2nd Week of July, 1460
“A-And what is then t-the sum of coin left over for the merchant if he borrows ten hyperpera worth of coin and then builds an irrigation ditch for his plot of land?”
Theophylact’s voice seemed to hold the room hostage, and no one suffered more under that captivity than Theophylact himself. Every word had to be dragged out past the tightness in his throat.
“R-Remember to subtract the c-cost of building materials and account for the p-paid labour during the time.”
He should have held it hostage was perhaps more apt to say. Instead, he heard snickers behind every syllable he uttered. The students whispered among themselves, passing some private jest. In the beginning, the Lord’s threat had been enough to keep them obedient and quiet, but once that eroded, the students had become increasingly cavalier in the lessons.
“D-Do not forget he has to pay an interest rate of three parts per one hundred,” Theophylact said, trying to raise his wavering voice above the din. “D-Deduct that over the time elapsed.”
It barely seemed to help. The students bent to the task with lazy obedience. Some actually worked through the numbers, but others only pretended to, their attention clearly elsewhere.
Theophylact paced between the desks, peering down at their tablets and the cramped, careless scratches pressed into the dark wax. For now, they were meant to practice on reusable supplies until they could be trusted with proper paper manuscripts. Theodorus had been exact in his demands of legible handwriting, but the students seemed to be barely trying.
They were not terrible, and they were progressing, though more slowly than they would have under a proper teacher, Theophylact was sure of that.
The problem was not stupidity, but carelessness. They didn’t seem to realize that a single misplaced mark or a missed comma was all it took for an estate’s accounts to be wrong. And then it would take wasted hours, sometimes days, crawling backward through records until the original mistake finally revealed itself.
“H-How are things progressing, Meliton?” Theophylact asked of a broad-shouldered teenager with thick wrists and the look of someone who would have been much happier gripping a sword than a stylus.
He was stabbing at his wax tablet as if it were something he could split open through force alone, and a deep frown sat heavily on his brow.
“The answers do. Not. Match. Up.” He punctuated each word with a jab of the stylus, the last one hard enough to gouge the wax.
Theophylact looked at the mangled numbers and tried not to wince. He had no idea why the boy had been selected for the classroom. Meliton had no talent for lettering at all, and even less for the patience required.
None of these boys was ready to be put to use.
Well, all but one.
“H-Have you finished, Michalis?” Theophylact asked.
The boy seemed to fold in on himself the moment attention fell upon him, shoulders curling inward as if he hoped to disappear beneath the writing desk. He hid as much of his face as he could under a thick brown bowl cut, trimmed neatly along his eyeline.
“Hmmhmm,” Michalis murmured, but didn’t sound very convinced of it himself.
Theophylact looked over the tablet and blinked.
The answer was written out in an orderly, detailed script that made the others around it look like chicken scratches.
“Y-you’ve already finished the problems I had prepared for you later,” Theophylact remarked, leaning closer.
A few nearby students glanced over, curious.
“W-Why didn’t you let me know?” Theophylact asked, confused. Most of the other boys were eager to show off whenever they found reason to.
Michalis did not answer, eyes glued to the neat lines.
“Master Steward?” The title was pronounced with the uncanny ability to show just enough disdain beneath the respect so as not to be reproached. Of course, it belonged to Julius Joakimides, a thin, regal-looking boy. “Isn’t it about time for our break?”
Your break is whenever I decide, Theophylact should have said. “A-Ah, yes,” was what he said instead, more out of reflex than anything well thought out. “Y-Yes, I believe so.”
It was nearly the proper time between sessions, he supposed…though had they not had a break only an hour or so before?
The students did not wait for his internal muttering to resolve itself. The young nobles spilled from the classroom in pairs and little grouplets, their voices brightening the moment they were free of him.
All but one.
“M-Michalis,” The boy halted halfway to the door, moving as if freedom from lessons was somehow less appealing to him than remaining behind among the wax tablets and stale air. “C-Could you stay a moment?” Theophylact asked.
