There had been moments of fear in her life in the past eight months, from the chariot races, to the night she'd woken in her own blood, and Stephanos' ride off to meet the Creed. But there was nothing that compared to the sight of guards at her door, telling her ladies to gather things and move her from her normal chambers. Stood in the center of the room glaring back at them, Olympia held herself tightly for security and tried not to let the terror show on her face. Only the anger and indignation that she felt as a queen being told that she was being moved.
"I'm going nowhere until I've seen my husband. Where is the king?"
Her demands seemingly fell on deaf ears, and as her maids and servants filtered away and the cold words of 'house arrest' echoed back at her she very nearly felt herself faint then and there. Something had happened, Irakles had struck at them without warning and it was all she could do to stay on her feet. Stephanos' words ran around her mind, Irakles wanted her dead and her baby along with her. Confining her along with her husband now in a small set of rooms would be the perfect way to ensure that when the time came for the prince's revenge there would be few witnesses and a situation easy to control.
One of the guards reached for her arm as if to drag her along and she snatched it away, spitting at him in disgust before Desma caught her and held her back. The old woman's touch was the only calming thing in her life, and as the nurse whispered to her that it was best for them to go along with it, Pia's nostrils flared as if a horse in fear, seeing herself backed now into a corner from which she couldn't see escape.
"My people will attend me. Desma, find Alastair. Then come to us. And send for my mother and Selene."
She had been having cramps the past few days, practice contractions Desma had assured her each time. The little crown prince was not yet on his way, but the time would be soon. Soon, and that meant she had hardly any time left before her own death if Irakles had anything to say about it. Stepping forward, Olympia kept her head held high as the queen she was determined to be until such a time as it was taken from her by force, even in her robe and plain chiton without jewelry or crown.
The walk to Stephanos' rooms was short enough, but with guards at her back and her front each step felt agonizing. This wasn't a romantic visit, it was imprisonment. As soon as the door was opened and she caught sight of her husband, Pia ran to him as quickly as her heavy frame could manage, relieved to see him alive after the worst she had been fearing. His hands were bruised unlike this morning, and she caught hold of him with trembling hands.
By the time they’d dragged him off the platform and gotten him out of sight of his uncle, he was a fraction calmer. The chance that he would swing a punch at any random person declined to such a degree that the guards simply kept hold of his arms and formed a tight unit around him. He didn’t fight anymore, knowing what they were doing. This was for his protection, against any retaliation that might follow, but it was also to keep him contained. He was one man against eight and stood no chance of breaking away and just taking off into the countryside.
They did not walk him to the palati, but trundled him and four of the guards into a carriage. It rolled through the streets, looking to the people who were not present at the senate disaster like he was simply returning home. The closer he came to the palati, the only place he’d ever even thought to call home, the more antsy he became. Were the guards going to kill him here? Had Irakles paid them? How few supporters did he really have?
It was a miracle he made it back to his room. Every second of the way he expected a knife to the chest, a dark clad assassin to step from behind a column, or even for the guards escorting him to turn and just start impaling him. Nothing of the sort happened and he didn’t start to shake until he was shown into his room and heard the door being barred from the outside.
His eyes swept the floor as he tried to think but his thoughts were scattered to the four winds. There was only one overriding notion that kept shattering any kind of plan he was attempting to make; failure. He failed. Months of trying to keep ahead of Irakles. Long nights of planning. All his time and energy. Wasted. Failed. He swallowed and chewed on the inside of his cheek.
A sharp, gnawing pain grew inside his mouth but he ignored it. Shaking fingers raked through his hair. He swung around and turned in a complete circle, not even sure what he was looking for in the room. When he swallowed this time, he tasted blood. His tongue worked against the ragged hole inside his cheek.
The senate replayed in his mind, over and over. Even punching Irakles was no longer satisfying. It made him cold. In the moment, he’d done it because it didn’t matter. He didn’t care. There was nothing left. But now that he was in his room, inside a building that was still standing, filled with people who did not yet know he wasn’t king, he realized what an idiot mistake it had been to give into the rage. If he’d been thinking he could have raced back to the palati, gathered his guards, and stormed back to the senate.
