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When Mydei wakes up at entry hour, it’s to thirty texts and ten missed calls, all from Phainon. Bleary eyed, he stares at his teleslate for a long moment before setting it face down on his nightstand once more. He groans into his pillow, lies there for another long moment, and then blindly reaches for his teleslate. A few taps later, he presses it to his ear.
“Mydei,” Phainon’s voice says, somehow managing to slur the consonants. “Mydei you… you wouldn’t—woah. Woah. Everything is—is—” A raucous round of laughter drowns out Phainon’s voice. He’s at a bar. Or, rather, he was.
This is so annoying.
“Mydei,” Phainon says again. “You wouldn’t be… belieeeve—” He stretches the word out like it’s some kind of competition. “Cipher just—Cipher just told me the craziest—it’s so—it’s really, um. It’s crazy. I’m—I’m—” The message stops.
Mydei pulls his teleslate from his ear to stare at it and the thirty-second long message. It’s not the first time Cipher has dragged Phainon to an ouzeri to get him blackout drunk. It’s not the first time Phainon has left him a drunken, rambling message while on such an excursion. It is, however, mildly infuriating that now Mydei will have to drag a hungover Phainon out of bed and onto the practice pitch for their spar. He could take the day off and find a different sparring partner, but that would do them both a disservice. And anyway, no one can match him the way Phainon can, so a workout without Phainon is a waste of his time.
Resigning himself to the inevitable, Mydei drags himself out of bed and into his shower. The cold water hits him like a dromas, giving him the kick he needs to wake up the rest of the way. He’s dressed for a spar no more than five minutes later, and then he’s out the door, stalking through the halls of the Marmoreal Palace, annoyed. Everyone who’s already out and about at this horrific hour gives him one look and steps out of his way. Mydei is not by nature an early riser, and he’s found that leaning into his irritability spares him the greetings of well-meaning Okhemans who will try to have lengthy conversations with him before he’s even eaten. The only one who gets that much of his time is Phainon, and only then because Phainon swings his sword alongside his mouth.
By the time he reaches Phainon’s door, he’s evaded unnecessary pleasantries with at least five people and worked himself into a pique. He bangs the back of his gauntleted hand on the door, gives it thirty seconds, and then tries to open it. He is, utterly unsurprisingly, unsuccessful.
Uttering a mild oath, he removes one gauntlet, pulls out his teleslate, and waves it in front of the door. That’s enough to release the lock—he’d insisted Phainon give him access after the first time Cipher got him hammered—and opens the door. Mydei invites himself into Phainon’s suite, passing through the living space and entering the bedroom. Where Phainon’s bed is made and unslept in. The whole space is a mess, which isn’t unusual, but the bed gives Mydei considerable pause.
With a heavy sigh, he turns to his teleslate again, pulls up Phainon’s information, and hits call. It rings, rings, rings, and then goes to voicemail. He doesn’t bother leaving one, hanging up to send a quick text: Call me. Then he opens his contacts, finds Cipher’s number, and dials her.
He’s a little surprised when the line connects. He’s less surprised when Cipher greets him with a muffled croak.
“Where are you?” he asks without preamble.
“Bed?”
“You sound uncertain.” He’s not amused.
She makes a pathetic noise, shuffles around, and then says, “Bed.”
“Stay there,” he tells her, and he hangs up.
Cipher, naturally, lives on the other side of the Marmoreal Palace, which requires him to glare his way out of several more unnecessary conversations on the journey to her door. When he arrives, he’s in a foul mood, and he knocks with too much force and absolutely no consideration for the state he’s sure she’s in.
She opens the door a minute later, green around the edges in a way that is decidedly not healthy, and groans up at him in greeting.
“Where did you put Phainon last night?” he asks.
“And a happy entry hour to you, too,” she replies, sagging against the threshold. “Am I his keeper?”
He just looks at her.
She sighs heavily, pressing a hand to her head and squinting against the light pouring into hallway. “I… I don’t know.” Before he can tell her to do better, she holds up that same hand, winces when the light hits her face, and shades her eyes once more. “Mydei, we had a lot to drink last night.” She blanches, clutches at her belly, and abruptly disappears into her bedroom with an alacrity that is unsurprising given the situation.
