Alexander then entered Babylon, victorious. He was received like a god. On top of the world, Alexander spoke of his dreams to his men as he and Hephaestion rode into the city on horseback.

A fond Hephaestion watched the king lose himself in elation.

The troops were awed by the lavish splendour of the palace. And yet, Alexander urged the men to control themselves.

"Wealth in great quantities brings the crows," he cautioned.

"Now you sound like Philip," Nearchus quipped.

Hephaestion sprang immediately to Alexander's defence.

"Philip never saw Babylon."

"No, he didn't, Hephaestion."

***

Darius' harem now belonged to Alexander. His men were eager to mingle with the Persian beauties, but Alexander urged restraint. Walking by Hephaestion's side, he locked eyes with a beautiful face, and made his way over.

How very unsurprising, the men muttered amongst themselves. A harem full of beautiful women and Alexander goes straight to a eunuch.

The head eunuch in the harem introduced him to Bagoas who, at fifteen, was in the very flower of boyhood. He had been Darius' favourite.

Alexander learned that he had been captured as a war prize, castrated and sold to Darius as a slave.

Alexander imagined him like a lamb to the slaughter, 'gelded' in a cold shed with dried blood, dirty straps and a table with knives where he was strapped down and his manhood cut from him, knowing nothing but pain. Then stinking men, screams, welts, and vomiting, and the wish for death.

Alexander shuddered, and would have fainted.

He would take him. He would treat him like a king. No harm would ever befall him again.

"You must have had a hard life. No longer will that be the case. Speak freely to me, of anything you wish."

Bagoas hesitated.

"My people spoke of you as a great and terrifying demon," Bagoas imparted. "Just as I suppose all your conquests did. And yet, my king, I am told you take your own bath and dress yourself. And even my clothes are richer than yours. And you... And yet they say you were presented with all the most pleasing concubines and did not keep one. They..."

"Go on," Alexander encouraged, cupping the boy's chin reassuringly.

"They say you are partial to males, and males only."

Alexander laughed.

Bagoas looked at him with eyes that asked, who are you?

Alexander only smiled on him.

Hephaestion watched their interaction from a distance, his face clouded.

Alexander offered the boy his freedom, but Bagoas was feeling a stirring within him, an inkling that this man was different from those that had abused him. He could hardly believe his own ears when he told the king that he would prefer to stay.

Alexander, greatly pleased, announced that the royal women and prince were to receive pavilions of their own, remaining untouched by his men. Everyone in the courtyard, woman and eunuch, was permitted to go free.

He looked to Hephaestion, who nodded in approval.

Alexander smoothed the cheek of the innocent boy, whose pride had been crushed, who was a human being with hopes and dreams lost. He would find him a gentle teacher, teach him Greek, restore his dignity.

Alexander turned to address all those present.

"I know not how much longer I will live. Every battle could be my last, for you know I fight alongside you. But this boy, and all others like him, are to be treated just as you treat me. Insult him, and you insult me. If you dare disobey me because you think me soft, and incapable of deriving pleasure from human suffering, heed well this promise I make. I will not be so merciful as to cut your limbs from your body. I will have them all coated with honey and torn off by bears. And I will look on and laugh."

The next day, Alexander instructed Hephaestion to have all the prisoners brought to him, to ensure that they were all treated well.

***

Leaving Babylon, Alexander headed for Susa. The city's treasury was captured and Alexander picked up men for his army.

He stayed overnight in Persepolis, the ceremonial capital of Persia. As he approached the palace of the former king Xerxes, he noticed a fallen statue of the man.

"Shall I pass by and leave you lying there because of the expeditions you led against Greece," Alexander mused aloud, "or shall I set you up again because of your magnanimity and your virtues in other respects?"

Alexander's reputation preceded him. Here, too, word had spread that the great Alexander conquered lands but would not take women with him.

When a Persian approached him at a drinking party and offered him the service of a male sex slave, Alexander slammed both fists so hard on the table in front of him that a hush instantly descended over the entire room.

The faces of Pausanias and Bagoas and all the dull-eyed girls who were handed around the palace flickered in his mind, and he let out an almighty roar.

"I should have you killed," Alexander raged. "What kind of monster do you take me for? You insult me by thinking I enjoy the bodies of the unwilling victims of your disgusting abomination. Let the boy go free. Let them all go free!" Alexander's lungs heaved, veins protruding along his temples and forehead. His flushed face was stricken by horror. "I am the king now. You will touch no unwilling body, nor sell it or offer it up, as long as I draw breath. Do you understand me?" The man nodded, panic-stricken. "Get out! Out, before I kill you myself."

Thaïs was a former Athenian concubine who had been offered to Alexander. He had refused to touch her, and she was freed before she married Ptolemy of her own volition.

Standing up, she declared her support for the king's verdict.

"These people, like all other barbarians you have conquered, my king, are despicable. They treat women and boys like cattle, property to passed along. They are beaten, starved, forced by vile men. It is the boys who are most defiled. If I were a god like you, your majesty, I would declare it a sin."

"You speak well, Thaïs," Alexander acknowledge through gritted teeth. He snatched a torch from the wall at his side. "I certainly should. Everyone who does not wish to die tonight, get out!"

As soon as the room emptied, the enraged Alexander set the palace of Persepolis on fire.

