Rhene had never walked in the woods. She’d walked on stone roads, dirt roads, through gardens, and on the beach. The drier nature claiming these foothills screaming with cicadas put less underbrush in her way, but the plant life that did thrive bristled, scratched, and poked. Rhene gritted her teeth with each harsh sting. Orius walked ahead and trampled down what he could. It didn’t take long, however, for his experience traversing in such environments to push him ahead only to halt with hidden impatience until she shuffled over. No frown or glare darkened his face when a decline awash with bees he walked through as simple as silk curtains froze her for five minutes. Rhene felt the stiffness in his hand though when he had no choice but to guide her onwards himself. 

“Is your companion far?” she asked, breathless. 

“There is a road at the bottom of the hill. He will be waiting there with supplies and horses.” 

“I don’t know how to ride.” 

“I assumed you would not. One will have a larger saddle for you to share with me.” 

Rhene wasn’t particularly fond of that idea, but she didn’t enjoy the prospect of walking to Tylasus either. Strangely enough, she began to miss the goat. Unfortunately, Orius didn’t truly answer her question, and she believed it better to not agitate his underlying irritation with a repeated request. Rhene moved her feet faster despite the saw-like scratches of red burning an awful heat to be done with it all already. They hopped a small drop—her graceless landing reverberating shocks through her calves—and made it to the road. 

“Over there,” Orius pointed. 

At the bend, a man leaned against the short crag bordering the road. Two horses tied to a tree across the way nibbled at what green grass grew. Orius hurried his pace. Rhene followed best she could, instinctively settling herself behind his back. 

“You made it safely,” the new man remarked on their approach. His voice light and warm, Rhene’s ears twitched with lure. 

“On schedule as well. This is—” Orius silenced. A strange dance occurred as he twisted this way and that not expecting the adamancy of Rhene staying unseen. “Has Gytos taken your mind? Why do you hide?” 

Orius strafed to the side, breaking her veil. Rhene did not anticipate this, and so her eyes high in their line of sight landed directly upon a pair of brown irises richer than any she’d seen. Where Orius’s reflected the sun with glow, his companion’s welcomed the shade smoothing his stare into deep velvet. A skin of lighter hue still captured essence of the earth in undertones crafted by the hot summer sky. Hair of golden cream tickled his brows in gently scraggly bends, though care had been taken to brush most back in some manner of proper tending. In the fading rays, it stole streaks of brown for its own. 

Rhene saw muscles and a clean-shaven chin. She saw an outfit of harmonizing creams, pale golds, browns, and black. She saw several bags and then the sword at his side. Orius clicked his tongue at Rhene flinging herself back behind the safety of his sculpted form. 

“Pelopia, I have need of your relief,” he then sighed. 

“You don’t need to beseech her for patience,” his companion noted with teasing inflection. “You need to control your own. What have you done but steal a young woman from her home and expect her confident cooperation? She may have been born a—” 

“We have not gotten to that point yet. She knows I am her brother, and that is it.” 

“Ah, I understand. My point regardless is your sister is a noble daughter of Astagoria raised in their traditions. A woman of her status is not to be seen, not to even be outside without the escort of a male member of her family. I’m sure she feels uncomfortable having only you to be her shield.” 

“She needs no shield,” Orius folded his arms. “Astagoria’s inane demands of women are truly the work of Gytos’s madness.” 

“Does your belief about the situation matter in this moment? Ponder it. How long would you last were you to take your sister’s position? Trapped in the home, weaving fabric for clothes, managing the kitchen, scurrying to your quarters when visitors come? 

“I’d break through the gate before an hour was done,” Orius grumbled. He sighed again, dispelling annoyance. “I get it, Evelthon. No more.” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “Be as you wish. I showed ignorance believing you’d be desirous to cast off the restrictions your life has placed upon you as soon as you had the chance. Women here in Samatis do not subsist under such shackled confines. You may share in their freedom at the pace you choose.” 

Rhene nodded. Thankfully, they accepted that as her response, for her mouth was trained not to open in the presence of an unrelated man. 

“Sister, this is Evelthon,” Orius introduced properly. “He will assist me in escorting you to my pater as mentioned. Evelthon, this is...my sister.” 

“What to say when the situation is not explained in full is a troublesome blockage. Let us away to Tylasus for the night and hope the morning light shines on the truth,” Evelthon proposed. 

He untied the horses. Orius surveyed the gathered supplies before holstering a sword to his belt. Rhene had patted the snout of her father’s horse once, yet she stood meeker before Orius’s stallion of black now than she had when a child. She withered entirely when Orius swung into the saddle before offering its side to her and slipping his foot from the stirrup. 

“You’ll sit behind me. Simply put your left foot here, I’ll help you pull up, and swing your leg over.” 

Rhene clasped her hands together and begged her heart to cease its throbbing attempt to break free of its fleshy prison. Awkwardness and Orius’s returning exasperation when she froze as a crimson-cheek statue raced it harder. Evelthon approaching flinched her. 

“It is natural for this to all feel wrong. I apologize then that we must insist on you riding with Orius, for the journey to Myrcaea will take too long on foot. If it is uncomfortable to lift your foot to the stirrup, allow me to help Orius in getting you to the saddle as well.” 

There was no choice. Lifting her left heel a foot was the most she could do. Evelthon caught underneath her foot and, with Orius grasping her arm, she was weightlessly lifted with legs straddling a mount once more this day. Oh, how imagining her mother’s despairing wail of Rhene’s spread legs and bunched chiton showing her calves ached Rhene’s head. There’d been no one around to see her in the sky... 

Evelthon mounted his own stallion, and they rode west. 