He does her the service of not following her, just catches her door with his foot, and waits patiently for her to finish her business.
When she eventually returns, she’s a little less green but considerably more miserable.
“Better?” he asks.
“No.” She pushes her hair out of her face and hangs in the shadows of her room where the light can’t reach her. “By all that’s good and holy—” He snorts. She ignores him. “—I have no idea where he is. I don’t remember getting back at all. I don’t remember… Wait.” He waits. “Wait, we… I think we swung by the dromas stables?”
He stares at her. “The dromas stables?”
She offers him a pathetic shrug. “All I can remember is the smell.” Her face goes white again. This time when she flees to the bathroom, he steps out of her room and lets the door slide shut, sparing her.
With his path charted for him, he sets off in the direction of the dromas stables.
“If he slept there,” he mutters, “I will kill him myself.” The last thing he wants is to spar with a hungover Phainon who also smells like redsoil and dromas shit.
He’s generally more awake by the time he makes it to the stables, which means he’s not feeling quite as irascible. It’s no one’s fault but Phainon’s that he’s here, and he doesn’t intend to take out his irritation on anyone else.
Except the stables are a mess of people, every hand crowded around a dromas Mydei’s pretty sure he’s never seen before. It’s hard to tell, of course. Aside from Kokopo, most of them look the same to him; he’s no dromasmaster who can tell them apart a glance like Ctesias can. And Ctesias himself is there in the mix. Mydei catches glimpses of him through the crowd of hands, all trying in some capacity to get a lasso around the dromas’s neck.
The dromas in question rears back, bugling with alarm, and Mydei figures that Phainon definitely hasn’t been able to sleep through any of this, so he edges around the crowd, trying not to bother them while they deal with their very upset dromas. He passes by Kokopo, who watches the upset dromas with an unmistakable air of disdain, and pats his friend on the leg. Kokopo offers a grumbling hello, and that catches the other dromas’s attention.
As it backs away from the hands closing in around it, it looks at Mydei. Mydei looks back at it. And its entire disposition changes. Its unhappy rumblings transform into delighted cries as it drops its head, pushes through the crowd, and tromps over to Mydei.
Mydei, who does just fine with animals, but not this kind of fine, freezes.
The dromas pushes its head directly into Mydei’s stomach, nearly lifting him off his feet, and Mydei stumbles back, stunned and not entirely sure what he should be doing. Bracing his hands on the dromas’s snout, he regains his footing, sets his feet into the earth so he can’t be pushed further back, and scans the crowd urgently for Ctesias.
Ctesias, bless him, appears seconds later. “My lord,” he says, sounding strained. “I’m so—we’re actually—this is so embarrassing.” Mydei stares at him as the dromas, no longer upset about the stable hands, nuzzles into his stomach. The creature makes a noise not unlike a cat’s purr, rattling Mydei’s bones. “Oh,” Ctesias says, staring not at Mydei in return but at the dromas. “Huh. He likes you.”
Pushing gently, trying to dislodge the dromas, Mydei gives Ctesias a tense sort of smile. “Apparently. Why are you embarrassed?”
“Aside from you getting accosted by one of my—well.” Ctesias rubs the back of his head. “That’s just the thing. He’s not one of my dromases.”
Mydei lifts a brow. “I don’t follow.”
“He just,” Ctesias says as stable hands approach from the sides, lassos at the ready, “appeared out of nowhere with entry hour’s arrival.”
Mydei’s brow climbs higher. “Surely a traveler brought him.”
“Maybe,” Ctesias says. “But that means someone—” He keeps his gaze very deliberately on Mydei’s face even though Mydei can tell he wants to give his hands pointed looks. “—didn’t do their job last night. So, now, we have a random dromas in our stables and—” He gestures Mydei to take a step back.
Mydei does so.
