Sophia locked her knees to stand her ground as Alexios ate up the space between them. “You play a dangerous game when you make assumptions you cannot prove.”

His low voice made the air seize in her throat. Truly, the man was fierce.

She looked up to meet the snapping fire in his eyes, girding herself with purpose. He doesn’t have to like you. Or even love her. By the sword, she couldn’t love him either! The attendant who lived under his roof was responsible for her father’s death.

Sophia swallowed back a wave of grief. Her purpose was bigger than her heartbreak. Her purpose involved untold numbers of present and future Spartans.

Her mourning…only her.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Mantes and his mother Lydia had run to her even before news of her father’s bite had reached the Assembly. Mantes had begged for mercy, confessing that King Tychos had never been the target. Sophia believed him, but couldn’t get him to reveal who’d been the intended target, nor at whose behest he’d carried out such a nefarious scheme. Certainly, he’d been a pawn in some aristocrat’s intrigue. One day the plot would be unmasked, and then she would deal with the offender.

As much as she grieved for her father, she could never out Mantes and Lydia to the Royal Guard. But she couldn’t tell Alexios that she’d already spoken to Mantes or else her coercion scheme would stall right here on the banks of the river.

It would be a utilitarian marriage only. She would gladly sacrifice a love match for a better Sparta. Tough choices needed to be made, no matter how much emotion tried to interfere. Papa was nearly always logical. And hadn’t he’d told her to marry this man? Surely he’d been imparted celestial wisdom as he’d wrung the final dregs from his life.

So it couldn’t be a betrayal to marry the man who housed the one responsible for father’s death.

Could it?

She rubbed her eyes, her shoulders slumping. “It’s not an assumption. Herodion saw Mantes purchase a viper from a Persian merchant the day before my father’s trip to the temple. Mantes was absent from his work duties after that, only to return shortly before my father’s unfortunate accident. I know it’s all true because I made inquiries after Herodion’s report on all this last week.” She sighed. “I have yet to understand Mantes’s motive, but he brought the viper that killed my father, Alexios. If you agree to my terms, your attendant and his family shall remain safe.”

His body crowded her, making her air scarce. “The terms of your blackmail entail marriage…for a lifetime?”

Blackmail. Yes, that’s exactly what this was. Why honey coat it? She’d have to soil her hands to see this thing through. Get used to it, Sophie.

She wet her lips and tried to suppress a shiver. He had a fresh cut on his neck where his pulse beat hypnotically. She wanted to reach out and touch his skin right there. It would be deceptively soft, wouldn’t it? And warm. Even now, standing so close, the radiant heat of his battle-honed body seemed to wrap around her. “Marriage for a l-lifetime. Y-yes,” she whispered, her throat aching with the need to cry. How I miss you, pater!

Alexios’s hooded, glittering eyes tracked down to her shoulder where her himation had slipped. She eased the cloak up again—her fingers inching up her arm as though they slogged through quicksand—yet it did nothing to calm the wild fluttering in her chest. Grief and attraction, a sick mix of feelings. It rooted her feet to the ground.

The backs of his fingers came up to brush against her cheek—the simple gesture more precious than all the jeweled tiaras piled up in her room. How barren I must be. Her eyes drifted shut as she turned into his caress, reopening when he abruptly sucked air in between his teeth and stepped away from her.

“What makes you think I care what happens to a helot boy?” he asked roughly.

She blinked for a moment to regain her wits, suddenly chilled with the withdrawal of his body heat. “You gave him a chance when no one else would.” Born with a palsied right arm twenty-two winters ago, Mantes had been deemed unfit by the Spartan Council of Elders. Left to die of exposure, he was the first baby Lydia saved, and the only one she’d ever kept for herself.

Alexios had taken Mantes into service three years ago despite his disability. Anyone who thought the Spartan king’s bastard was a brute had only to remember the patience he’d shown the helot boy from the beginning. Now Mantes’s confidence was such that his impairment was hardly noticeable.

Alexios stopped pacing to glare at her. “You overestimate my esteem.”

She shook her head slowly. “I think not.”

“Why would you even consider keeping such a treasonist secret? What about vengeance? Don’t you desire it? All know how much you loved the king.”

