Chapter 39 #2
He drove into me harder, faster, each thrust stealing my breath, until his hand slid down, fingers pressing against the slick, aching place that throbbed for him.
The contact was blinding, fire shooting through every vein, my vision swimming as the coil in my belly wound tighter, tighter …
until it snapped. Violent. Blissful. Absolute.
I cried his name, half prayer, half curse, as my body convulsed around him, clenching, and dragging him deeper. His groan tore from his chest, and he wrenched back with a ragged sound that left me gasping.
For a breathless beat, I was hollow. Empty.
Then his fist closed around himself, his body shuddering as release overtook him. Hot, thick ropes spilled across my stomach, marking me in streaks of heat.
He collapsed at my side, chest heaving, eyes wild with something unchained. But I barely felt his weight against the mattress. Because something colder was already coiling through me.
I stared at the mess he’d left on me, the evidence of his worship that was like a secret only we would ever know. But it would mark me long after the heat cooled.
If I ever carried Achilles’s child, the world would know. The difference between them—between him and the king—was written in every line of their bodies, every glance, every act of power and tenderness and pain. One was forged of cruelty. The other of fire.
And someday …
Someday, I would be forced to carry Menelaus’s child.
The thought set something screaming loose inside me.
I turned my head away, shame creeping into the edges of my euphoria, the future closing its teeth around my throat.
“Helena.” His voice was hushed. Threaded with something that defied the world I knew.
I didn’t look at him.
He cupped my face anyway and turned me back to him.
“Whatever you’re thinking, whatever shadow just took hold of you … I will vanquish it.”
I blinked, startled by the force in his voice.
“You hear me?” he whispered. “Whatever haunts you, I’ll destroy it. If it lives in your mind, I’ll burn it from your thoughts. If it walks in flesh, I’ll put a blade through its heart. But I won’t let it steal this moment from you. From us.”
His mouth was on mine before I could answer.
Devouring. Desperate. Divine.
“I love you,” he said, and the world seemed to still, to breathe in those words.
I couldn’t speak. I could only kiss him, pouring everything into the press of my mouth, hoping he felt what I couldn’t say aloud.
Outside, the wind howled, rattling the balcony doors.
It felt as though the heavens themselves had heard him, and for a moment, I swore the absence of the gods wasn’t absence at all, but something listening.
Their silence pressed heavy, a witness I could not see but felt, as though the air itself bent to hold its breath.
But in that breath, in that room, there was nothing, nothing but him, and me.
The sea burned, flames rolling across the waves in trembling sheets of gold and red. From the heart of that impossible fire, a figure stepped forward, striding through the heat as though it were nothing. Violet eyes followed me, bright through the smoke and dream-dark.
Heat flickered, dimmed … shifted.
I blinked, the fire dissolving to a blur of brightness.
Morning light spilled across the room like molten gold, catching on the sheer curtains and the smears of red paint still streaked across the sheets.
My body stirred, sore and marked, tangled in linen as the last traces of the dream slipped away.
Beside me, the bed was empty.
My hand reached across instinctively, fingers brushing only cool fabric where his body should have been. The silence pressed in. There was no steady breath, no weight of him anchoring me, just my skin still humming with where he’d touched.
I pushed up, the ache between my thighs proof that he had been here. Proof that we had burned like fire in the night, daring the gods themselves to drag us apart.
Now all that remained was absence.
A faint scent clung to the air, cedar, leather, and salt, and at the foot of the bed, the linen sheets dipped, as though he had knelt there before leaving. My gaze snagged on something resting where his shadow might have fallen.
A chain.
Delicate and bronze, my breath caught as I lifted it into the light. At its end hung a small gold ring, plain but heavy, tied through with a strand of hair the color of honey, a shade that looked spun from the morning itself. Achilles’s hair.
My throat tightened, vision blurring.
