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It isn’t a grand battle, when it happens. It isn’t particularly dangerous or high-stakes. In fact, it is profoundly unmemorable aside from the part where Hysilens gets slashed clean through her shoulder with a rusty scimitar and bleeds terrible sun-warmed gold all over the inside of the temple they’re in the midst of conquering.
“Hm,” says Cerydra after the fact, looking at her with clinical fascination. She stalks over in her sturdy heels. “How bad is it, Dux Gladiorum?”
Hysilens blinks down at her shoulder. “Fairly bad,” she observes, through the adrenaline-muted pain. “I am unable to lift my sword with my right hand.”
Cerydra’s brow creases, just slightly.
“Worry not, Imperator,” says Hysilens, bowing her head. “I shall simply use my left.”
“My knight will do no such thing,” Cerydra declares, tipping her regal chin up. “You will go back to your quarters and rest until you are entirely recovered.” She turns to her contingent. “Soldiers!” she yells. “Move out! We return to Okhema victorious!”
Oh. Right. Okhema. Victory. A feast.
Something in Hysilens’s chest sinks. She’s never missed a feast before.
“Rest to the fullest of your mighty abilities,” Cerydra tells her, as they prepare to move out. She looks sternly up at Hysilens. “If I see you so much as glance in the direction of a blade before you are fully recovered, I will have your head.”
“Imperator, would I not be more useful in a restructuring effort for the—”
“Silence,” Cerydra commands. “An injured commander is of no use to me.” She raises her pristine, white-gloved hand. Not even a fleck of gold or red blood stains her fingers. Hysilens looks down at her own dress, soaked in more blood than pigment, and feels strange.
Perhaps Cerydra is right, Hysilens thinks, looking despondently at her ill-treated clothing. Perhaps a commander who gets injured is no worthy commander at all. There must be plenty of fish in the sea willing to sharpen their teeth for her. Willing to swim toward the surface, even knowing that when they finally break that barrier, they won’t be able to breathe any longer.
Hysilens feels sick all of a sudden. It must be the blood loss. She bows her head. “Yes, Imperator.”
Cerydra looks back at her. Then she laughs sharply. “Quit dragging your feet. I’m not telling you to leave.”
Hysilens blinks at her. “You aren’t?”
“Certainly not. I am telling you to recover as fast as possible, so that you will be hale and whole and, of course, ready to serve me.”
Hysilens’s heart soars. The wound on her shoulder pulses with fresh golden blood, stinging in the wind outside Okhema’s gates. “Yes, Imperator,” she says, with reverence. “Whatever you command.”
So when Hysilens gets back to her chambers in the bathhouse, she does what any good knight would do: enters a full-recovery hibernation with practically zero chance to wake up before she has to.
***
Hysilens wakes to the discordant wailing of a child. She sniffs distastefully.
“Compose yourself, please,” says a familiar voice.
“But Silie’s dead…”
“I am no such thing,” Hysilens says, sitting up. Then she realizes she is entirely nude, and also in her own bath chamber, where, for some reason, Tribbie and Aglaea are both staring at her, wide-eyed. “Hello,” she says, quite politely. “Have I done something to offend?”
Tribbie looks at her and bursts into tears.
“You sleep like the dead,” Aglaea says, her voice more aloof than usual. Like she’s trying particularly hard to keep up the image of the uncaring, unaffected rival. “Tribbie was convinced you were not going to return to us.”
Hysilens looks at her, confused. “Is my internal clock off? I should have only been out for about four days.”
Tribbie wails harder.
“Yes, well,” says Aglaea, looking anywhere but her exposed body. “Pardon me for saying this. Most humans cannot sustain themselves for four days of sleep.”
“It wasn’t sleep,” says Hysilens.
“…Yes, it was,” says Aglaea, raising her eyebrows.
“I was hibernating.”
Both of them look at her in silence. Even Tribbie stops crying to stare at her.
“…Hibernating,” Hysilens repeats, just in case they didn’t get the memo. “The Imperator told me to recover, so I went into a recovery hibernation. Is this not commonplace?”
“Ah,” says Aglaea. “Humans do not hibernate.”
Hysilens blinks.