There was a very simple answer to his question—turning Mantes in would destroy Lydia, and Sophia loved Lydia more than she desired vengeance. But Alexios had to believe she was ready to hand Mantes over to the Royal Guard. She needed him. “Retribution will not bring back my father,” she finally replied. “Sparta’s future—equality—is more important than my need for revenge.”

She exhaled slowly, her pulse rate and sadness easing with her conviction. Lies, bluffs, and all this false posturing were like knives in her belly. It felt so much better to live the truth. She rubbed her chest, feeling lighter than she had in weeks.

More like herself.

Good would win in the end. She would stubbornly cling to the belief if it killed her.

Alexios glanced down at his shield. Sophia caught the slight lift and fall of his broad shoulders as he inhaled, then exhaled. He brought his gaze back to hers, but even by the bright light of the full moon, she could read nothing in those amber depths.

“Logical. How very Spartan of you. But, no.”

“No? No, what?”

“I don’t agree to your terms.”

“But—”

“Enough! It’s the middle of the night, princess. It’s a wonder King Niketas hasn’t turned the entire countryside upside down looking for you. Now, if you are not disposed to walk with me, I will be obliged to send a charioteer for you.” He surged into the olive grove, his shield knocking branches aside like a battering ram.

She hurried to catch up. She would be hard-pressed to find another opportunity to get him alone like this again. “I am very good at sneaking out, so I doubt I’m even missed. We need not fear my brother finding out unless you insist on razing through the trees in this fashion.” For now anyway. She had a plan to get Niketas to come around to the marriage, too.

She tried to walk beside Alexios, though it was difficult because his legs were so much longer than hers, and his steps, more confident. “Now, stop changing the subject. Marrying me is not displeasing to you. I can sense it in you.”

He looked to the skies above the tree boughs with the same helpless exasperation she’d seen on her brother’s face for as long as she could remember. She grabbed Alexios’ free hand, drawing it between both of her own as she tried to split her focus between her much-rehearsed words and the tree-shadowed, forest floor. If only he’d taken the well-traveled path! To trip now would be disastrous. “Would you have me marry Lysander?”

He spared her a brief glare without slowing his pace. “Your father pledged you to him.”

He didn’t answer the question. Sophia’s flutters returned. “I can hear what you’re not saying. You have thought of me…as I have thought of y—” As her foot snagged on a root, she pitched forward with a cry. Alexios cursed just before her forward momentum arrested and she was jerked her back the other way. She landed with a jar against a solid wall of muscle. His shield came around her, wrapping her so tightly against him his heart surged against her cheek, his manhood pressing like honed bronze against her belly. And Just. Like. That. fire licked across her skin, her breasts growing heavy with a deep stirring in her sex.

She’d never felt as vibrant. As safe.

As alive!

Even from afar, he’d had this effect on her, but now, touching him, being in his arms, was...

Elysium!

She closed her eyes, snuck her hands about his waist, and squeezed. Gods, he smelled so good. Like strength and security, hardy olive trees and leather, midnight secrets and soulful sighs.

She nuzzled his chest and bit her lip to stifle the passion that swelled within. Mother had always scolded her for being emotional, but mayhap she could achieve her dream and be happy?

Alexios groaned deep in his throat before disentangling her arms and setting her away from him. “Do not conjure affection where there is none. Warriors are incapable of such weakness, Sophia.”

Of course he would consider joy a weakness. Her mother had said as much. Still, hope–the silly, ridiculous flare of hope–stayed lit within. She laid a hand on her belly where his phallus had pressed into her so insistently, the memory so vivid she knew sleep would not find her for hours and hours. “I like it when you say my name,” she said softly. “And I love your voice. It makes me want to sit at your side and listen to you all through the night.”

“Well, apparently your plan has worked as it will soon be dawn. Do all Spartan maidens have such love of idle chatter?”

She forced her lips to tilt, though the rebuke stung and a bit of her hope flagged. “Oh, I think not. My mother despairs over it, but every time I endeavor to change, I feel miserable.”

“Zeus save us. Let us go. Now, Sophia.”

She sighed. Her shoulders slumped in temporary defeat. “As you wish.” On their walk, she took pity on him and held her tongue for two whole prayers to Athena. Oh, how she needed the help of the goddess of wisdom, war, and diplomacy to achieve her purpose.

