Caius has never been fond of happy homecomings. Marcus drowns Didyme with seeping, seeking kisses while Sulpicia and Aro have their own rituals, dependant on the tone of their farewells; he is left in the penumbrae of porticoes, surly and uncertain.

"You need to speak with your wife," Sulpicia says, escaping Aro's embrace with a darting giggle that is utterly unlike her.

"You are, I presume, using some alternative definition of that term." Caius' patience runs short with teasing, but a coarse cord of panic tautens in his chest nonetheless.

"Very well. The woman you wish was your wife," she appends, looping an arm through his. His cloak is rain-freckled and streaked with worse things but she does not seem to mind.

"What happened?" His mind is too adept at weaving nightmares of late.

"She will not explain. Athenodora returned from somewhere, locked herself in her rooms and broke everything that could be broken." Sulpicia pauses and offers a singeing smile, her lips chafed to currants by Aro's touch. "I could say something about matching tempers, but I will restrain myself. Am I not merciful?"

"I requested that you watch one newborn—" The words have ragged, snarling wings, before Caius catches himself. His brother's mate is a formidable, uncaring adversary and he does not want another war. "Why did she wander? Where did she go?" he demands, desperation drawing hands into claws.

Sulpicia's laugh is cut glass.

"Ask her. Prove your reputation for mindless courage."

[-]

"I went home and it seems that I no longer have one." Athenodora's voice glides, fingers dragged through water as soon as she sees the snow-haired man.

He attempts to speak, but she hushes him with a touch lighter than lark wings and edged with iron.

"You will listen first. What did you do to my family—why?" Anger sets her ablaze, the cold, blue-edged shade of corpse-lights. "Your desires were for me alone."

"There are laws to be obeyed." The defence is an arbitrary one, but then he has neither needed nor wished to justify himself before.

"What you did transcended the requirements of your beloved justice," she insists, shell-fine nails re-tracing the ghostly fissures she has carved into seamed stone. Her shoulders are drawn into bony wings, as though she wishes to flee from the shades of black-cloaked rule.

Caius sighs, raking roughened fingers through hair that still carries the sting of smoke. "Aro turned his youngest sister, and neither you nor I can call her happy," he begins, bringing unspoken things into the dusty half-light. "I killed half of my family. Marcus left his parents and siblings mortal and he regrets that choice still. Sulpicia never speaks of her kin." The confessions are ugly, tarnished things but he continues. "I wanted to ensure that you, if ever you sought your family, would not find them. That is easiest."

Athenodora meets his gaze with a raven's wariness, seeking truth in a blur of sand and pretty comfort. "Or perhaps you merely wanted me to be alone. I cannot leave you if there is nowhere for me to go," she says, the quiet rain of grief silvering her speech, turning her brittle.

"I will not apologize for that," he admits.

The stillness resumes its rightful place between them.

"Leave. Please," she whispers minutes later, and Caius does, only because he hates to see her beg.

[-]

Caius spends days pasting together some facade of peace for Athenodora's wrath cannot last, and her inevitable tears will splinter him to the marrow.

When he finds her once more, she is in her chambers, parchment strewn around her in ivory drifts. The discarded papers are dark with drawings, portraits of the same people repeated. She is skilled enough, he observes as he sits in her shadow, but details evade her as though her recollections are only words now.

Caius smoothes the parchment and gently, gracefully takes charcoal between wintry fingers. In sure strokes, he corrects lines and shadows, rendering the faces of Athenodora's brothers and father from memory, all pale eyes, fair hair, angles.

He offers her the sketches, atonement cautiously painted, and waits. Her hands curl in hesitant blossoms but she accepts them, holding flawed vellum so close that her tunic and fingertips burn and blacken.


AUTHOR'S NOTE: This update was a little later than I anticipated, and I apologize. A thank-you to everyone who reviewed and favourited the previous chapter.

On a vaguely related note, I've discovered just how much fun writing about Caius and Sulpicia is. There's a story in there somewhere, about the strangest pseudo-sibling combination in Volterra.