Chapter 44
He should not have been beautiful.
And yet he was.
Beautiful the way graves are beautiful. The way fire dances prettiest before it consumes. The way fallen gods still call to mortals. The way cursed kings wear crowns of ash and call it glory.
The court leaned back as he passed. The air stirred in his wake, banners rustling faintly against the walls. He halted at the base of the dais, stillness settling over him.
His gaze flicked lazily to the guards bracketing his sides.
“Careful,” he purred in a voice smooth and edged with amusement. “Hold me that tight and people might start to talk.”
There was a moment of shock at the sound of the stranger’s voice, and then a frisson of uneasy laughter, or maybe a shiver, passed through the room. He looked straight at Menelaus, a crooked smile tugging at his mouth, as if the whole court were nothing more than a game he’d already won.
Then his gaze found mine. It caught, held, pinned me where I sat. The weight of it pressed into my skin, slid down my throat, and stole the breath from my lungs. Something in my blood twisted, and I clenched my hands into my lap to still the tremor rising in them.
Achilles’s gauntleted hand shot out, giving a hard shove between the stranger’s shoulder blades that forced him a step forward.
Metal rang as the guards tightened their grip again, but it hadn’t been them who broke that stare.
It had been Achilles, his jaw set, his posture rigid, as though daring the man to look at me again.
The man only laughed low in his throat, a sound threaded with dark humor. He tilted his head, eyes glinting, and looked faintly entertained … like Achilles’s aggression was a play put on for his pleasure. “Was it something I said?” he mused.
“Enough,” Menelaus growled, staring down at him with open disdain. “You—what name do you answer to?”
The man bowed. Not mockingly, but just shy of sincere. “Theron,” he said in a voice as smooth as smoke rising from temple incense. “I’m but a humble servant from the eastern islands.”
A whisper of interest moved through the gathered nobles. I looked to Mene laus, wondering if the eastern islands belonged to the same region he kept probing his advisors about in hushed, tense conversations.
“Humble?” Menelaus echoed, his lips curling. “Strange humility, arriving by sea like a god or something worse.”
Theron smiled. “I came with no weapons, no army, no demands. Only the wish to serve. That is humility enough, is it not?”
Menelaus leaned forward, his fingers tapping the armrest. “Words are worthless, stranger. Any fool can call himself humble while standing in chains.”
At that, Theron gave a quiet, amused sound in his throat. He shifted once, as easily as a man adjusting his cloak, and the guards’ grips slid uselessly from his arms as he shook off the chains. The iron restraints might as well have been cobwebs for how easily he got them off.
Gasps tore through the hall. The guards stumbled back, hands empty, faces blanching. Achilles’s face was wrapped in a scowl.
I gripped the arms of my throne until my knuckles ached. My heart lurched against my ribs, the same way it had when I first saw him walking across the sea. That impossible, unstoppable thing in him … I could feel it again, whispering against my skin like a warning.
Theron rolled his shoulders as if shaking off dust, his intense gaze never leaving the king. “Chains?” he murmured, brushing a crease from his sleeve. “You’ll have to forgive me, but I don’t wear them well.”
Menelaus gaped at him, his jaw slack, crown sliding lower on his brow. For once, the king who never faltered looked as though the ground had shifted beneath him.
Theron dropped to one knee before the throne, his cloak fanning out behind him on the marble floor.
“Your name, great king, echoes farther than you know,” he said as he bowed his head.
“Across the red tides and beyond the cliffs of forgotten empires, they speak of Sparta’s strength. They speak of you.”
His gaze lifted, violet eyes glinting. “Men call you the God-Slayer, the one who sundered the divine yoke. The king who wrested power from the heavens themselves.” He struck his fist to his chest. “And I wish to stand with power, not against it.”
It was the kind of flattery Menelaus drank like wine. His mouth twitched with pleasure, but the suspicion in his eyes didn’t fade. It shouldn’t fade.
I didn’t believe a word of it.
