Page 94 of A Queen and HER Bad Boy
The door wrenched open, and a gruff old man with a wild gray beard and bronzed skin barreled through with a walking stick carved from olive wood. He wore faded black clothes with a white collar and rough sandals, looking every inch the hermit priest. He pointed his staff threateningly at Achilles. “You speak the old tongue… but do you truly belong? What do you do here?”
“We could ask the same of you,” Achilles said.
“This is my home!”
Bris’s eyes moved to the coordinates written across Achilles’s arm. Had he written them down correctly during the insanity of their escape? She noticed some smudges. Perhaps that was enough to get the numbers wrong… or this home had been abandoned in the war and then confiscated by the cloth. Surely, Charisse’s father valued his safety enough not to return here often, if at all.
Bris straightened, her hand going to Achilles before he did something they both regretted. “Pardon our intrusion,” she said quickly. “We were searching for the priest here.”
The man’s eyes narrowed on them, and then immediately, his scowl cracked into a grin. “Ah! You are seeking to be married!”
“Um…” That seemed a good enough reason as any. “Y-yes…” Bris stuttered. “Would you do the honors?”
Achilles glanced back at her, his brow going up with reluctant amusement.
The priest seemed to catch the look, and his interpretation of it sent him laughing even harder. “Does your suitor know about this plan of yours, my precious sister?”
Achilles seemed to collect his wits, along with a good lying face, and he cut in smoothly. “If I didn’t, it wouldn’t be the first time I was a blind idiot. I’ve wanted Prissy as my wife since the first time she stomped her foot at me and turned my name into Killiefish.”
The priest’s brown eyes grew warm, and he extended his hand. “I am Eleni—Father Eleni. I assume you are not speaking of me marrying youtoday?”
“No, no…” they both said at once.
“Of course not.” Bris was improvising as she looked around the room, trying to gain some inspiration on how to proceed next. Hiding out here was clearly out of the question. “We would like to plan an elegant affair, but…” she studied the priest’s suddenly wary face and wondered if they could use this opportunity to get more information on Achilles’s father before facing him, “but we want a simple wedding too… well, we want to go back to our roots, actually. I mean, this place is so historical, and so we were… hoping for a tour.”
Eleni looked from her to Achilles with a shrewd gaze before clapping Achilles’s arm in a friendly way. “You’ve come to the right place, my friends. Come—there’s much to see.”
He swung around, his weathered sandals slapping against the worn rug as they followed him from his cottage like naughty schoolchildren caught stealing olives from the orchard.
Achilles turned to her with a secretive wink. Great! They reallywerechildren again!
But this was exactly what they needed. Whatever secrets lay hidden in this faraway place would soon be open to them. Achilles reached behind him, tickling her knuckles until he had her fingers in his warm grip.
The priest led them through the small cemetery behind the chapel, where worn headstones stood among wild rosemary andthyme.Just like the folk song!Eleni’s cane tapped against the stone path as he moved with surprising agility.
“These graves,” he said, gesturing to a section where the headstones lay in neat, orderly rows, “are from the battle of the ninety-three uprising. When General Peleus first came here during Operation C.I.R.C.E., the royal military was ordered to crush the rebellion here, and they didn’t care about civilian casualties.”
Achilles’s features tightened with that familiar pain that turned Bris’s stomach. She squeezed his hand.
They passed the small stone chapel with its Byzantine arches and faded frescoes, where wild vines had claimed the ancient walls. Bris found herself imagining Achilles’s parents exchanging vows in that sacred space—two young people in love, unaware of the betrayals that would tear their world apart. The olive grove beyond stretched as far as the eye could see, where Aeaean workers moved among the silvery trees. Were they actually working on Christmas Day?
As the afternoon sun climbed higher, they walked through the grove where the priest led them up the hillside. The sea sparkled in the distance. “This sacred place,” Eleni said reverently, gesturing to the ruins with his walking stick, “is where Aeaeans have exchanged their vows for over two thousand years. The ancients built this temple to honor Aphrodite.” He smiled at their joined hands. “They believed that vows spoken here would bind two hearts so completely that not even death could part them.”
Bris leaned against Achilles’s arm, taking in the mystical beauty of broken marble pedestals where offerings of wildflowers were left by modern couples seeking the blessing of ancient gods. Below them, fishing boats decorated with twinkling lights bobbed in the harbor, their masts adorned with garlands and colorful streamers.
“They call them Karavaki,” Achilles said softly. “Each boat holds the family’s hope that the sea will bring their sons home for Christmas.”
The view was breathtaking. The combination of ancient romance and living tradition made her heart swell—no wonder these people guarded their home so fiercely from outsiders. Seeing their traditions made her wonder how much she really knew about these strange warlike people.
The sun moved higher as they climbed further up the hillside, the light danced over waters that never disappeared, only stretched endlessly. They came upon a small shrine tucked beneath a gnarled olive tree, its stone surface adorned with flickering candles. A weathered plaque bore an inscription in both Tirrojan and Greek.
“This is the shrine dedicated to the man who protected our people from invaders,” Eleni said with reverence. “We call him, the Shadow, because he moves as darkness to shield us from the royal army’s brutality.”
Achilles’s face had gone white, and he barely moved. “O Skia?”
“Yes, that is who I speak of. He sacrificed all he was for the people of Aeaea.”And Phoenix had him executed.Did this island know what happened to their hero?
The priest rested heavily on his walking stick, stopping to catch his breath on the sun-warmed grass, though he never could quite recover, and so his words turned ragged. “Our seas hold riches—vast riches that make foreigners hungry with greed. A prince made secret pacts with these sharks who washed up on our shores to starve us out and steal what belongs to us.”
