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"I didn't mean it! I didn't mean it! He's not going to die, is he? I'm sorry Mistress, I'm sorry, please go help him, he didn't mean it--"

"Hush, girl." Medea doesn't like writing out runes of a summoning circle under pressure, but time is of the essence. The lamb she'd seized from the pasture hangs from its feet, bleating pitifully as she paints the circle with its blood. Lyra is shaking, her hair loose, her bright yellow curls smeared with her brother's blood. Her bracelet rattles with her trembles, and she rests a hand on it to stop the sound, and perhaps to check that it's still there. Her eyes are red and her face blotchy and swollen from tears, but unhurt. Medea made sure she'd be unhurt. "If you want a chance of repairing this, you'll be quiet until I summon your father."

Lyra sobs, scrubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands and trying as hard as she can to be quiet. She didn't mean to. She didn't think he'd recognize her. She just heard him talking about his new wife, and she wanted to ask questions, and it'd seemed so nice at first, he'd seemed so nice, he was just answering her questions and treating her like a curious little girl, he even showed her his spear, but then she moved too fast and the bracelet rattled and he saw it and--

How dare you, witch? She's mine!

He'd sounded so scary, like if an angry, wounded lion could talk.

She's Lord Hermes', not yours. Now leave before I take your head.

He'd been bleeding really badly. The comb wouldn't let him go. It just kept sinking more into his hand like a burrowing rodent. And his eye was all wrong after Mistress struck him, and he looked ready to eat them all alive--

Medea finishes the circle, barely taking the time to wipe the blood from her hands before putting them together. Her inner sanctum isn't as put together as usual, rushed as she was to grab everything she needed, and she breathes, "Achilles, father of Neoptolemus, father of Lyra, I call your shade to visit the land of the living once more. Right now. Do not keep us waiting."

Where previously her call was a firm but polite tug, now it's like she's trying to yank Achilles out of the Underworld by his hair.

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“I suppose this is why a child needs two parents.” Achilles slopes his weight against Hermes. “Who could hope to manage this by themselves?”

He thinks of Deidamia and his lips press flat. She raised a bastard son surrounded by shame, only to see him taken and ruined by war. It’s a credit to her that Pyrrhus survived this long to see a hint of happiness.

He rolls his cheek against Hermes’ shoulder, feeling the strange fabric shift against his skin. “I’ll hear no apologies, my love. Your struggles are harder yet, and reach countless mortal lives.”

Some distraction would be welcome, and Achilles finds Hermes’ hand. “Where have your travels taken you?”

Hermes thinks of Deidamia too, but doesn't say anything. He knows next to nothing about what raising Neoptolemus must have been like. Hard, he's sure. It's always hard to be a single mother, especially without any evidence that she married the man she claims to be the father. Many such women become beggars and thieves, and Hermes happily takes them in as he can.

He squeezes Achilles' hand, turning his head to nuzzle Achilles' hair. "The Levant. Far from the Fertile Crescent. I've been learning more about the Hebrews and their god."

He moves his hand, stroking Achilles' hair, twisting the curls around his fingers. "I see more why the god would appeal to humans. They believe that any human, no matter who they're born to or how they're formed, can achieve love in the eyes of their god if they only follow a set of rules. The trouble is that their god isn't stable enough to settle on one set of rules, but they don't know that."

And Hermes understands that. He understands how a people enslaved for generations would want a god that doesn't prize noble births and divine bloodlines. A god that seems willing to give anyone a chance to achieve honor, no matter how weak or poor, if they only behave. How long had they watched their Egyptian masters cared for by their gods, craving that the divine would bless them half as much? How long had they seen Pharaohs blessed for little more than an accident of birth, and wondered why they could never earn half the recognition?

The concept is a bit odd to Achilles; he’s never thought of gods as a whole showing mortals love. There are some who show affection for all humans—Hermes, Prometheus, perhaps Hestia—but more often Achilles has known the gods to bestow favor on mortals they deem worthy.

Some gods can be fickle, too, but when offended they can be satisfied by an adequate sacrifice.

Achilles winces when he realizes these Hebrews remind him of Pyrrhus, desperately struggling to understand how he can win his father’s love. What a terrible thing to seek from a god. He forces the thought aside.

“Has this god threatened any others as it did in Egypt?” he asks, clearly only concerned about one nosy god’s safety.

Hermes picks up what Achilles is really concerned about. He gently, playfully tugs his hair. "Don't you worry, darling. It's well distracted."