***

Alexander was lying in bed, reading a letter from his mother, when Hephaestion walked in. He had a manner of tearing back the flaps and going straight up behind Alexander that, to an onlooker unschooled in the king's personal life, would resemble an intruder intent on murder. So brazenly did he enter the king's tent, without word with the guards or pause at the entry or so much as a greeting. The veterans muttered under their breathe about the gal, the effrontery, but Alexander was only too eager to acknowledge his most prized friend before all the world.

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Alexander kept her writings secret, except from Hephaestion who alone was privy to the king's communications.

Hephaestion came up behind him, leaning in.

Alexander touched his ring to Hephaestion's lips, thereby swearing him to secrecy, as was their habit.

As they read, Hephaestion massaged Alexander's shoulder with skilled hands.

Alexander's eyes slipped shut.

As Hephaestion's sensual hands worked, Alexander could feel himself swelling, melting, and hardening all at once. His mouth fell open.

Alexander drew a sharp intake of air.

Suddenly remembering himself, he opened his eyes.

"It's a high ransom she charges for nine months lodging in the womb," he spoke, as the king could do only with his dearest confidant.

"Bring her to Babylon, Alexander. It'll give her such joy."

"Joy!" Alexander swiftly sat up, swinging his legs off the bed. "I am the cracked mirror of her dreams."

His heart and soul felt heavy, taxed. And yet, his body now felt loosened and light.

Pulse ratcheting up, he swung around to face Hephaestion.

"Stay with me tonight, Hephaestion," Alexander implored him earnestly. His eyes shone with a mix of hope and affection.

There was fire in Hephaestion's smouldering eyes as well.

But Hephaestion lowered his gaze before nodding subtly towards the lingering Bagoas, who was preparing Alexander's bath.

"I'll take my own bath. Thank you, Bagoas."

Bagoas bowed his head and retreated, giving the men their privacy.

The balcony was shrouded in darkness, pierced only by the glow of lamplight.

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"What bothers you?" Hephaestion inquired.

"I see in her everything I fear," Alexander breathed, gazing out at the city before them. "Yet I have no idea what it is, this fear. She was always so sure I was born of Zeus. Why, Hephaestion?"

Hephaestion gazed at him reverently.

"I think there are things beyond our imagining. Like the lightening. Tales of strange conceptions. I don't doubt it."

"What is being told me? What destiny do we - do I - have?" Alexander wondered aloud.

Hephaestion moved closer, picking up on the slip.

"Well, if I'm Patroclus, I die first. Then you, Achilles." He hesitated. "The generals are upset. They question your obsession with Darius. They say it was never meant for you to be king of Asia."

"Naturally," Alexander scoffed. "They want only to return to their homes rich with gold, but I have seen the future, Hephaestion! I've seen it now a thousand times, on a thousand faces. These people want, need, change. Aristotle was wrong about them."

"How so?"

"Look at those we've conquered. They leave their dead unburied, they smash their enemies skulls and drink them as dust, they mate in public! How can they think, or sing, or write when none can read? But as Alexander's army, they could go where they never thought possible. They can soldier, or work in the cities. From the Alexandrias, from Egypt to the outer ocean. We could connect these lands, Hephaestion. And the people."

"Some say these Alexandrias have become extensions of Alexander himself. They draw people into the cities so as to make slaves..."

"But we've freed them, Hephaestion, from the Persias, where everyone lived as slaves! To free the people of the world! Such would be beyond the glory of Achilles. Beyond Heracles! A feat to rival Prometheus, who was always a friend to man."

"Remember the fates of these heroes. They suffered, greatly."

"We all suffer. Your father, mine... They all came to the end of their time and in the end, when it's over, all that matters is what you've done."

"You once said the fear of death drives all men." Hephaestion hesitated. "Are there no other forces?" They were side by side now. "Is there not...love in your life, Alexander?"

He swallowed, then asked quietly and reverently: "What would you do if you ever reached the end of the world?" His eyes searched Alexander's probingly, daringly.

Alexander gazed at him for a moment.

"I'd turn back, and conquer its opposite," he quipped.

Hephaestion's gaze dropped.

"I wonder sometimes," he hesitated, "if it's not your mother you run from. So many years, so many miles between you... What is it you fear?"

Alexander looked away.

"Who knows these things? When I was a child my mother thought me divine; my father, weak. Which am I, Hephaestion? Weak or divine?"

Hephaestion's shining eyes told him the answer. He looked at Alexander like he was more than a king or a conqueror or a god. He looked at Alexander like he was the whole world.

"All I know is...I trust only you in this world. I've missed you. I need you." Alexander's eyes gleamed bright with unshed tears. "It is you I love, Hephaestion. No other."

Hephaestion swallowed, blinking fast.

"You still hold you head cocked like that," he remarked.

Alexander chuckled.

"I have to stop that-"

"No," Hephaestion breathed fiercely, "like a dear listening in the wind you strike me still, Alexander." His doe eyes were wide. "You have eyes like no other. I sound as stupid as a school boy, but..." He drew Alexander to him in a fierce embrace. "You're everything I care for. And by the sweet breath of Aphrodite I'm so jealous of losing you to this world you want so badly."

Alexander sucked in a breath. Hephaestion invoked the goddess of beauty, fertility and sexual love.

"You'll never lose me, Hephaestion," he vowed. "I'll be with you always. 'Til the end."

Hephaestion drew back at length.

"You never had your bath," he smiled wryly.

Alexander's hands framed his face.

"Join me."