Chapter 30
I picked at the meal under watchful eyes.
The priestesses stood like statues around me. One had placed the tray in front of me moments ago: a handful of pomegranate seeds, a few olives, a sliver of dried fig. Simple fare that was just enough to keep me upright.
I lifted a single seed between my fingers. It shook before I brought it to my lips. The burst of sweetness was too much. It clung to my tongue like something I wasn’t meant to have. I chewed anxiously, forcing it down. Then another. And another.
The figs were easy. The olives, far less so—salt clashing with sugar, bitter pushing against sweet. I did my best not to grimace.
None of them spoke. Not even when I dropped a pit back on the tray too quickly and it clinked loud in the quiet. They just watched. Like I was something they had prepared and weren’t quite sure would last.
I swallowed the last fig and set my hands in my lap, folding them like I thought a queen might.
One of them stepped forward and dabbed at my lips with a square of linen. “It is time,” she announced after she was finished. The other two flanked the door.
I slowly rose. The silk of my chiton rustled against skin still tight from the paint, from the glyphs scrawled in black and red like spells across my arms and chest.
The doors opened and torchlight spilled inward.
The hallway beyond was quiet and glowing, the walls breathing in red and gold, and the scent of smoke trailing down the corridor.
Soldiers lined the hallway, their crimson cloaks skimming the stone floor.
They were all standing at attention, but they might as well have been faceless.
Because I only saw one.
Achilles stood at the front, taller than the rest, a blade strapped to his back and his helmet tucked under one arm.
His face was partially shadowed, but his eyes fixed on me and didn’t move.
His gaze swept down the length of me, taking in the red glinting across my skin and the black sigils curling down my arms and my throat.
I expected coldness. Pity. Something detached.
Instead, there was an ache.
How could a single look feel more intimate than touch?
The red on my skin shimmered in the torchlight, and for a moment, I could’ve sworn he flinched. As if it hurt him to see it. As if he felt it too.
He stepped forward and the others followed.
I moved when they did, the soft slap of my sandals echoing against stone as I followed them out of the private corridor that cradled my new chambers. The red silk at my waist swayed with each step.
Just beyond the threshold, a red-and-black palanquin waited, draped in silks. A vessel fit for a goddess … or a corpse.
I paused.
Achilles stepped forward and offered his hand.
I placed mine in his, careful to press only my palm to his skin so the paint etched along the back wouldn’t smear.
His grip was rough. Calloused. Too much.
For a breath, neither of us moved. His thumb grazed mine, barely, but it was enough. Heat flashed beneath my skin.
“Stop,” I hissed, carefully prying his fingers off with my free hand before the paint could smear.
He didn’t even pretend to be chastened. He just watched me, his lips tilting into that maddening smirk, eyes catching the light like he enjoyed every second of my fluster.
“I’m only helping my queen,” he said calmly … but I didn’t miss his emphasis.
My jaw clenched. I am not yours, and you are not mine. The words screamed inside me, clawing for space. But my heart didn’t listen. It beat faster anyway, reckless fool that it was.
I stepped onto the palanquin, my sandals brushing against the polished wood.
Silk whispered as my dress pooled around me.
One of the guards nodded, and a breath later, I rose.
The lift jolted roughly, the strength of six soldiers hoisting me into the air.
But then came the sway, slow and rhythmic, like a cradle, or a cage on a breeze.
The palace halls passed in a blur of motion. Columns loomed, etched with Menelaus mid-battle and monsters mid-roar. The scent of incense was mixed with the faint tang of wine and waxed bronze.
The music reached me first, faint, like a whisper under the sway of the palanquin. Then came the laughter, sharp bursts echoing off the stone. Goblets clinked. Feet shifted. Voices tangled with lyre strings and drumbeats, each note pulling my nerves tighter, knotting them one by one.
They were waiting. For me. With every steady step of the soldiers beneath me, the sound swelled, louder, closer, pressing against my skin like it meant to seep in.
And then, suddenly, we stopped.
I stared at the towering red doors of the throne room in front of me, adorned with phoenixes mid-flight, beasts with lion bodies and serpent tails coiled in battle … and my mouth dried.
This was where it had happened. Where I’d stood in front of the court for the first Trial—drugged, and out of control, Hetairis’s help turning me into a spectacle.
My stomach twisted. Gods, what if I embarrassed myself again? What if I froze, or tripped, or worse, let the whole room see how terrified I really was?
Achilles stepped forward and murmured something to the guards and their spears uncrossed.
The red doors groaned open and the palanquin swayed with each step as we moved inside, its silk curtains rippling around me as all eyes turned. The music faltered. Conversations cut off. Even the laughter died.
A voice rang out, clear and ceremonial: “Behold. Helena of Sparta.”
The name struck through the silence like a bell toll. It was my name … and yet, it felt like someone else’s. Someone made from marble and crowned in poppies. Someone I didn’t quite recognize.
Gasps rippled down the long hall, wonder and curiosity crackling like static in the air. I lifted my chin, my back locked despite the tremble in my stomach as the palanquin halted and the curtains were drawn back. Light spilled over me, and the hall seemed to exhale as one.
Dozens of eyes stared. Then narrowed. Then lingered.
They looked at me.
Not the glyphs. Not the crown of poppies clinging to the braids coiled at my temples. Me.
The hush fractured into a hum of whispers.
“She’s even more beautiful than they said—”
“Like a statue come to life—”
“No, not a statue. A goddess—”
“That skin … those eyes—”
“No wonder he chose her.”
