THE EAGLE BEARER returns, blood painting her cloven spear and spattered across her leather armor and face. She falls to one knee where Lesya and Deimos lie, and when Lesya turns her gaze upward, she knows the deed is done. Kleon is dead. Another pillar of the Cult of Kosmos felled —another step closer to ridding Hellas of their taint. The fighting is all but done with Athenians fleeing toward the beach, abandoning their dead and wounded to the field. Cries of the Spartan victory ring out in the air, but as Lesya beholds Deimos and the dead littering the ground around them, she cannot help but think this is a pyrrhic victory.

Brasidas limps over, blood sluicing down his arm and leg, though he knows he would have fared far worse against Deimos. "I owe you my life," the general remarks, humbled —he would be dead if not for her intervention, twice over. Hubris almost claimed him. Lesya nods, accepting the general's thanks, but her attention is quick to return to Deimos.

Kassandra and Brasidas look down on the felled champion, broken arrow rising from the center of his back, his head turned and resting in Lesya's lap. It's haunting to see Deimos at ease like this. All the anger and pain held in his furrowed brow and dark eyes vanished. They see him as he is —broken. "You should both leave," Lesya tells them, her fingertips following the sharp line of his jaw, "I can manage him."

The two Spartans share a look, a silent understanding between them. They do not doubt Lesya's strength —had watched her cleave men in two— but the battle is over, and she is beaten and bloody. "We'll help you take him into the city," Brasidas announces.


HE GROANS AT the sharp pain in the center of his back and turns his head, eyes opening to narrow slits as he glances around the nigh barren room. His armor is gone, piled in a corner, and next to the pallet of linens and pillows where he lays is a basin of water —once white strips of linen now stained red hang limply from the edge. Then he finds her, sitting near the door of the stone-and-mud hut with his sword draped across her folded legs, working to polish the blood and grime from the gleaming silver sword —her hair shining like flames in the setting sun. Deimos watches her, afraid she will be gone if he closes his eyes again. "Lesya," he gasps, lifting his hand, reaching out.

Lesya looks over her shoulder, then sets aside the Damoklean sword and goes to him. He tries to sit up, the grimace of pain clear on his expression. "Don't," she breathes, pushing down on his shoulder. Deimos has been hurt before, but she's never seen him like this —vulnerable. He sucks a long breath, hands clenching into fists at his sides. She sees the budding question in his eyes. "Kleon," Lesya answers before he can ask the question on his tongue.

His face twists in anger and betrayal; she can see the promise of revenge appear in his dark eyes. Neither of them will have the satisfaction of watering their blades with his blood, though. "He's dead," she tells him. Kassandra had made sure of that during the waning battle. "Move your toes," Lesya demands. Deimos looks at her with furrowed brows, and she rolls her eyes —almost having forgotten how stubborn a patient he was. "Men have lost the ability to walk by being struck in the back," she reminds him.

"I'm fine," Deimos hisses, sitting up, and then the next words on his tongue vanish when he beholds her in the light. Lesya's face is a myriad of cuts and bruises. It's a cruel reminder of mortality. That she —and even he— will soon fade in time no matter if the people in Hellas once thought them deities. The linen wrapped around her forearm is blossoming red, the cut below weeping again from fussing with him. He can only think of two other times when she'd been like this —vulnerable. Deimos reaches for her, the backs of his fingers brushing over her cheek and back into her copper hair.

On instinct, she turns her cheek into his hand —can feel the callouses on his fingertips and the scar in his palm. Lesya sighs, weary from the battle and the last weeks. "Alexios," she breathes his name as a quiet prayer, but his hand falls away from her cheek, and his face twists in anger.

"That's not my name," he tells her, voice wavering —as though he is trying to convince himself he is Deimos and nothing more. He will not meet her gaze. No, he feels he doesn't deserve to look upon her, not after the things he's done.

"Yes, it is." Lesya seizes his face in her hands, forcing his tawny-gold gaze to meet hers, not letting him look away or giving him the chance to deny it again. The arrow she plucked from his back should have made the picture clear. The Cult is in shambles, already crumbling, and they no longer needed a sword they could not wield unquestionably. Her laurel gaze —brimming with unshed tears— holds him captive. "You are Alexios of Sparta," she tells him. "The Cult is done with you."

