“The fact that you’re still here matters a great deal,” Rena said that evening on the third day.
“I can’t stay, and he won’t see me.” Defeat had well and truly settled in right alongside his concern for what was going on in Praevia during his absence.
Rena smiled and squeezed his hand. “Go. See to your lands. Then come back. And keep coming back until he changes his mind.”
So he did. He returned five days later, then five more after that. On that trip, he passed Rena in the hall after another lone meal with his people.
“Are you preparing to retire?” she asked.
“I am.”
Dimitrios folded a recent letter from Milonia, the parchment worn frommultiple reads. Her words and familiar script were the only things getting him through these visits. The pup updates were especially amusing.I fear we’ve created monsters. Theron, Thalios, and Lykos had taken to stealing from the kitchens and terrorizing people in the corridors.
Then, there was this:Caius asked me yesterday if you’d written back yet. I told him kings are busy men. He seemed to accept that answer, though he left a half-carved wooden figurine outside your study. It’s a dog, I think. Or possibly a wolf. Either way, it’s missing an ear and looks fierce.
The end of this one, though, made his stomach twist in warm knots.The halls hold less warmth when your voice isn’t among them.
A bold statement, even from a woman who constantly spoke her mind. He’d replied, intending to put a halt to such intimate words, but instead, he’d written:I’ve never liked quiet halls. They give the impression that no one’s listening. Keep them warm until I return.”
He shouldn’t have let their relationship become what it was if for no other reason than he’d promised his mother. But this woman and her son… He was tired of denying the truth. From the moment he’d met them both, they’d brought him back to life.
“Nephew?”
Dimitrios blinked back to the shadowed corridor and flickering candlelight, where his aunt studied his face. “Sorry, did you say something?”
“You were very far away just now. Are you all right?”
“It was a long day, and we have an even longer day of traveling tomorrow.” He probably didn’t have to add how defeated he was to lose another battle to earn Lord Nicolea’s time and attention.
Rena nodded in a particular direction. “Before you retire, might I suggest you seek your grandfather out first?”
He froze. “He’ll see me?”
“Don’t waste it.” She squeezed his hand before leaving him to venture the way alone.
Dimitrios found his grandfather sitting in a study lit by a roaring fire. A pang branched through his heart to see it—how many times had he walked into a room just like this one in search of his mother? Antonis even sat in a similar leather chair, one of two, that faced the fireplace. The walls were lined with the same dark, polished shelves full of books with well-worn spines. Oil lamps hung from bronze holders, casting the room in a warm glow that battled with evening shadows.
The stone floor was covered by a thick, woven rug with intricate geometric patterns in rich reds and deep golds. The rug muffled Dimitrios’s footsteps while adding warmth to the room.
Dimitrios must have passed into Antonis’s peripheral vision because the old man sat forward abruptly and peered over his shoulder. Antonis then relaxed upon seeing him.
“This is a lovely room,” Dimitrios said with a devouring gaze. “My mother has a study just like it. She calls it her sanctuary. A family as large as ours can bring quite a bit of chaos with it.”
Antonis didn’t respond right away. But he stilled, unblinking,silent… Finally, his hand—veined and careful—drifted across the arm of the chair, fingers brushing the worn leather. A quiet breath drifted past his lips.
Antonis stared into the fire, the flames dancing in his eyes. “She used to sit right there,” he murmured, barely audible, a single finger aimed at the empty chair beside him. “With a book in one hand and a plate of?—”
“Figs,” Dimitrios said, his chest warming at the memory.
“She never finished them,” Antonis mused.
“Not once.”
Then, catching himself approaching a smile, Antonis cleared his throat and sat back abruptly, as if folding the memory away. The wall came down fast. “You might as well sit.”
Dimitrios lowered into the twin leather chair to his grandfather’s right.
Antonis moved a book from his lap onto the side table. “Your aunt, Rena, has a much more level head than I. She says I have long judged Pandora unfairly and that I am not yet in possession of all the facts.”
