"They taught you how to survive, Erastes. They did not teach you how to live." The kindness had been in leaving the pain at his hand and not turning to any of the tools he had available to him everywhere in the suite.
He smiled at the vampire, all light and life as he looked up at them. "They were my friends, my lord. I would not have claimed kinship to Apollo when I met you if I had not known what it was to bask in his light once, to laugh with him and steal treasured little kisses. To drink with Dionysus and leave before his Maenads grew too mad and tore me apart, to watch Athena play chess? To race the east wind with Hermes, who, by the way, wore a form that looked a great deal like your boy the last time I saw him. A god of many shifts indeed."
He rested his hand on Carrick's chest. "Peace, Erastes. Peace. Your gods were not the only worshiped, have never been the only worshiped and it would be foolish to think we did not know each other. But...but as your makers taught you to survive, the ray of sunshine you let leave here, the true shifter you have at home...perhaps even me. You will learn life, true life before we're all dead and gone and then you will be prepared for immortality. Right now you are a weapon in search of a war to fight in. Rest, my darling Spartan. Take your ease and remember the pause between battles, the smell of the wind through the olive trees as the moon shone down on you all. Home in a way you have not allowed yourself to enjoy for so many centuries."