Chapter 40
You’re quiet tonight,” Menelaus said, his voice pitched for me alone. A smile slashed across his lips as he stared at me in that devouring way of his. “Tell me, my beauty … are you still sulking about the banquet the other night? Or are you hiding something?”
My fork stalled halfway to my lips. The meat slid back onto the plate with a dull thud, loud in my ears. Heat prickled the back of my neck, the room pressing closer, every laugh and clink of goblets suddenly far too loud.
I forced a breath, but my pulse betrayed me, thrumming wild as a horse before the charge.
His hand was already on my thigh beneath the table, his fingers pressing with quiet certainty in a silent claim.
He didn’t need to hurt to make his point.
Just the weight of his touch told me he could tighten if he wished …
and that he expected me not to pull away.
“I’m only tired, my king,” I said, shaping the excuse with a smile I prayed would pass for softness.
It wasn’t a lie. I had spent the morning overseeing the distribution of palace reserves to a village on the coast that had been struck by the Dread.
They’d lost thirty people in one afternoon.
We had plenty here to give them, but organizing transport, arranging escorts that wouldn’t steal the goods for profit, and ensuring the right hands carried the right crates had taken hours.
My muscles still hummed with the strain of it, and a faint headache pulsed behind my eyes.
Menelaus’s mouth curved, not quite a smile. “Ah,” he murmured, his thumb brushing my cheek as though in fondness. “Yes, I did hear that you spent the day giving away the palace’s supplies.”
The touch made my stomach knot. I saw in my mind his hands around my neck, tightening, cutting off my breath.
I remembered the moment the world dimmed at the edges, the certainty that he would not stop.
Even now, with his eyes clear and human, with his voice smooth enough to charm a hall full of courtiers, I could not forget the thing I had seen inside him.
I hated him for it. Hated the way he could wear gentleness like a mask and expect me to mistake it for mercy.
Before I could form a reply, he chuckled, the sound warm enough to fool anyone listening. “Sparta is fortunate,” he said almost lovingly, although it always felt more like a taunt whenever he praised my efforts to help his people, “to have a queen who cares so deeply.”
I forced a weak smile, hoping it masked the tightness in my chest, and the fury curling beneath my ribs. “It seems the Dread has been getting worse,” I said quietly. “Are you concerned?”
As the words left my mouth, I saw it—a flicker of strain tightening the skin around his eyes, a shadow slipping beneath the king’s carefully held calm.
He leaned closer, his thumb still resting against my cheek like he owned every breath I drew.
“No,” he said confidently. “The Dread will not reach us again. It will not make it past the palace gates.”
His confidence should have reassured me.
But all I felt was the edge of a promise I didn’t believe.
I reached for my cup to hide the tremor in my hand, and the wine burned down my throat.
Across the table, Achilles sat among some of his soldiers. He hadn’t looked at me all night, and yet … I felt him. Felt his presence like a current pulling under the surface.
“Are you sure you’re just tired, Helena?” Menelaus pressed. “I’ve noticed a difference in you as of late.” His gaze went to my stomach.
My stomach lurched as I thought about why there’d been a difference, and it had nothing to do with being with child. I forced stillness into my features. “Becoming a queen is an adjustment,” I said carefully, tilting my chin to meet his gaze. “That’s all.”
It was another truth that wasn’t a truth at the same time.
His eyes narrowed as he studied my face. “Just as long as you’re not forgetting yourself, my beauty. Don’t forget that every breath you draw, every glance you dare, belongs to me. Don’t forget that Amyklai’s welfare depends on me.”
My hand was shaking so much that wine spilled over the edge. We both stared at the puddle of liquid as if it was revealing all of my secrets.
Words finally formed on my tongue, although when they did, they came out soft, almost mocking. “How could I forget that? And how else can anyone but you exist in my world?”
Menelaus’s eyes flashed, though luckily it was just their normal appearance. “I would hope my queen is too smart to forget that,” he finally said smoothly, though the warning in his voice was iron.
I forced myself not to recoil, not to give him the reaction he wanted. Menelaus’s grip tightened over mine, his voice booming through the hall. “Raise your goblets, Sparta,” he commanded, yanking my goblet upward. “To Sparta’s queen!”
The soldiers roared, cups sloshing, the noise crashing over me in a wave of heat and wine and blind loyalty. Across the table, Achilles lifted his cup as well, his posture like ice. His eyes flicked to the king’s hand wrapped around mine, blue striking bronze in a single, searing look.
Menelaus grinned wider, almost like he was sensing the tension. “Captain,” he called, “is she not the most exquisite queen you’ve ever seen?”
A hush shivered through the hall.
Achilles didn’t look away from the king. When he spoke, his tone was even … and unmistakably insolent. “The finest in all the realms, my king,” he said, lifting his cup a fraction higher. “Truly worthy of a god. I imagine even you struggle to keep up.”
A few soldiers snorted into their wine. Menelaus’s grin faltered for a blink.
My pulse thudded. Because this, this sharp-edged familiarity, this thread of venom wrapped in loyalty, was exactly what confused me so much about their relationship.
Two men tied together by battle and blood. Two blades honed against each other.
