Page 12 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

A thens slept the way drunk men do—noisy at first, then all at once.

Bebe waited until the lyres went silent and the last of the toasts collapsed into snores, generals lay sprawled beneath fig trees in the courtyard, wreaths crooked on their brows, servants curled like commas in pools of moonlight.

The air was warm with wine and roasted lamb and the faint tang of smoke from torches guttering low.

Lysias had left her early with a careful bow and a warning look as he told her to rest. He’d dressed her in a silk chiton the color of pale pink, added narrow gold cuffs to her wrists that chimed softly when she moved, and a thin chain at her waist that might as well have been a leash.

Rest, he’d said, as if sleep could be ordered like wine.

Instruction manuals needed: time travel, assassins, and how to politely decline a public stoning.

She eased past the sleeping doorkeeper, slipped off her sandals, and hugged the cool stone wall where the corridors bent toward the outer gate.

She’d mapped the palace by habit during her time here—courtyards, storerooms, the little passage where the kitchen girls shared figs and gossip.

Tonight the guards had drunk deep in celebration of a “glorious victory” over a Spartan scouting party.

The moon made a silver road across the flagstones. Bebe followed it.

At the corner before the gate, a shadow lifted its head and spoke.

“Σ?γα.” Quiet.

She stopped so fast her bracelets kissed. A figure leaned against a column where ivy climbed like dark water, arms folded, one ankle crossed over the other with indecent ease.

Kassander of Thessaly. Of course.

“You walk like someone who has decided she no longer belongs in a cage,” he said. His voice was low, unhurried. Sober.

Bebe drew herself up, chin high. “And you lurk like someone with nothing better to do.”

The corner of his mouth moved—almost a smile, not kind. “Better than sleeping in my own vomit. Your generals chose … rest.”

She glanced toward the gate. Beyond it, the city breathed—distant laughter, a dog barking, the sea’s slow heart. Between her and that sound stood a row of spearpoints glinting under torchlight. A dozen men, maybe more. Not drunk. Not asleep.

“So.” She smoothed the silk at her hip like she could press her fear flat. “I suppose this is the part where you shout for them.”

“If I wished to shout,” he said, “you would be back in your room already.”

She weighed him. Barefoot, she stood almost to his shoulder. Up close, he smelled of leather and horse and clean steel, not wine. The scar at his brow looked paler in the moonlight; the one at his jaw was a darker curve, like a punctuation mark someone angry had left on his face.

“Why haven’t you left Athens?” she asked.

“Because I have not yet taken what I came for.”

“And what was that? Money? Grain?”

He tilted his head. “I do not take what a city cannot afford to lose.”

She rolled her eyes. “Spoken like a man who burns things for sport.”

“Spoken like a man who knows rot when he smells it.” His gaze slid past her to the gate.

“You think you will reach that door. Between here and there are twenty spears, three men who are not as drunk as they pretend, and one officer who owes me blood. Your feet are bare. Your bracelets tell the guards where you are with every step.”

Bebe’s wrists burned with sudden hatred for Lysias’s pretty gifts. “?ληθ?;” True?

Kassander’s brows rose, faintly amused that she’d chosen his tongue. “?ληθ?. If you fight, they will call it madness. If you beg, they will call it guilt.”

“Then I won’t beg.” She looked at him squarely. “Move aside.”

He didn’t. “Tell me, μ?ντι? — seer —what did the gods whisper tonight as the wine flowed? Did they tell you how quickly Athenians tire of their idols?”

She could have laughed. She could have cried. Instead, she answered in Greek, crisp as ice. “Ο? θεο? πα?ζουσιν. The gods play games.”

Something like approval flickered in his eyes. “Then hear a mortal truth. When a city grows afraid, it cages its miracles. And when it starves, it trades them for bread.”

The word sacrifice slid between them without needing to be spoken.

“Is that what you’re waiting for?” Bebe asked softly. “To see whether they break me?”

“I am waiting,” he said, “to see whether you break yourself.”

Silence. Beyond the gate, the dog barked again. A cup rolled somewhere and clinked to a halt.

“Why do you care?” she said.

