Kryptic ↟ Deimos

thirty-four: the redbloods

DEIMOS WATCHES THE stars flicker in the heavens above with a heavy heart. Somewhere she's looking up at the same stars. His thoughts haunted by distant memories from a time when everything seemed so much simpler. He's kicked himself a hundred times over for how he reacted. Years of telling himself they should have stayed there that night on the beach only to push Lesya away and leave her more broken than before when fate gave them another chance. He closes his eyes with a heavy sigh.

It's the sight of her in a peplos almost the same color as her eyes that makes his breath catch when he enters the bedchamber in the villa. She combs her fingers through copper waves, twisting some strands away from her face and braiding others, pinning them back in place for the symposium. "What?" Enyo asks, hiding her smile as she notices his lingering gaze in the looking glass.

He steps further into the room, loosening the ties of his vambraces from a day of training new vanguard and scion recruits —all fearless and able fighters, but none could ever match his or Enyo's prowess and brutality. Deimos throat is dry as he looks at her again. The linen and silk combination is gossamer thin, fitting for her disguise as a hetaera for the evening.

Through the fabric, he can make out the scars on her back and the curve of her hips and breasts. "Not used to seeing you in a dress," he notes, voice low and rougher than usual. Rough hands settle on her waist and the warmth of his breath ghosting across her neck and shoulder. Deimos watches her eyes slip shut and the soft sigh that leaves her parted lips. "Aphrodite may be envious–" he presses his lips against the crook of her neck, smiling at the shiver she gives.

"Deimos," Enyo chides, stepping out of his hold before turning to face him —fingers finding the ties of his gold-and-white cuirass. "You still need to get ready," she reminds him, nodding toward the black himation trimmed in gold lying across the table at the edge of the room as she pulls away his breastplate and sets it aside. Shedding his chiton and greaves, Deimos readies himself for the symposium as Enyo finishes her hair.

A smile creeps up onto her rosy lips when she looks at him —the dark fabric draped and pinned over one broad shoulder, leaving the other side of his chest bare. Enyo reaches for him, fingers brushing across a scar barely visible for the dark hair on his pectoral. It is just as rare a sight to see him without armor or weapons. His hands find her waist again, holding her in place as he cranes down, lips barely touching her own— Deimos startles awake at the harsh cry of a passing eagle. He sits up aboard the ship to Messenia, gaze shifting back to the night sky as his heart twists and aches at the bitter reminds of his and Lesya's past.

BLOOD DRIPS FROM Lesya's twin blades as she finds Kassandra to the east of Gla fort. Upon the sunrise, they each decide the last of the Boeotian Champions will fall today. With the Korinthians encamped around Thebes and across the countryside, and weakening Athenian morale from the death of their champions, there is no better time for Sparta to strike. "Is it done?" She asks, wiping her bloody lip on the back of her hand, glancing around Kopais Perch, looking for any sign of Aristaios.

Kassandra nods, eyes flicking from Lesya to the smoke billowing into the air from the fortress —the signal to prepare to march on the Athenians she promised Stentor. "Aye," she answers, turning and looking in the direction her father had gone —a felucca moves across the lake, "but Nikolaos claimed the finishing blow."

Lesya raises a brow, surprised to hear any mention of the general after what happened in Megaris all the years ago when her and Kassandra's lives were first entangled. "He will not come to our aid," Kassandra says, seeing the question budding in Lesya's laurel eyes, "he does not wish to sully this victory for Stentor." Nikolaos' dismissiveness of the campaign to help his homeland leaves her disheartened but hopeful that her broken family can be made whole again given time.