Page 5 of A Spark in Time (A Knights Through Time Romance #21)

T he room they gave her was nothing more than a gilded cage dressed up as hospitality.

It was nicer than the Plaza Hotel, if the Plaza had been designed by someone who thought comfort meant “lots of cushions” and privacy meant “no door, just a curtain.” The bed was essentially a wooden frame with leather straps woven across it, topped with enough pillows and blankets to smother a small army.

The walls were painted with scenes that made her cheeks burn—women dancing in various states of undress, Zeus pursuing nymphs in shapes that ranged from creative to disturbing, and what appeared to be an instructional guide to activities she’d only heard whispered about at Vassar.

Subtle, she thought. Really subtle.

She’d been here three hours—she knew because she’d been counting the shadow’s movement across the floor, her only clock in this timeless place.

The guard outside hadn’t moved except to shift his spear from one hand to the other.

She could see his shadow through the curtain, a reminder that “guest” and “prisoner” were separated by very thin semantics.

The slaves—and she had to force herself to think the word, not “servants”—had stripped her, bathed her, dressed her in a chiton that felt like wearing a bedsheet with pretensions.

They’d tried to do something with her bob, given up, and settled for a gold band around her head that made her look like a cut-rate goddess.

They’d taken her dress.

She’d fought them for it, actually fought, until the older woman had pointed to the tears, the mud, the blood, making disapproving sounds.

They thought they were helping. They didn’t understand that dress was her last connection to her world, those silver beads her only proof that 1926 existed. That she wasn’t hysterical.

Now she sat on a stool by the window—no glass, just shutters thrown open to the afternoon heat—watching ancient Athens go about its business below.

The sounds were all wrong. No automobiles, no jazz from distant radios, no telephone bells.

Just voices calling in liquid Greek, donkeys braying, the clash of metal from what might have been a blacksmith or swords, and somewhere, someone playing a flute with more enthusiasm than skill.

The smells pressed in on her from every side.

Olive oil hung heavy in the air, as if the whole city had been basted in it.

Smoke curled from a hundred cooking fires, spiced and acrid by turns.

Beneath that came sharper notes—sweat, animals, the sour tang of waste carried off in channels but never far enough away.

And always, underneath it all, the brine of the sea, salt and fish and something wilder that whispered of escape.

A knock at the door—no, a clearing of a throat outside her curtain. Lysias entered without waiting for permission. Of course, he did. Why would a woman’s permission matter here?

He’d removed his armor and now wore a simple tunic that should have made him look less intimidating but didn’t.

Without the bronze and leather, she could see the soldier’s body underneath—scarred, solid, built for purpose rather than show.

A thin white line ran from his left shoulder to his elbow.

War wounds, probably, from battles she’d only read about in dusty textbooks.

“Χα ? ρε,” he said. Greeting.

“Χα ? ρε,” she replied, proud that she remembered the response. Her classical education was coming back in pieces, like muscles remembering old movements.

He studied her transformation with calculating eyes. “Better,” he said in his broken Latin. “You look... less strange.”

“I liked my dress,” she said in careful Greek, the words formal and probably ridiculous. “It was... part of me.”

His eyebrows rose. “You speak our language like...” he paused, searching for words. “Like old priests. Or prophecy. Beautiful but... π ? ? λ?γεται... not alive? ”

Archaic, she realized. I speak ancient Greek like it’s even more ancient Greek.

“I learned from books,” she said truthfully. “Old books.”

“Books.” He said it like she’d said she’d learned from clouds or butterflies. “Women read books where you come from?”

“Women do many things where I come from.” Vote. Work. Drive automobiles. Fly airplanes.

“Strange place.” But he didn’t say it mockingly. There was genuine curiosity there, maybe even envy.

Bebe swallowed hard. “Strange, yes. Tell me something, though—what year is it?”

Lysias blinked. “Year?”

“Yes. The date. I need to know.” Her voice came out sharper than she intended, edged with desperation.

