“A tomb?”

"There was nothing left behind to burn, only your cloak and-" he stops, as though something is caught in his throat. 

…

“I…”

There are tears in his eyes.

He says nothing. 

He loses the strength to keep his arm aloft, and it falls to the side.

He stares ahead at Aetos’ chest.

“I am sorry.”

He slumps back. "You should not have offered yourself so. I was not swift enough to stop you. It was Ambrosios's place to die, not yours."

Ophellios shakes his head slightly, and the motion makes everything spin. He closes his eyes. “It is not yours to decide that. Who lives and who dies.”

"It was not my choice, but that of the immortal gods. It was you who chose to seek to pervert their will. What happened?"

“I told you,” he manages. “I do not know.”

The spinning slows down now, and he can open his eyes again without feeling nauseous.

“But if I had not drunk the nectar I would have surely died.”

"Ah. Nectar."

A pause. 

"Wherever did you find the nectar of the immortal gods, Ophellios? Did your father grant it to you?"

And remember, Lord of Pylos – I never came to your door.

Weakly. “I cannot say.”

"I see."

He feels a horrible unease, a sense of something not quite right like the very world tilting on its axis. 

"And this... nectar... it saved you from some wound? Or healed you when you were close to death, as it is said the food of the gods can do for mortals?"

“I think,” he murmurs, beginning to struggle now with the exertion. Sweat beads on his forehead. “That it protected me.”

"I see."

He leans over to move the matter hair out of the young king's face. "You are still weak. Sleep now, Ophellios." The words stick in his throat. "For you have survived an ordeal no mortal ever could, and come back from a place whence there is no returning. Rest now."

He sighs at the older man’s touch, and finds himself pleading before he knows it. “Stay.”

"I will."

He relaxes a little at last, and soon the King of Pylos sleeps again.

There is an eerie stillness to him as his companion watches. 

Aetos cannot get past the feeling. Something is wrong.

Aetos is eventually persuaded by the old man to go home and bathe, and to return when he is settled.

When he enters the healer’s hut again, he finds the Diameda girl curled up in bed with Ophellios, both unclothed and resting. The Pylian’s arm is wrapped securely around her – and though Aetos has often thought of the young king as small, he sees him now as towering.

Displaced now from Ophellios’ bedside, he has little else to do but wander.

King Menelaus is training his troops outside. He shouts orders and they all move with terrifying unison. Regardless, the man seems disappointed. 

“I have seen women strike more fear into men’s hearts than all of you combined.”

When he catches sight of Aetos rambling through the Spartan camp, he leaves instructions for his men to practice their forms and catches up to the Cretan king.

“Lord Aetos!”

He turns. 

"Menelaus."

The man has been... A little different, lately. Still brash, still obsessed, but less quick to anger, less dismissive. 

It's a strange turn. 

There is a satisfaction in him knowing that he has won. Aetos has become a pitiable thing now, and Menelaus finds it easier to be civil with such a creature – even friendly. 

The Cretan is no longer a threat, really.

“What news?”

He really does not want to have this conversation. 

It looks like he's having it anyway. 

Why fight against it? No man can help his fate. He knew that long before, but somehow never saw what it meant - that there was no need to try, to struggle, that what would come would come regardless. The cold rises up in him again. 

"They found what looks like Ophellios. Injured, but alive, and with no memory of what happened to him."

He raises an eyebrow. “What looks like Ophellios?”