Chapter 47
I paced the length of my chambers until the floor might have known my steps by heart. Stay, I’d been told again. As if walls could actually protect me from assassins … or magic.
Who had attacked us?
What was the king hunting?
And what, exactly, did Theron want?
The questions spilled out of me in a low murmur, spoken to the empty room because there was nowhere else to put them.
I crossed to the balcony, then turned back again, the motion restless and useless.
I dragged a hand through my hair and exhaled, forcing myself toward a chair, as though sitting might convince my body to relax.
A sudden frantic scratching broke the silence, snapping my attention to the wall. Roz was up on its hind legs, tail flicking behind it as it furiously clawed at the stone.
“What’s wrong?” I murmured, rising from my chair. The embers in the hearth had burned down, and shadows were crowding the corners, making Roz’s pale eyes glow unnervingly bright in the dim.
But Roz didn’t stop. Its scratching only grew more desperate, squeaks spilling from it in high, urgent bursts.
“Roz,” I tried again, but it kept clawing, as if possessed.
I hurried to it, my heart thudding as I examined the wall. There was a hairline crack running down the stone where its claws struck. Frowning, I pressed my fingers to it, jumping when the wall shifted under my hand. A rush of cool air slipped out, brushing my skin. I froze, gaping.
“Gods, Roz …” My voice caught. “You’ve found a passage.”
It squeaked again, tail lashing.
I swallowed hard, then tugged at the seam. The stone groaned open, revealing a narrow tunnel that yawned into darkness.
For a moment, I just stood there, staring down it.
Roz’s body went taut, its tail lashing once.
A squeak burst from it … and then it bolted.
Gray fur blurred down the tunnel as its claws skittered on the stone.
Roz’s eyes briefly glimmered back at me, two cold sparks in the dark—before they winked out.
“Roz!” I hissed into the darkness. But it didn’t squeak back.
I snatched a half-burned oil lamp from the table, and tipped it toward the embers in the hearth. The wick caught, throwing a wavering glow across the stones.
“Roz,” I whispered one more time, but it was long gone.
I tightened my grip on the lamp and stepped forward.
The stone pressed close on either side as I crossed the threshold, shadows peeling back reluctantly from the flame.
The air changed immediately, becoming cooler and damper and carrying the stale tang of stone that hadn’t breathed daylight in years.
My sandals scuffed against uneven flagstones, dipping into shallow grooves.
Each step carried me lower, down a stairwell worn smooth by time and long since forgotten.
Cobwebs clung to the ceiling, their ghostly threads tangling in my hair as I stooped. My lamp sputtered, its light catching on the slick sheen of moisture trickling down cracks in the stone. The shadows leapt with each flicker, darting along the walls like creatures just out of sight.
“What am I doing?” I whispered to myself, though the words were smothered against the narrow stone and swallowed instantly. My fingers brushed the wall for balance, and I wondered how many others had slipped through these passages before me.
The deeper I went, the more the air shifted. It pressed into my lungs as though the palace itself were exhaling around me. My chest tightened, not with fear exactly, but something stranger. A weight that seemed to sink into me.
Each step made it worse. By the time I’d reached the bottom of the stairs, the sensation had become a steady thrum under my sternum, like a second heartbeat that wasn’t mine.
I pressed a hand against my chest, fingers splayed. The stone wall was cold beneath my other palm, but the pressure inside me burned. The rhythm called to me. A pulse not my own, dragging me deeper, as though the stones themselves were summoning me.
Hinges shrieked as I forced a door open and slipped into a large room.
The lamplight wavered across low stone arches, revealing walls furred with moss and streaked by water that had long seeped through.
Crates and amphorae slumped in corners, their lids split, spilling out shriveled herbs and rotted cloth.
A sudden squeak broke the silence. I swung the lamp around and saw Roz perched atop a broken crate on the far side of the room. Its eyes gleamed in the light, fixed on me as though urging me deeper.
“We should turn around,” I whispered to it. Roz squeaked and darted down the next tunnel.
Sighing, I followed, hissing as my wrap snagged on a jagged corner of stone, yanking me back like a hand refusing to let me pass. I tore free and kept going.
I could still feel the thumping in my chest though.
