The cold fury sustained him through the bawdy tavern and out into the night. His men struggled to keep up with his brisk pace as he led them back through the twisting streets to the harbor. To the guards who stopped them, simply because they were a large group, he patiently answered their questions and put their justified fears to rest. Once at the ship, he stopped by the gangway, allowing his crew to go up first.

Each kept their silence, not trusting his. The truth was he couldn’t think. The chaos flinging his thoughts into utter confusion threatened to overwhelm him and he didn’t trust himself to speak. He wanted to keep his storm contained.

Arktos hung over the side of the ship, his upper half crushed against the railing. “Were you right?” he boomed. Lukos’s head snapped up. “Was it a royal?”

“Keep your fucking voice down,” Lukos hissed, looking around as eyes were drawn to them.

The harbor was mostly deserted except for a few sailors and fisherman. Whores too still wandered around, though most already had already departed, having secured a bit of business. The few women who were left eyed him and his ship with interest, both from Arktos’s careless bellow and from the fact that he had enough men to pay them all. He turned his back on them, not wanting any such company tonight or any other in the foreseeable future.

Arktos pushed away from the railing as his captain hurried up the gangway. They met just as Lukos’s boots touched the deck. The rest of his crew pretended they hadn’t heard but it didn’t matter. If the gods were as cruel as he knew them to be, Persephone would be here in three days and the secret would be out on ship anyway. He bunched his fist in Arktos’s shirt and hauled him behind him down the stairs.

“Easy!” Arktos’s fingers dug at his but Lukos only elbowed him into submission. The two of them drummed down the stairs and burst into his cabin. He let go of Arktos and hid his face in his hands as the older man shut the door. “Captain?” Arktos’s voice had lost any humor and was tinged with a note of alarm. He was only steady so long as his captain was and as Lukos paced blindly, Arktos’s muscles tensed, somehow making him appear smaller.

“I don’t know what to do.” Desperation bled into his voice, cracking it at the end. His fingers tangled in his dark hair as he raked through it again. For the first time in his life, he was at a complete loss. There was no plan and he could not see a way out.

“Steady,” Arktos reached out to pat him but Lukos reared back, his eyes swept him up and down. “Steady, it’s only me.” After a pause he said, “What happened?”

“It was the fucking princess,” Lukos covered his mouth with his hand and spoke from behind it. His voice came out muffled but Arktos didn’t have trouble hearing. “She wants me to testify in the senate against Stravos.”

“Oh you didn’t-” Arktos sank down on Lukos’s bed. It groaned under his weight.

“I was going to tell her she could fuck me and then we’d talk-” he laughed hysterically like it was funny without finding any humor in it at all. “But then Phaedra started throwing around ‘choices’-”

“Wait, what was she-”

“And I saw her and I just-” he wasn’t listening to Arktos as his bear struggled to keep up. “She’s like...I don’t know, I couldn’t tell her no and I sat back down and then Persephone is asking me what I want-” Arktos just stared, not hiding the naked horror and bewilderment on his face.

“You’re not going to the senate?” Arktos prompted when Lukos abruptly stopped speaking and paused by the open window.

“I’m not sure,” Lukos refused to turn around. He hugged himself, trying to slow his panicked heartbeat. “I think I might have agreed to be a baron if all this plays out Persephone’s way.”

Silence met this statement. “How did the princess even know about Stravos?” Arktos snapped. The bed creaked as he rose from it. “Why was Phaedra there?”

“She’s the one who betrayed us,” Lukos’s distant voice only made Arktos start to show the same signs of panic.

“You said she wouldn’t!” he stabbed a finger into Lukos’s shoulder.

“I lied,” Lukos didn’t flinch even though he could already feel the bruise that would form from Arktos’s abuse.

“You...you what?” The bed creaked again under Arktos’s weight. “You took her back knowing she would do this?”

“I hoped-”

“You knew.” The accusation was flat and angry.

“I didn’t think anyone would listen to her. She lied to me. I don’t know who she is but she’s not Phaedra or whatever else she claimed.” He turned then, still hugging himself and leveling Arktos with a righteous fury. “This is why I say we don’t take nobles. They are trouble.”

“They are when you fuck them,” Arktos surged to his feet, nearly hitting the ceiling with the top of his head.

Lukos had purposefully goaded his bear into a fight. He’d thought he wanted to rip someone apart but now that Arktos was ready, he found himself unwilling to push further. All he wanted now was to be alone. Dropping his arms, he walked to the door and opened it, silently motioning for Arktos to leave.

