Alexios felt Sophia’s worry for the child as clearly as if she’d voiced her concern. He turned his attention back to the king. “Are you aware that Theodora will try to hurt your sister?” My enemies as well.

Niketas shifted in the saddle, the sun steadily at work sucking the moisture from the earth. “Yes. I have a discreet guard assigned to protect her. We would have accosted you last night but the guards lost you in the rain.”

“Cowards, unfit to wear the Spartan scarlet. They are a disgrace. Let me choose her guard during my flogging. She will be at great risk while the city is distracted with my blood.” Everyone would be there to witness the king’s bastard’s thrashing.

Niketas stared at him. “If you use my sister to advance some sinister plot, you can be sure I will crush your bones with great relish.”

“If I were you, I wouldn’t be so sure the greatest threat to my family was beyond any palace walls. Take her and the child upon your horse. The child needs attention at once…your Grace.”

The king studied Alexios, his stallion snorting and throwing his head, anxious with inactivity. “Sophia got herself into this present trouble, and she will have to get herself out of it. It’s time I stopped rescuing her. You’re welcome to the job, bastard.”

When Niketas set his horse in motion, Alexios lengthened his stride to catch up to Sophia. It would be nigh to five hours before he needed to report to the sand pits. Plenty of time to help settle the child. Sophia was breathing heavily when he slowed his steps to keep pace with her. He reached to take the child, and as reluctant she was to let the babe go, he could tell it had been a growing strain on her arms and back. He settled the baby over the opposite shoulder as his baldric and stroked his head.

Sophia’s lips tilted slightly, pulling at something inside him like the hem of a chiton unraveling.

“Sing to us? Perhaps it will chase away both our terrors,” she said.

That she would be afraid greatly bothered him. Unfortunately, there would be much trouble and uncertainty along their chosen path.

He sang them down the mountain anyway.

Sang and hoped he could prove to be the warrior she believed him to be. Hoped he could change. To extinguish the anger, the bitterness. To move ahead for positive change. He wanted it.

He wanted her more.

To have her, he would have to set the vengeance aside.

He sang…a boatful of peaceful dreams to carry you home to Sparta, sweet little child…

His voice wavered on the stanza, the words profound this time.

Matrem, mother…how can I avenge you if I bury my anger? All this time he’d thought he’d find peace by avenging her. The blood of many—so many—on his hands had never bothered him.

Now?

Sophia’s hand reached out for his and squeezed. The unraveling within him hastened as the sun ate away at the shadows, and they descended the mountain.

Her soft voice broke through his thoughts. “I hate that you have to endure for my shortcomings. I am so sorry. Niketas is right. I’ve been seeing all this from my own vantage point. I’ve rarely stopped to consider this from anyone else’s. Even the Queen has good reason to hate me. Why don’t you?”

“I admire courage.” And her goodness, so unjaded, so bright it might even help cleanse his darkness. He took a breath to expel such swampy feelings. “Does Lydia have a list of families ready to accept this boy?”

Sophia’s gaze pinned his, seeing far more than he suspected he’d like her to see. His heart crash-thumped. By now he knew her well enough to realize she was probably thinking five steps ahead of him.

“She does…” A pause.

That pause could bode no good.

He risked a sideways glance at her when she continued to remain mute. “But…”

Her face grew imploring, an innocent smile gracing her sweet lips. He shook his head. “No. Whatever you’re thinking, you will set it aside.” Sweat ran down the side of his face. “Sophie—”

“What if we kept him?” she blurted.

He froze on the path. Took in the heightened color on her cheekbones, her hesitant, wobbly smile and felt his world tilt.

Gods damn him.

His vulnerability was not the forged bronze or iron of his enemies, but this singular pair of Aegean blue eyes and all the fire and heart and revolution that was at their foundation.

Sophie.

Here he stood, babe in his arms, gaping. If he had such slow reflexes on the battlefield he wouldn’t have lasted one campaign. Had she been anyone else, he would have asked if she was serious.

But she meant everything she said. Always. With all her heart. It terrified and exhilarated him all at once.

It must have been all over his cursed face.

Sophia clapped her hands, then twined her fingers together like she was trying to stifle their energy. “I’ve already begun to think of him as ours. Lydia can care for him tonight until this ordeal is behind us. Look at him—so content in your arms. He loves you, Alexios. You could be father to him as your father couldn’t be to you because of our slave laws. Laws we will change.”

He couldn’t speak. Didn’t dare speak. Her words drove deep into his soul, exposing pain too raw to share.

“He could be a new generation in Sparta,” she continued. “We will raise him to be more tolerant, yet no less strong. No less worthy to be called Spartan warrior.” Her voice rang with conviction.

If anyone could bring it about, it would be her. He shifted the babe who looked up at him with old brown eyes. A new urgency took hold to get the child sustenance. He started forward again, increasing his pace.

