Chapter 15 #2
Anysa wrinkled her nose like she’d just bitten into something spoiled.
“Honestly? It’s not the Trials I’m worried about.
It’s the queen training.” Her voice lowered dramatically.
“Do you know how many spoons there are? Apparently, there’s a fish spoon, a soup spoon, a honey spoon, and some kind of cursed demonic spoon with holes in it that’s just for olives. Olives, Helena!”
I blinked.
“And don’t get me started on the lessons they’ll do to teach us to walk correctly,” she ranted, her hands slicing through the air like an agitated orator before the assembly.
“What if I have to float like a swan while balancing a pomegranate on my head and pretending I don’t sweat.
I mean, sometimes I trip over air. It will be a disaster! ”
A giggle slipped out of me before I could stop it.
She raised her brows. “Go ahead and laugh, but I guarantee I’ll be the one flinging a spoon into the king’s lap by accident before week’s end. I’ll be executed for crimes against silverware.”
I shook my head, still laughing, and muttered, “Gods help us.”
The term had slipped out from habit. I winced, glancing around, unsure if such a thing was even allowed to be said within these walls.
Anysa seemed unbothered by my slip and she clinked her cup against mine like we were already toasting our own doom. “If they’re looking for the next elegant Queen of Sparta, I sincerely hope they have poor eyesight.”
I wasn’t sure the training would be as bad as all of that, but it still had me deep in thought as the noise of the room swelled around us. Murmurs, clinking cups, and the faint rustle of draped fabric. I caught eyes watching us, two girls tucked into a corner, talking like conspirators.
Anysa leaned in close, her voice teasing. “On a more delicious note … what do you think of the captain?”
I glanced at her, wary. “Captain?”
She tilted her chin toward the far end of the room. “Achilles,” she said lightly. “He just walked in.”
Achilles.
The name struck like a dropped goblet, a bright, clean shatter in my mind.
I turned … and stared as he moved through the doors, every step coiled with lethal purpose. A spolas hugged his frame this morning, its leather dark as oil and molded to the kind of body sculptors wept trying to re-create.
A crimson sash cinched his waist, its end brushing the hilt of a sword slung like an afterthought at his hip. His hair had been pulled back in Spartan fashion, revealing a face both terrible and divine, cheekbones like the edge of a drawn bow, a mouth made for commands, and those eyes.
Deep blue and unnervingly familiar. My breath hitched.
It was him … the soldier from last night. Apparently, he hadn’t been just some bored guard with a quick mouth and a quicker smile.
He’d been the captain of the king’s guard.
Achilles. The living myth. Sparta’s most beloved son.
And the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen.
Color flooded my cheeks, crawling down my neck, and I dropped my gaze, fingers tightening around the cool ceramic of my cup.
Achilles cut through the room with a quiet gravity, not speaking, not smiling. Just existing.
But that was enough.
Conversations faltered. Maza stilled halfway to mouths. Every girl watched him, some openly, some from beneath lowered lashes, but none could look away.
I stiffened. Why was he even allowed in here? We weren’t wearing our veils. Weren’t we supposed to be hidden, sacred, until the Trials ended?
I leaned toward Anysa. “Why is he allowed to see us like this?”
She shrugged, her mouth curving around a grape. “He’s the king’s right hand. He fought beside him in the war against the gods. They say there’s no one Menelaus trusts more.”
I pursed my lips, a strange feeling prickling beneath my skin.
He kept walking. Past the tables, past the servants, until the weight of his presence fell across me like a cloak in the desert.
He looked up … and our eyes met. The world stilled … until there was only that impossible gaze pinning me in place.
There was no expression on his face. Not really. Just that same too-still calm I’d seen before the king called my name. But something lived in the way he looked at me now, in the slight narrowing of his gaze.
Like he already regretted looking at me at all.
“They say he’s a demigod, you know. The only divine being Menelaus allows in Sparta because of their bond,” Anysa commented, pulling me straight out of the ridiculous stare-off I was having with the man himself.
My throat felt dry as I pretended the lamb on the plate in front of me was suddenly interesting. “I’m sure that’s not true …”
She chuckled under her breath. “I’m just telling you what people say.
That he’s the son of a sea goddess who tried to make him immortal—held him over sacred flame or dipped him in the Styx, depending on who’s telling it.
That he was raised by Chiron, the famed centaur-sage, on Mount Pelion, who taught him every way to kill and every herb that could mend.
Some say he wrestled a lion before he could walk.
Others say he killed a man with his voice alone.
But always, always, they say this: No one who’s ever fought him in battle has lived to tell the tale. ”
I said nothing.
I hadn’t seen him fight, obviously. Not yet. But I could believe what she’d said. The way the hall reacted to his presence. The way even the air seemed to hush. There was something about him that didn’t feel quite mortal.
Still, if he truly was Menelaus’s closest companion, he definitely wasn’t as flawless as his legend claimed. And then there was the fact that he was also a soldier. Both were insurmountable marks against him.
“He’s beautiful,” Anysa said dreamily.
My jaw clenched. Something about hearing her say it out loud … grated.
I couldn’t disagree.
The most dangerous creatures were often beautiful.
I wasn’t the exception. I was the proof.
Dragging in a breath, I forced myself to look away. I wasn’t here to gawk at soldiers. I was here to survive. To win. To keep my—
The door slammed open with a bang that echoed off the frescoed walls.
“Up! On your feet!” Nomiki barked, striding into the chamber like she owned it. “Is this how you prepare for your future? Lounging like pampered courtesans?”
The girls around us jumped, knocking over cups and cushions as they scrambled to stand. Anysa rolled her eyes but obeyed, muttering under her breath.
Nomiki’s gaze swept the room with withering precision. “Lessons wait for no one. Not even you lot.”
She clapped her hands once, sharp as a slap. “Move.”
“Here we go,” Anysa whispered, and smiled at me like we were walking into a play.
But my pulse thundered like I was walking into war.