Grace placed a tender kiss on his shoulder. How could his mother have ignored him so? How could any mother not answer the plea of her child to come visit him?
She thought of her own parents. Of the love and kindness they had lavished on her. And for the first time, she realized her feelings about their deaths were wrong. All these years, she'd told herself that it would have been better to never have known their love than to have it taken away so cruelly.
But it wasn't. Even though the memories of her parents and childhood were bittersweet, they comforted her.
Julian had never had the warmth of a loving embrace. The security of knowing that no matter what he did, his parents would be there for him.
She couldn't imagine growing up the way Julian had.
"But you had Iason," she whispered, wondering if that had been enough for him.
"I did. After my father died when I was fourteen, Iason was even kind enough to let me go home with him on furlough. It was on one of those visits that I first saw Penelope."
Grace felt a tiny stab of jealousy at the mention of his wife's name.
"She was so beautiful," Julian whispered, "and promised to Iason."
She went still at his words.
Oh, this wasn't good.
"Even worse," he said, lightly stroking her arm, "she was in love with him. Every time we visited, she'd be there to throw herself into his arms and kiss him. Tell him how much he meant to her. When we'd leave, she'd quietly beg him to be careful. Then, she too started leaving things for him to find."
Julian paused as he remembered the way Iason would look when he returned to the barracks with Penelope's gifts.
"You may marry one day, Julian," Iason would say as he flaunted her tokens, "but you'll never have a wife like her warming your bed."
Though Iason didn't say it, Julian knew all too well the reason why. No noble father would ever consent to give his daughter to a baseborn, disinherited man who had absolutely no family that would acknowledge him.
Every time Iason had uttered those words, they had cut him to pieces. There had been times when he suspected Iason salted the wound out of jealousy because of the way Penelope would let her gaze linger too long on him when she didn't think Iason was looking. Iason may have held her heart, but like other women, Penelope had ogled Julian whenever he came near.
It was for that reason that Iason stopped asking him to visit altogether. And it had torn him apart to be banned from the only safe home he'd ever known.
"I should have let them marry," Julian said as he cupped Grace's head with his arm, and buried his face against her neck to inhale the sweet comfort of her scent. "I knew it even then. But I couldn't stand it. Year after year, I would see her love him. I watched his family dote upon him, while I didn't even have a home to go to."
"Why?" she asked. "You said you had brothers, wouldn't they let you stay with them?"
He shook his head. "My father's sons hated me passionately. Their mother would have let me in, but I refused to pay the price she asked for it. I didn't have much in those days, but I still had my dignity."
"You have dignity now, too," she whispered, tightening her hold on his waist. "I've seen enough of it to know."
Releasing her, he looked away at her words, his jaw tense.
"What happened to Iason?" she asked, seeking to keep him talking while he was in the mood for it. "Did he die in battle?"
He laughed bitterly. "No. When we were old enough to join the army, I kept him safe on the battlefield. I'd promised Penelope and his family that I wouldn't let anything happen to him."
Grace felt his heart pounding fiercely against her arms.
"As the years went by, it was my name people whispered in awe and fear. My legend and victories recounted over and over again. And when I returned to Thymaria, I ended up sleeping in the streets, or in the bed of whatever woman opened her door to me for the night, just biding my time until I could return to battle."
Tears stung her eyes at the pain she heard in his voice. How could anyone have treated him that way?
"What happened to change it?" she asked.
He sighed. "One night, while I was looking for a place to sleep, I stumbled across the two of them in a lovers' embrace. I quickly apologized, but as I left, I overheard Iason talking to Penelope."
His entire body went rigid in her arms as his heartbeat raced even faster.
"What did he say?" Grace prompted.
The light in his eyes faded. "Penelope asked him why I never went to my brothers' homes. Iason laughed and said, 'No one wants Julian. He's the son of Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love, and not even she can stand to be near him.' "
Grace couldn't breathe as he repeated the cruel words, and she could only imagine what he must have felt when he heard them.