Theron’s voice was too smooth. Too perfect. There was a glint behind his deference, an edge too well hidden. It wasn’t awe. It was calculation.
He was lying.
Not in words, perhaps.
But in intent.
My eyes flicked to Achilles. His jaw was tight, his arms folded across his chest like he was restraining something. Instinct, maybe. The instinct of a predator tuned to the presence of another predator moving in his space.
Theron was still kneeling, his gaze never leaving the king’s. “Allow me to serve your court,” he said softly. “To earn my place. My loyalty is yours, my strength yours to command.”
Menelaus’s eyes narrowed slightly, studying the man before him not like a petitioner, but like something he might cage. Or weaponize.
“What are you exactly?” the king asked, his voice lower now, shrewder. “A seer? A priest’s mistake? You walked out of the sea and the water bent to your will.”
“Nothing so dramatic,” Theron said lightly.
“I am no god.” His fingers uncurled, and sigils along his skin stirred to life, faint at first, then brightening before fire licked awake in his palm.
Not gold, not the warm blaze of hearth or torch, but a blue so strange it seemed stolen from the deepest part of night.
The flame hovered above his skin, smokeless and unscented, an impossible thing swaying gently in his hand.
Gasps tore through the hall. One woman cried out and dropped to her knees, the sound cracking against the floor.
My own breath caught, refusing to move. Heat rushed through me, then vanished in an instant, leaving my skin clammy.
The blue fire seared itself into my vision, unreal and terrifying, and yet I felt at the same time a creeping chill threading through my veins.
Achilles shifted, stepping forward half a pace, every muscle in his body pulled tight, ready to strike.
But Menelaus … he leaned forward, a serpentine smile stretching across his lips. “Well,” he said, his voice thick with something that might have been hunger, “that is interesting.”
Theron closed his hand and the flame vanished.
“I offer it as a gift,” he said smoothly. “The old ways are not dead everywhere, my king. Some of us still remember what it means to speak with power.” His gaze dipped in another gesture of respect. “Though mine is nothing beside the might you already command.”
Magic. Real magic.
The word wasn’t spoken, yet it curled through the air like incense, illicit and intoxicating.
Besides the strange red mist that I’d seen breathe from Menelaus’s mouth and the otherworldliness in his gaze during those two times, I had never seen anything like this. Nothing so tangible. Nothing alive in someone’s hands.
And now here it was, kneeling in red stone halls, asking to serve.
Menelaus’s gaze sharpened. “Are there others?”
Theron’s smile didn’t waver. “None like me.”
It was the kind of answer that offered just enough and kept everything important hidden.
The king’s fingers tapped the throne arm again. A beat. Then another.
He was deciding.
“I could have you executed,” Menelaus said finally. “Or dissected. My scholars would enjoy the puzzle of your veins.”
“And yet you won’t,” Theron replied with gleaming eyes. “Because you’re smarter than that.”
Every body froze while we waited for the king’s decision.
Menelaus’s laugh cracked through the stillness, sudden and too loud against the hush. It rumbled low at first, then climbed higher, rolling wild and unsteady until it ricocheted off the vaulted ceiling like madness let loose.
“I like him,” he muttered. “Rise, Theron. You want a place in my court? Fine. You’ll earn it. And you’ll start by showing me what else you can do.”
Theron rose in a single fluid motion, his head bowed. “You honor me,” he said.
Menelaus sat back with a sneer. “We’ll see if you’re useful, islander. I’ve no need for fanged peacocks unless they can hunt alongside me.”
Theron’s lips curved as though he already found the whole thing a game. He tipped his head, his movements laced with a lazy kind of threat.
“Then I’ll hunt.”
My gaze flicked to Achilles. The blue in his eyes was no longer just suspicion.
Hunt. Theron had spoken the word as if it were a vow, as if the palace, the king, even Achilles himself were nothing more than prey.
Whatever this man was, he was dangerous. And Achilles had just marked him as an enemy.