Theophylact waited until the last of the boys were well beyond earshot before he spoke again.
“I h-have been noticing that you are solving the current problems and lessons with ease,” Theophylact began. “N-Not just arithmetic, but writing, history, and even law and ordinance.”
Each subject he named seemed to make the boy flinch, as though Theophylact were listing offences rather than accomplishments.
“H-Have you had any prior experience in them?” Theophylact had to ask, the boy seemed to arrive at lessons already knowing the subject.
“A minor one,” Michalis murmured. “On my family’s estate.”
Theophylact could barely hear him, and he was standing close enough to see the faint pressure marks left by the stylus on the boy’s fingers. Why was he so frightened to admit proficiency?
“W-Well, whatever the case,” Theophylact said, trying for a gentleness that wavered with his voice, “I was t-thinking about moving you along to the more advanced subjects, so you could begin scribe work sooner.”
The fear that crossed Michalis’s face was immediate, and his hand crept toward his sleeve.
“That would disrupt the classroom, Master Steward,” Michalis said. He was the only one who spoke the title with any true measure of respect. “You do not have to do that.”
“N-Nonsense,” Theophylact said, waving the objection away. “The Lord i-instructed me to speed up more promising recruits in this exact circumstance. Y-You can begin receiving full pay if you become a scribe, so you should t-try your hardest.”
“I do not need it,” Theophylact blinked, wrong-footed by the answer. Before he could decide how to respond to that bit of strangeness, Michalis swallowed only to deliver another, even more shocking statement. “In truth, I was thinking of quitting the classes.”
Theophylact stared at him, genuinely flabbergasted.
“W-Why?” he blurted out. If his most promising student suddenly disappeared, what would that say about his teaching?
“I don’t think that I am cut out for scribe work.” Michalis avoided his gaze entirely now, and Theophylact noticed him rubbing at his wrist beneath the fall of his sleeve. “I am sorry.” He bowed quickly, then fled the room mid-conversation.
For one terrible moment, a cold thought coursed through Theophylact’s mind. Was the boy cutting his own wrists? Theophylact had resisted the urge ever since his confrontation with Theodorus, and it had left him strangely adrift. For so long, pain had been the one thing sharp enough to pin him here, and now he felt strangely adrift without it.
But the thought of a boy passing through that same shade of misery filled him with dread. Was this how the Lord had felt, seeing him in his room with a knife in hand?
Theophylact found himself moving after him. He would not let that kind of tragedy take place in front of him. Not if he could help it.
He crossed near the courtyard and heard snickers off in a quiet, shaded corner. He recognized them. They followed him through every lesson.
Theophylact slowed and peered over, noticing a loose circle of boys had formed there. And in the middle stood Michalis.
“You think you’re so much better than us, don’t you?” Julius Joakimides said, because of course it was Julius. He shoved Michalis with one hand, and the movement was not kind.
“I do not, brother, I swear,” Michalis muttered.
Theophylact stopped dead at the sight of Michalis’s haunted expression and voice close to breaking. Memories of his father’s punishments rose unbidden.
“Do you not grow tired of preying on the weak, Julius?” Meliton remarked from the side. He was not part of the circle, but he was not stopping it either, watching the whole affair with the bored irritation of someone waiting for rain to pass.
“Shut up, Meliton,” Julius snapped, “I’m trying to teach my little brother a valuable lesson about not one-upping his betters.” He threw the words out like refuse, then took a slow, menacing step toward Michalis, and the boys around them instinctively tightened the circle.
“You know Father only sent you here because having two scribes close to Lord Theodorus would lend him more prestige,” Julius said. His voice had lowered now, losing the easy theatricality he used in class. “I told you to stop showboating. Are you trying to make me look bad?”
He jabbed one finger into Michalis’s shoulder with each accusation, hard enough that the boy rocked backward a little more each time.
“Is this revenge?” Julius demanded. “Are you turning on me, is that it?”
“Of course not, brother,” Michalis tried, though the words were useless the moment they left him.
