Chapter 46 #2
I stepped into the courtyard and gaped. Crimson and gold banners streamed from the marble pillars, too many, too gaudy, their threads glittering.
Musicians played near the fountain, their flutes and lyres weaving through the air.
The water had been dyed with saffron and rose, a decadent display that made the palace scent like a brothel at spring’s height.
This was not what I had planned.
I had wanted restraint. I had set aside the excess budget and food to be sent to the outer villages to feed the hungry.
But staring around at the gold pressed into the folds of figs and olives, the gold hammered into the rims of goblets, and the fact that even the bread was gilded, crusted in flakes like snow from some forgotten god’s table … the villages weren’t going to get anything.
My jaw ached from the smile I forced for watching eyes. I leaned toward Nomiki where she stood just behind my shoulder. “Why is it like this?” I hissed, keeping my lips curved. “This is not what I specified.”
Her eyes flicked sideways, careful not to meet mine. “The king’s wishes,” she murmured. “He said it must be … more.”
More, always more.
Fury burned in my chest, but I couldn’t show it. Not here, with Menelaus watching and every noble eye waiting to devour the smallest slip.
A sudden roar of delight shuddered through the crowd.
My head snapped toward it in time to see a troupe of acrobats vaulting into the air, their limbs glinting with oil, their bodies twisting like tongues of flame.
One spun through a ring of fire held aloft by another, landing on the marble tiles with catlike grace.
The crowd erupted again, cheers and applause breaking loose as feet hammered the stone beneath us.
I reluctantly made my way to where Menelaus was seated on an ivory throne.
I settled into the seat next to him, its edges biting cold through the silk at my thighs.
Menelaus leaned close, his broad shoulders filling the space, the cords of his forearms shifting as he lifted his goblet. His rings clinked against the metal.
His chest gleamed with gold and polished bronze, but when I leaned back, the faintest curl of something acrid reached my nose, burnt sage and bitter myrrh, cloying under the sweeter perfumes that drowned the courtyard.
I wrinkled my nose before I could stop myself.
Then I saw them, tucked beneath the chains at his throat: small leather pouches, knotted strings of teeth, scraps of bone and herbs pressed into crude charms. Talismans to ward off the Dread, a dozen at least, strung around his neck like a beggar’s armor.
I frowned as I stared at them. Menelaus had never seemed afraid of anything, not beasts, not enemies, not the Dread itself. The idea of him wearing charms, of all things, unsettled me.
Before I realized I was doing it, my gaze lifted to his face, searching.
I hadn’t forgotten how his eyes looked when they changed. But if I was hoping for a connection or a clue now, disappointment met me instead. His eyes were merely bloodshot with exhaustion, strained around the edges … but human. There was no otherworldly creature in their depths.
I must have made a sound because Menelaus’s attention suddenly turned toward me, his dark brows knitting as his eyes cut to mine. I smoothed my face, dropped my lashes, and let my hand curl around my goblet as though nothing was amiss.
He lingered a moment, searching, as though he might peel the thought straight from my skull. Then, with a soft grunt, he turned back to his wine.
How fitting, I thought, that he should choke on even a taste of the fear his people had been made to swallow every day.
Something suddenly brushed my palm where it was dangling down, and my heart stuttered.
I didn’t have to look to know who it was. I would’ve known that touch in the dark.
Achilles passed beside the thrones in full regalia. His hair had been pulled back with a leather strap, a ceremonial blade sheathed at his side. His stride was smooth and confident and caught several eyes as he crossed the courtyard.
He didn’t glance at me, and part of me wanted to cry. Since the Dread had swept through the palace, I hadn’t seen him. The halls were sealed, the guards doubled, the risk of being caught too high. Days ebbed and returned without relief, and the silence where he once was had grown into an ache.
I curled my fingers into a fist against my lap, clinging to the ghost of his touch as though it were a prayer, as though memory itself could be enough to sustain me.
My eyes stayed on Achilles as he took his place near the outer circle of guards, statuesque and unreadable. The mask he wore for court was almost cruel in its perfection. I wondered how many of them believed it. How many thought he was merely a sword at the king’s side.
I shifted slightly in my seat.