A lasso gets around the dromas’s nose, and the dromas promptly makes that everyone else’s problem. He rears back, taking two stable hands off the ground. They shout, which is fair, and Mydei rushes forward to catch one before she can land on her ass. She gives him a relieved little smile and hops out of his hold as soon as she’s able, her companions having caught the other airborne hand.
The dromas remains furious. Now, he’s lashing his head back and forth, transforming that rope into a dangerous whip, and Mydei, realizing he’s not going to find Phainon until this is dealt with, lunges forward. He grabs the end of the whipping lead, yanking hard to pull the dromas’s head down, down, until their eyes are level.
It—he—bugles without much shame.
Mydei scowls. “Enough,” he says.
The dromas grumbles, shakes the lasso off his nose, and nuzzles into Mydei’s stomach again.
He sighs. The dromas sighs. Funny how the same noise can sound so very different.
Ctesias clicks his tongue. “He really likes you,” he observes, his eyes narrowed with no small amount of suspicion.
“I did not sneak a dromas into your stables last night,” Mydei says quickly.
“No,” Ctesias agrees. “That’s something Lady Cifera would do, not you, sir.”
“Speaking of Cipher—” He grunts as the dromas nudges him with no small amount of purposeful intent, looking up at him with big, watery eyes. With plaintive eyes. He sets his hand on the dromas’s head and scratches, and the dromas, to his surprise, sinks to the ground, his tail lashing over hardpacked dirt. Huh. He turns back to Ctesias. “Speaking of Cipher. Did you see her or Phainon last night?”
“Lord Phainon?” Ctesias scratches his chin. “I didn’t, but I can ask my people once we get the dromas safely into a pen.” The dromas, whose eyes had drifted shut, makes a sound that is unmistakably a warning growl. “Or not,” Ctesias ventures, watching the beast. The dromas whuffles, wriggles against the ground as though he can burrow into it, and presses his head into Mydei’s hand. “I’m afraid, Lord Mydeidmos—” He really wishes they wouldn’t call him that. “—that we may need your help with this particular creature.”
Thirty minutes later, they’ve figured out the dromas won’t do anything if Mydei isn’t the one asking it of him. They’ve learned, too, that he’s an irritable little shit that bites when anyone else gets too close but is perfectly content when Mydei smacks him lightly on the nose. When Mydei tries to leave the stables, the dromas tries to follow. When Mydei sits, the dromas sits. He won’t accept food from anyone else but happily eats whatever Mydei offers.
He’s small for an adult male—Ctesias calls him a runt at one point, and he seems to take offense to that—and plainly colored: blue on the back, white on the belly. But his horns shimmer with an iridescent gold. “Quite unusual,” Ctesias observes. “You may have acquired a new dromas for yourself, my lord,” he adds.
Mydei scowls. “What use have I for a second dromas when Kokopo—” The dromas bellows, and Mydei’s scowl deepens. “Kokopo is—” Another angry bellow. He resists the urge to grab the dromas by the face and scold him; he’s smart enough to have picked up on quite a bit, but he’s still an animal, and yelling won’t help. Mydei pinches the bridge of his nose, having removed his gauntlets earlier. “If he must be registered in someone’s name, mine is acceptable.”
“And how should we call him?” Ctesias asks.
Mydei flicks an irritable glance at the dromas, who has settled once more to much on a redsoil brick. The only name that comes to mind is that of an old Kremnoan hero’s warhorse, but he supposes it’s better than nothing. “Bucephalus,” he says.
The reference is clearly lost on Ctesias. “A strong name,” he replies, nodding sagely but without comprehension. “If you can convince him to stay, we’ll take care of him for you.”
Mydei eyes Bucephalus. Bucephalus glances at him briefly before returning to his brick. “I suspect that will prove difficult.”
“Well. You can’t very well drag him around town,” Ctesias says.
As it turns out, Mydei very well can drag a dromas around town with him. Bucephalus happily accepts a lead from Mydei’s hand, all but shoving his head through into the collar Mydei offers him, and he trots happily after Mydei as Mydei leads him in circles around the stable space. In the span of another thirty minutes, as though eager to prove he’s not a menace to society, Bucephalus is sitting, staying, and laying down on command. Ctesias reluctantly agrees to let Mydei and Bucephalus out of the stables, and Mydei leads the great beast through the broader streets of Okhema.
