The Turks fought hard but Xenia's ever growing army fought harder. It took a whole year to drive them out of the area, and they'd gained large, dome-shaped tents with finely weaved patterns, as well, courtesy of the enemy.
Ares and Xenia were in one now with a large cypress table in the middle on which rested a large and detailed map of the region. They were making new plans.
"Your biggest challenge now will be the Byzantine Empire," he told her. "You are becoming the favorite topic of the empire, their biggest threat to holding on to what is left of the Roman Empire. Now if you march here-"
He became distracted because she wasn't looking at the map; she was looking at him in her intense way. It made his core feel like a sword thrust into the forge and plans of battle were forgotten, not an easy thing for him, but she accomplished it more often than not.
"I have something to show you," she said mysteriously, taking his hand and leading him.
Unfortunately, it wasn't toward her bed, a location he had yet to visit in this lifetime with her, but instead, the surprise lay outside the tent.
She took him to a building that had stone archways and was bleached white in the sun with a baked red tile roof. Its most impressive feature, however, was the way it was built into the stone cliffs, giving it a menacing and yet heavenly look.
"What this?" he asked.
"It was a monastery until just a few days ago," she said with a grin that suggested the monks must have had a rather sudden and unwilling relocation.
He liked that his first official active temple in years was one that had been seized in the same way that temples had been taken from him. Besides, it was fitting that the god of war's temple be taken through violent measures over being built.
Their footsteps echoed through the empty chamber as they entered. "No worshipers yet or priests," she said, "but that'll change. There'll be a line out here so long, people will have to wait all day to get in."
He was excited about the temple. He'd missed the offerings, the begging for favors, and the fear his name had struck into the average mortal's heart.
But it was Xenia he couldn't take his eyes off of as she gave him a tour of the modifications she'd made, who became more like her old self every day as more and more of the darkness took her.
A chair that had likely belonged to the Abbot or maybe even just a statue was now painted black with skulls fixed to the arms and before it was an altar that had been for communion. He took a seat on the magnificent throne.
"Let me be the first to give you an offering," she said and took a bottle of wine that had no doubt belonged to the displaced monks and poured its blood red contents all over the table. "I hear you also like blood."
"You've spilled plenty of blood in my name," he said, dismissing her rather generous offer. The wine may have not been much, not even a good year, but it was enough as he felt the familiar tingle traveling up his arm. He went back up on his feet and threw his first fire ball in a long while.
Her eyes widened with delight, the centers so black though still rimmed with blue, they put him in mind of the dark space of a flame where the temperature was the hottest.
He was feeling pretty exhilarated himself given his increase in power, but seeing her so impressed added to that exhilaration so that he picked her up and spun her around in celebration.
The smiling and laughing stopped when he set her down and he got a look at those eyes again. She seemed similarly entranced, and he captured her lips as he'd been longing to do from the moment he had laid eyes on her at his former temple turned church.
She hadn't the knowledge of experience, but that didn't matter, she had all of the passion and wild abandon he remembered without a measure of the boring piety that some women carried when they knew who he was and kissed him for the first time.
A part of him wanted a slow exploration of her lips to enjoy the taste of her and let it carry him back to all the other times they had connected in this timeless way, but she was impatient and her kiss was hard and frenzied, bruising if he'd had that vulnerability, so he hungrily pushed back, letting the bristles of his beard scrape her delicate skin.
His hands latched onto her hips and then snaked their way around her as if to keep her from escaping, but she wasn't going anywhere as she pinned him against his throne.
They'd crossed into new territory, and if he had his way, and he would, this was where they would stay.