A hush fell over the nearest cluster of nobles as the acrobats bowed, their painted skin shimmering with sweat. The king leaned back in his chair and wiped at his lip with the back of his hand.
“Well?” he drawled. “What do you think of the celebration, my beauty?”
“It’s … grand,” I said carefully, each word tasting acrid against my tongue. “Larger than I’d planned.”
What I wanted to say was that it was too much—obscene, even. That no land gasping for food should heap gold on bread and drown fountains in saffron when its fields lay broken and its people wasted away.
Instead, my lips curved into the polite smile he expected.
“Grand,” he repeated, chuckling. “Yes, I imagine it is to you. Your little village couldn’t have managed more than a maypole and a goat, could it? No wonder you’d planned so little for my favorite festival.”
My jaw locked until the muscle twitched, and I had to press my tongue hard against my teeth to keep from lashing out.
The insult dug deeper because it was true in its way—our offerings had been small, humble, but they had been born of hunger and prayer, not excess and waste.
I fixed my gaze on the fountain dyed saffron, willing myself not to look at him.
He turned more fully toward me, resting his elbow on the arm of his throne so that his broad chest loomed closer, and I was forced to breathe in more of the noxious scent of his talismans.
“This”—he gestured to the excess around us with a sweep of his ring-heavy hand—“is what true rule looks like, my beauty. The people expect grandeur. They need to see it. It reminds them that their king is chosen. That he is favored. That he is their god.”
The gold links at his throat clinked like shackles.
“You see them down there?” he asked, nodding toward the commoners permitted to crowd near the lower terraces for the festival.
“You think they begrudge me the meat on my table? The coins in my vault? They don’t.
They worship it. They want their king to feast while they try and lick honey from an empty comb.
It gives them hope, knowing someone lives well. ”
I gaped at him. Even for Menelaus that was mad.
His voice dropped, threaded with something like fondness. “They’d throw their daughters to the pyres if it meant their bloodline brushed mine.”
I focused on one of the talismans around his neck, a bird bone by the looks of it, instead of reaching out and slapping him in the face.
“They don’t want humility, Helena. They want a god they can bleed for. A lion, not a shepherd. And I …” He smoothed a hand over his chest. “I am the storm they kneel to when the crops fail and the rivers dry.”
His gaze darkened as it roved over me, settling with smug possession.
“You, my dear, will learn to wear this crown the way I do. Not with grace. But with might. And so will my sons.” His gaze dipped pointedly to my flat belly, his mouth tightening before he drained his goblet, and turned back toward the revelry, already bored of my silence.
My knuckles whitened around the stem of my cup as a set of dancers leapt into their final spin, limbs flashing like swordplay, the crowd erupting in applause.
A loud crack suddenly split the air, followed by a scream that ripped through the festivities, and I startled to attention, frantically scanning for its source.
Men in drawn hoods were surging from between the pillars, their blades flashing in the sun.
One broke from the rest, charging the dais, his sword raised high and aimed for the king.
My cry tore loose before I could stop it, the courtyard erupting around me, benches scraping, goblets spilling, women scattering in shrieks.
The blade never struck.
An inch from Menelaus’s gut, the sword shivered and groaned …
I stared at it as if in a trance, willing it to keep going with everything inside me.
But the steel began to warp with a low, grinding groan, contorting in on itself as if the marrow had been ripped out of it. A hiss rose as molten drops spattered the marble, eating tiny pits into the stone. The hilt clattered from the assassin’s grip, and he stumbled back with wide eyes.
I shoved back against my throne, its ivory biting into my spine as my pulse drummed in my throat.
Below, bronze flashed. Achilles was already moving, his blade carving a clean arc through another hooded man.
Shields slammed and steel rang as bodies collided.
The assassins surged forward, but the soldiers met them head-on, the clash loud enough to rattle my bones.
From the far side of the courtyard, someone moved through the frantic crowd.
A figure broke free of the shadows, tall and unbowed.
The skin at his wrists was darkened, chafed with the memory of iron, but no shackles bound him now.
Dirt streaked his skin and his black hair was a wild tangle that caught in the sun as he moved.
His tunic was torn and smeared with dust, but it clung stubbornly to his frame.
Theron’s violet eyes, luminous as amethyst in the day, calmly stared around at the chaos.