"That's the way we always started our day. As soon as we were dragged from our beds, we were severely beaten."
Grace winced. "Then why would you take the beating for him, if you were sore, too?"
"Being born of a goddess, I can take quite a beating."
Grace closed her eyes as he repeated Selena's words from that afternoon. This time, she couldn't resist reaching out to him. She placed her hand against his biceps.
He didn't pull away.
Instead, he covered her hand with his own and gave a light squeeze. "From that day forward, Iason called me his brother, and made the other boys accept me. Though both my mother and father had other sons, I had never had a brother before."
She smiled. "What happened after that?"
He flexed the muscle beneath her hand. "We decided to join forces to get what we needed. He would distract and I would steal so that if we were caught, I would be the one who suffered for it."
Why? was on the tip of her tongue, but she bit it back. In her heart, she knew the answer already. Julian was protecting his brother.
"As time went by," he continued, "I started noticing that his father would sneak to watch him in the village. The love and pride on his father's face was indescribable. His mother was the same way. We were supposed to be scrounging for food on our own, and yet every other day, he'd find something one of his parents had left for him. Fresh bread, roasted lamb, a flagon of milk. Sometimes money."
"That's sweet."
"Yes, it was, but every time I saw what they did for him, it cut through me. I wanted my parents to feel like that about me. I would gladly have given up my life to have my father, just once, look at me without contempt in his eyes. Or to have my mother care enough to come see me at all. The closest I could ever get to her was to visit her temple at Thymaria. I used to spend hours staring at her statue, and wondering if that was really what she looked like. Wondering if she ever gave me a passing thought."
Grace sat up and leaned against his back, then hugged him about the waist. She rested her chin on his shoulder. "You never saw your mother as a child?"
He encircled her arms with his own, and leaned his head back against her shoulder blade. She smiled at the gesture. Even though he was tense and stressed, he was trusting her with things she knew he'd never shared with anyone else.
It made her feel incredibly close to him.
"I haven't seen her to this day," he said quietly. "She would send others to me, but she, herself, would never come. No matter how much I implored her, she refused to come to me. After a time, I ceased to ask. Finally, I quit going to her temples altogether."
Grace placed a tender kiss on his shoulder. How could his mother have ignored him so? How could any mother not answer the plea of her child to come visit him?
She thought of her own parents. Of the love and kindness they had lavished on her. And for the first time, she realized her feelings about their deaths were wrong. All these years, she'd told herself that it would have been better to never have known their love than to have it taken away so cruelly.
But it wasn't. Even though the memories of her parents and childhood were bittersweet, they comforted her.
Julian had never had the warmth of a loving embrace. The security of knowing that no matter what he did, his parents would be there for him.
She couldn't imagine growing up the way Julian had.
"But you had Iason," she whispered, wondering if that had been enough for him.
"I did. After my father died when I was fourteen, Iason was even kind enough to let me go home with him on furlough. It was on one of those visits that I first saw Penelope."
Grace felt a tiny stab of jealousy at the mention of his wife's name.
"She was so beautiful," Julian whispered, "and promised to Iason."
She went still at his words.
Oh, this wasn't good.
"Even worse," he said, lightly stroking her arm, "she was in love with him. Every time we visited, she'd be there to throw herself into his arms and kiss him. Tell him how much he meant to her. When we'd leave, she'd quietly beg him to be careful. Then, she too started leaving things for him to find."
Julian paused as he remembered the way Iason would look when he returned to the barracks with Penelope's gifts.
"You may marry one day, Julian," Iason would say as he flaunted her tokens, "but you'll never have a wife like her warming your bed."
Though Iason didn't say it, Julian knew all too well the reason why. No noble father would ever consent to give his daughter to a baseborn, disinherited man who had absolutely no family that would acknowledge him.
Every time Iason had uttered those words, they had cut him to pieces. There had been times when he suspected Iason salted the wound out of jealousy because of the way Penelope would let her gaze linger too long on him when she didn't think Iason was looking. Iason may have held her heart, but like other women, Penelope had ogled Julian whenever he came near.
It was for that reason that Iason stopped asking him to visit altogether. And it had torn him apart to be banned from the only safe home he'd ever known.