He doesn't want to hear it —isn't ready to face the truth after living in the shadow of the Cult for his whole life. Deimos presses through the pain and moves to stand, but Lesya is quick, even with her injuries and the ache in her bones. She grips onto his bicep. "You're not going anywhere like this," she tells him.

"You're going to stop me?" He challenges. Lesya tilts her head, a single brow raised as though to say I am the only one who can, and Deimos knows it. "Gods curse you, woman," he grits out, unable to keep himself from acting on impulse, on desire. Deimos lurches forward, taking her face in both his war-roughened hands, and kisses her —the way she deserves to be kissed, how he should have always kissed her, with reverence and devotion and love. She sighs against his lips, hands finding purchase on his shoulders, then the nape of his neck to pull him closer, determined this time she will not let him go.

He breaks away with a hoarse groan when he feels something seize his heart and twist —it should be a realization, but it's something he's known for a lifetime. Lesya's thumbs move to brush over his jaw and the dark stubble there with a fleeting smile. Deimos takes a shaky breath, the words are on the tip of his tongue, almost to pass through his lips, but Lesya kisses again before they can be spoken aloud. Though perhaps how Deimos takes her into his arms and holds her for the night says more than words ever could.


THE MORNING LIGHT streams into the home, stirring Lesya from a deep sleep. Yet when she begins to wake, it's to a sense of panic. The space next to her is cold and empty —Deimos' armor is gone from the corner of the room, as is his sword. There's no trace he'd been there at all save for the bloodstained rags sitting next to a basin of stained water and the broken arrow she plucked from his back. She sits up, clutching the linen sheet tight to her chest, and screams —a harrowing sound nigh all of Amphipolis can hear. "Where is he?" Kassandra asks, seeing Lesya emerge from the small house alone, her stance and expression crestfallen.

She limps to the Eagle Bearer, the bandage on her thigh already blossoming with specks of red, and for perhaps the first time, Kassandra sees Lesya as she is —not a demigoddess or harbinger of war but just a woman, made strong by being pieced back to together a hundred times over. "He left during the night," Lesya says, looking out over the sea, letting the cool breeze brush through her copper hair. She draws in a slow breath, can taste the salt of the air on her tongue, then turns to the Eagle Bearer. "I have a feeling where he's going, though." Where it all began.


THE SPARTANS LOOK upon her in bitter disdain —it does not matter if she helped them win both the Megarid and Boeotia and drive back the Athenians from Amphipolis, her past tainted by the misdeeds and atrocities committed by her hand and blades in the name of the Cult. Not even Brasidas and Kassandra can sway the opinion of King Archidamus and the other Spartiates. It's a bitter sentiment surely shared across Hellas —a reminder she will never have a welcoming home outside of the sea. For years now, the Adrestia had been a home to her, as had Tundareos' vessel.

Months creep by, and the green fields of wheat turn to gold under the summer sun, and then autumn brings gales and rainstorms. Lesya ventures from the warm hearth of the mud and stone home in the Spartan polis and turns to the south, where an abandoned temple lies unoccupied on a hillock overlooking the sea. It is not a place she ventures often but one where she finds solace amongst the ruins when the memories and woes of life become too much to bear.

Lesya sits before the altar, unsure which deity it's meant for —she can't remember the last time she put stock in the gods. Though now, as she looks upon the broken stone with a deep ache and longing in her chest, Lesya begins to wonder if the gods would even answer her prayers. Bring him back to me. The words are not spoken aloud, but the wind shifts, and the downpour wanes. And instead of the rain, she feels the warmth of the tears sliding down her cheeks instead of the cool autumn rain.

Gravel and weathered stone crunch underfoot, and Lesya grips onto a short dagger hidden on the inside of her wrist, readying to strike. "Lesya?" It is only Kassandra, though. Above them, Ikaros cries, circling the dilapidated temple.

