Her head tilted, dark hair shifting to the side. “And when I’ve prayed to Athena…?”
I stopped myself from looking over my shoulder. I knew the goddess was not here, though given Eleni’s faith to her deity, without Athena’s permission, I would have remained unseen. This was my human, and the goddess had given us our time alone. That said, I was not about to disrespect the queen of wisdom, reason, and war in her own temple.
I was left with something I’d said to her more than five hundred mortal years prior.
My echo was a moment of honesty, of sorrow, of confession.
This truth belonged to us, no matter how much time had passed or whose face she wore. From the Dead Sea to Athens, from one end of the earth to the other, I knew it wouldn’t matter. This pearly soul would always be hers, as would I.
“The gods you call aren’t always the ones who answer.”
Chapter Five
326 BCE
Fifty thousand pairs of feet stomped over rock, sand, and mud. The dust and sweat and unintelligible grunts of a conquering horde marched for the Macedonian Kingdom’s expansion.
Mortals bothered themselves with battles, successes, unimportant wins and losses.
While I didn’t have a gift for seeing the future, I, like many of us beyond the veil, learned the human king’s plans long before the trembling public.
The calamities of war brought, with it, certain opportunities.
I remained on Grecian soil—a puppeteer plucking on invisible strings. I nudged a few humans and arranged an advantageous marriage to a high-ranking commander one short month before the man was, oh so tragically, forced to abandon his new bride in her upscale palatial home with no mortal man to bother her.
Her eastbound spouse took his armor, their best horse, a clanging satchel of gold coins, and his culturally rigidperformance of masculinity far, far away. My bright, intelligent, beautiful woman was all alone with only her friends, servants, and my ghost in the shadows left to accompany her.
So sad.
She’d taken to my presence as if I’d always been there.
Perhaps Shala had been my first human, but with Eleni, it wasmyturn to experiment with mortality. My residence on her side of the veil, among the frescos and mosaics, was for her eyes alone—skin stretched over muscle, the tingle of nerves, the sights, sounds and smells of a human. I wasn’t the man of the house by conventional standards, but for her, a man I would become.
It was a marvel anyone wore clothes in this mid-summer heat. Eleni fanned her pinked cheeks, perching on the bronze edge of a woolen mattress, humming as she changed. She’d dismissed her servants early in the day, unpinning the bun atop her head and letting her long hair down all on her own.
“You’ve been quiet today.”
I was grateful for every moment that I could look at her as two people might look at one another. Two humans. Two gods. Two equals. “That song you hum sometimes. Where did you learn it?”
She shrugged. “It’s just in my head from time to time.” After a pause, her expression changed. “Are you thinking ofhimagain?”
I peered out the window at the city that baked below us as if I might peer through time and space and see the army. I shook off the image.
“You’re asking if I’m thinking of that husband of yours?” A short, polite laugh. “I don’t think of other men when I’m around you.”
“He’s not terrible,” Eleni defended, lips quirking upward.
“And for that, I’m glad,” I said. “I worked hard to find you an auspicious match.”Auspiciously absent, but I kept that amendment to myself.
“Do you know of the war? I mean…the knowledge of the gods, that is. Where is my husband now? Does he live?”
My lips flattened to conceal my grimace.Yes, I’d had members of my legion tail the commander and report back to me on the expansion.
I’d prefer it if she didn’t care.
I wasn’t proud of the tar-like suction that lapped at me, nor how it soured my expression as I answered.
“His troops have crossed the snow-capped mountains. They lost men to the cold, but he lives.”
