Athenian Slave (Book 2)

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Alexios stood at the prow of his ship. Looking out over the sparkling waves. The sun scorching his skin. The horrors of his dreams blow away by the stinging wind. His hair flying around, an unruly mess he did not bother to tie back. He needed the elements to take him away. Make him forget. He had had pain in his life. A pain that would never leave him. A pain he hid from all those who knew him. The only ones other than him who knew of that pain…were now dead.

It was with a grim satisfaction that he thought of this. Theod always remembered their fathers as heroes. And Theod’s had been. But his father. His father was the monster hiding behind the charm. The sharpened teeth of the tamed wolf that could turn on its master at any point. He had learned to live with it, learned to stay silent, and learned to get past how his father had used him. He chose to remember the good times. The people who had entered his life and changed it for the better.

As a spray of the salty sea hit him, droplets clinging before dripping down in rivulets, along his skin. He thought of what he had witnessed only a full moon ago. He had walked away from a friend and fellow warrior. He had walked away and had not said any sort of farewell. A farewell the warrior had deserved. All because he could not stand to watch the joy he had found in his family. He had come back to find his woman and his twins accepting him as if he had not been through the fires of hades themselves.

He could admit to himself, if no one else. He was jealous. He had left a warrior he had fought beside for ten long, hard, painful years. And left him without the respect he was due. All because of common jealousy. He wanted what Theod had found with Elpis. But who would want a man shrouded in darkness, who was comfortable with lies, and traded secrets. He had no issue with using people to his gain in order for him to gain the information he needed. He had been looking out for himself for so long, he was not accustomed to being the one who could not gain what he wanted. Not the way he knew how.

Shaking his head, he looked back out, concentrating on the rolling, crashing waves. His gaze focused upon the shore that was gradually becoming clearer, and clearer as the day wore on. Yet he did not move. He needed to learn how to live a normal life once more. He had been a warrior every day for the last ten years. Unsure each and every day if he was going to live or join his ghost in the afterlife. He had no idea how to be the ‘normal’ the people of Athens would expect.

The last time he had visited. After he had word his uncle had left him his entire estate. For only Zeus knew the reason why. Because he surely did not. All he knew was that his uncle had considered his son a weakling, and so had left his property to the Trojan War hero Alexios. Only Alexios had a feeling deep inside that the reason it had happened was to try and recompense him on the fact his uncle never stopped the torture he went through as a child. He knew. Of course he had known. As his father’s younger brother, he had to know exactly what he had done to Alexios. But he had not changed a thing. It was his father’s right to treat him however he wanted.