DEIMOS WATCHES THE stars flicker in the heavens above with a heavy heart. Somewhere she's looking up at the same stars. His thoughts haunted by distant memories from a time when everything seemed so much simpler. He's kicked himself a hundred times over for how he reacted. Years of telling himself they should have stayed there that night on the beach only to push Lesya away and leave her more broken than before when fate gave them another chance. He closes his eyes with a heavy sigh.
It's the sight of her in a peplos almost the same color as her eyes that makes his breath catch when he enters the bedchamber in the villa. She combs her fingers through copper waves, twisting some strands away from her face and braiding others, pinning them back in place for the symposium. "What?" Enyo asks, hiding her smile as she notices his lingering gaze in the looking glass.
He steps further into the room, loosening the ties of his vambraces from a day of training new vanguard and scion recruits —all fearless and able fighters, but none could ever match his or Enyo's prowess and brutality. Deimos throat is dry as he looks at her again. The linen and silk combination is gossamer thin, fitting for her disguise as a hetaera for the evening.
Through the fabric, he can make out the scars on her back and the curve of her hips and breasts. "Not used to seeing you in a dress," he notes, voice low and rougher than usual. Rough hands settle on her waist and the warmth of his breath ghosting across her neck and shoulder. Deimos watches her eyes slip shut and the soft sigh that leaves her parted lips. "Aphrodite may be envious–" he presses his lips against the crook of her neck, smiling at the shiver she gives.
"Deimos," Enyo chides, stepping out of his hold before turning to face him —fingers finding the ties of his gold-and-white cuirass. "You still need to get ready," she reminds him, nodding toward the black himation trimmed in gold lying across the table at the edge of the room as she pulls away his breastplate and sets it aside. Shedding his chiton and greaves, Deimos readies himself for the symposium as Enyo finishes her hair.
A smile creeps up onto her rosy lips when she looks at him —the dark fabric draped and pinned over one broad shoulder, leaving the other side of his chest bare. Enyo reaches for him, fingers brushing across a scar barely visible for the dark hair on his pectoral. It is just as rare a sight to see him without armor or weapons. His hands find her waist again, holding her in place as he cranes down, lips barely touching her own— Deimos startles awake at the harsh cry of a passing eagle. He sits up aboard the ship to Messenia, gaze shifting back to the night sky as his heart twists and aches at the bitter reminds of his and Lesya's past.
BLOOD DRIPS FROM Lesya's twin blades as she finds Kassandra to the east of Gla fort. Upon the sunrise, they each decide the last of the Boeotian Champions will fall today. With the Korinthians encamped around Thebes and across the countryside, and weakening Athenian morale from the death of their champions, there is no better time for Sparta to strike. "Is it done?" She asks, wiping her bloody lip on the back of her hand, glancing around Kopais Perch, looking for any sign of Aristaios.
Kassandra nods, eyes flicking from Lesya to the smoke billowing into the air from the fortress —the signal to prepare to march on the Athenians she promised Stentor. "Aye," she answers, turning and looking in the direction her father had gone —a felucca moves across the lake, "but Nikolaos claimed the finishing blow."
Lesya raises a brow, surprised to hear any mention of the general after what happened in Megaris all the years ago when her and Kassandra's lives were first entangled. "He will not come to our aid," Kassandra says, seeing the question budding in Lesya's laurel eyes, "he does not wish to sully this victory for Stentor." Nikolaos' dismissiveness of the campaign to help his homeland leaves her disheartened but hopeful that her broken family can be made whole again given time.
They both turn back to watch the Gla fort burn, black smoke and flames rising. Regardless of if the Wolf will help lead the charge, the Spartans will war at dawn —planting their sword deep into the heart of Boeotia with the aid of the Eagle Bearer and destruction incarnate.
THE BATTLE ENDS, but the Spartans' bloodlust has not ebbed with the victory. Lesya strides into the heart of the forward camp, driving a spear adorned with the severed head of the Athenian commander into the ground. Cheers and battle cries echo through the gathering of men. Kassandra looks on, an ill feeling growing in the pit of her stomach —no one should look that at home covered in blood.
