Page 13 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

T he council chamber smelled like a funeral that hadn’t happened yet—myrrh and sweat and the particular stench of men deciding who should die for their pride.

Things that should have tipped me off this wasn’t a tea party: the guards blocking the exits, the way no one would meet my eyes, and Archon Theron’s smile—sharp enough to cut glass and twice as cold.

Bebe sat on her designated cushion, the silver silk sticking to her thighs as sweat dripped down her back.

They’d dressed her up like a doll again this morning—silver ribbons threaded through her bob, enough jewelry to sink a yacht, the works.

Now she understood why. You don’t sacrifice a goddess in rags. You make her sparkle first.

“Ta sēmata dēla eisin” the omens are clear, Theron intoned, his beard quivering with the kind of righteous fury that usually preceded something horrible. “Forty-three dead at Plataea. The Spartans at our gates. Athens suffers because we have harbored a Pseudoprophētis ,” Theron spat— false prophet.

False prophet. Rich, coming from a man who probably couldn’t prophesy his way out of a paper bag.

“Perhaps we misinterpreted—” General Kleomenes started, but Theron’s hand slashed through the air like a conductor cutting off a sour note.

“There is no misinterpretation. The Silver Siren promised victory. Instead, we received slaughter.” He turned those cold eyes on her, and Bebe felt her spine try to crawl out through her back. “The gods demand recompense.”

Lysias stood by the wall, still as marble. His jaw clenched so tight she could hear his teeth grinding from across the room. His eyes fixed on a point somewhere above her head—anywhere but on her face.

Look at me, she wanted to scream. You dressed me up, paraded me around, made me your divine puppet. At least have the guts to watch the finale.

“The question,” Councilman Alexios said, rising from his seat with the kind of leisurely malice that made speakeasy raids look friendly, “is not whether she dies, but how she serves Athens first.”

The room went quiet as a held breath.

“She claims divine favor? Eíthe! — so be it. Then let her prove it through service.” Alexios circled her cushion like a shark who’d spotted chum.

“Then let her prove it through service. My floors need scrubbing. The barracks need... therapeía. Entertainment .” His smile could have curdled milk.

“Let the soldiers who lost brothers at Plataea find comfort in her divine presence. Then, when she’s served her purpose, we give her to the gods, spill her blood to appease them. ”

Someone laughed—nervous, ugly. Another councillor nodded slowly, considering.

Bebe’s nails dug into her palms hard enough to draw blood. The silver bracelets on her wrists suddenly felt like handcuffs. She caught Lysias’s reflection in a polished shield on the wall—his face had gone the color of old parchment, but he didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

So much for protection, General. Guess your power only extends so far.

“No one,” Alexios continued, his voice dropping to a serpent’s hiss, “makes a mockery of Athens.”

“Agreed,” Theron said, already reaching for the ceremonial blade at his belt. “Guards, take?—”

The doors exploded inward like someone had set off dynamite.

Actually, no—dynamite would have been quieter.

Kassander of Thessaly burst through the entrance, swords already singing, and the first guard’s head separated from his shoulders before anyone could process what was happening. Blood sprayed across the marble in an arc that would have been artistic if it weren’t so horrifying.

Well, this escalated faster than gin prices after Prohibition.

“ Hyioi choírou — sons of pigs ,” Kassander growled—guards rushing forward, councilmen scrambling backward, Lysias finally, finally reaching for his sword.

Too late.

Kassander moved through the room like a tornado in a speakeasy—all controlled violence and devastating efficiency.

His blade caught another guard in the gut, twisted, pulled free with a wet sound that would haunt Bebe’s dreams for the foreseeable future.

A third guard tried to flank him, but Kassander grabbed the man’s spear, yanked him forward, and drove his knee into the guard’s face with a crunch like breaking crab shells.

“Stop him!” Theron shrieked, scrambling behind his chair like it could protect him from six feet of the most feared warrior in all of Thessaly.

Alexios—brave, stupid Alexios—actually tried. He pulled a ceremonial dagger from his belt, lunged at Kassander’s back.

Kassander spun, gold hair catching the light, caught Alexios’s wrist, and bent it backward until something snapped like a party favor. The councilman’s scream cut off when Kassander’s fist connected with his jaw, sending him sprawling into the wall with a sound like tenderizing meat.

Three more guards down. Five. Six. The floor was slick with blood now, the marble no longer white.

This is what happens when you cage a wolf and poke it with sticks. Eventually, it remembers it has teeth.

Through it all, Kassander moved with brutal grace—every strike purposeful, every kill necessary. His leather armor was splattered with blood that wasn’t his, his golden hair had come loose from its tie, hanging in his face like some savage god of war.

