Fallen Eagle

Chapter 96: Matters of the Heart

“Apostolos.”The soft canter of the horse moved like a lullaby beneath him. As much as the steady clop of hooves on beaten earth formed a gentle cadence, each step drawing Apostolos a little deeper, fingers going slack around the reins.

“Apostolos,” the wind seemed to say.

It whispered in time with the quiet movement of the mare beneath his saddle, a slow rocking back and forth that invited sleep with cruel tenderness. The night pressed close around him, cool against his cheeks.

“Apostolos,” it was soft and warm, just like his mother, golden caramel strands falling around her face as she bent to kiss him goodnight.

Yes. He could almost hear the low hum she used when she had him on the brink. He could just close his eyes right her-

“Apostolos!”

Michail’s sharp voice struck him awake like a slap.

The world returned with painful clarity. He was not in his bed with his mother beside him. He was on a dark, rutted road, half-starved, half-frozen, and riding at the head of two dozen knights and men-at-arms.

He was not swaddled in cotton sheets, he was leading men who were cold, dirty, hungry, and tired. So very tired.

“I’m here,” Apostolos answered quickly, before any of the others could notice he had nearly fallen asleep in the saddle. He straightened as best he could, forcing his hands to tighten the reins. “What is it?”

Michail held his gaze for a moment, as if weighing how sound he was. Then he jutted his chin down the road, toward where a hill rose out of the valley’s shallow dip.

Apostolos followed the gesture.

There, overlooking the dark valley and framed by a blessedly full moon, he saw it.

Suyren.

Home, or what remained of it.

The sight almost made him forget the last few terrible days. Then he remembered the defeat in those woods, the failed rebellion that had cost his father his life, and the desperate withdrawal from the Genoese camp, ending with a miserable trek back through roads where every snapped branch sounded like pursuit. And his mood plummeted.

But he was home, alive.

He had kept his promise to Cassandra.

That still felt like a small solace for what he would still have to face when he saw her again.

Apostolos only realized he had stopped in the middle of the road when Michail looked back at him again.

He swallowed and forced himself to remember his place. These men were watching him, whether openly or from the corners of their eyes. If he looked like a boy longing for his bed, they would remember that he was one.

“Let’s go, men,” he called, trying to place into his voice some portion of the authority his father had worn easily. “Home is just ahead.”

A collective sigh of relief passed through the column.

The march had been made under constant fear of Genoese or Theodoran trackers. The timing of their escape made pursuit unlikely, but unlikely was not the same as impossible. They’d done it anyhow.

Not that they were under any illusion that House Nomikos, or those sworn to it, would be spared retribution.

The Crown had won. His father was dead. Their banners had fallen somewhere far behind them in the mud and blood of the field.

Regardless of who won the conflict between Theodoro and Genoa, they would come north in time. Greek or Italian, it made little difference to House Nomikos now. One of them would eventually march through these hills and take what remained by force.

The siege should at least allow them some reprieve to set their affairs in order while the Crown and the Republic tired themselves out.

If they continued to bleed strength from one another beneath the fortress walls, then perhaps Suyren would have days. Maybe even weeks. That was all Apostolos could hope for now.

As they cross the Belbek to start up Suyren’s hill it became all the more real for Apostolos.

Apostolos had learned to swim in those waters, splashing and coughing under his father’s stern instruction while Cassandra laughed from the bank and Michail raced him to the other shore. In the arid summer months, the family had come down to the river with baskets of fruit, watered wine, and servants carrying blankets beneath the shade of the trees.

All of that belonged to another life now - it would never happen again.

His throat tightened with this realization.

“Apostolos,” Michail matched his horse to Apostolos’s mare, close enough that their stirrups brushed. “Everything all right?”

His cousin had always possessed an uncanny ability to sense his moods, usually at the worst possible time. Apostolos wanted to smile and reassure him, to say something calm or graceful. Instead, what formed at his lips was bitter and petty, and tears threatened to rise with it.

Michail leaned closer and set a hand on his shoulder. His own face had tightened into a painful grimace, and that steadied him more than he would have thought. He drew a trembling breath, but still managed the rest of the climb without embarrassing himself.

He was the Patriarch now, and he had to act like it.