Roz had finally stopped ahead, its tail twitching as it crouched before a damp wall. I crept closer, gasping when I heard the muffled sound of men speaking from just beyond the room.
Crouching down next to Roz, I set the lamp down. Its light trembled over the wall as I pressed my palms against the cold surface, searching. My fingers snagged on a grime-caked tapestry that clung to the stones. I tugged it back, revealing a narrow slit in the wall where faint light peeked through.
“This is madness, Roz,” I murmured as I leaned closer.
The air coming from the hole reeked of damp iron, sweat, and rot, foulness pressing in ahead of everything else.
Groans seeped through the stone, miserable and broken, punctuated by the muttering of men too beaten to beg.
Heat pressed against me as I peered through the slit, a suffocating wave rolling out of the dark.
I pressed closer, realizing that the strange pulsing in my chest had suddenly stopped.
Torchlight flared against damp stone, throwing long shadows across the chamber beyond. Menelaus bristled at the center of it furiously, his eyes lit like coals in a furnace. Achilles stood beside him, arms folded tight and tension braced in the hard planes of his shoulders.
On the floor, a man knelt. Blood streaked down his jaw, dripping onto the stone in dark spatters. His breath rattled, shallow and frayed.
Theron stood among them, the dirt streaking his skin a clear sign he still hadn’t been granted the dignity of a bath.
He lingered apart from the others, shadow tugging at the edges of him as if reluctant to let go.
His hands hung loose at his sides, and the faint lines were still glimmering across his palms, symbols alive with a deep blue glow that pulsed like ice refusing to melt.
A shiver climbed my spine. Gods, what was he?
Menelaus’s commanding voice cracked through the chamber, shattering the silence. “You claim you can shield Sparta? Prove it. Break him—here, before us all.”
Theron’s gaze fixed on the kneeling assassin, flames banked deep in his eyes. He stepped forward slowly, raising a hand.
Menelaus’s brows shot upward. “What are you doing?”
Theron’s mouth curved faintly. “What you asked,” he said smoothly. “Breaking him. Just … my way.”
The glyphs on his palms flared.
The prisoner went rigid as his eyes snapped wide. His scream ripped through the cell and I flinched back from the wall, a hand flying to my mouth.
The air thickened and warped. It shimmered as though the chamber had bent into the shape of something wrong. Light twisted on itself. Sound bent sideways. And the man shrieked again, not in pain, but in terror so pure it curdled the air.
He clawed at the stone floor, his nails tearing. “Ianthe—run!” he sobbed to shadows none of us could see. “Gods, don’t let them take her!”
My heart slammed in my chest as I watched, bile rising hot in my throat.
“What is he seeing?” Menelaus demanded, his voice sounding shaken despite himself.
Theron tilted his head, watching with the indifferent calm of a predator who already knew the outcome. “His worst memory,” he said. His tone was almost amused, a cruel flicker tugging at his mouth. “And the best part? When it ends … it starts over.”
The assassin writhed, convulsing, sobbing like a child. “No—please—don’t make me watch again. Please—” He slammed his head against the stone floor. The sound cracked through the wall, each blow spilling fresh pools of blood.
“Gods preserve us,” I breathed. Roz pawed at my knee and I picked it up, cuddling it close for comfort.
Menelaus stared, awe and revulsion warring across his face, while Achilles’s face was blank, as if none of it was actually happening.
The prisoner broke at last, his voice shredded to ribbons. “I’ll talk!” he sobbed. “Please—just stop it! I’ll tell you everything, only stop!”
Theron lowered his hand and the air snapped back into place as though some vast pressure had been released. The assassin’s entire body crumpled as he gagged on his sobs. Chains clattered as his shoulders shook.
Achilles seized him by the collar and hauled him upright, his voice a growl. “Who sent you?”
The man’s eyes rolled white, his breath hitching in panic. “Sidon,” he gasped. “A noble there—he hired us. I don’t know why, only that we were paid to see the king dead.”
“Sidon,” Menelaus repeated, his voice dripping venom. “They should be worshipping me and instead they whisper my name and send dogs to bite at my throne.”
The assassin trembled harder and his words tumbled from his lips in a rush. “He has others—scattered in your villages, waiting. That’s all I know. Gods’ truth. Please.”
