters, and neither should you trouble yourself with doing so…but know this, dear lady: you cannot give back a gift once it has been freely given. You can do what you’d like with him now that he is yours, but you cannot refuse him. Perhaps that is how affairs were conducted in your backwards land, but here it is not so.”
You wanted my land, you longed to say. You took me from my father and wed me to a statue in search of it. And still you call it backward? But you could not, so instead, you turned away — away from the prince, who was close to crumpling and only remained standing out of sheer will, and away from your husband, who beamed as if he had done something great or wonderful.
“I will retire now,” you said. Do not follow me. This remained implied, unsaid, but a fool your husband was not, and so he only hummed in agreement.
“Be well, dear lady,” he said. “My messengers have told me that you are having difficulties adjusting to the climate here. I shall be sure to pray for your feeble constitution.”
“Thank you, my lord,” you said, stiffly, primly. It scratched like bile and you hated every minute of it, but you had no recourse for the matter, so you swallowed it down, as you always did and always would.
“And what of the prisoner?” he said. “Shall I send him to a jail? Do you think he is better suited for deprivation or pain?”
They meant to make him shatter, to methodically yank him apart until he faced death with the dull eyes and swayed back of an over-aged broodmare. You supposed to them it was meaningless — why should they show consideration or kindness to a man who would never show them the same? — but you were no warmonger, and that apathy did not cling to you yet. The prince was a beast born of sun, a wild, vicious creature, and if he really was slated to die, then you wanted him to meet his end as just that, nothing less.
“Leave him be,” you said. “Treat him as well as you are able.”
“He would’ve killed me,” your husband said, a low note of warning in his voice. You shrank into the safety of your clothes, as if they were a shield against his vexation.
“But instead you will kill him,” you said. “So how does it matter? You said I could do as I like; well, this is what pleases me. Don’t prolong this anymore than necessary.”
You darted back into the palace without waiting to hear his answer, your jaw burning and your footsteps heavy against the mosaic floor as you ran all of the way to your chambers and slammed the door shut behind you.
For three days and three nights you did not leave your room, taking all your meals in seclusion, refusing any visitors that might attempt entry. You could not help it; the thought of seeing your husband or any of the soldiers made you want to weep — you! Who never wept, even as a baby! So you claimed that you were terribly unwell, that you could not stand for fear of collapse, and that managed to ward away your husband without incurring his wrath, even though it was only a temporary solution.
As the sun set on the fourth day, there was a knock on your door, and you were about to call out that you had no interest in conversation when someone hissed through the crack in the entrance: “Lady, I come not on your husband’s behalf but another’s. There is trouble, and you must attend to it.”
“What?” you said, scrambling to your feet, crouching by the entrance, pressing your ear to the wooden door without opening it. “Who is this? Who are you? Speak plainly, so that we may understand one another!”
There was a shuffling sound, and then an exhale. You worried with the collar of your shirt as you waited for them to continue, your arms pulled tightly around yourself, your brows furrowing together as you chewed on your lower lip.
“The prince of Kremnos,” they whispered. “He calls for you.”
“Are they mistreating him?” you said, straightening and flinging the door open. “The prince, are they — hello?”
The hallway was devoid of life. You peered down it, craning your neck this way and that, but it was placid, showing no signs of having been disturbed. Shutting the door slowly, you leaned against it, holding your head in your hands. Was this place driving you to insanity, then? And if it was, then why could you not have thought of something more pleasant than summons from a prisoner — prisoner!
Wasn’t it your duty to make sure your husband had held good on his word? The prisoner was yours, though the notion of ownership sent unpleasant shivers down your spine and didn’t feel quite right — perhaps a better way to think of it, then, was responsibility. He was your responsibility, and maybe the strange vision had been nothing more than a reminder of what you owed the man.
You waited until it was midnight, when you could be certain that your husband would not rise from his slumber at the sound of your activity, and then you donned a pair of slippers and a cloak, throwing the hood on and retreating into the billowing depths of the fabric, so that your face was obscured from prying eyes. Of course, there would not be very many of those, not at such a late hour, but you did not want to risk even one person recognizing you and reporting back to your husband, whose reaction to this escapade you could not foretell.
Although you were not so familiar with the palace’s layout, as you had never spent much time exploring it, most constructions of this nature followed a similar plan, and you had grown up in exactly such a grand, sweeping home, so you found the doorway to the cellar in record time. As the palace had no towers, the cellar was the only logical option for the keeping of such a dangerous prisoner, and you had no doubt in your mind that this was where you would find the prince, if he was still somewhere that you could find him.
