We breathe together. Four in. Hold. Six out.
The first cycle feels like nothing.
The second, like a small lever lowering somewhere behind my ribs.
By the fourth, my hands stop tingling. The bees in my chest start lining themselves into tidy rows.
“Good,” he murmurs. “Now the rest.”
He shifts closer. His hands rise—not to grab, not to restrain. To work.
He starts at my shoulders, thumbs pressing gently into the muscles along my neck where they’ve been bunched for days.It’s not a massage like in a spa brochure. It’s something older. Intentional.
His touch follows a pattern—deliberate points along muscle and bone, like he’s moving through steps he learned long before he had words to describe them. There’s technique here, not guessing. Knowledge.
“You always know exactly where to press,” I murmur before I can stop myself.
His hands stop moving for a breath. “Philos,” he says quietly. “Two thousand years later, and his knowledge is helping you now.”
I love that he was trained to mend as much as to fight.
“This one,” he says softly, pressing just above my collarbone. “You said is where your body keeps panic.” He waits for my nod, then holds the pressure until a strange, sweet ache blooms and then eases.
His hands move down my arms, tracing tendons, circling joints, mapping tension like he’s reading battle damage.
“In my time,” he says quietly, “before a fight, the men who lived longest did not jump and shout and wave swords. They sat with someone who knew how to put their pieces back in place. Breathing. Touch.” His mouth twists. “We did not have a name for it. Only ‘he makes me less likely to die.’”
“Catchy,” I whisper.
He huffs a soft laugh.
His thumbs dig into the arches of my feet—another point he discovered weeks ago when he first showed me these techniques. Electricity shoots up my calves, stutters my breath, then drops into something like… relief.
“You cannot control them,” he says, voice low, focused. “The people in the little window.” His hands move back up, fingers circling my wrists, grounding me. “You cannot control their thoughts, their past, their fear. Only your truth. Only this.”
I swallow. The words sink in like warm water.
“You told me that in your time,” I say, “the arena didn’t care if you were fair or worthy. It just… was.”
“Yes.” His gaze is steady on mine now. “So men who lived longest learned this: Do not waste your strength on what you cannot move. Save it for the thing you can.”
“So, what can I move?” I ask.
“Your words,” he says. “Your spine.” One corner of his mouth lifts. “Your very sharp brain.”
I snort, a small, ridiculous sound that still manages to puncture some of the pressure behind my eyes.
“Say it,” he urges.
“I can’t control them,” I murmur.
“Louder.”
“I can’t control them,” I repeat. My voice doesn’t break.
“Again. Tell your bones.”
“I can’t control them,” I say. “Only… how I show up. What I say. Whether I disappear or not.”
