A bittersweet feeling welled at the memory. “We’d talk of having a little cottage somewhere quiet. Maybe on the seaside. With an orchard, so we could just walk out and pick fruit and eat it. And maybe a cat, but one nicer than Nyx.” Lea and her mother had spent many nights whispering to each other about what fruit trees they’d plant in their hypothetical orchard, what color the cottage walls would be painted, even what they’d name their cat.
“That sounds pleasant.”
Her eyes fell shut again, and her mind conjured a vision of this improbable cottage. She wasn’t entirely sure what peace and quiet actually felt like. Both were present in this very moment, a tranquil midnight hour wrapped in Kallias’s arms, but as soon as dawn broke, he would leave and it would shatter.
“I only have one question,” Kallias said. “Do you think you’d entertain visitors in this cottage?”
She ran a hand over the lean planes of his chest, smiling. “Only handsome physicians, I think. There will be a sign out front to that effect.”
He chuckled, and the sound vibrated through his chest to her ear, a pleasing rumble. He was silent for several moments, his breathing deep and even, and she thought he’d fallen back asleep. Then he spoke once more. “Lea,” he said, something tense and uncertain lurking in his voice. “I have to confess something.”
A trickle of unease ran through her at his words. “What?”
“I may have…well, that is…” He let out a stiff sigh. “I lied to you. Sort of.”
She blinked. “What do you mean, sort of? And what did you lie about?” Her mind skimmed through all the things he’d said to her. Was it about their coupling? Had he not liked it after all? Was she not good enough, not skilled enough?
“You remember when you asked me about that Greek word I used? The endearment?”
She frowned. “Yes. Phil…something.”
“Philé emé,” he said, the words fluid and lovely on his tongue. “I told you it meant sweetheart.”
“It doesn’t?”
“It’s not entirely incorrect. Which is what I told myself to assuage my guilt. But really, it means something closer to…” He hesitated, and she felt tension in his body where they touched. “My beloved.”
She turned the words over in her mind.My beloved. They felt heavy, loaded with a promise she wasn’tsure what to make of.
“I said it without thinking,” he continued hastily. “It doesn’t need to mean anything.”
He was giving her an opening to brush it off. She could simply agree, reassure him she didn’t give any significance to the word, and move on.
Maybe that was the safer choice, the easy choice, the choice she would have made a few weeks ago.
It would also be the cowardly choice, Lea realized. And she was no coward.
She raised herself on her elbow, turning to gaze at what she could make out of his face in the shadows. Her heart squeezed at the sight of him, and she realized with a startling lurch that the word suddenly seemed all too apt for the way she felt about him.
“It can mean something,” she said.
It wasn’t supposed to turn out like this. Her trysts with Kallias were supposed to be enjoyable, distracting, soothing an itch she had no other remedy for.
They weren’t supposed to make her fall inlove.
His breath drew in sharply at her words. “Good,” he whispered. “Because I think I love you, Lea, and it would be quite inconvenient to have to pretend I didn’t.”
A laugh blossomed from deep within her chest. All her misgivings fell away. In the back of her mind, she knew there were things she should be worrying about, questions they needed to ask, problems that needed solving, but for now, she could only laugh as the joy of his confession overtook her. “I’m afraid I’m falling in love with you too.Ph-philé emé,” she stammered.
He gathered her close and kissed her forehead. “Your accent is terrible, but I’ve never liked the sound of those words more.”
Kallias stared down at Lea’s sleeping face as dawn light bathed the floor in gold. He needed to leave soon, and he prayed his absence had gone unnoticed at the palace, but he couldn’t bring himself to move.
He wanted this every morning: Lea in his arms, her dark hair spread over his chest, the gentle rise and fall of her breathing. But until he extricated himself from the emperor’s service—and until Lea secured her own freedom—it was impossible.
He still couldn’t believe she loved him. His mind ran over and over those few words she’d uttered until he became half-certain it had just been a pleasant dream.
But in a dream, she probably wouldn’t have butchered her pronunciation of the Greek words and used the wrong form to address a man.
