Chapter 32 #2
Before I could respond, another guard shouted in panic. Alcmene stiffened, then hurried to the balcony, peeking over my shoulder.
The guards were moving fast, circling the dark, crumpled shape on the grass. Their torches illuminated his blood-spattered features. Her lips parted. “Is that … the Dread?” She yanked up part of her dress to cover her mouth.
“Come inside. You shouldn’t stand there, my lady!” She gasped, urgently gesturing for me to follow her. Once inside, she shut the doors quickly, her hands shaking as she dropped the bolt into place.
She busied herself at once, though her movements were distracted and nervous.
Worrying her fingers together, she crossed to the wall and lifted the lever so water began to flow into the tub.
Stepping back, she smoothed her skirt, then rubbed her palms against it.
All the while her gaze kept flicking to the balcony doors fearfully, as if she expected the Dread to seep through the cracks of the stone and find us.
“That’s never happened before, right?” I asked, wondering if the rumors had been wrong.
Alcmene shook her head. “Not that I know of,” she whispered, nervously dropping rose petals into the water.
I frowned as I watched them move across the surface, their perfume drifting faintly in the damp air.
Before I’d come here, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen flowers that weren’t shriveled with drought. Here, they floated as if drought had never existed.
I slipped off my clothes and stepped into the water, the warmth licking at my skin, the petals brushing past my legs like curious fingers.
She bathed me in silence, pouring warm water down my arms, over my back, tending my hair as if I might break. I closed my eyes and let her scrub away the paint and the scent of a throne that I was now starting to fear.
But no amount of rosewater could wash away the red mist out in the gardens, or Anysa’s red blood spreading across the marble floor.
The palace reeked of it now, and so did I.
Sleep was a cruel joke, something that dangled just out of reach. I twisted in the silk sheets, the scent of crushed flowers from the bath still clinging to my skin. The room was too quiet. Even the wind stayed still, like the whole world was waiting to see what I’d do when morning came.
And then, just once, I slipped under.
Into darkness.
Next to her.
Anysa’s body lay sprawled across the marble, eyes half lidded and mouth slack, her blood weaving through the cracks in the floor like red thread spun by the Fates. Her lips moved, soundless. Her fingers twitched.
Her gaze crept to mine, like it was costing her the last scrap of strength she had left.
A shadow blotted her out. The executioner stepped into her blood, the curve of his blade catching the torchlight, and his mouth split around the words:
“Smile, Helena. You’re next.”
I woke with a gasp.
My chest heaved, breath shuddering in and out of me like a knife had paused a breath from my throat. Sweat clung to my neck, pooling at my collarbone. My hands fisted the sheets, my heart racing.
The air shifted. I didn’t hear anything, I just sensed the subtle press of another presence, the way shadows seem to breathe when you’re not looking. A prickle worked its way up the back of my neck.
I wasn’t alone.
I turned slowly, my body already knowing who was there before my mind would admit it … and found Achilles standing in the corner, half shadowed, torchlight catching the edge of his jaw and the dark sweep of his shoulder armor.
My breath caught, but I didn’t move or pull the sheet tighter. I didn’t even sit up.
I just looked at him, unable to muster even the effort of surprise.
“Captain …” The word escaped before I could stop it, more breath than voice, a sound that seemed to unravel from somewhere low in my chest. It carried none of the formality it should have, none of the steel I meant to lace into it. Just a quiet surrender I hadn’t intended.
His title tasted strange on my tongue, wrong, too small for the man in front of me, but I refused to give him the truth of his name. Names were for claiming, and I couldn’t let him claim this moment. I couldn’t let him know how my pulse tripped just seeing him here.
He crossed the space between us, until he reached the edge of the bed. For an aching moment, he just stood there, looking at me like I was something precious and already lost.
“I had to check on you,” he said, the words slipping into the quiet.
I let out something between a laugh and a breath, though there was no humor in it. “To see if I survived the day … and her death?”
His gaze held mine, steady, unblinking. “To see if you survived him.”
My hands fisted in the sheet, not because I was afraid of Achilles, but because I wasn’t. “You shouldn’t be here,” I murmured. The words were habit, worn thin from overuse, the ones we always seemed to give each other when one of us didn’t know what else to say.
