The gardens of Sparta were not like those of Ithaca. There, the wind came salted, curling round olive branches and the gnarled limbs of fig trees, always tugging at sleeves and hair with sea-slicked fingers. Here, the air was heavier. Laced with resin, rosemary, and the honey-thick hum of bees. The walls were high, carved with stories older than memory, and the blooms were fierce in their color—pomegranate and hyacinth, marigold and flame-red crocus. Even the sunlight here seemed more sure of itself.

Odysseus had slipped away when the courtiers weren’t looking.

Laertes was deep in talk with Tyndareus, trading words heavy with politics—marriage pacts, grain routes, threats from the east—and Odysseus, though expected to listen, to learn, had found himself fidgeting. His foot tapped. His jaw ached from nodding. Gods, but he tried. And still the words pressed into his skull like dull arrows.

Then, movement. A flutter at the edge of the garden colonnade.

You.

He hadn’t meant to follow. Truly. But one moment he had been standing dutifully behind his father, and the next he was brushing past marble pillars and carved lions, the hem of his cloak snagging on thyme bushes, bees whining in protest as he ducked into the sunlit quiet.

And there you were.

You were not dressed like the others—none of the peacock silks or golden chains that weighed down the Spartan women he’d glimpsed in the great hall. No. You wore linen, simple and pale, belted loose at the waist, your arms bare to the sun. There were dirt-smudges on your hands, half-crushed petals in your lap. You sat cross-legged on the warm stone, wrist-deep in a bowl of crushed herbs, frowning thoughtfully like the fate of kingdoms lay in the balance between mint and anise.

You didn’t look up at first.

So he stood there, idiotically silent, a prince with no script, watching the sunlight chase patterns across your cheeks. Something strange happened in his chest. Not a jolt. Not a strike. Something quieter. Like the slow, careful drawing of a bowstring.

He cleared his throat.

Loud. Too loud. A frog in his throat and gravel in his voice. You looked up.

And gods. Gods.

He’d never been good with pretty girls. Not the way the others were, with their sharp smiles and brazen boasts. His cousins, his peers—they strutted and preened, full of easy arrogance. But Odysseus? He’d always been too quick of tongue and too slow of wit when it came to softness.

"You're… You’re mixing something," he said brilliantly, gesturing vaguely at the bowl.

You blinked. And then—thank the gods—a smile. Not a courtly one. Not polished. A crooked thing. Curious. Real.

In another life, in a sharper moment, he might have said something clever. Something that would land like a charm. But instead he blurted,

“Do you, um—do you like gardens?”

Silence.

A bee buzzed past. He wanted to die. To melt into the earth like Icarus wax.

And that was how it began. A prince with dirt under his nails and no idea what he was doing, and you, with petals in your lap and eyes like the hills after rain.

He would not forget it. Not ever.