He was king. He could have actually crushed the rebellion right there. His soldiers were loyal to him, even if the senate was not. It wasn’t an ideal course of action and it was tyrannical, but it would have allowed him to keep his throne until he could work out what to do. Playing Irakles’s game had caused him to lose because he just wasn’t a politician. Just because he could insult or play the system like any courtier didn’t mean that he’d been aptly prepared to take on the lying, amoral bastard that was his uncle.
All at once, he felt angry. More than angry. Enraged. Livid. How dare the gods allow this to happen? How dare they stand by as a murderer - he picked up the first thing his fist closed around and flung it - get onto his throne. Zennon’s throne. Zacharias’s throne. His son’s throne!
Pottery shattered. Blindly, he reached for something else and flung it. Pieces of pottery skittered across the floor. He flung a jug of wine. It burst and shattered, spraying the room. He needed more. Someone was shouting. The sound was far away and sounded like an animal letting out a guttural, primal roar. His own throat burned and he realized that he was the one making the sound.
It didn’t matter. They wanted to take him from his throne? Fine. They wanted to kill him? Fine. But he would not stand here calmly and just take it. They’d find this room destroyed. Whoever had brought him here hadn’t bothered to take his weapons off the walls. Taking a battle axe, he wielded it in a frenzy and used it to chop at the door. That was enough for the guards. They rushed in, swords drawn only to defend themselves against the insanity of their king. As gently as they knew how, they disarmed him of his axe and fled the room.
He didn’t reach for his swords. After that, he sank to his knees, staring around at the devastation he’d wrought and let out a tremulous sigh. Yet again, he’d only managed to fuck up his own life. Irakles was still at the Dikastrios, blithely unaware of all this.
His demeanor was calm again, once his wife was brought to him. The sight of her made him feel incredibly guilty all over again. Not only had he forgotten her in his rage, he’d somehow forgotten to be scared for her too. With her presence he gained both a feeling of warmth, coupled with the cold dread of knowledge that they’d die here. Together.
Her hands were the only things keeping his steady and when she asked him what happened, he only shook his head at her. He didn’t want to tell her that she’d married someone incapable of preventing his own demise - and hers, and their child’s. Like that wasn’t evident already. It was all he could do at the moment to keep it together. When the urge to speak hit him again, he opened his mouth but ended up shaking his head again and leaning forward to gather her against him.
She didn't need a verbal answer from him, as soon as she caught the expression on his face she felt herself go cold with fear, breath catching even as he held her close. Whatever had happened, they were finished. Irakles had them confined now to just these few rooms and had some sort of pretense to keep them here, no doubt until he could follow through on his plans to kill them. They were as good as dead as long as they stayed here. It was a surprise to her that no tears fell, in spite of the despair that was taking hold, hopes and thoughts, plans that might work and might fail were running through her mind to try to find a way out of this.
Her legs seemed incapable of holding her up any longer, and Olympia leaned heavily into him, trusting her husband to either keep her upright or lower them to the floor as the weight of it hit her. She didn't want to die, didn't want to lose him or the baby, and yet they were all at risk unless they did something immediately. The silence stretched between them as her pounding heart marked the time that passed until she finally pulled back and cupped his face in her hands, a half plan formulating that would depend on Alastair's ability to keep them alive long enough and Desma's swiftness in delivering the news to her family.
"I sent Desma with news to my family. They will find a way to help us, I'm sure. What did he do?"
In order to enact the plan that was now frantically taking shape, it would depend on what could be brought to them and how secure their notes were that could be passed between them. She had been told by some midwives, that there were herbs that could speed a labor if the mother was late, if the baby was weighing too heavily but still seemed content in the womb. A tea could be made to induce the birth and surely if she was in labor, if she gave birth, it would be harder to kill all three of them without rousing suspicion. If her son was born it would be yet another body between Irakles and the throne he so desperately grasped for. If, gods forbid, something happened to Stephanos, their child would take the throne instead, and she could instill about them a regency that would protect them from his uncle.
