Chapter 38
I limped back toward my chamber, each step dragging a dull ache through my body. The sounds of revelry still chased me down the stone halls, laughter, music, the clatter of goblets … a feast that had long since soured into frenzy.
The guard at my side said nothing. His jaw was tight, his eyes fixed straight ahead, but I could feel the stiffness in him, the unease that made him avoid my face. Perhaps he didn’t know what to say to a queen who had been thrown to her knees before the court.
Or perhaps he didn’t care.
The air stank. The halls shook with the reedy cry of music and the din of men too drunk to remember themselves.
My last image of the king was of him sprawled naked across his bed, snoring into the tangled sheets, his skin slick with sweat. His hand still rested possessively against the place where he’d pinned me, even in sleep. A lover’s pose, almost tender …
When his appetite for spectacle in front of our guests had finally waned, he had taken me to his chamber.
He’d tried to be gentle. His voice softened, his praise whispered thick with wine.
He spoke to me sweetly, almost lovingly, as if the man who’d ordered me to my knees in front of the Sidonians had been someone else entirely.
But the illusion shattered quickly.
His gaze had changed … it had shifted. And for the first time since our wedding night, I saw it again. The same thing that had looked out at me was there once more.
His touch turned rough and impatient, and then his hand had closed around my throat.
His fingers tightened just enough to steal my breath, to make my vision spark and dim at the edges.
Panic surged as my lungs clawed uselessly for air.
I tried to speak, to gasp, but nothing came out, only a thin, broken sound trapped in his grip.
The room tilted, my heartbeat thundering wildly, and then beginning to stutter.
For a terrible moment, I knew he wouldn’t stop. That the creature inside of him didn’t care whether I lived, only that I yielded. Spots burst across my vision and darkness crept inward.
And at the last second, when I was sure this was the end … he released me.
I collapsed against the bed, coughing violently, air tearing back into my chest like glass. He loomed over me, breathing hard, eyes still wrong, still distant—as if he hadn’t even noticed how far he’d gone.
His touch afterward was rough, impatient, and stripped of pretense. He was too drunk to register the tremor still ripping through me, too proud to care how close he’d come to ending me.
By the end, my throat burned and throbbed, every swallow a reminder of his hands.
The sheets beneath us were wrenched and bunched from where I’d clawed at them, trying to stay conscious, trying to stay alive.
He’d sighed contentedly, rolling away like a man settling after a meal, already drifting off.
I lay there shaking, lungs still stuttering, staring at the painting on the ceiling while my pulse screamed in my ears. Long after his breathing evened out, my body stayed locked in that moment, replaying the truth I couldn’t escape. He’d almost killed me. It had almost all been over.
My body was sore in places I wished I could tear away as the guard stopped at my door and pushed it open. I stepped through, every muscle screaming. The door shut behind me with a thud that sounded too much like finality.
Alcmene stood in the room, her face pale, her hands tight around a pitcher of water. “Your Majesty,” she breathed, taking a step toward me.
I said nothing. My tongue felt thick, useless, as if words would splinter me further.
She stepped closer, soft footsteps against the stone, and lifted a shawl, the fabric brushing my arm as she tried to drape it around my shoulders. “You’re freezing. Let me—”
“Don’t,” I whispered, the word scraping out frayed.
She froze mid-motion. The shawl hung between us, trembling slightly in her hands. Her eyes searched my face, wide and uncertain, and I knew she could see it … my pain, the tremor I couldn’t hide.
I turned away, hugging my arms close, as if the chill were safer than her kindness. “Please. Just go,” I whispered around the lump in my throat.
Alcmene hesitated. I felt her eyes on me. Her worry. But she didn’t argue. She knew when to leave a wound untouched. She bowed her head, placed the pitcher on the table, and slipped through the door without another word.
The silence closed in.
My hand shot out, seizing the pitcher. With a broken cry, I hurled it across the chamber. It shattered against the wall, shards skittering across the floor, water running in rivulets through the cracks in the stone.
I snatched a wet rag from the basin and scrubbed at my skin, fierce and desperate. The crimson paint smeared instead of lifting, streaking across my arms, my collarbones, the hollow of my throat.
A sound broke the silence … a faint squeak.
I froze.
Roz crept out from beneath the table, small and strange, its gray fur shimmering faintly, that long red tail curling and uncurling like a ribbon.
