Carrick licked the last trace of blood from Samandriel's throat, and raised his head. His mouth moved close to the boy's own, hovering barely an inch above it.
"Enjoy it, slave," he murmured. He could sense the boy's arousal even beneath his fear. "There's no shame for you to submit. It's what you were born for."
He raised his eyebrows at Samandriel's next words - Carrick neither spoke nor read Sumerian, a language older than even his own.
Something stirred in Carrick at the slave's impassioned words. He thought of Apollo; beautiful and merciless, golden and bright, lord of medicine and art and poetry and music - of learning and philosophy and of civilisation itself. Apollo, whose great and noble heart was broken forever when his beloved Spartan prince Hyacinthus died in his arms, and whose funeral feast was one of the most important religious festivals in his homeland.
But Sparta's patron had been another Olympian; Artemis, Apollo's beloved twin sister and opposite to all he was; fierce and solitary virgin huntress whose arrows glittered not with sunlight, but with the silver of the crescent moon. Lady of forests and rocks and rivers, who swore never to be controlled by a man, who bedded only the nymphs of her retinue, slaying them with unquenchable fury should they lie with anyone but her.
"... Not a nymph, or a maenad, or a mortal son of the gods. A Muse," Carrick said softly. "You're a Muse."