Julius’s prods grew sharper, more violent, his frustration feeding itself on the lack of resistance. Theophylact could see where it was going, how laughter was often followed by cruelty because it became easier once a crowd approved it.
He was not of a mind to let it go that far.
“W-What exactly is going on here?” Theophylact demanded, stepping out into the courtyard.
The boys whirled around with almost comic surprise.
If Theophylact expected them to show guilt, however, he was sadly mistaken. They looked, at most, only mildly inconvenienced.
“Master Steward,” Julius said smoothly, with an ease that made Theophylact’s stomach tighten. “We were only asking my brother for pointers, nothing more.”
He set a hand on Michalis’s shoulder, companionably enough for anyone arriving too late to mistake it for affection. Meliton, still standing off to the side, rolled his eyes at the obvious performance.
“I-I think I know what was happening,” Theophylact said, thrown back by the absurdity of having to argue against what he just saw. “And i-it was most certainly not that.”
“Then you have misunderstood, Master Steward,” Julius replied, entirely unrattled. His well-tended brown locks bobbed slightly as he inclined his head in false courtesy. “Isn’t that right, Michalis?”
The shy, chubby boy wavered. Shame gathered visibly across his face, weighing him down tremendously. Then he nodded, in defeat.
Theophylact felt something in his chest twist at the sight. He knew that nod well. He had given it plenty before, because agreeing with a lie was sometimes easier than surviving the truth when you were weak.
He would not allow it this time.
“D-Do you think you can lie to me?” Theophylact asked, taking a step forward. “I c-clearly saw you torment Michalis, Julius.”
Julius’s expression changed by degrees. The polite mask cooled and hardened into something truer.
“I think that, perhaps, you should not interfere in personal familial matters, Master Steward. I was just speaking to my brother.”
Theophylact’s throat went dry.
He recognized the soft, lordly command of someone born above him, speaking to a commoner who had inconvenienced him. It was a voice he had obeyed out of reflex for most of his life, and he felt the urge now, even for a boy barely a man.
But he was not that man anymore. He was trying, however poorly, not to live every waking moment as a hostage to fear.
You are my friend. And far braver than you realize.
Someone was counting on him now. Someone believed in him, however absurd that belief sometimes seemed, and he could not bear the thought of proving that trust misplaced.
“I-I think that heaping misery on fellow students is unbecoming of any scribe meant to work in Suyren,” Theophylact said.
“Is that a threat, Steward?” There was no courtesy left in the title now.
“It i-is a promise,” Theophylact answered, and took a step forward. “If you s-show this kind of behaviour again toward M-Michalis, or display any more of this disrespect toward me, I w-will fail you and send you back to your estate, where you w-will have to explain to Lord Joakimides why his son could not even become a scribe.”
Julius’s lips thinned.
“I d-decide your fate here,” Theophylact continued, surprising himself with the bite in every word. “No one else.”
It felt as though some other man, sterner and more resolute, had spoken for him. When Theophylact glanced at Michalis and saw the boy’s wide eyes, saw the faint and fragile spark of hope there, a strength he did not know he possessed surged from within.
“You cannot be serious,” Disbelief frayed the edge of Julius’s voice. “You’re defending this little rat?”
He looked back toward his little posse, clearly expecting laughter or outrage, and saw only worry. Even Meliton’s bored expression had sharpened into something more attentive.
It seemed they had realized, more quickly than Julius, that this was no longer only just a bit of sport. Their futures might actually be jeopardized by continuing it.
“On the contrary,” Theophylact said, and a strange, almost giddy feeling moved through him, “I-I believe you are not serious enough.”
He had always felt jealousy when seeing confidence in other men, how they wore it smoothly without thought. Was this how it felt?
“You are hereby suspended from further classes for one month, Julius.”
Julius looked as though God Himself had struck him silly.
“Y-You can rest assured I will be detailing the reason for your suspension to the Lord,” Theophylact felt as if he were soaring.
