Sophia’s heart stopped in her chest and then kick-started on a savage pang.

Alexios’s rich copper and gold eyes no longer closed in death.

With a gasp, she brushed strands of wet hair from her eyes. It cannot be. I am but hallucinating.

Thoughts of her father’s final moments rained through her confusion. Alexios’s hand reached up to stroke her cheek. A scream burbled up her windpipe as her hands sought to confirm what she was seeing with her eyes. He looked and felt mostly…whole?

How?

The raw flesh of his back that had hung in bloody, sand-caked strips was now healed. The spear that they’d left protruding from his heart was gone, leaving only a small jagged blemish. The only other imperfection on her beautiful warrior was a sickle-shaped scar from his left temple to the edge of his lips from Theodora’s dagger.

Sophia couldn’t breathe. All members of the aristocracy had left, and the few remaining helots around them seemed to have turned to stone. Frozen like marble statues in an artist’s studio, in whatever motion they’d been about to perform when Alexios opened his eyes.

He rolled over and crouched in front of her, his face wary, his body no longer naked, but clothed in a fresh chiton. What? She scrambled away from him on all fours like the little crabs that foraged by the river. This was either a cruel trick of the gods, or she was very ill.

Resurrected.

Impossible.

Her gaze winged around the sand pit. Artemis, save me.

Don’t rant. Her lips ached to open and let a terrible madness spew forth. But Alexios had taught her some temperance. “W-what are you? Umbra?”

“No, not a shade, my love. Let me take you home. Then I will tell you what I know.”

It looked like Alexios. Sounded like him, too. “But I h-held you as you…died.” Her voice cracked and fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. Her muscles had begun to shake and her teeth to chatter.

He frowned and stood. She gave a cry and scrabbled to her feet when he approached. “Stay back!”

He stopped immediately.

She hated that she couldn’t stop crying. But she was afraid—so afraid—this was a fever’s phantasm. Or worse, he was a death shadow who would haunt her, ever reminding her of all they’d never have. She turned to run, but felt warm fingers on her arm. She swung around with a punch that he deflected with his forearm. She yelled and scratched and kicked until, pressed tightly to his chest, soft strains of the lullaby he’d sung to their son broke through her panic.

Stanzas of love and loyalty intermingled with a heartbeat next to her ear.

Steady, strong.

Heartbeat.

Shades wouldn’t have heartbeats, would they?

Her fingernails dug into the wide swath of his back. “Alexi?”

She felt his lips on her hair. “I am here, Sophie. I am truly here. I will never leave you again.”

No mortal could make such a claim. She pushed back, struggling to get free of him.

“Sophie, look.”

Alexios pointed to the riverbank. It was the tall seer, only now she could see his face for his hood was pushed back. And he didn’t look like a seer any longer, but rather, a soldier. And a fearsome one at that. The air around him seemed to shimmer, waves of light pulsed and danced, a mirage.

I’ve seen him before.

At Alexios’s contest of endurance seven years ago.

Alexios took her hands. “He brought me back. It was my choice. I am not a shade, but I am no longer entirely mortal.”

Her gaze darted between the two warriors. “Is he a god? Are you a god?”

“He is called Michael the Archangel. I am a Guardian.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I am now a protector of humankind.”

“You are a g-g-god then.” Her teeth rattled and clacked so hard a shaft of pain radiated up the side of her face.

He bent to swing her into his arms, but she stopped him. “A-answer my questions.”

“No, I am not a god, but a new creation.”

“How?”

“The archangel says because I fought my darkness, I have become the first in a new band of soldiers who seek out and eradicate evil. I get this chance because I found you. You became the light inside me, Sophie. You will always be my redemption.”

Preposterous. Her vision grayed at the edges. She swayed, then felt herself bolstered by Alexios. She heard his voice, but it seemed so far away. His lips grazed hers, the touch a fine down of feathers alighting the nerves, flushing away the fuzzy edges of gray. She looked in his eyes. Saw his hope. His worry and intensity. That was as before. She looked at the archangel, then back at Alexios. “You cannot die?”

“Only in rare cases.”

“Good.” Her shoulders slumped, and other, more realistic concerns flooded in. “You will grow frustrated with my clumsy, mortal ways.”

Alexios framed her face with his big, callused hands. “Never.”

