“I can’t take you as a servant,” he replied, shame and embarrassment all over his face.  “I’m an unmarried man.  I usually live as a soldier in the city.  I come to my father’s house only occasionally.  I cannot engage you as a maid.  Perhaps, if you speak to my mother…” He looked down at Samara and suddenly he realized that though she was proposing being a maid, that was not everything she was proposing.  “You’re asking to become my wife,” he concluded. His mouth went dry as he said it.  His brain was stalling.  Not even he knew what he thought of the idea.

She lowered her head further, so he could not see her face.  “I realize you do not want me to be your wife as I am now.  You want me to undergo another purification ritual to prove my purity.”

When she said that, she meant that she needed to undergo a purification ritual to show that she was not pregnant with the dead King’s child.  She was offering to be a maid until six months had elapsed.

Leonidas breathed a few times.  “You just finished a purification ritual.  At the palace, you had at least one servant to care for you.  In my father’s house, you would have to do the opposite—work as a maid while you finished another six months.  That is what you’re suggesting.  You would be willing to do that?”

She nodded, still keeping her head down.

“I thought you said I didn’t think you were beautiful,” he reminded her.

“I don’t.”

“Then why are you asking for this if you think there is no love, not even admiration, between us?” he questioned.

She answered with an unwavering voice.  “It has been revealed to me that you have many concerns weighing on your mind.  I do not ask that you make a decision about marrying me today.  You were wise to interpret my request to become your maid that way, but today I am asking to work as a maid in your household.  Nothing more.  If you decide you do not want to marry me when I complete the purification ritual, then I will leave your home.”

“Where will you go?” he asked gently.

“I do not know,” she said, and to her credit, she did not sound like she intended to make herself pitiable.

Leonidas made a decision.  He’d do as she said.  Without speaking to his parents, he knew his father’s thoughts.  His father would be delighted that a former wife of the King was to be his new daughter-in-law.  After all, his father had tried to marry off Leonidas numerous times, only to be met with failure.  Samara was the niece of a King.  She was willing to work as a servant.  The path forward was littered with good omens and a sparkling future as far as his father was concerned.  The man was a shepherd.

Besides, the whole world had been flipped on its head in two days.  Perhaps it would be flipped back on its tail in six months.

She might be called back to her uncle’s.

“Come,” Leonidas said, resting a hand on Samara’s head.  “Let’s go see my brother.  I’m impatient to see him.”

Samara arose, aware that he had not given her a direct answer, but also aware that he had not refused him.  She lifted her eyes to his and gave him a smile that was visible through the gauze of her veil.

***

Everything at Leonidas’s home was off-kilter.  Ciphas was hiding in a cellar, treating a wound in his shoulder and another in his thigh.  One of his mother’s maids was stitching his wounds together and complaining about having to do it in the dark of the cellar, but Ciphas would not come into the light, terrified that the rebels were still hunting him.  He’d killed a few of their favorites.

However, his face lit up when he saw Samara.  “You survived!” he cried, joyously.

Leonidas was instantly annoyed that his brother was more pleased to see her than to see him, but he squashed his resentment as the two of them sat on the cellar floor and discussed how things had been torn apart.  She told him the fate of the guard who died in the tiger pit.  She told him how the rebels had stabbed her guard once they were locked in, thinking that the tiger would eat the dead man first.  It was the surprise of a lifetime for them when the tiger turned on them, tearing them to shreds.

Ciphas told the story of how he had helped the daughters of the King escape the city.  He had been wounded and sent them on ahead, putting his sword into the hands of a princess.

The girls were doomed.  Wherever they went, they would be followed, tacked, and chased until they were found.  They were surrounded by danger on every side.  They were pursued in the perilous jungle, in the mountains, and everywhere else.  Nowhere was safe for the sheltered princesses and consorts.

Ciphas feared for them, but he shifted his tale to what happened to him after they deserted him at his command.

He had been on a secondary trail through the mountains, and a man came by with a cart who recognized him.  He offered to bring Ciphas home.  What were the odds of that?

Ciphas thought the man was an angel.

The man had no animal.  He wheeled the narrow cart himself.  Ciphas felt peace as they rolled along.  The princesses were on paths that had split from his, and he found that his restless mind could only fixate on Samara.  What had happened to her?

She was in front of him now.

“I’m sorry the guard we sent wasn’t able to protect you,” Ciphas said in his too-high voice.

Samara breathed, her throat stiff.  “He didn’t go with me because he wanted to defend me.  He went with me because he believed that I would be able to protect him.”

Ciphas nodded as if he understood what she meant by that.

Leonidas tried not to think about what it meant.

Instead, he looked at his brother.  It had been so long since he’d seen him that he had changed.  He had been tall and thin the last time they met.  Now, he was even taller.  Parts of his face had changed.  Perhaps baby fat had dropped off.  Perhaps the bone in his jaw had grown.  Whatever was different, Leonidas always felt strange looking at his brother’s face.  Everyone knew eunuchs looked different because they had been robbed of what made them men.

Leonidas had been there the day they chose Ciphas to be a eunuch.  They seemed to choose Ciphas because he was better-looking than Leonidas.  It seemed a strange reward for having a pretty face.  Now his brother’s face had become even better, even though he was too lean.  Leonidas was not jealous.  It was impossible to be jealous of his brother.  Instead, he felt sick.

Suddenly, he wished he had joined the rebels.  He wished he had dethroned the king.  He wished the king and his harem had never existed.

Unconsciously, he glanced at Samara.  His eyes accidentally traveled to her stomach and what might be growing inside.

Yes.  He wished the king had never existed.

Suddenly, Ciphas turned to Leonidas and said, “Have you seen yourself in a mirror lately?”

Leonidas touched his face.  It was scratchy from the beard he hadn’t groomed.  “I haven’t,” he admitted.