Menelaus turned to Theron. “Finish it.”
“I’ll do it,” Achilles growled, stepping forward, his blade already rising. Theron shifted before he could strike, cutting across Achilles’s path. His violet eyes flicked to the sword, then to Achilles’s face, another faint grin tugging at his mouth.
“Always so eager to swing first,” he murmured. “But this one’s mine.”
Achilles went unnervingly still, his shoulders coiled with fury, but he didn’t lower his blade. Their stares locked, tension sparking between them. For a heartbeat, the chamber seemed to shrink around their silence.
Theron turned from him, dismissing the captain as though he had never spoken at all. His hand lifted and his fingers moved slowly as the glyphs pulsed.
The assassin convulsed, his body arching off the floor as an unseen force snapped him rigid. His scream tore through the stone chamber, and then cut off as his throat crushed in on itself.
I pressed myself hard against the wall, fighting the urge to turn away, to close my eyes. I made myself look. I needed to know what this stranger was capable of.
The prisoner’s legs kicked once before going slack.
Menelaus jerked, just a hair’s breadth, but it was enough to show his flash of fear.
For a moment, only the hiss of the torches filled the silence.
The stink of blood and iron thickened, cloying in my throat.
Theron exhaled softly, lowering his hand as though nothing had passed.
His smug look lingered, his gaze drifting over the corpse before sliding back to Menelaus.
“Now it’s finished,” he said lightly, as if mocking the finality of death itself.
Menelaus watched the still-warm corpse, then turned back to Theron. “What is the limit of your power?”
Theron was quiet. The glyphs faded slightly, dimming as though unsure of their welcome. “It is not limitless,” he said at last. “But enough. Enough to serve you—if you allow it.”
The words slid smooth as silk, but something in them snagged at me. They were too polished, too careful. His voice carried the weight of truth, but my skin prickled with the certainty that it wasn’t the whole of it. He was holding something back. Lying, or something close to it.
“A wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Achilles muttered, almost to himself. The words carried though, biting through the cell.
Theron didn’t so much as twitch. But the silence thickened, heavy and expectant, as if the air itself leaned in to listen.
I watched in horror as his head suddenly tilted, and impossibly his gaze shifted, and his eyes cut past Menelaus, past Achilles, past the corpse on the floor … straight to the wall.
To me.
I lurched to my feet, clutching Roz as I stumbled backward, then turned and fled the way I’d come. Yet even as the tunnel closed around us, I felt it—his gaze, burning, unrelenting …
Watching.
I ran through the tunnel, my lamp guttering in the draft. My sandals slapped against the ground, the corridor curving in dizzying spirals until I burst back into the large room littered with crates, and sacks, and the stench of rot.
Roz went feral and twisted in my arms, its tail snapping like a red whip as its tiny claws scrabbled against my skin.
“Roz—stop—” I hissed, but the little creature tore free, landing with a soft thud before darting across the chamber. It sprinted toward a far corner where broken amphorae sagged in piles, then began clawing at a shallow rise of dirt with frantic urgency.
“Roz!” I lunged after it. “Enough!”
And then … something pale appeared in the soil.
There was just a sliver at first, but my breath stuttered as I dropped to my knees and brushed aside loose dirt, helping Roz clear the rest. The soil crumbled beneath my fingers, revealing a long, bleached-white shape, thin and unmistakably solid.
It was a bone.
Roz kept scratching, but I scrambled back, my palms slipping on the dirt. My eyes swept the rest of the chamber in horror.
There were mounds everywhere.
Some small as sleeping dogs. Others long and narrow. All subtle enough to overlook if you weren’t kneeling in the dirt with a bone in your hand.
My breath snagged.
This wasn’t a storage room. It was a burial ground disguised as one.
I turned and bolted. Back through the crates, through the tang of decay, through the tunnel that felt like it was closing in on me. Roz skittered after me and I didn’t stop until I reached my chamber and slid closed the passage.
Roz darted beneath the bed as if it was frightened too.
I pressed my back to the wall, shaking so violently my teeth knocked together, the image of that bone burning behind my eyes.
Something was buried beneath this palace.
Many somethings.
And whatever they were … I had just uncovered a piece of a truth I was sure Sparta had never meant me to find.