[A/N] Sorry for not updating this book in a while, I have been a little sick recently. ( ꩜ ᯅ ꩜;)  Turned out it was just allergies !  ʷᵒᵒʰᵒᵒ  But the new schedule is very good for me, because it means if I delay a lot of things I have a period of time to finish them in. 

Thank you for being patient everyone. ⸝ ♡˚

Time neither moved fast or slow, and the marks on my legs were the only measure I really felt in place. When I undressed and bathed and saw them slowly healing. Since they were whisper thin cuts, and I was training constantly, they took longer than usual to turn into pink strips that were still a strong red in hot water.

I worked hard. My servant brother Alkimos was friendly, but not too much so, and did not instruct me on all the things I was expected to take care of. While I did my best figuring out how exactly certain things must work, I would occasionally be rebuked for my lack of speed, and Sergios, in particularly, made a point to stop and tell me off for certain things in front of everyone.

When I extinguished the candles incorrectly, or used too much polish on the silverware, or brushed the carpet with the wrong brush.

Sergios, when there to notice it, would announce to everyone ese that I had made this mistake and dolled out his punishments loudly.

Luckily being whipped or flogged was not a common punishment in Panemorphy, so I spent some time on my knees cleaning the latrines instead, and I put effort into making sure that the jobs I knew how to do, were done properly, no matter how tired I was.

"He's not that bad when you get to know him..." Mentor smiled at me while we were sat together in the warm cluttered kitchen, with rosemary hanging just over his head, during dinner one day, while Sergios was busy with duties.

I nodded, though finding it hard to believe. "It's my fault, there is a lot I need to learn."

"You stayed in the palace..." Alkimos hummed. "What did you do there?"

Another servant nodded keenly. "Is it quite different from here? I heard the place is so large that one would need a map to get around..."

"I stopped by on my way," Alkimos nodded to the servant. "He gets on with the servant master there, so he can't have suffered much."

Without me every saying a word they all continued. The footman leaned in curiously. "Did you ever see the King then?" 

I started at all of the questions, they hadn't asked them so far so I had assumed someone had warned them not to ask, instead the flood came all at once and I sat there like my lips were glued shut, feeling my ears burn a little as I frowned hesitantly and pretended to chew my bread slowly.

"Come on Gabriel." A cook replied to the footman, rolling her eyes. "The palace is twenty times the size of this estate, and he keeps to himself, how would he have ever met him?"

"He could have seen him, I didn't mean that they should be friends." The footman argued. "He isn't a ghost. He has to be present at functions, and there's been a few celebrations recently."

The cook looked unsure, and eventually turned to me. "Have you met him? Or have you only seen him? Not that either matter ah... I'm sure he's not terribly kind, people with money usually aren't. We're lucky here."

Alkimos laughed and raised his glass.

I struggled to speak for a moment, then cleared my throat. It would feel strange to pretend not to know him, and when I returned, even if I was just an entertainer by his side, it would be revealed as a strange lie, along with the false name I was to give them. 

"I think... I may have..." I sounded unsure, my voice low.

She laughed and shook her head. "Believable."

"Could be telling the truth." Gabriel frowned at her, then me.

Sergios entered as the a servant stood up to return his plate.

Rolling his eyes he glanced back at me before leaving. "You might have? Might have seen the King? Does he look so much like anyone else then?"

I sighed, feeling awkward amidst the eyes on me, while the bread, cheese and warm soup were being ignored between us. "I have seen him before but I... do not know him very well..." I muttered.

The lie felt like a mothball on my tongue and I felt my face heat up even more, so that I probably looked sunburnt from the face, ears and neck down.

"Do not know him well..." Sergios scoffed, thick black brows and short black hair paired with blue eyes that judged me from the doorway as he grabbed the water jug. "Are you all forcing him to promise relations he does not have? Watch and see your gossip fall on Her Ladyship's ears."

The Gabriel scoffed, downing the rest of his tea before getting up. "You all act as though the King is not mortal." He said before leaving.

"And you should not lie to them, Aither." Sergios glared at me, though possibly amused. "They are all so very gullible."

"I did not lie." I stood up as well, my stomach flipping nervously. "While caring for the children, I saw him many times..."

I muttered, the vision of Amun and I playing returned to my mind, and then the memory of the three of us in bed, with him hugging his father's side, some of the obstinate demanding imitation of an royal adult draining backwards into the calm, subdued child that he was, desperately clinging to his last remaining parent, soft features pressed up against his arm.

