Chapter 27 #2
Her gaze lingered on my face, her lips parted as though she were weighing the truth like a coin.
Then she reached out and cupped my hand in both of hers.
“If it can’t be me, I want it to be you,” she said, her words an echo of the conversation we’d had the other night.
“Fervently. Fiercely. You can do what this place needs. What our people need. You showed them you’d rather die than become queen through cruelty.
That’s the kind of woman I’d kneel for.”
There was an ache behind my eyes that burned.
She leaned in, resting her forehead briefly against mine. “I’ll serve you in any way I can. And when they crown you, Helena of Sparta, I’ll be right beside you. Not because you took it—but because you earned it.”
Tears were spilling down my cheeks now as well.
Anysa sniffed and tilted her head, her smile lifting again with quiet mischief. “And of course, there’s the other thing.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “What other thing?”
She leaned back and fanned herself with one hand. “The captain, darling. Achilles himself. He’s been hovering like a storm cloud with legs. Checking in. Asking the healers for updates. Pacing outside your door.”
I blinked. “He has?”
Anysa grinned, all too pleased. “Oh yes. Several times. It’s been very intense. Now, tell me, my nearly queen friend—why do you think the most battle-hardened, stone-faced rumored-demigod in the palace would be so very interested in your recovery?”
“I have no idea,” I muttered, but my cheeks betrayed me, burning hotter than the sun streaming in from the windows.
Roz suddenly scampered out of sight right as a knock came. Anysa clicked her tongue in frustration but didn’t get the chance to say anything else because the door creaked open, and Achilles stepped inside as if her words had summoned him.
He didn’t look like a hero fresh from glory. He looked like a man who was … broken.
His tunic hung wrinkled and askew, loose where it once clung with Spartan pride.
The sun-warm glow of his skin had dulled to a sickly pallor, and bruised shadows pooled beneath his eyes.
Unwashed strands of hair clung in disarray at his temples, a testament to nights without sleep.
Stubble roughened the strong line of his jaw—not the kind grown in pride, but in neglect, as if he’d forgotten himself entirely. Or no longer cared to remember.
But when his gaze landed on me, when he saw I was awake … a light flickered in his eyes. I watched his shoulders drop, like he’d been carrying the weight of a world only he could see.
“You’re awake,” he said hoarsely, like he hadn’t used his voice in too long.
“Yes,” I answered, keeping my voice level, though my heart beat like it wanted out of my chest.
Anysa rose, and he turned abruptly, before immediately reining himself in. “Stay,” he said. A little too quickly. “Don’t let me interrupt.”
His gaze locked onto mine. “I just—” His fingers flexed helplessly at his sides, Achilles the unshakable suddenly stripped of certainty. “I needed to see for myself.”
“I’m alive,” I said softly.
His jaw worked for a moment. “You gave us quite a scare.”
A flicker of something passed through his expression—pain, maybe. Or an echo of fear.
It hit me then, sank into my insides like the poison I’d drunk.
There would be no us. Not in this life. Not in any that demanded crowns and trials and poison-laced chalices. Whatever thread had once tied our hearts together, soft and golden and secret, it had been severed the moment I lifted that cup.
I’d known that when I’d refused him the night before the Trial, but the truth hit harder with the crown looming over me. I had shattered the future we might have had, and the soundless crack of it echoed between us still.
He stood there, pretending the truth wasn’t bleeding from his eyes, and I sat frozen, pretending I didn’t feel it. There was no mending something that had never been allowed to exist.
Anysa blinked at him, then turned her wide, delighted stare on me, her eyebrows climbing with gleeful mischief. I ignored her.
“Well,” I said, shrugging as if my hands weren’t shaking, “Thank you, Captain, for your … relief.”
“Yes,” Achilles murmured. And in that single word, I heard all of his pain.
He took a small step back, but his gaze didn’t follow his body. It stayed fixed on me, lingering, unspoken and screaming.
“Rest … Your Majesty,” he said softly, and I immediately mourned the way he used to say my name. “I—I still see you.”
Those words landed exactly the way they had that night in the garden, gentle and ardent, like he was peeling back every layer I hid behind and was choosing me anyway.
And gods, it hurt.
Because as the words settled in the space between us, something inside me pulled tight to the point of pain. What if he was the only man who ever would?
I held his gaze, because looking away would’ve been its own confession, and let the ache continue to take root where no one would ever see it.
He nodded once and left, closing the door behind him like it hurt.
“Queen of Sparta’s Heart indeed,” Anysa murmured.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The title rang in my ears like a fate I’d fought tooth and bone to reach. Yet hearing it aloud felt heavier than I’d ever imagined.
It settled over me not as triumph … but as consequence.
Gazing into the mirror against the wall, I tried to imagine a crown on my head. It didn’t look like it belonged there.
Not yet.
But it would.
Let them whisper. Let them kneel.
Sparta had a queen now.
And she would not be silent.