by Harley James
Niketas jerked his hand from her grasp. Once more she knelt beside the king whose lips were moving, though his eyes remained closed. The Elders shooed the surgeon away and stepped up to the bed next to the queen.
“Papa?”
The King opened his eyes. He looked unbound to this earth. Sophia’s heart skipped a beat. Gradually, his eyes refocused, his gaze settling first on his son. “Niketas, my pride. Green fruit ripens slowly. Have patience...and wisdom will follow.”
Niketas bent to kiss their father’s hand before rising to stand rigidly at attention, an uncommon pallor to his swarthy face.
Sophia’s throat ached. The king’s gaze sought hers. "My sweet, subversive Sophie...do not go barefoot upon the thorns.”
This was sounding like final blessings. Sophia’s hands trembled as she rose to her feet. Her mother had settled next to the king, now brushing her long, elegant fingers across his brow.
“Papa, I am not unprepared. I know the way will be hard, but a water drop hollows a stone. I will prevail through perseverance.” She felt the weight of the Elders’ disapproval for such an unbecoming outburst, but did it really matter? She’d never fit the mold of how a Spartan princess was supposed to act. No, she didn’t fit and never would.
Neither would Alexios.
She’d studied his behavior for seven years. The way he interacted with those beneath his command, those who scorned him, those who idolized him.
He was a harsh, but honorable man. When his father sent him through the agoge warrior-training school, it had the dual effect of not only angering the aristocrats, but also alienating him from many helots who believed he was betraying them by walking in the footsteps of their enslavers.
“Do not anger the gods by asserting your will over that of our wise forebears, princess. For your father’s sake," Giorgios implored.
To hell with the gods. They hadn't protected her father from the rogue snake that had sunk its fangs in him while he’d sought their counsel at the Delphic oracle. But for once, she held her tongue. Her mind was made up. Arguing with the Elders wasn’t going to change it.
Her father looked at Giorgios. “Your Lysandros, will he be...much aggrieved at Sophie’s refusal?”
Oh, that this was playing out so publicly! Sophia’s face was scorched earth as she stared down at the shining marble floor tiles.
“Lysandros and Sophia would make a strong match for Sparta’s future, " Giorgios replied carefully after a moment. “However, my grandson is not so overcome by youthful exuberance to let his passions get the better of him. He will find another. It’s his father who might take issue with the broken promise.”
Unfair! “Why must I be subject to a betrothal when all other Spartan women are free to choose their mates?” Sophia cried.
“Indeed?” Queen Eleni looked steadily at the Elders, her son, and finally, her husband. A new lump rose to Sophia’s throat to feel her mother’s support. For once.
But then Eleni turned her gaze on her daughter. “This does not mean I support a marriage to King Davos’s bastard. Because I don’t. I have heard from all quarters that Alexios is a warrior without equal, but also one without soul, without heart.”
Sophia’s shoulders bunched. “People only see what’s on the outside, but he’s so much more than people believe.”
Her mother’s eyes were sad. “According to many in the Assembly, Alexios lives for war and bloodshed. He could never love you or make you happy, daughter.”
Would that the world would swallow me up now.
Sophia closed her eyes for a moment to rediscover her center. Her mother’s bleak assessment, however much it hurt, wasn’t the point. It wasn’t the crux of her dream.
She swallowed to ease the dryness in her throat and thought about all the Spartan babies she and Lydia had already saved by matching them with helot couples who weren’t able to have children of their own.
It will be enough. “I don’t need a man’s love to liberate the slaves or to abolish infanticide. I need someone who can help me reach across the class lines. Alexios is the one man, the only man, who can do that.”
“You are a disgrace to the Agiad house,” boomed Zenon.
King Tychos reared up in bed, eyes afire, the gooey poultice sliding down his leg as he scrambled to his knees. The Elders lurched back while the surgeon moved in to restrain his patient.
