Note from the Author: Some of you thought Helena and Zoro couldn't possibly have a child. I'm wondering how you figure...I thought I made it pretty clear that they consummated the marriage. Um...

Anyway, please don't judge Helena too harshly. The poor dear has been through a lot...

Ch. 3 – The Queen's Secrets

The following sunrise found Helena in the Grove of Kings behind the palace. She had just completed her pre-dawn workout, and so wore a short, thin chiton despite the slight chill of the morning mist. Though it was technically considered athletic attire, Helena saw nothing inappropriate with visiting the graves of royalty dressed in the traditional garb of the ancients.

She had arrived carrying two bouquets. One, an arrangement of waterlilies, she had already placed in a fork in her mother's pomegranate tree. The other, a small blue bundle of forget-me-nots, she clutched loosely in one hand as, with world-weary eyes, she searched for another, smaller grave.

It didn't take long for her to find what she was looking for. She'd tread the route to this particular sapling many times before. Kneeling before it, she placed a hand on the young bark and smiled a sad sort of smile.

"So it's true what they say, mon."

Helena rarely if ever saw anyone in the sacred groves these days. She looked sharply up at Calypso, demanding to know why he was there without posing the question in so many words.

"And what exactly do they say, sir?" she asked, her tone icy.

"That this place is a graveyard. Pretty for a graveyard," he observed, keeping a safe distance from the Queen and the various swords strapped to her person. "Though I'd heard it was once even more beautiful."

Helena settled herself into a half lotus position in front of the small sapling, reaching forward to place the forget-me-nots at the root of the tree. Another dying bouquet from the day before rested there. This she took up and laid aside in one ritual motion. She would pick it up to take with her when she left to begin the day.

"The trees here are normally in blossom all year round," Helena informed him. "But they haven't born blossom or fruit for almost two years now." A smirk teased her lips as she glanced back at him. "A certain Queen went out of her way to anger the gods. I believe her ancestors may be demonstrating their disapproval."

"Does that tree belong to the young prince?" Calypso asked, motioning to the sapling before her. "The one you lost?"

Helena reached forward to fiddle with the knot of a worn black bandana that had been tied about the trunk. She didn't answer Calypso, nor did she speak until she'd tightened the knot to her liking.

"Why are you here?" she asked in a dull voice. "You are interrupting my morning meditation."

"I came because I wanted to speak to you before you come to court today, mon," he informed her quietly. "I want you to know that I told the others that you'd finished the shroud last night."

"Not that I've been lying to them?"

"I'm sure many suspect it, but at the very least they do not have a confirmation, mon. Your integrity remains intact."

Helena snorted. Integrity? If she felt like she had any of that any more, she would have driven all of the suitors out ages ago. It wasn't like any of them stood a chance of winning her hand anyway.

Calypso made to leave the grove, and Helena almost let him go without saying a word. But then, he'd spoken of her integrity. It made her miss the woman she used to be:

"Mr. Calypso," she said quietly as he passed her, and he paused. "Thank you, truly."

A smile spread across his charming face. "It weren't no matter, mon," he replied, and he kept walking.

Helena watched him go for a moment before she turned back to the grave before her. Though almost two years had passed, looking at it still made her heart ache. Her fingers brushed a bronze plaque at its base, near the flowers she had just placed:

In Memory of Prince Telemachus du Helena et Zoro of the Line of Prometheus

Kissing the tips of her fingers, she planted the kiss at the heart of the tree before settling back into her half lotus position. There was a time when she used to bow to a statue of Athena before her daily meditation, but she forwent such a ritual now. Allowing her eyes to fall shut, she let the rustling whisper of the trees wash through her, bringing with it a sense of peace and communion with the dead.

Unbeknownst to the Queen, Roronoa Zoro also sat cross-legged in mediation only a few miles away. With his face toward the ocean and the rising sun, he let the familiar sound of the ocean's waves cleanse his emotions. He knew he needed to face the coming day with a clean slate, or he might do something he'd regret. – like visit Helena.

There were certain things Zoro didn't talk about, not even to himself if he could help it. One of those things was his love for the woman he had married here ages ago. It had been hard enough to leave her the first time, and he knew that if he saw her again he ran the risk of giving up everything he had worked for for the past two years. Helena wouldn't want that.

He couldn't help but wonder about her now, though. She had barely been coronated when he'd left her. He'd had no doubts as to her ability to rule, but how had her first few years as queen gone? Had she changed much? Would she still want him back when the adventure was done?

Images of her briefly flashed unbidden behind his eyelids: her smile, her swords, her scars. He opened his eyes to try to shake her from his mind. He'd have to start his meditation over again.

Of course, it would help if the stupid Ghost Girl weren't hovering over him. Her upside down face and pigtails were the first thing he saw.

"Holo holo holo holo," she giggled as he recoiled away from her.

"Would you stop doing that?" he growled. She ignored him.

"I know something you don't know," she sing-songed, flipping herself right-side up.

"Do I look like I care?" he asked peevishly.

"You should," she trilled obnoxiously. "I know where we need to go to save King Goosey."

"Great…" Zoro started with little enthusiasm.

"And your wife thinks you're dead."

"WHAT?"

Perona was the type of person to take delight in other people's misery. Her expression turned positively euphoric as she went on: "She thinks you're dead, and she's taken on a lover," she simpered.

