Page 140 of Axios

“I do not fear death because I’m afraid of dying, Ery…”I had told him. “I fear it because it would take me from you.”

More soldiers surrounded us.

“Ery, you have to fight,” I said through harsh wheezes. “Leave me and go.”

I was incapable of moving, but that did not mean he had to stay and meet the same fate.

“No.” His green eyes held my gaze before he pulled me against his chest, his heart beating against mine. “I will not leave you.”

As he held me, he was stabbed in the back. He barely even winced. But when another plunged into his shoulder, he gasped and held me tighter. His arms wrapped around me like a protective cloak as he shielded me from further injury, taking the damage upon himself.

Another sword was forced into his back and went all the way through him, piercing me as well.

I whimpered at the intense pain and the agony of him being harmed. And then I closed my eyes. My head lolled to the side, resting in the crease of his neck, and my breaths started to slow.

“What makes up the stars?”I had once asked him in a time that seemed like a different life. A happier one.

“The stars are heroes, men who died and are now commemorated for their bravery in battle,”he had answered, smiling.

Eryx stopped breathing and slumped against me.

With his death, I felt myself die with him. Everything turned cold. My heart shattered, but I was too weak to move—too weak do anything but feel the darkness creeping in.

The years with him flashed before my eyes. The golden-haired boy who had taught me so much about myself. The one who had my heart and always would. I recalled his face: the flush in his cheeks when we’d made love, the way his green eyes sparked with determination one moment and with love in the next, and the small smile that lingered in the corner of his mouth when he tried to hide his amusement at me but failed.

I had spent years memorizing every detail of him, storing his face to memory, and I finally knew why.

It was to prepare for that moment.

I’ll see you in the stars, my warrior,I silently told him, feeling myself slip away.

And then I fell into the dark abyss, hoping he waited for me there.

Epilogue

Haden

Five Years Later

The passing of the years had not dulled the ache from the loss of my companions. My brothers. All of them were dead, and I carried guilt for being the only one to have survived. Guilt that threatened to consume me some days.

My family kept me grounded. Leanna and the boys were my whole life.

As I stared down at the grave before me—one now covered in a bed of grass and decorated with flowers from my wife’s garden—I remembered the battle at Leuctra.

After Demetrius, Cassius, and I had taken the king back to camp, I had tried to run back out onto the battlefield, but they had held me back. Looking down into the plain, I’d noticed the Theban force had completely engulfed our army. Men ran into the camp, bloodied and hysterical, and some had been missing limbs, while others carried injured men with them.

The battle had been lost, and Eryx had known it before he’d sent me to safety.

Sparta had surrendered after that, and the Theban army had allowed us to retrieve our dead from the field. When my gaze had landed on my brothers, I had fallen to my knees and sobbed.

Eryx and Axios had been embracing, wrapped in each other’s arms long after they’d taken their final breaths.

Over a thousand of our men had been slain that dreadful day, and out of the seven hundred Spartan born men who had fought, four hundred had been among the dead. Fighting ended once a truce had been called, and our army had packed to return home.

We’d carried our slain brethren back to Sparta where they had been buried.

I’d buried Quill in a small meadow just outside the city’s borders. My wishes were to travel to Orchomenus to bury him with Theon, but the commanders had refused my wishes.