POV: Eros
Love requires more restraint than war.
I've known that for centuries. I've believed it. But watching her right now, watching the pain move across her face as she learns what she is and what was done to her bloodline — I feel every second of the restraint like something physical pressing against my chest.
She doesn't know I'm here.
I exist in the space between moments when I need to, that thin edge where I can see everything without being seen. It's not a comfortable place. It was never meant to be comfortable. It was meant to be useful, and it is, but useful and easy are not the same thing.
Aphrodite reaches out and touches the carved stone in the ruins, and I watch understanding move through her slowly. Her shoulders drop. Her jaw tightens. She's putting it together — the pieces of a history that her pack never told her, that no one ever told her, because no one who knew it wanted her to understand what she actually came from.