The half-moon was your only witness as you fumbled with the lock, trying every key in your possession until one finally slotted into place and turned. Wincing as the door heaved open with a profound creak, you yanked it shut behind you quickly, without ceremony, lighting a small candle and using it to guide your way down the dark stairs, rushing so that you were out of sight in case someone came to investigate.
You did not know how long you walked for, but eventually the stairway ended, giving way to cool, damp earth. The must of uncut stone permeated the thick, heavy air, and the adjustment of your eyes to the surrounding blackness was slow, the pain of it only alleviated somewhat by the little candle’s valiant flame.
“Come to toss scraps at me?” The voice was rumbling and low; in spite of its weakness, you could hear a sneer in it, a disdain in the rough baritone. “You needn’t try again. Like I told you, I won’t eat your trash.”
“No,” you said. “I’ve brought nothing with me.”
There was a brief pause, and then: “You sound different than the others.”
“This tongue is foreign to me, as it is to you,” you said. “I cannot speak it in the same way as those who were born here. Verily I have been instructed in the art since I was but a child, for my father must have known in that manner of his what would eventually become of me, but I will never lay claim to it the way that a native of this empire would.”
“You’re his wife.” Chains clanked, the harsh drag of metal against stone reverberating in the cellar, and then you felt more than saw his looming countenance, filling what you had mistakenly believed upon arrival to be an empty room. Swinging your candle before you so that it was close to your heart, you gasped when it reflected in a pair of eyes glaring at you from mere paces away, the irises possessing a hollow and impossible brilliance in the way a pair of fading embers might.
The chains now only encircled his left leg, binding him to the wall but leaving him otherwise free to move as he liked within the length of his confines. He had been stripped of armament and adornment alike, his mane of hair tangled and falling lank about his broad shoulders, yet for all of these injustices, you had no doubt in your mind that he was anything but a prince. He had a dignity to him, a hard-won pride to the straightness of his back and the firmness of his gaze; before you could chase it away, the thought came to you that there was far more intrinsic nobility to this man than there was even your husband.
“I suppose that I am,” you said.
“Have you come to gloat about your craven lord’s cowardly victory, then?” he said. The chains were pulled taut, so he could come no closer to you than he already was — you were sure of this, but you were still a slave to your instincts, which urged you farther and farther from him with every second. He watched you go with some measure of delight, like he was relishing in this power which you had inadvertently gifted him, and when you skittered to a stop, he huffed. “There is nothing to be proud of, and you look a fool for suggesting there might be.”
“I was just…” you trailed off, because it suddenly felt entirely absurd to suggest that you were inquiring after his wellbeing. What did it mean, the wellbeing of a doomed man? What reason would he have to believe your intentions? “What is your name?”
“My name?” he said with a brittle, incredulous laugh that rapidly descended into a cough. “Why? Do you wish to curse your husband with it? Does your language not have gods you can swear on?”
“You’re sickly,” you said, frowning and ignoring his jabs.
“You have torn me from the sun and chained me in this dingy room, and yet you have the gall to be surprised by that?” he said, scoffing. “You’re more of an idiot than that husband of yours.”
“I did no such thing!” you said. The defiance took you by surprise. You had forgotten what it felt like to defy someone, to disagree and resist their words, to feel alive with resentment and bad-temper. “I didn’t wish for this. I didn’t wish to keep you here anymore than you wished to be kept!”
“Is that so?” he said, and then he grinned at you, but it was less of a smile and more of a threat. “Then free me.”
“What?” you said.
“If you don’t want me, then free me,” he said.
“You’ll kill me if I do,” you said uneasily, shifting from foot to foot.
“I give you my word that I will spare you,” he said, placing a solemn hand over his heart.
“Not the others?” you said.
He did not respond, which in and of itself was a response. It was one you shouldn’t have liked as much as you did, but in truth the prospect of such a slaughter made your fingers twitch towards him. Only for a moment, and immediately, you shoved your hands behind your back, but it was too late — he had seen, and he raised his eyebrows at you in return.
“Well, anyways, it doesn’t matter,” you said hastily, hoping to distract him before he could comment on the treason. “I couldn’t free you even if I wanted to. Your chains are thrice-blessed. I didn’t know what that meant until recently, but now that I do, I understand why you have been kept without even a permanent guard.”
“Blessings,” he said, rolling his eyes. “Don’t tell me you put genuine stock into that drivel.”