The words landed harder than any blow could have. Julius’s face stiffened, and his haughty arrogance broke apart, as Theophylact gestured toward a stunned Michalis.
“And y-your brother here has just become the first official scribe of Suyren,” he said, surprising literally everyone present, including himself. “So you would d-do well to care for how you s-speak of him.”
Michalis’s jaw nearly fell to the floor while Julius stood stock-still. Theophylact could see him weighing the matter behind his eyes, deciding whether this was something he could challenge, mock, or twist back into his favour. But when Julius looked around, he found no support waiting for him. The other boys had drawn inward, suddenly very aware that they were second and third sons with limited prospects, and that this class might be the best chance any of them had to make something of themselves.
“Very well,” Julius said at last, in a rigid, forced tone. “I beg your leave, Master Steward.”
He ground out the title as though it had turned bitter on his tongue.
Theophylact waved him away and Julius left fuming, although he could not quite hide the urgency in his steps.
“G-Go to the classroom,” Theophylact ordered the others.
He was still half-drunk on whatever authority he had seized, unable to tell whether it had truly belonged to him or whether he had merely borrowed it for a few reckless moments. Either way, the students obeyed. They shuffled away in a subdued cluster, significantly more cowed than before, their earlier snickers nowhere to be heard.
Only Michalis remained.
“Master Steward,” the boy said after a long moment, his voice small enough that the breeze nearly stole it. “Did you… did you mean what you said?”
He looked like someone afraid to believe his own good fortune.
Theophylact turned to him, becoming fully aware that he had, in fact, just promoted a teenage boy into the position of official scribe.
“O-Of course, y-you are ready,” Theophylact said, deciding to sound as though this had been his intention all along.
“You already r-run circles around the numbers, and know your way around the l-laws,” Theophylact said, practicing the argument he would have to give his Lord for the sudden appointment he had just made, “and, most importantly, you have a good head on your shoulders.” He placed a tentative hand on the boy’s shoulder.
“Father and Julius will not appreciate that,” Michalis said, rubbing at his wrist again.
Theophylact watched the motion with a painful tightening in his chest. The boy reminded him of himself in too many ways.
“B-But did you?” Theophylact asked quietly.
Michalis looked up, startled that anyone would think to ask for his opinion at all. He fidgeted with his hands, then nodded.
“I did,” he said. His voice was tiny, but genuine. “Thank you, Master Steward.”
“T-Theophylact.”
“Pardon?” Michalis asked.
“M-My name is Theophylact,” he reiterated. “You’re not a student anymore.”
The boy’s eyes widened, somehow only realizing now what his new status meant.
“Thank you, Theophylact.”
He stood a little straighter when he said it.
They held each other’s gaze in the passing breeze. The sweltering July heat did not seem to reach them quite so fiercely in that small, shaded corner of the courtyard. Theophylact was still certain he was exactly the wrong person to teach these boys anything. He was nervous, thin-voiced, easily frightened, and held together by destructive habits he was only now beginning to question.
Yet perhaps he could nudge them in the right direction in his own flawed way.
And perhaps, without meaning to, they could nudge him in return.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3rd Week of July, 1460
“Carissa, come with me.”
Stefanos’s voice cut through the grim monotony of Miss Dina’s perpetually exhausting sessions. Cassandra had been helping strip and replace the bedding in the servants’ quarters, a task that punished every muscle in her back and arms. And it was made worse by the horrid thing they made her wear atop her head. She felt half a step into hell with how hot it was.
The other girls slowed, sneaking glances at the one-armed servant in the doorway. It was not every day that one of the lord’s personal attendants came down to concern himself with a girl from Miss Dina’s group.
Even the Miss herself appeared thrown off balance by the interruption.
“Is Carissa required for something? I was not told of this.” Her mouth drew into a severe line.
“Carissa will not be required for your services anymore, Miss Dina,” Stefanos clarified.
That earned a greater ripple of whispers from the gaggle of maids. Cassandra herself was surprised.