He looks out at the middle distance, as if he can watch the unfortunate Hebrews from here. "It's a god that likes to be very involved with its people. I imagine it hasn't had an organized group of worshipers like this before, and the power can go to a god's head. I think all it cares about right now is tormenting the poor people for the next forty years, and then I imagine it'll be distracted for at least a century getting them settled in the land promised to them in the Fertile Crescent. So long as no other gods try to interfere with its people, I don't imagine it'll care much for anything else for a while."

For a while. Hermes isn't convinced that the god will be content with one little group of humans and one little kingdom for very long. But if it can be content long enough, that gives everyone else some time to learn about it and prepare for whatever it might do.

"Something I saw in Egypt, something I'm still trying to understand..." Hermes furrows his brow. "The god's chosen prophet went to the Pharaoh--that's what they call kings in Egypt--and requested that he let his people go. And the Pharaoh agreed. There wasn't any fuss because the Pharaoh and the prophet had been raised as brothers and loved each other very much." Hermes' mouth sets in a hard line. "But the god hardened the Pharaoh's heart so that he would renege on the deal, and the god could begin retaliating for his refusal to release the Hebrews. It wanted the excuse to torture the Egyptians."

And Hermes finds that very troubling. It doesn't make any sense to him, and it demonstrates a very disturbing sadistic streak in a very unpredictable and powerful god.

Achilles frowns, deeply bothered by the whole situation. It feels like the work of Eris, sowing discord for discord’s sake. But Eris is a lesser goddess. No one worships her, much less seeks her love.

“You understand it well enough. Does it need to be watched so closely?” Achilles toys with a hem of Hermes’ strange robes. He isn’t nearly satisfied by his assurances. The god could notice him, of course, but Achilles is also concerned about Hermes watching so much mortal suffering when there’s nothing to be done to ease their pain. “Can you let it be for now? Stay in Greece?”

Achilles feels selfish for asking, but he would feel better knowing Hermes is among his family of stronger gods. Apollo, Athena, Poseidon … they could easily destroy an upstart god.

Hermes sighs through his nose, giving his lover a rueful smile.

"I'd quite like to. The company's much better here." Hermes playfully tugs Achilles' hair again. He's trying to keep the mood light, though it's probably a lost cause. It won't due to make his lover even more unhappy now after his heart was pulverized by his son. "But it's not enough to understand its followers. I need to understand it if I have any hope of predicting it."

Hermes leans down, plucking a small flower growing at the base of their bench. He spins the flower between his fingers until the petals blur together. "That's how spying connects with everything else in my domain, really. All it is is learning about people. Understanding what they want, gauging what they're willing to do to get it, that sort of thing." Hermes' various domains all seem to come back to people. To understanding them, and knowing how to give them what they want... or take it away. "If I don't understand what this god wants, how can I guess when it might be a threat to us?"

Achilles watches the frilled petals spin into a single shape. He knows it as a Dianthus. Flower of Zeus. A humble little thing to carry such a name.

“Why not destroy it? It’s done enough to prove it’s a threat—how many mortal children did it slaughter on a whim?” Achilles huffs. His emotions are still raw and anger comes easy. It feels good. Better than more sadness.

“Olympus could easily cut down an upstart god. Why wait until it gains more power? Or causes more suffering?” Achilles has learned a very hard lesson about judgement, courtesy of his own son, but this is different. He remembers the terrible visions of the god’s incomprehensible form. It’s hard to have any sympathy at all for such a monstrous thing.

"That's what it did on a whim. What would it do fighting for its life?"

Hermes contemplates the flower between his fingers. He stops spinning it, nudging the underside of one of the frilled petals with his thumb.

"If we declare war, there will be casualties. Maybe even divine casualties. We already know it eats gods, and it had the power to subvert the whole Court of Osiris in the heart of their land." Hermes moves to gently thread the flower in Achilles' hair behind his ear. It's still a little warm with life. "The advantage we have that they didn't is we're forewarned, which means we have time to study and plan. If we aim for this upstart, we don't want to miss."

He knows that's Athena's ideal goal. One strong hit, one single blow to end the threat without giving it a chance to respond. Anything less, and Hermes is certain that many mortals will suffer for it.

The flower in his hair is an absurd contrast to his frown. Achilles grunts, annoyed by the complexity. Mortal warring was so much simpler.

He wants Hermes to be cautious, of course, but waiting also makes Achilles anxious. The Olympians are much older. They survived the Titanomachy. One new god could hardly match their combined strength …

“Promise me you’ll be extra clever. Extra vigilant. Find its weakness quickly and end this.” Achilles presses his forehead to Hermes’, imploring. “It won’t be long before our fledgling flies the nest and travels the world. Make it safer for her.”

