Heir of the Gods

Ch. 4: The Price Exacted

Calix held the cloak over his chest to keep his medals from making too much noise. The quiet was welcome—the touch of the rich wool was hateful.

He managed to get to his rooms spotted only by a single slave girl, who glanced once at him, then trained her eyes quickly on the floor. He locked his door behind him and let out a long sigh.

Closing his eyes, he smirked. He could feel the burn of small, artificial scratches radiating across his back. But he'd seen the princess' hidden claws before that, when she'd used her prick brother's own knife to remove him from her rightful place.

She was interesting, at the very least. And with a little more practice... he grinned to himself at the idea. He stifled a yawn, then opened his eyes. 

Interesting...and ruthless. But he didn't mind, considering that the game she played suited his own needs just as well.

He quite honestly couldn't believe his own luck, and considered examining it, then decided the princess was right. Perhaps the gods had seen fit to grant him this small relief for once. Questioning it might encourage them to again withdraw their favor. 

Calix pushed himself away from the door, stopping when the cloak swayed and the medals on his chest rang against each other. Breathing deeply in an attempt to control his temper, he removed the general's cloak from his shoulder and held it out in front of him.

The expensive wool was finely woven, dyed a bloody shade that would hide the severity of most wounds. The clasps were not silver, but rather brightly shined steel, treated to resist the corrosion of rain, sweat and blood.

It was something he had once longed for.

His temper snapped. He threw the cloak across the room with a roar, watching it come to rest on the dark stone before the empty fireplace. 

Everything in him wanted to burn it.

A whore. He was no better than a common whore, bought and paid for. 

That cloak had not been earned. He had just begun his long climb to that rank last winter, when Arcturus had come into his tent grinning, holding a letter that declared him a centurion after the skirmish at Verna.

Calix jerked himself away from the memory and shed his coat, placing it carefully over the back of a nearby chair. His fingers brushed over the newest addition, his heart darkening.

Sound filled his head first, as it often did. The clatter of steel against steel. The screams of men and horses. The squelch and suck of the mud under his boots. The raven's caw of his own hoarse voice as he called out orders.

Grana had not been a single-handed charge. Fifty good men had gone with him into hell. Much to his horror, he and four others were the only ones to emerge again from those cursed river caves.

But they were common men, so their lives had meant nothing to the other commanders, to his father, to the king. Only Arcturus had understood why he'd broken down crying, on his knees in the freezing mud and stinging rain when he'd heard the news. Only Arcturus had been brave enough to dare approach him when his sorrow had turned to rage and he'd begun screaming, cursing the gods and their cruelty.

Calix quickly shed the rest of his clothes and went into the bathing room. Sitting on the low bench running along the edge of the pool, he let the sound of rushing water hitting red marble fill the spaces in his mind. The spaces prone to horrific memory and worse imaginings. 

The burning water lapped at his feet, then his ankles. Only when the pool was filled nearly to overflowing did he turn off the faucets. He leaned his head back against the hard stone, letting the water soak in—imagining the roiling darkness always so present within him seeping from his skin and staining the water.