"HONK?!"

Zoro hadn't realized Cygnus was awake and listening to the conversation. The goose looked about as shocked as Zoro felt.

"HONK honk honk honk honk! HONK HONK!" Cygnus started pacing along the beach, his wings balled into some semblance of fists. Zoro could practically hear him saying: "I raised her better than this! What is she thinking?"

So you didn't know anything about that either, huh? He thought.

"In fact, there's a whole army of suitors camped out in her throne room," Perona went on, giggling.

"Is this true?" Zoro asked Cygnus.

The goose king turned to him, sighed, and nodded.

"Soooooo," Perona asked, swirling around Zoro in delight. "Are we going to go storm the castle and take back what's yours? Give your wife a good proper spanking?"

Zoro raised a brow at this, then smirked. "No," he said definitively.

Perona ceased in her happy, weightless dance to stare at him. Cygnus looked equally surprised.

"If Helena's taken a lover or wants to entertain suitors, what's it to me?" Zoro pointed out. "She's not being untrue. As you said, she thinks I'm dead."

"Yeah, but, you're not," Perona insisted. "Shouldn't you let her know?"

"I will," Zoro replied. "When the Straw Hats make a comeback, she'll know I'm alive. Or Cygnus can tell her when we've left. After that it's up to her how to proceed. Knowing her sense of honor, I don't really have anything to worry about. And anyway, why embarrass her?"

Zoro felt perfectly satisfied with this answer. Cygnus and Perona seemed surprised, but then, the decision wasn't up to them, was it?

After a meager breakfast, it wasn't long before the party of three had started off again. This time, Perona insisted on being carried so she could float above them and serve as their guide. Zoro grumblingly agreed to lug her around on his back, internally acknowledging that the ghost girl would probably get them wherever they needed to go faster than Cygnus would.

Speaking of the king, he still looked furious about the morning's revelation. Stomping about as much as a goose could, with his beak and neck extended low to the ground, looking straight and sharp like a javelin, he wasn't doing much to hide his frustration.

They'd walked in silence for most of the way. Well, Cygnus had let out a grumbled little honk every now and then, but Zoro finally decided to make conversation:

"You do realize Perona has got to be making that part up, right?"

Cygnus looked up at him quizzically.

"Look, Perona's really not the most reliable source of gossip. She likes to embellish for the sake of making things sound more miserable," Zoro explained. "You and I both know that Helena wouldn't risk the legitimacy of the throne by taking on a lover. She loves Ilium too much for that."

Cygnus' posture became decidedly less rigid as he pondered this. His expression cleared after a moment's thought, then he nodded to Zoro and gave a decidedly more positive sounding, "Honk."

"Right?" Zoro replied, cracking a bit of a smile. "The suitor thing I can believe, if she really thinks I'm dead." Cygnus nodded to confirm. "But a lover? Helena's too honorable for that…"

Now bathed and dressed for the day, Helena sat at her vanity mirror and made a face at herself as she applied the last of her make up. Not that she had gussied herself up too much – she didn't want to give those rotten suitors any ideas.

No servants helped her as alone she styled her tastefully cropped hair. Only a select few people were allowed in her room these days. Anyway, it wasn't like she wasn't capable of dressing and grooming herself.

Satisfied with her hair, she placed the comb back on her vanity. Her eyes lingered for barely a moment on a crystalline bowl of water sitting on her vanity countertop. A live lotus blossom floated therein, but the gift did not make her majesty smile.

Taking a white porcelain crown from a special, velvet lined box, she placed it carefully on her brow. Its gracefully carved laurel leaf motif was almost lost in her whitening hair. It curled around her forehead over an orange tourmaline charm in the form of small sun, which glittered like faceted gold in the morning light.

A blur of motion out of the corner of her eye made her turn sharply away from her morning ablutions. Drawing a rapier from the sheath hanging on the back of her chair, she whirled toward the ornate French doors leading out to her balcony. Through their windows she could see the figure of a man just swinging over her marble balcony railing.

"Halt or I run you through," she said, standing with sword at the ready. "Don't you set one foot in this room."

"It's just me, your Royal Loveliness," a familiar voice called.

She lowered the blade. "Paris," she said, unlatching the door. Her eyes lingered a moment on a broken pane. It had been that way for a few years, but she had expressly left it unfixed. She pushed it out of her mind: "Paris, what were you thinking, climbing up here in broad daylight? What if you had been seen?"

"I had to see you again," he said, a little breathless from the climb. He flipped his pretty chestnut brown hair from his eyes and straightened his uniform – a white tunic with two rows of gold buttons, dark slacks, a snappy red cape. As an archer he wore a large wooden bow across his back, but his quiver held swords, not arrows.

"Idiot," she said, not unfondly. Casting her eyes about quickly to see if anyone were watching, she grabbed him by his tunic and pulled him roughly inside. Then she drew the curtains.

Helena could have been more careful. Someone had in fact been watching. From the palace gardens, Calypso caught sight of Paris climbing to her balcony. Hiding behind a convenient pillar, he watched as the Queen furtively pulled the handsome young man into her bedchamber.

Calypso shook his head slowly to himself. So her majesty had resisted the suitors because she already had a paramour! This new discovery didn't deter him so much as make him grin.

"Oh, it is on, mon," he chortled, and walked with determined step back to the palace.