Captive Prince (Captive Prince 1)

Slaves-in-training were gathering around him, a semi-circle of onlookers.

‘What happened?’

‘Iphegin slipped on the stairs.’ And then, ‘You think Aden pushed him?’

The joke was awful. There were dozens of male slaves-in-training, but only four wore a golden pin, and Aden and Iphegin were the only two who wore the pin of the King. A voice at his elbow.

‘Come away, Erasmus.’

Iphegin was breathing. His chest was rising and falling. Blood down Iphegin’s chin had stained the front of his training silks. He would have been on his way to a kithara lesson.

‘Erasmus, come away.’

Distantly, Erasmus felt a hand on his arm. He looked around blindly and saw Kallias. Trainers were lifting Iphegin and carrying him indoors. In the palace, he would be tended by concerned trainers and palace physicians.

‘He’ll be all right, won’t he?’

‘No,’ said Kallias. ‘It will scar.’

Erasmus would never forget how it had felt to see him again: a slave-in-training rising from a prostration to his trainer, heart-wrenchingly lovely, with a tumble of dark brown curls and wide set blue eyes. There had always been something untouchable about his beauty, his eyes like the unreachable blue sky. Nereus had always said of him, A man only has to look at him to want to possess him.

Aden’s mouth had turned down. ‘Kallias. You can moon over him all you want, everyone does. He won’t look twice at you. He thinks he’s better than everyone else.’

‘Erasmus?’ Kallias had said, stopping as Erasmus had stopped, staring as Erasmus was staring, and in the next moment Kallias was throwing his arms around Erasmus, holding him tight, pressing his cheek to Erasmus’s cheek, the highest intimacy allowed to those who were forbidden to kiss.

Aden was staring at them, open mouthed.

‘You’re here,’ said Kallias. ‘And you’re for the Prince.’

Erasmus saw that Kallias also wore a pin, but that it was plain gold, without a lion’s head.

‘I’m for the other Prince,’ said Kallias. ‘Kastor.’

They were inseparable, close as they had been in the gardens of Nereus, as though the three years of separation had never been. Close as brothers, the trainers said, smiling because this was a charming conceit, young slaves echoing the relationship of their princely masters.

In the evenings, and in the moments snatched around training, they spilled out their words and seemed to talk about everything. Kallias talked in his quiet, serious voice about vast, wide-ranging topics, politics, art, mythology, and he always knew the best of the palace gossip. Erasmus talked hesitatingly and for the first time about his most private feelings, his responsiveness to his training, his eagerness to please.

All of this with a new consciousness of Kallias’s beauty. Of how far beyond him Kallias seemed.

Of course, Kallias was thre

e years ahead of him in training, although they were the same age. That was because the age at which one took training silks differed, and was not marked in years. The body knows when it is ready.

But Kallias was ahead of everyone. The slaves-in-training who weren’t jealous hero-worshipped him. Yet there was a distance between Kallias and the others. He wasn’t conceited. He often offered help to the younger boys, who blushed and grew awkward and flustered. But he never really talked to them, beyond politeness. Erasmus never really knew why Kallias singled him out, glad of it though he was. When Iphegin’s room was cleared out and his kithara given to one of the new boys, all Kallias had said was, ‘He was named for Iphegenia, the most-loyal. But they don’t remember your name if you fall.’ Erasmus had said, meaning it, ‘You won’t fall.’

That afternoon, Kallias flung himself down in the shade, and let his head rest in Erasmus’s lap, his legs tumbled out on the soft grass. His eyes were closed, dark lashes resting against his cheeks. Erasmus barely moved at all, not wanting to disturb him, over-conscious of his heartbeats, of the weight of Kallias’s head against his thigh, unsure of what to do with his hands. Kallias’s unselfconscious ease made Erasmus feel happy and very shy.

‘I wish we could stay like this forever,’ he said, softly.

And then flushed. A curl of hair lay across Kallias’s smooth forehead. Erasmus wanted to reach out and touch it, but he wasn’t brave enough. Instead this daring had blurted out of his mouth.

The garden was drenched with the heat of summer, the piping of a bird, the slow buzzing of an insect. He watched a dragonfly land on a pepperstalk. The slow movement only made him more conscious of Kallias.

After a moment, ‘I’ve started training for my First Night.’

Kallias didn’t open his eyes. It was Erasmus’s heart that was suddenly beating too fast.

‘When?’