“I would leave him missing if I could,” Mydei is saying. Bucephalus gives an unimpressed bleat. “However, I’m not going to just let one of the most important men in the world vanish overnight for no reason.”
Bucephalus chortles like this is a joke, like he understands humor, and Mydei glares at him.
“Generally, I’d say Phainon couldn’t be kidnapped, but if he was as drunk as Cipher implied, it’s possible. Or he’s lying half dead in a ditch somewhere, hungover and miserable. As he deserves.” Another bleat. Without much thought, Mydei reaches up and scratches beneath Bucephalus’s chin. “He needs to be found regardless.” Mydei’s gaze swings over the plaza they’re passing through and lands on a line of artists drawing not just the plaza itself but portraits of the people passing through.
And that’s how Mydei finds himself bent over a portrait artist’s shoulder with a dromas bent over his own shoulder, offering instruction on how to render Phainon’s face. “No, his eyes are softer,” he says, and the artist tries again. “His jaw is stronger, and his smile… warmer.” Bucephalus lips at Mydei’s shoulder, and Mydei pushes his face away. “Don’t drool on the canvas.”
The artist jumps, turning toward Mydei.
“Not you,” he says quickly—to the artist. As though sensing he’s being attacked, Bucephalus grumbles. Noisily. Directly in Mydei’s ear. Mydei shoves his face away again. “Beast,” he mutters, returning his attention to the artist’s rendering.
They go through at least ten attempts before the artist creates something Mydei is pleased with. “Can you do ten more just like it?” he asks, and the artist regards him with a funny sort of look on his deeply lined face.
“With respect,” he says, drawing out the words slowly with the air of someone who isn’t particularly worried he might offend but, rather, who has been upon greatly, “I do think all of Okhema is familiar with the Deliverer’s face. What need have you for hand-drawn posters?”
Mydei startles. All at once, he realizes how silly this is. He has photos of Phainon—somewhere, he’s sure, for Phainon has taken numerous selfies using Mydei’s very own teleslate—and he could simply have those printed. He clears his throat. “Is there anything wrong with encouraging the economy?” he asks, snatching the sheet of paper as it’s offered to him. He rolls it up and offers the artist a generous number of coins in exchange. “Thank you,” he says, a little stiff, and, refusing to feel embarrassed, strides away.
Bucephalus gives the artist a parting warble before following after Mydei on tromping feet.
“Right,” Mydei says, partially to himself, and he turns and slips the rolled-up paper into one of Bucephalus’s saddle bags. “Putting up posters would be foolish, anyway. We don’t want the city to know what’s going on.” The dromas looks at him and then pointedly back at the artist, as if he can understand, and Mydei rolls his eyes. “The man has better things to do than gossip about Phainon. Maybe he’s—” He makes a vague gesture, affecting an air of disgust. “—having brunch. He does that. Brunch.”
At that, Bucephalus hops from one front foot to the other, pounding loudly against the street.
Hissing, Mydei tugs on his lead until he stops. “Enough of that! You’ll wake the dead.”
Bucephalus chortles.
“Come on, this way. There’s a meze nearby he likes.” Mydei scowls. “Cheap food and cheaper drinks.” But the place is done up with shafts of golden wheat. Mydei can understand—quietly, privately—the appeal of such a place. A place that reminds someone of home.
But when he reaches the meze, his stomach growling, and the owner comes out to greet him, Phainon isn’t there. The owner apologizes profusely, to the point that Mydei thinks she’ll offer to find Phainon for him. She doesn’t, he’s grateful, she retreats into her restaurant, and he turns to the dromas sniffing one of her decorative planters.
“If you eat that,” he says to Bucephalus.
Bucephalus jerks back and ducks his head as though chagrined. Which he is not because he is an animal and animals don’t experience human emotions. He still looks embarrassed to have been caught.