As soon as she sagged against him, he felt a dormant part of himself surface again. He could not allow himself to breakdown with her there. Alone? Fine. There was no one to harm but himself. With his wife, things got a little more complicated. He did not allow her to sink to her knees. Instead, he pulled her up and slipped an arm around her waist to keep her upright.
When she finally pulled back and cupped his face, he looked back at her, utterly flat. The vivid blue of his eyes was dull and lifeless while her deep brown eyes were pools of frantic anxiety. He did nothing while she tried to assure him that Desma would get word to her family and that her family would help them. It was a nice thought.
With infinite patience, he pulled her hands off his face and held them down at their hips. He smiled blandly at her and pulled her through the main room and deposited her onto his bed. He then sat beside her and rested his elbows on his knees so that he could form his hands into fists. On his clasped fists, he rested his chin.
He did not need to hear her thoughts to know that she was a buzz of activity inside. The things she was thinking had already been through his own mind. Who did they know that could help them? Who could possibly break them out of this lush prison? What servant, what courtier, what baron could they appeal to? Were the people they could actually trust strong enough to break them out?
No.
No, no, no, no, no.
He’d already dismissed her parents. They were good people, so far as Leventi personages went, but Georgios would not stand up to Fotios. Not in a million years. However much her mother might want to, she did not have the power or means to spirit her daughter, much less her son in law, away. Elise was too much in a dither to be counted upon. He’d not seen either of his sisters and, more than that? He didn’t want to involve them.
Irakles seemed likely enough to ignore their presence, as they did not pose a threat to his rule. More than likely he’d use them to bolster his own image. Secure them good and proper marriages. Get them off his hands as soon as possible. A show to the people that he was a good, able uncle, as well as the perfect regent. It made him a little bit sick with jealousy.
“No,” he said absently when she asked if the baby should be induced. “No,” he said again, inside a sigh. “Once our son is born, he’ll be suffocated and have died in your womb, and you, of course, will have bled out during the birth. I will then have killed myself in grief and shame.”
He already knew how Irakles would spin that. They didn’t have a power move. They could not rely on their son’s birth. He was actually safest still tucked away within his mother. Perhaps before...before they were locked up. That would have been the time. But it was too early and he hadn’t had a vision that any of this was going to happen.
“The gods have abandoned us, my love. We are utterly, totally, completely alone.” He was tired of lying to her and to himself.
She let her husband guide her over to the bed, sitting beside him and leaning her head against his shoulder as she stared off across the room. It was so familiar, and there were memories in these chambers, of laughter and pleasure and time spent together in joy, some in sadness, but never before had she seen this place as a prison. For all of the finery that surrounded them and the comfort and luxury they had been allowed in this imprisonment, it was still a cell, still a place where they would await the news of their fate which would no doubt be decided for them without any chance to properly defend themselves. If they found him guilty, would she be allowed to live? Would he?
They would not see the outside of this space until Stephanos was declared innocent, if they were ever freed again. As much as she had felt hopeless, lost and confused and terrified by everything that had happened to them in the past few hours, the description of how Irakles would use the birth of their son to end them was what brought her to tears. The sobs she'd managed to hold back shook her shoulders as she pulled away from him, her face in her hands.
They were dead if she gave birth now, dead if they waited. Until now the greatest fear in her life was the pain of childbirth, but now the certainty of her dying before or during labor was almost assured. Her control was lost until he said the gods had abandoned them, and as if to contradict his father their son gave a kick that took her by surprise. Turning to look at him with a new fire, Olympia shook her head and stood, pacing briefly before him before turning and catching hold of his shoulders.
"No. No, we have each other, and we have friends on the outside. We can't give up, we've made it this far. We will fight for him." She caught his hand to press it to her belly, holding it there whether the child moved or not and tried to meet his fair eyes with her own dark. She had loved him for years, been sharing his bed for almost a full year, and now was going to give birth to his child no matter the cost.
"You can't give up. Please promise me we won't stop fighting."
He did nothing to comfort her as she cried but put a silent arm around her shoulders. There was really nothing else to be done. They were stuck and Irakles had won. It was the situation he’d feared, only worse. When he’d been forecasting their deaths, he’d never considered that his uncle would have them locked up. All he’d been thinking about was a quick, clean death.
