Chapter 10
When Damiskos imagined a lasting love, it had always been in the context of marriage or the army. If you had asked him five years ago what he wanted, he would have said he wanted both. If he had to choose, he would have chosen the wife, as the more respectable option and the one that came with the comforts of a settled home. That was why he had got into the habit of saying that he “preferred women.” If he didn’t have to choose, if he could have exactly what he wanted, he had always thought he’d want a kind and loyal wife at home, and a lover in the army, so that no matter where he was, there would be someone who was uniquely his, someone with whom he could share a deep companionship of body and soul.
He’d had lovers in the army, on and off, but they had all been taken from him