"I will, darling." Hermes closes his eyes, nudging their noses together and draping his arms around Achilles' neck. "I'll hurry back as quick as I can. I miss the company here, after all."

To put a point on it, Hermes cups Achilles' chin and turns his face into a soft, lingering kiss. Then he draws back just enough to see Achilles' face, studying him for signs of his earlier devastation.

"We'll salvage things, love," Hermes says softly, gently. "All is not lost. We'll take care of everything."

Pyrrhus, Lyra, Medea, everything. Hermes earnestly believes that with enough time and patience, all can be mended. Perhaps not in this life, but there's an eternity for the next.

When he parts from the kiss, Hermes will notice the swollen redness around Achilles’ eyes has receded. He still looks haggard and worn by emotion; the lines around his brows and around his mouth look more chiseled. “I’ve missed you, too, magpie.”

He looks up at the stars and takes a centering breath. If circumstances were better, he’d relish the sight of the deep night sky, but his thoughts are too crowded with worry over his children.

“I’m ready,” he says, rising to his feet and offering Hermes his hand. The bracelet on his wrist shifts, shells clicking delicately against one another. “We should go to our daughter.”

Hermes takes Achilles' hand, gently rubbing his thumb against the ring on his finger. The shells of the bracelet are cool against his skin, and he can feel how much love and effort went into stringing them together.

Things have been very unfair to poor Neoptolemus, Hermes thinks to himself. He's hardly unique in that regard--things usually are unfair for everyone--but it seems especially sorry that he was dragged into a situation he ought not to have been so young, and then shunned by gods and men for mistakes based in youthful ignorance. Maybe Hermes could stand to give him a little more credit too.

"Let's. Lyra will need reassurance," Hermes says, squeezing Achilles' hand.

Inside, Medea hasn't waited in her inner sanctum. She's retreated to Lyra's room, sitting on the edge of the girl's bed while she clings tight to her clothes. Lyra sits in her lap, clinging harder than a girl half her age, but Medea allows it and pets her hair. Her face has its usual stern edges, but her gestures are gentle and caring. Beside the bed sits a cup of fragrant liquid, smelling of deep sleep. Lyra had rejected the sleeping potion before her father returned with news, and Medea would indulge her this time.

Achilles pauses just outside of the room to carefully reconstruct a calm facade: he softly clears his throat of any remaining thickness, scrubs at his cheeks, and adjusts his cloak to hide any tear-darkened damp spots. He knows his daughter is very astute. Wordlessly, he asks for Hermes’ nodded approval at his appearance before he steps into the room.

His lips press flat at Medea, still annoyed by her callous disregard for his son’s wounds. This is the only fleeting sign of his displeasure; no point in arguing now. Certainly not in front of Lyra.

“Oh, fledgling.” Achilles pointedly ignores Medea and kneels beside the bed. His face softens and he swallows back the tightness that’s returned to his throat. “Don’t despair. I found your brother. His wounds will mend.”

Hermes gives his approval to Achilles after straightening his hair and cloak. Medea, if she notices Achilles' displeasure, doesn't acknowledge it. Instead, she unwraps her arms from Lyra, allowing her full movement, and her eyes linger on Hermes, who lingers at the door.

"Daddy!" Lyra turns from Medea to look at her father. Her eyes are puffy with tears, her voice hoarse from crying. Her hair is still wet from washing the blood out, but she smells lightly of perfume, the sort mixed with soap to help a person relax. Maybe it worked--she's able to verbalize much better now than when they summoned her father--but she's still wrecked. "So he's okay? He's not hurt too bad? He doesn't hate me?"

Her eyes briefly flick up to see her other father in the door. Her eyes flash with momentary surprise. "Papa?"

Hermes smiles warmly. Putting on a show of being calm and collected comes to him much more naturally than it comes to Achilles. He comes to sit beside the bed with Achilles, feathers fluffed and smile opaque. "I'm here, Little Bird."

“His wounds will heal,” Achilles confirms, gently combing fingers through Lyra’s still-damp curls. “And he doesn’t hate you, my dear.”

He’s fairly certain of that; he recalls Pyrrhus’ pause when Achilles asked him about Lyra. He hopes all of his son’s anger is entirely reserved for his father and not his sister. “But I don’t think he will return to Athens for a long while.”