“Perhaps the gods of other lands have forsaken their subjects, but this empire is known as the birthplace of every divine act, and so deities still sometimes glance upon its people and offer up their favor. Thrice-blessed chains are one such offering, for they are in fact more like contracts than they truly are chains,” you said. When he did not interrupt you with any snide remarks, you were emboldened to continue. “They can restrain anything, even a god, but this strength comes at a cost: they are conditional. If their captive can understand this condition and meet it, they will crumble into dust, but until then, the chains remain unbreakable.”
“What is it?” he said insistently, reaching out his hands like he was going to grab you and shake the answer out. He fell short, grasping at empty air, his muscles straining against the chains which, true to legend, did not falter. “This condition. Whatever it is, I will do it. You only need to tell me and I will do it!”
“I don’t know,” you said. His lip curled, and you shook your head frantically. “No, no, I’m telling you the truth, I really don’t know! Only the wielder and the gods he prayed to can know for certain. The conditions are decided arbitrarily, without trend or reason. It could be anything from singing a song to moving a mountain! At least, that’s what I’ve gathered from the little I’ve read on the topic.”
“The wielder — your husband, then? That’s easy enough. Bid him to tell you, and then relay to me his answer,” he said.
“Easy enough? Not in the slightest. He would just as soon do your bidding as he would mine,” you said. The prince squinted at you, and evidently he must’ve determined that you were serious, for he broke into that awful laugh again, the one that must’ve once been handsome and full-bodied but now was little more than a rattling plea for air.
“You are pitiful,” he said. “I thought that you must be some great, fearsome empress, as wicked as your husband, but you are just a frightened mouse of a girl. You would not survive a day in Kremnos, you know. It would crush you.”
Duty. Obedience. Docility. They were branded onto you, swirling letters that you had unwittingly carved into yourself with every wedding vow you spoke, and you could not escape them any more than the prince could escape his chains. If only you could argue with him, tell him that once upon a time, you had been someone unrecognizable from who you were now…but already, you had tested their limits. Your tongue was frozen in your mouth, refusing to move in anything but accordance with your oaths, and so you only clasped your hands together.
“If you say it is so, then it really must be the case,” you said. “Farewell, prince of Kremnos.”
“Farewell,” he said, but it was clear he did not mean it. “Dear lady.”
“Don’t call me that,” you said, recognizing the provocation for what it was. “You are not my husband, nor do I wish for you to be.”
“Then what should I refer to you as?” he said. “Your excellency? Your grace? Your most exalted highness? Your holiness, the saint of the realm?”
“Here, I am only known as lady,” you said quietly. “But I bore a different name before. I cannot…I cannot say it anymore, but if you ever come to know of it by other means, then please call me as such.”
Morning brought with it a freezing palm pressed to your brow. It startled you to consciousness both because of its temperature and its temerity, for you could not fathom who had dared to enter your room without your permission, and while you were asleep, at that! In the haze of your sleep-addled mind, a rebuke rose to your lips, but then someone clicked their tongue and you fell silent even as you clambered to a more alert state.
“Your fever has finally broken, dear lady! You do not know how overjoyed I am to hear it,” your husband said, helping you into a sitting position, one hand cradling the back of your neck and the other holding up a glass. You blinked, trying to clear the fog from your vision, swallowing down the water he poured down your throat without objection.
“Fever?” you said.
“The ailment you have been suffering from,” he said. “I was told it was a fever of some sorts. I bore it quietly, the prospect of your malaise, but today I could not stop myself from checking on you. I had some dreams of playing the nurse, but here you are, entirely well! Such a miraculous recovery.”
His grandiose words masked suspicion with affection, but he did not make any further accusations, for just as you had sworn to heed him, so too had he promised to trust you. His vows had been made to a portrait of yours, as well as written in pig’s-blood and sent to you in a sealed envelope. You could recall them with perfect clarity, the way the stench of iron clung to the parchment as you unfolded it and rang your fingers over the lines, which were grouped in stanzas of three.
Trust. Favor. Companionship.
You spent the entire day with your husband, although you had neither the desire nor the will for it. You hardly ever had the desire or the will to do anything, of course, not nowadays, but this was the worst of all, because your husband was not just a reminder but the very reason for everything which had happened to you. Still, you could not refuse, so you trotted along at his side, motionless as he showed you off to his officers, his advisors, and even, at one point, his cousin, who could not be less interested in you if he tried.
“Brother,” he said boredly, for indeed he and your husband were the only children of their respective fathers, and so were more like siblings than anything, “you have better things to be doing than showing off a woman who doesn’t bear showing off in the first place.”
“Are you saying that she is somehow deficient?” your husband said, swelling up with righteous indignation. Anyone else might’ve lost their head for the statement, especially given how blandly he had said it, but his cousin was above reproach, being the only person he really loved.
