Chapter Text
Sunset
Irene walks ahead, but it is the Thief behind her who leads the way. Out of sight and at an advantage, unsettling in his inscrutability— although, her memory supplies unhelpfully, he has always unsettled her, even from the depths of her dungeon, where he could not hide from her sight. Night is falling around them, but the sun was not yet in the middle of the sky when he stole into her palace—into her own chambers, like gods know how many times before—and spirited her away.
The Thief tells her to turn right, then, and Irene concentrates on not tripping on the irregular ground. Her dainty sandals were not meant for anything more challenging than the smooth floors of a palace, and she longs to take them off—except her bare feet are even less suited for such a hike.
Irene feels a burning need to see the Thief’s face. They have been walking for hours, and though he could have, should have killed her already, the fact that he hasn’t gives her no hope at all. She is afraid; much the worse, she is helpless.
She walked this path on foot before: once, in a dream, arm in arm with a goddess. Now, in the red light of the setting sun, Irene passes the two trees between which that same goddess had commanded a wooden plank be nailed. And there! Right next to it, the spot where her dogs tore into Eugenides, a lifetime ago.
The Thief says something then, but the wind catches it. When she glances back, he grimaces something that passes for a smirk, or smirks something that looks like a grimace. “I don’t expect them to think of looking for us here,” he repeats, his voice rough and unpleasant. A reply is unnecessary, and impossible—her mind is far away, reliving memories one by one. The dogs and guards on a mad chase, capturing the Thief; his previous taunts and his later begging; Attolia’s justice finally served. The Thief diminished, delirious, ruined.
Irene trips and falls ungracefully, further staining the rich fabric of her wedding apparel with dirt. She waits for Eugenides to react, but he offers neither mockery nor help. Maybe he thinks that if he reaches with his remaining hand, she will bite it clean off his wrist.
But he’s frowning; surely this place affects him more than it affects her.
The thought brings little comfort. She gets up, and they march on.
Sunrise
Irene trips and falls again right before sunrise; this time, the tie in her sandal snaps. She sits there on the ground, exhausted and hungry, contemplating the finely worked leather cords like the last piece of an impossible puzzle.
“A little more, just across the bridge, then we stop,” says Eugenides, sounding exhausted too.
Irene shakes her head. She sees the cliffside, hears the river raging below, can spot the bridge in the near distance, but her legs and feet pulsate with pain. The last thing she ate was some old, hard traveling bread Eugenides shared with her, years and years ago.
“Your Majesty,” Eugenides says, not asking.
“Pointless,” she whispers, closing her eyes. “You know my groom is looking for me. My dogs will pick up the scent.”
“Don’t count on it,” he says grimly.
Irene feels the sting of those words through the numbness of exhaustion. She wonders if Eugenides poisoned her hunting dogs, and if so, if he did it out of pure pragmatism, or with the pleasure of putting down the animals who once hunted him like prey. What does it look like, the Thief’s revenge?
She eyes the cliff edge beyond which the river runs.
“I wouldn’t jump if I were you. It’s only rocks down there.”
“Why does it matter how I die?”
“Who said anything about you dying?”
She stays where she is, eyes closed, hand flying to the stinging spot in her neck where his blade nicked the skin, many hours earlier.
“Is that not what you came to do?” Irene asks him. “Why this farce? Everyone will know it was you, anyway.”
“Get up, Your Majesty.”
“You’re not taking me to Eddis. This is the Seperchia. Are you selling me to Sounis?”
“No. Get up.”
The Thief looks angry now. It is a welcome change: throughout this trek he kept his composure, his blank face a mirror of her own whenever she glanced at it. But before that, when he had put a knife to her neck; when she had locked eyes with him in the mirror for a moment; when she had tipped her head back, baring her neck to him… then his eyes had turned huge, round and bright like a boy’s.
“Why didn’t you kill me before? In my bedroom?” Irene finally asks.
