Chapter 43
Alcmene’s hand suddenly clamped around my wrist.
“We can worry about that later,” she hissed, dragging me back from the balcony. “Right now, we need to take advantage of this and get you in your quarters before Menelaus remembers he was looking for you.”
I stumbled after her, casting one last look at the figure on the water. Dread pooled low inside me, tightening with every step he took toward shore.
Metal scraped against metal. I glanced back to see Achilles buckling his cuirass, his movements clipped and efficient. He glanced once toward the water, then back to me.
“You’re going out there?”
“Of course I am,” he said simply. His hand shot out, catching the back of my neck. He kissed me hard … bruising, a claim and a warning all at once. When he pulled away, my lips stung.
“Get her back safely,” he ordered Alcmene.
“Achilles—” I began, but he was already striding out the door.
He didn’t look back.
“Come, Your Majesty.” Alcmene seized my hand again, her pace brisk and silent as she led me into the narrow servant corridors that cut through the heart of the palace like veins. We slipped through shadows, past stone walls that had witnessed too many secrets and swallowed every one whole.
By the time we reached my quarters, the bells were ringing in the watchtowers. I could still feel his kiss burning on my lips though.
Alcmene closed the door softly behind us, then pressed her back against it with a shuddering exhale. “That,” she muttered, “was far too close.”
She started to say something else—a lecture, no doubt, something about how I’d lose my head or worse—but I didn’t hear it.
I was already moving.
Wind looped through the open balcony doors like a beckoning hand, the night air cool against my skin as I stepped outside. My fingers gripped the stone balustrade, and Alcmene joined me reluctantly.
She fell silent when she reached my side. Because there, below us, on the red shore where land met sea, the figure had reached the beach.
The glow around him had dimmed, but it pulsed faintly, like the heartbeat of something buried deep that was still waking. Dozens of soldiers had gathered in a wide, uncertain circle around him, torches raised, blades unsheathed … but none of them stepped closer.
They watched. Waiting. Petrified.
So did we.
The figure stood unmoving, tall and cloaked in sea mist, the hem of his garments dark with brine, his hands empty and loose at his sides, as though he knew there was nothing they could do to him.
I couldn’t see his face.
But something flickered inside me. A shift.
As if a door I had long since bricked shut cracked open, spilling light into places I thought forever sealed.
My breath caught.
This was no stranger … and yet I had never seen him before.
A strange heat stirred in my spine. Not fear. Something deeper. Wiser. It twisted beneath my ribs and whispered pay attention.
“Do you feel that?” I whispered.
Alcmene didn’t answer right away. Her face was pale in the faint light, eyes narrowed.
“It’s like …” I struggled for the words. “Like I’ve stood on this balcony before. On this very night. And watched this exact thing.”
Something unsettlingly familiar. Or fate. Or something far worse.
Alcmene’s fingers tightened around the balcony rail. “Sometimes doom doesn’t need a name. It just arrives.”
Her words splintered through me. And then … the man looked up as though he’d heard her, as though he’d felt the weight of my gaze. His eyes found the balcony, found me.
My breath stuttered. The world shrank to that stare. A cold ache uncoiled in my chest, stretching, clawing, as if some hidden part of me already knew what it meant.
From the balcony we watched as a ring of soldiers surrounded the man, their spears glinting, shields overlapped, while their sandals scuffed red stone in wary circles. The man only stood there, his bare feet planted on the sand as if the sea had delivered him here.
He didn’t reach for a weapon or resist.
Achilles barked a command, and the stranger inclined his head and walked forward of his own accord into their midst.
I backed from the rail and turned for the door to the hall, throwing it open only to stop mid-step at the sight of two guards blocking the threshold of the room.
“Your Majesty,” one said, his spear haft braced firm against the floor. “The king has ordered you to remain inside.”
My hands curled at my sides. It was doubtful the king had ordered anything, judging by how drunk he was. Which meant that Achilles had made the order.
“Very well,” I snapped, stepping back into the room and nodding my head at Alcmene. “Go, fetch me some wine.”
She dipped her chin once, eyes flicking to mine in a quick, knowing glance.