It was with some small remnant of his battered pride that he managed to pass through the castle town with his head held high. The settlement was wrapped in darkness, narrow lanes silvered by moonlight and the faint glow of banked hearths behind shuttered windows. Their arrival stirred the sleeping village, doors cracking just wide enough for pale faces to peer through the gaps. Their eyes were grim, watching the few men who had made it back.

Recognition passed to understanding. These were not victorious sons returning with plunder and stories. These were remnants.

No one called out. No one asked where the rest were. The silence they offered was worse than questions. It settled over Apostolos like judgment following him up the street toward the dark bulk of Suyren’s gates.

“Halt! Who goes there?”

The guard who called down from the gatehouse was an overfed old man Apostolos recognized having retired a handful of years ago. Now he stood with a spear in hand, peering down into the dark beside another man scarcely younger.

So this was what remained of Nomikos strength.

“You are in the presence of Apostolos Nomikos,” Michail called back, trying to force what pride he could into the address, “Patriarch of House Nomikos.”

A stunned pause passed between the two guards above.

“We were told Master Apostolos was at the head of what remained of the northern levies,” the old guard said slowly, distrust plain in every word. “And that he was presently at the siege of Mangup. You have neither an army at your back, nor are you at the capital.”

“We were taken hostage by the treacherous Genoese,” Michail said. “We mounted an escape from their military camp and rode through half the night to return.”

“Forgive my impertinence, my lord,” the guard replied, though his tone made it clear forgiveness was not the first thing on his mind, “but that sounds like a tall tale. In the dark, any fool with a dozen sellswords could come here claiming a noble name and expect us to open the gates.”

Apostolos realized then that the man did not recognize him. In the years since the guard’s absence Apostolos had grown up, his voice grown deeper, and night reduced all of them to shapes beneath travel-stained cloaks.

He was the heir of House Nomikos, and yet he had arrived so diminished that even his own household’s guards questioned whether he belonged.

“It is the truth!” Michail snapped, patience abandoning him rather quickly. “Come down here and I’ll stamp the damned signet ring on your face if that will prove it to you.” Ironically, even that was false. The signet ring had been lost with his father's death in the ambush. The only one left was a cheap, old imitation they kept as a spare in the castle.

Michail's hand had moved to the hilt of his sword as if he meant to order an assault on the fortress with their pitiful little force.

“Michail,” Apostolos warned.

The gesture was familiar. The command in his tone was not. It still felt strange to pull obedience from others, stranger to hear his cousin go quiet because of it.

Apostolos looked back up toward the gatehouse and forced courtesy into his voice. “My good sir, please fetch the steward, or anyone else who might readily identify us. We will wait here until they come.”

The guard considered that, suspicion still written across his broad face. At last he bowed, more stiffly than deeply, and disappeared from sight.

Things could never be easy, could they?

Cassandra raced down the spiraling steps with a hurried energy that matched the butterflies in her stomach and the frantic beating of her heart. The stone was cold beneath her bare feet, the night colder through her thin clothes, but she scarcely felt any of it. Her brother was here. Apostolos was beyond the gate, she knew it.

“My lady!”

The guards trailed after her as she burst from the tower in a mad dash across the courtyard, their heavy gambesons weighing on them as much as their poor condition.

“A thousand apologies, but I must see my brother!” she called back, too breathless and too excited to care how improper the shout sounded, or that it was waking half the castle.

“But- in your nightdress!” one of the guards protested, huffing and puffing.

She couldn't blame them for trying, in their lumbering way, to stop the acting head of Suyren Castle from embarrassing herself further.

By every sensible measure, Eliana ought to have been the one managing affairs, but her sister had spent most of the last weeks sunk in a stupor so heavy that she barely emerged for meals, let alone govern the household, so that task had fallen to Cassandra.

She wondered what Madame Zeta would say if she could see her now, dishevelled and flushed, racing toward the battlements in a manner entirely unsuited to a lady of birth. The thought nearly made her laugh.

She did not care.

This was why she had commanded her personal guards to wake her the instant there was word of her brother’s possible arrival, no matter the hour, no matter the state in which she might be found.

She reached the small, aged portcullis that separated Suyren from the outside world in record time, nearly slipping on the last few steps as she climbed to the wall.

“My lady, what is this-”

The gate guard barely had time to turn before she swept past him, his eyes widening like saucers as he took in the pale shape of her nightdress and the hair tumbling loose around her face.

