Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 3

perhaps. I want to believe in reason , but there is no reason with this ability. There's only rage and fear and pettiness."
    I wanted to soothe him, but I couldn't think of anything to say. Eventually, he spoke again. "She wants to leave this place. Alexander is dead, and his empire will be broken into pieces. She thinks it isn't safe here."
    She's probably right.
    Eryx shrugged. "It doesn't matter if she is or not, I have to go with her. I haven't learned enough yet to free you."
    Oh, Hades. I should have been happy that he was still set on freeing me, but instead it just made my heart clench. I was tired of this existence, so tired. He could free us both much more easily. Break me instead.
    "What? No!" He surged to his feet and glared at my profile. "I'm not going to destroy you! I'm not going to be like her!"
    It would be a release, Eryx. The last few years alone had been almost unbearable. I couldn't imagine going back to that painful solitude.
    "No, Thanos." There were still hints of the child I had known in him, but the determination I saw now was completely adult and utterly serious. "I can do this," he swore. "I will free you. Just give me time to study. I'll save you."
    It would take a stronger man than me to deny the only person who had shown me any affection for hundreds of years. Study hard , I said at last.
    "I will." He reached out and put his hand on my upraised shoulder, and I could feel his warmth. "I'll come back as soon as I can." He bit his lip, weighing words in his head, before finally letting me go and walking away without saying anything else. The heat from his touch leeched away, and I was left alone again, and alone had never felt quite so much like despair.
    Seasons, years, all passed in a blur. I learned how to put myself into a state close to sleep, so watching the time go by wasn't as painful as it might have been. Occasionally people came, but none of them reached out to me, and I didn't even try to speak to them. I only came awake for Eryx, who appeared at irregular intervals and kept my soul alive when he did. Each time he tried something different to free me, and each time he failed, but I didn't really care all that much. I enjoyed his company, and he still seemed to enjoy mine.
    On his third visit, I finally did the math and realized… You aren't aging, are you?
    "That's one thing I did inherit from my mother," he said, building up a fire a few feet away. "Immortality, of a sort. I maintain my youth with herb lore I learned from my mother, but as for actually dying, I don't know that I can. I've come back from being stabbed several times, and poisoned once. I passed my hundredth year two months ago."
    Still just a baby.
    "Oh, no," he laughed. "I haven't been that for a very long time."
    Part of me will always think of you as that lonely little boy, Eryx.
    "I would much rather you think of me as a man," he said, and there was unmistakable heat in his voice. "I have wanted you like one for most of my life."
    I had almost forgotten what arousal felt like, that curling ribbon of sensation that coiled around my chest and groin. The novelty of it was extremely frustrating. Then you had better get me out of here, no?
    Eryx laughed. "I will."
    And so it went for centuries, for over a thousand years. My location was rural, the temple completely overgrown, and the only person I ever saw was Eryx. He came, he tried to free me, he failed. We spoke of alchemy and black magic, of new gods and new crimes. He brought me modern inventions to marvel at, things he found in distant lands or objects that he himself had created. He occasionally mentioned Ligia, still kicking in some far corner of the world. When he told me the world was actually round, I laughed and called him senile. When he proved it to me with an astrolabe, delighting in the science that he had always craved, the smug look on his face made me laugh all over again. It was a thin excuse for an existence, but bearable because Eryx came. It never occurred to me that anyone else would.
    I underestimated the Brits. Their empire made the world anew. Their coffers overflowed with foreign tribute, and their archeologists and treasure hunters stuck their noses into absolutely everything. One moment I was drowsing, covered over by vines and not unhappy with that, and the next my shade was being torn away. A man peered at me and exclaimed in a language I didn't understand, and before I could puzzle it out, men with hammers showed up.
    "I want