“I’m saying that she looks ill with misery,” his cousin said, and then he sighed, returning to his book. “I’m not so sure the lady has recovered from her illness. You ought to be more cautious with her, that’s all.”
His cousin was younger and handsomer than he, and as the two of you walked away, you thought that you would not have minded marrying him as much. Though perhaps this was a paradox — after all, if he had taken you in the manner that your husband had, then you would have hated him, too. It was your lot in life, then; always you would detest whoever you wed, whoever stole your freedom in that way and bound you to them with the cruel ropes of matrimony.
The hall where you took your dinner was like an enormous cavern, so large that you felt like your voice might echo if you spoke. You and your husband were the only ones in it, which heightened the effect, and every clank of his silverware against his porcelain dishes resounded in your ears like discordant bells.
“My prisoner,” you said after a long time had passed wherein the two of you discussed nothing. Your voice was dry with disuse, and you pushed the food on your plate around without attempting to eat, although it was all appetizing and you were certainly hungry.
“What?” your husband said, covering his mouth with his hand as he chewed.
“My prisoner,” you said, clearing your throat but keeping your gaze trained firmly on your food. “The prince of Kremnos. Is he well?”
“You’re asking after his health?” your husband said with a chuckle. When you did not laugh or otherwise indicate that you were joking, he frowned at you. “You needn’t fret. As you requested, I am treating him as well as I am able. Far better than he deserves.”
The image of the prince, chained and kept in darkness, the only sound his persistent cough and unsteady breathing, given scraps for sustenance and mice for company, flashed across your mind.
“I wish to see him,” you said. There was a warning in the back of your head — duty, obedience, docility — but you ignored it as best as you could, stabbing oversharp fingernails into your thighs, hard enough to draw blood and distract you from the dangerous line you tread. “My lord, I wish to see the prince and ensure that he is alright with my own eyes.”
At this your husband did not even pretend to humor you. He burst into a raucous fit of cackles, his fork and knife clattering to the table, his eyes watering at the corners. You waited for him to stop, picking your own cutlery up in vain before setting it down and folding your hands in your lap.
“No,” he said. “I am afraid that I cannot allow that, dear lady.”
“You cannot—” you began, but it was too much, you had stepped over that precarious boundary, and now you were frozen. Gulping, you counted to five before continuing. “He is mine. He is mine, you said it yourself, so why — can’t — I — see — him?”
Each word dug into you like gravel, and you knew that you had lost this argument before you could even attempt to have it. How could you ever win? When you had sworn thrice over that you would be tractable, how could you ever try to be anything else? Your intentions did not matter as much as the execution, not to the number three and the power it lent this empire.
“How obstinate,” your husband said, appraising you with a new eye. “I am sorry, dear lady, but as my cousin said, you are still weak. It will do you no good to be faced with such a base creature. You can see him again on the day of his execution.”
“Yes,” you said through gritted teeth, which was not as much as you wanted to do but was as much as you could, at present, manage. “Might I be excused?”
“Excused? You haven’t eaten anything,” he said, pointing at your plate. True to his word, it was untouched, and you picked it up, holding it close to your chest as you stood.
“My stomach is protesting,” you said. “I will take it to my room and eat it later. If it pleases you.”
“Very well,” he said, waving at you. “I shall pray for your health, dear lady. Sleep as late as you’d like tomorrow, but once you are awake, I implore you to join me in my preparations. There is a grand celebration in the afternoon, as a marker of our victory against Kremnos, and I have been summoned to speak; if you could muster some words as well, it might hearten the people and warm them to you.”
“Yes, my lord,” you said. “I shall think of something.”
“See to it that you do,” he said, watching you with an unreadable expression on his face as you left, your footsteps growing faster and faster until you were all but racing to your room, your head spinning and palms clammy like you had gotten away with some great crime.
Tonight, there were no strange voices beckoning you, but that did not stop you from staying awake far past the moon’s rise, waiting until it hung over the clocktower before picking your way back to the cellar, your heart pounding as you crept back down those dark, endless stairs, an actual lantern in one hand and your plate in the other.
The prince was still there. You had half-expected him to have disappeared, to have turned out to be some figment of your imagination, but he was leaning against the wall, his arms folded over his chest and his lips pursed as he watched the light of your lantern approach. When he realized it was you, his eyes narrowed, and he tucked his chin to his chest in what you could only assume was a stubborn display of the meager strength he had left.
“I brought food for you,” you said, setting the lantern on the last stair and presenting the plate before you. “Please eat it.”
“What do you think I am?” he said. “Some kind of a dog, such that I am eager for you to foist your refuse on me? Hardly. Take it and leave me at once.”