“She is being let go?” Miss Dina asked, her tone far from the satisfaction Cassandra would have expected. “She has gotten significantly better. I believe she can still improve.”
Cassandra nearly strained her neck with how fast she turned to stare. The older headmistress had not, during any of their time together, spared even the thinnest word of kindness for her. Yet now, faced with finally being rid of Cassandra, she was taking something that almost resembled a stand.
“You misunderstand,” Stefanos said quickly. “The Lord has found what he hopes will be a more suitable task for Cassandra within the castle.”
Miss Dina’s expression did not soften. If anything, the explanation made her more doubtful, as though a more suitable task for Cassandra sounded less believable than almost any other claim made so far.
“You need not worry about it, Miss Dina,” Stefanos said, stepping closer and laying his lone hand on the headmistress’s arm. He offered her a radiant smile, bright and easy, flashing pearl white teeth.
Cassandra noticed several maids go nearly still at the sight. She had never really considered the prestige that came with being the lord’s personal servant. Stefanos was close to power, neatly dressed, and familiar with the household’s inner rooms. He would have been a fine match for nearly any girl here, though Cassandra suspected that was not the only reason so many cheeks had turned pink.
“Well, if the Lord says so…” Even the strict taskmaster did not seem wholly impervious to Stefanos’s wiles. “I suppose you are free to go, Carissa. Be on your best behaviour, and work harder than you have so far,” Miss Dina intoned, eyes narrow, fully going back on her earlier statement now that the threat of expulsion no longer loomed. Cassandra supposed that was as warm a goodbye as she was ever likely to receive from her.
“Come along, Carissa,” Stefanos said, looking at her meaningfully.
Cassandra rose with a slight strain, smoothing her plain skirt, and followed him out. She kept her face lowered as they passed the other girls, refusing to meet the curious looks that trailed after her. Once the servants’ quarters had faded behind them, the silence between her and Stefanos grew more noticeable.
They walked through the castle corridors without speaking. The stone passageways were cool compared with the workrooms, shadowed where narrow windows failed to catch the light.
Stefanos had made no mention of the scene in the loggia, where he had found her in such a wretched state, and for that Cassandra was grateful. Still, it was strange to walk beside him and pretend nothing had happened.
Cassandra’s life as a hidden servant had thus far been one emotional crisis after another. Stefanos was the chief obstacle standing between her and any hope of escaping this blasted place. Yet he had also helped her when she had been closest to breaking.
“What job will you have me do?” Cassandra forced herself to ask, eager for any subject that would spare her from rummaging further through her own thoughts. They had become too knotted lately, full of sharp turns and contradictions she did not know how to name. Or want to.
“You will see soon enough,” Stefanos said, and his only betrayal was the small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“The Lord has finally found some better place to hide me away?” Cassandra asked, choosing to react with anger because it was simpler than anything else.
“I will admit that took some precedence in the Lord’s decision,” Stefanos replied, his tone mildly troubled by the admission. “But there is also the fact that none of the servants have delivered a glowing report on your disposition toward the work.” He glanced at her pointedly.
“I am sorry I was not born gifted in scrubbing floors or tending horses,” Cassandra riposted.
“Did you try to become better at either?” he asked with the calm of someone who already knew the answer.
“Do you blame me for not trying?” Cassandra challenged. None of this had been her choice.
“I do not,” Stefanos said quietly, and that gentleness unsettled her. “But perhaps this will be work you might enjoy doing.”
The warmth of the sun struck Cassandra’s face, spilling through the upper foliage in bright, broken shafts, turning the dust in the air to gold. The scent of leaves, old stone, and dry earth reached everywhere in the loggia around her.
The high, shrill cry of summer crickets was a song almost dear to her. The idyllic scene was broken only by a small circle of ruin that sat in its corner.
There, thorn bushes had been torn loose and left twisted upon themselves over flattened flowers and dry clumps of earth.
Cassandra approached the wreckage. She had trampled the garden her mother had made and her father had preserved, let grief and fury destroy such a gentle thing. She felt shame at the sight.
