He tries (and fail) for something more grounded

Stone masonry, last Winston had checked, was difficult work and slow besides.

“How about we focus on smaller projects for the time being?” he suggested. “Less grand. More finished.”

A palace could consume years even with skilled workers, and a residence worthy of the name would still demand more time than he wanted to spend waiting on his first permanent roof. Tektonia might have been the finest mason on the island, or merely the most enthusiastic one Hippolyta could summon quickly. What Winston knew for certain was that she had arrived with tools at her belt, hunger in her expression, and an eagerness to serve that required no command from him.

Some of the brightness faded from Tektonia’s face, though she recovered quickly. “Of course, my king. Smaller works, then.”

“A wall might serve you well,” Hippolyta offered before the disappointment could settle any deeper. “Something to mark the boundary of whatever ground you choose to claim for yourself.”

That sounded more manageable. Winston found himself thinking of Roman auxiliary forts, the practical sort built to establish a position before anyone worried about grandeur. Timber, earthworks, ditches, and eventually stone where permanence justified it. A proper finished fortification could still consume years, but something defensible did not have to begin that way. “That would be fantastic.”

Tektonia’s attention sharpened immediately. “An outpost fort, then? Like the ones we learned to design from the Children of the Capitoline?”

The title caught Winston strangely. He knew who she meant, Romulus and Remus, but the phrasing sounded like something inherited from a much later Rome rather than from the old story of the cave and the wolf. Tektonia was young enough that she could only have learned the name from others, while Hippolyta had watched whole ages of the outside world come and go.

“You knew Romulus and Remus?” he asked.

“Ah, no.” Hippolyta rested a hand beside her plate. “Themyscira gained many daughters from that part of Man’s World in later centuries. They brought their own names for old stories with them.”

Winston could not quite stop the roll of his eyes. Even after everything between them, Hippolyta could still speak of the rest of the earth as though it existed partly to supply Themyscira with useful women. The attitude was so deeply rooted that love, law, and loyalty had done little to disturb it. Hypocrites, the lot of them, he thought, before remembering whose authority currently held half the people in this tent emotionally bound to him.

As their king, he had very little room to complain.

Tektonia had already returned to the practical problem. “Alone, I would need weeks, perhaps months, depending on what you want built. Give me a workforce and finished plans, and I could have the first timber circuit standing within ten days. Stone could replace it section by section afterward.”

“That would mean exposing more Amazons to me,” Winston noted.

A knowing curve appeared at the corner of Hippolyta’s mouth. “Only if we intend to build here. This camp served well enough while we picked through ruins and decided what came next, but I would not choose it for your residence.”

“Then where would you?”

“There is higher ground farther into the forest with springs beneath it and enough elevation to make the approaches easier to defend. Another site sits along the upper bank of the nearby stream, where the water could be brought within the walls from the beginning.” Her gaze shifted briefly toward the canvas surrounding them. “We could remain here if you preferred, though any permanent settlement on this ground would eventually need an aqueduct.”

By the time she finished, Winston had the uncomfortable suspicion that Hippolyta had been considering the location of his future seat for considerably longer than he had.