Chapter 19 #2
I glanced around, wondering if the room usually glittered or if that was just an effect of whatever Hetairis had given me.
Tall braziers lit the space with flames that licked upward, casting shadows that danced like spirits.
Spartan nobles and warriors lined the walls, dressed in crimson robes or gleaming bronze, their faces hard and appraising.
At the far end of the hall, Menelaus was already there, waiting in the way I imagined a god waited, as if arrival itself had bent around him. We had not seen him since the night we’d been chosen.
The throne he was on did not hold him so much as proclaim him, the red-veined stone dwarfed by the sheer fact of his presence. The room seemed arranged in relation to him, every line and column drawn inward, every gaze pulled whether it wished to be or not.
He rested one arm along the armrest, his fingers drumming lazily against the marble, and the sound carried.
Not loud, just noticed. His crown caught the light, bloodred metal etched with his sigils, and for a moment it felt less like an adornment than proof.
This was the shape power took when it decided to be seen.
He looked half asleep, but it was the dangerous kind of stillness, the kind that meant nothing here required his full attention. A god at ease among mortals. A predator who knew the room would hold its breath whether he moved or not.
The air shimmered strangely around him too, or maybe it was me …
my vision was slippery at the edges, warped by the bittersweet haze of the herb.
The red-veined marble beneath him seemed to pulse like flesh.
The lion pelt slung over his shoulder looked ready to twitch, its glassy eyes almost watching.
His crimson robes flowed like blood over muscle.
Just beyond the dais, behind a gate of gilded iron, a lion paced. Real and alive. Its golden coat shifted with each step, muscles rippling beneath the fur. The muted thud of its paws echoed softly over the stone as it turned, tail flicking in restless arcs.
I idly wondered if it had noticed its brother strewn across the king’s shoulder.
As if it had heard me, the lion halted mid-step, its amber eyes locking onto the room beyond the bars. Its chest expanded … and then, it roared.
The sound tore through the hall, rattling the gold chains that draped the pillars.
A woman ahead of me jerked back, her hand flying to her chest. Another gave a frantic gasp, half stumbling as her veil slipped sideways. Even Anysa flinched beside me, her breath catching.
I stood still.
The roar rolled over me, through me, but I didn’t move.
Not a blink or a breath. The floor could have cracked open beneath my feet, and I wouldn’t have cared.
My fingers remained loose at my sides and my gaze fixed forward.
The herb spread through my veins, dulling everything but the steady burn low in my belly.
Menelaus’s eyes found us, sweeping over the line hungrily. Not the hunger of cruelty, that would have been easier to name, but something deeper, darker. He looked at us the way a butcher studies lambs, not searching for the finest, but for the finest flesh to cut.
A shift of movement behind the throne caught my eye and then I watched Achilles straighten from the shadows.
Gods.
He looked carved from sunlight and violence.
Bronze skin stretched over a body built for conquest, his sand-brown hair damp and curling back from his forehead in a lazy defiance of order.
A leather harness crossed his chest, framing the ridges of his torso.
Gold caught the light at his wrist as did the blade of his sword at his hip.
The ache burgeoning between my thighs suddenly wasn’t for the throne or the crown.
It was for him.
For the line of his mouth, stern and unimpressed. For the hollow at the base of his throat. For the disinterest that wrapped around him like armor. His presence was a language, and I was already fluent. He looked at us the way a man looks at statues in a forgotten temple. Not cruel. Not curious.
Just … bored.
And somehow, that stung more than if he’d leered.
Because I wanted him to see me. I wanted him to … want me.
I blinked at that thought. It has to be the herb. I wasn’t craving him. I couldn’t. He wasn’t the path or the goal.
I craved Menelaus. He was all I wanted.
Because the crown was all I wanted.
The heat sitting low in my stomach didn’t seem to care about that though. It didn’t care about logic or necessity. It just ached … for him.
Achilles murmured something to Menelaus. Whatever he said drew a faint twitch of amusement across the king’s mouth. Menelaus nodded once, never taking his eyes from us as we came to a stop before the throne.
The High Priestess stepped forward, and it was all I could do to tear my gaze from Achilles’s face. She raised her arms, and when she spoke, her voice rang through the hall.
“Behold,” she said, “those who would be queen.”
The crowd stilled, the only sound the pacing of the lion and the women’s anxious breath around me.
