Chapter 3 #2
My grip on her wrists tightened, thumbs pressing into the fluttering pulse beneath her skin. She arched into it—into me—as though she craved the restraint, needed it, thrived beneath the pressure.
“Then say it,” I snarled, low and guttural, a sound I hardly recognized as my own. “Say you won’t take another. That you belong to me.”
She slipped free, like a serpent shedding its skin—fluid, sinuous, her escape so effortless it made my blood thrum. She turned her back to me, hips swaying with dangerous confidence, glancing over her shoulder with eyes gleaming and a soft, lethal smirk that could topple kingdoms.
“Of course, my love,” she purred. “I would never.”
Sweetness, laced with sin.
But I watched her—the curve of her spine, the subtle shift of her shoulders, the dangerous ease with which she played me like a lyre string. She was smoke in a closed fist—impossible to hold, impossible to forget.
She lingered on my skin.
In my blood.
She was my brother’s widow.
My brother’s woman.
But with every stolen kiss, every clawed midnight, every breathless promise in the dark—she became mine.
And the more I claimed her…
The more she owned me.
Heart. Flesh. Soul.
And that terrified me more than any sword, any battlefield, any enemy I would ever face.
Helena moved to the window, her steps slow, deliberate.
She reached for an ankle-length shift, pale linen clinging to her as she slipped it over her nakedness.
It draped her curves in translucent whispers—thin enough to tempt, thick enough to deny.
In the morning light, she looked less like a woman dressing and more like a goddess re-donning her armor.
I bent to fasten my sandals, the leather stiff, biting into my ankles like punishment. My steps felt unsure, and I hated that. Hated how she must have laughed behind those knowing eyes—eyes that held daggers even as they begged me to stay.
Outside, a gull cried—high and hollow, its voice carrying across the sea. The sound sank into me, echoing the emptiness carved by years of being overlooked, dismissed, forgotten. Its cry was my own.
I gathered my cloak, the wool worn smooth as if by years of hope, and swung it across my shoulders.
But before I could fasten the clasp, Helena crossed the chamber in silence.
Her hand pressed against my chest, halting me mid-motion.
Her eyes locked with mine, gold and venom, sharp enough to cut.
Then, with a sudden tug, she pulled the cloak aside and drew me down into her.
Her mouth crashed against mine.
Not gentle. Not farewell.
It was possession—ruthless, searing. A kiss that branded me, that seared through flesh and bone.
Her lips tasted of wine, of salt, and of ashes—the aftertaste of every fire that ever burned too bright, too fast, and left me nothing but ruin.
Her nails dug into the back of my neck, anchoring me, marking me, cursing me all at once.
When she broke away, her breath lingered like smoke against my lips.
“Come back to me,” she whispered—not a plea, but a command. “Or I will come find you.”
Her words clung to me like chains, her kiss still burning in my blood as I turned at last toward the door.
And I knew, as dawn swallowed me whole—the war ahead would not be my only battlefield.
* * *
The door shut behind me, cutting off the incense and the taste of Helena’s kiss that still scorched my mouth—fire and ruin lingering like a curse I could not spit out.
The air outside stung my lungs—cold and salted by the sea. My cloak snapped in the wind as I descended the steps, each strike of my sandals on stone echoing like thunder.
Nyros waited in the yard, restless as if he had felt the hour long before I did.
His dark flanks quivered, hooves pawing the packed earth, his mane tossing like a storm breaking against the coast. The leather reins gleamed with fresh oil, the saddle pad already strapped tight by another’s hands.
Helena’s order, no doubt. A last kindness—or another reminder that even beyond her walls, I carried her mark.
I mounted. The stallion shifted beneath me, muscles as tight as drawn bowstrings, breath steaming white into the bitter dawn.
For a moment, I looked back at the house I’d left.
Its pale mudbrick walls loomed silent, shuttered windows concealing her figure.
She was there—I could feel it—watching through the dark with that venomous smile, pleased to see me ride off with her taste still burning in my blood.
I drove my heels into Nyros’ sides. He surged forward, hooves striking sparks from stone, carrying me into the narrow streets of Ugarit.
