Dionys had been gone since dawn, training the newest recruits. When he returned, he found the tent empty, the bedroll cold.

  His first thought was battle-sharp instinct: Gone. Taken.

  His fingers found the hilt of his dagger before logic caught up.

  Then he heard the laughter, just outside the tent. He pushed through the flap.

  And there she was.

  Alessia stood beside the fire pit. Standing. Swaying slightly, her bare feet planted in the war sand. No cane, no support, just her, balanced on her own for the first time in days.

  Stella sat cross-legged nearby, commanding a small army of strategically placed rocks.

  “So you don’t fall, Mama!”

  Odrian lounged beside her, watching Alessia with a grin even as his hands hovered, ready to catch her if she stumbled.

  Dionys didn’t move. He didn’t breathe.

  Alessia took a step.

  Then another.

  Her ankle held.

  “Again,” she murmured to herself, to the gods, to the wind, before she lifted her foot once again.

  Her balance wavered.

  Odrian tensed.

  Alessia laughed, bright and startled, and righted herself before he could stand.

  “This is terrible,” she announced with a grin. “I’m terrible at walking.”

  Her next step landed harder before she turned and saw him.

  Dionys stood frozen in the tent’s shadow, his throat tight.

  Alessia smiled and held out a hand.

  “Well?” she teased. “Aren’t you going to come hold me up, Warlord?”

  Her voice shook. Her stance wobbled. But her eyes were unbroken.

  Dionys crossed the distance in three strides, catching her elbow before her next wobble could topple her. His fingers tightened, not to hold her up but to steady her.

  “Don’t rush,” he grunted as he helped her find her own balance. His thumb skimmed the inside of her wrist before he stepped back, giving her space.

  But his eyes never left her. Ready.

  Odrian shot to his feet, arms spread like an overly dramatic spotter.

  “Yes, truly abysmal. How do you even manage to stand without tripping over air?”

  “I can walk perfectly,” Stella bragged, hopping up to demonstrate. She immediately tripped over her own rocks. She blinked at the sky and shrugged. “… Mostly.”

  Dionys snorted before scooping Stella up one-handed and depositing her back on her rock pile.

  “Practice,” he told her, gruff and fond. He turned back to Alessia. “You, too.”

  Alessia took another step, unsteady and winning, and squeezed Dionys’ hand like an anchor.

  She hadn’t realized how much she’d missing walking. How much she had missed the simple act of moving through the world without dragging a chain behind her. Every shift of weight sent pain flaring up her leg, but she gritted her teeth and kept going.

  Dionys didn’t coddle her. He didn’t try to take her weight. He just matched her pace—silent, steady, there—as she tested each step.

  One more.

  Again.

  The fire crackled beside them, casting long shadows across the sand as the sun dipped lower.

  Odrian had shifted from goading her on to distracting Stella with increasingly ridiculous battle strategies. But his eyes kept flicking back to Alessia’s progress.

  Her breath caught as she took another step.

  Her ankle trembled, but held.

  Again.

  Dionys didn’t praise her. He didn’t need to. The way his fingers tightened around hers, possessive and proud, said enough.

  And maybe she leaned into him a little more than was strictly necessary.

  ─ ·??☆?°· ─

  The camp had gone quiet, the fire burning low, and Alessia was still walking.

  Small circles at first, then longer paths. Each step steadier than the last.

  Stella had fallen asleep in Odrian’s lap, her tiny fingers curled around the shackle they’d saved for her sword. Dionys lingered nearby, arms crossed, tracking Alessia’s movements like a sentinel.

  It wasn’t graceful.

  It wasn’t easy.

  But it was hers.

  And when she finally sank to the bedroll, smiling as her legs shook, Odrian pressed a kiss to her temple.

  “Perfect.”

  Dionys squeezed her hand.

  No words.

  Just pride.

  ─ ·??☆?°· ─

  Stella charged into the medical tent with the subtlety of a young warlord, her arms full of rocks.

  “I built you steps!” she announced as she dumped them at Alessia’s feet with a clatter. “So you don’t fall!”

  They weren’t really steps. They were a haphazard pile of increasingly large stones, leading nowhere.

