Your tent smells of blood and myrrh.

The blood is yours. The myrrh is not. Someone—someone, likely Euryalus—thought to scatter it near the pillows, an offering to ward off rot or flies or whatever gods look kindly on the half-broken. You had not asked for it. You had not asked for anything—only a tether, a silence, a place to bleed unseen.

You’ve spent the better part of the evening peeling off armor with your teeth.

It lies scattered now, unfastened piece by piece like a shed skin. The cuirass by the basin. The greaves near the threshold. A streak of ochre along your right thigh, not all of it yours. Beneath the linen, the bandage clings to your side—wet, still seeping. You press your palm to it. Grit your teeth. The wound pulses like a second heartbeat.

Outside, the war drums have gone quiet.

And yet he comes.

You hear him before you see him—his gait, uneven from the limp he never speaks of. The slight rasp in his breath from a spearpoint that once grazed his lung. The man moves like a storm that’s learned to walk upright.

Diomedes says, low and even. “You’re still breathing, I trust?”

The tent flap rustles. You see his shadow cross it. Large. Square-shouldered. Stubborn as rockface.

“I saw you fall.”

“I didn’t fall.”

A pause. The sort that could slice clean.

“I saw you,” he says again. “If that was not a fall, I am a Thracian milkmaid.”

You almost laugh. Instead, you shift where you sit, drawing your knees closer, the blanket tighter. Diomedes does not laugh either.

“I brought salve. And cloth. And wine, if you’d sooner rot in comfort.”

“Go.” You say.

“No.”

You snap your head up.

“Laertiades says I’m thick as Boeotian mud. I say that means I’m not likely to let go when I’ve found something worth holding.” He steps inside. “Or when a friend is bleeding to death behind a linen sheet.”

Diomedes sets the basin down. Quietly. Then kneels.

“I’ll not shout,” he murmurs, softer now. “Not call for the healers. Not touch a thread without your leave. But you’ll not lie here dying like a goat in spring. Show me.”

You hesitate. Your breath shakes.

“I said show me.”

And you do.

Slowly. Carefully. Fingers trembling as they unwind the cloth, as they pull back the edge of your tunic, stained dark with sweat and secrecy. The cloth sticks for a moment where it’s matted with drying red, then peels away to reveal not just the wound scored high along your ribs, but the unmistakable curve and swell beneath it. The binding has come loose in the chaos, unraveling just enough to betray the shape of what you’ve hidden since the draft. Not much—but enough. Enough for his gaze to land there, to pause, to see.

Diomedes' breath draws in sharp. His eyes—so rarely wide—go wider still, and when they lift to meet yours, something in them has shifted. No longer just confusion or concern. Now there is knowing—swift and soundless and whole.

“You are—” He stops. Tries again. “Ah, you are?—by the gods.”

You say nothing.

He looks down at your chest again. Then, after a beat, back up. His brow furrows, not with scorn.

“How—how long?” he asks, low. And he exhales. Sits back on his heels, as though he’s taken a blow to the chest. "How long did you—"

A long silence stretches between you, not brittle but weighty. Diomedes reaches for the salve. Uncorks it. Pauses. Waits.

His eyes flick to yours. "...Just—let me see the wound."