“Apostolos!” Cassandra cried from the crenellations, leaning out toward the dark mass of haggard men gathered below. “Is that you?”

“Cassandra?” Apostolos looked wholly astonished to see her there, his face lifted toward the wall. “What are you doing here?” His gaze shifted, and even from above she saw his eyebrows rise. “And dressed like this…?”

Several of the men behind him seemed suddenly very interested in looking anywhere else.

“Oh, it is you, brother!” Cassandra exclaimed, overjoyed. “Open the gates!”

“But my lady-” the guard began.

“Open them, goddamn you, now!”

The command rang out with stark authority. A lady did not curse, and Cassandra had always tried to be gentle, mannered, and pleasing.

But damn them all to hell now. Her brother was safe.

Cassandra waited for the gate to groan open just enough for a gap she could slip through.

Apostolos barely had time to dismount before she flung herself at him with the fiercest embrace she could manage. He was thinner than he should have been, cold and wet, but he was real.

“You’re alive,” she breathed into him.

“I did promise you, Cassandra.”

Apostolos held her back just as tightly, and sagged against her as though he’d been holding himself regal and upright by strings and had finally found a place where he was allowed to be tired.

“Oh, you foolish brother,” Cassandra whispered, unable to keep the tremble from her voice or the tears from gathering in her eyes.

She had always believed he would come back. Even when others doubted, she had held to that promise like a candle cupped against the wind. But to see him, to touch him and know her miracle came true, made the world feel dreamlike and unsteady beneath her feet.

“Come inside,” she urged, taking his hand. His fingers were frigid. “You must all be exhausted.”

They certainly looked it. Every man at the gate seemed carved from hunger, dirt, and stubborn endurance.

“We would be grateful, Lady Cassandra.”

Michail bowed from beside them, and Cassandra noticed her cousin properly for the first time. Her face tightened before she could stop it. There had always been something about his gaze that unsettled her. Dark eyes not only in colour, but in intent.

“I am glad to see you well, Michail,” she said, dipping into a curtsy.

In truth, she was not, but she could not deny he had always looked out for Apostolos, whatever else he was.

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“Let’s not dally,” Cassandra turned back to her brother and tightened her grip around his icy hand. “You must tell me everything. About how you escaped, and about…Father.”

Apostolos’s smile died.

“Inside,” he said.

There was an unfamiliar authority in his voice, hard and carefully placed, like a blade he had only just learned how to hold. It sounded forced to her.

“This is not talk for prying ears.”

…

“The rebel host is decimated, and Philemon was as good as dead when I left,” Apostolos finished recounting the terrible events.

Flames snapped and twisted in the hearth, throwing a warm gold across old tapestries and carved chairs, even if the warmth seemed not to reach Apostolos. He sat before it with a haggard stillness, and eyes that looked as if they were looking at something far colder.

“We fled when we had the chance,” he continued. “We realized the Genoese would discard us at the earliest convenience. There was no point in staying after that.”

He told it without anger, without trembling, without even the raw grief Cassandra had expected, and that frightened her. As though the disaster had happened to someone else and he was only repeating the tale out of courtesy.

“Then our House…” Cassandra began.

She could not finish. The words would not pass her throat.

“Is finished,” Michail said for her.

He handed Apostolos a cup of strong red wine, then took one for himself and drank deeply. “To Genoa or the Crown, it will make no difference in the end.”

“We have to escape,” Cassandra said immediately. “We must flee the Principality. There is no future for us here.”

Michail turned toward her, surprised. “And go where?”

“Anywhere,” Cassandra answered. “With the few riches we still have, we can carve out some semblance of a life elsewhere.”

“As paupers in a foreign court,” Michail spat.

“Better than dead with our heads set on spikes,” Cassandra snapped, her voice cracking with more irritation than she intended. “And it is not your opinion that matters. You are not the Head of this House.”

“Neither are you,” Michail challenged.

Both of them turned to Apostolos.

He did not seem to hear them. His gaze had drifted past the table, past the wine, staring at an overcoat hanging from a peg near the hearth. The firelight danced in his eyes, glossed and faded over.

“Brother,” Cassandra said softly.

She laid a gentle hand on his arm, trying to draw him back from wherever grief had taken him.

