Chapter 49 #2
The words hung between them, stretched taut, as if the air itself braced for the first strike.
I swallowed the blood and lifted my chin. The world wavered at the edges, but I kept my gaze fixed forward. I made myself still. I buried the scream. I buried everything.
“Clean yourself up,” Menelaus muttered, already turning away. “I won’t be seen with a queen who looks soiled.”
I didn’t move until the clamor returned—forced laughter, clinking goblets, music resuming like nothing had happened.
Then I left. I didn’t know where I was going. I just needed to move. To get out before the walls collapsed on top of me. My vision blurred, the sting in my cheek pulsing with every heartbeat. I couldn’t stop reliving it … the feel of his hand, the laughter that followed.
I rounded the corner too fast and found my way barred by yet another solid chest. Hands closed around my arms, steadying me before I could stumble. I lifted my gaze to Theron, a scowl crossing my lips. Unlike me, the longer he stayed in the palace, the more alive he seemed to look.
His skin had never looked sickly, even in chains, but now it gleamed, sun-warmed and whole, the way marble glows when sculptors smooth it to a final, perfect sheen. There was nothing of the prisoner left in him. His shoulders carried a new breadth, one that was sharpened and honed.
I saw myself reflected in his gaze. The blood on my lip. The bruise already blooming along my cheek. The sight made my chest tighten, and I shoved against him, breaking his hold before he could look deeper.
His eyes narrowed, the fire in them cutting close. His voice dropped, simmering with something I didn’t care to examine. “Who did this to you?”
I lifted my chin, bitterness coating my tongue. “Why? Planning to congratulate him?”
Something flickered across his expression, surprise, maybe. Or amusement. But he didn’t smile as he grabbed my arms again.
I tried to twist away, but he didn’t release me.
“Let me go,” I snapped, jerking against him. “The last thing I need is someone seeing you touch me.”
“There’s no one,” he growled, his grip unyielding, dragging me closer as if daring me to lie. “Now answer me. Was it the king?”
I forced my chin up again, meeting the violet blaze of his stare. “Do you want to die?”
He tilted his head. “Was it Achilles, then?”
The ground fell out beneath me. My stomach dropped so hard it left me dizzy. “No!” I hissed. “Why would you—”
“Why didn’t he stop it?” Theron cut in, his voice rising with a fury that felt like it might burn the stone around us. His eyes raked over the mark on my cheek, the split at my lip, every wound I had tried to hide. “He looks at you like you’re his heartbeat. But he let this happen?”
My breath hitched. Panic slammed into me, clawing up my throat. I staggered a half step back, trying to rip free of both his hold and the truth he circled, the one I couldn’t bear to name.
“Stop,” I said, the word breaking harsher than I meant, my voice edged with something far too close to fear. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
But he did. I saw it in his eyes, the merciless gleam of a man who had put the pieces together and didn’t care if I wanted them scattered.
His grip lingered a moment longer, hot and punishing on my arms, as though he could will the truth from me if he just held on hard enough. Then, slowly, his fingers loosened and he let me go.
The absence of his touch felt almost violent.
My hands fisted at my sides. I forced my expression blank, but my pulse thundered in my ears. I felt exposed, like he’d peeled something back.
“You don’t understand this place,” I hissed. “You don’t understand me.”
“No,” he said, stepping closer. “I understand far too well. You’re the queen, and yet your cheek bears his mark. In my land, queens are not struck. They are revered. They rule beside their kings, not beneath them.”
Something twisted in me. His words flayed me raw, scraping against wounds I tried to keep buried.
“What fantasy is that?” I bit out. “You think a crown means something here? I used to think that too, and I learned very quickly that my only role here is to smile. To be beautiful. To be a warm body. Nothing more.”
His eyes didn’t flinch. “And if I told you that you could be dangerous instead?”
My lip trembled. I hated that it did.
“That would be useless. If I ever lifted a hand against Menelaus, they’d hang me from the gates.”
Theron stepped in. Close. His heat pressed against the chill in my skin.
The scent of spice clung to him, but beneath it—something wilder.
Like the air after lightning split the sky, that strange metallic tang that made the hairs on my arms lift.
“You never know when opportunity might strike, Your Majesty.”
I stared at him, my breath snagging in my throat. How dare he. It was only the cruelest man who would try and make me hope when hope was a poison I could not afford.
“Leave me,” I whispered.
He didn’t move.
His hand lifted, hovering just short of my cheek. He never touched me, but the nearness made my breath stumble, as though the air itself pressed against my skin.
“You don’t have to be what they made you.”
A pained laugh scraped from my throat. Bitter. Broken. “And what am I, Theron?”
His eyes burned into mine. “Something weak. Something powerless.”
I flinched and my mouth opened, desperate to protest even if he was right.
But he cut across me. “Someday you’ll be a real queen, Helena. One they’ll learn to fear.”
With one last look, he turned and vanished down the hallway, leaving only the echo of his words.
I stood in the corridor until the last of my tears crusted on my cheeks. The sting on my face throbbed, a constant reminder of what I truly was.
Menelaus’s possession.
And nothing more.