“I know.” His eyes swept over my face, searching for something that felt like it was already slipping away. “But I couldn’t stay away.”
I should have turned my head. Looked anywhere else. Instead, I let him look, let him see the exhaustion draining me, the way my shoulders folded inward, how I hadn’t been able to stop shaking since Anysa fell.
His hand shifted, so gradual I almost missed it, each inch closing the space between us like a question I hadn’t decided how to answer. When his fingers found the line of my jaw, heat bled into my skin, and for a heartbeat I hovered on the edge of flinching. But the warmth stayed.
“You’re freezing,” he said, his thumb grazing the corner of my mouth. “Even here, in all this heat.”
I swallowed hard. “I can’t seem to warm up,” I said, and the edge of my voice finally broke. “Did you know she was going to die?”
Something flickered in his eyes—fury, maybe. Or the kind of helplessness that came from wanting to burn the world down for someone and knowing you couldn’t.
“No,” he said immediately. “I swear it. The king sent me out on an errand this afternoon. I didn’t come back through the gates until moments before I saw you tonight.” Achilles shook his head. “Tell me what I can do.”
I didn’t say save me. I didn’t say kill him. I didn’t say burn this cursed palace to the ground.
Because I wanted those things for myself.
I leaned the smallest fraction into his hand. “Tell me something that can make me forget … just for a moment,” I finally whispered.
He bit down on his lip, like he was considering my request.
I watched the rise and fall of his chest, the faint glint in his eyes as if he were searching for something buried between the weight of his duty and the pull of whatever tether bound him to me. I closed my eyes, letting myself have this moment.
When he finally spoke, it was barely more than a murmur. “If I take your pain for myself … even for a breath … you may not want me to give it back.”
My lashes lifted, slow and heavy, until his face filled my sight, closer now, the line of his mouth drawn tight. His hand slid from my jaw to the side of my neck, and his thumb pressed lightly against the flutter of my pulse.
“I’m not asking you to take it,” I said. “Just … drown it for me.”
His expression shifted, pain, hunger, and regret all vying for a place there at once. He leaned in, until his shadow swallowed mine, until the scent of leather and steel and faint salt was all I could breathe.
“Then close your eyes,” he said.
I obeyed, and for a moment there was nothing but the sound of his breath mingling with mine. He pressed his forehead against mine. It wasn’t a kiss. Just the barest press, centering and unbearable all at once. His hand tightened fractionally against my neck.
“Breathe,” he whispered. “With me.”
And I did. Inhale, exhale, our chests rising and falling together in a rhythm older than war, older than kings. For those breaths, the memory of Anysa’s blood faded, the marble throne disappeared, the weight of the crown and the king’s hand on my skin dissolved into something softer.
But it wouldn’t last. I knew it, and so did he.
Because when his lips finally brushed the corner of mine, a touch so fleeting it could have been imagined, his whole body went still, like he’d just remembered the cost.
He drew back, his hand lingering one last heartbeat before falling away. “That’s all I can give you,” he said in a breaking voice.
Emotion swelled in my chest so violently I thought I might come apart from it—the heat, the ache, the sheer wrongness of what lived between us … and the impossible, holy truth of it all the same.
“Thank you, Captain,” I whispered raggedly.
His jaw clenched and something in his eyes darkened … but not with anger.
With need.
With pain.
“Achilles,” he said softly, correcting me. Not an order, or a demand. Just … an offering.
I stared at him, my throat thick. The word burned in my mouth before I let it go. “Achilles.”
He exhaled as if I had struck him or saved him, and blinked hard, tearing himself back as though it cost him something vital.
Every line of him strained toward me, like he was aching to linger in the pull between us, to surrender to what was already unraveling.
But he fought it. Fought me. He staggered a half step, his hand flexing like he could shove the desire back into his ribs and lock it there.
The air where his fingers had touched me was still full of him, charged, and aching with his shape. He turned fast, like if he hesitated even a second longer, he’d fall to my bed and ruin us both.
And then he was gone, the door closing behind him like the final note of a song I already knew I’d never hear again.
I lay in the dark, the echo of his touch burning against my skin, and tried to remember how to breathe … because by tomorrow’s end, I would go to sleep no longer just as myself, but as the bride of Sparta’s king.