Tara (16 page)

“I’ll make it quick, philos.” He sounded more in pain now than he ever had.

“They’ll kill you if they find out it was you.”

“The gods would want me with you. We are déno̱ zév̱gos, they won’t allow us to be apart.”

Ah. There was the reason he was willing to do it. He thought they would meet again in the afterlife. That his gods would reunite them so they could be free of pain and suffering.

“I don’t belong to your gods, Leonidas. My own pantheon has twice claimed me, they will not release me.” Tara’s voice cracked and for a moment she thought he might be crying, but the shadow across his face made it too difficult to tell.

“I will speak to Pluto then, perhaps he would release my soul from Hades and give my soul to Eltera. I will find you in the afterlife, philos. I swear it. We must be quick before kyrios notices our absence.” His voice was desperate, and she couldn’t take the hope from him. What did she know of the Romans and their gods? Perhaps they would be so kind.

Tara wound her hair atop her head and laid down on the ground, from there she spoke again, “Eltera would be lucky to have you.” The face of her goddess, her adopted mother, swam in her mind, the pride on her face when she had taken the stone knife and given it to her father. The humor and gratitude when she’d watched Tara learn to fight with knives, the glory of so many battles won.

The horror of one battle lost.

Eltera had loved her, had remade her into someone strong and brave. Had given her eternal life to protect their people, and to serve her.

Tara sat up suddenly and the axe buried into the earth in front of her. Leonidas choked out a sound and came to his knees next to her, and this time he hugged her against him tightly. She could feel his tears in her hair and on her shoulder as he shook with quiet sobs.

Her eyes couldn’t leave the sight of the axe buried in the earth. He really would have done it for her, even though it would have torn him apart.

“I should have never asked you for this. I’m so sorry Leonidas.” She spoke through her own tears and he didn’t respond. “I feel like I can’t go on, but I can’t end the life Eltera gave me.”

“So you will stay?” His rough voice wrenched her heart more, and she nodded against his chest.

“Yes, I will.”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to live without you.” He confessed to her hair. In the dark of the night, in the quiet of the field, he finally showed her that all of it affected him too.

“You would have let them kill you.”

“It would have been mercy. Before they bound me to you, there was nothing but darkness. Having you to talk to, having someone who cared, that gave me something to wake up for.” He spoke quietly and slowly relaxed his arms around her and she was able to take a full breath. “Without you there would be nothing.”

“I won’t leave you, Leonidas, I swear it. Let’s go back.”

It took them longer to get back. Neither wanted to lie down in the tent of their master and resign themselves to their lives again. Their confessions had opened up a conversation between them that couldn’t be forgotten. Leonidas may be able to detach, but he couldn’t deny it bothered him anymore.

This time when they slept he pressed his back against her front and she did her best to wrap her arms around his broad shoulders as they fell asleep.

***

Eltera’s light came and went in the morning, but in the quiet of the camp at dawn she didn’t move from Leonidas’ side. She wrapped her arm around him again so he would know he wasn’t alone in his sleep. His muscles relaxed unconsciously and it made her smile that in all the world he trusted only her.

And she had almost betrayed that trust.

She wouldn’t be so stupid again, she wouldn’t crack under the pressure. She would figure out how to detach so she could be as strong for him as he was for her. She must have fallen back to sleep as Eltera’s power faded, because she was jerked awake by shouting and rough hands pulling her up and away from Leonidas.

“Did you plan to kill me?!” Kyrios shouted down at them as several soldiers dragged Leonidas to his feet, his own eyes as bewildered as hers.

Their master lifted the axe in his hands, and Tara screamed, “No, kyrios, never!”

“I was speaking to Leonidas!” Her master’s rage activated the bands on her wrists and she buckled in the arms of the soldiers as sudden, sharp pain crept up her arms, leaving her breathless as she felt like her ribs were burning and breaking all at once.

“No, kyrios.” Leonidas had already detached, she could hear it in the dead calm of his voice, and see it in the relaxed muscles of his body.

“Liar!” Their master backhanded him hard across the face and through her own pain she winced as blood appeared on his lip. “Take them outside.”

The soldiers pushed them out into the morning light, a small crowd gathering as word spread through the camp of the commotion in their strategos’ tent.

“Kneel, both of you!” The bands activated and it didn’t take much prompting from the soldiers for Tara to collapse to her knees. They had Leonidas several feet away, too far away to reach out to him.

“If not to kill me, why have this axe? I know only Leonidas could have held it with any accuracy.” His voice seethed with rage as he drew a short sword and moved closer to Leonidas.

“NO!” Tara shouted through the pain, even as it doubled when his rage focused on her. “It was for me, kyrios, it was for me! I begged Leonidas to kill me, it was my fault. Mine alone. Leonidas refused!”

“Then why have the axe?” He stepped in front of her and backhanded her hard enough to send her to the dirt at her side. Compared to the pain from the bands, the strike was background noise. She pushed herself back up.

“I took it, to try and convince him to kill me.” Tara spoke clearly, ignoring the pain in her mouth, and her arms, and the feeling of suffocating as the muscles in her chest clenched.

“DO NOT LIE TO ME!” He roared at her and the bands glowed so brightly they stung her eyes, and it felt like all of her bones were breaking at once. When it finally started to fade she realized she was sobbing, and he grabbed her face. “Tell me the truth. What happened?”