Cries of victory get cut short when Stentor exits the tent from convening with his harmost and strategos, his face twisted in anger. Neither his step-sister nor her accomplice had fallen as expected. Defeating the Boeotian champions was meant to be an impossible task, as was facing the blockade against the Korinthian fleet. Now that the region is won, he can not retain the hatred boiling in his blood as he thinks about what could have been if the Wolf of Sparta had stood at his side.
"You killed my pater," Stentor accuses, picking up his bloody sword and slamming it back into its sheath before ripping his spear from the earth. "And you," he spits, leveling his spear in Lesya's direction. She and Deimos deserved to rot in the pits of Tartarus for the atrocities committed by their hands. Pausanias would honor him well for killing both her and Kassandra —assured entry into the Cult for such a deed.
The Eagle Bearer draws the Leonidas spear, following as Stentor paces around them, his body tense like a lion ready to pounce. Enough blood has been shed this day. "It doesn't have to be this way!" She rasps, trying to convince him their father still lives. He won't hear it, though. No cry for mercy or plea for peace will change his mind as he looks upon the two women who murdered the Wolf of Sparta. Kassandra sees his spear flash up through the air, quick as a striking snake. She leaps clear of it, though before she can engage, Lesya is in front of her —daggers drawn. The mask of blood she wears like a wreath of victory. Kassandra knows how this fight will end.
Lesya spins around the swipe of his spear —exhaustion from the battle slows him, anger makes him careless. She knocks the lance aside, taunting him, giving him a shred of hope he may be able to defeat her. He thrusts the spear forward again, but this time Lesya rips it from his grasp, snapping the lance over her knee and throwing the broken pieces aside. Stentor stumbles back, drawing his kopis, but it is too late. Lesya closes in too quickly, thrusting one of the daggers beneath his spear arm, twisting the hilt. Stentor drops the kopis, shouting and writhing as a second blade sinks beneath his shield arm. Pulling the blades free, Lesya steps back. He crumples to his hands and knees —blood spurting and sluicing down his arms and gold plate.
The Spartiates surrounding the duel stand aghast. Screaming, she drives her knee into Stentor's jaw, leaving him sprawled out on his back —a deathly pallor quickly taking hold of him. The ferryman awaits, hand outstretched. "You killed him," Kassandra breathes, looking down at the unmoving corpse of her stepbrother. She bore no love for Stentor, but it still elicits a strange feeling in her chest as she looks between his corpse and the blood on Lesya's hands, finding her expression blank —there is no remorse in the former champion's darkened gaze. The Eagle Bearer stumbles back, a sickly feeling overcoming her as she shakes her head in disbelief, quickly departing before the remaining Spartiates decide to act.
A blackened wax seal on a scroll catches Lesya's attention. She bends, plucking the message from Stentor's belt before retreating from the camp and deep into the forest, tracing Kassandra's path on horseback. Breaking the seal, she unfurls the papyrus. Stentor —the scroll reads in a messy script, the edged still wet with blood. Your work in Megaris has not gone unseen. For your final task, bring us victory in Boeotia — a task even the Wolf himself could not achieve. Then you will have earned your place among us as a Redblood. You are close. Do not waver. The true blood runs red. Lesya's face twists in anger as she reads over the note again, signed by P. Another moment, and she pieces together who the cultist is. King Pausanias of Sparta.
Kassandra spins on heel, anger flaring in her eyes when she hears twigs snapping underfoot behind her. Stentor's murder could cost her everything in Sparta. The kings would not forgive the transgression against one of their commanders, even if it wasn't her blade that took his life. "Do not return to Lakonia," she spits, nigh unable to meet Lesya's cold laurel gaze as she slips from the back of a horse. "Brasidas nor I will be able to stand for you against the kings after what you've done."
What I've done? Lesya wants to laugh. I sowed the seeds, and you reaped in the harvest. She takes a step toward the Eagle Bearer and watches her tense, fingers flexing as though she's going to reach for the sword at her hip. "You wanted to know which king is a Cultist?" Lesya waves the scroll under Kassandra's nose. "Here's your fucking proof." She presses the blood-stained letter taken from Stentor's corpse into the misthios' chest before turning and taking the road leading back to the Ippalkimon on the back of a stolen silver mare.
Kassandra stares down at the broken seal for a long moment before unrolling the stiff and stained papyrus —reading over the message with a sickening realization. "Lesya!" she shouts, but the former champion is already gone.