When she glances at Eugenides again, he’s frowning fiercely. It makes her angry, too. Part of her had been expecting an attempt on her life since news of his recovery. These feelings had doubled after his feint on Ephrata, tripled once she got engaged to the Mede ambassador. When guests started to arrive; when she saw her own guard flanked by soldiers of the Mede, when Sounis sued for peace; when flowers, real and silken, started arriving in laden carts, sent by the future emperor of the Mede—her brother-in-law-to-be—to be woven into decorative garlands and strewn all around the city, in celebration of such an auspicious marriage. Each of these events added a twist to the knot of in her gut. Her menses came early, which her attendants took for a good omen. When the day of the wedding finally arrived, by the time they had bathed, perfumed, dressed and groomed her, Irene was choking on empty air. A reprieve, then, to run off to the silence of her chambers where she could sit and think and scheme. But even in the solitude of her bedroom, her thoughts would not obey.
When the blade—her own, she had time to notice—came to rest cold against her neck, setting off goosebumps like the sudden spring bursting throughout the fields…the knot untied, and her heart became so light it fluttered like a bird in her ribcage. Once your fears become reality, what more need is there to fear?
“Did you think it was too easy for me, to simply die?” Irene asks, and the Thief is truly scowling now, his mouth twisting with anger. “Or could it be you lost your nerve?” She taunts.
“Did you lose yours?” he snaps back, “To give up your life like that? To not even—not even argue? Fight? Negotiate? You had another knife at hand in your drawer!”
Shock overwhelms Irene for a moment before indignation takes over. “You had me. What was the point of struggling?”
“Where there’s life, there’s hope, Your Majesty,” is his sardonic reply, and for a moment anger possesses her beyond all self-control: she throws the useless sandal at him. Eugenides flinches, so much more dramatic than her attack warrants that, at first, she is sure the Thief is just mocking her. But he does not laugh. Rather he straightens his posture and picks up the sandal, which he throws back—not to attack her, but for her to catch.
She does catch it, puzzled, and belatedly considers the possibility that her provocation had hit her mark. That he came to kill, and had indeed lost his nerve. He’s a liar, and much too malicious and clever besides, but his expression of shock in the mirror had been no lie.
Silently, he points again towards the bridge. Impossibly, she gets up and follows his directions, half barefoot.
“Where are you taking me?” she tries again. It’s no use; Irene begins to wonder if he even knows. Eugenides has to be aware that he's ruining his own queen’s plan, and giving the Mede exactly what he wants. Great wars have been fought for abducted brides before.
Midday
The sun is high in the sky when they arrive at a small, derelict temple overgrown with moss and grass. The entrance is almost entirely covered by thick hanging vines, an ancient fallen trunk, and years of accumulated debris; right by the western wall, a dark stream of miraculously fresh water.
Legs aflame with exhaustion, Irene bends to drink, then watches as the ripples smooth out on the reflexive surface. The face staring back at her is almost grotesque, with the ruined bridal ornaments and half-undone braids, and she cannot help musing on how she was too young the first time she wore the garments of a bride, and how now she’s too old.
She starts when she hears Eugenides right behind her, much closer than she thought. He says the water is too shallow for her to try anything. He doesn’t touch her.
“Are you taking me to your queen or not? Am I to be a prisoner?”
He does not look at her and does not reply, but instead asks, “Do you really want to marry that Mede?”
“How can you ask me that, when you put me into this corner yourself?”
He finally raises his eyes at her, and the confusion on his face rouses Irene’s anger again.
“Your little feint at Ephrata? To whom else did you think I would turn?”
Once more, Eugenides’s reply is infuriating silence.
“You must have known I would not surrender. ‘Where there’s life, there’s hope’—were those not your words just now?”
“You were supposed to take the boat. I was waiting for you there, to steal you.”
Irene waits a long time for him to go on. When he doesn’t, she asks, “How is that any different from now?”
He looks frustrated, as if it is the first time one of his plans has gone awry.
At last they go inside the temple, pushing aside vines like thick curtains, only to find the ruined interior flooded with sunlight. The stony remains of the collapsed roof are the closest thing to a seat that they can find, and they sit side by side, sharing the meager shade. There’s no longer a place for the fire to burn, nor any wood anywhere inside; every inch of surface is covered in abandoned nests, plants, little animal bones. The sense of displacement and intrusion is immense, and Irene has no idea where she is. Eugenides offers her half of what is left of his disgusting bread, so hard by now that she needs to hold it in her mouth awhile to soften it before it can be chewed, and yet Irene could almost weep with relief. She has never felt this hungry before.
“I’ll take you somewhere. To Ferria, if you want.”
“If I want?”
They eye each other.
