The bodies were still being counted when Hecuba summoned him.

Lysander had not slept. He had tried—had lain down on the cot in the supply office while Arsini worked beside him, her stylus scratching against clay—but his body wouldn’t surrender. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the axe rising above him on the beach, the giant’s scarred chest, the moment when he had known, with perfect clarity, that he was about to die.

Miros had saved him. Hector had saved them all. The black ships were gone.

But he couldn’t stop seeing the axe.

The summons came via a servant—one of Hecuba’s women, the same one who had walked beside her cart when she arrived at the palace. She found him in the supply office, his armour still on, his hands still trembling slightly from exhaustion.

"The queen wishes to see you," she said. "In her chambers."

Arsini looked up from her tablet. She didn’t speak, but her eyes met his for a moment. Go, the look said. I’ll be here when you return.

He went.

Hecuba’s chambers were in the eastern wing of the palace, near the gardens. He had never been inside them before. The Lysander who existed before the fall had probably spent time here as a child, sitting at his mother’s feet, learning whatever lessons mothers taught their sons. But that Lysander was gone. The man who walked through the door now was a stranger in his own past.

The room was simple by royal standards. A low couch, a table covered in scrolls, a brazier burning in the corner. The walls were hung with tapestries—scenes of hunting and harvest, not battles. A loom stood near the window, a half-finished weaving stretched across it. She had been working on it recently. The threads were bright, the pattern intricate. A lion, he saw. The same lion that adorned her brooch.

Hecuba sat in a chair near the brazier, her hands folded in her lap. She was wearing the same simple robes she had worn when she arrived, her white hair bound back, her bronze lion brooch at her shoulder. She looked up when he entered.

"Sit," she said.

He sat.

For a long moment, she simply looked at him. He was still in his armour—blood-spattered, dented, the leather straps cutting into his shoulders. His face was hollow with exhaustion. His hands, he realised, were still not entirely steady.

"You fought," she said finally.

"Yes."

"On the eastern beach. With Miros."

"Yes."

"I spoke to Hector this morning. He told me the line broke. He told me you held it anyway."

"Miros held it. I was just—"

"I know what Miros did. I’m asking what you did."

He was quiet for a moment. "I killed men. I don’t know how many. I almost died. Miros saved me. Then Hector came and the line held."

Hecuba studied him. Her dark eyes—Hector’s eyes, but older, harder—gave nothing away.

"I’ve been hearing stories about you since the day I left the healing springs," she said. "At every port, every village, someone had a tale to tell. The prince who negotiates treaties. The prince who built the settlement. The prince who counts grain stores and designs ships and stands on towers watching the sea." She paused. "I didn’t believe half of it. It didn’t sound like my son."

"I’m sorry."

"Don’t apologise. I didn’t say I was disappointed." She leaned back in her chair. "The boy I left behind was quiet. He stayed in corners. He never looked anyone in the eye. He certainly never picked up a sword and stood in a battle line." She tilted her head. "What happened to him."

It was the question he had been dreading since the moment he saw her cart enter the courtyard. The question everyone had asked, in one form or another, since the fall. What changed you? What happened? Who are you, really?

He couldn’t tell her the truth. He couldn’t tell anyone the truth. But he could tell her something true.

"I fell," he said. "In the training ground. I hit my head. When I woke up, everything was different."

"That’s the story everyone tells. I don’t believe it."

"It’s the only story I have."

She looked at him for a long moment. "No. It isn’t. But I’ll accept it for now." She shifted in her chair, her joints clearly aching despite the healing springs. "I watched you last night. From the wall. I saw you run toward the eastern beach when the signal came. I saw you come back this morning, covered in blood that wasn’t yours. I saw you stop at the medical tents and speak to the wounded."

"I didn’t know you were watching."

"I’m always watching. That’s what mothers do." She paused. "The boy I left wouldn’t have fought. He would have hidden. He would have found a corner and waited for it to be over. The man who came back this morning didn’t hide. He stood in the line and killed men and almost died. That man is my son

Lysander didn’t know what to say. He had been measured by this woman since the moment she arrived—her sharp eyes, her inventory, her promise to watch. He had assumed she was looking for proof that he wasn’t really her son, that something had gone wrong, that the boy she had left behind had been replaced by something else.

Instead, she had been looking for proof that he was.

"Thank you," he said.

"Don’t thank me. I’m not praising you. I’m telling you what I see." She leaned forward. "You’ve been carrying this city on your shoulders. I can see it in the way you stand, the way you don’t sleep, the way you count things. You’re trying to hold everything together because you believe that if you stop, everything will fall apart."

"Something like that."

"It won’t. The city will still be here if you rest. The people will still fight if you put down your sword. You’re not the only one holding the line."