There were no torches flickering in Sparta when they approached their famed city without walls. The soldiers were expected to be as comfortable in darkness as they were in daylight. Alexios guided them along the moon-shadowed Assembly buildings as they drew closer to the palace, grasping her hand at times to shift her course. But as quickly as he took her in hand, he released her. She was growing desperate to convince him—the next Krypteia is only five moons away and we have so much to accomplish before then!–but really, really…

What had she expected?

That this soldier, famed for his ruthlessness in combat, would bend to her will and see the value of her revolutionary proposition within one turn of the hourglass?

Perhaps I am as much a daydreamer as they say. “Will you call on me tomorrow?” She cringed inwardly even as she asked the question.

“No. I’ve used up all my words for the next fortnight.”

She grasped his bicep to arrest his forward movement, his skin warm steel against her palm. “Please, Alexios. Lysander is a decent man and a fine soldier, but he is not for me. I choose you.”

He scowled as he faced her. “You are a fool then because he is the better choice for you.” He turned away again and continued walking toward the palace.

Anger built inside her chest at his easy dismissal. “You’re wrong! For what I want accomplished, I need a lion at my side, not a kitten.” She stilled—physically and metaphysically—feeling the truth of her plight in her soul. Feeling so much. She was tired of feeling guilty about feeling. Why did people always have to hide the emotions that rolled through them? It took so much energy to bury it down, pretend like it wasn’t there. She was sick of it! “You are that lion I need. And warrior, I so much liked what I felt when I was in your arms.”

Alexios stopped abruptly, swung around, and stalked toward her, his movements full of grace and menace, coming so close she had to tilt her head back to look at him. His beautiful eyes were dark, pupils swallowing up his stormy copper and gold irises, his nostrils flaring like he was just barely containing something wild within. Her pulse throbbed violently. Her voice scraped out, huskier than she’d ever heard it. “Don’t you dare hold back on me.”

With a sound that made her go weak in the knees, he grabbed her hand fiercely and pulled her along so effortlessly that her feet seemed to fly over the paved tiles. As they rounded the final corner before the palace grounds came into view, he pushed her roughly up against the well-shadowed Council building. His large thigh slipped between her legs, pushing the short skirt of her peplos aside to rub against her in the most exquisite way. Her neck arched as she tilted her head back. His lips were a liquid brand on her jaw, the hollow of her neck, her mouth. His teeth bit down on her lower lip, and her fingers wound in his dark hair that curled so appealingly at the nape of his neck. His shield clattered as it dropped upon the stones. Then his hands, those magnificent hands—large, strong, scarred—were upon her, cupping her breasts and ‘twas like standing atop the Delphic Oracle with Zeus’s thunderbolts jolting through her.

Her fingers reached under the edge of his above-the-knee chiton, finding his phallus hot, hard, and slippery. He pressed his mouth into her hair behind her ear and groaned long and low. Eros and Aphrodite themselves could not emit a more erotic sound. Her muscles went lax in wonderful surrender. She hadn’t engaged in much back alley fondling over the years, but what experience she had couldn’t come close to what she felt now. This soldier was hers, and no one was going to get in the way. “Take me to wife, Alexios.”

His fingertips eased down her spine, fingernails curling into the weave of her peplon above her buttocks. “You are testing the limits of my control, princess.”

“I quite love it,” she managed breathlessly.

His other hand pulled her hair, his breath hot—

Suddenly he straightened, spun around to hoist his shield, and, with the span of his back, pressed her into the building to block her from whatever threat he’d detected.

Momentarily a dark shape approached from the direction of the agora. “Identify yourself and your purpose, Spartan,” came a sentry’s unfamiliar voice.

“Alexios, enomotarch in the Heraklid Company. On my way home after a late-night swim, I became…detained.”

The watchman laughed bawdily. “Lucky you. Now you, lady behind the shield, how do you fare?”

Alexios’ muscles were strung so tight. Sophia ran her palms up the sides of his thighs and around, down the yolk of his pelvis to cup his scrotum, safely hidden from the sentry’s gaze by the shield. Alexios pressed his rump harder against her in response. He couldn’t think that was a reprimand? She made sure her smile was in her voice when she answered the watchman. “I am right where I want to be, soldier.”