“You were marrying him—for survival, then? Just for that?”
His question gets the silence it deserves for answer.
“Would you marry me, then?”
Now she can’t help a strangled, mirthless laugh that escapes her throat like a croak, like a cough, like a gasp. Eugenides frowns and finally averts his eyes. She thinks he might be blushing.
“Why? So you can have revenge? Control my country and me?”
“Is that what marriage is?”
“You know it is. For women and queens it is.” He shakes his head in denial, and she grows angry. “Then why haven’t you and Eddis married?”
It’s his turn to stare, at first confused, then flustered. It makes her even angrier. He couldn’t possibly have thought the rumors hadn’t reached Attolia. They weren’t flaunting their affair, true, but neither did they sound too worried over keeping it secret.
“Did you think I was in love with Nahuseresh? You must think me very stupid. No one marries a queen for love,” Irene says, considering whether he is trying to fool her, or worse, if the insult was sincerely meant. “If you had me first in your power, and only proposed to me afterwards, that would merely change the usual order of things. That is the only difference between you and my barons, or you and Nahuseresh—”
She’s startled when Eugenides rises abruptly and kicks a small rock with more violence than Irene has seen him do anything yet. He paces, fuming, then leaves.
Irene stares after him, shock adding to her offended pride. She will not stoop to going after her own captor like a well-trained slave; instead, she merely sits and waits.
The light has changed by the time Irene awakes, feeling watched. When she looks up, the Thief has his back to her. He turns, pauses, then offers a bundle—his own cloak, she realizes—with some fruit, nuts, olives, things she has not seen on their trek so far. Now she sees he has been busy cutting up some fruit—not very well, but surprisingly neat for a one-handed man. She wonders how far he paced to spare them both of his anger.
She doesn’t know how long she slept for, but the ache in her bones and in her gut is still the same. She decides to eat as slowly as possible—maybe to give her soldiers time to find her.
Her soldiers, and her groom.
She eats.
“I don’t know what to do,” Eugenides announces.
Irene’s exhaustion doubles.
What was your reason for sparing me? Irene wants to ask again, but does not dare. The Thief’s eyes travel, slowly but surely, from the juice dripping off the edge of his knife up to her eyes, like he heard her question anyway. She masks a sudden shiver by sharply turning back to her food, focusing on a dusty pomegranate. When she risks another glance, she finds his gaze remains steady.
Very deliberately, Eugenides stretches his arm towards her, his only hand grasping the knife by the blade, offering her the handle. Thick juice stains the metal as well as his naked fingers, flowing in lazy ropes down the skin of his hand to drip off his wrist in hypnotizingly regular intervals: drip-drip, drip-drip.
Irene looks up, feeling sick. The expression on his face makes her sicker.
Next she knows, his sticky hand is on her back, rubbing softly through the fabric as she bends over to the side and throws up her meager lunch. Her own hand grasps his forearm right where it is covered by the hook sleeve. His face is closer than it has ever been, so that she can’t escape his inane apologies no matter how much she wants to. “I’m sorry,” he says frantically, revoltingly, “I must have picked something bad, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
They end up back on the stream outside, and instead of kneeling down to drink, Irene just wades into the water. It reaches up only to her knees, so she sits down, for once giving up on looking dignified, and submerges herself fully. It turns out Eugenides was wrong. The stream is shallow, yes, but definitely deep enough to drown a person in.
The cold water is pleasant against her sore limbs. Irene sits up and proceeds to undo her hair, the style ruined beyond ridiculous. The hand she uses to wipe her face comes back smeared black and red from whatever face paint still remains; she wipes it all off on the hem of her skirts, already much soiled. The cool water revives her a little, and she bends to drink in long gulps until the bad taste washes away completely. When she finally cannot not stall any longer, she looks at the Thief, who remains there as if planted on the margin, staring at her.
Irene has only ever considered the Thief as either a pawn of Eddis, or a player of his own accord. Still, less practical thoughts of him would sneak up on her just like he himself used to, in her palace, and assault her at night. In those moments she didn’t see a skilled subject of Eddis, nor the threat he posed; she saw his hunched, fevered, delirious form, praying over and over again to the same gods that had betrayed him. Emotions she had mastered long ago would riot, then, bringing tears, nightmares—all sorts of humiliating symptoms of feeling. In the dark, she indulged in them—or had she merely been powerless to do otherwise?