“That coat…” Apostolos murmured.

He rose from the armchair with slow, measured movements. Cassandra and Michail exchanged a glance, neither daring to interrupt as he crossed the room.

“It was father’s.”

The coat was dark wool, heavy and well-made, its collar worn softer by years of use.

Apostolos reached for it, his fingers closing around the sleeve with a care that made Cassandra’s chest ache.

“It is a good plan,” he said at last. “You should leave.”

“Us?” Cassandra asked, unsure.

“Yes.” He did not look away from the coat. “I will stay.”

The finality in his tone chilled her.

“Alone?” Michail demanded. “Have you gone insane?”

“Brother,” Cassandra said, shooting Michail a sharp look that told him to be silent. She turned back to Apostolos and softened her voice as much as she could. “Why are you saying such things?”

“Because, Cassandra, it rests on me to serve as Patriarch of House Nomikos, even if I am to be the last.” There was pain in his voice. “We are all branches of the same tree. Is that not what he used to say?”

His hand moved over the coat as if it were some relic, his thumb brushing the worn seam near the cuff.

“No one gets left behind,” Apostolos said, and there was finality in it.

Cassandra swallowed. “I have already arranged for most of our distant relatives in the northern lands to convene at Suyren,” she said, hurrying to meet his resolve with something practical, something that might hold him. “And I have made preparations for us all to evacuate.”

Michail’s eyes flicked toward her, slightly wide. He seemed stunned that she’d had the foresight to make such arrangements and the power to act on them at all.

“So there is no need to worry,” Cassandra pleaded, taking a step closer. “We can all leave together.”

“Not all of us,” Apostolos said.

“Remus,” Michail said, realizing Apostolos’s intent.

Remus had been sent to the capital to serve as an aide to the Megas Doux, a harmless appointment once meant to flatter the family. Now it was a prison.

“And there are others,” Apostolos said. “Half a dozen Nomikos at least remain in the capital as hostages.”

“You are not thinking this through, brother,” Cassandra found herself saying, “this is a foolhardy decision.”

Michail glared daggers at her, bristling at the casual dismissal of his brother.

“What is your life against a few minor House members?” The words tasted foul even as they left her mouth. She did not even believe what she was saying. But she couldn’t bear the thought of her brother going through with this manic plan. There was no assurance it would even work.

“You damn viper,” Michail said, moving toward her with ugly, hardened eyes.

“We cannot save everyone,” Cassandra said, looking to call him to reason.

“We can try,” He did not budge.

“Why are you throwing your life away?!” She pleaded with him, composure finally cracking.

Apostolos turned from the coat. “BECAUSE IT IS WORTH NOTHING!”

Apostolos’s fist slammed into the wooden table, hard enough to make the cups jump. Red wine spilled across the surface and ran over the edge in dark streams, pattering onto the floorboards beneath like fresh blood.

“Our House died with our father,” he said, and now the cold emptiness was gone, burned away by something rawer and far less controlled. “He groomed me from childhood for this, Cassandra. Every beating, every reprimand, every humiliating lesson. I suffered through them all to one day be ready.” His breath hitched, though he tried to master it. “That day is here. And I am not. I am unfit and lost, left to rule over rubble.”

He turned from them brusquely. His eyes were red-rimmed, and tears had cut bright lines down his travel-stained face. The sight struck Cassandra harder than his shouting. Apostolos had always been tender in ways their father disliked, too quick to apologize, too eager to please, too visibly wounded by disappointment. She had loved him for those softnesses. Now they seemed like exposed flesh beneath armour that did not fit.

An uneasy silence settled after the outburst, freezing them in that terrible moment.

Apostolos stood there, breathing unevenly. Then, with careful slowness, he reached for the coat reserved for the Nomikos Patriarch and drew it over his shoulders. The heavy pelts and deep burgundy cloth settled around his frame, filling him out, lending him a shape that was larger than his, almost their father’s.

“What use is a Patriarch who rules in exile?” he asked. His voice had quieted, but that was more frightening still. “If I do nothing else in my life, I will at least try to leave a legacy worth something.”

He looked so old when he said it. The weight on his shoulders was tremendous, absurdly so, far too large for him. To Cassandra, he was just the boy who’d bake her sweets alongside his mother to cheer her up.