  But Alessia stepped onto the first one. Then the next. And when she reached the top, Stella beamed like she’d just conquered the world.

  Askarion sighed and muttered, “Gods help me,” before gently nudging the stones into actual steps with his boot.

  Alessia grinned, then wobbled. She threw her arms out wide to catch her balance.

  “Shit—”

  Askarion lunged. Dionys moved faster..

  But it was Odrian, perched on the bedroll with a half-asleep Stella in his lap, who caught her. He hooked an arm around her waist before she could faceplant into the rocks.

  “Graceful,” he teased, his lips brushing her ear as he steadied her. “Absolutely regal.”

  Dionys growled, which morphed into a rare, rough chuckle as he crouched to reassemble Stella’s “steps” into something less lethal.

  “Walk,” he ordered as he handed her a waterskin. His fingers lingered against hers, warm. “Then rest.”

  He stayed close enough to catch her, his shoulder brushing hers as she drank.

  Stella, waking from her nap, blinked just in time to see her rock-stair masterpiece being rearranged.

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  Her gasp was devastated.

  “…Uncle Dio,” she said. “Why?”

  Dionys didn’t even look up.

  “Because your mother walks like a drunk goat.”

  Alessia snorted into the waterskin.

  “Rude.”

  She didn’t deny it.

  Odrian commandeered Stella into a dramatic reenactment of The Fall of Mama the Ungraceful, complete with sound effects.

  “And then—CRASH!—she was felled by the mightiest foe of all… pebbles.”

  Stella giggled, delighted by the theatrics, even at her mother’s expense.

  Watching the chaos from the doorway, Askarion exhaled through his nose,

  “You’re all banned from my tent,” he said as he turned to leave. “After you finish walking.”

  It was the closest he’d ever come to admitting he was proud.

  Alessia bit her lip, eyes bright, and took another step.

  Her ankle ached. Her legs shook. But Dionys’s hand was solid at her back, Odrian’s laughter was warm in her ears, and Stella’s joy was ringing through the camp like bells.

  So she walked.

  ─ ·??☆?°· ─

  Later, Dionys knelt beside Alessia’s bedroll and pressed his lips to her newly freed ankle.

  His kiss lingered on the scarred skin, his thumb brushing the remnants of the shackle’s grip on her flesh.

  “Never again.”

  A warning. A vow. She could taste it—salt and iron—when he turned his face up to hers.

  He stayed like that, kneeling with his lips to her skin, until her breathing evened out and the darkening bruises around her ankle finally stopped throbbing.

  Then he pressed one last kiss to the scar before tugging the blanket over them both.

  “You’ll walk farther tomorrow,” he muttered as he settled beside her.

  A challenge.

  A promise.

  Alessia didn’t argue. She just curled into him, her toes brushing his calves, and slept.

  ─ ·??☆?°· ─

  Odrian lounged on a low bench near the empty training grounds, elbows on his knees, a wine cup dangling from his fingers. His usual theatrical flair had bled out with the fading light, leaving something quieter behind.

  Patrian found him like that, gazing at the scattered weapon racks, at the grooves in the sand where Alessia had taken her first halting steps.

  He exhaled sharply as he dropped onto the bench.

  “You’re thinking too hard. It’s unnerving.”

  Odrian turned the cup in his hands.

  “I was just wondering… what, in Olympus’s name, we even are now.” A pause. “Her. Me. Dionys. The tiny tyrant who keeps stealing my knives. This.”

  Patrian took a sip of his own drink, staring out at the same horizon.

  “A family, you idiot.”

  Odrian choked on his wine.

  Patrian rolled his eyes. “Don’t make me say it twice. You’ve played king and conqueror your whole life, but this—” He jerked his chin toward the tents where Alessia and Stella slept, where Dionys kept silent watch outside. “—isn’t a wartime alliance. It’s not politics. It’s just… life.”

  Silence fell between them and then Odrian laughed, sudden and bright. “We’re terrible at this.”

  “You are,” Patrian smirked, ignoring how he had been eyeing a pair of matching bracelets for Aurelis and himself in the last trade caravan.

  Odrian drained his cup, flicking the dregs into the sand. “… Think we’ll get better at it?”

