Chapter 52
The hallway lay in silence as I staggered through it, my steps uneven, my limbs rubbed raw.
Each torch hissed and flared too bright, shadows jerking against the walls like they knew what I had done.
What had been done to me. The reek of sex clung to my skin, thick as tar, shame crawling over me with every breath.
I bit the inside of my cheek until blood filled my mouth, salty and metallic, holding back the tears burning at the corners of my eyes.
Menelaus had been the worst he’d ever been as if the failure of his hunt needed a body to punish, and mine was closest. My wrists throbbed where his fingers had clamped down, iron-hard, bruises pulsing beneath the skin.
A cut burned across my thigh where his ring had caught and torn, and …
the evidence of it all slid down my leg in warm, vile trails, sticky and humiliating.
My foot caught on an uneven stone on the floor and I stumbled, about to fall, until a hand clamped on my arm and steadied me.
“Easy there, Your Majesty,” Theron murmured.
A shiver broke across my skin. Gods. Of all the people I could have collided with, it had to be him.
I forced myself to look at him, reluctant, bracing for the grin I’d come to hate.
His gaze raked over me, over the bruises at my wrists and the tremble in my mouth I couldn’t bite away. The mischief in his eyes vanished. His face didn’t soften with pity … it hardened, set into something sharper and almost foreboding.
I jerked back, not from fear but instinct, a visceral need to keep him from seeing more than he already had.
He didn’t move, but his head tilted and his violet eyes narrowed, pinning me as if he were peeling back every layer I’d tried to bury. As though I were a riddle he’d solved long before I could open my mouth.
“I can help you, you know,” he murmured.
A sound clawed its way out of me, half laugh, half choke. “Do you take me for a fool? That I’d ever accept help from you?”
“No.”
His lips curved, but it wasn’t a smile. It was too thin. Too dark.
“I think you’re drowning,” he said. “And I think they’ve taught you to keep silent while the water fills your lungs.”
I tried to shove past him.
He shifted easily, cutting off my path. “I can make him fall asleep,” he said, his voice almost … bored. “Every time he wants you.”
I froze. The words rang in my skull, not because I believed him …
But because I wanted to.
The hallway tilted, torches blurring at the edges as my knees nearly buckled. I forced myself steady, swallowing down the surge of hope burning in my throat.
“Why would you offer me that?” I asked in a strained voice.
Theron’s shrug was infuriatingly casual, the kind only the dangerous wore with ease. “Because I can.”
I laughed bitterly. “And erode all that trust you’ve been building with the king? My, how uncharacteristic of you.”
His lips curved again … not in amusement, but in something far more unsettling. “What makes you think the king will ever know?”
The words slid under my skin, and my breath stuttered. For a moment I couldn’t tell if it was warning or temptation tugging at me.
I studied him. “What will it cost me?”
His eyes gleamed. “Why do you assume it must cost something, Helena?”
It was the first time he’d said my name—Helena—not “my queen” or “Your Majesty” said mockingly. The way he said my name was soft and startling, like he knew the weight of it. Like he meant to hold it carefully.
“Because everything does.”
A flicker passed through his gaze … not mischief this time, but something hungrier, edged with charm he wore like armor. “Yes,” he said, tilting his head slightly. “I could see you thinking like that. Especially when I’m giving you so much.”
He glanced up at the ceiling, as though weighing invisible scales. For a long moment, he looked almost contemplative, his lips pursed like a man turning over a puzzle in his mind.
And then the spark lit.
His eyes brightened with the satisfaction of a brilliant idea just born. “I’ve got it,” he murmured excitedly. “We’ll seal the deal with a drop of blood.”
I stiffened. “No.”
His brow lifted, not in shock, but with that infuriating flicker of quiet amusement. “Why not?”
Heat rushed to my face, my pulse slamming in my throat. “Because blood isn’t a trinket to be bartered,” I snapped. “It binds. It remembers. It gives power … and I’ll not hand mine to you.”
His lips parted, just slightly, before curving again—this time into something more intrigued than mocking. “I’m obviously not a lamia, Your Majesty. I assume that’s what you’re thinking of, isn’t it?”