“You say that now.” He would watch her grow old and die. If she were to live that long. She frowned. “This cannot work.”

“It will. Enough of your pessimism, that is my realm.” Alexios looked over his shoulder at the archangel. “Can you send us to our kleros? I would care for my wife and see our son.”

You have the power to do that yourself now.

Sophia heard the archangel’s words in her head and, in the next moment, found herself tucked in with blankets, seated in an uncharacteristically extravagant velvet chair before a crackling hearth in a bedroom.

Maybe she’d dreamed the whole flogging and accident sequence.

She pushed the blankets aside and was nearly out of her chair when Alexios prowled into the room, a bundle in his arms. Her heart skipped a beat to see his soft smile as he looked upon the child.

“What name have you given our son?”

Her eyes assessed her warrior from head to foot. She swallowed, feeling her imperfections all the more. “Leonidas.”

Alexios smiled and laid the baby on a pile of furs. “Lion. A fine, strong name.” He kissed their son, then approached her. The sudden furrow in his brow made her want to hide. She looked down at her feet, deciding to stay where she was, certain that if she tried to move now, she’d surely stumble.

He kissed her hot cheeks, the shell of her ears, the corners of her mouth. “You are perfect.”

“I am bumbling and ungraceful and, in short, everything you are not,” she said as her arms wrapped around his neck. His arms came beneath her knees. He swept her up as though she weighed a trifle, then laid her gently on the bed, coming to rest beside her, his elbow bent to support his head with his hand.

The palm of his free hand warmed her belly through her peplon. “Who you are makes me feel alive. No one has ever moved me the way you do, and Sophie, I will always find you.”

What an odd thing to say. “Is this real?”

“This?”

“Between us.”

He nodded. “And eternal.” When he kissed her lips, her hope surged. She opened her mouth and, foreheads pressed together, he breathed her air. Stole her thoughts. The pads of his fingertips scorching her skin as he slowly, achingly removed her garments. Her nails scored his back, hungry for more of his mouth on her breasts, his lips pulling and sucking. Their bodies moving in a raw, gritty dance as he stilled her covetous hips and pushed her legs further apart to press the broad tip of his phallus at her sex. He levered above her, his eyes hot. So hot.

Gods.

“Does this feel real?”

She couldn’t speak, but threaded her fingers in his dark hair and pulled until he growled. The dark rumbling noise shot down to her groin. She writhed, rising to claim his thickness within her. I’ve got you now, warrior. Triumph bloomed, riding, rising with her growing ecstasy. Tendons in his neck stood out, sweat sliding down his fierce face as he tried to resist her.

Surrender. Be mine.

Always, Sophie.

She blinked through a haze of passion. His voice in her head?

His hips backed out, then curled down, driving into her, flushing out impossibility, the pleasure…

Exquisite.

She reached back, fingers scrambling for purchase, anything to tether her to this plane.

You have only to hold on to me.

So she trusted that voice. Her hands sought him, and he did not disappoint. He thrust again and again, his pelvis grinding, muscles bunching, shoulders shifting in the flickering firelight, his face in shadows, savage as he took her, made her more than she was.

Together, they were all.

He wound his hand in her hair, tilting her chin up. His mouth loved her neck as he drove and ground out his passion, her body his battleground.

My canvas.

‘Twas poetry. “How can I hear you?” she panted out.

“Our connection is beyond space and time.”

“I don’t understand.”

No more words, Sophie.

* * *

A dark hunger rode him. Alexios drew air through his nostrils, striving for control. Take her. Take her. He flipped Sophia over to her belly and scooted her down until her knees planted on the floor. She opened her mouth to complain, but she seemed to lose her voice when his legs straddled hers, caging her in with his body. Yes. Mine.

Right where he wanted her. No one—no one—would ever harm her. He would protect humankind, yes, and he’d even figure out what this Crown of Thorns meant and do his best to defend it. He would honor the pledge he’d made with the archangel, but Sophie would always come first. He curved down over her, moving her hair to lave her neck with his tongue.

And froze.

Right below her hairline was some sort of small, dark vine glyph, its smoky black color like that of the tattooed, Egyptian slave girls he’d seen in Athens last summer. The slave trader had said the designs were made using flat, bronze needles. The colorant was created from burned wood soot. And it never came off.

Alexios ran his thumb over the intricate pattern of vines and...

Thorns.

