Chapter 42
Achilles’s room smelled like us.
Sweat and salt and firelight.
His chambers were set apart from the others, tucked into the higher wing of the palace, and nearly as lavish as mine were.
There were no guards posted outside his doors.
Achilles did not require watching, and no one questioned who came or went from the captain’s rooms. His presence alone was considered security enough.
My skin still buzzed, aching where he’d touched and claimed me, the echoes of him pressed into every curve. Achilles lay beside me, one hand curled at my hip, the other draped over his eyes like he couldn’t bear to look at the ceiling just yet.
The sheets clung to us, damp and tangled. It was never just quiet after—we called it silence, but it always felt like defiance. Like we were two sinners worshipping in the wrong temple.
But I never stopped craving it.
I lay on my side, tracing the ridges across Achilles’s abdomen.
“Where the fuck is she?” Menelaus’s voice, slurred and violent, echoed off the stone as it howled down the corridor like a curse.
I shot upright. My breath stopped. My blood turned to ice.
“No—no, no.” I gasped in shock, scrambling up, dragging the linen sheet with me as if it could shield me from the wrath already bearing down on us.
Achilles was on his feet in an instant. The ease in his face evaporated. In its place was steel. “Get dressed,” he ordered. His voice was calm, but the edge of it was unmistakable. “He’s close.”
I could hear it too … sandals pounding the hall, shouting, servants crying out, someone fumbling with a door down the corridor.
“Helena! I swear—find her or I’ll gut every lazy bastard in this palace!”
“He knows,” I breathed, my heart slamming against my ribs. “Gods, he knows.”
I scrambled for the heap of cloth on the floor, fumbling with the folds. My fingers were shaking too hard to find the seams, to fasten anything properly. I could hear guards scurrying. The crash of something thrown.
“He’s tearing the palace apart,” I whispered as I finally got the accursed dress on. “He’s going to find me.”
Achilles turned to me, jaw clenched, hair tousled, his chest still rising from the aftermath of what we’d done.
“No,” he said flatly, already across the room, his body coiling like a war god, muscles tensing as he yanked on his tunic, reaching for the hilt of the blade resting in the shadows near the hearth, the one he never let leave his sight. “He won’t.”
“This is his palace—”
“These are my quarters,” Achilles growled. “He doesn’t walk in these rooms without my permission.” The words were quiet and absolute … deadly.
My mouth parted. “Achilles—”
Another crash echoed from farther down the corridor. “She’s not in her rooms. WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?!”
Achilles’s eyes didn’t waver. He looked like a lion caught mid-stalk, all tension and hunger, every breath cut to strike. And still, I saw the flicker of something else in his eyes. Something terrified. Not for himself.
For me.
The door creaked once and there was a knock. Achilles tensed, his sword rising.
“It’s me!” came Alcmene’s hushed voice.
Achilles crossed the room in two strides and cracked the door open. Alcmene slipped inside like a shadow, her eyes wide. She saw the state of me, the bed. Her jaw clenched. “You needed to be gone ten minutes ago,” she hissed, a hint of hysteria in her voice.
The door rattled and all three of us froze.
The wooden frame shuddered as something heavy struck it from the outside. Again. Then again. “Achilles!” the king slurred. “I need you to find the fucking queen!” His bellow staggered down the corridor, thick and stumbling, before fading into some other drunken tirade.
“He’s completely pissed,” Achilles hissed. “Hide yourselves,” he said, pointing to the next room.
“Achilles!” The door rattled again, harder this time, the wood groaning in protest as the iron latch held. A curse rang out, followed by a heavy thud as Menelaus lost his footing and went down.
The king moaned as if his fall had mortally wounded him.
If only.
I heard soldiers rush to him. “Gods, he’s down. Lift him, lift him!” one called, his voice breaking with effort. Another cursed under their breath as Menelaus groaned, their scuffling footsteps dragging him to his feet. “Up, Your Majesty.”
The palace walls suddenly lurched, groaning like the earth was in pain, and the floor bucked beneath me.
I went down hard, my shoulder cracking against the floor.
Achilles hit the floor beside me with a grunt, reaching instinctively to shield me even as he fell.
Alcmene crumpled near the doorway, her palms scraping against the floor as she tried to brace herself.
Through the balcony doors came frantic shouts from the palace gardens, voices rising from below—alarms, commands, cries that bled together in panic. “There’s something out there!”
More voices followed. Armor clattered.
“Take him—now!” I heard the unmistakable sound of struggle as soldiers hauled Menelaus away.
Achilles tensed and he jumped up and rushed to the balcony, throwing the doors wide as wind and dust poured into the room. I struggled to my feet, listening as the soldiers aided the king, until only the echo of their steps remained.
“Stay back,” Achilles muttered without turning. “Don’t let them see you.”
I peered around him, my body half hidden in the shadows, my heart battering loudly from everything that had just happened.
Out on the red sea, something moved.
Not the waves, or the mist.
A figure. A man. Walking across the water.
Not wading. Walking. The tide rippled away from his feet in precise concentric rings as the sea held him up.
A glow clung to him, dim at first, like the last trace of starlight before dawn.
Then it brightened and warmed, shifting into something that pressed against my skin in warning.
It wasn’t holy or divine … but something unnatural in a way I could not name.
Something that did not belong to this world anymore.
He neared the shoreline with unhurried grace, as if time bent itself around him. As if he had all the power in the world and didn’t need to run to prove it.
Guards scrambled along the battlements, some calling down to the others, their shouts frantic, voices cracking. Bows were raised, arrows notched. But not one arrow flew.
They were terrified.
The figure kept walking, each step a shudder through the silence, each breath a pressure building in the dark, waiting to break.
I pressed a hand to my mouth as my knees nearly gave. “What is he?” I whispered.
Achilles’s eyes narrowed, not with fear, but with a flicker of doubt I had never seen in him before. A shadow of hesitation cut across his face, as though for the first time, he was unsure if his strength alone would be enough.
The torchlight behind us sputtered as another gust of wind swept into the room, laced with salt and something else. The air itself seemed to quake.
Somewhere deep inside me, I felt it, the turning of something vast and unseen.