Odysseus had always been one for tricks.

He’d learnt well over his years how deception reaped only the bestest of rewards.

Helen, fairest daughter of Zeus would fall to his claim—that he felt blessed by Athena’s foresight.

Though, as always, people tended to flock to where Odysseus’s mind did wander. He was one of thousands, princes, kings, prophets—any man with or without a name ventured to Sparta to just gleam a sight of the princess.

You were a respite within Sparta and the challenges he and the other suitors found themselves enthralled in.

Her cousin, unknown to that of name, protected by your father from his and other men’s sights. Heartwarming if it did not hinder the son of Laërtes conversations nor entertainment with unraveling what cloth hid such a mind.

He did could not love you, that he knew—even if his mind did wander to you of Helen’s place or the rage that clouded judgement when another prince did dare attempt to woo you.

Keeping themselves within Helen’s line, a tempting trick he’d perfected long before those brutes.

He knew you were no fool, you knew his tricks. Never a coincidence when a suitor whom spoke to you found himself hazed with wine, rumors spread of his bed or house, a bruised nose or broken bone in more intense moments.

It’d never been a coincidence. Not even when they drove themselves out of Sparta.

You were not his, his prize would be Helen—his mind paused, a fraction of uncertainty with his plans of husbandry for the daughter of Zeus. Her beauty confounded men, Ithaca would become known if he made her his bride.

But those futures so often became clouded by another goal: keeping you within his sight. His ways of keeping you to him.

He found you, within the gardens, his own form hunched in bramble as his eyes caught the robust frame of Philoctetes—speaking with you. Of matters Odysseus did not care.

He was speaking with his… something.

Something he dare not to name.