“You want to make amends?”
The voice came from the far side of the little courtyard. A stooped figure stepped out from beneath the shaded archway, one hand brushing aside a hanging veil of vine as he crossed into the sun.
Demetrios.
Cassandra turned toward him. “Yes,” she admitted, surprising herself.
“I might have something that will help, then.” The old servant’s lined face split into a small grin as he drew his hands from behind his back.
He carried a pair of leather gloves, a narrow iron trowel, and a small pruning knife tucked safely into a sheath. A rush basket hung from the crook of his arm, ready for weeds, dead leaves, and whatever else needed to be cleared away.
“You don’t mean…” Cassandra’s breath caught as recognition settled over her.
“The castle needs a gardener, as you can see.” Demetrios gestured toward the verdant, untended landscape around him, where greenery had grown too thick in some places and too thin in others. “And you seem to have already gotten a head start.”
He stepped into the ruined corner with a sly look that should have irritated her, but was superseded by surprise.
“Why?” Cassandra asked, confused. These men were her family’s enemies. Their lord had helped bring down her world as she had known it. But they stood, offering tools and redemption instead of punishment.
Why were they lifting her up?
“This garden is not the only thing in disarray,” Demetrios said by way of answer. Behind him, Stefanos’s expression softened into something almost encouraging. “Perhaps, in nurturing it, you can begin to heal as well.”
Cassandra looked down as Demetrios placed the gloves and tools in her hands. The leather was rough, the iron warm from the sun. Her fingers trembled around them.
“And perhaps you do not need to do so alone,” Stefanos added.
He stepped forward with a short rake whose teeth had been worn smooth in hand, then lowered himself carefully to his knees beside the torn earth. There was no command in his eyes this time, only an invitation. After a moment of hesitation, Cassandra knelt beside him, gathering her skirts awkwardly beneath her. Demetrios joined them with a quiet grunt.
Together, the three of them began clearing the ruined corner of the garden. They pulled loose weeds from the soil, and gathered broken stems into the basket. It was clear it would be a large task, certainly not one to be completed in a day, but the first small patch of earth already looked less hopeless beneath their hands.
And together, Cassandra wondered lightly, they could indeed work much faster than apart.
…
Cassandra felt exhausted by the time she reached her small room. The day had slipped away in a blur of weeds, dark rich earth, and spotted sunlight. Dirt clung beneath her fingernails, and the smell of leaves clung to her clothes.
Her thighs protested each time she moved, sore from hours spent squatting beside flowerbeds, and her lower back answered with its own dull ache from time spent bent over roots. But most of all, her face ached from smiling all day.
It was a strange sort of pain, as though her cheeks had been overworked by doing too much of something she had half forgotten. Cassandra could not remember the last time she had laughed properly in these past weeks. Now she had to keep her laugh down each time she remembered Miss Dina’s scandalized expression upon finding Cassandra kneeling in the garden, her dress stained brown, speaking in a low half-mumble to the plants.
Cassandra entered her room with something warm kindling in her chest. She would never have imagined she could feel such a thing while living in captivity.
The thought dimmed her mood. She was not free, not truly. A kinder task did not change the walls around her. But it did make it ache less sharply.
Another thought struck her, and before she could think better of it, she found herself standing before the wooden door beside her quarters. She knocked.
“Yes?” Stefanos’s voice came muffled from within.
“It is Cassandra,” she said, the words leaving her before she could snatch them back. Suddenly, this seemed far less sensible than it had a breath earlier.
A long pause followed.
“Come in,” Stefanos said at last.
Cassandra opened the door and found him seated at a desk, writing on a wax tablet with a stylus. His shoulders were slightly hunched, and his back had the crooked look of someone who had been bent over the same work for hours. A small lamp burned nearby despite the lingering evening light, its flame swaying whenever the air moved through the room.
“So this was the tremendous task you had to accomplish, and why you could not stay to help in the garden for longer?” Cassandra tried for a jest, but the words came out awkward and strained even to her own ears.