“He has said Dawnmaker needs sharpening,” Mydei says abruptly, turning down another broad boulevard. “Let us visit Chartonus. Perhaps he’s less hungover and actually being responsible for—” A strange premonition skates down Mydei’s spine, and he turns around just in time to see Bucephalus extend his neck and delicately grab a whole pomegranate off a fruit stand.
The vendor is, understandably, too stunned to react. Mydei, who prides himself on his short reaction time, is also stunned, and he stands there, boggled, as Bucephalus freezes in place. Wide dromas eyes roll from Mydei to the vendor and back again.
“Bucephalus,” Mydei growls.
Slowly, the dromas puts the pomegranate down. Even more slowly, he withdraws his head from the stall.
Flat teeth marks line the circumference of the fruit, and Mydei heaves a beleaguered sigh. He reaches into one of the pouches on his belt, removes his teleslate, and approaches the man behind the fruit stand. “How much for the pomegranate?” he asks.
The man now stares at him, just as stunned as before, perhaps more so. “My lord, I cannot possibly ask—”
“I am,” Mydei says, as politely as he can when he’s cutting the other man off. “I am asking. Please. How much?”
So they spend the next five minutes haggling, and then they have to haggle five minutes more when they realize Bucephalus has eaten a small display plant for its soil. In the end, Mydei walks away with the fig plant—not that he knows what he’ll do with it, since it’s half eaten and covered in dromas spit—and the pomegranate—also covered in dromas spit. The latter, at least, he can carve into as they walk, and he does, eating his meager breakfast and keeping Bucephalus on a much shorter leash. The dromas doesn’t seem to mind; he keeps bending down and lipping Mydei’s shoulder as they walk.
It’s not until Bucephalus nudges him hard enough to make him stumble that he, catching himself, looks back at the dromas. “Can I help you?” he demands.
Bucephalus shimmies up to a nearby bench, as close as his bulk will allow, displacing several annoyed Okhemans, and then plops himself down, half in the street. He puts his head on the bench and stares at Mydei.
“So not only are you the smallest adult dromas I’ve ever seen—” Bucephalus’s head shoots up and he makes a short, upset barking noise. “—but you’re also the laziest.” Mydei sits down anyway, taking the opportunity to find one of the rags he uses to clean his gauntlets to use on his knife. The remains of the pomegranate he tosses into another of Bucephalus’s saddle bags.
The dromas bleats at him, barking as though he’s arguing, and Mydei ignores him to sag against the wall at his back. He hasn’t been up for particularly long, and they’ve hardly been walking much, but something weighs on him.
“What if he’s hurt?” he asks softly, turning toward the dromas.
Bucephalus falls silent and rests his chin on Mydei’s thigh.
Absently, Mydei runs his hand over Bucephalus’s head, between his shimmering, golden horns. “What if Cipher left him alone, and he got hurt?” He closes his eyes and tips back his head. “It’ll be his own damn fault,” he adds quickly, gruffly, despite the squeezing of his heart. “Phainon can take care of himself.” But he doesn’t. Phainon has never taken much care of himself, has always thrown himself into stupid, idiotic competitions and dangerous, life-threatening situations for other people. “Self-sacrificing idiot.”
A little growl catches in Bucephalus’s throat, and Mydei thumbs the jut of his eyebrow, soothing him.
“He is, though,” Mydei continues. “Phainon would—he did lay down his life for everyone else, for the whole of the world, over and over again. Without any hope of reprieve. He would light a match against his own skin if he could. Would use himself as a brazier if it was necessary.” He clicks his tongue against the back of his teeth. “He’s probably out in the agora getting taken advantage of right now.”
Bucephalus makes a sound, a very suspicious sound, a sound not unlike the rise and fall of someone’s voice when they say, “Well, I don’t know.”
Mydei frowns. He leans to the side to peer down at the dromas whose head is in his lap, and Bucephalus looks up at him with the gaze of an animal that knows only trust. One of Mydei’s brows lifts. The other joins the first. “No,” he says.
Warbling, Bucephalus cocks his head to the side.
“Oh, absolutely not,” Mydei says as a realization—absurd and impossible though it may be—slowly begins to come over him. “Absolutely not,” he says again, staring down at Bucephalus.