A shiver raced through him. It wasn’t there last night when they’d made love.

“Alexi?” Sophie turned to look over her shoulder. “What is it?”

Archangel, if you expose her to the fires, there will be war.

Alexios stared at the tattoo, trying to quell his pulse. To listen for an answer from the warrior archangel. What if he wasn’t who he said he was?

What have I agreed to?

His only answer was the crackling of the fire in the hearth and Sophie shifting against the blankets.

“Alexios, what’s wrong?”

He tightened his arm around her middle and pressed her against the bed once more to whisper in her ear. “Do you have any pain? Anywhere?”

“No, but why—”

His body shuddered as he pressed deep into her body, the sound—slick, erotic—drowning the echoes of his uncertainty. A temporary reprieve. I need you, Sophie. She bounced back against him, her breasts jiggling magnificently until he had to take their weight in his palms. His groans merged with her throaty moans, the tang of their lovemaking fragrant around them.

He curled closer around her, driving deeper, fingers of one hand slipping between her legs, pressing, rubbing until she spasmed, her inner walls clenching. Have to see her. To watch the passion bleeding from her expressive face. He pulled out, lifted her onto their bed, and crawled on top of her, their heavy breaths intermingling.

“Look at me,” he demanded.

Her stormy, blue eyes found him. His name spilled from her lips when he thrust home. Her hands bunched in the blankets, then scored his back, her soft body quaking under him, alive with a thousand points of light. As she fragmented with cries of completion, he gave in to his own, her skin so fucking sweet, the textures, perfume, and taste of her imprinting on his soul. “Love conquers all things, so we too shall yield to love,” he rasped.

“Love conquers all things, so we too shall yield to love,” she breathed back.

When it was over, he kissed her deeply once more, then went to the wash basin for a cloth. Upon his return, she stretched languorously and reached out to accept the cloth, then went rigid, her eyes widening.

She scrambled to her knees and pointed to his chest. “Your death scar…it’s gone.”

His hand came up to sweep across his cheek as he looked down at his chest. The curved scar on his cheek was still there, but the skin on his chest was restored.

He couldn’t manage a full breath. “You’ve healed me.” Did the thorn tattoo imbue her with powers?

She eyed his cheek with a rueful smile. “Not entirely.”

He waved a hand in the air by his mouth to help dispel his restlessness. “This one is insignificant.” If she had powers, that meant she wouldn’t be as vulnerable to those who sought to do her harm—human or otherwise. He exhaled slowly, then rolled his shoulders and prowled closer to her. “You have power between your legs, woman. More reason to spend all my nights there.”

She returned his smile and lay back at his urging so he could cleanse her body with the cloth.

And with his mouth.

“Gods, you make me burn, Sophie.”

“Bring your fire, Spartan.” She caressed him intimately, whispering promises as their bodies joined again. Sighs and moans. Shivers and fever. They loved long and hard—desperately almost—and would have gone another round had not their boy begun to stir and fuss on the furs.

Alexios laved Sophie’s dusky nipple once more before groaning and rolling from their bed to walk to the boy’s cradle. He paused, looking down as the baby wriggled and tried to fit his fist in his mouth. A strange fullness grew in his chest. He reached for the baby, so small in his hands, and grabbed the hanging vessel filled with goat’s milk on his way to the bed. He watched Sophie change the baby, then feed him from the terra cotta spout.

“Do you still wish to fill our home with children?” Tomorrow he would try to summon the archangel to ask him about her thorn tattoo…and whether he could even beget children as a Guardian.

“More than anything.” Her smile was luminous. “And if they turn out clumsy like me, I shall never scold them for making a mess or breaking things. Unless it’s someone’s spirit.”

He tweaked her pert nose, then stroked the top of Leonidas’ head, counting out one hundred heart beats in the soft spot before asking, “How many children are we talking about here?”

He lay back and settled her and the boy in his arms as her answer wove a spell of comfort and peace through his soul. The archangel had said times would be hard.

Let it come. Spartans embraced adversity.

But now, for now…

He would savor the good.

He breathed in his wife’s lemon and lavender, kissed her often and deeply, and listened to her ideas for peace, for unity, for family.

And when her voice grew thin and drowsy, he kissed her once more and sang her to sleep.

Sang her the song he would ever use to find her through time.

I love you, Sophie.

He sang. And slept.