“We typically sleep for a maximum of eighteen hours at a time,” Aglaea explains. Then, sounding almost affronted, “Is that my dress?”
“No,” says Hysilens. “It’s my dress.”
Aglaea sighs heavily. She lifts the mutilated garment from the floor and grimaces. “I ought to just make you golden clothing instead. If it’s dyed with blood, perhaps it won’t look so gruesome when you get it filthy.”
“Or,” says Hysilens hopefully, “I could wear nothing.”
Aglaea does her best impression of a parent whose child has just asked for ten kilos of candy in exchange for their silence. She turns on her heel and leaves abruptly, ruined clothing in hand.
“We’ll go tell the Imperator,” says Tribbie, sniffing and wiping awkwardly at her nose. “And, um… we’re glad you’re alive.”
“Okay,” says Hysilens.
Tribbie looks at her expectantly.
“Goodbye,” says Hysilens. Then she turns around and begins washing four days’ worth of soaked blood from her hair.
The wound on her shoulder is entirely gone. She can barely even feel a twinge when she moves it. The bathwater is blessed by Phagousa, so of course it has a greater healing effect on her. It appears to have worked in tandem well with the hibernation state. After a perfunctory wash-off and bodily inventory, Hysilens finds that she’s just fine, so she stands from the bath in all her nude glory.
And then Cerydra walks in the door.
“Oh,” says Hysilens. She sits back down in the bath.
“How many times must I tell you?” Cerydra says, clicking her tongue. She motions with her hand, as if to say, Get back up. “Do not bow to me. Retain your full height in my presence, Dux Gladiorum, or I shall have your head.”
Without her head, they would be the same height, Hysilens thinks drily. Outwardly she says, “I am unclothed. Dux Goldweaver has informed me that it is impolite to be nude when one has company.”
Cerydra laughs. “Just because Dux Goldweaver is a prude doesn’t mean I am,” she says, stepping closer to the bath. “Please, my knight. Stand.”
Hysilens stands.
“Good,” Cerydra says. She scans Hysilens’s body the same way one might scan a fruit they wanted to purchase at the market, her eyes lingering at the shoulder and waist, where her largest wounds had been.
Hysilens’s stomach swirls at the odd, analytical nature of her gaze. “I am fully recovered,” she tells her.
“So you are,” Cerydra says, sounding mildly impressed. “Dux Hostage tells me that you entered hibernation. A sea siren capability, I presume?”
Hysilens nods.
“And in this state, you… appear dead?”
“My heartbeat slows, I do not eat or drink, and I become nearly impossible to awaken. But I am quite alive.”
Cerydra’s eyes sharpen. “Unacceptable,” she declares, her heels clacking against the tiled floor as she paces. “I cannot have my Dux Gladiorum incapacitated like that all on her own. What if someone were to attack you in this state?”
Hysilens’s heart drops. Is this what she finally gets kicked out over? Is this, her miraculous healing ability, the thing that separates her from humans enough to get her excluded from the single place she’s ever belonged? “…I would be vulnerable,” she admits, ducking her head. “Forgive me, Imperator. This is my quickest method of recovery, and the most effective. I will not use it again.”
Cerydra’s heels click to a stop on the floor. She tips her head back and laughs raucously.
Hysilens stares at her, baffled, until she finally stops.
“My dear heart,” says Cerydra, still looking amused. “You think I would prevent you from using this miraculous method? Quite the contrary. In fact, I encourage you to use it. But…” Here she snaps her fingers, summoning a chess piece. “When you hibernate, you must inform me. I shall provide you adequate protection to ensure your safety while you recover.”
“Oh,” says Hysilens faintly, feeling a little stupefied. She clears her throat. “Thank you, Imperator. I will.”
“Hm,” says Cerydra, sounding pleased. Then she walks right back out the door.
***
It happens three weeks later.
This battle is larger, at least, and more interesting; they’re conquering the Georios-devoted city-state of Icatus. Most of the citizens go quietly once they see Terravox, their demigod, commanding them to join the alliance. But some of them protest, so Hysilens fights to their surrender, and leads them back into Okhema to send tribute and to select a representative for the assembly.
