“O-One moment, please!” Rhene pleaded, fingers fumbling. 

“You asked for a moment prior. Don’t you perhaps mean to ask for a second?” The banter in Orius’s muffled response from behind the door was void of any rebuke, yet it made her fingers stiffer. 

“A second then!” 

The second didn’t last as long as the first. Even if she had help, what Rhene intended would still take far too long to accomplish. Thirty seconds of struggling dropped her aching arms to her side and shuffled her to the door she cracked. Orius, less intimidating with tufts of hair sticking at end from sleep, offered a plate of food and curious brow raise. 

“From your panic, I expected you to have made a mess. What had you so flustered?” 

“I was...struggling with my hair,” Rhene sheepishly tucked a loose lock behind her ear. 

“What is wrong with it?” 

Rhene’s fingers grasped the strand tighter. Orius spoke with genuine intrigue, as if nothing was wrong with her half-presentable state before him. With what he said yesterday as well...could she worry less about expectations? 

“I’ve never had to do my hair myself. Mater insisted on tying it most mornings, although occasionally one of my sisters or the slaves would help when she couldn’t. I thought to put it up as I’m used to. However, I don’t even know where to start,” Rhene admitted. 

“I have less idea,” Orius folded his arms. “I do recommend holding it back in some manner, at least bound back with a band, to prevent it from getting in the way while riding. I...can offer the most basic of help. In the past, my sisters have coerced me into assisting them with their hair. A simple braid is in my skillset.” 

“You have sisters?” Rhene wondered. 

“Yes. Three, all younger. The smallest of whom is just a babe.” 

Rhene perked up at that, but she also forced down the sour tickle at the bottom of her throat wondering if, somehow, these sisters were sisters of hers too. Rhene needed breakfast before she curdled her stomach further by yanking out the truth prematurely. Besides, her lackluster courage had to be used for the following mumbled request instead. 

“Could you help me then?” 

Orius nodded without care of her once more crimson cheeks, which Rhene worried might become a permanent feature should it continue to flood her face. Rhene munched quietly on lightly buttered bread, dried strips of meat, and slices of fruit. Orius sat behind her on the bed and weaved the promised simple braid. 

“The days remain hot despite summer seeing itself out. I recommend wearing one of the lighter chitons Evelthon should have packed. There should also be a hood to don and olive oil to put on your skin to halt the worst of the sun’s burn.” 

“I’ll do so. Thank you...” Rhene took a bolstering breath, “brother.” 

Orius flinched. His rough fingers gently tying off the end of the braid halted too before, after an unheard inhale of his own, he finished the job. Rhene shifted to spot a softer expression more reminiscent of the way Perdix often looked. Orius cleared his throat. He stood. 

“Eat, and then we’ll head out to travel as far as possible before the sun reaches its peak. We’ll break then before pressing on when it cools.” 

“Yes,” Rhene agreed. 

He left her to it. Rhene absentmindedly finished her meal, begrudgingly submitted herself to the pot in the corner, and wiped her body clean as best as possible with what little water she had. Rhene carefully tucked her new yet now slightly soiled chiton within the pack before wiping herself in oil and settling a shorter chiton of simple dark fabric that itched in ways she didn’t expect over her shoulders. She scurried to the room next door where the two men required only a minute more. 

Rhene again accepted Evelthon’s assistance to mount Orius’s horse. Orius eyed her. 

“The hood?” 

“The sun is still weak. I will wait to put it on to not overheat myself.” 

“Even weak sun can burn. I can see your skin is delicate.” 

“I will be fine.” 

“Look at that,” Evelthon chuckled over Orius’s scoff. “She’s standing up to you. That’s a good improvement over yesterday.” 

“I merely won’t hear any complaints when her cheeks and shoulders scald red,” Orius shook his head. 

A click of his tongue, and his black stallion jostled to a start. Rhene held his waist and immediately wished for the hood. Not to protect her from the sun, but for the veil it would have been for her as the three of them passed through Tylasus. The town was a standard place full of mud brick walls and clay tiles like those stuffing the lowers districts of Irideska. Men and women both went on their way with barely any glancing her way to see her simple hair, exposed calves, and position behind a man on the back of a horse. It was if...they didn’t care. 

They passed the agora full of heavy spices, oily musk of freshly caught fish, and burning wood from smiths tending their forges. Children darted about the tightly wound streets, several risking the tossing of a ball between the horses’ legs as they passed for a created game. The children darted in an instant when Orius’s stallion bucked at them. Rhene impressed herself by managing to hold on and only moderately slamming her nose into the hard of Orius’s back. Perhaps because of that, Orius and Evelthon sped up the pace out of Tylasus. 

A wide road trampled by many feet and carts guided them west. Their elevation dipping into a valley saw the return of greener grass, leafier trees, and the appearance of a stream leading towards the nearby lake. Rhene gawked at the never-ending path before them. She watched with endless delight birds zipping between trees as if weaving an invisible web. Her neck craned with wince when in the far distance she spotted a deer—one that was alive, not on her plate. After an hour, however, Rhene did relent to the hood when their rising on the road took from them the shade of the slope. 