This was no trinket. No careless token. In my village, women wove the hair of their beloved into talismans, threads to keep them safe in battle. To cut a piece from oneself, to tie it to gold, was to give not just devotion but destiny.
The ring pressed cool against my palm, the hair rough as thread between my fingers.
I held it to my lips, eyes closing as exquisite pain shuddered through me.
Menelaus had given me bruises, a crown, and a prison.
Achilles had given me this. Not a promise spoken aloud, but something deeper.
A tether, invisible and unbreakable, binding me to him even when he was gone.
Tears stung my lashes. I curled over the chain, clutching it tight to my chest. For one heartbeat, it felt as though I could still hear Achilles’s voice threading through me. Not a goodbye. Not an end.
But something meant to last.
A knock at the door jolted me upright, the chain sliding through my fingers, the ring and coiled strand of his hair catching the light as if alive.
The door creaked open, and Alcmene stepped inside, her eyes tight with concern, disapproval flickering in its depths.
Her gaze went first to the gift in my lap before lifting to the faint shimmer of red paint still clinging to my collarbone.
“I’ll take it to my grave,” she said quietly.
My head snapped up, breath catching. “What?”
Alcmene stepped fully into the room, her hands folded neatly at her waist, but her gaze dug into me. “Whatever passed between you and the captain last night. I don’t need you to tell me—I saw the signs. The air still carries it.”
A chill slid down my spine. My pulse stumbled. The room suddenly felt smaller, the air pressing in tight, as if the walls themselves might whisper my secret into Menelaus’s ear.
I opened my mouth, but the words tangled uselessly, a trapped bird beating against my ribs.
Alcmene moved closer, her face solemn, knowing. “Be careful. Menelaus has ears in every hallway. Eyes in the walls. He feasts on secrets. And nothing stays hidden from him for long.”
“I don’t care,” I bit out, the words tearing from my throat. My hand shook around the necklace, the chain biting into my skin as though it meant to draw blood.
Alcmene’s gaze didn’t waver. It pressed into me, unflinching, like metal left too long in the fire, glowing, absolute, impossible to turn away from. “So that’s it, then?” she asked incredulously. “You would risk your crown, your village, your blood, your life—for this? For love?”
The heat of defiance burned in my chest, but the words struck deep … just not the way she intended. My whole life had already been given up, for my family, for my people, for a kingdom that would never see me as anything but a jewel.
I had sacrificed every dream, every piece of myself, on their altar of survival. And gods help me, I loved them still. But for once … for once, I wanted something that was mine. I curled my fingers tighter until Achilles’s hair pressed like fire into my palm, a hidden flame I refused to let go.
“That wasn’t just love,” I whispered, my breath breaking, my voice torn open. “That was something older than kingdoms. Wilder than war. Something even the gods themselves could not stop.”
Her brow lifted, her face unreadable. “That kind of love always comes with a cost.”
I felt my lips twist into a faint, reckless smile. “Then let it cost me.”
Alcmene’s face tightened and the furrow between her brows deepened. For a moment she looked far older and wearier, as if I’d confirmed every fear she carried for me.
Her voice dropped, soft but searing. “Is it enough though?”
The words cut deeper than anything else she’d said. My breath stuttered. “What?”
“Love,” she said, the word tasting bitter in her mouth. “Is it enough to anchor you? To save you? Or will it be the weight that drags you under faster than any crown ever could?”
The question hung in the air, smoke and ash, refusing to fade.
I dropped my gaze, brushing my thumb over the coil of his hair, fragile and unbreakable all at once. My throat ached as the truth clawed free.
“I don’t know,” I admitted, every word scraping raw. “But if I fall … at least I’ll have fallen for something that was real.”
Alcmene didn’t answer.
She only turned away, pulling the curtains wider. The morning light bled in even more, spilling across the sheets, across my bare, paint-streaked skin, exposing me to the world I could no longer escape.
I sat there, his taste still ghosting my lips, and prayed that love would be enough.