I swallowed as I felt Sergios's eyes on me when I meant to leave, looking more annoyed.

"Simply existing near him is not a rank."

I glared at him. "I never said it was, and I never wanted a rank."

"Great, then remember this is your life now, and stop sulking!" He snapped at me.

I stood there breathlessly staring at him for a moment. "I'm not... not sulking."

"Your dreary, unhappy expression greets me first every time I see you. In this well kept estate where we are all looked after you are the only one who stares at his knees every morning like he has some terrible burden to endure. Swallow this, the royalty there would never have noticed you, no matter how long you stayed, or whether you return." He stared at me, blue eyes trained on me as I stared back at him.

There was a slight flip to my stomach. Realistically I could not hope to mean very much to the household there, I served one man and he was gone, but somehow I felt as though everything, down to my clothes and the scent still clinging to my hear, was a promise that I was not meant to stay here.

"My legs are just sore in the morning..." I muttered, but felt the quietness of the room as I left.

Since my conversation with Silas he was seemingly exercising me to the bone. His lessons were far more intense than before, and by the time I staggered away I knew I would wake up with freshly aching limbs.

Agrius kept smiling as I nearly fell asleep during his lessons, revelling slamming the block on the table and seeing me startle awake, then would remind me that my lessons with Silas were voluntary.

I frowned and tried to finish his work in silence. Concerned that if I kept slacking off during his instruction he might choose to send Silas away.

I received a letter the next morning, shoved hastily into my hands by Sergios as he passed with his tray, other correspondence piled on it under a small paper weight waiting to be brought to their recipients upstairs.

"Tell your family to deliver your post to the right messenger. Timothy delivers for the owners of the estate, not the servants." 

I held the paper in my hands, I knew immediately who it was from, despite him having left out the royal wax insignia that I saw him stamp on all other correspondence when he once sat at his writing desk and dutifully replied to them one by one.

I held it with some trepidation but kept a carefully even expression. "I don't know how it landed in his hands in the first place then, who should I be telling to carry out their work differently?"

He looked at me with a critical frown. "Aither I don't care if your life as a servant is a new one you should know by now that Borus collects the servants mail and delivers it on the third of every second week. Unless someone is dying or getting married immediacy should be of no concern to you." He turned on his heel and left.

I inhaled carefully, put the letter in my top robe and hurried back to my room. 

"Ah, Aither." Mentor stopped me on my way back with a warm smile. "Bring some tea up to Lord Seth's study in a moment will you? I'm meant to but I'm needed to help carry the preserves down to the pantry."

"Oh, ah, where do I-"

But before he could answer he was already gone, fast on his feet the man always hurried from one duty to another.

I frowned but decided to read the letter first, the anticipation made me feel tense and nervous. I would hurry, I decided.

To my dismay, I found upon opening it that it was written in gold script, the longhand of nobles, and while I was learning to read it, it would take me too long to get through the letter.

Frustrated I put the letter on the desk and hurried to the kitchen to boil some water to send up.

The small number of kitchen staff were busy in the pantry together with a few servants making sure the new stock was lowered down there properly and I could only look around helplessly for a teapot while the water boiled.

It took me a long time till I found one, and even longer till I found the tea. I felt like a child wandering through the large kitchen searching for sweet things to steal.

If I made a mistake I would simply have to accept a punishment, they could not expect me to know everything at once, and this was not one of my responsibilities so far.

I put the strainer in the top of the teapot, but it didn't fit quite properly and I thought when I was pouring the hot water into the pot that it spilled over the side of it and onto my legs, some of the heat masked by the two layers of fabric, but I still jumped back.

I tried again and gasped in shock as the pot split through the middle and practically exploded. It was not because the strainer did not fit, I realised, it was because the pot had quite literally broken at the touch of hot water and spilled on me.

Unfortunately this time the water splashed out and onto me and I fell backwards and landed on the floor, half winded from shock, the searing pain of the burns on my knees startling me. The rest of the pot hit the floor and smashed around me.

And just as I was groaning in pain and hurriedly trying to pull the trousers up to look at the burns another servant walked in, and I knew by his footsteps who it was.

"For the sakes of the gods what is this?" Sergios looked at the mess and down at me, clutching my legs in pain on the floor. "Have you no sense at all."

Bothered by the burn on my legs I ignored him out of frustration, and continued trying to roll up the trousers.