“Sparta stands upon four sacred pillars. Discipline. Loyalty. Strength. Fertility. A Spartan woman is more than a wife. More than a bearer of sons. She is the soil from which warriors rise. The fire that tempers steel. The softness that calls a man home … but never weak.”
She turned toward the king, her voice lowering to reverence.
“Sexuality is not shameful,” the High Priestess said in a resonant voice.
“It is power. It is an offering.” Her eyes burned as they swept over us.
“It is through the body that power speaks. Through desire we remember we are not mere vessels, but creators. To master this is not to be base. It is to be divine.”
Another wave crashed through me, hot and sudden, like fire licking up from beneath my skin. My breath caught, unsteady. I shifted where I stood, toes digging into my sandals, the ache building … spreading.
It was getting harder to stay still, harder to pretend nothing was unraveling inside me. The herb in my blood answered the High Priestess’s voice like dry fields catching fire, sudden, wild, and all-consuming.
“To stir hunger,” she went on, “to awaken longing with a glance, a breath, a shift of your hips. That is not vanity. That is command. And command is the seed of an empire.”
My skin prickled. The floor felt far away as heat continued to pool between my legs. I glanced down, surprised there wasn’t a puddle of my lust on the floor beneath me.
The High Priestess bowed to Menelaus. “Tonight, these women perform to prove they are worthy of you, my king. That they are worthy … of Sparta.”
Menelaus’s mouth curved, a flash of teeth that wasn’t quite a smile. “Worthy,” he echoed, like he was tasting the word. “A tall task indeed—to find a goddess fit to stand beside a god.” His voice rumbled through the hall, smooth and self-assured, carrying both challenge and certainty.
He lifted his goblet, the wine within catching the firelight like blood. “Begin.”
A melodic rhythm began to pulse through the room. The hum of lyres slipped beneath my skin, sweet and sinuous. Drums followed, low and steady, like heartbeats not my own. Then came the flute, high and twisting like a ribbon of light, winding through the air and piercing something deep and hidden.
The sound didn’t just fill the chamber. It owned it.
It shot through my veins, coaxing my pulse into its rhythm.
My chest rose, unbidden. My thighs shifted.
Every note seemed to find a place inside me, a lock to fit, a door to pry open.
I swayed without meaning to, my breath gone shallow, and my nipples tightening as though the sound itself had grazed them.
The High Priestess gestured, and the concubines, led by Hetairis, stepped forward, their silks a waterfall of sensuality.
Hetairis moved like she’d been born from the idea of desire itself, each motion fluid and unhurried, a dance spun from secrets and sin.
Her silks clung and slipped in turns, catching the torchlight in a thousand flickers.
Every motion of her hips was a verse, every lift of her hand a spell cast in plain sight.
Behind her, the other concubines mirrored her movements, lesser stars orbiting a sun. Their arms arched overhead like swans, hips rolling in patterns too fluid to name.
Hetairis turned toward us, her voice precise with command. “Chosen, step forward. It is time to be seen. To seduce … to make them want.”
The concubines closed in around us, their touches gentle but insistent, pressing at our backs, adjusting our arms, whispering reminders into the folds of our veils. One tugged lightly at my wrist, guiding me like I was a puppet pulled by strings.
We moved, stepping into the firelit circle at the center of the chamber. My feet obeyed, though I couldn’t feel them. The marble beneath me could’ve been mist, or wind, or nothing at all. I was untethered. Floating. The ache in my body had turned into something all-consuming.
Another pulse of the herb thundered through me.
My breath hitched as heat flooded quick and biting, a dagger made of want.
The ache between my legs had sharpened into agony, no longer gentle or ignorable, but cruel in its hunger.
Every step sent another throb spiraling through my core, my thighs slick and trembling.
My mouth parted. I couldn’t close it. I couldn’t think. Thought was a distant continent. I was a creature now, made of pulse and ache and need, hollowed out by longing and filled again by every glance, every motion, every echo of the priestess’s voice.
“Let go,” Hetairis murmured behind me, her breath cool against my ear. “Stop clinging to thought. Fall into it—the music, the feeling. That’s where your power is.”
The words slipped into me like water into cracked earth, and something inside gave way.
I stopped fighting.
The music wrapped around my limbs, pulling me under. My hips began to move, not with intention, but instinct. My hands lifted, wrists soft, guided by rhythm rather than reason. The chamber, the throne, the watching eyes … all of it faded.
I stood there, lost in the spell of it. No longer Helena, daughter of Amyklai.
But something else entirely.
Something starving.