Could Sparta really have a bold new future?

Sophia leaned over as she walked to place a kiss on the baby’s head. “You feel the rightness of this. I know you do, warrior.”

He did. He also felt the rightness of his body seated deep inside hers, but the child’s needs came before his desire.

“I want to fill our house with children, and I want you to sing to them all, so that when we are old, they can sing to us.”

Alexios’s feet nearly stumbled on the path. He cleared his throat and looked away as he tried to forget the most beautiful words that had ever been spoken. Focus. Like on the battlefield.

Horse hooves sounded from the right. Alexios looked up, his gaze falling upon the Temple to Apollo where a figure stood, his himation flapping in a breeze they couldn’t feel where they were standing. Instead of Spartan scarlet, the figure was dressed in black battle panoply. Black helmet. Black cuirass. Black greaves. Even black bracers encircling his wrists.

Judging by the figure’s position next to Apollo’s statue, the soldier was the tallest man Alexios ever seen.

Déjà vu made the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. He scanned the immediate area, turning away from the soldier to see Niketas ride hard toward them, two extra horses in tow, but no king’s guard to accompany him. Alexios pulled Sophia closer as her brother reined in.

“Why are you here, Niketas?” Sophia asked.

“The Council of Elders demand that Alexios repair to the sand pits at once.”

Alexios looked again toward the Temple of Apollo, but the figure was gone. “So they sent the king on a messenger’s duty?”

Niketas flushed, but held Alexios’s gaze. “I told them I would bring the summons as it is my family’s affair.”

Sophia squeezed Alexios’s forearm. “You are king, Niketas, can you not overrule their decision?”

“No. Four of the five high magistrates have sided with the Council. If Alexios does not come with me, and you don’t leave the child as proscribed by the Elders who pronounced it unhealthy, they are prepared to exile you both.”

Sophia’s fist rose in the air. “Barbarossas! That’s what they all are! This child is mine!”

Niketas’s face darkened. “Shut your mouth, you little idiot!”

“I will not! These base behaviors—infanticide and…and…inbreeding—demean our people and show how far back we are sliding as a culture. We shall become deficient, or worse, extinct, if the highborn only want to fuck select citizens from the same family!”

“Seven Hells, Sophie!” boomed Niketas.

Give them hell, Sophie, thought Alexios.

He positioned his body to protect his warrior princess from the wrath of her brother who was now furiously dismounting. A baby in his arms didn’t make for a good shield, but he could wield his sword one-handed. “You would be wise to stay back, your Grace. The Elders and Ephors are none the wiser if we deliver this child to a helot. We are almost there. Spare your sister this grace, and I will ride with haste to my flogging.”

Sophie spun to Alexios. “I cannot bear the thought of the lash upon your skin. Perhaps exile is the right choice.”

He placed the baby in her arms. “You have not chosen a man who runs.”

Niketas advanced until he was a foot away from Alexios. The color of the king’s eyes mirrored Sophia’s, but cynicism crouched where Sophie’s gleamed with hope.

Alexios understood the cynicism better.

“Loving my sister will bring you even more pain than it has caused me. Are you certain this is to be your path?”

Alexios drew a deep breath, then blinked and envisioned the bodies of his enemies littering the ground. Their blood would answer for his mother’s death.

But what then?

What would remain if he didn’t die along with them? Pride? He would sojourn easterly across the sea to become a sell-sword. Always fighting other men’s battles for coin. Ever empty. Ever alone.

Standing under the weight of Apollo’s sunlight, that prospect didn’t satisfy as it once had. Not since the princess had imploded his world.

He would honor and avenge his mother another way.

Sophie’s revolution.

Alexios blinked away the vision of his enemies’ massacre. “Iron is forged in fire. I am not afraid of what lies ahead.”

Niketas shook his head with a curse, looking between them. “You are both fools. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Let’s be off then.” He spun on his heels and walked back to the horses. He smacked the rump of the first one toward Alexios, and the other horse followed. “And one more thing, if either of you disrespects me in public again, I will have you put in the stocks. Don’t think I won’t.”

Thankfully, Sophia didn’t respond. Alexios moved behind her to help her mount her mare. He pressed into her backside, leaning down to her ear, transferring his mother’s ring—the only possession of value she’d ever owned—from the pouch at his hip into her hand. “At Lydia’s, give this ring to Mantes so he knows I’ve claimed the child as my own. He will protect him with his life should it come to that. Ask Lydia to care for the child until I come for him. Tonight, when I meet you at my kleros, you shall tell me the name you have given our son.”

She blinked back tears as she looked over her shoulder at him. “You won’t regret your choice.”

He rubbed his thumb across the child’s papery cheek before handing him up to Sophia and mounting behind them.

Niketas frowned. “I brought two horses.”

“So you did,” Alexios replied.

Niketas’s eyes promised trouble. Alexios didn’t doubt it was to come.

And soon.