He runs a thumb over his daughter’s brow, then kisses her forehead before giving her a tired, but reassuring smile. “Give him some time, and then we will send him a letter. He needs to know we are not mad or afraid.”

Achilles looks over his shoulder at Hermes, inviting him closer. “Your papa will see it’s delivered.”

Lyra sniffs, her lip wobbling as she's caught between relief and guilt and grief. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make a mess. I'll tell him I didn't mean to make a mess."

"Oh, little bird." Hermes draws closer, settling next to Achilles and leaning against him, resting a hand on Lyra's knee. "Siblings are messy. The first time I met my brother, I'd stolen his entire herd of cattle, and we somehow made it through."

Lyra lets out a watery giggle. Hermes gives Lyra a wink, squeezing her knee. "Think on what you want to write to your brother when he's had some time. You can show me how far along you've come with your letters when you send him a message, hmm?"

"Yeah." Lyra scrubs her eye with the heel of her hand. Her shell bracelet rattles as she does. The sound makes her throat tight.

“No need for apologies,” Achilles says firmly, drawing Lyra into his arms. In this moment, he remembers the boy in Pyrrhus‘ dream, terrified by nightmares—the one who still exists along the warrior and the king, abandoned and hungry for love.

He feels guilt churn in his gut. Pyrrhus should have known this comfort growing up. “We should tell him that we still love him.”

Achilles scoops her hair out of her face, and behind a shoulder. She looks much better than she did earlier and her laughter is heartening. “This was my fault, fledgling. I’m sorry your first meeting went so terribly. I should have prepared him for this.”

Lyra slides off Medea's lap into Achilles'. Medea allows it, folding her hands neatly in her lap, watching the exchange with a quiet, observant air about her.

"No, I promised not to talk to him, and I broke my promise. I was bad." Lyra sniffs as she leans her cheek on her father's shoulder. "He was just saying that he got married, and I wanted to hear more about her."

"What did he tell you about her?" Hermes asks, leaning against the bed, almost casual in the moment.

"That she's a descendant of Aeolus, the wind god. And she's pretty, with gray eyes and white blond hair," Lyra mumbles, reaching out to grasp the loose folds of Hermes' robe. He positions himself so one of the wings at his ankle can unfurl towards her, and she digs her fingers into his feathers. "And she likes swans. And silver. And dandelions. She likes to make wishes on them and watch the seeds float in the air. And she's nice to Molossus, and she likes to play with him in the garden, and doesn't mind when he gives her frogs even when they're slimy."

It was another reason Lyra was tempted. If Ophelia is married to Neoptolemus, then that means Ophelia is her sister. And she quite wanted a brother and a sister. But now all the desire is a pit of guilt and regret in her gut.

It was his choice to give her the bracelet, he wants to insist, but he knows from experience how hard it is to relinquish a sense of guilt. “You were excited for him, I can’t fault you that.”

He shifts into a more comfortable seat on the floor and nuzzles a kiss against the crown of Lyra’s head. The smell of calming soap fills his nose.

“I’ve seen Ophelia in his dreams. She’s very beautiful indeed.” Made all the more beautiful through the lens of Pyrrhus’ love for her. The same way Lykos was painted with more generous strokes. “After all your brother’s endured, he deserves people who love and care for him.”

Achilles rests a hand over her matching shell bracelet. “Even if he doesn’t want that from us right now, he isn’t alone. He has Ophelia and Molossus and the kind servants who look after him.”

The bracelet feels heavy on her wrist, and the glass pendant that holds her fathers' hair and feather feels heavy against her bare skin under her chiton. She bites her lip, looking at the shells on her own father's wrist.

"Is he very sad?" she asks. "That I'm real?"

That must be why he refuses to come back, and why he doesn't want their love right now. Even if he doesn't hate her, she's hurt him by trying to be his sister. Why else would someone who needs love reject it when it's offered to them?

Her heart hurts. She didn't mean to make him sad. She didn't mean to make him want to go away.

“No, fledgling. He’s not sad about that.” Achilles caresses her hair and sways side to side. “He feels betrayed that I didn’t trust him enough to care for you. Your brother is worried about your upbringing.”

Achilles spares a brief glance at Medea, then Hermes. “But your papa and I have our reasons for choosing who we did.”

Even after her treatment of Pyrrhus, Achilles is doing his best to keep faith in Medea. She was doing her duty. Remember Apollo’s prophecy. Who knows what could have happened …

But both of his children have still suffered so much tonight. He wants to be angry at someone. Himself. Medea. The Fates.