The king swung out with his once-mighty arms, one blow catching the surgeon so solidly he fell back into Niketas’s arms. Tychos pointed furiously at the corner of the room where only shadows from the lamps flickered and danced upon the walls.
“Summer, autumn, war. The greatest of all wars is coming.” His gaze raked over each person in the room without seeing them. “It’sss coming,” he whispered gutturally.
A shiver quaked through Sophia. The queen ran her hand down her husband’s back. It was the first time Sophia had ever seen her mother’s eyes well up. “Beloved, come, lie down with me—”
The king crouched on all fours and snarled at her. “It’s coming! Sparta will fall!”
Goose bumps broke out across Sophia’s arms as the wrenching sob she’d been holding in finally poured from her lips. Her father spun toward her, spittle running down his chin and bright, red blood running down his damaged leg, soiling the white linens of his bed. “Only you can save her.”
“W-who, pater?” She choked on her heartache, wanting to be gone, hating to see her father this way, but rooted in shock and disbelief at his unraveling. She turned her face to the ceiling with its vibrant frescoes honoring Ares and Apollo. “Damn you for turning your backs on him like this!”
“Sophie!” Niketas shouted, making her tremble despite the fury chasing through her blood like unwatered wine.
“You’ve eaten the bull, do not leave the tail,” King Tychos yelled. “Save Sparta! Save her, Sophie!” Her father screamed in agony then, collapsing in an unnatural tangle of limbs as though all his bones had liquified at once.
Niketas and the surgeon lurched forward. Through her blur of tears, Sophia backed further away from the bed and stumbled against the low-slung leather couch next to the hearth. She scrambled to her feet, and turned to flee the room.
As her sandals flew over the tiles toward the tall archway leading to the atrium, her father’s wild voice rang out once more. “Marry the bastard prince, Sophie! Save my Sparta! Save Spar—”
The directive halted and was replaced by her mother’s cry of torment that could only mean…
Thanatos had come for the king.
The sun struck her face as she reached the outer stoa and ran as fast as she could under the roofed colonnade.
The Agiad king was dead.
Oh.
Papa.
The tip of Sophia’s sandal caught a crack in the tiles and, for a moment, she was weightless. She came down on her knees and elbows with a searing pain, put her arms over her head, and wept into the cool, clay tiles for all of Sparta to see.
Chapter 5
The princess was following him again.
Alexios held his heavy shield close to his body and moved swiftly through the cypress and olive groves toward the river Eurotas. The night lay thick and dewy upon his skin, which was crusty with layers of blood and dirt from hours on the drill field.
The thirty-three men of his platoon had been grateful he’d worked them after sunset, happy to let the younger age-cohorts of the agoge get their hours in during May’s heat of the day. He’d told them he didn’t give a damn about their comfort. He was doing it because it suited him only. He ran a hand across his hip where one of his men responded to the selfish comment with a wicked slash of his short sword.
Alexios grimaced on contact with the wound, then smiled in the dark. Anger always made men fearless fighters.
He could have retired to the baths along with the other soldiers, but tonight, he craved the depth and solitude of the river. Seclusion so he could plan how he was going to destroy every last member of the goddamned aristoc
racy who had his mother’s blood on their hands.
If the maiden followed him any further along this winding trail, however, he wouldn’t find the seclusion he was hoping for.
For the last seven months, relentless guilt and a bone-deep anguish were the only things that had kept him from launching into a full-on killing spree. Seven months of aimlessness. Fighting. Training. Letting his rage off the leash on the drill fields. Torturing himself with blame.
He’d known it was the night of the yearly Krypteia. Why hadn’t he escorted his mother home after her midwife duties? Better yet, why, why, why hadn’t he forced her to stay home where she would have been safe from the predators just waiting to make an example of a slave with social influence?
His mother’s death had sent shockwaves of despair through the entire helot population.
It was exactly the reaction the Spartiates were after.
He’d wasted seven months.
No longer.