Menelaus’s fingers drummed once more against the armrest. “Escort him to the phulakē,” he ordered, his voice carrying the finality of a decree, gaze steady on Theron, as if daring him to object.
A flicker passed through Theron’s violet eyes. It wasn’t surprise or defiance. Merely … calculation. He inclined his head, the movement fluid … playful. “As you command, my king.”
Achilles was on him in an instant, his hand clamping hard around his arm in a grip less escort than warning.
His shoulders bunched with restrained violence, veins standing out along his forearm as he shoved Theron toward the guards.
They closed in, spears angled, though it was clear Achilles alone could have dragged the man across the hall.
The cloaked stranger didn’t resist. He turned with the same unhurried grace as before, as though even rough hands and iron spears could not touch him, as though every step back toward the prison cells was still entirely his choice.
The heavy doors boomed shut behind them.
Yet Menelaus’s gaze clung to the space where Theron had stood, as if the man’s presence still haunted the hall.
“Blue flame,” Menelaus muttered, almost under his breath.
“Fire that does not burn, that does not die …” His eyes gleamed with appetite.
“I wonder if perhaps I have found a weapon that will help me rid the gods from not just my lands … but everywhere.”
He stopped himself and his lips settled into a thin, unsettling smile.
My stomach turned.
The High Priestess stepped out from behind us and I startled, not aware she’d been in the room. She bowed so low it was as if she might dig herself into the stone. “Your Majesty,” she cajoled. “If I might offer counsel.”
Menelaus gave a disinterested flick of his wrist. “Speak.”
She rose, folding her hands before him, prayer beads wound tight around her fingers. They clattered against one another, their sound like hollow bones.
“The man is dangerous,” the High Priestess said carefully. “As you have declared, there is not room for any other god in Sparta.”
Menelaus arched a brow. “A god?” He let out a humorless laugh. “He crawls out of the sea and parades tricks before my throne and suddenly he rivals me?” His lips twisted with contempt. “Whatever he is, he is not a god. And he will never match what I am … or what I can do.”
The High Priestess dipped her head at once.
“Forgive me, great king. I did not mean to imply otherwise.” Her voice softened to a near whisper.
“I only wished to caution that strangers who arrive with such power often arrive with a purpose. A hidden one. And it would be wise to remain … attentive. If the court begins to believe he was sent by the gods—”
“They’ll worship him?” Menelaus finished scornfully. “Is that your fear, Dione? That he’ll steal your place at my side?”
She bowed her head again, but not before I caught the dismayed flash in her eyes. “My only fear, my king, is for Sparta. Let me get rid of him,” she continued. “Let me quietly purge the stain before it spreads. No one will question it.”
“No,” Menelaus said simply. The High Priestess looked up, blinking.
The king lifted a goblet that had just been handed to him and took a languid sip, letting his gaze once again linger on the space where Theron had stood.
“I want him watched. Studied,” the king went on.
“He showed us but a flicker of power. If he is here to serve me … then he’s more valuable than you or your priestesses have ever been.
If he can burn without wood and light without smoke, he might be worth more than half my army.
” He pursed his lips. “Do I need to remind you that you prophesied that our queen would be Sparta’s ruin as well?
And yet, I look around and there’s no ruin to be had. ”
She stiffened even more.
Menelaus leaned forward. “There is only one god in Sparta … me. But I do like things I can use. And if that means keeping a wolf in the court, so be it. I’ll keep him on a leash.”
“And if the wolf bites?” she asked softly.
The king’s features sharpened like the prospect excited him. “Then we’ll break its teeth.”
My sense of foreboding deepened as the High Priestess bowed again and drifted back into the shadows silently, her warnings once again ignored.
My eyes flicked back to the door, on the shadow Theron seemed to have left behind. Because even though the court had returned to its pretense of calm, I knew the truth. We’d invited something into our house. Something powerful. Something that was just waiting.
And no matter how strong the leash, wolves were born to break them.