It was weird for Xenia coming across the people she'd grown up with after so long away, over a year in fact. They'd been able to stay in the same general area. They must have had their harvest for there was another field waiting a harvest, but did they thank her for it? Not likely.

She was an enemy to them despite the fact that she'd saved them from starvation. She had rooted out all the Slavs in the area and killed their men for her people, so that they could live in peace.

She felt their hatred on her as if they were shooting invisible arrows at her as she walked through their camp.

She ignored them and walked to he mother's tent, to the tent she had grown up in, and her mother stood outside it as if she had been expecting her.

The woman who had borne her looked her up and down in her armor and eyed the sword in her sheath as well as the chakram that hung at her side. "I don't know even recognize you. Who are you?"

"Your daughter born of the blood of the Ancient Greeks. The one who will lay waste to all these invading nomadic groups and take back what is ours." It wasn't only Slavs who were a problem, but the Turks and Avars as well.

Her mother slapped her as if trying to snap her out of some reverie.

"You are a Roman citizen. How dare you label yourself as a polytheistic worshiper, a pagan. I raised you better than that."

"I am a Greek, and I mean Greek in the fullest sense. We were too quick to turn from the old ways. I'm not only going to make this a secure land to live, a place to farm and raise children, I am going to restore worship of the gods. Ares namely."

Her mouth dropped. "You are insane. And you're also wrong. I have no daughter."

She grinned only to hide her pain at the sting of her words.

Why did she think time to mourn was going to change anything? The woman would always blame her for her Lucius' death. And she could see from the open tent flat that Titus had never returned. He'd either thought them lost or been devoured by wild animals.

There was a saying that you can't go home again. She'd never really understood it until now. She looked behind her. Her men, who had tripled since Constantinople as her fame grew, waited for her. He waited for her.

sss

When Xenia jumped on her horse and rode like she was racing the wind, trying to outride her problems, Ares didn't go after her, but he was there for when she dismounted.

Despite the fact that she hadn't shed a tear, she collapsed into his arms. He wrapped her in his embrace. He didn't count it a weakness that it affected her so. He knew what it was like to have your family turn on you. For them to blame your destiny and nature as something you could have helped.

He'd witnessed the whole exchange. It couldn't have gone any better if he'd planned the whole thing himself. While he would stop at nothing to have set her on this path if it meant her return to him, he was sorry it had to be that way for her.

Over his shoulder, she saw a hillside of graves, and she knew instinctively who they belonged to. She pulled away from him and climbed up the hill. He followed her wordlessly.

She stopped at the grave of her brother. A simple cross with his name carved in the wood marked the grave.

He hated that symbol, not because it marked a new and more peaceful religion that had taken over the countryside though there was that, but because he still remembered how he had found her pinned to one. It had been the first time he had ever experienced losing her. It had cut him to the quick and made him feel things he didn't know he could feel.

He'd gotten her back in a manner of speaking only to lose her again. And again And again.

Her eyes remained dry as she stared at the grave, but he knew how deep the pain went and he wrapped his arms around her once more from behind this time.

"You don't need her," he whispered in her ear. "I will be all the parent you need. What is a father if it's not someone who cares for you and gives birth to your future? I am more than your teacher, your god, or your ally. I am your friend, your confidant, and if you let me be, I want to be so much more."

She leaned back into him, closing her eyes, his words doing the trick of enticing her, but he meant every one of them. He wanted to be the sum of her world even more than he wanted a legion of worshipers again and the powers that came with that.