“You have been taught silence, haven’t you?” Orius noted dryly. He and Evelthon had spoken a little to each other, but Rhene knew the comment was for her. Orius continued, “I did agree to not push you, and I will stick to that. Even so, do you truly not have a mind burning with questions? How am I your brother? What are my intentions? What was the goat about?” 

“Does...Evelthon know about the goat?” Rhene checked hopefully. 

“I know about the goat.” Another gentle laugh from him. “It is an odd creature for sure. Helpful, if aimless in its actions.” 

“How do you know that kri-kri? With what it can do, it must be a steed of the gods,” Rhene asked Orius. 

“I came across it needing help, and I helped it. I suspect it to be connected to the gods in some way, yet the specifics of that I cannot determine.” 

“It is hard to talk to a goat, even one that can fly,” Rhene nodded thoughtfully. Evelthon laughed louder, and Orius snorted too. A moment passed. This time, Rhene let herself over the edge of the cliff. “How...are we related?” 

Orius needed his own moment. He needed a second. After a third, Rhene felt the building tightening of his chest go completely rigid. 

“I had time to prepare an answer, and I knew the question to come. Regardless, I do not know the way to start the truth in a way that does not hurt,” he admitted, chin towards the sky laden with clouds of wisp. 

“I can tell her,” Evelthon offered. 

“No. It’s alright. I think,” Orius gripped the reins, “I shall start like this. The young woman sitting behind me, what is your name?” 

“R-Rhene,” she hesitated. 

“That is what you have grown up using, but it is not your true name. I know you as Hellanike.” 

“Hellanike?” Rhene repeated. A fair name, but it in no way felt like it belonged to her. 

“I lived in the village of Coron with my pater, Aetion, and my mater, Kalykso. Pater got called away north to fight, and I began my first session of obligatory training in the spring. I left Mater with her being pregnant with my younger sibling. The others Pater and Mater tried to have died in the womb or died shortly after birth. I hoped that, upon my return in winter, I could finally call a younger brother or sister by name.” 

Orius paused. Rhene’s nails dug into the fabric of his cloak. 

“I never got the chance to do that with what turned out to be a younger sister. The fights that drew Pater north also took place around Coron. Armies from Astagoria hoped to win land weakened by the withdrawal of men elsewhere. Coron was overrun, and many of its citizens were slaughtered, including my mater. The name of the one who killed her? Pelagon.” 

Rhene no longer feared the sun, for her whole body went white and cold as the worst of a mountain’s blizzards. 

“I found out when Pater came to collect me after his service was done. We discovered our home in ruins, Mater buried, and my sister gone. The knowledge of that disastrous day came from the witness of a young slave girl Mater bought shortly before my departure. Wounded, she’d fled to a hiding spot inside the house where she secretly watched Pelagon, sword still dripping with blood, find you. However, he did not move to take your life. That murderer picked you up and held you kindly. One of his companions came to convince him to see you dead, but Pelagon refused. He expressed that his own daughter of your age and startlingly similar appearance had passed, and her death left his wife in the throes of great delusion and despair. It was his hope that bringing you home to her would relieve her of that burden.” 

The shrilling cicadas, the singing birds, the heavy winds in the trees, and the solid clopping of hooves on dirt—her ears once more took it all and heard nothing but oppressive silence and high-pitched ringing. Rhene claimed only enough composure to be glad for her fingers dug so deeply in Orius’s clothes, else she would have collapsed right off the horse. How many minutes passed? Rhene could not say. Even when the great passage of time that saw the road leveling and sun bearing down without mercy kept pressing on, Rhene barely understood she spoke the words that did finally slip out of her lips. 

“I was told I got sick,” she hardly whispered. “When I was a babe. I came so close to death that my heart stopped beating for a time. That it led to rumors with the neighbors that I had indeed perished. That Mater’s desperate pleas to Melinna brought me back and saw me healthy. The experience was what drove Mater’s obsession with me, with her overprotective coddling that took her so far as to continue to refuse me marriage despite me reaching nineteen summers.” 

“She obsessed over you because her child had died. I do wonder if her delusion was so great, however, that she truly convinced herself you were hers, or if she merely clung onto the relief your presence brought,” Orius mused indifferently. 

“That does not need to be brought up right now,” Evelthon chided. Rhene couldn’t sense the worry radiating from him towards her. 

“I do not care about that woman who trapped my sister as if a prisoner in a cell.” 

“It is your sister I am telling you to speak carefully around.” 

Orius frowned and bit his lip. More silence passed. Rhene wavered when Orius shifted to pat her knee. 

“Once more, take your time. Just know that you still do have true family, and—what light comfort it might bring—I want you to know that I am glad to finally meet you, Hellanike.” 

When she didn’t respond, Orius turned his attention back to the road. Their trek stayed the course west in intense gloom. Despite trying her best, the cascade of tears held back last night burst their way free, and Rhene gave in to the flood.