Of course Irakles would need to go this route. To outright assassinate them would implicate him too much, because he was the one who stood the most to gain from their three deaths - five if you added his father and brother. No, the prince’s hands were and had been bound by the public’s view. Stephanos could have kicked himself. It was all so easy to see in hindsight. He should have dealt his uncle an unpopular, but killing blow when he had the chance. Perhaps sent him off somewhere as an ambassador - but he and Irakles would have known what it really was; Exile. And in exile, he could have had the old man killed.
He lay back on the bed and fantasized about it for a long time, letting his mind slip away from Pia’s sobs. Then she was up and she drew his eye again as she began to pace. At first he paid this very little attention, but her agitation worked its way into him enough that he sat up again. It was as though she was waiting for him to do it. As soon as he sat up, her hands were clawed into his shoulders, begging him not to give up hope.
They had each other. They had friends on the outside. They couldn’t give up for their son. And then she was asking him to promise to keep fighting, using his hand on her stomach to rouse some sort of emotion. Anything but the closed down, bland nothing he was at the moment.
“Alright,” he nodded to her and smiled up. “We’ll keep fighting.” At first he was just going to lay back again and stare at the ceiling. That was as much fighting as they were able to do, given the circumstances. But then he remembered that sometimes soldiers were antsy before a battle. They needed something to do so that they did not focus on the fact that they were going to meet the ferryman very soon.
Stephanos sat up again and finally started to think about something other than his own morose thoughts. He looked around with an expression that was a little more ‘awake’. “Pia, I need you to gather anything that is fabric. Our sheets, the curtains. Anything like that. Do you think you can make a rope? We might be able to scale down the balcony once night comes.”
It was a ruse to keep her mind off their plight. They could probably scale down the balcony and die trying to do it. Who knew? She might find that preferable.
The moment Stephanos seemed to rouse, she felt a wash of relief, smiling through the tears and panic for just a moment. If there was any glimmer of hope, no matter how faint, she was going to take it. She wanted to meet her son, watch him grow and give him siblings, and for a moment as she threw her arms around Stephanos in a tight embrace she wondered if she could be just as happy if they never got the crown back. If they simply fled and lived in a different kingdom, perhaps as farmers or merchants or anything else. At least they would be alive and together.
Burying her face in his neck, she simply wanted to hold on to him as long as possible, if it was one of their last moments she needed to take it. His request had her lifting her head slightly before she burrowed against him once more. It was hitting her now, the true desperation and futility of their current state. As much as they tried to fight, there was nothing that could be done, no one to save them. Unless…
”Vangelis.”
Olympia sat upright, reaching for a sheet and beginning to twist it, uncertain how best to make the makeshift rope he was asking for. Her hands needed to be occupied even if the attempts were completely useless, but now she was looking at him intently. The Colchian Crown Prince had saved her life once, both of their lives really, in the Circus the day Stephanos had lost his father and brother. Why could they not ask him again to help them be free?
”Would he be able to help us? Find a way to get us out, until our son is born, and we can fight back?”
"Maybe," Stephanos was doubtful about this suggestion. Wildly, he hoped that Vangelis would help him. After all, the man knew of his fears that turned out to be true. And he knew that Vangelis was likely somewhere back in Vasiliadon. As to whether or not he'd help? That remained to be seen. "We'll get a message to him tomorrow," he promised without any idea of how they'd do such a thing. The servants were probably being watched even more closely than the two of them were. He wasn't overly sure that even if he could get a message to the prince, that his uncle wouldn't immediately know and then do something about it.
For the moment, he was able to lie back and contemplate their fate without being interrupted by her as she worked on the sheets. The servants brought them food that the two of them mutually agreed not to touch. Who knew if it was poisoned or not. What he couldn't have predicted to be the worst part of being imprisoned, especially on this first day, was the boredom. It was perverse, but he couldn't imagine that being dead would be worse than being this bored.
By the time night came, he was so ready to be unconscious that he closed his eyes and actually did sleep. His wife, unfortunately, was not as lucky in her mental escape, but he'd done all he could to help her. It was poor consolation that they were in this predicament through no fault of their own. It was just...Fate.