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His attention fixed at once on Theron.
“I expected more clothes,” Atlas said, his gaze cutting between Aster and me as we dragged ourselves to our feet.
“In their defense,” Theron offered, entirely unbothered, “I was taking a bath.”
Atlas looked genuinely appalled. “Cover yourself, for fuck’s sake, Theron.”
Theron lifted a brow and made a slow show of glancing about the room. “With what, precisely?”
Atlas turned, snatched a book from the nearest shelf, and hurled it at him.
“That’s a start.”
Theron caught it one-handed, looked down, and read the title aloud. “The Rot of the Flesh, and the Curing Thereof.” He turned it over in his hand and chuckled low before setting it carefully aside. “I think not. My cock deserved better than that.”
Atlas narrowed his eyes and flicked them to Aster, who took the cue, nodded, and slipped out of the door.
“Lazaros.” Atlas’s gaze came to me. “Thank you for your swift return. A successful one, no less. Minus the clothes, and do I want to know why you’re both wet?”
I inclined my head. “You asked, and we delivered, and no, you don’t want to know.”
Theron laughed at this and countered, “Oh, I bet he does.”
“Perhaps when I’m feeling less murderous,” Atlas replied, the tension in his jaw easy to see.
An awkward silence settled over the office after that. Theron, meanwhile, had begun to wander it, idly, entirely unconcerned by his own nudity, pausing beside the wreck of Atlas’s desk. Or what was left of it after he’d half-destroyed the thing only days before.
The room was halfway through being put right since Atlas’s outburst. A new bookshelf stood where the old one had been reduced to splinters. Several deep cracks still scarred the stone walls, and for all someone’s best efforts, ink stains lingered across the floorboards. Theron trailed a finger along a particularly impressive gouge in the wall near the desk.
“Redecorating, are we?”
Atlas folded his arms. “It wasn’t exactly intentional.”
“No?” Theron examined another crack with apparent interest. “I rather like it. Very expressive.”
Atlas’s jaw tightened. “Yes, I can imagine a man like you would appreciate raw fury, as I was rather angry at the time.” I scoffed at this, as that was one way to put it.
“I gathered.” Theron’s eyes wandered the room once more before returning to my brother’s. “I find I am rather angry myself, especially when dragged from my home and my kingdom,” he said, despite not looking half as murderous as I would expect. Regardless, I rested my hand on my dagger all the same.
“You send your failure of a brother and that bull to my home and demand I attend you at once.” His gaze slid to me, cool and unhurried. “Did you forget who I am so quickly, little prince?”
The words came out shaped like a threat, and Atlas took a step forward. So, I took one too, ready to throw myself between them if it came to it, just as Aster came back through the door.
“That,” Aster said, “is King to you.”
“Ah. Yes. And yet didn’t you wander off and vanish for a good long while?” Theron mused, plainly enjoying himself. “A sabbatical, was it?”
“This is fucking pointless!” Atlas snarled.
“He knows exactly who you are,” Aster said from the doorway, hurling a pair of breeches and a loose white shirt across the room at Theron. “Which is precisely why he needs your help. Now get dressed.”
Theron caught the clothes, holding the sandy breeches up between two fingers with open distaste. “Gentlemen. We were all born naked. Why on earth should we trouble ourselves to cover it up?”
“I will not have you anywhere near Alexandra with your cock out!” Atlas spat; every last shred of his patience gone.
“So, she is conscious, at least,” Theron noted, his tone far more serious this time.
“No,” Atlas snapped. “But your cock is not coming anywhere near our bedchamber.”