“Does she know what she’s walking into?”
The heat of it found me, gazes crawling across my skin like fingers too bold to lift. Eyes raked over my face, my throat, my waist. I sat straight-backed, hands in my lap, trying to look as much like a queen as I could.
I thought I’d known what it was like to be stared at. But somehow the eyes in this room felt like a different animal.
I had never felt more exposed.
The silk of my chiton clung to freshly oiled skin, and though the priestess had painted me in red and black and sacred symbols, nothing could mask what I was beneath it all.
A woman wrapped in poppy petals and uncertainty.
I stared forward, unblinking, even as the whispers thickened.
“She doesn’t look afraid.”
“She should be.”
I searched the crowd for anyone I recognized, but there was no one.
Of course not. I nodded to myself, swallowing around the tightness in my throat.
Everything had happened too quickly for my mother or Calismae to reach the palace, too quickly for word to travel and feet to follow.
For a moment, I swore I saw a flicker of copper hair, a shape that might have been Anysa. But when I blinked, it was gone.
There were no familiar faces. No safe eyes to meet. Only the weight of strangers. Hungry and awed. And I wondered—when would it start to feel like I was a queen? When would I stop feeling like something to be devoured?
The throne room was a vision of decadent madness.
Light poured from a thousand suspended oil lamps, their flames encased in colored glass that fractured the air into shards of red, gold, and sapphire blue.
New silk banners draped the vaulted ceiling, stitched with Menelaus’s sigils.
Cushioned lounges flanked the path to the throne, each one occupied by guests reclined in sheer fabrics and dripping with jewels. Fingers stilled mid-toast.
A rustle moved through the crowd, and I felt Menelaus before I saw him … it was always that way with him. A pressure in the air, like thunder crouched behind the clouds.
The king strode forward from his throne, crimson-robed and gold-crowned, a lion among jackals.
The silk of his garment glinted with ruby-colored threads, the same shade as the blood that stained the sands outside Amyklai. His shoulder was once again covered by a lion’s pelt … and that smile was back, the one that was wide and full of appetite.
It gave me the same sense of misgiving as it had before I’d seen his gentler one.
The palanquin was lowered as the king reached me and he stared, his eyes gleaming beneath his heavy crown. “My beauty,” he murmured, extending a strong, ring-laden hand.
I stared at his hand long enough that I expected annoyance to surface, but when I finally looked up, all I found was patience … as though he were simply giving me the space to choose.
Taking a deep breath, I lifted my chin. I was Helena of Amyklai. Helena the Beauty. Helena of Sparta. This was my destiny, and I would not cower before it.
I placed my hand in his.
His fingers closed around mine, and he dipped his head just enough for the words to brush my ear, soft as a vow. “There’s my queen.”
I forced myself to smile, errantly thinking how his touch sparked nothing. There was no lightning under the skin, no heat leaping up my wrist like a brand. Just … contact. Achilles’s hand had been different. Calloused, rough, and alive. Charged like danger and desire braided beneath the skin.
Menelaus’s grip was simply … there.
With time that will change, I told myself as I stepped off the palanquin carefully.
“I’ve never seen something more beautiful,” he murmured, loud enough for those near to hear, though his eyes never left my face.
Something, not someone.
Was his wording intentional?
“Thank you, my king,” I answered as he guided me forward, his hand firm around mine, steering me through the parting crowd with the quiet assurance of a man who knew everything here belonged to him.
His throne rose ahead, towering and brutal. Stone lions crouched on either side, their bared teeth set in a snarl.
But beside it, smaller, and unmistakably new—there was a second throne. It was lower to the ground, but cut from the same red marble with its seat draped in white silk. Menelaus’s sigil was along the base of it.
“For you,” Menelaus said, his voice deep with pride. “All of this. For you.”
Around us, the crowd bowed as one as I stared at my throne.
I was truly about to be queen.
And with time—time to steady myself, time to learn him, time to wield the power placed in my hands—Menelaus’s touch might kindle something more than duty. With time, I would grow into my crown.
With time, I would save Sparta.
“Sit down, my beauty,” Menelaus coaxed as he led me to the seat. “Let them see what a goddess looks like when she takes form.”
I stepped forward and lowered myself onto the throne. Red and black shimmered along my arms, catching the light like ancient seals pressed into skin.
Just two months ago, I’d been in Amyklai, training and waiting.
I’d studied maps by candlelight, recited histories, drilled posture and poise until my back ached and my lungs burned.
Those lungs had seared with every breath as I held each stance a little longer, imagining the day I would stand before a king without trembling, imagining the day I would finally belong to something greater than a village’s hopes.
All of it in preparation. All of it in hope.
The throne was cold beneath me. And yet, around me, the room gleamed like a fever dream, a hundred courtiers draped in decadence and watching my every move.
They didn’t see the woman who’d spent her mornings dodging dust storms and her evenings mourning the dead.
Who had waited in that manor like a soldier ready to be summoned.
They saw the crown. They saw a queen.
And maybe I could be that. Maybe I already was.
My fingers twitched against the stone. The red shimmered on my skin, glowing faintly like fire sealed beneath glass. The music had softened, and even the laughter from the court had taken on a careful hush.
Once more I lifted my chin.
I had trained for this.
I had bled for it.
And even if the weight felt heavier than I imagined—even if the dreams of Amyklai didn’t match the truth of what this throne would feel like—I would hold steady.
Because I was no longer waiting.
I was chosen.
I was Helena of Sparta.