“You’ll waste away,” you said. “You are only doing yourself a disservice! This is my own dinner, which I have gone without so that I could bring it to you. Does that make it easier to stomach?”
“Shall I sit on the floor, then, and eat it with my hands?” he said with a disparaging smile. “Will that amuse you? Is that why you’ve come? I heard your husband, you know. ‘Do what you’d like with him now that he is yours.’ How joyless your life must be, to think that this is what you entertain yourself with!”
“It is joyless,” you bit back, and your eyes widened at the freedom of the declaration. “It is! But you are not my — you are not some kind of amusement, I resent that you — I even spoke against my husband for you, and you say that! Fine, then. Starve, you thoughtless simpleton! Starve and die for all the good it’ll do me!”
You turned on your heel and stomped towards the stairs with the graceless irascibility of a child, not even sparing a glance over your shoulder at the prince. He was quiet, but you knew from the heavy weight of his stare on your back that there was something like turmoil brewing in his mind, a turmoil which weakened your resolve with every step you took away from him.
It was to your credit that you made it all of the way to where the lantern was sitting before you wavered, your stride shortening until you halted in place. Scrunching up your face, wondering when you had developed this love for punishment, for strife and conflict, you allowed your shoulders to sag in acceptance.
“Dispose of this before anyone comes to see you,” you said, shoving the plate into his hands before he could protest. “I suppose it matters little how you do it, but you must, or else I will be convicted of treason, and where will that leave us? Imprisoned side by side and left to rot together.”
He did not respond until you were almost out of earshot entirely, and then he coughed. You could not tell whether it was to capture your attention or to clear his voice of any residual hesitance; regardless, he accomplished both objectives, as you lingered for a moment longer than you would’ve.
“Ten,” he said. “That’s how many times I could’ve killed you in the time you’ve been here. But I—”
You continued walking before you could hear the rest of it.
You woke up the next day in better spirits than you had in some time, and in fact when a servant announced that you had a visitor, you opened the door with a new vigor. Upon realizing that the man in front of you was not your husband but rather his cousin, you thought that you might die from the glee of it all. Taking his arm, you allowed him to escort you to where the imperial contingent was setting up for the festival, at a grand stage which took up most of the square and was already laden with visitors at its base.
“It is a relief to see you recovering so well,” your husband’s cousin said. “The rumors in the palace are that you’ve contracted some illness of the chronic variety; in truth I believed them, especially after our meeting yesterday, but today I see that you have been revitalized. Did you rest well last night, then? I heard that you did not eat your dinner, but you must’ve taken it in your room, yes?”
You had done neither of those things, and his questioning did make you pause. What was the cause of your good mood? You had gone to sleep for only a short time, without much of anything in your stomach, and your situation had not improved any, so why did you feel, even if only marginally, as if you were something like yourself again?
“I suppose it must be something like love,” he mused, without waiting for your answer.
“Ah, pardon?” you said, startled from the winding turns and byways of your thoughts at the strange declaration.
“To think that even a day in your husband’s presence has cured you to such an extent,” he explained. “Surely it is love? I cannot think of any other name for it…but I apologize! It is not my place to inquire, nor to speculate. I trust you will not tell my cousin about this?”
He had, in the taken-aback blink of your eyes and the pinch of your brow, found what he was seeking: a demure shyness which he could only comprehend as a lack of affection. You knew, then, that you had passed the test of the man, who had not believed any more than your husband that you were truly ill.
“I will take your leave,” he said, and then his palm clamped down on your shoulder. “But I trust you know this: however much you may love your husband, he is a difficult man to be loved by in return. If ever you are in search of solace…there are places you may turn to, dear lady.”
“What did he say to you?” your husband said, appearing at your side with his expression arranged into something like a frown. “I could not hear. Was he bothering you? I am sorry if he was. He has always been headstrong.”
“He was not bothering me,” you said, incapable of lying to your husband with any great skill but remaining certain that it was absolutely imperative you did not divulge his cousin’s secrets to him. “We spoke as family members might.”
If he recognized your evasive language, he did not comment on it. Instead, he stroked his chin in thought, and then he directed his attention towards the stage, where one of his generals was beckoning him — and, by extension, you.
The sun hung high in the sky as you ascended to the podium, though its rays did not dare touch you, disguised in your husband’s shadow as you were. Your vows tied more than your tongue, after all; your entire being, everything but your heart and your mind, were trained and twisted into the picture of submission, and soon those, too, would fall, leaving you a husk which could do nothing but nod and follow along.
