The sky is too quiet between you.

Not the hush of peace, but the silence that follows after something has broken. Smoke still stains the horizon in finger-thin wisps, and from this high place—his place—Ganymede can see the ribs of Troy laid bare to the sea. Her walls, once proud, once singing with the tread of spears and sandals, lie like bones, and her towers curl black where the fire touched them.

He does not speak. He cannot.

His throat tastes of ash and honey, and neither belongs to him.

So, he sits with his knees drawn in, cloak half-fallen from his shoulder, watching a bird circle once above the ruins before veering west. A gull, maybe. Or something else. He had never learned the names of earthly birds. Zeus plucked him from the earth too young for such knowing.

But Ganymede remembered Troy.

He remembered the warmth of the banquet fires and the songs that reached even Olympus on the wind. He remembered her princes—bright-eyed, olive-skinned, voices wrapped in gold and smoke and pride. He remembered him, the god of all gods, laughing at some jest beneath fig leaves, his fingers stained with pomegranate, his eyes catching Ganymede's like a thrown spear.

He should have looked away.

A breeze ghosted over his skin. The hem of his cloak fluttered. Somewhere below, the gods are quiet, watching. Somewhere above—

A voice like thunder, soft for now but no less commanding—“Ganymede.”

His name is not a question. It never was. Spoken from that mouth, it is a summons. A reminder. A collar made of light.

His chest pulls tight.

The air here tastes thinner than it should, thinner than the mountaintop or the meadows or the halls where he poured wine into the cups of immortals and try not to tremble when their eyes fall on him for too long.

So, Ganymede rises, mutters a goodbye.

Slowly. Mechanically. Like a statue carved to move only when called. His knees ache. They are not meant to, but they do. He gathers the edge of his cloak, fingers trembling where they knot the fabric, and glance once more toward the Trojan ruin.

He thinks—if he could weep for them, the sky would flood. But Olympus does not weep, and he, beloved, was of Olympus now.

Zeus calls again.

Ganymede trembled, but does not look back. Because he was summoned, and one learns to obey.