  Patrian snorted.

  “Aurelis still calls me ‘healer’ half the time when he forgets to use my name. Dionys once tried to stab his feelings away. And you?” He leveled Odrian with a deadpan expression. “I once watched you apologize to a fig tree after kicking it.” He took another deliberate sip.

  “No. We will not get better at this.”

  He paused, looking into his own wine cup.

  “But we’ll keep trying.”

  Odrian grinned. “Good.”

  ─ ·??☆?°· ─

  Alessia woke with a gasp, sweat-drenched and trembling, her fingers clawing at the blanket tangled around her. For one terrible, disoriented second, she felt it again. The shackle’s bite, the phantom weight, Walus’ laughter echoing in her skull.

  Dionys was already awake. Already there. His arms locked around her before she could even register the movement, hauling her against him like he could press the nightmare out of her with sheer force.

  “Breathe,” he ordered, voice rough with sleep.

  Her nails dug into his arms, her heartbeat a trapped bird against her ribs. “I—”

  She couldn’t. Not yet.

  Then a small, sleepy whimper from the other side of the tent caught her attention. Stella.

  Alessia froze.

  Dionys’ grip tightened.

  “She’s safe,” he growled, low enough that only she would hear it. “You kept her safe.”

  Slowly, muscle by muscle, Alessia forced herself to relearn the shape of now.

  The distant crash of waves. The quiet murmur of the night watch.

  Odrian shifted in his sleep, one arm flung out toward their pallet like he’d been reaching for her.

  Dionys’ calloused palm, warm against her spine.

  The scent of salt and pine tar clinging to the tent walls.

  Stella’s soft, rhythmic snores.

  No shackle.

  No chains.

  She exhaled and let her forehead drop to Dionys’s shoulder.

  “… Tell me again,” she whispered.

  Dionys’s fingers traced the bare skin of her ankle, where the shackle had been. Where it would never be again.

  “Here,” he muttered, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head. “Alive. Free.”

  A pause. Then, lower, rougher, “Mine.”

  His grip trembled, just for a second. The word coming out more plea than claim.

  Alessia didn’t mention it. She simply closed her eyes, breathed, and repeated the words into the hollow of his collarbone.

  “Here. Alive. Free.”

  (Yours.)

  The unspoken addition shimmered between them, fragile as the dawn light.

  Then louder, braver, as her fingers tangled in his tunic.

  “Again.”

  Dionys’s hands tightened. His lips found her temple.

  “Here.”

  Again.

  “Alive.”

  Again.

  “Free.”

  His mouth hovered over hers, close enough to steal the words back if she wanted.

  “Say it.”

  “Yours,” she whispered, raw and feral in its honesty. She sealed it with a kiss.

  When she finally slept, it was with his pulse thudding against her palm and Odrian’s fingers laced with hers.

  No more chains.

  No more running.

  Just this.

  Here. Alive. Free.

  ─ ·??☆?°· ─

  The air was still cool with the last remnants of night when Dionys struck, a brutal, testing swing that forced Odrian to pivot hard, sand spraying under his boots as he barely parried in time.

  They’d been at it for nearly an hour already. No banter. Just the clang of blades and the ragged sound of breathing.

  Dionys didn’t fight like this often, like he was carving his words into steel instead of speaking them.

  Odrian disengaged, chest heaving, and wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. He was grinning, but his eyes were sharp, assessing.

  “What’s got you in the mood to try and decapitate me before breakfast?” he asked as he twirled his blade lazily, his stance anything but relaxed. “Other than my general irresistibility, of course.”

  Dionys didn’t grace him with a response, He just lunged again, harder, forcing Odrian to skid backward before countering.

  They traded blows in silence until finally Dionys muttered between gritted teeth, “She said yours, too.”

  A pause. His next strike was downright vicious.

  “Not just mine.”

  Odrian staggered back, more from the words than the blade, his throat working.

  “Ah,” he said with feigned lightness. “Jealousy doesn’t suit you.”

  His breath caught when Dionys’s next swing came within a hair’s breadth of his ribs.

