CHAPTER 99: REKINDLING OLD FLAMES

Athena’s POV

The room was cold. The kind of cold that seeps under your skin, that makes you forget what warmth ever felt like. The kind that belongs in ruins, in places where hope has long since rotted away.

Broken walls cast jagged shadows across cracked marble, all that was left of what used to be mine. Once, this chamber had echoed with music, laughter, the weight of sacred vows. Now it smelled of smoke, blood, and the ashes of everything I used to love.

A soft knock broke the silence.

I didn’t answer.

I didn’t have to.

The door creaked open, its hinges groaning beneath the weight of time and neglect. He came anyway.

Lucas stepped inside like a man walking into his own execution. His hands trembling was just enough to betray how nervous he was. And his eyes, gods, his eyes looked wild, desperate, and burdened with something far heavier than guilt.

Me.

"Athena," he breathed, and my name landed somewhere between a prayer and a curse on his lips.

I didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. I kept my back to him, studying the fractured stone of the wall like it might tell me something I didn’t already know. "Don’t."

His voice cracked like brittle glass. "I know I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you. But gods, I can’t stop thinking about you. And wanting you."

I turned then, sharp and sudden like a blade drawn too fast from its sheath. "You betrayed me."

His throat bobbed hard when he swallowed. "I did. And I want to make things right. I can’t live with this guilt in me anymore." His voice faltered, then steadied.

"But it’s killing me."

"Good," I spat, my voice cold, cruel. "It should have."

He stepped closer. I should have told him to stop. I should have burned the space between us with the same fire I used to destroy armies. But I didn’t.

The air thickened, charged, humming like the moments before a storm. Every heartbeat felt like it might splinter the cracked marble beneath my feet.

"I don’t want forgiveness," he whispered. "I just want you."

No. I hated him. I hated what he did, I hated that I didn’t hate him enough.

"I should hate you," I whispered.

His eyes burned as they pinned me in place. "I know," he said, his voice rough, frayed at the edges. "But you don’t."

I didn’t know who moved first. Maybe we both did. Maybe we had always been moving toward this disaster.

When our mouths collided, it wasn’t soft. It wasn’t gentle. It was chaos.

His hands tangled in my hair, dragging my head back so he could take my mouth like he had a right to it. Like he needed to carve himself back into me.

I kissed him back like I wanted to wound him. Like I wanted to bleed him for every choice he made. For every fracture he left in me.

Clothes tore. His. Mine. I didn’t care which pieces hit the floor first. His tunic split beneath my hands, fabric shredding under my desperate pull. My nails dug into his shoulders, carving angry crescents into his skin. I wanted him marked. I wanted him to leave this room wearing me like a scar.

"I missed this," he rasped against my throat, dragging his lips along my pulse, biting hard enough to make me gasp. "I missed you."

"Shut up," I hissed, even as my traitorous hips arched toward him, my body betraying me with its aching need.

His mouth curled against my skin, that sinful, knowing smile that only he could wear. "You still want me."

Gods, I hated him. Hated that he was right. Hated that I wanted him so much it made me feel like I was splintering from the inside out.

I wanted to destroy him. I wanted to pull him deeper until I forgot where I ended and he began.

He lifted me with brutal ease, carrying me backward until my knees collided with the shattered frame of what had once been my bed. We fell into it like we were falling into madness.

There were no gentle touches. No whispered promises. Just tangled limbs, gasps that tore through the silence, teeth sinking into skin, nails raking down backs. A violent, desperate tethering. Two people coming undone in the wreckage of what they used to be.

When he pushed inside me, I bit his shoulder, hard enough to taste the salt and copper of his blood. He hissed through clenched teeth but didn’t stop. He drove into me like he was trying to bury the guilt, the grief, the history.

It wasn’t love. It was punishment.

It was salvation.

It was war.

Rage tangled with need, guilt twisted with longing. Every thrust was a blow struck. Every gasp was an apology neither of us dared to speak aloud.

I clawed his back, desperate to brand him with the shape of my fury. He bruised my hips, each grip a silent confession of how much he hated needing me.

"Say you hate me," he groaned, his forehead pressed against mine, sweat dripping from his temples. "Say it."

"I hate you," I breathed, the words sharp and trembling on my tongue.

But I kissed him anyway.

And when I shattered beneath him, it was his name I whispered like a blasphemy against the old gods.

When the fire dulled into aching silence, we lay tangled in sweat and shadows. My head rested on his chest, and I could still feel his heartbeat hammering beneath my palm, fast and unsteady.

"I have never asked you about this but what are your plans regarding Kieran and Cassius?"

His question made me lift my head.

"What about them?" I knew what he was driving at.

"Your history with them, does it,"

"I don’t know." I cut him off.

I was conflicted, each of this men I have had some sort of connection with them.

"What about us?" He whispered.

"There’s no us. This means nothing. ," I whispered back, my voice thin, trembling under the weight of too many feelings I wasn’t ready to name.

"I know," he murmured, like he had resigned to the fact that we might never work out our issues.

But we both knew it was a lie.

And I hated that, too.