And then, once she’s got that all sorted out, she realizes she has a great deal of internal bruising on her ribs.
Ah. Right. Her wounds.
So she goes to the palace and dresses in the sheer bathing-robe Aglaea made for her so as not to be nude in public areas. Then she finds Cerydra and reports back.
“The citizens of Icatus have selected their representative,” she says. “They did not put up significant resistance, and should be amenable to Okhema’s alliance from now on. Also, I sustained internal bruising and am going to hibernate.”
Cerydra looks at her and raises a single eyebrow. “You ought to tell me about the hibernation first of all, Dux Gladiorum.”
Hysilens tilts her head. “But I am the least important of these conquests. Naturally, I should report my own affairs last.”
Cerydra smiles, just slightly. “You are no conquest,” she scoffs, raising her scepter. “I conquered you long ago.”
Hysilens’s face feels warm. She nods.
“One ought to hear the condition of their heart before the condition of their kingdom, yes?”
Slowly, Hysilens nods again.
“Good,” says Cerydra, touching her arm momentarily. She pulls away just as fast, something strange in her gaze. Then she says, “If one’s kingdom falls, they lose their glory. But if one’s heart stops beating, they lose everything.” She looks Hysilens right in the eye. “There is no recovery from that, Helektra.”
“Of course,” Hysilens says, looking back at her. Her heart races oddly in her chest. Her ribs. They must be very badly bruised. “I will retire to my chambers now to hibernate. Thank you.”
“Your chambers?” Cerydra asks, sounding amused. “Oh, no. No, that simply won’t do. My knight will be secure in her rest.”
Hysilens blinks rapidly. “Alright,” she says, rather cluelessly. “Shall I go to the royal chambers, then…?”
“Come now, Dux Gladiorum, don’t jest. You shall be offered the highest protection Okhema has to offer: mine.”
Hysilens stares at her. She opens her mouth, and then finds she has nothing to say.
“Don’t gape at me like a fish out of water,” Cerydra snaps, though she’s smiling slightly. “You may retire to your chambers if you wish to enter your hibernation there, for your own comfort. I will move you myself once you are unconscious. Worry not.”
This, at least, sounds like a legitimate plan. Hysilens salutes her goodbye and heads to her bathing chambers again, already preparing to lie down. She doesn’t know why Cerydra won’t simply send her directly to the royal chambers, instead of moving her herself. But she doesn’t understand many things about Cerydra. She is very hard to understand. It is, Hysilens thinks, the greatest part of her.
It’s only natural for a fish to desire things they do not understand. Things that gleam dangerously at the surface, like sharp metal hooks and whirling rudders. This is how Hysilens consoles herself: it is only natural. It is only natural. It is only natural.
***
“Speak your purpose.”
Hysilens scrunches her eyes closed. She doesn’t want to wake from her hibernation yet. She is so very tired.
“Im-Imperator,” says a small, trembling voice. “We are requesting a lessening of—ah, of the taxes upon our village…”
The pillow beneath Hysilens’s head shifts. Hysilens curls further into herself, nudging softly into the pillow’s material.
“Oh?” says Cerydra’s voice from above her. “For what intent?”
“Our harvest was, um, impacted by the cold front… We cannot provide all of our tithe, or else we shall—we shall starve, Imperator.”
Hysilens sighs out a breath. She doesn’t want to open her eyes.
A hand gently combs through her hair. She leans into the touch, pleased. The hand trails along her hair, down through her locks, then comes to rest along the curve of her waist. A thumb strokes across the divot of her hipbone, then back up toward her waist, then back again. It is very nice. Hysilens breathes into it, letting her chest rise and fall beneath the gentle touch.
“My subjects shall not starve,” says Cerydra. “In light of the circumstances, your tithe will be temporarily changed from a concrete amount to a percentage. Twenty percent of your yield, and the other eighty will be yours.”
“Thank you, thank you, great, merciful Imperator—”
The hand on her waist vanishes.
Hysilens makes a faint, displeased noise in her chest.
“Oh,” says Cerydra gently, and the hand returns. “Dux Gladiorum is waking. Everyone, out.”
