Phobia ☤ Alexios

eleven: pearls and broken spears

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MOONLIGHT BATHES THE white stone buildings of Athens in a silver glow though the small fires scattered around the city fight the cold light with golden warmth. Alexios finds Irene where she is nearly every evening -sitting on the open roof beneath the pergola.

"I found these while seeing to one of Perikles' tasks." It's a partial truth. He'd been on the beach opening clams and oysters for hours under the hot sun hunting the gems. Alexios places seven pearls in her palm. One is pink, another a deep grey, and the others are white as seafoam.

She turns them over in her hand and glances up -cheeks flushed with warmth. Pearls had always been one of her favorite things. As a girl she'd walk along the Ephesus shore, picking discarded pearls and sharks teeth out of the sand. Her small chest of trinkets had been left behind in Persia. "I love pearls," Irene remarks -maybe one day she will have enough to string a necklace or hairpiece.

Alexios quickly averts his eyes when her gaze shifts from the gems to him. He begins undoing the ties of his greaves and bracers. The day is drawing to a close and within the confines of the villa, he feels at ease.

Irene tells him of her life in Persia before fleeing to Athens when he asks –of learning strategy under Hydarnes and having the general be her instructor. Though the memories she is most fond of is when the old general would tell her stories beneath the stars. Irene holds those stories dear to her heart. "And what of you?" She asks in turn.

"Not much to tell," he says with a shrug and bitter tone, "my pater threw me off a fucking mountain." Irene sits back, breath catching in her throat. His tale confirms what she had suspected on Samos. Before her is the boy from the mountain she had first seen in a dream so many years ago.

Alexios leans against the stone railing, crossing his arms. "I survived though and learned to look after my own." Markos had taken him under his wing, but more often than naught, there was trouble to be dealt with. Especially whenever Markos cooked up a new scheme to earn drachmae quick. Everybody benefits he would say, even if Alexios walked away with more bruises and cuts than drachmae. In the end, he supposed it was all for the best –Kephallonia turned him into a survivor.

The princess picks up the broken spear at his side. "But how do you have the other half of the spear?"

He wraps his hand around the wooden shaft, fingers brushing over Irene's. A familiar jolt of energy spreads through them both. She lets go of the spear and watches as he trails his fingertips along the edge of the blade -reverent. "My mater's pater was Leonidas," Alexios admits.

Irene pales. He is the grandson of Leonidas. She is the granddaughter of Xerxes. "What if fate brought us together to be enemies?" There is a quiver in her voice as she asks the question. It doesn't seem right for a Persian and Spartan to be on friendly terms after what happened at Thermopylae.

Alexios cups her cheek -his hands are rough and firm. "I don't think it did," he tells her, confident they had found each other for another reason -even if it has yet to be revealed. He drags his thumb across a faint, silvery scar on her cheekbone and shakes his head with a soft smile. "Why is it so easy to talk with you?" He asks.

She laughs and unwittingly leans into his touch. "I've asked myself that too." Zephyr had instilled in her that anonymity was the best protection, to be mistrustful of people until their intentions were revealed. Few people in Athens know of her past and those that do have been sworn to secrecy by Perikles. Irene can't place exactly why she trusts Alexios, but she does.

"Alexios," she breathes, glancing down to his broken half of the spear. "The spear showed me what happened to you on the mountain. It's done so many times."