"Breath, little one! By the gray eyes of Athena, breathe! The world is not ready for you to leave it so soon! The King waits! The very heavens are burning!"
The voice was thunderous, shrill, and entirely too close to his ear.
Magnus gasped, a ragged, wet intake of air that felt like swallowing fire. He was asleep. He had to be.
"He lives! The Prince lives!"
Magnus tried to open his eyes, but the light was a searing blade. He tried to speak, to ask for a doctor, to ask if his insurance would cover this.
'What the hell?' Magnus thought, panic rising like bile. 'Why do I sound like a squeeze toy?'
"Wash him, quickly! Before the King bursts in and slaughters us all for the delay. The Queen is fainting!"
The hands touching him were rough, calloused, and smelling of iron and heavy herbs.
He felt himself being hoisted into the air, naked and shivering.
The cold air bit at his skin.. skin that felt incredibly sensitive, raw, and new.
"Careful, you clumsy ox! He is the blood of Achilles!"
'Achilles?' Magnus's mind reeled. 'Who talks like that? Am I in a theater production?'
"There is no time to argue, Hellena! Look at the window! The sky glows red. The messenger says the Temple of Artemis is gone. Reduced to ash and memory."
The woman holding him, whose voice trembled with a mixture of awe and terror, scrubbed him with a rough cloth.
"The Temple of Artemis? Burned?" The second voice, Hellena, sounded horrified. "On this night? It is an omen. A terrible, blood-soaked omen."
Magnus felt a sudden, terrifying vertigo. Temple of Artemis. Burning. A prince born on the night the temple burned.
'No,' Magnus thought, his tiny heart hammering against ribs.
'No, no, no. I know this history. I was a history nerd. That happened in 356 BC. That happened when…'
"He is clean," the woman said, wrapping him in wool that scratched. "But he is small. And his eyes… look at his eyes, Hellena."
Magnus forced his eyes open again, fighting the blur. He saw looming faces, giants with skin weathered by the sun, wearing tunics of undyed wool.
The room was stone, illuminated by flickering oil lamps that cast dancing shadows on the walls.
"One brown as the earth, one blue as the sky," Hellena whispered, crossing herself... no, making a sign against evil.
'Heterochromia,' Magnus realized, the pieces slamming together with the force of a phalanx.
'Alexander. I am Alexander the Great!'
The absurdity of it washed over him, followed immediately by a wave of primal fear.
He wasn't a conqueror. He was an office manager from Seattle.
"What do we do now?" The younger maid asked, clutching the bundle that was Magnus. "The King… he is in a foul mood. The news from Ephesus has poisoned the feast."
Hellena, the older matron, straightened her back. She was a woman of the mountains, built like a fortress.
She had served the royal house of Epirus since before Olympias was even a gleam in her father's eye.
For twenty years, she had watched over the wild, snake-loving princess who had become a Queen. She had seen Olympias through the madness of the Dionysian rites and the cold neglect of King Philip.
She would not let a little thing like a burning wonder of the world stop her from doing her duty!
"We take him to the Queen first," Hellena commanded, her voice cutting through the panic of the birthing chamber.
"Olympias must see him. She must bless him before Philip lays his heavy hands on the boy. If the King thinks the boy is cursed by the fire, he might toss him off a cliff before sunrise. We know how the Macedonians are."
'Toss me off a cliff?' Magnus tried to scream, 'I object!' but it came out as a pitiful, hungry wail.
"Hush, little lion," Hellena cooed, taking him from the younger maid. Her grip was firm, safe.
"First, we go to your mother. Then, we face the wolf."
...
The Antechamber of the Royal Palace, Pella.
Gathered around a heavy oak table were the pillars of the Macedonian Kingdom... generals, advisors, and warlords who had spent more of their lives in the saddle than in a bed.
"Your Majesty, you must look at the truth of it," Parmenion said, his voice gravelly and low. He was a man of war, scarred and steady, the only man in the room who dared to look the King in the eye when he was in such a temper.
"The courier from Ephesus was clear. The Temple of Artemis is a ruin. It burned to the ground at the very hour the Queen went into labor."
King Philip II of Macedon paced the length of the room like a caged tiger.
He was a man of terrifying vitality, missing an eye, limping from an old wound, yet radiating a power that made lesser men shrink.
He stopped, slamming his goblet down onto the table, splashing dark wine over the maps of Illyria.
"And what would you have me do, Parmenion?" Philip roared, turning his good eye upon his general.
"Send a letter of apology to the goddess? 'Sorry my son was born, terribly sorry about your house'?"
"The soldiers are muttering, Sire," Antipater, a scholar-general with a long, dour face, interjected softly.
