Chapter 23 #2
I narrowed my eyes. They’d been almost tender with her, their strikes slowed, their posture softened, as if they’d decided she deserved mercy the rest of us hadn’t.
Before I could dwell on it— “Helena,” the High Priestess called.
My name echoed over the stones, but it felt far away, like it had been spoken underwater. I stepped forward, the bell on my wrist shaking faintly with each step, as if it already knew I was going to fail.
Achilles’s gaze was pinned on me as I stopped in front of the soldiers, the sun catching in the sweat on his collarbone, his chest rising and falling with deceptive calm.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Menelaus lean forward, his goblet forgotten, his gaze gleaming as he stared. At least in this Trial he knew for sure which one I was. Not that it would help me if the bell on my wrist chimed.
“Stillness,” I whispered to myself as my pulse thundered behind my ears.
Achilles stepped forward, the sword loose in his grip. His eyes met mine and held for a moment … before they slipped to the throne.
Menelaus was now watching us with that same unreadable amusement I’d seen during the last Trial. That calculation flickered now, a quiet challenge in the air.
Achilles didn’t look away. Neither did the king.
It felt like the same game. The same test. Menelaus pushing. Achilles holding his ground. Me caught in the space between them again. Except I wasn’t sure how I was going to use this game for my benefit this time.
When Achilles finally turned his gaze from the throne and let it settle on me, something in his eyes made the air feel thinner, hotter.
This wasn’t going to be good.
“Spread out,” one soldier whispered, exchanging looks with the others. “Is he … is he changing it?”
“He’s taking her himself?” another replied, sounding confused.
Achilles circled me once, the others holding their lines. His footfalls barely existed, a quiet glide that didn’t belong to a soldier at all, but to something patient enough to choose the perfect place to sink its teeth.
“Strike,” he barked, and the blade sliced past my cheek, snagging the veil in a fleeting pull, less a breath than the cold inhale before a kill.
I didn’t move. I pressed my heels into the earth, gathered every trembling thread inside me, and forced my body to stay exactly where the blade had kissed the air.
The next blow came harder. It cracked against the stone at my feet with a jarring crunch. Dust flew up in a sharp burst around my ankles.
Stillness, I reminded myself. Be stone. Be wind. Be nothing.
Achilles was silent. His lips tightened, irritation leaking through the control he was trying to hold. I caught it and frowned inwardly, baffled. Why would my refusal to move provoke him at all?
He prowled behind me. I couldn’t see him, but I felt the air shift and the chilling pull of the sword’s flat edge tracing along the back of my calf.
My gaze darted to Menelaus. He sat forward on his marble throne, eyes bright, his fingers closing around the stem of his goblet as if settling in to witness whatever came next.
This wasn’t a test. It was a message … but I didn’t know what it was supposed to say.
A muscle in my thigh twitched. My knees locked tight.
“Don’t move,” I whispered under my breath, so softly I wasn’t sure the words had left me at all.
For a flicker of a moment, I saw Thalessa in my mind as she’d stood during her whipping—spine straight, chin lifted, refusing to give them anything.
I tried to borrow a piece of that courage, to hold myself the way she had, unyielding.
Achilles circled back and eased the metal under the hem of my shift. The contact wasn’t gentle this time. It nudged higher, a quiet show of how little stood between skin and steel. My breath caught.
“Gods,” someone hissed behind me. “He’s toying with her.”
I forced my chin higher. The crowd leaned in, drunk on it. On me.
The strikes changed. They became harder … meaner.
One hit the pillar just behind my shoulder, stone chipping in a burst that stung the back of my arm. The impact rattled through me, a shock I forced myself to swallow. I stayed still. Barely.
Achilles’s jaw tightened. The next strike came fast and unforgiving, cutting past my temple. The gust of it lifted strands of my hair, close enough to feel the threat of it skimming skin.
Another slash swept beneath my wrist. My pulse stuttered. What was he doing?
Achilles flicked a look toward Menelaus, a brief, snarling glance, before growling in his throat and turning back to me.
The king cocked his head slightly, one brow lifting in a needling arc, as if daring Achilles to continue.
Achilles’s grip tightened around the hilt, answering that silent provocation without a word.
Blood pooled on my tongue where I’d bitten the inside of my cheek clean through. Sweat slid down my spine in a slow, traitorous trickle. My muscles trembled with the effort to stay still.
I side-eyed the High Priestess, wondering when she planned to stop this. Chloé had only been tested three times, for gods’ sake.
Achilles stepped in front of me, muscles coiled, and I braced. “Yield,” he muttered urgently, a quiet curse riding the word as he lifted the blade.
What had he just said? Had he told me to yield?
I didn’t have time to react to his choice of word. The metal met my skin and he pressed, guiding it in an unforgiving line across my forearm.
Pain ripped through me. A hiss burst out before I could swallow it. Blood welled fast, warm against the cooling air, and trailed down to the red stone in a bright, stinging line.
A murmur lifted from the throne that sounded too much like Menelaus laughing, quiet and satisfied, just as a gasp shivered through the courtyard.
“She’s bleeding—” someone breathed, stunned.
“He didn’t cut the others,” said another, louder. “Why her?”
I locked my body still, straining with the effort. My blood dripped, proof of something, but not weakness and not defeat. Thalessa flashed through my mind again, her back straight under the whip, her refusal to give them her pain. If she could do that, I could do this.
My shoulders stayed square, and my chin lifted. I didn’t move.
Achilles watched the blood trail down my skin. His expression held for a moment, then tightened, heat flaring in his eyes. It wasn’t guilt, and it wasn’t shame … it was disappointment, simmering and unmistakable, as if my refusal to break had somehow angered him.
As if he’d wanted me to fail.
A deliberate clap cut through the courtyard. Menelaus leaned back on his throne, giving Achilles a satisfied nod, the kind that carried both approval and mockery. His sneer lingered on Achilles like a hand pushing him farther.
My chest twisted, but not with hurt. With fury. A cold, searing kind of rage that unfurled beneath my ribs.
“She’s done,” Achilles announced in a flat voice. His gaze flicked to the High Priestess, something unspoken sparking between them, before he turned away without a glance back.
I didn’t realize I was shaking until the soft chime of the bell at my wrist betrayed me, one delicate sound, impossibly loud even amidst the chatter of the crowd around me, like it had been waiting to humiliate me all along.
I turned slowly and walked back to the others, my fury held tight beneath my skin, steadying each step.
My bare feet clung slightly to the warm stone as I moved, gaze fixed straight ahead, refusing to look at the nobles, the king, or the silk-draped women circling like vultures waiting for a corpse.
Blood from the shallow cut on my arm ran in a sticky trail as Anysa reared back in shock, and then reached out and slipped her hand into mine.
Her fingers were warm, offering a small piece of calm. Mine shook despite it.
I should’ve felt proud … or even victorious. I hadn’t flinched or failed. I was still standing.
But all I felt was the sting of betrayal.
He’d warned me. He’d looked at me like I mattered, like there was something in me worth protecting. And then he’d cut me. Not by accident. He’d tried to break me.
I couldn’t make sense of it.
All I knew was that the only blood spilled in that courtyard was mine. And he hadn’t even bothered to look back.