Your husband did not need to start with any address. His mere presence was enough to silence the gathered empire, every single onlooker leaning towards the stage in eager anticipation of his words. From your vantage point, it was like the swell of a tide, crushing and suffocating, inescapable in its overwhelming intensity, but where you withdrew, your husband brightened at the weight, lifting his head and squaring his shoulders.
“Mydeimos,” he said, over-enunciating every syllable. The word, unfamiliar and foreign to your ears, had a rhythmic, marching cadence, more suited to a battle-cry than a formal declaration, and it seemed you were not alone in your thinking, for it had all the effect of one on the crowd.
A heckling clamor burst from them, the individual words indecipherable but for brief snippets. Demon. Monster. Warmonger. Kill. Curse. Blood. Kill. Kill. Kill! Your husband waited for them to quiet of their own volition, and only then did he venture to continue, this time with a wide, beaming grin.
“Mydeimos has fallen. The prince of terrors is no more!” he shouted, raising his fist in the air to thunderous applause. “Without him to lead the army, Kremnos will surely follow suit. Their lands will be ours within the year, of this much I assure you! Our empire will soon be the most prosperous in all the world. Even the great lands of the Southern Sea will pale in comparison!”
Your heart twinged at the mention of the Southern Sea. You could envision it even now, the streaks of salt left on the cliffs where the water lapped at them, the ripples in the placid blue where the balmy winds skimmed along the surface, the moon-white sand as it clung to the crevices of your feet and hands.
When you were younger, your father would take you on his boat and dip his fingers into it, urging you to do the same. You would ask him why and he would answer, always with a laugh or a smile: of all the jewels in my treasury, my darling, the Southern Sea is the second-loveliest. Then you would ask him which could be the first, if even the sea was not its equal, and he’d press his damp hands to your cheeks and kiss your hair and say you, my darling, you and only you.
“What a horrible thing he was,” your husband said. “Mydeimos. That wretched excuse of a man…the world is all the better now that he is locked away. I watched him — watched him, good citizens, with my own eyes — tear out a man’s heart with naught but his nails and teeth! Even now I can imagine it…the tips of his canines dark with pierced flesh…bits of entrails coating his fingers…the heart still beating in his palms…he looked the proper part of a devil, and I was certain that I had died and found damnation!
“But as I said, he is no more. Our army prevailed, as we always have, and as we always will; I made Mydeimos beg for mercy with my sword at his throat and my foot upon his inhuman heart, and then I dragged him back so that all of you could see what he has been relegated to — a chained puppy, given to my dear lady as a pet and kept as a servant until the day of his execution.
“For the surest way to kill a Kremnoan is to destroy their pride, and the prince of terrors has more pride than most, so we must endeavor to strip him of it, systematically and fastidiously, until even a child can cut him down!”
Your husband concluded his speech and pulled you forward simultaneously, with a great flourish which invited praise and drew attention to you both. You swallowed, your mind racing at breakneck speed, far too quickly for you to make any sense of the things you were saying until you were saying them.
“I have not seen the prince of Kremnos — Mydeimos — since the day that he was brought to me,” you said. The applause that had begun faded as soon as the soft words sparkled into existence, and the many eyes of the audience blurred together until you could pretend like you were alone, like you were speaking to nothing but small, bright stones reflecting your own sentiments. “But as my lord husband said, he was proud. I feel as though I have never seen a man prouder. Even after his loss, he remained proud. Even with nothing else left, he clung to that pride, that assurance…I remember thinking to myself that it was, in its own way, admirable. That he was admirable.”
Your husband’s arm around your waist grew tighter with unspoken warning, though it needn’t have. You had said all that you wanted, all that you could, and now there was nothing left but the judgement of the collective.
“Lady!” someone shouted, the singular soul brave enough to speak. She was a woman — you wondered if this was what bolstered her confidence, a perceived kinship between the two of you for that fact alone. “Do you fear the prince?”
“No,” you said, and although you had meant it only as a vague and empty placation, you were surprised to find that it rang true. You were not afraid of him, and it wasn’t his chains or his infirmity which caused this emotion to surge in you; rather, it was what he had told you last night, that declaration he had made with the utmost of seriousness, which you had not even allowed him to complete. “I am not. He cannot harm me.”
You knew your words would be interpreted as faith in your husband and the empire, and furthermore that this misinterpretation would curry favor with your subjects and your lord alike, so you did nothing to correct it. Yet you would know, and would hold close to your heart the knowing, that it was not your husband who you held faith in: it was Mydeimos, the prince of Kremnos, who might’ve killed you ten times over but had instead let you live.
“You have much to improve in terms of your orating,” your husband said coldly as the three of you — him, his cousin, and yourself — returned to the palace.
