Chapter 49
I walked the outer paths of the palace garden with Alcmene beside me. The sun hung pale behind a gauze of clouds, its light washing the stones in a wan glow. The air carried the faint perfume of the king’s roses, stubborn blossoms spilling from trellises that climbed the walls.
For a moment, the quiet almost fooled me into believing in peace. Almost.
And then the spell cracked.
Shouts snapped across the courtyard, rough and harsh, wrong against the hush of the garden. I whipped my head toward the gates.
The butt of a guard’s spear slammed into a woman’s ribs. She staggered back, clutching a child so tightly his small legs dangled. The boy whimpered, and she hunched over him, as if her body alone could shield him from Sparta’s cruelty.
My pulse surged. I was already running, skirts dragging at my legs, before Alcmene’s hand could stop me.
By the time I reached the gates, the woman’s shawl had fallen into the dust. Her arms were wasted thin, the child clinging to her ribs like a shadow. When her eyes lifted and found me, they widened. Hope struck across her gaunt face.
“Please, Your Majesty,” she gasped in a shredded voice. “We’ve come so far. There is nothing left in our village, no grain, no water. My husband died in the fields. I—I cannot make it farther. But he can.”
She pressed her boy forward, shaking with the effort of lifting him. His cheeks were hollow, but his eyes … gods, they still held a spark of something that refused to die.
The soldier at the gate shoved her back. “On your knees,” he barked, then turned toward me. “Your Majesty, she’s not permitted. We don’t let beggars through the gates. She could be carrying the Dread.”
“Please,” she begged once more. “He’s all I have left.” She tried to lift the boy toward me again, and her arms shook with the effort, her body swaying.
I growled at the soldier. “The Dread does not pass through touch,” I shot back, heat rising in my chest. “We all know that.”
The soldier faltered, but another stepped up quickly. “Even so, the king’s orders are clear—”
I rose to my full height, my voice edged in steel. “And am I not queen? Are my orders not clear?”
Silence. The soldiers shifted, uneasy under my gaze.
I pointed to the boy. “Bring him inside. Now. Gently.”
They hesitated a heartbeat longer, then obeyed, pulling him from his mother’s arms. She kissed his head once, whispering words too soft to hear, and let him go.
Her arms dropped limp. She folded forward until her forehead touched the dust, her body bent in surrender. Alcmene’s hand pressed to my back, guiding me away as the gates clanged shut behind us.
The boy twisted in the soldier’s grasp, his thin arms reaching, his small voice breaking in the air. “Mother! Mother!”
I glanced back. She had not moved. Her body remained folded in the dust, head bowed, arms limp at her sides. Not a supplicant. Not a beggar.
A corpse.
The truth pierced through me. She had used the last of her strength to carry him here, to hand him over. To die at the threshold.
The boy thrashed harder, shrieking for her as I took him from the soldier. My throat burned as I stroked his hair, trying to quiet the panic in his small body. “No,” he sobbed, “no, no, no—”
I cupped his face, forcing his gaze up from the gates, from the lifeless shadow on the other side. “Look at me,” I whispered in a breaking voice. “Look at me. She wanted you to live. She brought you here so you could live.”
He tried to twist back again, but I held him as he shook, rocking him against me as his cries tore through the courtyard. “You are here now,” I murmured, even as the words tasted like ash. “Look at the palace, little one. Look forward. She gave everything so you could be here.”
His sobs did not quiet, but he clung to me, fists tangled in my chiton, eyes wet and wild. Behind us, the guards averted their gazes, eager to be rid of the sight, eager to forget the woman already cooling in the dust.
I could not forget.
We slowed near the servants’ wing, the rush of kitchen scents filling the corridor. “Find a nursemaid for him,” I ordered Alcmene. “Food too. He won’t go without.” I glanced at the boy, his mother’s last plea echoing in my ears like she was with us.
“Of course, Your Majesty.” She studied me for a beat, then added softly, “You should rest, Helena.”
Rest. As if I could.
I forced myself to look at her, to nod again, though the words snagged in my throat. “See to him first. Nothing else matters.”
Alcmene inclined her head and picked up the still crying boy before she slipped into the servants’ wing, her footsteps swallowed by the murmur of voices beyond. I stood in the corridor, alone, the woman’s last words still snagged in my ear like a barb: He’s all I have left.
“What in the gods’ names were you thinking?” Achilles snapped as he suddenly rounded the corner.
I jerked back, surprised. “What?”
His fists were clenched at his sides. “You let her touch you. You knelt beside her. Do you even know what she carried? What she could have passed to you?”
