"Your city's sake. Come, or show yourself the coward you are in truth."

“Call me a coward one more time.”

"Coward."

There is a roar and a flash of silver as he strikes.

He punches him heavily in the gut, again, and again. 

"Coward. You would turn a blade on your own brother? Better for you that you were never born, you odious thing in a fair disguise. Whatever the Cytherean saw in you, even She must turn away in shame. If that blade had landed, if your hand had ever been turned to any weapon greater than a lady's razor, you would have been a parricide, and died a slower death than any Greek's spear would bring you. I have saved your wretched life, brother. Are you grateful?"

He is curled up on the ground now, in vain defence against his brother’s blows, wheezing and spitting blood–

He tries to push himself up, again, again–

“Paris!”

She runs barefoot from the baths, trailing water behind her like pearls.

Before Hector can land his next blow, she forces herself between the brothers, her hand outstretched like the statues of Aphrodite herself. Her hair is loose, curls tight around her pretty head.

“Stop! Stop this, what are you doing?!”

He inclines his head courteously. "Helen, as lovely as you are in every moment; forgive me, I did not wish to frighten you. I was just protecting your foolish husband from his follies, again."

“Protecting him? You have hurt him!” She crouches now, cradling her arms around her husband. The loose drapery of her clothes slips in the motion, settling just below her fair shoulder.

“What folly do you speak of? Your own rage, you brute? What has become of the great princes of Troy?”

Her eyes are so big, so deep.

“Helen,” he croaks out her name, her beautiful name, “it is alright.”

He manages to hold himself up at last, his arm against the ground. The world spins; his body and pride bruised.

"Fear not. He will live - he is not even much wounded. Boys take harder blows in training for war; for your sake, Helen, I would not harm my brother's pretty looks. I only needed to keep him from doing something stupid." He glances at the blade, and then at Paris, but doesn't tell Helen what happened. 

She does not know what he means and she does not care.

In the blink of an eye, in the release of a single breath, Prince Hector ceases to exist.

“Come, my love.” She touches Paris’ cheek, her eyes welling with tears for his suffering. “Come with me.”

His heart pulls towards her. It presses against his bones and skin, an ache.

Dimly, he thinks he should be somewhere else. The tower, a meeting of the council – he should be somewhere, somewhere important.

He smells her. The perfumes of her bath, the flowers he decorates her bed with…

Prince Paris allows himself to be led softly away.

The first time it happens is during the sack of an outlying town. 

No troops are stationed here. It's mostly women and children and the elderly and infirm left behind, while their sons and husbands and brothers swell the ranks of the city. It would be too costly to defend. 

So there isn't much resistance, except for the little boy who takes a kitchen knife and sneaks outside and tries inexpertly to jam it into Ophellios's neck as he supervises men loading wagons. 

The look on one of his men’s faces tips him off– then a crack as someone takes a single misstep behind him.

Ophellios turns swiftly, driving his boot into his assailant’s chest. The attacker falls back onto the ground, and the son of Apollo draws his bow back to shoot–

This is a boy.

A child, younger than even he.

He does not release the arrow.

…

“How old are you, boy?”

He looks about fourteen, and he doesn't answer, just scrambles up and lunges forwards and sticks his knife into where he thinks Ophellios's heart is.

Shocked fingers release the weapon against their will.

The boy collapses, the arrow lodged deep in his throat. The light does not take long to leave his eyes.

It is all a blur. All Ophellios knows is the pain in his chest, the blood, the knife between his ribs–

He feels strong arms pulling him, lifting him.

His vision blacks out.

He awakens in an unfamiliar place - a large tent, in which a large man with gentle hands is bending over him. Machaon, the healer, said to be the child of Asclepius Himself. 

"The wound is not serious," the man says patiently. 

He opens his mouth to speak.

Little sound comes out, trapped deep in his chest. Perhaps the knife pinned his voice against his bones.

His eyes are blurred.

“Thank you,” at last he manages, weakly.

"The knife only pierced your skin. I have dressed it well. It was not enough alone to unstring your limbs - did you take any other injury?"

Ophellios manages to push himself up, the way warriors are supposed to, though the pain shoots through his chest.

“No. Not that I am– aware of–”

The Trojan boy.

It comes back to him like the sudden crash of Poseidon’s waves. The Trojan boy, gargling on his blood, twitching on the ground–

His pupils narrow into pinpricks.

The Trojan boy, his mother screaming for him–

The prince falls back onto the bed, his breaths coming shallowly.

Machaon is very calm as he checks breathing and heartbeat, skilled fingers probing at bone and tissue, looking closely into an opened eye. 

Ah.

"Your breathing, prince of Pylos. Control your breath."