Sergios grabbed me by the arm and made me stand up. "Get up! Get up!"

"I'm burned..." I gritted out, trying to get him to let free of my arm.

"I will take you back to your room and we will look at your wound there, not here! If someone sees you what will they think! The cooks are almost exclusively women!"

"I only wanted to look at my knees!" I hissed.

"We are in the middle of civilised society, even the servants do not bare skin unnecessarily to the opposite sex, and..." He looked down at my legs. "You'll have to take the trousers off anyway!" I spat.

I stared at him, blinking slowly, breathing a little fast from the shock. He was surprisingly kind despite the oddly petulant, demanding tone he put on sometimes.

"Then I will clean this up and go quickly..." I mumbled.

"No!" He glared at me. "First you will stand and realise what you have done wrong! You may never have been punished in your life but let this burn stand as the Fates lesson for you." He pointed angrily at the broken pot. "This is not a pot for hot water, but for liquors! It is not made of porcelain, and it is expensive! You'll be paying for this out of probably six months of wages!"

My heart raced from the mistake and I bowed and apologised. "I was never told this..."

He sniffed, his eyes angry. "You must have lived quite the privileged life." 

To the contrary, at home I had never encountered anything other than the old metal teapot that could be set directly on the fire to cook the water, and spirits were drunk in the same cups as all other beverages, why would I know there were different pots for different drinks? And what was the use in that at all?

When I stayed in the palace I never saw a pot like it either that I could recall, but Demosthenes, short of sharing a cup of wine with me, never actually drank very much, and since bringing me back from the brothel, without saying a word, never let me drink a drop. I did not fight him on this, of course.

Before I could reply, however, he had grabbed my arm and pulled me after him toward the door.

"Let me clean it up first!" I pulled free.

He glared at me. "No! I won't have you pretending I put you to hard labour if anyone sees those burns. Move!"

I shook my head, frustrated, as I let him pull me after him, and as we passed he told a maid passing down the same corridor to clean it up.

When we reached my room I sat down on the bed while he briefly disappeared, hissing in pain. When he returned a moment later he entered with a basin and rag.

"Go on, undress."

I stilled and looked up at him. "Ah, in front of... I can do it, thank you." I told him sincerely, accepting the basin.

He scoffed and shook his head. "Undress, I don't have time for this. If you're as incapable of treating wounds as you are at everything else then I think you might die. Let me see if it needs to be treated."

I hesitated, but undressed slowly, watching the door. "At my house we had one teapot and that was it..." I muttered.

He grunted. "You've stayed in the palace long enough to know better though."

I shrugged sheepishly as I pulled off the trousers, angling myself away from him, legs together, braies still on, the kind with tied around each leg, stopping just above my knees.

"Let me see." He demanded.

I was concerned about him seeing any of the marks still fairly vibrant, littering my legs and lower belly, so I tried to keep fabric down, so he could only see the red welts on my knees.

He pulled up the freshly wetted rag, and looked irritably at my right leg and pulled the fabric up. I hissed as his fingers brushed over the burn and he started and jolted his hand back briefly. I hurriedly pulled the fabric back down, face burning, and reached out to take the rag from him.

For the first time since my stay he looked surprised and his hand was frozen with the rag slightly out of reach.

I leaned forward to take it, my heart hammering away in my chest.

He blinked at me, slapped my hand away and pulled the fabric up again, I hurriedly shoved his hand off of me and my face burned as he stared at me.

"I can do it!" I whispered, snatching the rag from him.

He continued to stare at me, thick black eyebrows and blue eyes watching me. Then, after a moment, with the cold water running down my leg as I pressed the rag to it, he snatched it back and pulled the fabric up again, nearly all the way.

His eyes went very wide, about as wide as my face went red.

"I can do this myself, I won't die, it was just a little hot water..." I mumbled quickly. "Thank you..."

Then he frowned deeply, not a trace of a scowl or a mocking smile on his lips. "Where did you get those marks?" He demanded.

I pressed my lips together. "What marks?" I avoided looking at him, but he continued to stare and perhaps it was the colour of his eyes that made it somehow unnerving. "I- I scratched myself."

"No you didn't."

"Yes..." I whispered at him, bright red. "I did."

He went silent for a moment longer as I continued wetting each of my knees for a moment at a time, they would likely blister before they healed.

He stared at me still, eyes narrowing, and after some silence stepped back. "I will bring you some ointment."

