Page 117 of Axios

Theon.

Looking back at Eryx, my eyes watered and I tried to sit up.

“Stop,” he demanded, touching my chest and pushing me back down on the soft cushion. “You need to—”

“Theon! He—”

“He is dead,” Eryx spoke, staring at me with saddened eyes. “He and many others fell in battle. And I feared you’d be amongst them. The physician cleaned and spread healing herbs upon your wound and gave you grains of the poppy plant and fennel to keep you resting. I have not seen your eyes staring back at me for days, and I feared I never would again.”

I calmed my racing heart and tried to compose myself. My throat was dry and my muscles ached from lying down so long, but all I could think about was the look on my friend’s face as he left this life and passed into the next.

“How is Quill?” I asked.

“Not well.” Eryx looked away, and I followed his line of sight, seeing Quill sitting by the lake. He was motionless. “He has not spoken to any of us since that day. We were able to retrieve the bodies of our fallen, and Quill wanted to carry Theon back to Sparta for a proper burial… but the new commander denied his wishes and demanded that he bury him here with the others.”

“And what of the cowards who abandoned us on the field?”

Eryx glanced back at me, an odd expression in his eyes. “They were reprieved from any punishment. Sparta needs all the men we have, and in such dire situations, laws can be altered.”

Something occurred to me, and I touched his hand.

“How are we alive? What happened after I fell?” We had been surrounded by Thebans, and I had believed us all to be dead men.

His brow creased and as he opened his mouth to answer, we were interrupted.

“Axios!” Haden ran toward us and dropped to his knees beside me. He had a wrap on his upper right arm and another on his lower left, but other than that, he only had minor cuts and bruises. “I am delighted to see you awake at last. I worried we were going to lose you too.”

“I thought the same,” I said, still trying to comprehend what had actually happened.

“You must be starved,” Eryx said, removing his hand from mine and standing. “I will bring you something to eat.”

I watched him as he walked away.

“He seems distant,” I said, looking at Haden and wishing he had the answers I sought. “I have not ever seen him so… withdrawn and aloof. Perhaps toward others, but not to me.”

“Fear can do many things to a man he never thought possible,” Haden responded in a sympathetic tone. “When you fell on the battlefield, something shattered in him, Axios. He went mad and slaughtered countless men, so much so that he was covered in their blood as if he had bathed in it. But they kept coming and our men kept dying.”

A lump formed in my throat. “What followed?”

“Just as it seemed we would all meet our ends, he gathered you in his arms and carried you off the field. Quill and I followed him, deflecting the strikes of the men who attacked.” Haden pinned me with a serious stare, one that was so unfamiliar on his face. “He retreated from the battle, Ax. To save you. The sense of detachment you feel from him is not only the trauma of nearly having lost you… it is also shame.”

Running from battle was a thing Eryx swore he’d never do. His father had been a coward who had done the same, and Eryx had worked harder than any other man to ensure he would not follow in those footsteps—that he’d be a fierce warrior who obeyed all the laws of Sparta and who’d give his life rather than flee a fight. That he would be a stronger man than his father had been.

He threw that away for me.

When Eryx returned, I did not mention the battle again and neither did Haden. We spoke of smaller things while I attempted to eat—a feat much harder than I’d imagined due to my poor appetite.

Sitting up soon became too much, and I winced.

“You need to rest in the shade. The sun is at its highest and you are starting to sweat,” Eryx said, gently wrapping his arms around my waist to lift me. When I tried to argue, he glared. “That was not a request.”

I did not have the strength to dispute anyway, so I allowed him to carry me back to the tent where other soldiers were being treated for their injuries. Moments after he laid me down, my eyelids grew heavy and I welcomed sleep once more.

***

Emotional wounds were much harder to heal than physical ones. My injury had not festered, fortunately, and as the days passed, the sting of it lessened. But the pain of losing one of my brothers was nearly unbearable.

I would have preferred a thousand stab wounds over the ache in my chest every time I recalled Theon’s impish grin or his contagious laugh.