“I thought her speech was excellent,” his cousin said, shooting you a sly smile behind his back. “Very concise, and of a good style. It’s a gift to be able to convey meaning so succinctly. You ought to nurture it.”
“She certainly conveyed a meaning,” your husband said. “It remains to be said what value that meaning truly holds.”
“Is that for you to decide? Ah, brother, don’t be a curmudgeon, I am only teasing you! You spent so much of our childhood poking fun at me, so how can you fault me for paying you back in kind?” his cousin said.
“You need some lessons in respect,” your husband said, but without any real bite behind it. His cousin snickered before sobering, shifting his weight toward you.
“Will you take your dinner in your chambers again, lady?” he said. You nodded.
“If it does not offend,” you said.
“Do as you please,” your husband said. “Though I expect you’ll do that anyways, sworn to me or not. Isn’t that right, dear lady?”
You couldn’t think of any response which would be satisfactory, so you said nothing, allowing the two of them to escort you to your room, where you waited with bated breath until the night fell and you could return to the cellar.
The entire way down the stairs, you turned the name over in your mind, polishing it in the way waves polished driftwood, battering it with incessant worry until it shone, uncanny and unrecognizable. Mydeimos. Mydeimos. Mydeimos. The prince of terrors. The man who had torn a heart out with his teeth. What did it say of you, that you were making your way to exactly such a knave? With trepidation, of course, but what did it say that you were still doing it anyways? Perhaps very much, or perhaps very little.
“There is an odd pattern to your footsteps,” he said before you could even greet him. He stood as he always did, prepared for a battle that he would never again see. “Or perhaps it is your breathing, or something else entirely.”
“What do you mean?” you said, putting your lantern and the dinner down in the space between you both. “I walk and breathe as I always have, as others do.”
“I know you,” he said, disgust mingling with the barest traces of awe in his tone. “The door to this cellar opens frequently. All manner of men come to visit me, to mock me from their places at the bottom of the stairs, lambasting me from the safety of their distance. I recognize few, and I remember fewer — nor do I have any great desire to — but when it is you, I know. From your very step, from the very creak of the door, I know. I cannot understand how or why, but I know.”
“My husband told me your name,” you said after a pause, when it became clear he was not expecting a reaction from you. Motioning towards the food in a gesture you hoped he took to kindly, you continued: “I did not ask him, but he mentioned it in passing, so naturally now I know it.”
“I see,” he said, and although his gaze flicked towards the ground, he did not move. You remembered, then, what else your husband had said in that speech of his, the vainglorious words echoing in your ears: for the surest way to kill a Kremnoan is to destroy their pride, and the prince of terrors has more pride than most, so we must endeavor to strip him of it, systematically and fastidiously, until even a child can cut him down!
“Mydeimos,” you said, and then you sat on the floor, which was made of a cold stone that shot chills down the backs of your legs. Resting your elbows atop your thighs and your chin in your hands, you blinked up at him. “That is what he called you. ‘The prince of terrors.’”
“How unimaginative,” he said, and you suppressed a shudder at his glare, which was baleful and acute as it settled upon you. “My-deimos. Many-terrors. Yes, that is my name, though that ridiculous nickname is of his own invention. The Kremnoans would laugh if they heard it.”
“He said that he watched you tear out a man’s heart with your nails,” you said, and then you glanced at his lips, simultaneously and unconsciously wetting your own with the tip of your tongue. “And your teeth.”
He bared those very teeth, white and glinting, in a barking laugh — as much an expression of warning as it was humor. “My teeth! Your husband is one for fiction.”
“And — and he spoke of how he defeated you,” you said. At this, anything resembling mirth vanished from Mydeimos, and he grew curiously immobile — you almost thought that you had frightened him into the grips of memory, but then you realized that he was not frozen as much as he was waiting.
“Did he?” he said. “And what did your husband say of my defeat, dear lady?”
“He made you beg for mercy with his sword at your throat and his foot upon your inhuman — upon your heart,” you said, correcting yourself for the slip of the tongue, finding no merit in telling him about that particular detail. “And then he dragged you back here.”
The longer Mydeimos remained silent, the shallower your breaths became, a cold fist forming around your heart and squeezing, the muscles in your arms and legs contracting, protesting their inactivity. You needed to run. If you were wiser, if you had anything resembling self-preservation, you would run, would flee and hope that you were fast enough to make it to the stairs before he pounced.
You supposed you lacked both wisdom and self-preservation in spades, for you remained on the floor, peering up at him and praying that he could not read your mind, could not comprehend the depths of your thoughts.