Heat prickled my neck. Gods, how did he read me so easily?
The old stories whispered of the lamia, creatures cursed with a thirst for blood, slipping into bedchambers to drink from children and men alike. Mothers used the tales to frighten girls into obedience, warning us that giving too much of ourselves would turn us into something hollow and ravenous.
One important part of the legends though … the lamia were always women.
He stepped closer when I stayed silent, his shadow stretching long across the floor. “I’m not a beast, Helena.”
“No,” I said tightly, my gaze locked on his. “You’re something far more dangerous.”
His grin unfurled as though I’d handed him a gift instead of an accusation. His head tipped, eyes glinting like he was already savoring the shape of my fear.
“Do you have any other choice?” he asked, and this time his voice was filled with pity.
The word choice lingered between us, mocking.
Choice. As if I hadn’t signed it away in my vows. As if I hadn’t been used like a vessel, emptied and filled again at another’s command. As if I had ever been allowed it at all, since the day my village realized my beauty might benefit them.
“How long can you last like this?”
Another trail of the king’s seed slipped down my skin like it had been summoned by his words.
My stomach lurched. Revulsion sliced up my throat, bile stinging the back of my tongue.
I pressed my thighs together as though I could erase it, as though I could force the filth back inside where no one could see.
But it clung, shameless, running over the cut on my leg like proof of everything I couldn’t hide.
I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek, tasting more iron as I fought the urge to tear at my skin right there on the marble. Gods, I wanted it gone. I wanted him gone.
Theron’s voice turned smoother. “It’s not about a payment. That’s not what I’m asking. A favor like this that is freely given … is sealed in blood. That’s the tradition where I come from.”
He stepped closer, and he didn’t touch me, but the heat of him brushed my skin like firelight. “Think of it as a transaction. One drop. For nights of peace. For silence instead of pain.”
I stared at him. At the honed, beautiful angles of his face. At the strange mix of cruelty and grace that made it impossible to look away. I hated that he was the one offering this.
I hated that I was desperate enough to want to accept.
My heart beat so loudly I thought he could hear it as every instinct screamed not to trust him.
But that word was also beating inside me.
Choice.
What choice did I have?
I couldn’t bear another night of pain. Another night pinned beneath Menelaus, forced open, gutted of dignity until there was nothing left but the sound of my own ragged sobs in the dark. And what about when the creature inside of Menelaus next appeared? Would I survive it?
My nails dug crescents into my palms, grounding me in the sting of flesh, in the only pain I could control. I finally lifted my gaze. Theron hadn’t moved. He only watched patiently as though he’d already seen the shape of my surrender long before I spoke.
The words scraped up my throat, trembling and fragile, and I hated him for hearing them. “Fine,” I whispered. “One drop.”
Theron inclined his head once, solemn, as if we’d struck something far more consecrated than a bargain, and reached into the folds of his tunic. He pulled out a small silver pin and gently took my hand.
I flinched at the contact. My instincts screamed to pull away, to snatch back what little of myself I still owned. But his grip was cool and certain, his thumb brushing once across my palm as if to calm me.
Thump.
Thump.
My chest jolted. It was the same pounding sensation I’d felt in the hidden tunnel beneath the palace. It was back now, stronger, surging beneath my skin as if his touch had summoned it.
His gaze locked on mine, knowing and unblinking … like he could hear it too, like he could feel the rhythm hammering through me.
My lips parted to protest, but the silver pin flashed and I felt a quick sting. He’d pricked me on my finger before I could change my mind.
A bead of blood welled and Theron caught it on the tip of the pin and held it there, his expression unreadable, tempered in something I couldn’t name.
A quiver shivered through me, so slight it might have been imagined, except it sank deeper. My pulse faltered and my breath caught mid-draw. Cold seeped outward, stretching beneath my skin. The air changed, and with it came the sense that I’d crossed a line I couldn’t see.
When I lifted my eyes, his were already on me.
“It’s done,” he murmured.
The words landed like a closing door, final and quiet. And I stood there, trembling, unsure if I had bought myself a reprieve—
Or delivered something of myself into far more dangerous hands.