The city was waking, bakers lifting flatbread from clay ovens, women bending over stone wells with jars balanced on their hips, children scattering gulls that screamed overhead like restless spirits.
Yet silence followed wherever I passed. Faces turned.
Eyes tracked me, heavy with the reality of war.
They knew where men like me were bound—and how few ever came back.
The walls of Ugarit fell behind me. The road opened, dust curling under Nyros’ hooves, the horizon bleeding with dawn. And there, waiting at the edge of his house, I saw them.
Lazarus and Amara.
He stood like stone, shoulders squared beneath a rough cloak, his horse bridled and ready at his side.
Amara pressed close, her hand fixed to his arm, her hair stirring in the salt wind.
Her gaze never touched me. It was locked on him—eyes swollen from weeping, yet burning with something Helena had never given me.
Not venom. Not deceit. But fear. Devotion. Love.
I drew Nyros to a halt, the stallion stamping hard at the earth, eager to run. My eyes lingered on the two of them—Lazarus, unbending in his quiet strength, Amara clinging to him as though the gods themselves might tear him away.
And for a moment, I hated them.
Not because they had what I didn’t.
But because they made me remember.
I had always wanted love. Real love. And it had never been mine.
Not from my father, who gave me nothing but silence and rage.
Not from Helena, whose kisses tasted of poison and chains.
The only love I’d ever known came from friendship—from Lazarus’ loyalty, from Amara’s kindness—and even that had chosen itself without me, binding them together while I stood outside.
I wanted what they had—someone to wait for me, someone to care whether I returned, someone to look at me with devotion instead of calculation.
I led Nyros forward, the stallion restless beneath my hand.
Lazarus turned at the sound of hooves, his jaw set, his face shadowed beneath the hood of his cloak. He looked older than his years, as though the war had already laid its hand upon him.
“Salvatore,” he said quietly. “You came.”
“Of course I came,” I answered, my voice rougher than I intended, the memory of Helena’s kiss still burning in my blood.
Amara clung to Lazarus’ arm, her eyes red from weeping. “You don’t have to go,” she whispered, looking between us. “Either of you. You could stay—you could live.”
Lazarus bent and pressed his lips to her brow. “I swore I’d return,” he murmured. “This is for us. For the future.”
Her tears fell again, her whole frame trembling. Then she turned to me.
I slipped from Nyros’ back, my leather sandals striking the packed earth, and for a heartbeat, she just stared at me.
Then she stepped forward and threw her arms around me, holding me with a desperate strength that knocked the air from my chest. For a moment, I didn’t move.
My hands hovered, uncertain—then I folded her against me, letting myself feel what I knew would never be mine.
When she pulled back, she kissed my cheek, her lips trembling.
“I want you both to be safe,” she whispered. “No matter what happens… come back. Both of you.”
I swallowed hard, unable to answer. All I managed was a nod, swift and small, while her devotion sliced into me. Because she meant it, she loved us both. But only one of us carried her heart.
Lazarus mounted his horse, shoulders squared against the dawn. I vaulted back onto Nyros, settling against the plain pad strapped to his back, the reins tight in my grip.
Amara stood behind us, arms wrapped around herself as if to hold in the pieces we had torn from her.
I saw it all. The love in her eyes. The faith she placed in him. The way her soul clung to both of us, though in the end it belonged to Lazarus.
And I hated it.
Not her. Not him.
But the hollow place in me where that kind of love had never lived.
If my mother had survived my birth, she would have filled that place. I know it. She would have given me the gentleness this world refused me. And perhaps then, I would not feel so full of rage, so cursed to carry only poison.
So, I rode with Lazarus onto the road, dust rising beneath the hooves of our horses, the horizon bleeding with dawn. We left Ugarit not as sons, not as lovers, but as two men bound for the same fire—brothers in all but blood.
Perhaps this war would bring us victory. Perhaps we would return with honor, and I could at last make my father proud.
Or perhaps it would end as all wars seemed to—in misery, in silence, in graves dug by strangers.
Only the gods knew what awaited us.