Zenobia hummed softly as she pattered about her kitchen gathering ingredients for dinner. She checks on the bread baking in her oven and pulled out the fresh loaf to replace it with a pair of dressed chickens. She paused to take a sip of wine and sighed.

“Enjoying playing the dutiful wife, Zenobia?” Othya called out as she entered the room. “Pattering about a hot kitchen to ensure your husband and sons have a hearty meal at the end of the day.”

“I enjoy being the dutiful wife,” Zenobia said and turned to Othya with an unsurprised smile. “I like to cook and clean and keep a nice house for my family. It may be getting hard to keep up with what needs doing with my aging knees but I still find my peace in it. Now, what brings you here? Personally no less, the last time I saw your pretty face was when you gave me the name of Augusta Euphemia. What name do you bring now?”

“Not just one,” Othya said and took out the sheafs of papyrus. “Twenty nine names need to end in the coming weeks, I bring you twenty eight.”

Zenobia took the papyrus and began to read through the list and tried to put faces to the names. Thankfully the locations of their homes and ages were included along with the names because she didn’t recognize any of them. If she were to go by the locations of these homes, close to the palace and the Augusteum that it lays in so they were all rich and involved in governance.

“Time to clean the court then?” Zenobia hazarded a guess.

“The senate,” Othya corrected and nodded. “The court is already under Theadora’s thumb so there no true need for worry at the moment.”

Zenobia nodded as her thoughts turned to the last name that was not on the list. Othya wanted her to know it but will not speak it, some things never do change and a few ways she is still that little girl that hid in the rafters from when Zenobia still prowled the streets of the city to strike names herself. So what was this name, someone whomes death is too delicate to entrust someone that didn’t know the entirety of the plot. The list is also not written in Othya’s hand, if Zenobia had to guess this would be Phoebe’s due to its political nature. So even Phoebe wasn’t told of this twenty ninth individual. Oh.

“She would never agree to this Othya,” Zenobia sighed. “She will hate you if you follow through with it.”

“It is necessary,” Othya said and shifted her gaze to the floor, focussing intently on counting the scattered feathers rather than meeting Zenobia’s eyes. “She loves him too greatly to see him as what he is, a tool for us to use. I know what she will say to me, the arguments that she will use and none of them will work and she will refuse to see that. If she is to hate me then she will hate me, but I am a Daughter of Nyx, I surve no one woman my Oath is to the betterment of the Amazons no matter the personal cost.”

“She will no longer trust you, to her your word will carry the weight of a soft breeze.” Zenobia told her. “What about after when she will no longer take your council, what then?”

“Then there will be another Aranea to take my place and I will go elsewhere to continue my work.” Othya said and looked up and met Zenobia’s gaze.

Zenobia sighed as she looked in her eyes and saw the same look she always sees in her huntresses when they go on their first hunt, scared of what they are about to do and what it might do to them. The look of a girl who is still afraid and will not admit it no matter what. So with a shake of her head Zenobia stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Othya and pulled the younger woman into a hug.

As Othya rested her head on Zenobia the older woman was reminded of her distaste for the Daughters of Nyx, always so obsessed with necessity and willing anything to achieve it. Othya is not the first Aranea of Constantinopple that Zenobia has interacted with, she is not even the second or third but the fifth. In her sixty five years of life she has spent only the last twelve as the Mistress of the Hunt that oversees the Daughters of Artemis and ten more as the Holder of Names and Othya is the latest and longest living one at just over eight years. All of them disappearing into their shadows without a word for their replacement stepped in as if nothing happened, just as this girl had done at only sixteen.

“I don’t want her to hate me,” Othya whispered. “I broke a tenant of my Oath, Zenobia.”

“Oh, child,” Zenobia sighed and rubbed Othya’s back. “We all break our Oaths in some small ways throughout our lives. What truly matters is we keep the spirit of it weather than the literal words. So tell this old Huntress who has seen the world what troubles you so, the weight of thoughts can wear your body worse than any wound.”

“I know not the Oath of Artemis,” Othya started, “but part of the Oath of Nyx is that no one, no thing, no event, no desire shall impede any mission or pursuit of a goal for the betterment of my Amazon sisters and to ensure that I will bear no children, I will hold no love, I will make no ties except those in need for my purpose. Now I hesitate at the thought of what needs to be done for I love.”

Zenobia could only sigh at this, each of the Sisterhoods went about training and recruiting their members in their own ways. And these sisters deal with the bindings of their Sisterhood in their own way, some dealt with their bindings as if they have always been a part of her but then there were those that found them too tight and burdensome.

“I have known you since your age of majority, Othya,” Zenobia said, “in that time I have witnessed you hesitate and hold your hand in uncertainty many times. But you have always done what you needed to do.”

“It is not whether or not I shall complete my task, there is no doubt of that,” Othya said, “I am also the Oath Keeper of the city, how am I to complete this duty if I myself have broken a tenant of my Oath of Nyx?”

“But I have already told you, have I not?” Zenobia asked with a chuckle. “We all break a miniscule tenant of our Oaths every now and then, but we all kee to the spirit of our Oaths. It is nothing to be ashamed of, child.”

Othya stepped back and out of Zenobia’s arms and quickly wiped her eyes. She gave a short nod and then swept out of Zenobia’s kitchen like with out a whisper of a sound, Zenobia sighed at the weight that Othya put on her own shoulders.