He reached Bebe in thirteen seconds that felt like thirteen years.

“Get up,” he commanded.

She was already standing, had been since the first head rolled. “I can walk?—”

“No time.”

He grabbed her by the waist, hauled her up and over his shoulder like a sack of very expensive flour. Her dress tore—a long rip from hip to hem that exposed entirely too much leg.

“Better my captive than their corpse,” he growled, and she felt the words rumble through his chest where her stomach pressed against his shoulder.

“Kassander!” Lysias’s voice cracked like a whip. “Put her down!”

Kassander turned just enough for Bebe to see Lysias’s face—torn between duty and something else, something that might have been regret if she’d had time to analyze it.

“You had your chance to protect her, General.” Kassander’s voice could have frozen the Mediterranean. “You chose Athens instead.”

Then he was moving, running, and Bebe’s world became a blur of marble and blood and the sound of pursuit.

Her hip banged against his shoulder blade with each stride. His hand gripped her thigh—high enough to be scandalous, firm enough to keep her from falling, hot enough to burn through her dress. She could feel his muscles bunch and release as he ran, could smell the sweat and leather and violence.

Note to self: Being rescued by a barbarian warrior is exactly as uncomfortable as it sounds. Also, considerably more arousing than it has any right to be.

Behind them, came shouts and clanging bronze. Lysias calling orders, guards responding. The sound of Athens realizing its pet oracle had just been stolen by the very mercenary they’d insulted.

“You’re insane,” she gasped, blood rushing to her head from being upside down.

“Yes,” he agreed, taking a corner so fast one of her bracelets flew off and clattered against the wall like expensive rain.

“They’ll kill you for this.”

“Let them try.”

He burst through another set of doors—the kitchens. Servants scattered like startled pigeons, dropping amphorae that shattered on the stone floor. Oil spread in golden pools, mixing with wine and water and the blood still dripping from Kassander’s swords.

“Where are we going?” she managed between bounces.

“Away.”

“That’s not a plan!”

“It’s the only plan that matters.”

He kicked open the servants’ entrance, and suddenly they were in the street. The real Athens—not the marble halls and perfect gardens, but the Athens of fish vendors and beggars, of narrow alleys that stank of human waste and ambition.

People dove out of their way. A few recognized her—the Silver Siren, slung over a barbarian’s shoulder like plunder—and she heard the whispers start, spreading like wildfire in a gin mill.

“Argyrē Seirēn!—the Silver Siren!”

“You can put me down now,” she said, trying to maintain some dignity while upside down with her dress torn to her hip.

“No.”

“I can run!”

“In those?” He squeezed her thigh. “ Hypódēmata Athēna?ká—Athenian slippers. You’d last thirty feet.”

Thirty feet? I’m from New York, you Bronze Age beefcake.

They burst onto the docks, and there it was—a ship, lean and predatory as its captain, black as night. The Nereid , according to the paint on its hull. Thessalian crew members were already casting off, like they’d been waiting for exactly this moment.

“Did you plan this?” she gasped as he carried her up the gangplank.

“I plan everything.” He swung her down from his shoulder—finally—but kept his hands on her waist, steadying her as the ship lurched away from the dock. “The only question was whether you’d come willing or over my shoulder.”

She looked down at herself—dress torn, hair a disaster, covered in other people’s blood.

“And you chose shoulder.”

“You weren’t exactly in a position to choose willing.”

Then she grinned, slid an armful of jewelry off her arms onto the deck with a clatter. “Payment for my passage.” She touched the necklaces. “I’m keeping these, I’ll need them to live.”

He smiled, nodding to one of the men who scooped up the gold and silver bracelets and rings she’d shed like party gloves.

Behind them, Athens erupted. She could see guards flooding the docks, Lysias at their head, his perfect composure finally, completely shattered. He looked older somehow, watching his oracle—his responsibility—sail away on a Thessalian ship.

For a moment, their eyes met across the widening water. She saw his lips move in what might have been her name, or what might have been a curse.

Then he pressed his hand against her lower back, turning her away from Athens, from Lysias, from the golden cage she’d been dying in by degrees.

“Welcome to freedom, silver girl,” he said, and his smile was sharp as bronze, bright as blood, beautiful as disaster. “Try not to die.”

The wind caught the sails, and the Nereid leaped forward like a horse given its head. Athens fell away—marble and politics and sacrifice—leaving only the sea, the sky, and a future that smelled like salt and tasted like chaos.

Well, Bebe thought, gripping the rail as the ship rolled, at least this cage moves.