Yet in that moment, cruelly, and impossibly, the mantle seemed to sit properly on him.

“Brother, I-”

“Leave me,” he said.

It was not a request.

“Both of you.”

His back looked broad beneath the coat, his words steadier than they had any right to be. Cassandra stood there, unable to move at first, staring at the figure he had made of himself out of grief, duty, and desperation.

She could not help thinking Father would have been proud of him.

And she was not sure that was a good thing at all.

Farewells had never been one of Apostolos’s strong suits.

He had always been too emotional for them, too quick to let his feelings rise where others might see them. His father had once said he often disgraced himself with such pitiful appearances, that a nobleman must learn to part from others. Apostolos had tried to learn that lesson.

He had to show strength.

He stood before the gates of Suyren facing his House and all its remnants. They were arranged in the courtyard and along the road beyond as if gathered for a march to war, though this army carried more bundles than blades. They’d packed everything they could onto the animals, trying to fit the riches of the house into something they could carry halfway across the world.

Men with more grey than brown in their beards watched him with the solemn attention once reserved for his father.

And young boys looked to him as if looking at their salvation. The man who had to have all the answers. He felt the pressure in every breath he took, and it was stifling.

He did not even recognize all the faces gathered there. Some belonged to distant relatives who had not returned to Suyren in years, drawn from their estates and villages. Others were retainers, household servants and men-at-arms too wounded or too old to have gone with the host. All of them had been dragged here by the folly of those who were now dead, and now they waited for a boy to tell them where to go.

At their head stood Michail, his expression stripped of its usual dour grumpiness, replaced instead by naked worry.

“Are you sure about this, Apostolos?” he asked, keeping his voice low enough that those nearby would not hear.

Apostolos nodded.

He had been given enough time to reach this decision. Enough time to lie awake through the dark hours, turning over his choice in his mind. Enough time to feel fear, resentment, shame, and a strange, hollow calm.

“Family. Friends.” Apostolos addressed the gathered crowd. “I have called you here to bid you farewell. And to tell you to go on without me.”

Confusion spread, a low murmur passing from one knot of people to the next. They had expected instructions, perhaps some stern command from the new Patriarch to endure hardship with dignity. They had not expected his first decree to be to abandon him.

“I cannot go with you,” he said, “for the simple reason that members of our House remain under custody in Mangup.”

The words seemed to land unevenly. Some understood, most others frowned, searching nearby faces for explanation. Apostolos wished he could have it called selfless, just, loyal, and good.

But none were the reasons behind what he was doing, not really - It was fear, plain and simple.

“Michail will lead you to Caffa and out into the Black Sea before the Genoese can even think to stop us,” Apostolos said.

He placed a hand on Michail’s shoulder, and the gesture carried more weight than it looked. With it, he was effectively granting the title of Patriarch to his young cousin. Everyone gathered understood what it meant, even if no formal words had been spoken.

Michail’s jaw tightened, knowing the burden, but he did not step away.

“The years ahead will be hard,” Apostolos continued, forcing his voice to carry over the courtyard. “Make no mistake. The easy life we had here will never be ours again.”

He looked into the eyes of his family and saw the same glint of fear in him reflected back.

“But we will endure,” Apostolos said. “And no matter where you go, no matter what names foreign courts give you or what roofs you shelter beneath, remember this. We are all branches of the same tree.”

The words spread from mouth to mouth, low at first, then steadier as more voices found them. “All branches of the same tree.” It was a maxim that would live with them for the rest of their lives like a final binding thread connecting them forever.

They filed out in loose, uneven shapes - the remnants of a noble house becoming a column of refugees beneath the pale morning light. People turned to look back at Suyren, trying to hold its memory through a last glance.

Their steps were slow and heavy, the steps of people leaving home without knowing whether they would ever see it again.

“Brother.”

Cassandra was among the last to leave. A small cadre of ladies waited behind her with Hilda, their worry plain despite their attempts at composure. Cassandra’s eyes were red-rimmed from a night spent weeping, and dark shadows lay beneath them, giving her delicate face the bruised look of someone who had not slept at all.

“Must you truly go ahead with this folly?” she asked.

“I am sorry, sister.” Apostolos knew she would never fully understand. He himself almost did not. This fear that consumed him had too many faces. Of never being enough to lead others. Of being the Patriarch who brought down the House. Of leaving his father behind.