He glanced back and frowned. The Agiad princess was still doggedly picking her way along the path, hood drawn over her hair.
Since her father’s death six weeks ago, Spartans and helots alike hadn’t ceased their tongue-wagging about her grief. The Spartans were outspoken in their disapproval of her painfully visible sadness. Most helots ignored her in public, but gossiped about her in the marketplace during the day and in their homes at night.
He wanted to forget the events surrounding the king’s death, but talk of the princess was everywhere. And now, for almost two fortnights, she had been everywhere he was, trailing him persistently. They had a connection, yes, but what could she possibly want with him? She’d observed him for years, but it had always been from afar, and he’d done his best to ignore her.
It was increasingly difficult to put her from his thoughts.
When he was seventeen, he’d fixated on her during his contest of endurance because she’d been a child, dressed in helot clothing. Her dirt-smudged face and wide, compassionate eyes had been a safe place to channel his mental escape. His polestar to temporarily rise above the pain.
During those excruciating moments, he let her in.
While she stood in the front row with the jeering onlookers so hungry for the spectacle, her expression was nothing like theirs. Her eyes offered kindness, strength, and challenge.
He’d fed on that. And survived.
A moon later, he’d seen her on her father’s chariot and realized the girl to whom he’d bared his essence was the king’s daughter. For the last seven years, he’d wondered when that connection would come back to bite him.
Perhaps that time was now.
Alexios ducked under a massive cobweb stretched between two trees, then paused. The princess would pass through this very spot. He pulled down the webbing, then continued toward the river, shaking his head at his foolishness.
The tall, gangly girl had transformed into a beautiful woman, more captivating than ever, with her compelling facial expressions and all that dark, shiny hair that seemed to capture the complex essence of night.
Experience with a few other Spartan females had taught him outside the doll, inside the plague, but he hadn’t observed any trickery or dishonor in the princess. She confounded his every notion about the aristocracy. Her refusal to indulge in the luxuries of her station. Her insistence on doing things for herself to make the slaves’ workloads lighter. Her covert trips to meet with the helot Lydia to rescue Spartiate babies left to die on the foothills.
He was even drawn to her undeniable clumsiness.
But she could never be for him.
She was part of the fabric of society he wanted to tear asunder.
People were easy to mislead when they expected you to behave a certain way. To most, he was the cold, brutish bastard of a frivolous king who’d seduced a helot slave. Alexios was content to let them nurse their superiority. One day, it would be their undoing.
Princess Sophia behaved just the opposite. Alexios sensed it was more than her grief over her father’s death that made her chafe against expectations. She gave the opposite of what the aristocracy demanded, and she looked beyond the superficial. It made him want to repel her as much as draw her close.
Had she discovered...?
No. There was simply no way blame could be traced back to him.
Still, there had been times when the pain on her face had been so profound he wished he’d never made that one careless remark to his attendant.
The soft sigh of the river drew nearer, understory notes to the trill of insects and the intermittent shifting in the brush as nocturnal animals slunk away from his intrusion.
Alexios gathered the woodsy spice of cypress into his lungs before stepping into the moonlit clearing at the broadest bend in the river. Anxious to submerge himself in the soothing waters, he paused once more to look over his shoulder. To watch and listen. He couldn’t pinpoint her location in the cradle of the trees, but he could sense her.
His skin tingled in awareness and heat flared in his cock.
He cared not at all for the sensation.
Was she waiting for him to call her out? Surely she wouldn't think he cared what she was up to.
He turned back to the water, scowling, as he lay down his short sword, then unpinned his chiton. He’d removed his sandals and was beginning to unfasten his greaves when a startled cry and a loud squeal rent the air. A thrashing tore through the brush, getting louder as it neared the clearing.
He snatched up his sword, his senses honing in on the gap in the trees where he’d emerged onto the sand. Sophia burst into the clearing, a wild boar in pursuit, both of them barreling his way.