Hysilens sighs. Caught. But she feels much better rested now, and so she cracks her eyes open and tries to bring herself to a seated position.
Only to find herself looking right down at Cerydra’s face.
She’s sitting in Cerydra’s lap. On the throne. She’s been lying across Cerydra’s throne, the space reserved solely for her. No one else has ever joined her on it. No one, that is, until now.
“Oh,” says Hysilens. Her voice is higher than she expects. She clears her throat. “Imperator. I have recovered.”
“Hm,” says Cerydra, running her hand along Hysilens’s side again. It doesn’t feel clinical this time, not at all. It feels more like a lazy caress, something superficial and unnecessary. It makes Hysilens’s heart go haywire.
“Thank you for your protection,” she says, a little breathy.
“It was no trouble,” Cerydra says lightly. “You may stand, now, if your legs feel strong enough.”
“Right,” Hysilens says quickly, and stands from the throne like it’s burned her. “Ah—Imperator, might I ask…”
“Speak.”
“Were you the one touching me?”
Cerydra smiles faintly. “If you think I would let anyone else lay their hands on my heart, you are very mistaken. No—you are mine alone to protect, and mine alone to keep.”
Hysilens stares at her like she’s watching the sun from beneath the water’s surface. She had thought Cerydra was touching her to comfort her, or keep her secure. But—and here her head spins—it sounds more like she was doing it as a mark of ownership. To tell every guest she received, This one belongs to me, and I will keep her in my favor forever.
“It was nice,” Hysilens says, before she can stop herself. “You may do it again, if you wish.”
Cerydra’s smile widens. “Of course I may,” she says. “I may do whatever I like to that which belongs to me.”
Hysilens swallows around nothing. “Yes, Imperator,” she says, lifting her head high. “I know.”
***
And so it goes. Whenever Hysilens hibernates, she wakes with her Imperator. Sometimes on her throne, sitting in her lap in her thin bathing-robe; sometimes sprawled at her feet at a meeting, with Cerydra petting her hair idly; sometimes laid out on Cerydra’s bed with her head pillowed on Cerydra’s thighs as they both slumber. Cerydra doesn’t appear to mind the closeness. She does what she pleases.
After all, Hysilens is one of her things now. Hysilens is a kept woman. A piece of Cerydra’s own heart, kept loyal without a leash.
Hysilens, strangely, finds that she enjoys it. Enjoys belonging somewhere. Enjoys being something of Cerydra’s. This is her promised banquet, she thinks, as Cerydra protects her yet again beneath her touch. This is where she can sit at the head of the table, and be welcomed, and be merry.
***
Hysilens doesn’t get injured very often—at least, not seriously—and so she rarely feels the need to hibernate. Most injuries, like scratches on her legs or slashes to her arms, are superficial, and don't need any particularly intense care.
Merfolk have tougher skin than humans, she’s learned; swords that would barely leave a dent in her kin shred through humans like kelp. But no power comes for free, and Hysilens stores her weakness in different areas: her chest and her horns.
Her chest is protected by Aglaea’s metal plate-armor. But her horns—
Well. They may look like just a hairpiece, to the untrained eye. But those are her bones, resting outside of her skin, and they’re particularly impervious to attack. In fact, when defeating merfolk, one typically takes their severed horn as a sign of victory. One might even, if they were a noble, hang their horns on the wall as a form of decor.
And so the noble Hysilens is executing looks at her hairpiece, and knows.
Hysilens is stronger than her. It’s an objective fact. She has the strength to snap this noble’s neck with her bare hands. But as she’s getting the job done, the noble stabs something into the edge of her horn. A letter opener. A pathetic little instrument, barely even a knife. It wouldn’t do Hysilens any harm, had she stabbed it anywhere else.
But in her horn, it’s enough.
Hysilens’s head spins with the pain. She doesn’t even have the energy to clean up the body. She just leaves the noble there, strangled on the carpet, and throws open the estate door, blinking into the blinding dawn device’s light.
She grits her teeth and trudges back toward the palace. Just back to the palace, she tells herself. Back to the palace. Back to the palace. Back to…
***
“Hey.”
Hysilens blinks open her eyes. She’s staring directly at… “Dux Goldweaver’s cat?”