“You put us all at fucking risk,” the bear hissed, not as ready to drop it as his captain. “For a woman.”

Lukos slid his eyes slowly away as Arktos bent down to get into his face. This feigned indifference infuriated the bear further. Two meaty hands slammed against the wall on either side of Lukos’s head but all it did was was prompt Lukos’s dark eyes to shift back in a haughty challenge for Arktos to push him into a real, bloody fight. They both knew he wouldn’t.

“She must be a good fuck,” Arktos bared his teeth. “You know what else? I don’t see her here. She doesn’t want you, Lukos. She left. So I just want you to know, that we will follow you and we will drown with you, but it’s your fault if we all die.” he said, jabbing his finger into Lukos’s chest hard enough to push him back. “Your fault.”

Just before Arktos slammed the door, he said, “And you didn’t take me to see the princess!” as though this part of the betrayal was the worst of it.

Lukos stayed against the wall, listening to Arktos stump down into the lower deck. He could hear his men laughing above him and knew they were getting into the wine but he didn’t have it in him to stop them. Athenia’s port wasn’t Colchis. The ship would be safe enough more than likely.

Growling to himself, he pulled off his shirt and flung it into the corner. Until the conversation with Arktos, he hadn’t even bothered about Phaedra’s real identity. All he knew for certain was that she’d lied about her name and he’d fallen for it. For months. She’d played him so completely he was surprised that she hadn’t just ripped his whole goddamn island out from under him but, he paused as he started to climb into bed, she actually had. That was what he’d essentially agreed to. Her revenge on him was complete.

After the clay lamp was extinguished, he lay there in the darkness, listening to his men grow ever more rowdy until at last, they dropped off to sleep one by one. He too drifted into unconsciousness, the tomblike silence of his temple the last thing he thought about before slipping away. His sleep was deep enough that he didn’t rouse completely when Thalia thumped on the floor of his room. It was a sound that could have happened anywhere onboard and did with such frequency, his sense of danger was not piqued.

He started to shift as soon as she had one knee on the bed but abruptly stopped as soon as he felt the edge of the knife on his throat. His eyes flew open as her soft hand pressed down hard on his mouth. All he could see was her shadowed outline in the darkness but even her shape was so familiar that his body relaxed almost immediately. Despite the knife, his hands came up to rest on her hips.

“What-” he tried but she shushed him softly and he quieted. She leaned down, letting the blade clatter to the floor, and kissed him. Whatever he thought of her, he didn’t fight her. His hands slid to cup her bottom and he lifted up, forcing her back until they were sitting upright, still caught up in each other.

When she whimpered into his mouth, his arms locked around her, crushing her against him. Being without her for so long had been a unique torture. Her fear back in the tavern that he’d been with others was justified. He had. Several. But no one tasted like she did or made his blood race fast enough to make him dizzy with desire. They’d all been pale imitations; insignificant and ultimately worthless.

He didn’t want anyone else and his attempts at burying her memory had failed spectacularly. All the anger still burning toward her didn’t matter as she sat astride him, giving him a taste of what he’d wanted the second she’d left.

She broke their kiss, leaning back just enough to tell him he was stupid. “Very,” he whispered, finding her mouth again but she wasn’t done.


"Why did you do that? ...Of all the things.... you could ask for.... a barony? What would you do.... with a barony??"

Her face was wet. Their kisses were constantly interrupted with words. The muscles of her body were tense under his hands and he was the same but he did not cry. As she mentioned the barony, the panic he’d barely fought down threatened to undo him again. Shifting them, he forced her back so that she was flat on the bed with him staring down at her through the dark.

There was no intimidation. He didn’t have time. She’d disappear if he didn’t keep his mouth somewhere on her body. At first it was her mouth, then her check, down to her neck. Her hair smelled different than it had on the island but it felt the same against his nose.

“I should have asked for her crown,” he whispered against her ear, his fingers working her hair out of its braid. “She’s a fool if she actually goes through with this.” Her questions of what he’d do with a barony were wholly ignored because he didn’t know. It didn’t bear thinking about because, at least for now, that nightmare was far away, and, as far as he was concerned, still might not happen at all.

He didn’t want to think anymore. Not about Persephone or of his argument with Arktos. So what if the woman below him had lied about absolutely everything? She was here. Her tears betrayed that Arktos was fucking wrong; she did want him and he wanted her and as bad as it was, he knew he’d line his whole crew and their families up to the gallows if she asked it of him. It wasn’t a question of if he wanted to so much as he would deny her nothing; he was too selfish and he needed her too much for any of his actions to be remotely rational.