Now she looks at him and sees a man in the outline of his shoulders, in the open features of his face. Still wretched, she thinks when the glint of his hook catches her eye, but a man nonetheless, with none of that sense of humor that had offended her pride so much before. No: she killed that boy herself.
In this sense, his revenge can never be complete. Maybe that is what aggravates him, after all—she has no girlish joy left that he can destroy.
Irene glances at his hook again. Instinctively, he hides it behind his back, a look of alarm on his face. Then he brings it back out, doing the worst impression of casualness she has ever seen.
Then he finally makes his mind, and comes to sit close to the margin.
“I cannot let you go back,” Eugenides begins again, looking at the ground, “That is essential. The Mede—they can’t have Attolia. They can’t have this foothold.”
“Are you worried for Eddis?”
He nods. Irene looks ahead, and betrays nothing.
“Then are you going to kill me?”
She can’t tell if her question embarrasses him or simply tries his patience. “You know I won’t,” he snaps for the second time that day, “stop asking.”
Her eyebrows shoot up, but he merely goes on, saying, “We cannot stay here either, we have to move. I’ll take you to Eddis—in secret. There my cousin can decide what to do. But I cannot let you give Attolia to the Mede,” he repeats.
“I am not giving Attolia to anyone,” Irene hisses.
“He’ll take it anyway.”
“Let him try.”
“You are letting him try!”
“And you speak like you haven’t pushed me into this corner yourself,” Irene reminds him again, coolly. She expects him to get up and kick a rock or pace again, but instead he just deflates, shrugs, takes a deep unhappy sigh.
“I have been fate’s fool before,” Eugenides finally replies, as if she doesn’t know. “It amuses the gods to see men make plans, my grandfather told me once.”
“My father,” Irene says, and has to pause for a moment. “My father used to say the same.”
Evening
Eugenides goes away again and returns later with more olives and fruit, but also a loaf of yet more old, hard bread, and some greasy salted fish. By then Irene has eaten all the remaining fruit, massaged her sore calves and feet, and managed a fix for her broken sandal. Tearing the fabric of her skirts, she means to make bandages for her feet where the chafing leather has broken the skin, for when she next slips into her sandals to march again. For now, though, she remains barefoot.
She must look altogether very strange. Eugenides takes in her appearance when he joins her back inside the temple, where the mossy debris has turned orange and pink in the light of sunset, and she braces for mockery that never comes.
Eying the strange assortment of foods, Irene decides against asking its origin; hunger is a forbidding adversary, able to produce the most humiliating and misplaced feelings of gratitude. She wonders what will happen to the food prepared for the foiled feast. What will the kitchen staff do when the news of her abduction reaches them? It hadn’t occurred to her to worry about that all those years ago, on the wedding she had ruined herself.
The Thief is silent. She knows he is trying to plan the rest of this escape. She leaves him to it, too exhausted to plot herself, and is about to head into the carcass of the temple to find sleep again when Eugenides catches her eye and shakes his head. He takes her outside to a shaded area in the overgrown vegetation among the trees outside, not too far. The tall grass on that particular spot is bent, as if it has been stomped on, in the manner peasants do when sleeping out on the field. Eugenides spreads his cloak on top of the abused leaves and Irene winces internally, but to her surprise, the grass feels soft, almost gentle under the fabric when she finally lies down. The night is thankfully warm, only disturbed by the gentlest breeze. She yawns almost immediately.
“You’re not sleeping?” Irene asks between more yawns, somehow not thinking too hard about sharing this makeshift bedding with the Thief of Eddis. At another time, Irene might be surprised by her own ease of mind in that moment, but she has truly come to believe her life is not in any immediate danger—either that, or Eugenides is the muse of comedy himself, acting out the most puzzling and intricate farce for the benefit of the gods alone.
He gives her a calculating look, maybe thinking similar thoughts, and shakes his head. “Not now,” he says cooly, but there is a hint of color on his face that makes Irene wonder if he’s missing his usual sleeping arrangements in Eddis, where he’s been rumored to share the bed of another queen.
She could catch him by surprise. She could make cow-eyes at him and fool him like she fooled Nahuseresh once, Irene thinks unprompted, and then can’t help laughing at her own folly. To seduce the man she maimed! Not even Helen—either the kind one in Eddis or the beautiful one in the songs—could pull it off.