As the princess ran, her hood fell back to expose the sweep of her nose and lips pulled tight with fear. He lurched forward to grab her arm, swinging her aside. He met the boar’s charge with a two-handed downward stab of his xiphos. The blade pierced the hide, but with the hog’s velocity, it glanced off the animal’s tough skull.
Alexios spun away from the thrusting tusks and parried for another killing shot. Sweat covered his body, the hog’s grunts ringing in his ears as it pawed the ground. The beast had to weigh as much as four warriors. If he had his battle spear, he could distract it with pokes and then move in for the close-quarter kill that his two-foot sword required. Alas, no spear.
Alexios circled the animal, angling to jump on its hairy, humped back.
In his peripheral vision, a streak of movement. Sophia. “Climb upon the boulder!” he yelled at her.
“I cannot!”
He dug his foot deep into the cooling sand of the riverbank, kicked a mass of sand at the boar's face, then lunged to the left, pivoted, and propelled himself across the boar’s hindquarters. “Take a running jump at it!”
“I am no good at agility! You shall have to kill it!” she shrieked back.
Astride the beast, he drove his xiphos into the boar’s muscular neck where warm blood welled over its leathery hide. Its squeal nearly made his ears explode, but he held on, a hand’s length of his sword buried in the swine.
Alexios slid sidewise on the animal’s back, his bronze greaves scraping across sand as the boar tried to outrun its death. The animal seemed possessed by death god Thanatos, bucking and screeching in rage. Alexios gritted his teeth and tried to pull himself back over the great beast’s back so he could sit upright again. He’d almost managed it when something cracked against the boar’s head.
The beast dropped to its knees with a deep-throated groan.
Alexios’ muscles unclamped, and he slid to the ground. His chest burned as he regained his breath. Sophia stood over the boar with outstretched arms, a large rock squeezed between her hands. The look on her face was as fierce as Athena on the hunt.
He rolled to his feet and stood beside the princess. She didn’t raise her eyes to his, but continued to stare at the hog, her arms beginning to shake.
“He is quite vanquished,” Alexios murmured as he pried her frigid fingers from the large slab of limestone
and set the rock upon the ground.
Her eyes widened as they finally registered the bare, broad chest in front of her. “Are you certain? My aim is never true.” She glanced at the beast as though it might come back from the dead, then back at him.
Or rather, at his boar-hair-scraped manhood.
“Oh my,” she said, breathless.
Fuck. Even as banged up as his cock was, it was rising to the occasion. The soothing waters of the River Eurotas were becoming more critical by the minute.
Alexios turned away from her to retrieve his bloody xiphos, then headed to the spot where he’d removed his chiton and sandals. As he bent to remove his greaves, he heard her mumble an entire speech under her breath.
Nerves, or a peculiar trait he’d so far failed to notice?
In any event, she was at his side in the next moment.
She clasped her hands tightly in front of her. “Please excuse my dearth of manners. I am Sophia. I am indebted to you for coming to my rescue, Alexios.”
His name on her tongue hit him like a full glass of wine. Gazing upon her sweet, solemn face would certainly spell disaster, so he kept his attention on unfastening his greaves. “I know who you are.”
He’d never thought to share a moment like this with her. Bearing down on a common adversary in the heat of survival wove an uncommon bond whether you liked it or not.
He liked it not.
“You are no more in my debt than I am in yours.” And thank the immortals for that. “‘Twas your stone that ultimately felled him.”
She followed him to the lip of the river where the water lapped at her sandals. As he waded into the gentle current, he felt her gaze on him like the press of summer’s sultry winds. His chest expanded, but surely it was the water’s influence. Many females had looked upon his nakedness over the years as that was how all Spartan males competed in sports. Why should this feel any different?
Doesn’t matter.
“I know you know who I am. But we’ve never been formally introduced. The rock may have dropped him, but only because he was nearly conquered already. I don’t know how you managed to stay on the beast with him bucking and running amuck like that. That was remarkable.”