Good.
I untied him without asking. I swung up bareback—old leather straps biting my thighs—and rode, hard.
The stone path buckled beneath us as we cut through the outer wall and raced down from the cliffs that guarded the city. Ugarit shrank behind me—towers and banners folding into dust and distance, limestone edges bathed in the dying sun. The wind smelled of resin and burnt bronze, an aftertaste of old blood and new power.
The farther I rode, the more it fell away.
Open sky replaced carved gods. Soil replaced polished basalt. Wild fig and barley fields unrolled where lion banners had once snapped in the wind. The scent of ash thinned, and the air turned sun-warm and honest.
Freedom came with a taste like iron and dust—the cruel kind I had never been meant to have. I was going to see Lazarus.
My closest friend, my brother in all but blood.
We had been raised in different worlds—I, under stone and sword; he, under wide sky and the blunt, patient sun. I was schooled to command battalions and speak in the clipped cadences of courtiers; he taught me how to snag an eel from a slow bend, how to laugh until my ribs hurt, how not to flinch when anyone touched me. He saw me—not the title, not the name—just me.
Nyros thundered along the dirt track toward the river lands. Fields blurred gold at our flanks. Flax rustled like sparks in the breeze; distant herders coaxed goats with low, half-sung chants—old songs passed father to son. They did not look up. They did not need to. Their world moved at its own slow pace—kinder, less hungry, truer.
No chiseled lions. No obsidian halls. Sometimes I wished I’d been born to this—a low hut, a quiet life, no lofty expectations but the clench of earth beneath my feet. A roof, a field, a woman who loved me for the man left when the name was stripped away.
I saw his cottage long before I slowed. It hunkered against the terrace like something grown, not built—sun-dried mudbrick smoothed with lime, corners softened by wind and rain, a reed-patched roof bowed with age—smoke curled from the narrow, blackened chimney—simple and functional. There were no walls of carved judges, no bronze guards. Just a plain wooden door, scored with runes worn nearly smooth like old scars. Wormwood, mint, and hyssop strung across the lintel crackled in the breeze. A clay jug sat by a basket of figs; a pair of battered sandals leaned on the step. The air smelled of warm earth and fresh bread.
It smelled like everything my house was not.
Lazarus stood barefoot in the yard, feeding chickens from a chipped clay bowl. His tunic—rough-woven linen the color of wet sand—clung to him, sweat dark at the chest and back. Dust and grain speckled his forearms, burnished gold against sun-browned skin.
He was lean and wiry from labor, not war. Freckles dusted his nose and cheeks where the sun had kissed him too often. Dark hair, damp with sweat, fell in loose waves against his jaw, tousled by wind and work.
His face was a study in angles—high cheekbones, a narrow nose, a jaw that might have been fit for a prince—if it weren’t for the dirt under his nails and the soft, unwarlike tilt of his smile. Lazarus had never had wealth. He had always been poor but kind. He always smiled—stupidly, truly—even when nothing invited a grin.
He looked up.
When he saw me, his smile vanished. The clay bowl dropped. Feed spilled across the dirt like a small scatter of stars. His eyes locked on my face—swollen lip, crusted blood at the brow, bruises shadowing hollows.
“Salvatore…” The name left him like a warning—low, controlled, threaded with fury that came only from seeing someone you loved hurt again and again.
I tried to smile; the split on my lip opened wider. “Go on. Take a guess.”
He moved before I finished. Long strides ate the yard; his gaze cataloged each mark, each wince, a silent inventory of pain. “Your father again?”
I grunted, dismounting Nyros with one rough motion. “Of course.”
“Come inside,” he said. “Amara will patch you up.”
The cottage swallowed us in cool shadow, an immediate sanctuary. Hot skin met sudden shade, and for a breath the world narrowed, the hush of hearth-smoke muting the sharp ring of pain behind my teeth. Mud-plastered walls wore old clay murals—wheat beneath crescent moons, river-serpents with gilded eyes, sun-glyphs that curled like tiny flames—images that told of harvest and storm in the same hand. Reed mats softened the floor beneath our steps, their fibers holding the dust of a thousand bare feet. Shelves crowded with clay jars, bundled herbs, spools of dyed thread, and carved bone tools—each object lived in a shape that made sense. In the hearth, a low fire cracked, throwing light that seemed to breathe warmth into stubborn, aching limbs.
The air smelled of baking bread, coriander, and charred lentils—the honest smoke of work and feeding, not the acrid aftertaste of conquest.
Amara knelt near the fire, hands dusted with flour, sleeves rolled to the elbow, working a bowl of dough. Her dark hair—wild and long, tamed only by a loose linen scarf—had slipped free, damp with the heat of the hearth and the steam of boiling broth. Her face was sun-browned and steady—full lips, a jaw that held itself, and brown eyes deep and certain, the sort that didn’t merely see you but kept you as if they measured the worth of small mercies. When she looked up, concern flared over warmth in a single breath—a live wire of recognition and worry.
“Oh no—” she breathed. “Again?”
She rose without waiting for a word, dusting flour from her palms onto her apron. Her hands moved with patient purpose—reaching for a jar of healing oil, a clay bowl steeped with river water and herbs—motions learned from years of mending scrapes and broken days. She worked as if the order of things were sacred—first water, then rinsing, then the oil warmed between her palms, the ritual anchoring both her and the man before her.
Watching her was like reading a hymn I half-remembered—familiar notes that tightened my chest. We had grown up together—Lazarus, Amara, and I—children beneath fig trees, throwing stones at river snakes, daring the gods to strike. We raced through barley and stained our hands with berries until the juice ran like warpaint. We slept under the same indifferent stars and swore, once, to always come back for each other.
But time had a way of drawing lines.
And as we grew older… they grew closer.