"I should have let them marry," Julian said as he cupped Grace's head with his arm, and buried his face against her neck to inhale the sweet comfort of her scent. "I knew it even then. But I couldn't stand it. Year after year, I would see her love him. I watched his family dote upon him, while I didn't even have a home to go to."
"Why?" she asked. "You said you had brothers, wouldn't they let you stay with them?"
He shook his head. "My father's sons hated me passionately. Their mother would have let me in, but I refused to pay the price she asked for it. I didn't have much in those days, but I still had my dignity."
"You have dignity now, too," she whispered, tightening her hold on his waist. "I've seen enough of it to know."
Releasing her, he looked away at her words, his jaw tense.
"What happened to Iason?" she asked, seeking to keep him talking while he was in the mood for it. "Did he die in battle?"
He laughed bitterly. "No. When we were old enough to join the army, I kept him safe on the battlefield. I'd promised Penelope and his family that I wouldn't let anything happen to him."
Grace felt his heart pounding fiercely against her arms.
"As the years went by, it was my name people whispered in awe and fear. My legend and victories recounted over and over again. And when I returned to Thymaria, I ended up sleeping in the streets, or in the bed of whatever woman opened her door to me for the night, just biding my time until I could return to battle."
Tears stung her eyes at the pain she heard in his voice. How could anyone have treated him that way?
"What happened to change it?" she asked.
He sighed. "One night, while I was looking for a place to sleep, I stumbled across the two of them in a lovers' embrace. I quickly apologized, but as I left, I overheard Iason talking to Penelope."
His entire body went rigid in her arms as his heartbeat raced even faster.
"What did he say?" Grace prompted.
The light in his eyes faded. "Penelope asked him why I never went to my brothers' homes. Iason laughed and said, 'No one wants Julian. He's the son of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and not even she can stand to be near him.' "
Grace couldn't breathe as he repeated the cruel words, and she could only imagine what he must have felt when he heard them.
Julian drew a ragged breath. "I had guarded him more times than I could count. Had taken numerous wounds in battle to protect him, including a spear straight through my side, and there he was mocking me to her. I couldn't stand the injustice of it. I had thought we were brothers. And I guess in the end, we really were since he treated me the way the rest of my family had. I had never been anything more than a bastard stepchild. Alone and unwanted. I couldn't understand why he had so many people to love him when I only wanted one.
"Angry and hurt by his words, I did what I'd never done before. I called out to Eros."
Grace could easily guess what happened after that. "He made Penelope fall in love with you."
He nodded. "He shot Iason with a lead arrow to kill his love for Penelope, and Penelope was given the golden arrow to make her love me. That was supposed to be the end of it..."
Rocking him gently in her arms, she waited for him to find his next words.
"It took two years before I finally convinced her father to let her marry a disinherited bastard without family influence. By then, my legend had grown, and I'd been promoted. I'd finally accumulated enough wealth to house her like royalty. And I spared no expense when it came to her. We had gardens, slaves, everything she wanted. I gave her freedom and latitude that no other woman of her time enjoyed."
"It wasn't enough?"
He shook his head. "There was still something missing and I knew she wasn't quite right. Even before Eros interfered, she was always overly emotional. She would cling to Iason in a manner forbidden of Spartan women, and one time when he'd been wounded, she had shorn her hair completely off in grief.
"Then, after Eros shot her with his arrow, she would have long periods of great depression or rage. I did the best I could for her and I tried so hard to make her happy."
Grace brushed his hair back as she listened.
"She told me she loved me, but I knew she didn't care for me the way she'd cared for Iason. She gave herself willingly to me, and yet there was no real passion in her touch. I knew from the very first time I kissed her.
"I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter. Very few men in those days had love in their marriages. Besides, I was gone for months, even years, as I led my army. But in the end, I guess I had too much of my mother in me, because I wanted more."
Grace ached for him.
"And then the day came when Eros, too, betrayed me."
"Betrayed you how?" she asked anxiously, knowing this was the source of his curse.
"He and Priapus were drinking the night after I killed Livius. Eros drunkenly told him what he'd done for me. As soon as Priapus heard the story, he knew how to take revenge.
"He went to the Underworld and filled a cup with water from the Pool of Memory, then gave the cup to Iason for him to drink. As soon as the water touched his lips, Iason remembered their love. Priapus told him what I'd done, then gave him more water for Penelope."