"They say it is a sign. They say a child born on such a night brings only ash and ruin."
"The soldiers are superstitious fools who would read omens in the entrails of a goat if it meant they could avoid a drill," Philip spat.
"We are the undisputed power of the north. We have crushed the Illyrians. We have bribed the Athenians. Our phalanxes are the envy of the known world."
"But this is Artemis, Sire," Parmenion pressed, his brow furrowed. "The protector of childbirth. If her house burns while your son is born, it suggests she was… absent. Or angry."
Philip growled, a low sound in his throat. He hated this. He hated the mystical nonsense that his wife, Olympias, revelled in.
"It is a humiliation," Philip admitted, his voice dropping. "The Greeks will laugh. Demosthenes in Athens will stand on his podium and screech that the barbarians in Macedon have birthed a fire-demon. It weakens our standing."
"Exactly," Antipater nodded. "If the child is… weak… or deformed… combined with this omen…"
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't have to. In Macedon, a King needed a strong heir.
A weak heir was not a son; he was a liability. And liabilities were removed.
"I need a son, Parmenion," Philip said, staring into the fire of the hearth. "My brother Perdiccas died leaving a child too young to rule, and look at the chaos it caused. I seized the throne to save this kingdom. I need a boy who can hold a sword, not a distaff."
The heavy double doors of the antechamber groaned as they were pushed open.
The conversation died instantly. Every head turned. The generals stiffened, hands hovering near their weapons out of habit.
"Who dares enter without—" Philip began, his fury rising again.
"The Prince," a voice announced.
Hellena stood there. She was just a servant, a midwife, but in this moment, holding the swaddled bundle against her chest, she looked as imperious as any queen.
She walked into the room, ignoring the generals, ignoring the guards, and stopped directly in front of the King.
"He is here, Philip of Macedon," she said, her voice steady, though her knees shook beneath her robes.
"Your son."
The silence that followed was heavy, suffocating.
Magnus, swaddled so tight he could barely wiggle, felt the shift in the atmosphere. He couldn't see much, just the blurry outline of a man who smelled of wine and old violence.
This was him. His father. The man who would conquer Greece.
'Please don't kill me, please don't kill me,' Magnus thought, trying to look as cute and non-threatening as possible.
'I'm a good baby. I promise to eat my vegetables. I won't invade Persia until I'm at least twenty.'
Philip looked down at the bundle. His face was unreadable. The scar across his empty eye socket twitched.
"Let me see him," Philip commanded.
Hellena lowered the bundle.
Philip reached out a scarred hand and pulled back the wool.
Magnus stared up at him. He stopped crying.
He didn't know why, but a strange calm washed over him. He looked at the one-eyed king and blinked.
Philip stared back. He looked at the tiny, red face. He looked at the strong set of the jaw. And then, he saw the eyes.
One brown. One blue.
The room held its breath...
"The eyes…" Antipater whispered from behind. "Sire, the eyes."
Philip didn't look away. A slow grin spread across his bearded face.
"The Temple of Artemis burned tonight," Philip said softly, his voice carrying to every corner of the silent room.
"Sire?" Parmenion asked, confused.
"Do you know why it burned, Parmenion?" Philip asked, not looking up from Magnus's face.
"No, Sire."
"It burned," Philip roared, sudden laughter bursting from his chest, "because the Goddess Artemis was too busy attending this birth to save her own temple!"
He reached down and lifted Magnus high into the air with one hand, displaying him to the generals like a trophy of war.
"Look at him! He does not cry! He does not flinch! He stares at a King and does not blink!"
Magnus dangled in the air, feeling a draft, thinking, 'Actually, I'm just paralyzed with terror, but sure, let's go with that.'
"The world burned to make way for him!" Philip shouted, his voice ringing with pride and madness.
"Let the Greeks chatter! Let the Athenians tremble! This is no curse. This is a storm!"
"What shall he be named, Sire?" Parmenion asked, a smile finally breaking through his stoic mask.
Philip pulled Magnus back down, holding him close, eye to eye.
"He shall be Alexander," Philip whispered, the name sounding like a decree of fate.
"Defender of Men. And he shall inherit… everything!"
The King turned to his scribe, who was cowering in the corner.
"Write it down! Three victories this day! My horse has won at the Olympic games! My general Parmenion has crushed the Illyrians! And now, a son is born to me."
Philip laughed, a sound that shook the walls. "I fear a small misfortune must follow to balance it. But not today!"
Magnus, safe in the arms of the most dangerous man in the world, let out a small, tired yawn.
'Alexander,' he thought, the weight of the name settling on his tiny shoulders. 'Well. I suppose I have some work to do.'