“Very well. But take your…interlude off the streets, or I shall take you both to the stocks where you’ll wait out the night,” the sentry replied.

After he’d moved on, Alexios grabbed both of her hands in his right and pinned them to his chest. “You are very familiar with a man’s body.”

Her heart pounded at the unspoken accusation. “I have never touched another the way my hands seek to know you. I can’t stop myself. Does this displease you?”

He shook his head, his eyes as soft as she’d ever seen them. “I don’t understand you.”

She swallowed convulsively. It was the most vulnerable statement he’d ever made. Tread carefully, Sophie. “Most people don’t. Sometimes I don’t even understand myself. What I do know is that something about you grips me and won’t let me go. It hasn’t changed in seven years. That more than anything shows me that I can’t do this for Sparta without you.”

He stared hard at her for a long moment. She didn’t dare breathe. It all hinged on him. Privately, they might make a horrible match. Maybe he would use her—her body, her naïveté, her desire to leave a stronger legacy for Sparta—but she would gladly sacrifice a love match for the chance—the only viable one she had—to make her dream come true for her beloved city-state.

This is it. He would either accept or reject her.

He blinked, once, twice, and that softness in his eyes was gone. No!

“You are wildly dramatic,” he said tonelessly. As he stepped away, he seemed to withdraw into himself. “How do you propose to get inside without the guards raising a fuss?”

Her chest rose and fell with her struggle to contain a mad flush of emotion. “That’s all you have to say when I’ve just poured my heart out to you?”

“Yes.”

She made a rude sound her mother would probably faint upon hearing. “Well, be advised then, I am nothing if not persistent.”

“You have rainbows in your eyes, girl.” He inspected their surroundings as they drew nearer to the palace grounds. “How will you get into the palace undetected?”

He would not dismiss her that easily! “There’s a difference between optimism and idealism, you know.”

“How. Will. You. Get. Inside?”

“Oh, may the sun not be warm for thee, you irritating man! The stables will be my gateway.”

He kept walking, but by the sudden sparkle in his eyes, she got the sense he was withholding a smile. “Elaborate,” he said, mildly.

Cursed warrior! “Herodion showed me a passage that leads from the second story loft to the roof around the peristyle. From there I can get to my bedroom unseen. Now, you really must—”

“Princess, I beg you stop. You’re wounding my ears.”

Oooo, he was just…ooooo! Neither of them spoke the rest of the way to the stables as she stewed over his condescending rejection. What could he be thinking? Had she influenced him in any way? Was he even considering her proposal? She’d risked everything tonight.

But it’s not over. It was too important.

She opened the stable door and poured as much sincerity into her gaze as she could when she looked at him standing in the shadows. “You are everything that I need in a husband.”

“Then you have set your expectations too low.”

“You’re wrong.”

His teeth flashed in the gloomy interior of the stables, but there was darkness in his voice. “You are grossly misled and naïve. I have cut men down because I can. I have taken life, lied, and cheated. I have used people in the two worlds I straddle. Few trust me, fewer still like me. I would do nothing but hinder your campaign.”

A horse three stalls down nickered as though in agreement. Even the damned animals oppose me. Fine. “Show me a soldier who’s made it through the agoge who hasn’t done all that and more. It’s what the system forces you to do to survive. It’s where your heart lies that makes you the better man, and I happen to believe you also want a Sparta where no man or woman is called slave,” she replied.

He laughed harshly. “You are as foolish as they say. Yet I am more the fool for letting this absurd conversation carry on as long as it has.”

That really stung.

Stay the course, Sophie. She should be used to criticism by now. Much worse would come her way before her vision became reality. “Be forewarned, I will seek you out again.”

“I do not doubt it. Only know that I chart my own path, princess.” He smacked her rump as she ascended the ladder. “And I refuse to tie myself to a crusader who plans to fight an impossible battle.”

Her eyes blurred with sudden tears. At the top of the ladder, she looked down. He was still there. He waited until she made it across the walkway to the second story stoa. Two more steps and she knew he could no longer see her from his vantage point. But she could see him. She watched him fade into the shadows beyond the stables.

He’d waited until she was safe before he took his leave. It made her eyes tear even more. Why did he say one thing, but his actions said something else entirely?

He was so much better than he believed.

“I will find a way to convince you, warrior,” she whispered.