Menelaus stared at Achilles with a narrowed gaze, as if deciding whether Achilles’s response had been friendly … or a challenge he couldn’t yet name.
“Drink,” Menelaus demanded, his fingers bruising into my skin as he watched Achilles lift his cup. The captain took a sip, a faint smirk tugging at his mouth as if the entire display were nothing more than entertainment to him.
Menelaus finally leaned back, seemingly satisfied, but the ache lingered in my hand and my thigh, and a chill slid through me.
For one terrible instant, I saw it all unraveling, his eyes finding the truth, his wrath burning through me, through Achilles, through everything.
The vision of it clung like a foretelling, dark and inevitable, waiting only for the moment it would come to life.
The heavy bronze doors groaned open, and music swept into the hall. Flutes trilled. Drums throbbed, stirring the air as the concubines poured in, led by Hetairis as always.
Painted lips flashed, kohl-lined eyes glittered, and their gauze-thin chitons clung to every graceful step. I knew them now, knew their rhythms, their charms, the quiet arsenal hidden in every glance and gesture.
Leira with her seductive laugh that could draw a man’s gaze across a hall. Callianeira, who always moved like water catching sunlight, her touch lingering just long enough to make men ache. Melantha, bitter as pomegranate rind, who leaned too close and let her words cut even as her fingers soothed.
They drifted through the room with practiced grace, laughter spilling from them in silken traps meant to ensnare. Men at the tables shouted their approval, their greedy hands and mouths open as the women slid into laps, poured wine, and scattered their practiced lies.
One drifted toward Achilles.
Polyxena. She’d been a favorite of the king before I came into the picture.
Menelaus was fond of having her “entertain” me at feasts and in his chambers when he was tired of seeing me with Hetairis, pressing figs to my lips while she laughed at nothing, her voice honeyed just to see me flush.
She enjoyed it, making me squirm, knowing that I didn’t want her touch.
Now her hips rolled with each step, bells at her ankles chiming with every sway.
Torchlight slid across her oiled skin, making her gleam seductively.
Without hesitation, she swung onto Achilles’s lap, folding herself against his chest as if she had always belonged there.
Her nails scratched lightly down the lines of his shoulders, her hair spilling forward to veil half his face.
Over her shoulder, her gaze caught mine. The corner of her mouth curled, a taunting sneer that tasted my jealousy before I’d even drawn breath to hide it.
I frowned, confusion prickling beneath the heat.
Why was she looking at me? There was no way she could know.
My nerves stumbled and I forced my face blank as she bent lower, her lips almost brushing Achilles’s ear as her eyes locked on mine like a challenge.
Achilles’s jaw flexed. His hands remained at his sides, refusing to touch her, but the air between us still thickened until I could hardly breathe.
Achilles’s chest rose once, hard, then stilled. His jaw locked, a vein pulsing at his temple.
My cup trembled in my hand. I lowered it fast, pressing my nails into my palm.
“Tell me,” Polyxena murmured loud enough for those nearest to hear, her hand tracing down his chest, “is the great captain as disciplined as they say? Or can you be tempted?”
A roar coiled in my throat. Achilles’s fingers twitched, then closed around her wrist. Her expression faltered as he peeled her from him, setting her aside as if she were nothing.
She stumbled, the bells at her ankles jangling harsh in the hush that swept the hall.
Achilles rose, towering, his shadow spilling long across the floor.
Without a word, he turned on his heel and strode from the room, his cloak flaring behind him like a banner of defiance.
Menelaus frowned, his gaze locked on Achilles retreating.
He leaned back, lips pressed thin, calculation etched deep into the lines of his face.
He stared at the door long after it closed, the silence tightening the room around me.
My chest constricted with every breath, nerves bracing for the moment his attention snapped from the doorway to me.
“Polyxena,” he suddenly called, his tone deceptively smooth. “Come. You’ll attend me and my queen.”
Dread sank its claws into me at once. My skin went hot while something inside me twisted tight.
Polyxena startled. Her eyes flicked to the door Achilles had vanished through, wide with disbelief, as if she still couldn’t fathom how he had cast her aside so easily. For the first time, she looked less like a siren and more like a girl caught off guard, bracelets clinking too loud as she moved.
She gathered herself quickly though, weaving toward us with her usual sway, though her steps carried an edge of haste.
Menelaus’s hand seized my wrist, but I kept my face still, my lips curved in something that might pass for obedience, even if on the inside, I was nothing but trembling revolt.
My body betrayed me though. My shoulder angled toward Achilles’s empty chair, as if some part of me reached for him. But Menelaus’s grip tightened on my wrist, dragging me back, anchoring me to the place where the doll-queen lived.
There was a fracture inside me, one that had begun when I’d lain with Achilles and it tore wider now, the obedient figure swaddled in gold on one side, the shadow-cloaked woman who lived for midnight on the other. Two selves straining in opposite directions, splitting me clean down the middle.
As Menelaus pulled me toward the shadows of his rooms, each step felt wrong, as if obedience itself were erasing something I’d only just discovered in Achilles’s touch.
And I was afraid at how easily it might be taken from me.