“Don’t ask me for more,” he muttered, returning to her mouth. “I don’t have anything left.” She had on too many clothes. He unclasped her cloak and pushed it off her shoulders without mercy. His hands slid over the fabric of her dress, re-memorizing the curves of her body. The urge to lose himself inside her overrode everything else. There would be time for questions later.

Waves lapped at the ship’s hull as it lulled up and down in the calm waters of the harbor. Occasionally distant laughter or a shout would filter in through the open window. A breeze flitted through the room. He was unaware of any of it.

As she stared up at him, murmuring what he’d wanted to hear, he thought back to Arktos’s own taunt, thrown in his face in this very room just a few hours ago. If the bear only knew. Her fingers tugged at the laces of his pants and he understood that she shared his desire not to speak further.

They fit together seamlessly, easily. The hiss of her breath in his ear and the way she moaned into his mouth as he struggled to keep her quiet were what he would burn cities to keep. She writhed beneath him, real and tangible in his hands. Until he was inside her, with her legs wrapped around his waist, he hadn’t realized how badly he’d truly missed her.

When the Aceton had docked back at the island after she’d gone, he had walked up the hill to the temple. As soon as the doors were open, and he was confronted with the things she had left behind, the realization of what he’d done and how far he’d pushed her dropped him to his knees. That first night, he slept there alone, partially as self punishment. The next night, he went down to Arktos’s house and stayed there for a solid month.

As her breath quickened, he shifted them both so that she sat astride him again as he looked up at her. He’d purposefully broken their stride so that they could keep going. When this ended, real life would come crashing back. His hands cupped her backside and he didn’t help bring her to her climax yet. If she wanted it, she’d have to do it on her own. It was selfish but he wanted to keep her as long as possible.

The whores staying with Arktos had been all too keen to keep him there. He was a change of pace from the bear or anyone else and for a time, they had served as a distraction but only for a little while. The meaninglessness of it was not enough which was something he had not experienced before. It was as if Thalia had reached out to him from Athenia for a final stab, taking any pleasure he’d had in life with her, keeping it at an unreachable distance.

After a month, he returned to the temple and dismantled everything she had set up. The bed was back to where it was before, the fabric he’d sold the first chance he got. All the crates had been loaded onto the Aceton and sold. In the three months she had been gone, he’d brought in new things, arranging them just as haphazardly as he’d done before and it looked like she’d never been there. It was the only way he’d been able to get a decent night’s sleep.

Her hips rocked against his. His hands moved up her body, cupping her breasts and smoothing down her back. He forgot to delay anything. As her breathing hitched, he sat up, kissing her throat and chest. Without thinking he matched her, riding out a shock of pleasure he hadn’t experienced since before she’d forced him to give her up.

His heartbeat slowed at last and his ran his fingers along the contours of her stomach, looking up at her. Questions started teeming in his mind again as the haze of lust subsided. She was perfect and right where she should be. He had a nagging suspicion though that she would not stay until morning.

“Is this how it works?” he kept his voice low so that if one of his men woke up, they wouldn’t hear. Although, he wasn’t entirely sure they’d been quiet enough just now. “You sneak away from your husband every time I’m in port?” It was well past midnight. They were into early morning. She’d had to wait and sneak out from somewhere and he guessed that she’d been married off already. If she was coming with him to stay, likely she would have just walked in through the door and informed them all. With her, there was usually no sneaking around.

She was as bad as Arktos about bullying her way into places and so that she’d dropped in through the window told him that no one knew where she was. The knife he didn’t ask about. They were usually fairly rough with each other and he was content to believe that she both wanted to kill him, and love him. He generally felt the same, although tonight, he’d have let her drive the dagger into his chest; no fight, arms open and waiting.

She brushed a tendril of hair away from his forehead, frowning at him. The heat of her fingertips left ghostly trails behind, even after she’d taken her hand away. He waited as the silence stretched, already playing out scenarios. How long would this last? Would she come after she had children? Would one be his? Or perhaps her husband would find out and she would be confined to the house.

A contented sigh escaped him as she shifted off his hips, separating them. Any conversation would be better done not inside her. He accepted her kiss, his fingers trailing down her back, over her butt and down the backs of her thighs before he flattened his palms against the tops of her legs and continued up her stomach, stopping on her breasts.

