Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Fifty thousand pairs of feet stomped over rock, sand, and mud. The dust and sweat and unintelligible grunts of a conquering horde marched for the Macedonian Kingdom’s expansion.
Mortals bothered themselves with battles, successes, unimportant wins and losses.
While I didn’t have a gift for seeing the future, I, like many of us beyond the veil, learned the human king’s plans long before the trembling public.
The calamities of war brought, with it, certain opportunities.
I remained on Grecian soil—a puppeteer plucking on invisible strings.
I nudged a few humans and arranged an advantageous marriage to a high-ranking commander one short month before the man was, oh so tragically, forced to abandon his new bride in her upscale palatial home with no mortal man to bother her.
Her eastbound spouse took his armor, their best horse, a clanging satchel of gold coins, and his culturally rigid performance of masculinity far, far away. My bright, intelligent, beautiful woman was all alone with only her friends, servants, and my ghost in the shadows left to accompany her.
So sad.
She’d taken to my presence as if I’d always been there.
Perhaps Shala had been my first human, but with Eleni, it was my turn to experiment with mortality.
My residence on her side of the veil, among the frescos and mosaics, was for her eyes alone—skin stretched over muscle, the tingle of nerves, the sights, sounds and smells of a human.
I wasn’t the man of the house by conventional standards, but for her, a man I would become.
It was a marvel anyone wore clothes in this mid-summer heat. Eleni fanned her pinked cheeks, perching on the bronze edge of a woolen mattress, humming as she changed. She’d dismissed her servants early in the day, unpinning the bun atop her head and letting her long hair down all on her own.
“You’ve been quiet today.”
I was grateful for every moment that I could look at her as two people might look at one another. Two humans. Two gods. Two equals. “That song you hum sometimes. Where did you learn it?”
She shrugged. “It’s just in my head from time to time.” After a pause, her expression changed. “Are you thinking of him again?”
I peered out the window at the city that baked below us as if I might peer through time and space and see the army. I shook off the image.
“You’re asking if I’m thinking of that husband of yours?” A short, polite laugh. “I don’t think of other men when I’m around you.”
“He’s not terrible,” Eleni defended, lips quirking upward.
“And for that, I’m glad,” I said. “I worked hard to find you an auspicious match.” Auspiciously absent, but I kept that amendment to myself.
“Do you know of the war? I mean…the knowledge of the gods, that is. Where is my husband now? Does he live?”
My lips flattened to conceal my grimace. Yes, I’d had members of my legion tail the commander and report back to me on the expansion.
I’d prefer it if she didn’t care.
I wasn’t proud of the tar-like suction that lapped at me, nor how it soured my expression as I answered.
“His troops have crossed the snow-capped mountains. They lost men to the cold, but he lives.”
She stepped out of her garment. “Try not to sound so disappointed.”
I turned toward the window, watching the city as it cooked. I allowed her a semblance of modesty, feigning the role of a gentleman.
“Enjoying the heat?”
Past the clay roofs and monochromatic buildings, I fixated on the gilded sparkle of a far-off sea. I wanted to be near her, yet a thousand miles away whenever she spoke of her husband. I fixated on the glittering waves, one white and yellow speckle at a time as the water disappeared into oblivion.
“You’re the closest thing we have to snow in Athens.”
She pulled my attention back from the waves. “Hmm?”
“You and your ice, of course.”
There was a sing-song quality to her joke. She’d found my hair, my eyes, the pale flesh I wore worthy of endless commentary. I was marble. I was porcelain. I was whatever frosty peak her husband had shivered over a fire to survive before the army descended upon Armenia.
Bathing salts and fragrant oils rolled off her as her dress fell away, which wasn’t my preference.
Wealthy Athenians were soaked, scrubbed, and doused in perfumes.
Her servants drenched her long dark locks, soaking through her pores, masking that crisp, painful lungful of air that only she possessed.
I missed the clean smell of her soul, but at least she was here. She was alive. She was mine.
I was better off staring at the sea rather than fixating on the ownership that consumed me.
Mine, mine, mine.
What was I doing?