“So that is his story,” he said. “I should’ve known he wouldn’t tell his people the truth.”
“He made it up,” you said rhetorically.
“You don’t sound surprised,” he noted.
“It is not — it is not —” You gnawed on the inside of your cheek, trying to come up with some way to circumvent your wedding vows, some way you could impress upon him what you were trying to say. “When we were wed, it was said that I loved him madly and completely, that I bawled to my father until he allowed me to come here.”
“Then it is not his first time dabbling in such falsehoods,” Mydeimos completed. When you nodded, he snorted. “You cannot speak ill of him, can you? Is it magic?”
“In the way of this land,” you said with a shrug.
“What an emperor,” he said. “So he can neither bed his wife nor win his battles without the use of tricks and obfuscation? Where I come from, they have a word for those like that, but as it is foul, I will not trouble you with hearing it.”
“What do you mean?” you said. “Ah, not by the foul word…that is, what tricks do you refer to? If the story he told is inaccurate, then how did he really defeat you? For surely he must have, or else you would not be here.”
“He did not defeat me,” he said. “Believe it or not, but that is the truth.”
“How?” you pressed, for you had already eschewed wisdom once and did not mind doing so again.
For a moment, it was as if the sun shone down upon him again. You saw him as he was on the day he met you, or perhaps even before — the prince of Kremnos, sleek and powerful and indomitable, red marks blooming in place of the scars he would never receive, eyes ablaze in his hollow face, hair as wild and untamed as his spirit.
“He surrendered,” Mydeimos said, scowling. “Our numbers were smaller, but Kremnoans have never cared for things like odds. We were winning, indubitably we were winning, and your husband knew it as well as we did. They attacked us in our own territory, fought us with our own weapons…how could we have lost? We would’ve wiped them out, but your husband and his men raised their white flags, and so we ceased to attack them.
“I went to parley with them, to negotiate the terms of their surrender. In a show of goodwill, I agreed to your husband’s request to come unaccompanied. His men were exhausted, and I found it honorable that he was putting their wellbeing first, so I ignored my instincts and the warnings of my advisors, going forth alone, leaving my armor and weapons as I was instructed to.
“That was my mistake. I should never have expected honor from a serpent, whose nature it is to bite. The surrender was a ploy; I was met by hordes of guards, each with a spear pointed at my heart. Even then, I fought. Do not think I met my end willingly, dear lady — I fought and killed as many men as he threw at me. I could’ve killed them all, I would’ve killed them all, but right as I was about to, he threw these chains at me from the corner where he hid. It should not have worked, his aim and the strength behind it were both lacking, but it was as if the metal had a mind of its own, and before I knew it I was bound.”
“As I told you, they are thrice-blessed,” you said. “Divine. They long to fulfill their purpose, and will do anything to that end. If it defies the laws of nature, well, what are those laws compared to the ones who wrote them? Those men were only a distraction. Once my husband received these chains, there was nothing which could’ve changed your fate.”
“What sort of a god favors a man who feigns surrender?” Mydeimos said. “What kind of deity loves perfidy?”
“I have often asked myself the same questions,” you admitted, half-expecting yourself to be unable and closing your eyes in relief when you weren't. “Why is it that he is the one they champion? What justice is there in that? He must have been a saint in his past life, to be treated as he is. A saint, or a martyr, or something like that. Something wonderful to the point of deserving so many miracles in this next iteration of his.”
You chose your speech carefully, injecting as much resentment into it as was needed to convey to the prince what you really meant, but not enough that you seized up into inaction. Not enough that you strained against the hold that your vows held over you.
You heard him exhale, and at this, you allowed your eyes to flutter open once more, peeking up at him and immediately wishing you hadn’t.
Whatever had briefly rallied in him, whatever fervor and fire he had briefly regained…it was gone. It was gone, leaving him fractured and bereft, forlorn instead of fearsome, prisoner instead of prince. Your husband had done that to him. Your husband had destroyed him, as he had destroyed you, and it was this reflection of your own fate which tore at you the most.
Breaking off a piece of bread, you dipped it in the long-cooled sauce pooled in the corner of the plate, and, without a word, held it out to him. He eyed it suspiciously, and for a moment you thought he might refuse it. The beginnings of an argument bubbled to the surface, but it never had the chance to take shape — before your lips could so much as part, he knelt across from you and took your proffered hand by the wrist.
Holding it in place, his thumb digging into your pulse like a reminder that he didn’t want this, didn’t want to accept your help, he used his free hand to swipe the bread from your palm. Then, his brows heavy, low over his eyes with mistrust and reluctance, he shoved it into his mouth and ate it.
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