"You really are an idiot. ...There's no one else for me. There never was and there never will be. I love you."

He tried to look her in the eye but she moved down beside him, her cheek resting on his chest. All he could see of her was the black of her hair and the pale round of her shoulder with her hip further down. His tongue slid over his lower lip, searching for the lingering taste of her mouth.

She loved him.

His fingers toyed with the ends of her hair as he stared straight ahead at the door. They’d done a lot of things in this room, almost none of it pleasant. For her to tell him here, to make love to him, to promise that she was his for the asking...he cleared his throat.

“Some people would say…” he paused, his eyes straying to the thick wooden beams above them. She was hot against him. Their skin was cool and slick where they weren’t pressed together. “That you don’t understand what you’re offering. But I think you do.”

What he wanted to believe was that she was telling him that she would come with him back to the island for good. They would live in his temple and they would fight there, love there, possibly in the very remote future have children there, and that she would be content with that. However, that was not what would happen and they both knew it. Not now.

“Is your princess really going to just give me Stravos’s title?” his voice was level, calm as though he was just mildly curious. He wanted to repeat what he’d said earlier; that she would be foolish to do so. Her barons would not be happy. The slave turned pirate, the pirate turned baron. It seemed like it was happening to someone else.

All this, of course, hinged on the complete secrecy of the plan; he was risking a great deal to stay in the harbor for three days. If Elias got the merest hint of a whisper of what he was doing, or that he met the princess, or perhaps even that he was fooling around with...whoever he was currently holding, his life would be in extreme danger. “You know,” he said, moving so that he could see her face. “I’d like to tell you that I love you too, but I don’t actually know your name.”

He wanted to know a great many things that she’d denied him or had lied to him about. Slowly, he rubbed the backs of his knuckles against her cheek. “I don’t know you - The Athenia you.” If he went to the senate, and if he came out alive on the other side, and if she was not married, since she still hadn’t told him one way or the other, he expected that at the end of that trail of fire, she would be there.

Back in the tavern, he’d promised to listen but he hadn’t really known why at the time. It was only now, after she’d admitted her own feelings, that he realized he’d loved her long before she’d ever loved him. Or, at least, he’d begun to. He hadn’t fully committed to it until after she was gone and she was no longer a possibility. Then, and only then, was when he realized for perhaps the first time, what a monster he could be. And somehow, despite that, she loved him anyway.

“Thalia of Nikoloas…” he whispered her name and lay his head back on the pillow. “I would never have brought you back if I’d known.” The corners of his mouth turned up until he was smirking at the ceiling. It was all so clear now how incredibly fucked he was every way he turned.

The senate. Her father would be staring down at him in that meeting. Would her brother be there too? Surely he would be.

His fingers tangled in her hair again and he pulled until her face tipped up. Sitting forward, he slid his tongue into her mouth. Her betrayal tasted sweet. It was oddly erotic to him. Perhaps he should have raged, or knocked her backward but he didn’t want to. He wanted to fuck her again.

“I love you,” he whispered against her mouth. Nothing with her was easy, except sleeping with her. Her name made everything more complicated. She may be content to come with him, but he was sure her family would never allow it. However, baron or not, he would have her. Some how, he’d force Persephone to work it into the deal. As monarch, she could override Thalia’s father’s wishes. In the tavern, Persephone had as much as said Thalia was his for the taking but he hadn’t understood her then.

So far as he was concerned, her father and brother could drown themselves in the ocean. He didn’t need their permission to take what was already his. All at once he pulled away, frowning. “You’re not married yet.” The question came out more like an accusation that she already was. It made sense, why she would have to be stolen away again, rather than come to him in day light. Three months was a long time. Certainly long enough to arrange something if her parents so wished and he couldn’t imagine they didn’t. She’d told him on the island that she wasn’t engaged but he couldn’t trust anything she said back then.

When she answered him, he pressed his hips against her, a wordless appeal for her to give in. If he was someone else, he might have tried to talk her out of loving him, for her own good. His life was dangerous. He himself could be vengeful and cruel. Across the Aegean he was feared and despised.

“You can’t stay,” he murmured, nipping at her neck. “Unless we just...leave Persephone.” By the gods he wanted her again. She would tell him no to leaving, that he must go through with the deal. His hand slid down her arm and grabbed her wrist, bringing it around the back of his neck so that she was stretched out on top of him. In direct contradiction to what he’d just told her, he said, “I need you.”