In the end, all he had ever wanted was his approval, no matter how much he had come to hate wanting it.

“I must,” he said.

Cassandra reached out a tentative hand, and Apostolos took it in both of his and squeezed, harder than he meant to.

“You promised you would come home,” she said softly.

“I did come home.”

“That is not the same as staying alive.”

Apostolos tried to smile, but the attempt failed before it became anything worth seeing. Cassandra stepped forward and embraced him, carefully at first, then fiercely enough that it hurt.

“Goodbye, brother,” she whispered.

He closed his eyes and bent his head toward hers. He couldn’t bring himself to answer back.

She drew back, kissed his cheek and walked away.

Apostolos watched her go.

The last hope that he might yet walk out of this alive seemed to recede with her. He knew very well what awaited him.

Now all that was left was to wait to die.

…

It was early dawn when Apostolos left his chamber.

He had not found the courage to sleep in his father’s bed, and in truth, he had not found the courage to sleep at all. He had spent the dark hours sitting in his armchair near the cold hearth, listening to the sounds of a castle emptied of its lifeblood.

“My L-Lord.” The Steward intercepted him the instant he entered the corridor. “B-banners on t-the h-horizon.”

Apostolos strode quickly to the parapet, his heart hammering hard enough that it seemed to shake his ribs. This was too quick.

Sure enough, banners moved in the distance, catching the dawn wind in slow, rippling strokes - a white eagle on a field of purple.

Had the Crown forced peace with Genoa already? Impossible. He had counted on a few more days at the very least.

There was even a chance that they might have caught the fleeing Nomikos column before it made enough distance.

His stomach dropped at the thought.

“W-what do we d-do, sir?” Theophylact asked.

“Assemble the men,” Apostolos said, forcing calm into his voice because panic would serve no one now. “We will parley.”

The steward hurried away to obey while Apostolos remained frozen, staring out at the approaching army with his fists clenched against the stone.

“Do not tell me you are doubting yourself now, brother.”

A feminine voice came from behind him.

“Cassandra!” Apostolos turned, amazement striking through him first, followed almost at once by horror. “What are you doing here?! You could die!”

“I could not leave you, brother,” she crossed the space between them and hugged him, “And I knew you would not let me stay.”

Apostolos found himself leaning back into the touch before he could stop himself.

“Now we will both…” He could not finish the sentence.

“Perhaps not, brother.”

Apostolos looked, wanting to see where the confidence came from.

“Why do you say that?”

Cassandra turned her face toward the purple banners swaying in the morning wind. “Because I know who is coming for us.” She answered.

She knew he would come. Her heart told her so.

There were too many loose ends he had left behind.

Theodorus could not help but loathe the imposing silhouette of Suyren Castle. There were too many regrets layered here for him to remain indifferent to it.

Apostolos sallied out with only four men to his name, one of them hooded.

That told Theodorus nearly everything he needed to know.

The Nomikos army was in tatters, though that was hardly a surprise after the disaster at the Kalamita Hills.

Theodorus sat astride Boudicca, his posture stiff inside the borrowed laminated armour they had procured for him. A new set was meant to be fitted properly to his measurements, but until then he had to endure this borrowed armour. He'd prefer his own brigandine to be honest, but a Strategos could not be seen to be wearing such 'poor man's clothing'.

With a new station came greater expectations. And greater demands.

“They are on their knees,” Zeno commented from his side.

His Hypostrategos had spent most of the journey north in thoughtful quiet, each word selected with careful economy. The two of them were still trying to understand their relationship, testing invisible boundaries like men crossing a river by stones hidden beneath the surface.

“We could capture their leader and be done with this mess,” Zeno suggested.

“That would stain our reputation almost immediately,” Theodorus said. "Reputation is crucial when governing a realm."

“The truth is malleable if you know which levers to pull,” Zeno countered, casting him a sidelong look. “No one would have to be the wiser.”

“It is an unnecessary risk,” Theodorus replied, unwilling to resort to such methods against Apostolos. “We do not need to. I will talk with them.”