The girl tips her scrawny little head back and giggles. “Yep! Cipher. The seamstress told me that if any one of her big scary coworkers showed up, I should keep ‘em back here and deny everything ‘til the Imperator gets here.”
Oh, Hysilens thinks, grimacing. The Imperator. “Cery—dra,” she chokes out, fumbling blindly through the air. She catches hold of something and pulls.
“OW!” Cipher yelps, leaping away from her. “That’s my tail, idiot!”
“Huh,” says Hysilens, feeling dizzy. If she had called her an idiot in front of Cerydra, the poor cat would be done for. The thought makes her laugh weakly, coughing on air. She feels her consciousness slipping away. She’s not dying. She hopes she isn’t dying…
Cipher comes back into view. “What do I do?” she asks urgently, running around the entire back of the workshop. “What do I do, what do I do, what do I do…”
Hysilens coughs again. “Water,” she croaks out, putting a hand on her forehead.
Cipher jumps to attention. She runs back into another room, then reemerges alarmingly fast with a tall mug of water. “Here,” she says, carefully pressing it into Hysilens’s hands.
“Thank you,” Hysilens says, and then she dumps the whole thing on her face.
Cipher yowls. “My fur!!!” She jumps around, like she’s trying to dance a terrible jig. “Wet, wet, wet, wet, wet—”
“Cifera,” someone says, sounding exasperated. “Didn’t I tell you to man the shop?! Get your scrawny posterior back in here or so help me I shall personally fish the entire lake bed dry, you little rascal—”
Good, Hysilens thinks, her eyes sliding closed. Aglaea is here. Aglaea is a good woman, she thinks vaguely. She’ll know what to do. She’ll know to take Hysilens to her heart. She’ll know where Hysilens belongs.
***
The hibernation, this time, is so intense that Hysilens has no idea how long it’s been when she wakes.
It’s bright outside the dark curtains, but it’s always bright out in Okhema. She groans and pushes herself up off the surface she’s been lying on—
—Only to be greeted by an enormous spread laid out at her sides.
Hysilens blinks her eyes open further. It’s a feast. An enormous feast, made entirely of the things she likes best. Broiled fish and honey-brew and cabbage rolls and rice and grapes and figs, all laid out across a grand wooden table. The table she’s also laid out on.
Hysilens frowns. She glances down at herself. She’s entirely uninjured, but she’s been wrapped in a different robe than usual. It’s made in the same shades of blue and white as Cerydra’s usual dress, and the fabric is finer than anything Aglaea would normally deign to make for her.
Hysilens pushes herself up from her laid-out position and prepares to slide herself off the table.
“Dux Gladiorum!”
The tension bleeds out of Hysilens’s shoulders as familiar heels click against the floor behind her. Hysilens turns to face her, almost relieved. “Have I been here long?” she asks. Her voice comes out raspy with disuse.
Cerydra smiles wryly. There are dark circles inscribed beneath her eyes, and her gloves are wrinkled. “Yes,” she says, taking Hysilens’s hand. “Over two weeks.”
Hysilens purses her lips. “My horns are fragile,” she says, tipping her head down. “Naturally, it takes longer to recover from that.”
Cerydra inhales, her mouth set in a thin line. “Protect them better,” she demands, her eyes crystalline and almost wet.
“My apologies, Imperator. It will not happen again.”
“See that it doesn’t,” Cerydra says sharply, turning back around. Then, softer, “Please see that it doesn’t.”
Hysilens blinks at her retreating figure. “What?”
Cerydra still doesn’t turn to look at her. She says something inaudible.
“Imperator?”
Cerydra whirls back around to face her. “I said I was scared, Helektra,” she yells, like she’s commanding an army. “Aglaea told me—told me you were as good as dead.”
Hysilens stares at her. “But if you believed her, then why did you prepare this whole feast?”
Cerydra sighs and shakes her head. “Don’t you see, Helektra? You only ever ask for one thing. I thought—perhaps if I brought it to you, then you’d come back for it. That you’d—” Here her voice falters, but resolutely steels her expression and looks firmly up at her. “That you’d want to join me again.”