He needed her now, and he needed her to be with him from tonight onwards. Despite his need, however, he would have to let her go back. Her hair fell softly across his face. Deftly he brushed it aside, drawing her to him again.

He was contentedly exhausted by the time he noticed her face was clearly visible in the weak light. They had nothing left to give and collapsed atop each other on the narrow bed. For the moment, they lay in silence. His fingertips trailed from the swell of her bottom to the top her exposed shoulders. As his eyes closed, his mind drifted dangerously close to sleep.

Today would be long after such an active, sleepless night.

Thalia shifted, rousing him. He watched as she slid out from under his hands. She sat up and he turned onto his stomach, hugging the pillow. It was too early yet for anyone to be awake but he was aware that he wouldn’t sleep after she left.

She leaned down, grabbing her dress from the floor where he’d dropped it. Against the light, her outline was silver, reminding him of another time when he’d watched her in this room, left to want what he could not have. Despite what she assured him and herself, she was still just as much out of his reach now as she was then. Someone was in the way.

The gray of morning glittered across his eyes, giving them a cold cast. When she stood to pull her dress over her head, he sat up and slid into his pants before laying back again. With each clasp, she was closer to leaving. He said nothing as she braided her hair before picking up her cloak.

It was only when she sank back down on the bed, the first waver in her resolve to leave that he could see, that he moved. She ran her fingers along his temple, telling him that she needed to go and implying that it would be best if her brother didn’t find out about their stolen time. His eyes dropped to her mouth as he closed the gap between them. At her insistence that he tell her he loved her again, he shook his head.

“That would give you the ability to leave,” he murmured, nipping the hollow underneath her jaw. The way he sat, her shoulder pressed into the center of his chest so that he was almost wrapped half way around her, blocked her from being able to get up easily. One hand rested flat against her stomach, pressing her to him.

“Thalia,” he kept his voice low. The crew were still sleeping. No boots or creaking of any kind resonated through the ship but he wanted to be careful. Arktos would not be pleased to find her here; not yet. “This engagement,” his hand slid up her body, cupping one of her breasts. “How solid is it?”

Abruptly his hand snaked up and around until he had her chin between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to lock eyes with him. “Because this deal between me and Persephone is for you. If you’re not part of the deal, there isn’t one.”

Perhaps it was naive, but he wasn’t afraid of Persephone’s threat of an armada coming after him. Stravos had already pledged ships for his use. The arrangement could be maintained.

“So tell me, exactly, how it is if I become a baron… that you don’t marry that man.”

The difference in their expectations was fast becoming apparent. She seemed to think he would be content in the knowledge that she loved him, whatever else happened. It was easy to guess that he was the first person she had given her heart to and she seemed to think that love could conquer all barriers. His experience with love was quite different; he understood it to be unstable and transient. It could be ripped away or sold out from underneath him.

Sitting on the bed, with her nuzzling him, he stared straight ahead at the door. A dark frown crossed his features. She held his hand and drew his attention back to her with, “What are you saying, Lukos? ..I...I didn’t consider you a possibility up until a few hours ago. What is it you want from me? From Persephone? Lukos...you have to speak to the Senate. Athenia cannot withstand being controlled by Stravos. You know this….”

He pulled away from her and her growing distress. Circumstances kept shifting. Just to please her, he had entertained Persephone’s offer. Now, Thalia had come to him and given him a taste of what he actually wanted - only to tell him that, in essence, this was all he could reasonably expect.

“If I am a baron,” he said slowly, rising from the bed and walking barefoot over to the corner of the room. “That means I give up the island. I don’t sail whenever I wish like I do now.” His tone was even, deceptively casual. “I sign my life away to your princess and in return, I don’t get killed by Stravos...I trade places with him.”

Lukos slipped his shirt over his head and walked back over to the table beside the bed. Silver rings lay scattered over the surface. He slid each one onto the appropriate finger, smiling at her without a ghost of it reaching his eyes.

“And you are married off to someone neither of us cares about. But that’s all fine. Because we love each other.”

His voice had taken on a dangerous, velvet smoothness. He lowered himself until he knelt at her feet. From here, he looked up into her face, his arms resting on her knees. “I’ll do what you want.” There was no need to rail at her or scream to drive his point home. No matter what she said, or what he did, whether he pledged himself to Elias or to Persephone, they would not be together.

When she married, which he imagined to be sooner rather than later, her husband would go into her on their wedding night and whether she enjoyed it or not didn’t matter to him. He didn’t want someone else with her at all. Thalia wasn’t an island whore, going between Arktos, himself, and whoever else. She was different, meant to be treated differently.