He felt Zeno’s gaze linger on him, sharp and assessing, weighing not only the decision but the machinery behind it. His methods. His instincts. The invisible line between pragmatism and scruple. Theodorus had the distinct impression that Zeno did not especially want to seize Apostolos at all. He merely wanted to see whether Theodorus would flinch from the idea, justify it, or condemn it outright.

“Very well,” Zeno said, guiding his horse half a step back. “Lead the way.”

Theodorus knew the man would be listening to every syllable that followed, filing each away for later use. That was fine. Let him find out Theodorus was no pushover.

He guided Boudicca forward to meet Apostolos halfway, a subtle acknowledgement and concession. It cost Theodorus nothing but pride after all, and that was rarely something he bothered with.

“Apostolos,” he greeted.

Apostolos’s face was more hollow than Theodorus remembered, the youthful softness sharpened by hunger and sleeplessness. His prim ponytail had frayed at the edges, stray pepper strands clinging against his temples. The dignity with which he conducted himself more an act than true bearing.

“Theodorus,” Apostolos answered, his voice heavy with weariness. “Thank you for agreeing to the parlay.”

“Please. Come inside.”

Theodorus guided them toward the tent they had prepared between the two forces. It was a plain thing, nothing like the ivory monstrosity the Genoese favoured, with no perfumes, trays of delicacies, or silk-lined theatre. It was a table, chairs, guards posted at a respectful distance, and shade from the near-summer sun.

Theodorus almost laughed at the ridiculousness of it all. Apostolos had murdered Kyriakos, and he had murdered Apostolos’s father, but here they were sitting down at a table, meant to discuss business as if nothing had happened.

“You requested talks?” Theodorus asked once he and Zeno settled into their respective chairs, content to let the Nomikos side take the initiative.

“I wanted to negotiate terms of surrender,” Apostolos said bluntly.

That did not surprise Theodorus. Suyren had no chance of holding against a determined assault, and everyone at the table knew it.

“Contingent on the exoneration of House Nomikos and the release of the hostages in Mangup,” Apostolos continued.

“Those are heavy concessions,” Theodorus replied, folding his hands on the table. “They can only be made by the Prince.” He was ready to drive a hard bargain.

“I’m aware, in return I offer…” Apostolos drew a deep breath, visibly bracing himself. “Myself.”

Theodorus raised an eyebrow.

“I am the last of the main Nomikos bloodline, and its current acting Patriarch,” Apostolos said. “I will submit, formally renounce any claim to the northern lands, and place myself under custody before the Prince.”

It was the ultimate act of humiliation, and likely a death sentence besides. Theodorus could see that Apostolos understood as much, and looked deadset on doing so regardless.

This didn’t feel like a ploy by some senior Nomikos House member, or even Hypatius, though he wouldn’t put it past the man to have found some blackmail on Apostolos. “That is not enough to warrant the exoneration of the entire bloodline.”

“Exile, then,” Apostolos countered, struggling to keep his tone level. “Let them live in exile.”

Theodorus shook his head.

“I am giving everything away,” Apostolos snapped, a flash of hatred breaking through the polite mask. “Is that worth nothing?”

“Apostolos,” Theodorus said quietly, without malice, “your life is already forfeit. Whether by assault or surrender, that does not change. I could order my men to kill yours and seize you right this instant, drag you to Mangup in chains, and no one would bat an eye. You are a traitor.”

He felt Zeno’s piercing glance at Theodorus’s threat. The same one he said he would not do only moments earlier. An amused curve formed on his lips. Theodorus ignored him.

“Why you vermin!” Apostolos shot up from his chair, panic widening his eyes, his hand flying to his sword. "I will cut you down if you try!"

Theodorus frowned. This was quite an over-the-top reaction, especially for Apostolos.

“You dishonourable-”

A hand settled on his arm.

The hooded retainer who had come with him stopped him with only a light touch. Only then did he notice the hand itself, slender and manicured, unmistakably feminine. In fact, that hand…

“I misjudged you, Captain.”

The voice stole the breath from him even before she lowered her hood.

“Cassandra…” Theodorus felt his eyes widen.

“Would you be able to do the same to me?” she asked, and there was a grudge hidden in the depths of her voice.

Neither of them had run away. Apostolos, he could understand, but Cassandra?

He felt the ground shift beneath him.

What had been a straightforward surrender had become something infinitely more complex, not in terms of conquest, but in matters of the heart.