Pale blue eyes glowed, watchful, too knowing for such a tiny body.
Roz had appeared every night I wasn’t with Menelaus, never judging, only watching …
its presence a quiet reminder that I wasn’t entirely alone.
But not tonight.
“No.” My voice cracked. I lurched upright, the rag dripping in my hand. “Get out!” The scream tore free, strangled and violent. “Leave!”
It flinched. For a moment it only looked at me, head tilting, as if it understood more than it should. Then it darted back into the shadows, swallowed by them as though it had never been there.
I caught my reflection in the mirror. You couldn’t see the bruises under the paint smears. I looked more bloodstained than anything else. Fitting, I thought, that on this last night of paint and ritual, the color would still cling to me like a curse instead of washing clean.
The rag slipped from my fingers. My knees gave way, crashing to the stone. The cold bit through the silk as I folded in on myself, sobs tearing out of me so violently I could hardly breathe. The red streaks were like brands of shame that would not wash away.
My vision blurred, the corners of the room swimming. If the Sidonian warriors hadn’t entered … If Achilles hadn’t stepped forward … If Menelaus hadn’t come to enough to let go of my neck …
The thoughts twisted in my gut. I gagged on my own breath and curled forward, pressing my palms into my eyes until bursts of light flared behind the lids.
But still I felt it, his hand pressing down on my head, holding me there.
Still I saw it, his eyes emptied of anything human, fixed on me with a cold, unblinking intent.
The certainty that my end meant nothing to him at all.
My stomach lurched. I stumbled to the corner and retched, bile and nothing else burning my throat. I hadn’t eaten. I couldn’t.
I collapsed back to the floor, trembling, my gaze falling to the glitter of red still clinging to my thighs. The torches around the room stretched long shadows across the walls, swaying like specters. They swayed, and I swayed with them, hollow, weightless, undone.
I couldn’t do this.
There was no escape. Not from the palace, not from the king … not from the gilded cage of my own body. No matter what I did, the prison closed in tighter.
I couldn’t change Menelaus. I couldn’t control him.
No one would save me.
Not Achilles.
Not Alcmene.
Not Roz.
And certainly not the gods.
I rose unsteadily, my joints creaking like rusted hinges. The balcony doors yielded at my touch, and the night air struck my face, cold and stinging, almost cleansing.
Beyond Menelaus’s gardens, the red sea stretched out under the stars, a wound carved into the earth, close enough to see and yet far beyond reach.
The drop beneath my balcony wasn’t far. Three stories. Maybe more. But there were rocks directly under me that jutted out, angled to break anything that fell, like Menelaus had intended for this to be my end when he’d built the palace.
Perfect.
Tears slipped hot down my cheeks, blurring the stones below until they gleamed like the fangs of some waiting beast.
I climbed the railing, the stone cool beneath my bare feet. My toes curled hard around the edge, gripping, as the breeze lashed at my skin like a warning.
The horizon rolled on forever, endless and pitiless, and I was so very small against it. So small … and yet the pain inside me was bigger than everything.
I didn’t want to be Helena of Sparta.
Didn’t want to be a queen.
Didn’t want to be a bride.
Didn’t want to be a symbol.
I didn’t want to be anything.
The wind howled in my ears, louder, urgent, like it was calling me home. I leaned forward, just a breath, and the world tilted under me. My eyes slipped shut and darkness wrapped around me.
I was ready … willing.
Because anything—anything—was better than this.
My toes lost their grip. The stone vanished beneath me. The wind surged hard at my back, shoving me into the night. I pitched forward, the sea roaring louder, louder, until it was all I could hear.
I could almost believe it was calling my name.
Like the grip of the gods themselves, hands suddenly seized me midair, wrenching me backward before the drop could claim me.
My lungs spasmed as strong arms crushed around me, unrelenting.
My feet left the stone. The night spun in a blur, the outside vanished, and my world jolted in an instant from release to captivity.
I screamed, a strangled, broken sound that tore my throat. “Let me go!”
Instead, those arms only locked tighter, dragging me against a body that felt as unyielding as the rocks below. My heart still plummeted even as I was held fast, the air burning in my throat with every gasp.
“Let me go!” I thrashed, kicking, twisting, my head snapping back against a shoulder broad enough to withstand it. Panic clawed through me, wild and rabid.
“No.” The word rumbled behind me roughly.
Achilles.