"I know."

"Do you." It wasn’t a question. "Hector tells me you’ve built a network. People who work with you, who trust you, who can do things without you standing over them. That’s good. That’s what a leader does. But a leader also knows when to let other people lead."

She stood slowly, bracing herself against the arm of the chair. Her joints were stiff, he could see, but she didn’t ask for help. She walked to the window and looked out at the city below—the harbour, the settlement, the walls that had held through the night.

"I’ve been queen of this city for forty years," she said. "I’ve buried children. I’ve watched wars. I’ve seen kings and princes come and go, some of them brave, some of them foolish, most of them both. The ones who survive are the ones who learn when to fight and when to rest. You fought last night. Now rest."

"The work—"

"Will still be there tomorrow." She turned from the window. "I didn’t summon you here to interrogate you. I summoned you here to tell you something. You are my son. I don’t know what happened to you while I was gone. I don’t know why you’re different. But I know my children. Hector’s courage. Paris’s charm. Cassandra’s sight. And now—" She paused. "Whatever this is. This determination. This refusal to stop. It’s yours. And it kept this city alive last night."

Lysander stood. His legs were unsteady. His shoulder ached. But something in her words had shifted something in him—a weight he hadn’t known he was carrying, slightly lightened.

"I should go," he said. "There’s still work to do."

"Yes. There always is." She turned back to the window. "But before you go—the settlement leader. Maea. And the fisherman. Shebek. They fought last night. I saw them from the wall."

"Yes."

"Hector says you want to train them. Properly. Make soldiers of them."

"Not soldiers. But they held the line. They’ve earned the right to be trained."

"Yes. They have." She didn’t turn around. "I’ll speak to Priam. The council will resist—they always resist anything new. But they’ll listen to me."

"Thank you."

"Don’t thank me. Just make sure the training is good. If we’re going to arm our refugees, we’d better make sure they know how to use the weapons."

She said it with the same flat certainty she said everything. An order, not a suggestion.

He bowed his head and left.

The corridor outside was quiet. The palace was beginning to stir—servants moving through the halls, guards changing shifts, the ordinary rhythms of a city that had survived the night. He walked toward the supply office, his steps slow, his body heavy.

Arsini was still there. She had moved from her own work to his chair, going through the coastal watch reports, her stylus moving steadily across the clay. She looked up when he entered.

"How was it," she said.

"I’m not sure." He sat down heavily. "She told me I was her son."

"You are her son."

"I know. But she said it like she’d decided it. Like she’d been weighing evidence and had reached a verdict."

"That’s probably what happened." Arsini set her stylus down. "She’s been watching you since she arrived. Everyone knows it. The guards talk. The servants talk. They say she’s been asking questions about everything you’ve done—the treaty, the settlement, the schools, the fleet. She’s been building a case."

"A case."

"To decide whether you were still the person she left behind. Or whether something had gone wrong." She paused. "Apparently she decided you were."

"She said I was different. She said she didn’t know why."

"Did you tell her?"

"No."

"Good." Arsini picked up her stylus again. "The truth wouldn’t help her. What you do helps her. What you built helps her. That’s what matters."

Lysander looked at her. "You’ve been saying that for two years."

"Because it’s been true for two years." She held his gaze. "Now rest. I’ll handle the reports."

"I should—"

"Rest."

He didn’t argue. He was too tired to argue. He lay down on the cot in the corner of the office—the same cot where he had slept in snatches between emergencies, between crises, between waves of refugees and attacks and all the thousand things that had demanded his attention over the past two years.

He closed his eyes.

The axe rose again in his mind. The giant’s chest. The moment of certainty.

But this time, behind it, another image: Hecuba at the window, her back straight despite her stiff joints, telling him he was her son. Not because she understood what had happened to him. Because she had decided.

He slept.

When he woke, the lamp had burned low and Arsini was gone. A fresh tablet lay on the table beside him—the coastal watch report, completed in her neat handwriting. On the corner of the tablet, a single word: Nothing.

No new threats. No returning ships. The sea was empty.

He sat up slowly. His body ached in ways he hadn’t known a body could ache. His shoulder was stiff, his sword arm sore, his ribs tender where the giant’s axe had driven him to his knees. But the trembling in his hands had stopped.

He stood and went to the window. The harbour was quiet, the fishing fleet still pulled back, the freighters still at anchor. The settlement was stirring, families returning to their shelters, children running through the streets. The sky was clear, the sea calm.

Somewhere beyond the northern horizon, the black ships were still out there. They would find other villages, other coasts, other places to burn. They would come back someday. Or others like them would.

But not today.

Today, the sea was empty.

He picked up the coastal watch report and began to read. There was work to do. There was always work to do.

But for the first time in days, his hands were steady.