Damocles loved having a decorated soldier outside of his doors. She was a predator turned pet, her claws dulled from lack of use.

Whenever he caught sight of Nyx outside his rooms, his eyes dragged across her from the tip of her head down to her toes. Every time he passed her, he found a way to brush against her arm. To lean in too close as he whispered his orders. Their skin was separated by armor and a glove, but it was still difficult for Nyx to keep that calm, stoic face, especially when his lips turned up in that knowing smile.

She didn’t know why she could break through while others couldn’t. In those stolen, clear moments, Nyx despised Damocles. She nursed her tiny ember of hatred, and she let it burn. Once, she had been so proud to serve. She couldn’t pinpoint when that devotion had soured. Did anyone else around her feel it? Were they all pretending, or was their love still coded so deep it might as well be real?

The questions came to the forefront of her mind whenever she saw Damocles’s favorite courtesan from the Pleasure Garden. Rhea Aglaea-7. Tall, willowy, every movement graceful as a dance. The long, curled dark hair, a scattering of darker freckles against her pale skin.

A year ago, those wide, green eyes had stared up at the chandelier as she had lain on a table. When she stared at Nyx before entering Damocles’s chambers over the next few seasons, she didn’t blink, didn’t flinch from the tattoos on Nyx’s face and all the slaughter represented.

Did you hate that night after the battle? Nyx had wanted to ask her that night and all the days since. Being served up like a platter? Not having the choice to say no?

Dangerous questions. Treasonous questions. Throughout each day, Nyx’s loyalty waned. Like every soldier, every citizen, she listened to the Oracle’s voice murmuring through the speakers in the barracks as they slept, the same words echoing the programming in Nyx’s mind.

In the morning, she loved Tholos and its Heir anew.

Eleven months after that dinner where Nyx refused to dine on food still warm from the other woman’s body, Rhea pressed a note into Nyx’s hand as she left Damocles’s room. Nyx startled at the touch, but her fingers closed over the paper. It stayed in her hand for the next five hours of her shift. It stayed in her pocket that evening, as she ate in the canteen with the other soldiers. Eventually, in the middle of the night, when the barracks were silent but for soft snoring, she crept to the bathroom and unfolded the note. Old paper, anachronistic, so nothing could be traced.

But the note was nonsense. A smattering of random letters. Nyx’s anger flared—was this woman mocking her?