0451472004 by Stephanie Thornton Read Free Book Online Page B

disappointed if she’d giggled and batted her lashes. Instead, she studied me. “And here I believed—as I think all of Greece does—that Alexander held the key to your affections.”
    “Alexander and I learned the pleasures of the flesh together,” I admitted. This was a common practice, although typically it was an older man who would teach his eromenos about love. At seventeen, we had been deemed men, but like Achilles and Patroclus, our affection for each other remained constant even as we discovered the wonders of women as well. Alexander once claimed that only sex and sleep reminded him that he was mortal; add wine and books to that list and my vision of Elysium was complete. “We’re closer than brothers, but we’ve large appetites and neither of us wishes to eat from the same dish night after night.”
    “I see.” Timoclea smiled. “While I don’t doubt that you could show an old widow like me a new trick or two, I have my daughters to care for.”
    I’d expected her rejection, yet it still stung. However, I could have my pick of pretty chariot drivers and camp women eager for a roll in my tent, one of each even. Or perhaps I’d seek out Alexander tonight.
    “Thank you,” Timoclea said. Then she stood on tiptoes and brushed her lips to my temple. “May the gods protect you, Hephaestion of Macedon.”
    I gave her a cheeky grin, then mounted my waiting horse to follow Alexander. “Actually, I don’t think the gods know quite what to do with me.”
    Her laughter followed behind me. Timoclea would return to her estate and raise her girls to sass their future husbands. And I would follow Alexander, as I’d always done.
    •   •   •
    W e continued on our way after Thebes to Delphi to consult the oracle of Apollo before heading for fabled Troy and, beyond that, Persia, where Alexander hoped to lure Darius, King of Kings, into open combat.
    We arrived at Delphi on one of the season’s unlucky days, at odds with the stunning vault of winter blue sky overhead and the crisp smell of cypress in the air. Yet Alexander had been in a foul mood even before we started marching.
    “I don’t care for prophecies,” he said, approaching the famed Temple of Apollo, nestled like a hidden treasure at the base of rocky Mount Parnassus. The rest of his guards craned their necks to catch a glimpse of the fabled mountaintop. “I’d gallop right past Delphi if I could.”
    “Prophecies are just words,” I said. “They can be twisted to suit your liking.”
    “Tell that to Oedipus,” Alexander muttered. “Or my father.”
    He was right of course; the power of words had ruined—and saved—many a man.
    One glance at the homely woman waiting on the steps of Apollo’s temple and I was certain Alexander would have whatever prophecy he wished from her dry, cracked lips.
    I, of course, was wrong.
    “We’ve just marched from conquering Thebes.” Alexander wore his famous smile as he approached her after dismounting, the one that made everyone—even me—eager to do his bidding just for a chance to bask in its warmth.
    “It matters not if you marched from Egypt itself,” the priestess said, crossing her arms over her board-flat chest. There was no doubt that we were addressing the Pythia, Apollo’s oracle, draped and veiled in sumptuous cloth of gold to honor the god of the sun, although surely even Apollo would have shuddered to behold her face. “There shall be no divining on so unfortunate a day.”
    “Ah, well,” I said to Alexander, wrinkling my nose against the temple’s otherworldly, sulfurous scent. “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow for your prophecy.”
    Alexander scowled at the Pythia. “You would refuse to scry for Alexander of Macedon?”
    “That’s exactly what she said,” I answered for her. The priestess looked down her hooked nose at us, the effect marred by her pockmarked face and misshapen lips. It would have cost a fortune to muster the dowry to make up for her lack of