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Achilles and his best friend and shield-bearer Patroclus were her two favorite characters inThe Iliad. She loved how much they loved each other, protected each other. And from her first reading, she’d secretly envied Briseis, the enemy queen who Achilles took as his personal concubine.
“Let’s find out.”
Still underneath her, August reached for the kylix and wine bottle on the bedside table. He splashed in a little wine and offered the cup to her. Lia’s heart beat madly as she took it from him and cradled it in her hands.
“Ready?” he asked. She took a shuddering breath.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.”
Her toes were already curling in anticipation and excitement. But fear, too. Real fear. What on earth was about to happen to her?
Lia lifted the kylix to her lips and drank deeply. Her hands shook so badly August took the cup back from her. He drank from it and set it on the table again. Then he rolled them over so that he lay on top of her again.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“Very.”
“You’ll be safe,” he said. “I won’t let anything happen to you except the preauthorized capture and very pleasant rape.”
“Good, thank you.”
“Until then...” He kissed her deeply on the mouth, and his tongue tasted of wine. She wrapped her arms around his back and held on to him tightly. Before she knew what she was doing, Lia opened her thighs for him again.
August entered her with a thrust.
“My lovely concubine,” he said.
“You’re more my concubine than I’m yours. I bought you.”
“Rented,” he said. “Do you really want to play my concubine, or did you just want to see me in a leather kilt?”
“It’s called a pteruges,” Lia said.
August laughed softly into her ear. “I know what it’s called, and you didn’t answer my question.”
Lia started to answer it, but before she could speak another word, the world went dark.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Lia ran.
She didn’t need a torch to light her path. She knew the fastest way from the palace to the temple. Those had been her servant’s last words to her as the old woman lay dying on the floor by the great stone hearth.
“Hide in the temple. They may fear the gods. They fear nothing else, it seems,” Hagnes had said, coughing on the last word, blood on her lips. She died before she could take her next breath.
The temple, just ahead, gleamed like polished silver in the moonlight. Behind her, the battle sounds raged on. She heard the screams of men and wondered if any of the sounds belonged to her brothers. She did not wonder about her father or her husband. They had been among the first to fall under the sword of Achilles.
She reached the temple and found it eerily silent, eerily dark. No fires burned in the braziers. The priests were all hidden. Or dead, too.
Lia ran up the marble stairs and searched for shelter. Under the great altar, perhaps. There was a room that led deep into the bowels of the temple, where the sacrifices were offered. She saw the altar ahead. The eternal flame on the wide table still burned. But for how long?
She ran toward it, naked feet slapping the mosaic floor. As she neared, a shadow moved, coming out of the dark, and seized her by the arms.
A man. A soldier. An enemy, likely Athenian.
He asked her no questions. He simply looked at her face as she writhed in his iron grasp, trying to free herself. A beast of a man, grizzled doglike face, breath like rotten meat. Lia braced herself for death, expecting he would run her through with the short sword on his hip. Instead he threw her over his shoulder. As he started off with her, she reached for the handle of the iron brazier burning on the altar. She yanked it with all her strength and brought it down to the temple floor where the smoldering coals inside struck the soldier’s feet and legs. He screamed and dropped her. She hit the ground running. Hagnes had been wrong. There was no safety here. There was no sanctuary to be found anywhere but in death.
Lia raced through the temple, hoping to make her way to the mountains, the trees, somewhere she could hide until the army returned to their ships. Male voices shouting, barking orders, and still more screams followed her into the dark night.