He hesitated, then said carefully, “We mark by archons. This is the archonship of…” He gave a name that meant nothing to her, syllables tumbling like coins she couldn’t catch.

“That’s not—” She bit the inside of her cheek. Of course, it wasn’t what she needed. They didn’t use neat little calendars, not here. Not yet.

“Long before your people,” he added finally, his tone almost apologetic.

The words settled like ice in her chest. Long before her people. Long before 1926. She didn’t know how many centuries, but enough. Too many.

“The Archons want to see you.”

“The rulers?”

“Yes. They think you’re...” He paused, and she saw him choosing his words carefully. “Important. A sign. The Spartans mass at our borders. Athens needs the gods’ favor.”

“I’m not a goddess.”

“I know.” He said it simply, matter-of-factly. “Goddesses don’t bleed.”

She looked at her palm, where the rake’s punctures were already healing into pink dots that would definitely leave scars. Her mother would be appalled. Scars were for the lower classes, for people who actually had to work with their hands.

She groped for something solid, anything her old classics tutor at Vassar had drummed into her.

The Parthenon—she remembered this much—was begun under Pericles in the fifth century before Christ. Fifth century BC.

Which meant more than two thousand years stood between this painted marble crown and the postcards tourists bought on the Acropolis.

Her mother, her whole world—cocktail parties and radios and automobiles—was twenty-four hundred years in the future. Literally ancient history. Or future history. Or?—

“Come,” Lysias said. “The Archons don’t like waiting.”

She stood and immediately realized the problem with chitons.

Without proper undergarments—and they definitely hadn’t provided anything resembling underwear—the fabric clung and moved in ways that left very little to the imagination.

She saw Lysias notice, saw his eyes darken slightly before he turned away.

“We need to discuss terms,” she said in her formal Greek.

He turned back, amused. “Terms?”

“If I’m to help Athens, I need guarantees. Protection. Freedom of movement. Respect.”

“You’re a woman.”

“I’m a woman who fell from the sky in a flash of light wearing a dress made of silver. That has to count for something.”

He laughed—actually laughed—and it transformed his face from handsome to devastating. “You bargain like a merchant.”

“Where I come from, everything is negotiable.”

“And where is that, exactly?” The humor faded from his eyes. “You appear from nowhere, speaking Greek like you learned it from Homer himself, wearing clothes that shouldn’t exist, skin pale as milk while everyone here is burned brown by the sun. What are you?”

Lost. Terrified. Twenty-four hundred years from home.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “I was somewhere else, and then I was here. I don’t know how or why or if I can go back.”

He studied her for a long moment, and she saw him make a decision. “The truth?”

“Please.”

“I think you’re either a gift from the gods or their cruelest joke. Either way, you’re mine to figure out.”

“I belong to no one.”

“Everyone belongs to someone here. The question is whether you’re a guest, slave, or something else entirely.”

He moved closer, and she could smell the olive oil on his skin, see the gold flecks in his dark eyes. “I’m trying to keep you in the first category, but you need to help me.”

“How?”

“Convince the Archons you’re valuable. That you’re worth protecting rather than...” He didn’t finish, but she could fill in the blanks. Rather than enslaving. Rather than killing. Rather than sacrificing to ensure divine favor.

“And if I can’t?”

“Then we both have problems. I’ve claimed responsibility for you. If you’re a threat to Athens, I pay the price as well.”

The weight of that settled on her shoulders. She wasn’t just risking herself—she was risking this stranger who’d offered protection when he could have let the mob have her.

“What do they want to hear?”

“That you’re a sign of victory. That the gods favor Athens. That Sparta will fall.” He paused. “Can you give them that?”

She thought about it. She’d studied Greek history, knew vaguely about the Peloponnesian War, though dates were fuzzy. Athens and Sparta would fight for decades, exhausting each other, ultimately leaving both weakened. But she couldn’t exactly explain that she knew this from future history books.

“I can try.”

“Try hard. Your life depends on it.” He turned to go, then paused. “And mine.”