  Alessia had been trying to sneak up on them with fresh water and breakfast, steps uneven, ankle still tender. She froze.

  Dionys didn’t even glance over, too busy catching Odrian’s wrist and yanking him close, their blades crossed between them in a shuddering grip.

  “I’m not.”

  His voice was low. Furious.

  But not at Odrian.

  “I’m glad.”

  A beat. His forehead pressed roughly to Odrian’s, their ragged breaths mingling.

  “She chose us.”

  He couldn’t stand the weight of Odrian’s knowing gaze, so he shoved him back with a growl.

  “Eat your damn breakfast.”

  Alessia pretended she hadn’t heard. Pretended her hands weren’t shaking around the waterskin she carried.

  All her life love had been a currency. Affection was traded for survival. Words like yours and mine were bargaining chips, not truths.

  And yet …

  Here she stood. Breaking the habit of a lifetime.

  “I brought figs,” she announced loudly, before either of them could speak. “And bread. And if you two kill each other, I’m giving it all to Stella.”

  Odrian whipped around so fast he nearly took Dionys’s shoulder with him, his grin wide and wild despite the sweat dripping down his temples.

  “You heard the woman,” he declared, slinging an arm around Dionys’s neck and hauling him toward Alessia with zero regard for personal space. “No murdering your favorite king before he gets figs!”

  Dionys jabbed his elbow into Odrian’s ribs, and Odrian wheezed dramatically but didn’t let go.

  Dionys allowed the manhandling with only minimal glowering, his glare softening when Alessia pressed a waterskin into his hands, her fingers lingering against his.

  “You walked,” he noted, blunt as ever, but his thumb brushed her wrist. Proud.

  “Barely,” Alessia snorted. “And only because Stella promised to build me a throne if I made it to the mess tent.”

  A lie. The way her toes curled in the sand, testing, trusting her ankle to hold, told the truth.

  Dionys hummed, unimpressed by the deflection, his hand cupping her elbow, steadying her as she shifted her weight.

  “Tomorrow, farther.”

  A command.

  A promise.

  Then he stole a fig from the pile in her hands, ignoring Odrian’s squawk of betrayal, and pressed it to her lips.

  Eat, the gesture said. You need your strength.

  Alessia rolled her eyes but took a bite, letting her teeth graze his fingertips.

  The look he gave her could have melted bronze.

  Odrian let out a wounded noise.

  “This is brutal,” he announced to the sky. “I’m being erased from my own love story! Left to wither! Forgotten like a—”

  Dionys crammed the other half of the fig into Odrian’s open mouth.

  “Chew,” he ordered, deadpan.

  Alessia snorted, nearly choking on her own bite.

  And just like that, between their bickering and the rising sun, she realized: She wasn’t afraid of the shackle’s ghost anymore.

  Because this was her life now. Figs and foolish kings, and warlords who spoke in grumbles and blade strikes.

  She swallowed the last of the fruit and reached for Dionys’s hand, for Odrian’s sleeve, and tugged them both toward the sea.

  Dionys didn’t hesitate. He just took her hand and steered her toward the shoreline, ignoring Odrian’s squawking protests about “treason” and “breakfast abandonment.”

  They both knew he’d follow.

  ─ ·??☆?°· ─

  Stella found them like that, Alessia walking hand-in-hand with Dionys along the water’s edge, Odrian trailing behind with an armful of pilfered breakfast rations and a fond, dramatic lament about “ingratitude” and “stolen figs”.

  She squinted at them, judging, before shrugging and commandeering a loaf of bread from Odrian’s pile.

  “Step better, Mama!” She ordered through a mouthful, already darting ahead to map out a path in the wet sand for Alessia to follow. “Or next time I’m building stairs out of crabs!”

  Odrian gasped. “Cruelty! The betrayal never ends!”

  Then he was breaking into a sprint to chase after her, heedless of the waves soaking his boots.

  Dionys watched them go, the king and the child, equally wild, equally his, and tightened his grip on Alessia’s hand.

  “Walk,” he muttered gruffly, nodding toward their footsteps in the sand. “We’ll match them.”

  His thumb traced the inside of her wrist. His steps slowed to match hers.

  The sea would wash the evidence away.

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