Water. Window. House. Human. Ground yourself, for fuck’s sake. Pick something new. Be here. Be present. Control yourself.
I focused on the way the gauzy curtains tufted in the wind, appreciating the pale orange of late evening over the sea. The rustling of locks of hair, sweat unburdened by florals, and fabric let me know she’d slipped into her robe.
I heard her steps before I felt the brush of her skin against my back.
My jaw clenched involuntarily as she slid into the space behind me.
I closed my eyes as she ran one hand down my arm, fingers interlacing in mine.
She pressed her cheek into the place between my shoulder blades.
Her heat soaked into me, warming whatever I had that passed for a heart.
“Eleni…”
This wasn’t the first time she’d touched me, and I still didn’t know how to respond. I had a human once before, but never like this. Not one I could touch. Not one I could hold. I didn’t dare to take it further, as if my hands would stain her irreparably.
She was pure, and I was…me.
Eleni didn’t see it that way and had spent the better part of two years winning me over to her logic.
Two years that I hadn’t left her side. I’d walked home with her that night.
I’d been her unseen sentinel, her companion, the center of her universe, as she was mine.
I didn’t dare return to Hell for more than the barest of moments, never knowing if it would be a minute or a day or a week that had passed in the human lands.
For better or for worse, I’d told Eleni how I’d first met her soul, of our time together, and how I’d burned her home to the ground when I’d learned of her death.
I hadn’t known if honesty was the right decision when discussing our connection, but who else could I share it with, if not her?
Eleni had things to share of her own.
She’d likened our story to Eros and Psyche, though the human woman had lost her heart’s love once she’d looked upon his immortal face.
Maybe that was the cautionary tale that kept her from pushing for more, though she certainly mentioned Zeus and his human lovers whenever she found a way to work it into the conversation.
My sister had found me once in the days following my disappearing act from the Grecian party. Izi’s amusement turned into something else when she called my attachment to this shimmering, opal soul what it was.
Obsession.
Telling her to go fuck herself was insufficient; so, I personally crafted wards to ensure that no infernal entity could cross Eleni’s threshold. I had no interest in hearing my sister’s opinion as I took up residence with the now twenty-two-year-old woman who studied the stars.
Hell would be fine without me.
But this soft, fragile creature with mere decades on the earth? She needed me.
Her betrothed, on the other hand…
Eleni’s husband would be gone for a long, long time.
Faithful members of my legion clung to him like a second dusk.
The smokey extension of my will gathered at his shoulder.
Shadows beyond the veil borrowed the outline of his fingers, guiding him toward the sweetness of the wrong wine, the confidence in a mistaken battle choice, a snowy passage, a carelessly held blade, and, fuck it, a wild jackal sprinting into the camp from time to time when things weren’t moving fast enough.
If, rather when, I orchestrated the man’s death, I could keep word of his passing at bay for decades.
Eleni would never have to remarry, nor be forced to take on the social status of a widow, as long as her betrothed male was believed alive.
It was an asinine system. The humans could learn a thing or two from the gods and the way we structured independence.
But that, along with many of my uncontrollable feelings regarding mortal customs, changed little.
So, I controlled what I could. And for now, that meant being here with her.
The squeeze of her fingers returned me to the present moment.
I wished she wouldn’t touch me like that. It rearranged my atoms in ways that made me feel out of control, which was so unfamiliar that it sent me into a spiral every time our bodies grazed.
“Have you stayed?” she asked. “Have you been in the house, I mean? When my husband and…” She looked over her shoulder at the woolen mattress and waited for my gaze to follow. My pulse quickened at the memory of her skin, the heat of her body, the shallow gasps as they joined.
Sex? Of course that’s what she was asking.
I wasn’t sure whether to chuckle at the absurdity of the question, given the flicker of anger whenever I thought of someone else holding dominion over her.
I loved the idea of my human grabbing the mortal realm by the scruff of its neck and taking it for a ride, if it brought her power or pleasure or joy.
“Did I stay to watch you left unsatisfied?” I asked, still facing the sea beyond the city.
“Well, Eros…” The moniker was a taunt, though not unkind. “I’ve been wondering…”