Eugenides eyes her, surprised and curious at her outburst, but she ignores him. She desperately needs to rest, and in the morning she will start putting together a plan for when she reaches Eddis. Relius must have told her the name of dissident barons at some point, she’s sure. Not even bright Helen could be unanimous. Could she? And Eddis has taken Mede gold before, in the distant past. There is much to think of. I’ve been through worse, Irene tells herself, and falls asleep to the sound of the stream, the crickets, and the Thief pacing nearby.
It feels almost companionable.
Night
It is the middle of the night when Irene wakes up from a dreamless sleep to find the Thief lying wide-awake next to her, staring straight at her face.
She starts, he starts back. Somehow, the genuine surprise in his eyes calms her down. He’s lying very still on his side just like she is, his good hand’s arm under his cheek, cradling his head. The position makes it look like he might have been asleep, but he seems too alert for that.
She waits for him to say something, but he doesn’t. Maybe he’s also waiting for her, but she has nothing to say. Her mind is blank, incoherent. She knows, in her heart of hearts, that she will regret any word that escapes her lips tonight.
Time passes, unaccounted and unaccountable. Their gazes are locked still and spell-bound. It is the strangest feeling.
Overhead, a cloud covers the moon like a garment.
The breeze carries a leaf that lands on Eugenides’s temple, next to his right eye, making him blink. As deliberately as unthinkingly, Irene reaches to brush it off.
Eugenides starts again—but more violent, his body convulsing in one quick movement. His free hand flies up to stop hers—except it’s not a hand anymore, it’s a hook, cool and sharp: it cuts her skin.
She gasps and yanks her hand back. The movement is aborted by Eugenides, his one remaining hand lashing like a snake to grasp her wrist despite the odd angle. She is afraid of him, then.
But the restless clouds are still moving aloft, and the moonlight shines pale on his face, and Irene sees his own fear.
It is enough to stop her again, this uncanny mirror.
Right when her arm starts to ache from the awkward position, Eugenides moves along with the shadows. He brings her bleeding hand to his cheek, so cautious and deliberate, inhumanly slow.
How can it take so long for their hands to cross such a short distance?
At the first moment of contact, he shudders again. How he tenses! How he relaxes; how his gaze remains inexorably trained on her. She keeps her hand right there, where he placed it so carefully. They breathe at the same speed; it might be the same breath animating their lungs.
The rest of the evening blurs in her consciousness. There is his hand on the lobe of her ear, over the ruby of the earring he had once mocked her with; she had, on a whim, removed the royal bees and put on these earrings on the afternoon before, after donning her bridal attire. The way they shone in the mirror, in sharp contrast against the Attolian colors of her garments, had been enticing to the eye. Red had ever been her color.
He touches the rock in its casing now, and the soft skin where it rests. It is the strangest caress.
Other impossible touches follow. There is her thumb brushing the scar on his cheek that she can feel, but not see. There are knuckles tracing her jaw, then his hand on her neck, over the small cut he had made earlier there with her own knife. There is the way her skin breaks into goosebumps at that touch, the way her breath becomes unsteady—as unsteady as his. They’re so close. If there was light, she would be able to see her reflection in his eyes. She comes closer, just to see, and he mirrors her implicitly.
There is skin, then, and the taste of blood when her lips brush his cheek. It is her blood, escaped from the cut he’s just inflicted on her wrist. There is the pungent smell of sweat, the bitter, salty impression it leaves on her hungry tongue, and the sourness of his breath when his mouth finds her own. There are sounds, but no words, and movement, but no audience, and then pleasure, and also—like everything else in her life—pain.
But the pain passes.
Later, that night, they wake up to the noise of boots on concrete. Irene opens her eyes to see soldiers with their torches entering the temple, sweeping the surroundings. Behind her, Eugenides is tense like a bowstring. The thought of calling out to the men occurs to her only vaguely, like in a half-remembered dream, and dissipates entirely when she notices their uniforms: they are not of her own guard, but her groom’s. She closes her eyes, and listens to the sounds of their methodical search—no sound of dogs barking, she notes—for what seems like a long time, until it fades into the hum of the woods around them.
Then she turns around, and finds Eugenides’s mouth again.