“She was dying,” I shot back. “And she begged me to save her son.”
“You shouldn’t have been anywhere near her.”
I stared at him, anger sparking through my grief. “So I should’ve turned my back? Pretended I didn’t see her?”
His jaw flexed, the tic pulsing. “You’re not just anyone,” he ground out. “You’re the queen. If something happens to you—”
“If something happens to me,” I cut in, my voice shaking with fury, “at least I won’t have been the kind of ruler who let a child die on her doorstep.”
That landed and he flinched, just barely.
Achilles stepped closer, his voice still carrying that rough, frantic edge. “You think I don’t understand? I do. But I can’t—” His throat worked, his eyes bright and fierce. “I can’t lose you. I wouldn’t survive it.”
I thought of the woman’s body crumpled in the dust, her boy’s screams breaking against the palace gates. “And what about them?” I whispered fiercely. “The ones already dying? The ones no one else sees?”
His gaze flicked away, shadows cutting across his face.
I brushed past him and kept moving, not waiting for his answer.
Another day. Another feast.
During the Trials, they’d trained us to prepare such things. But I hadn’t understood how endlessly Menelaus demanded them.
I’d made sure each table had gold platters piled high with roasted pheasant, spiced lamb, and pomegranates, and that servants refilled the pitchers of ruby-colored wine before they ever ran dry. Dancers were performing at the far end of the room, their colorful scarfs floating through the air.
Now I sat beside Menelaus, every inch the dutiful queen, my skin crawling beneath silks that felt like shackles. His arm brushed mine every time he lifted his goblet, and I fought not to flinch.
The doors burst open and a soldier strode in, dragging someone behind him.
Two someones.
Alcmene’s hair was unbound, her cheeks flushed, and her eyes wild with fear. The boy at her side was barefoot and trembling, his face a map of salt-streaked tears. He clung to her hand as if the world would rip him away the moment he let go.
The music faltered, a sour note hanging in the air. A few courtiers glanced over, their brows arched in irritation rather than concern.
I was on my feet before I knew I’d moved.
The soldier shoved the boy forward, his voice carrying across the hall. “Caught this handmaid tending to a stray in the servants’ quarters, my king. Knew you’d want to be made aware.”
Menelaus wiped his fingers on the corner of the tablecloth, then stood. “Alcmene,” he said, stretching her name with slick disappointment. “I’d expect better of someone who serves my queen.”
Alcmene dropped to her knees. “Please, my king. He’s starving. He lost his mother. He’s no threat—”
“He’s filth,” Menelaus snapped. “And if you think I’ll have urchins wandering my halls when the Dread is just outside—”
“I brought him,” I said, stepping forward. My voice rang clear in the sudden silence. “It was me. I found him at the gates. I brought him inside.”
Menelaus turned to me. “Someday you’ll bear me a child, Helena,” he said. “A strong son with royal blood. Not some gutter-born creature with rot in his lungs.”
The boy flinched harder, trembling all over, tears continuing to streak silently down his face.
“Please,” I said, loud enough for every guest still chewing to hear. “He is a child, not a threat. He needs shelter, not punishment. And if the palace cannot spare a corner for one starving boy, then what exactly are we ruling for?”
The guards grabbed the boy as if I hadn’t said a word. He didn’t resist. Didn’t cry out. Just sobbed silently, his small shoulders shaking as they tore him away.
“Let him go,” I cried, stepping toward them, only for Menelaus’s hand to shoot out and clamp around my wrist and yank me toward him. I glared up at him, not bothering to hide my hate. Hoping he could see the threat in my gaze, that one day, I’d be driving steel through his throat.
His expression darkened, anger simmering just beneath his skin. “You call that strength?” he spat. “It is weakness. And Sparta does not suffer the weak.”
“The only weakness I see in Sparta is you,” I snarled.
His hand whipped across my face before I could even draw breath.
The sound cracked through the hall like a split branch. My head jerked sideways, hair spilling across my eyes. Fire bloomed across my cheek, and I staggered back a half step. My lip tore against my teeth as blood rushed over my tongue in a hot and metallic rush.
From the corner of my blurred vision, I saw Achilles lunge forward, fury carved into every line of his body.
“Move,” Menelaus barked. “Remember yourself, Achilles.”
Achilles didn’t back down. “She is your queen,” he snapped, his voice rough with barely contained violence. “You’ve obviously forgotten that.”
Menelaus’s eyes narrowed as he studied his captain. “Oldest friend or not,” he said, each word hard enough to bruise, “I am still king.”