Chapter 25 #2
My heart slammed against my ribs, body seizing as I blinked, certain I was still dreaming.
But no—he was real. Solid and moonlit, his features drawn tight in the hush of my chamber.
His shoulders swallowed the light from the window, and something in the space between us tightened, waking like a creature roused from sleep.
“What …” I hissed, dragging the sheet to my chest. “What are you doing in here?”
His words rushed out urgent and uneven. “I had to see you. Before tomorrow. Before it’s too late.”
I sat up slowly, my heart pounding. “Too late for what?”
His eyes searched mine like the answer should already be there. “For this. For us.”
I blinked. “Achilles—”
“I’m not good with words,” he said, his jaw tight. “I was never taught how to beg. But I will. Gods help me, I will.” He reached for the edge of the bed, gripping it hard. “Run with me. Leave all of this behind. Be with me, Helena. Not the crown. Not the throne. Just me.”
My breath caught … it caught hard.
“You weren’t made to belong to any man. Not to a god, not to a king, not even to me. But if there’s a world where you’d choose this, where you’d choose us, then I’ll tear down every gate in this palace to give it to you.”
The world tilted.
Achilles surged forward and caught my face in his hands like it was the only thing anchoring him to this world.
His mouth crashed against mine with a force that stole all the air from my lungs, a groan vibrating from deep in his chest as I tangled my fingers in his hair, pulling him closer—closer—until there was nothing left between us but need and heartbreak.
His lips were wild and worshipping all at once, tasting of every sleepless night, every secret glance, every moment we’d spent pretending we could be anything less than this.
My body bowed into his like it remembered him. Like it had been waiting.
His hands slid to my waist, gripping me like I was something precious, fragile and dangerous all at once. When he finally tore his mouth from mine, I was left gasping, lips burning, heart soaring, every part of me trembling with the weight of what we’d just done.
For one breathless moment, nothing else existed. Just him. Just us.
Then reality came crashing in.
My lips parted, but no sound escaped. I stared up at him, chest heaving, caught somewhere between wonder and devastation. He was asking me to run. To choose him.
But …
My mother’s words echoed in my skull, fierce and pleading.
Filippos, crumpled in the fields, blood painting his face. The boy who wanted to become a man. Gone.
Thalessa. Eyes wide, tongue cut off … left to rot in a cell.
The children, ribs showing through dirt-streaked skin as they trudged past the manor.
The villagers with dust in their lungs and hope draining from their eyes.
Amyklai.
All of them.
Every soul that had ever looked at me and prayed I might change something.
Counting on me.
My throat burned. My eyes slid shut as if darkness could block it out, his face, his voice, the ache in my chest, the want twisting tight and treacherous, the impossible choice lying between us like an altar waiting for a sacrifice. But the pain stayed. Gods, it stayed.
When I opened my eyes again, he was still there. His gaze locked on mine. Unmoving. Unblinking. Waiting like the world might tilt on whatever I chose next.
“I can’t,” I finally breathed.
The words felt like skin tearing.
Achilles went utterly still. Not the poised, battle-ready stillness he wore like armor. This was different. A quiet, stunned halt, as if the ground had shifted beneath his feet.
“What?” he said, the word heavy with disbelief, by something wounded beneath it.
I sat up, the sheet slipping from my shoulders.
My chest rose and fell in shallow bursts as I forced the words out, each one cutting through me like a blade I had to wield myself.
“My duty is to my people,” I said, the sorrow in my voice unmistakable, shaped from everything I’d lost and everything I still feared losing.
“I cannot turn from that. If there is even the smallest chance I could win tomorrow … if there is any path that might save them. I have to take it.”
For a moment, he didn’t move.
He only stared at me disbelievingly, as if the right kind of stillness might rewind the world, might make the words I’d spoken fold themselves back into my chest.
But they didn’t.
And I wouldn’t.
I watched the realization hit him. His shoulders lowered, not in surrender, but in a slow collapse, like something monumental giving under its own weight. Something that had stood too long against too many storms.
And then it happened.
The shift. The unraveling.
Piece by piece, he drew himself inward. The fierce want in his eyes dimmed. The ache in his expression dissolved. The fragile, helpless hope that had trembled through his words moments before faded until what remained was emptiness and an ache that radiated between us like a widening gulf.
There was no rage, no fire, no fight. Just quiet grief that settled over him like dust on forgotten armor.
When he finally spoke, his voice was softer than I’d ever heard it, scraped down to something bare and aching. “I hope you get everything you want.”
He turned without waiting for an answer.
The door opened. Closed.
And the quiet that followed felt like a final breath.
He was gone.
I stayed where I was, lips tingling, skin still warm in the places his nearness had touched the air around me. Carefully, I folded myself back against the pillows, as if movement might crack me open farther.
But the ache didn’t fade.
It settled. It took root. It unfurled through my chest in painful blossoms, filling every hollow space he’d left behind.
And as the first pale light crept into the room, brushing the walls in soft relief, I knew I’d made the right choice.
I just wasn’t sure I’d survive it.