The guards shifted aside, lowering their spears just enough for her to slip past. She did not look back, but I knew she understood …
the queen’s maid going out under the guise of an errand, but really to spy, to listen, to return with word of what was going on.
The door shut again with a dull thud.
Squeak.
Roz ran out from under a dresser, jumping over a brush that had fallen to the floor. I scooped it up and cuddled it against my chest as I anxiously paced back and forth across the room.
“Who do you think that was?” I asked. “Do you think he was the one who shook the palace?”
Roz obviously didn’t answer, but I felt better having it near.
I strode faster, as though motion alone could drown out the restless churn in my chest. I measured time in steps and breaths, straining for the sound of her return.
But the minutes stretched on. At last, my legs weakened beneath the weight of waiting.
I dropped into a chair by the window, the wood cold against my back.
The silence pressed in until even that could not hold me upright.
My body sagged, lids dragging lower, and despite myself I drifted, slumping in an uneasy doze, still waiting for Alcmene to return.
I saw water. Fire. A figure walking out of the sea with the confidence of a god and the patience of a hunter. From behind my eyelids, I dreamed of violet eyes watching me.
“Your Majesty.”
I woke with a gasp, the taste of salt and fear on my tongue.
Alcmene was hovering in front of me. For a moment I simply stared at her, the dream clinging to me like mist. I tried to reach for it and remember why it felt like something returned rather than new, but the images slipped apart too quickly, dissolving before I could grasp even a single piece.
I glanced down and saw Roz hadn’t stirred from its spot on my lap. Somewhere along the way, it had decided Alcmene was trustworthy, and when she hadn’t startled at the sight of it, it stopped darting from the room every time it sensed her approaching.
“You’re being summoned,” she said without preamble. Her voice was steady, but her eyes betrayed everything. Tense. Wide. The way I imagined you would look if the gods had come knocking and no one yet knew whether to kneel or run.
Roz sat up at that, emitting a small squeak.
“To the king?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.
“To the Great Hall,” she confirmed, stepping forward with a bundle of fabric. “You are to look your best.”
My heart lurched. “What did you find out?” I asked as I stood up and stripped off my dress so I could change into a fresh one.
She shook her head, reaching for a jar of unguent, her fingers moving swiftly as she went to work on my skin.
“Everyone was talking,” she said in a hushed voice.
“The guards, the servants, even the stewards in the hall. But no one seemed to know anything beyond what we saw. A man who came across the sea. Who walked straight into the palace prisons without a fight.”
I frowned at that. “What about …”
She pursed her lips and started working on my hair, her pulling edged with reprimand. “What of the king nearly discovering you?” she muttered. “Fortunately for all of us, he remembers nothing—only the stranger … and the hangover gnawing at him today.”
I breathed out a deep sigh of relief.
“You’re shaking,” Alcmene said as she fixed a curl. It wasn’t a question, just an observation. “We need to get a flush in those cheeks.”
“I’m fine. It was just … it was close.”
Alcmene dabbed color along my cheeks, her touch brisk. “Close is careless,” she said, her voice clipped. “And careless will get you killed.”
I nodded because I didn’t disagree, and stared into the mirror in front of us.
I barely recognized the face staring back anymore.
My cheeks had thinned despite having more access to food than ever before, my lips were colorless, my eyes were ringed with shadows too deep for powder to hide.
I was wan. Hollow. A fading outline of the woman I’d come here as.
And that was despite Achilles’s best efforts to bring me back to life.
What would Anysa think of me now?
The thought slid in cruelly.
Would she look at what I had done with my queendom so far and see strength? Would she understand why I endured what I endured? Why I bent instead of broke? Why I stayed silent when silence felt like a betrayal?
Or would she think I’d squandered the life she lost—that the crown she died for had swallowed me whole?
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, squeezing the wood on the table so hard that a splinter came off and burrowed in my skin.
The pain didn’t make me feel better because … I wasn’t sure.
I was also still feeling that same thing from last night, that pulse of something strange threading through the marrow of the world, the whisper of what had walked out of the sea and unsettled the very silence around us.
It pressed against me like a weightless, unseen hand on the back of my neck … impossible to shrug off.
“You’re still the most beautiful woman in all the land,” Alcmene said, as if that meant anything, a slight tremble to her voice.