Bucephalus stares back.
This isn’t happening. This cannot be happening. “Phainon?” Mydei asks slowly, with the kind of dread that can only belong to a Chrysos Heir who has lived through too much bullshit.
And the dromas, the big, stupid idiot of a creature, lurches to his feet, prances from one to the other, and bugles happily.
Jumping up, Mydei grabs the leash, jerks Bucephalus’s head—Phainon’s head—down to eye level. “Stop that,” he hisses as several amphoras fall over with loud crashes and a few nearby people stumble. “For—Phainon, enough.”
Phainon—because of course this is Phainon, of course Phainon has heard half the confession of Mydei’s heart, and Mydei could crawl in a hole and die a few hundred times—stops. He bleats, shimmying in place, little wiggles that lack the destructive force of his jumping.
“How did this happen?” Mydei demands, but he already knows. “Oh, Titans—” It’s a strange thing to swear by himself, but old habits die hard. “—it was Cipher.”
Phainon bleats, pulling his head up and lipping at Mydei’s forehead.
Mydei knocks his face aside. “Stop that.” Phainon is undeterred and turns his mouth to Mydei’s hand, slobbering all over it. “Phai—would you—that’s—” Mydei gives up and lets Phainon lick his palm, having several various and conflicting feelings about the fact that Phainon is licking his palm while trapped in the form of a dromas. “For fuck’s sake,” Mydei finally says, settling on that because there’s nothing better. “Cipher did this to you.”
Somehow, Phainon manages to shrug. Or, rather, he does something similar enough to the gesture that it gets his meaning across well enough. He bobbles his head from side to side, grumbling as though Mydei can understand him, babbling as though he’s speaking words. Maybe he is.
“Cipher didn’t do this to you?” Mydei asks, trying to piece this very lazy charade together into something meaningful.
Phainon hesitates and then starts babbling again, and Mydei becomes acutely aware of the fact that he’s having what looks to be a cogent conversation with a dromas on the edge of the fucking agora.
“Not here,” he snaps, snatching up Phainon’s lead and attempting to drag him out of the agora. It only works because Phainon doesn’t resist him, but Phainon’s never been one to resist Mydei all that much. Oh, they have their conflicts and competitions both insipid and inspired, but Phainon has always caved where Mydei is concerned, and Mydei is only now realizing that. His cheeks flame, both with the mortification of that realization and the lingering horror of having divulged any of his own feelings to Phainon.
He leads Phainon out of the agora and up the curving road toward the stables, but that won’t do, either, so he brings Phainon further along toward the places where deliveries are made well before entry hour, which should at least be somewhat quiet by now. There, alone but for Phainon, Mydei turns and regards the beast before him.
Phainon bends his head and bumps it against Mydei’s shoulder with a soulful sort of look. “Yes or no, Phainon. Did Cipher do this?”
Once again, Phainon bobbles his head and babbles in bleats and grunts and growls, carrying on long enough that Mydei finally puts his hand on Phainon’s snout to quiet him.
“You both did this?” he hazards, and Phainon nods his head vigorously. Mydei frowns. Recalls the message Phainon left you. “Did Cipher call you a dromas?”
Another vigorous nod.
“And you,” Mydei says, exasperated, “were drunk enough to believe her.”
A third vigorous nod, though this one stops rather abruptly. Phainon has the sense to look chagrined, and he ducks his head.
“You can’t undo this because you believe it. Phainon, you’re a man, not a dromas.”
Phainon lowers his bulk to the ground and presses his snout into Mydei’s belly. He makes a mournful little noise.
Heaving a sigh, Mydei puts a hand on the top of his head. “We can’t get you drunk again,” Mydei says, thinking aloud. “Alcohol will kill you.”
Phainon makes another sound, one that somehow, inexplicably, manages to say, “By some philosophical measure, is not the man you knew as Phainon already dead?”
Mydei curls his fingers into a fist and smacks the top of Phainon’s head. “Don’t be defeatist. Can you not just believe you’re a man?”
