You see him long before he reaches you.

Bent-backed and broken-hipped, his hand pressed to his side as though he could hold the blood in by will alone. His steps are staggering things, dragged forward more by memory than strength. The once-prince of Troy, the shepherd-judge of goddesses, the man whose beauty kindled ships and fates alike—now limping, dirt-streaked, ruined.

Alexander.

Your Alexander, once.

You do not rise.

You are seated beneath the pines, where the roots split like ribs from the earth. The spring babbles near your feet—clear and uncaring—and your healing herbs lie spread across your lap, half-crushed, half-forgotten. The wind shifts through the oaks like a whisper of something old. Something you had put down long ago.

He stumbles into the clearing.

Falls to his knees.

“Oenone,” he gasps.

It is not your name as it once was—spoken in jest, in honey, in the hush between kisses. This is a raw thing, thickened with pain and desperation.

You lift your eyes slowly. The wound in his side is angry and red, seeping like a torn pomegranate. His lips are cracked. Sweat clings to the edges of his hair like seafoam.

Paris crawls closer. Presses a hand to your ankle—lightly, reverently, as though you are temple-stone. You do not move.

“They would not help me,” he says, breathing like a dying stag. “Hecuba weeps. Helen turns her face. Even the priests—” He coughs, deep and wet. “They say the wound is god-wrought. A punishment. A thing made to end.”

You tilt your head, ask what he would call it. And he closes his eyes.

“A reckoning,” he whispers.

There is silence, save for the spring and the low moan of wind through the peaks.

You remember the feel of his arms, once. The way he carried you laughing through these same woods, ankle-deep in snowmelt. You remember his promise—that no city, no crown, no goddess would come before you. You remember the look in his eyes the day he broke it.

Your hands hover over your herbs.

You could save him.

The knowledge lives in you like a second heart. The roots, the salves, the breath of ash and bitterwater—these are the tools of the mountain-born. You are no Helen. No queen. But you are a nymph. A healer. A daughter of streams and stone.

You could make him whole again.

But to do so would be to raise the man who burned a kingdom. The man who traded oaths for ornament, truth for the soft curve of a goddess' favor.

To do so would be to love him still.

Paris looks up at you.

“Oenone,” he breathes. “Please. I have nothing left but you.”