Her lungs felt like they were filled with fire already, and she knew a lie wouldn’t leave her lips with the command he had given. “The axe was to kill me.” True.

“Who got the axe?” He shouted the question as if he were an actor and the gathering crowd his audience. Tara bit down on her tongue, tasting blood. There was no version of truth she could give to that question. She didn’t even know where Leonidas had obtained it.

“I did, kyrios.” Leonidas spoke and looked at her in pain, and she wanted to curse him, to scream at him, but it would only make his confession more valid.

“To kill Tara?”

“Yes, kyrios.” Leonidas bowed his head, and Tara lunged for him but the soldiers held her back by her hair and her arms. The bands ripped pain through her again and she sobbed. She wanted to shut his mouth, hold it closed so he couldn’t confess.

“You would take my property from me?” Their master raised his voice as he pulled Leonidas’ head back up by his hair.

“I wanted to set her free the only way I could.” He didn’t show an ounce of fear, always the cool water to her raging fire. She was screaming and sobbing. He was still and stone faced.

Even with the pain from the bands, the two soldiers were barely enough to keep her back from him. Spots danced in her vision as her body threatened to faint under the strain. She pleaded, “It was all my idea, kyrios! I speak the truth! You know I cannot lie to you after your command. Please, punish me! Do not punish Leonidas for being the one to hear my request!”

“Silence her!” One of the soldiers wrapped his rough hand over her mouth and she screamed again, the pain from the bands as she fought making her dizzy and sick.

“You brought a weapon into my tent. You admit to planning to kill my property, you admit to wanting to free a slave, even if that freedom was death.” Kyrios spoke in a frighteningly soft tone.

“Yes.” Leonidas locked eyes with him, and she knew the moment their master made the decision. She screamed until her throat felt raw, but it didn’t stop the short sword from coming up in a swift arc, slitting Leonidas’ throat.

The soldiers held him a moment as his blood painted his chest red in the morning light, a choking sound filled the air, and the light went out of his sky blue eyes. Tara felt something inside her break as she screamed. She was alone.

Without Leonidas, none of it mattered.

“He killed him in front of you?” Alaric was staring at her with an open mouth.

The cold separation in her body was the same as the first time she had successfully detached, when the pain of Leonidas’ death had snapped something inside her. It had made her ‘self’ a loose thing that she could move, that she could send somewhere else when reality was too much.

After that day it hadn’t mattered what they did to her, she was never there anyway. She slept horribly without him near her, even for centuries after. There had been nothing but the cold fog inside her repeating her nightmares.

Then she’d found music to fill the empty spaces inside her.
That
had been some comfort.

That day she’d cried so hard for him that she’d damaged her vocal chords. Her sobs had continued until morning, and it was the last time she had felt anything that strongly. Even now, the cool buffer of being detached kept the memories from completely tearing her apart.

Alaric had asked her a question.
What was it?
Tara forced herself to return to the present.

“Oh. Yes,
kyrios
killed him.” Her voice was empty.

“
Kyrios
means?”

“Master. It was the only thing I was ever allowed to call him.” She’d hated him with a fury that rivaled the gods before Leonidas died. Afterwards she was too empty to hate him.

“Did he – did he keep you?”

“For another few months, then he died in a battle. His soldiers believed it was because he broke Leonidas and me apart. If that was true, it was the only kindness Apollo or any of those gods ever gave me.”

Now
that
sounded bitter.

“So that’s why you’re so calm in the face of everything? Because he died?” Alaric said it as gently as possible, but the observation still hurt for some reason.

“I’m calm because I have to detach from this life to survive it. That’s what Leonidas had figured out so quickly, and what he tried to teach me. If I detach, then none of it matters.” Tara winced as she breathed deeper than she should have and the torn muscle over her stomach sent pain rushing through her.

“It does matter.”

Oh no.
He was contemplating something stupid. Tara could see it in the way his brows knit together.

“No.” Her voice came out stronger than it should have with the blood loss and the pain she was in. “No, Alaric. You will not do anything stupid. You will deliver me to Luca, or whomever Luca tells you to. You’re not betraying the man who saved you for no reason.”

Alaric stared at her hard. “I can talk –“

Tara raised her hand and stopped him. “No. There is no saving me, Alaric. Gormahn doesn’t forgive, and he will not forget that I am meant to serve.” He clenched his jaw and she knew he was angry with her, but she’d accept that if it meant he lived. “I’m not losing another good person over a moment of weakness.”

Light suffused her skin just then, starting out faint before it grew to the bright golden light of the gods’ power, and the pain and exhaustion in her body just melted away. Tara hadn’t even realized how much the room smelled like blood until the scent of rain overwhelmed it. Alaric didn’t even notice, he kept arguing.

A bitter laugh burst out of his mouth. “Me? Good? Did you already forget what I told you? I let my father kill my mother twenty feet down the hall from me. I’ve killed men with my own hands.”

“I’ve killed men too, Alaric.” Tara responded with a frigid tone as her strength returned, the glow a steady brightness in her skin.

“I signed up to kill a man, kidnap his girlfriend, and deliver her to some other man because he had enough money to pay me to do it.” He shoved himself to a standing position and rubbed his hand across his mouth as he raised his voice, “I agreed to deliver you like you were some object. I’m no better than your kyr- krysis –”