Turning his head toward the sky, Phainon yowls like a dog.
Mydei bops him on the head again. “Stop that. You’ll bring half the city-state down on us, and that’s the last thing we need.” He narrows his eyes. “Surely you don’t genuinely believe you’re a big, stupid dromas.”
Another baying yowl, quieter this time. Phainon’s eyes are bigger and watery than they’ve ever been before, as though he’s about to cry. Not that dromases cry. But maybe dromases who were once men have that ability.
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Mydei closes his eyes and resolves to himself that he’s not going to get a headache.
He’s getting a headache.
“Phainon. You spent how many cycles as a man?” Phainon barks at him. “Yes, fine, as whatever Flame Reaver was, too, but you were still a man.” He drops his hand and scowls at Phainon. “You are still a man.”
And now Phainon is looking at him expectantly, and Mydei has read enough foolish novels to know how this next part is supposed to go. “I’ve already told you that I think you’re an idiot who is willing to destroy yourself to keep other people happy,” he says instead, deciding he may as well weaponize Phainon’s core personality flaw. “And it would make—” He pauses, realizing that he’s about to make the concession he didn’t want to make anyway. “It would make me happy,” he grits out, “if you were a man instead of a beast.”
Of course, nothing happens, because a meager confession isn’t the conceit of such novels. But Phainon’s looking at him with an expression that could melt any heart, even his, and somehow this is easier because Phainon isn’t a human who can say anything, who can reject him, who can have a meaningful opinion.
“Begrudgingly, Deliverer, I prefer you as a man.” Phainon’s horns perk. “And I prefer you that way because I find you…” Mydei looks away, irritated with himself, with Phainon, with Cipher, who he might personally hunt down after all this is over. “I find you pleasing.”
Phainon makes a quiet sort of trumpeting noise, a sound of pure and unadulterated delight, and Mydei allows himself to look down at him. He is as small as he can make himself at Mydei’s feet, his face turned toward Mydei, his eyes bright with an emotion Mydei doesn’t dare to consider.
And Mydei, because he knows how these stories are meant to go, cups Phainon’s scaled face in his hands, bends down, and kisses the soft tip of his nose.
Quite suddenly, Mydei’s hands aren’t touching warm scale but rather warm skin. He isn’t bending down, he’s looking up. Hands, warm hands, human hands, wrap around his wrists, and kind eyes, human eyes, eyes bluer than the bluest sky, smile down at him. “You find me pleasing, Mydeimos?” Phainon asks.
“I will fucking kill you,” Mydei says without a moment’s hesitation.
Phainon laughs, soft and sweet, like music, and he touches his lips to Mydei’s. “I find you pleasing, too, you know.”
“I liked you better as a dromas.”
“That’s not true,” Phainon says, grinning. “If I were still a dromas, I don’t think you’d kiss me again.”
Mydei presses his lips into a thin line. “I’m not going to kiss you again—”
But Phainon kisses him, and Mydei can’t help himself. He’s wanted this for so long, wanted Phainon for so long, and he’s already cut open his heart to let Phainon see it, so he might as well. He kisses Phainon back, allowing himself this moment, even if it’s brief, because it has to be brief. They’re in public, and Phainon is very, very naked except for the oversized collar hanging off his shoulder.
“Here,” Mydei says, shrugging out of his jacket, pulling it free, and offering it to Phainon. “Put something on before someone sees you.”
Phainon’s grinning as he ducks out of the collar and into the jacket. “You didn’t mind earlier.”
“You were a dromas,” Mydei reminds him.
Phainon’s grin grows wider. “Mydei.”
“No.”
“Mydei, you saw me naked.”
“Absolutely not,” Mydei says, because he knows where this is going and his tolerance for bullshit is just about at its limit.
“It’s only fair,” Phainon says, and Mydei puts his hand on Phainon’s face and shoves him aside. “Mydei!”
Mydei ignores him. “We have a spar you’re late for,” he says. “Get your things and meet me on the pitch.”
“But—”
Mydei looks over his shoulder. “If you can beat me, maybe you’ll get what you want.”
And Phainon lights up.