The horse did not provide the same comfort the kri-kri did. Rhene felt each hard impact on the bumpy road in ways that shrilled her mother’s imagined distress over Rhene’s steadily decreasing potential for marriage, although Rhene also had to note how this would make her mother happy. Orius’s chest was all she had to cling onto for balance, and the way he moved to match the horse’s movement in a better way than her wayward bouncing had her praying he told the truth about being her brother. 

Face awash in unhindered crimson upon their arrival in Tylasus, Rhene thanked every god and goddess her pitching mind could recall when Orius and Evelthon did not delay finding them rooms for the night. Rhene didn’t care to take in a single sight and found breath only when Orius allowed her privacy in the small, rented room. The size of which was less than the space of her balcony. A frame of local wood with hay settled upon the rope bands with a scratchy woolen blanket over it made up the bed. There was no furniture but a rickety small table and a pot of suspicious smell in the corner. Light came from a single window no bigger than the size of her face with a half-used candle waiting on the table. 

Rhene collapsed upon the bed. Her room faced away from the street, but the end-of-day clamor permeated through the window regardless. Rhene didn’t hear it. Nothing but the muted warbling of blood pumping through her ears with an indiscernible high-pitched screech playing an accompaniment broke through the nauseating swaying as she stood before the proverbial cliff. Brother or not, good-intentioned or not—Orius abducted her. She’d been forcefully dragged from her life and unceremoniously dropped on a path darker than even a moonless night. Worse, there was no difference she could make. They’d catch her if she ran, and she’d be killed by the elements, eaten by wild animals, or be a victim of the blackened hearts of man should she successfully escape anyway. 

She wanted to cry. Wanted it in equal measure to wanting her family, her home. Rhene would give up the beach. She’d give up Leocedes. She’d give up marriage forever if the pantheon above took pity on her and undid with their almighty powers what Orius had done. Lashes stung as whips with each blink, the beating progressing faster as the flood barraged the confines of the dam. Rhene just had to submit. 

Her teeth dug into her lower lip to the threat of blood. No. She would not cry. It was an untruth that she couldn’t do anything. Rhene was useless in any skill that might change the situation she was in, but she could endure it. She could hold fast, have faith. When safely in her mother’s arms, her father’s house, Rhene could say she made it through. Her pale fingers continued to shake, but they determinedly worked through the messy tangle her half-destroyed crown of braids had become to set her strands free. Fighting her way through the morrow couldn’t be without a good night’s sleep. 

A knock came from the door. 

“Pardon my intrusion,” Evelthon stood at the threshold. Rhene mustered her courage to meet those eyes of velvet brown once more, no matter how heavily instinct burdened her to drop her gaze. It was then that she noticed a distant gleam almost that of melancholy persisting in his stare, although the soft upwards curl of his lips and genuine manner of speech imparted more of that kindness somehow settling her nerves. Evelthon held out one of the larger packs from earlier. “This is for you. Orius asked me to prepare a pack suitable for a young woman. I understand I cannot provide the luxury you are used to, but I hope these supplies will help you pass the days in general comfort. Orius’s father is powerful and wealthy. You will see better care upon our arrival in Myrcaea.” 

“Thank you.” The ease at which her lips unlocked surprised Rhene, as did the way Evelthon’s receptive smile to her finally speaking intrigued her. 

“Orius addressing you is an awkward situation until everything is properly explained. However, I do know that you have been named Rhene, correct?” 

“C-Correct,” she hugged the hefty pack to her chest. 

“Insensitive as I know it is to say given what has transpired, I still will say that it is a pleasure to meet you, Rhene. I wish not to hear the same said back to me from the pressure of pleasantries, but it is my aspiration that, by the time our paths part, you come to understand Orius and I have done what we’ve done to allow you to truly craft the future you desire with full understanding of everything that you have a right to know.” 

“I...sense graciousness in your words,” Rhene spoke softly to keep her own words steady, “although, for tonight, I cannot state what I truly think.” 

“I don’t think anyone would be able to. I...” Evelthon trailed off. He licked his lips and inhaled sharply twice as if about to speak before finally choosing what he said. “It will be further impertinent of me, but...may I be impertinent?” 

A question like so silencing her thoughts in bewilderment, Rhene’s impulse to allow the men before her anything they wanted had her nodding without consideration. Evelthon stepped forward. He wrapped his arms around her. Though her clutching of the pack prevented closer contact, he embraced her. Rhene lost thought, lost breath. Base emotions were what was left, and they told her something bizarre—Evelthon was warm. His touch brought comfort, and she didn’t reject his presence upon her like every rational consideration would insist. The heartbroken wavering in her chest Rhene had determined to contain, in fact, began to relax. Evelthon pulled back. 

“I apologize. You are putting on a brave face, but it felt like that might help.” 

Her cheeks tingled. Even her emotions no longer belonged to her, it seemed. 

“Please know something,” Evelthon continued. “I agreed to aid Orius because I believe what you will come to learn is something that should not be hidden from you. I have faith in Orius’s affection for you, and he does care for you. However, I also believe in your right to your own decisions. Once he and I accomplish our goal, if you choose to go back to your family in Irideska, I will take you there despite what anyone else thinks.” 

Rhene took a deep breath. She spoke louder, “May...I hold you to that?” 

“If you have patience to hear us out and see Aetion in Myrcaea, I swear that I will escort you safely to Irideska if that is your wish.” 

“I will hear you out. I will meet Orius’s pater. I will hold you to your vow.” 

“Thank you,” Evelthon dipped his head. “I will now leave you to your night. Orius and I are in the next room over should you require anything.” 

“Yes. Goodnight,” Rhene, without thinking, smiled. 

Cheeks burning harder as soon as she realized, Rhene stepped into her room, hurried the door closed, and, shoving aside embarrassment, collapsed upon the bed a second time, still hugging the pack to her chest.