Maria was branded dishonored, politically toxic, and dangerously vulnerable. She fled east across the sea and then west across continents, seeking a court untouched by the intrigues that ruined her family. She found refuge in the distant Kingdom of Castile. Aeolos grew up in Castile, far from the marble halls of Byzantium or the fortifications of Mytilene. His childhood was shaped by the languages of merchants, the clang of Iberian steel, and the dignified bitterness of his mother, a princess without a throne, a woman haunted by betrayal.
From her, he inherited a sharp mind trained in both Latin and Greek, a fierce pride in the Kantakouzenos bloodline, and an unspoken longing for the Aegean homeland he had never seen. From his father, though only through stories, rumors, and the occasional Genoese letter,Aeolos gained an iron stubbornness and the restless spirit of a sailor-knight.
By his late teens, Aeolos had become known in the Castilian court as the Greek-born bastard with the lion’s stare. He trained alongside young hidalgos, learning the art of mounted combat, the discipline of knightly etiquette, and the political dance of a court full of ambitious nobles.
He dreamed not of Castilian estates, but of the island of Lesbos, where his half-brothers Jacopo, Dorino, and Palamede Gattilusio ruled and quarreled and schemed under the long shadow of Genoa.
As a young man, Aeolos made a vow to win his own honor, not as a prince in exile but as a knight worthy of respect. He sought to enter the ranks of Castile’s famed cavalry, to earn spurs by merit, not birth. But beneath this chivalric ambition lay his deepest desire to travel at last to Lesbos and to stand before the brothers who likely had never heard his name. Also to walk the battlements of Mytilene Castle and to decide for himself whether Francesco Gattilusio was a hero, a villain, or simply a man who chose his throne over the woman he loved.
Aeolos carries his mother’s pain and his father’s legacy in equal measure, one as a wound, the other as a compass. And now, as he readies himself for his first true campaign as a Castilian knight-aspirant, the winds of destiny may one day turn once more toward the Aegean. Toward the brothers he has never met. Toward the island that could reject him or finally acknowledge him.