Medea doesn't visibly react. Her face is as quietly observant as ever, a fox watching things play out, hands neatly folded in her lap. Lyra swallows hard, the relief of knowing her brother cares enough to worry mixing into a bitter stew with her knowledge that he won't come back any time soon.

"I like being with Lady Medea," she says. And it's true. It's lonely here, and Lady Medea isn't warm like Eu-Eu or easily tricked, but Lyra loves the things she learns here. She loves that her Mistress treats her as smart and competent like no other grownups do, but also still protects her. She thinks Lady Medea loves her in her own way, and there's comfort in that. "So I'll write to him that I'm happy here. But I would've been happy with him too, I think. He was very nice before he was scary."

He didn't treat her like Mistress does, like she's smart and competent. But he treated her indulgently. Even warmly. She thinks he found it charming that she asked so many questions. The stories don't make him sound very patient, but he didn't seem annoyed by all the questions, and he didn't make her leave him alone like some guests do.

Hermes spreads the wings at his ankle, allowing his feathers to bristle up against Lyra's fingers before smoothing, letting her curious hands feel how they move. "People can be very nice. You know that. And sometimes, very nice people can have struggles of their own that make them sometimes do not nice things they wish they didn't. You know that too," Hermes says gently. Lyra nods, looking down at the feathers and stroking them. It had scared her when Pyrrhus grabbed her hair. And it had scared her to see him lunge for her mistress. She's not sure if he would have hurt Lady Medea if she hadn't splashed his eye first. It's hard for her to match how scary he was with how nice he was beforehand. It's hard to stitch that into one person in her head. She's never seen someone swing so quickly and so hard from one feeling to the next.

“I know he would have liked to care for you, but your life would be very different in his house.” He doesn’t say worse, but he imagines stubborn fights between the two headstrong siblings, particularly where to comes to the strict boundaries for young women.

Achilles also isn’t sure it would be good for anyone if Pyrrhus was under Hermes’ close scrutiny. Medea doesn’t seem at all intimidated by watchful Olympians, and if she ever fails at her duties, Achilles won’t be as distraught by her punishment as he would Pyrrhus’.

He nods at Hermes’ reminders. Lyra might instinctively know these things, but experiencing them firsthand is different.

“It’s been difficult to convince your brother that I love him.” Or that anyone loves him. He thinks of Pyrrhus’ tablets and the words that underpinned his dreams. “People tell themselves stories for years and years. Stories that are hard to rewrite, especially those they learned them when they were young.”

Lyra's brow furrows. "Why would he not be convinced? Haven't you told him?"

She summons her quiet observations of people. It's common for couples to have doubts about each other, she's noticed. Like Patroclus doubted Achilles' love. Or like how sometimes grownups need to do something to prove their love.

But she's never seen it between children and parents, she doesn't think. Her foster parents never had to prove their love for her and her siblings to believe in it. Her foster parents took them all in even when they were too poor to care for them, and the daily proof of loving them was the same as any parent. She's never seen Tisander doubt his mother's love, even when he's sometimes a little afraid of her like everyone else. Parental love seems like something one can just take for granted.

But she tries to think of it from Pyrrhus' view. Daddy didn't do the daily work of caring for him growing up, like Medea did for Tisander or Lyra's foster parents did for her and her siblings. But Daddy doesn't do it for her, either, but she still knows he loves her. But maybe it'd be different if Daddy could never talk to her, never visit her, and she just had Mistress Medea. Even then, she's not sure she'd doubt Daddy if he said he loved her, but maybe she'd feel different if she were all grown up like Pyrrhus.

"That sounds very sad for him. And lonely," Lyra says, reaching her free hand to grip the pendant under her clothes. She's not sure what it'd take for her to not believe her daddy saying he loves her. But she is sure that that it'd feel very sad and scary to not be able to believe that much.

Medea cocks her head. It's the first visible reaction she's had during this conversation, but it's hard to read what's going on behind her eyes.

“Yes, I’ve told him many times now, but he has little reason to trust me,” he sighs. Achilles holds Lyra tighter, as if a surplus of affection will keep her safe from growing up with the same skepticism towards love. “Keeping you a secret didn’t help matters.”

His eyes switch to Medea, drawn by her motion, but he doesn’t know what to make of it. Maybe Hermes would, but Achilles finds the woman impossible to read.

His attention returns to Lyra and he hums agreement at her assessment. “I think your brother wants to trust people—desperately—but he’s afraid. He would much rather be lonely than be hurt again.”

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