Hysilens’s eyes go wide. She stares down at Cerydra, baffled by the shimmer to her usually cold and frozen-over eyes.
“Never mind all this,” Cerydra mutters, looking off to the side and wiping awkwardly at her eyes with her gloves. “It was silly of me to throw you a two-week feast. You must be sick of feasts by now, with how many I throw for you.”
Hysilens blinks rapidly. “For me?”
Cerydra laughs thickly. “You didn’t know?”
“I never know what you’re thinking,” Hysilens admits. She looks down at the grand spread on the table. It’s not just any feast, either—it’s missing all the dishes Hysilens can’t eat, and features the ones she can. It’s a feast designed for her. Something in her chest clenches. “I never know,” she says softly. “I can rarely even guess.”
Cerydra sighs and extends her hand. “Well, get off the table,” she says, still blinking her wet mascara awkwardly out of her eyes. “Ignore my pointless endeavors.”
“Wait.”
Cerydra freezes.
“Imperator,” Hysilens says quietly, “won’t you ask me what I want? In return for my victory?”
Cerydra’s brow creases. “Do not mock me, Dux Gladiorum,” she mutters. “Do not tell me you want a feast. I know it was foolish for me to prepare all this for you.”
“Just ask, please.”
Cerydra sighs heavily through her nose. “Then, Dux Gladiorum,” she says quietly, “what shall be your reward for your victory?”
“To serve you forever.”
Cerydra’s ever-strong expression falters.
“To serve you forever,” Hysilens repeats, her heart racing in her chest. “To belong to you, and rise with you, and fall with you. To never feast alone ever again.”
Cerydra looks up at her, wide-eyed. And then she laughs. Not her polite, tiny laugh, but her real laugh, loud and uncouth and sharp-edged and unlike any pleasant song the world has ever heard.
“I mean it.”
“I know you do,” Cerydra says, smiling her cruel grin. “Poor Helektra. You really want nothing more? Your greatest desire is to be my heart?”
“And for you to be mine,” Hysilens says. “You said there is no recovery from the loss of one’s heart. And so if I were to lose you, I would never recover.”
Cerydra bows her head. “And I you.”
Hysilens smiles, just slightly. She takes Cerydra’s hand and steps down from the banquet table where she’s been laid to rest. “Come on, Imperator,” she says, squeezing her hand gently. “There’s a feast to be thrown. All this food won’t eat itself.”
Cerydra clings tightly to her hand. “Helektra,” she says quietly, not looking at her.
Hysilens breathes in slowly. “Cerydra,” she says back.
The name tastes strange on her lips. She doesn’t use it very often, if ever. She gets the feeling that Cerydra wouldn’t mind if she did, but regardless, Cerydra is her Imperator, and her light, and her fire, and her heart. She deserves every title she earns, the cruel and the honorable alike. And Hysilens will use them. Even should everyone else lose faith, should everyone else turn on her, Cerydra will forever be her Imperator.
“Tomorrow, we will set out on another conquest," Cerydra says. She stands up tall again, fixing her crown atop her hair. “But tonight, let the people enjoy this grand feast I prepared for you. And let my dear heart be the guest of honor.”
Hysilens shakes her head. “I don’t want that.”
Cerydra tilts her head.
“All I’ve ever wanted,” Hysilens says softly, “is to belong somewhere. Let me celebrate as an ordinary soldier, alongside everyone else.”
Cerydra smiles, just a tiny bit. “To belong,” she repeats. “Helektra, how funny. You already belong somewhere. You belong with me.”
Hysilens’s heart leaps. She belongs. She belongs. And isn’t that what she’s always wanted? Isn’t that what she’s been chasing all her life?
Something long-restless settles quietly in her chest, like it’s finally found its home.
“My Imperator,” says Hysilens, looking at her with reverence. She takes Cerydra’s gloved hand and brushes her lips to the back of it, light enough that she isn’t even sure Cerydra can feel it through the fabric. “I will belong with you until the day we die.”
Cerydra only smiles her strange, wistful smile. “Yes, Helektra,” she says, her voice almost sad, like she knows something Hysilens doesn’t. “I have a feeling you will.”