Perhaps it would please him if they could find ways to come together but she would not be available to him every day and every night. In another twist, he wasn’t exactly asking for her hand in marriage, either. He wanted what they had on the island - no strings but an unspoken understanding that she was not to stray, and that he would not. She’d asked him before why he wasn’t married and his answer was still the same; What would he, of all people, do with a wife?

Thalia did not feel like a wife. She was a different entity entirely. Someone with freedoms a wife would never have. No. He didn’t want to marry her and it hadn’t occurred to him that he could try.

After a pause, he sighed and said, “What are you doing here, Thalia?”

It was as if the air was sucked out of the room. He waited for her to answer but instead, she laughed. Without ceremony she forced him back as she shoved his arms off her lap. His eyes narrowed as she stood over him.

Pain etched itself in her features, in the twist of her mouth. The hazel of her eyes shone bright behind the barrier of unshed tears and he waited for them to slide down her beautiful face. He wanted to look away and would have done if she’d not sank to her knees. They were almost on top of each other again. This time, he didn’t want her close. The way she pleaded unnerved him.

“Is it not obvious? Is it not enough for you? What do you WANT from me, Lukos?? I’m giving you.. Everything I have the ability to give you but it’s not good enough. It’s never enough!”

“Thalia-” he tried but her tears spilled over and she grabbed him, silently demanding him to keep eye contact. His pulse quickened as his natural reaction urged him to shove her away but he forced himself to remain in her grip. She didn’t allow him to finish, instead, cutting across him, begging to know how to love him.

“Shhh,” he reached up, covering her hands with his own and firmly took them away from his face. Once her hands were in her lap, he put his arms around her and gathered her to him. Her cries were muffled against his shoulder. The perfume in her hair washed over him. It was easier to focus on that than to consider the suicide she’d just proposed for them.

He could possibly avoid Persephone’s fleet for a while. There was an even slimmer chance of escaping Stravos’s ships. But the two combined? He’d be a fool to try.

“Stop,” he said softly, pulling her back. The wet of her cheeks caught the dawning light and he ran his knuckles over the tear tracks, smoothing them away. It was the hopelessness and the frustration in her gaze, something close to an accusation, that made him think of someone else who’d looked at him the same away long ago.

She’d clung to him too, begging him to save her. Her hair had been softer than Thalia’s, and blonde. They’d been in this very room. His orders had been not to touch her but he’d disobeyed because he had been young, and she had been willing, and they assumed that he would be allowed to buy her freedom. Fate was not kind to either of them.

“You’d never forgive me for stealing you twice,” he searched her face as the momentary smile he wore died.

The temptation to take her up on her offer was overwhelming. They could pretend for a few days, or a few weeks but fate would find them. Instead of being beaten by his captain until he was a bloody mess on the mid deck, he’d be cut down by some nameless soldier of Persephone’s or Elias’s, while Thalia was brought back and either executed for treason or locked in her father’s house until the end of her days.

“You don’t cry,” he said, tipping her chin up with his thumb. “You are not weak. These people made you forget.” His eyes bored into hers, willing her to understand. “Their manners and their palaces are all masks. They are weak. They need us.”

“And I want you,” he said, referring to her earlier question of what he wanted. “If I can’t have you as I am, then I’ll be something else.” To him, she’d made it seem that her marriage could not be changed. He would put this to the test. If Persephone needed him as much as he suspected she did, then this little barrier between them could be kicked down. However, if Thalia was content to do as her family told her, and resign herself to a lifetime of unhappiness just to keep peace, then he’d misjudged who it was he was in love with.

“I need to know who I’m fighting for. Am I asking Persephone for the woman who held a sword to my neck at the temple? Or the one who lets others decide for her.” After a long pause, he added, “Or do you want me to fight for you at all?”

He rested his forehead against hers, letting his gaze fall. “I’d burn the world if you wanted me to. And I’ll go to the Senate, because you ask me to…”

His threat of no deal without her was a hollow one. No matter what happened between himself and her, because she wanted it this badly, he would testify.

“Don’t answer me now,” he murmured. “We have three days until Persephone brings her promises to bear. Think about it...I’ll walk you part way home.”

They’d talked too long. Dawn seeped through the window, brighter with every passing minute. He didn’t want to fight with her. Their battles for power were over. If he could prove himself to her...perhaps she wouldn’t be hesitant.