“I do not.” His gaze rested on her a beat too long. “But I prefer to be right.”

She almost smiled at that—the honesty of it. “You’re very sure of yourself.”

He shrugged one shoulder, warrior-casual. “When I am not, I die.”

“Poetic.” She shifted, bracelets whispering. “Let me pass.”

He stepped aside a single pace—enough for her to see beyond him to the line of spearpoints, the officer with his head bowed but not asleep, the lazy circle of a torch’s ember. Enough to taste a freedom already denied.

She exhaled. “Of course.”

“Περιμ?νετε.” Wait, he said, as if to the night.

“For what? For them to decide whether I am a goddess or kindling?”

“For dawn.” His voice cut like flint. “By dawn they will have sobered. By dawn they will have counted the dead from their ‘glorious victory.’ By dawn, fear will need a face.” He looked at her. “Do not give it yours in an alley.”

“Then what should I give them?”

“Nothing.” He let the word fall heavy. “Not your words. Not your tears. Not your cleverness that makes men hate themselves.” He took a step closer, invading the space where perfume and heat meet the edge of sense. “When the wind turns, stand still. Make them come to you. Make them choose.”

“And if they choose my blood?”

His answer was simple. “Then I will take you.”

She wanted to ask how. Through twenty spears? Through marble walls and council oaths and the weight of a city’s fear? But his face said he was not boasting. It was a thing decided inside him already, like weather.

She laughed instead, because it was that or shake. “You can’t carry me past all of them.”

He didn’t smile. “I can kill enough.”

The bracelets rang with her pulse. “You’re … monstrous.”

“No.” He shook his head once. “I am honest.”

From the arcade behind them came the scrape of a sandal, a muttered curse, the soft clatter of a spear butt. A guard turning in his sleep. Another not sleeping at all.

Kassander lifted his chin at the shadows. “Go back the other way, ?σφαλ?στερον. ” Safer .

“And you?”

“I will do what I came to do.” He stepped back into the ivy-shadow until the moonlight made a pale hook of his scar and nothing more. “Listen to me for once, silver girl. Athens does not love forever. When it ceases to love you, it will say the gods commanded it. Μν?μην ?χε. Remember. ”

She met his eyes and answered in low Greek, a blade wrapped in silk. “Ο? σ? ε?μι. I am not yours.”

Something like a real smile cut across his mouth then—brief, bright, gone. “Not yet.”

Boots sounded at the far end of the walkway. Voices. A torch flared. The officer who owed him blood lifted his head, eyes narrowing.

Bebe turned. The bracelets told on her with every bell-like kiss. She wanted to rip them off, fling them into the fountain, let them sink like bright lies.

She went the way Kassander had indicated, through the colonnade where the frescoes watched with timeless patience, past the sleeping doorkeeper, and back into the room where Lysias had ordered her to rest. She closed the door softly, leaned her forehead against the wood, and let her breath come back by degrees.

Outside, the city’s heartbeat thudded. The sea against the stone, drunk laughter winding down, a dog’s bark, metal on metal. Somewhere in that rhythm, Kassander’s words threaded like a dissonant drum.

When a city grows afraid, it cages its miracles. And when it starves, it trades them for bread.

She slid the gold cuffs from her wrists and set them on the table. They looked like sunlight. They felt like shackles.

In the courtyard, someone laughed and then hiccuped and then vomited. The night returned to its stupid, mortal noises.

Bebe lay down without undressing, eyes open to the dark, and tried to pretend the room did not tilt. She could almost hear the sea if she held perfectly still. She could almost believe in the morning.

Wait, he’d said. Stand still. Make them choose.

She thought of the council, of Theron’s trembling beard, of Alexios’s fish-white eyes and the way words like θυσ?α—sacrifice —had begun to whisper at the edges of conversations when they thought she could not hear.

“Let them choose,” she whispered into the dark. “Let them try.”

The torch outside guttered and flared. A breeze slid under the door and lifted the fine hair at her nape. For the first time since Athens had named her their miracle, their goddess, she did not pray for the gods to interfere.

She prayed for a man with a scar and a promise he hadn’t needed to speak aloud.