“Well, come here,” Ciphas offered.  His hand was in a bag next to him, and Leonidas came forward to see inside the mirror.

In a smooth motion, Ciphas pulled his empty hand out of the bag and slapped Leonidas lightly across the cheek.  “You’re looking at one,” he said with a smile.

“You’re saying we look alike?” Leonidas gawked.

“I am,” Ciphas confirmed.  “Ask her.”

Leonidas turned to Samara.

She looked between the two of them.  “He’s exaggerating to tease you,” Samara said.  “But it’s very obvious that you’re brothers.  Even though you’re not a perfect copy, there’s probably no one in the world who looks more like you.”

Scrambling, she took the bowl of bloody water the servant had been using to clean Ciphas’s injuries and said she would refill it.  The maid, annoyed that Samara was doing her job, got up and chased her.

“How did you end up with her at the tiger pit?” Ciphas asked, his curiosity evident.

“I was trying to find you and someone told me a story of a eunuch who was thrown in the tiger pit with one of the King’s girls.  I found her and she convinced me to help her,” Leonidas explained.

Ciphas’s gaze was no longer playful.  “She’s a prize.  Do you know what the Queen usually did on the nights the King took a new bride?”

“Rattled the chains of the dead?” Leonidas offered lightly.  “Samara told me she nearly exploded in rage.”

“That is what happened the night the king married Samara, but that was not the way it usually played out.”

“Oh?”

“Usually,” Ciphas proceeded slowly.  “She cared who he took to his bed.  The Queen is a woman of unusual grace, elegance, and beauty.  Most of the other harem girls are like cats: one is white, one is black, one is spotted, and one is striped, but none of them are better than the other except that they are different.  The Queen was more beautiful than all of them.  If the King wanted to take more wives, and sometimes there were very good reasons for doing so…”

“I’d like to hear those sometime,” Leonidas interjected.

Ciphas rolled his eyes.  “Palace politics are boring.  They put me to sleep faster than counting sheep, and what shepherd hadn’t fallen asleep while counting his herd?  Anyway, the Queen was not threatened by any of his other wives.  She asked him not to take any more wives because she didn’t want to pay to feed them.  However, the King could not refuse a princess like Samara.  The Queen was so threatened by Samara, it was like her world had cracked in half.”

“All those petty problems,” Leonidas balked, rising and pacing the cellar.  “Who cares who is more beautiful when the kingdom is lost?”

“Yes, but all this might last but a moment before the King wrestles back control,” Ciphas said with a shrug.

“Well, King Alhondrius is not in a position to wrench control from the rebels.  He’s dead.  We heard the news this morning,” Leonidas informed him.

His brother’s mind clicked and turned.  “So now Samara is a widow.  That’s fantastic.  I’ll marry her as soon as her mourning is complete.”

Leonidas cocked his head.  He had heard of eunuchs taking wives.  Mostly, it was a status thing.  They took a wife to prove that they were like other men, and maybe make a few people forget they had been castrated in their youth, but it was hard to make anyone think that when their voice hadn’t dropped.  It proved wealth, status, and something Leonidas did not quite understand.

Leonidas’s hesitation to comment obviously annoyed Ciphas.  “What?  You don’t think she’ll want to marry me?  I bet she will if the King impregnated her on their wedding night.”

Leonidas forced his eyes not to bug out.  Apparently, his brother had had the same thoughts as him, except the opposite ones.  So, if she was pregnant, Ciphas wanted to marry her, and if she was not, she wanted Leonidas to marry her.

Leonidas swallowed hard.  “She asked me to bring her here to be my maid,” he admitted, even though he didn’t want to.  It would be insane not to tell his brother the full truth of the situation at the onset.

“Ah… but you won’t want her if she’s carrying the King’s child,” Ciphas said simply.  “I’ll pray she is pregnant.”

Leonidas let his head loll back until he could see the ceiling.  “You want to raise the King’s…” he hesitated on the next word.  He wanted to use the word ‘illegitimate’, but that was not correct.  Technically, it was a legitimate child.  It was just that the reason it was legitimate was so distasteful to Leonidas that he fell silent.

“You are such a difficult man, Brother,” Ciphas said, putting his hand on his wounded shoulder and experimenting with moving it.  “You can hardly look at me without allowing tears to fill your eyes.  Honestly, your pity is…” Now Ciphas hesitated, but Leonidas waited for him to think of the right word.  Finally, his brother said, “Unhelpful.”

“Unhelpful?” Leonidas repeated in surprise.

“Yes.  Unhelpful.  What’s done is done.  I know you think my work in the harem was ridiculous and all for nothing, and that what was taken from me could not possibly be rewarded with what was given, but you don’t know anything.  I loved serving the women there.  I loved being a servant to the little girl princesses.  I hope they are all right.  I hope I did not lead the rebels here to ransack our house and seek revenge.  I pray the harem girls made it out.  Do you have any other news, since you knew the King was dead?”

Leonidas shook his head in the negative.  “After we released the tiger, Samara said we should come here to find you.”

“She’s a prophetess,” Ciphas declared.  “Another reason the Queen hated her.  Listen, I understand if she’s not good enough for you, Leonidas.  You always want things to be perfect in eight different ways before you can be happy.  I know my life is like a burn wound in your heart, but you’ve got to stop thinking that way.  You have to stop feeling sorry for me.  If your pride is so puffed up it stings and you find yourself unable to marry her like she’s offered, I hope that you will conceal it from her until she finishes her purification ritual and then give her to me.”

Leonidas could not keep looking at Ciphas.  He turned his head away.  “There’s plenty of time.  She hasn’t even met our parents yet.”

“You think they might not accept her?” Ciphas leaned back and gave Leonidas a look of long-suffering.  “They will.”