I said nothing, but quietly accepted the ointment when he returned with it and gave me instructions for it. Quiet dark judgement in his eyes as he stepped back toward the door.

I took the opportunity to lay the move to the desk and read the letter.

I needed to know what was happening, the more time that went on the more irritated I felt, antsy and nervous. Sergios was right, I was glum most of the time, waiting to receive terrible news.

He had made me depend on him. I could return to my family and live well wherever I was but he had made me fall deeply for him and now I could not even keep watch over him.

I opened up the letter and slowly read through it, writing on a spare piece of paper the letters again, so I could read it in one go.

Dear Elpis,

Are you well settled in Panemorphy? I hope Lady Mynthe has made you feel welcome. If you are too tired from your lessons go to her and let her know, she studied under Agrius too. 

He spoke for a while about the layout of the land, the trees and flowers and everything else which he knew the names of and detailed in a way he must have been used to doing with nearly every other recipient of his letters.

To me it was all painfully irrelevant, I wanted to know if he was hurt, what the state of the army was, what their next plans were. And maybe all of these would be too dangerous to convey in a letter, even if it was in gold script.

We have already been met with a few small fights here and there as we pass through Guerney. The enemy soldiers occupy some houses there.

We were met with a surprise fight in the morning, which was swiftly defeated with few casualties, very few injuries, the fighting just ceased a moment ago and there is little to speak of on the matter. Everything is proceeding as intended.

I hope you are not angry. You will understand in time why I settled the matter in this way. I think you do not understand my claim on you. If keeping you safe means reminding you of your vow of submission to me then this is necessary. When I return I will remind you that I belong to you, but until then I must continue to remind you that you belong to me. 

Your first duty now is to learn and not ask so many questions of Silas.

Remember I can still punish you when I return.

Yours Truly,

Demosthenes

I took a deep breath and closed the letter, concerned and irritated.  I was not stupid, he avoided explaining exactly what happened with the fighting in the morning. Few injuries, but were you injured?

He would not tell me. And suddenly I felt a wave of frustration.

Maybe it was his turn to run from me, then wasn't it my turn to chase him down and bring him back? Or did he enjoy so much the prospect and energy of war that in reality he wanted to store me somewhere safe while he went on his expedition? And in the future would this be the same, with my stomach clenched waiting in the distance for news of his dead body being recovered?

I exhaled, turning my quill with an irritable dip into the black ink.

Dear Demos,

Read this in private, because I will not be careful like you, and mask the meaning behind my words. Nor will I write in gold script as you want me to, because I fear then neither of us would be able to read it.

It seems I may vent my frustrations with you without pause now, because, simply put, you cannot do anything about it. 

You might have been able to scold me, but words lose power in the written form, and I won't be worried at all. If you had let me attend to you I might have been at hand, so that you could, as Ophelos would hope you to, disciplined for my insolence. But with so much distance between us I fear I shall forget your character and rebuke you like a child.

I am unhappy. Death comes to us all, if you have accepted it you should understand I have too. I deserve to die by your side, and if you must, then die by mine. 

Promise to tell me everything that is safe to say in a letter. Do not deliberately hide problems from me or I will be angry and I will shun you when you return and will not sleep in the same bed as you.

I am settled well in Panemorphy, the place sits on the edge of the earth as though it were not connected to it. 

Perhaps I like it here better than the palace, perhaps I would like to stay as a servant and look after my master and mistress here. The herb garden is twice the size as the one at home, there is no iron fist guarding the library and the trees here are allowed to grow fruits that drop on the floor and rot.

I eat three times a day and am in good company.

I hope you are too.

Elpis

I paused, then scrawled a note below my name at the bottom of the letter.

My legs and chest are still clearly marked, they do not hurt, but make for quite a sight, how should I explain them when people see them?

My nostrils flared as I folded and found wax to bind the letter before quickly, without another thought, sending it to Silas to send off. He raised an eyebrow at the tinge of red on my face as I entered and left but said nothing.

I would at least express my aggravation, and make him regret leaving, I thought, but as the moments passed I began to regret the flippant letter, and became concerned that it might seek a little more ire than I could chew.

But later that evening I when I searched for Silas with a little bubble of nervousness in my gut, he was gone.

[A/N] I want to give really big warm hugs to my patrons... ⸜(｡ˉ  ᵕ ˉ )⸝♡꒱ ‧₊˚

♆ Vanille ♆ mochi010 ♆