She releases her grip on the blade, shoulders falling forward and head hanging low. "You must think me weak," Leysa says, half-laughing, lifting her gaze to meet the Eagle Bearer's when she kneels at the alter too.

Kassandra has seen her drenched in blood, smiling at the promise of death, but seeing Lesya like this is somehow more terrifying. "No," she shakes her head. Only a fool would think Lesya weak. She grips onto her shoulder and squeezes. "You're one of the strongest people I've ever known." Few could endure what she had. Kassandra does not even think she would have survived the torment and toil of being the Cult's champion and still find a way to break free of their grasp and regain the girl she'd once been.

"I cannot stay here," Lesya admits. It was folly to think she could live among the people who she'd wronged so many times. She was raised to care little for the opinions of others. Does a lion concern himself with the opinion of a sheep? Chrysis would ask her champions. But the whispers and harsh looks day after day had made their mark. Sparta would never be a home. "They hate me." Her voice cracks under the efforts to stay the tears stinging in her laurel eyes. "Alexios is gone, and the last dregs of the Cult remain. I cannot sleep knowing they are out there." The hierarchy would be in shambles with Kleon's death, but the stalwart would regroup under a different leader rather than disband.

"So," Kassandra sighs, but she understands what it is Lesya feels she must do, "this is where we part ways again?" Lesya nods —she sent word to her brothers, and they would be arriving soon. "I thought he would come, too," Kassandra confesses. Of all the places in Hellas, and given what had happened, Mount Taygetos seemed like the only place left for him to go.

"I'll find him, eventually," Leysa says, determined. "Somehow, I always do." The gods never could keep them parted for long —their fates entwined. No matter which path she and Deimos chose to take, it always seemed to lead them back to one another. She looks back toward the road, then to Kassandra. "Give Brasidas and your mother my gratitude." Kassandra nods, bidding her fried a final farewell as she picks up her bow and spear, turning toward the sea.


TUNDAREOS AND TIMOTHEUS grin as they see their sister striding toward the docked trireme. It has been several long months since they last saw her. She looks well, aside from the distant and longing look in her eyes, but that is something neither Tundareos nor Timotheus could remedy. Lesya pauses before stepping onto the ship, peering up at the Ippalkimon's sails —no longer bearing the colors of Keos and sigil of Xenia— a scarlet laurel on a pale green background.

"If there's one thing Xenia understands, it's the importance of family," Tundareos explains. His years of service to the pirate were more than enough to repay his debt of stowing away on one of her ships as a boy, chasing after a lost sister. Xenia had granted the Ippalkimon to Tundareos and the crew, should they choose to remain under his command —he'd not lost a single one.

"It's good to see you both," Lesya says, embracing them —she'd been a fool for enduring Sparta so long when she could've been sailing the seas her brother, but Deimos. She follows them to the helm of the trireme, and they both begin shouting orders, preparing for departure. The oarsmen push away from the Gytheion dock in and into the Lakonian Gulf, rowing away from the Peloponnese. It feels good to have the spray of the sea stinging her cheeks and the wind in her hair —true freedom.

It is almost sunset by the time they have entered open water. And both Tundareos and Timotheus flank her sides, each with a skin of wine to share. "What is our heading?" Tundareos finally asks. He knows his sister well enough now to realize the cold determination in her stoic expression.

"Krete," she answers, having spent many restless nights thinking about the remaining cultists who called themselves the Gods of the Aegen who prowled the waters around Krete and further east, praying on merchant vessels and warships alike. But that is not the only allure for turning south. Lesya leans toward her brothers with a twisted smile and spiteful glint in her eyes. "Tell me, brothers," she starts, "have you heard of the Beast of Sparta?" Tundareos sits back, his clear blue eyes wide in surprise.

The Beast of Sparta is an epithet for Belos uttered in terror by even the vilest pirates. He is the champion of the gladiatorial area in Pephka. Timotheus looks between them, the same shock on his slim face and dark eyes —he runs a hand over his silver-tinged beard, drawing in a shaky breath. Lesya sees their unease, and her smile widens. What a tale this will be, she thinks, sharpening the broad tip of her spear.