“Just practicing my numbers,” Stefanos said, mercifully choosing not to point out the failure. He set the stylus down, seeming equally willing to move past the strangeness hanging between them.
“Arithmetic?” That caught Cassandra’s attention. That was not a normal skill for a servant to need.
Stefanos nodded. “The Lord wants me to learn proper calculation work. I already know my numbers, but he wants me to progress. If it were up to him, I think every servant in the castle would know how to multiply and divide.”
His faint smile faded as he realized his mistake.
The mention of the Captain doused much of the goodwill that had brought Cassandra to his door. She felt the urge to retreat before she had to feel anything too complicated. She should have known this was a mistake.
“What did you want?” Stefanos asked, more gently now, as if he had noticed the change and wished to steer around it.
“I came to…” Cassandra stopped. The words had seemed easier when she had imagined them in her room, with only the walls to hear them. “I wanted to thank you.”
Stefanos looked wholly surprised. “For what?”
“I know you were the one who spoke with the Captain and suggested the garden.” The Captain had thus far taken a distant approach to her position, content to have her watched rather than directly managed. If the idea had come from anyone, it had to be either Demetrios or Stefanos.
“You do?” Stefanos’s eyebrows lifted.
The corners of Cassandra’s mouth rose. A heartbeat later, Stefanos seemed to realize he had betrayed himself.
“Well played,” he conceded, almost ruefully.
“Working as a gardener does not make up for everything,” Cassandra said, and his smile died. She looked down at her hands, where faint traces of soil still marked the creases of her skin. “But it does help. In a way, it reminds me of home. Of how it used to be.”
Stefanos turned fully toward her then, the wax tablet forgotten beside his elbow. The lightness left his face, replaced by something quieter and more solemn, and after a moment he gave her a small nod, accepting the thanks with more care than triumph.
“I am glad,” he said softly. “Truly.”
From the corner of Stefanos’s figure, Cassandra caught a glimpse of the markings on the wax tablet he had been writing upon.
At first, she noticed only that they did not look like numbers. Instead, the surface was filled with flowing lines of script.
Cassandra’s practiced eye knew a poem when she saw one.
She leaned a fraction closer before she could stop herself, curious. Then her eyes widened.
She recognized the letters.
They were more graceful now, as though whoever wrote them had been practicing since then, but the telltale signs remained. Cassandra had spent enough of her life reading, copying, and writing to know a familiar hand when she saw one.
Do not give away your heartHe will only break it apart
It was the same writing as the note. The warning about the Captain. Before the rebellion, before the betrayal, before everything in her life had been broken and rearranged.
Cassandra’s breath caught in her throat.
Stefanos noticed her gaze. His expression changed at once, the softness vanishing as he shifted forward, drawing his lone hand across the tablet and then leaning his body over it to hide the wax from view.
“I appreciate your thanks,” he said, his voice careful now, almost too careful, “but I think it is time for you to leave.”
There was something forceful in the words. He rose and moved with her toward the doorway, leaving her little room to remain.
Cassandra allowed herself to be guided out, too stunned to resist.
Had Stefanos been the one who had tried to warn her of the Captain’s scheme? His own servant? The thought seemed absurd. Why would he have done it? Why warn her, when by every reasonable measure they had stood on opposite sides?
And was that not what he was doing now as well? Speaking to the Captain so that she could work in the garden, because some part of him had understood what it would mean to her. Even though it might give her more space to move, perhaps even more chances to flee.
“Good night, Carissa,” Stefanos said pointedly, forcing the conversation to an end, but there was something in his eyes that held her attention. There was more he wished to say.
Then he closed the door, leaving Cassandra alone in the corridor with her thoughts in turmoil.
She wanted desperately to color them villains. It would have been easier to paint them all in black and white and be done with it. Yet shades of grey kept appearing, even in the darkest corners of her mind, and she did not know if she was meant to follow where they led or paint them over in a darker hue.