Chapter 56
Morning broke, gray and heavy, the sky sagging with slate-colored clouds.
Ahead, Sidon rose from the coast like a crusted wound, its cliffs rust-colored, its walls a deep ochre stone that seemed to drink the sun rather than reflect it.
Even the waves turned darker as we neared, frothing not with foam but a dull, sullen churn.
There were no gulls. No sound but the sails and the slap of oars cutting through water.
“It feels like the world ends here,” I murmured before I could stop myself. I hadn’t meant to speak aloud. But no one answered anyway. No one else dared to break the silence.
On the walls of Sidon, their warriors were waiting. Rank upon rank of soldiers in armor bright as hammered silver, spears lifted high, a forest of gleaming death. Banners drooped in the windless morning, each marked with moonlit sigils.
Their helmets curved like horns, silvered and cruel, but it was their faces that chilled me most. Even at this distance, their skin looked leeched of life, the high planes of their cheeks glimmering faintly with that silver, metallic sheen.
A thousand merciless eyes watched from the walls, as cold and pitiless as the emissaries who had once stood in Sparta’s halls.
I stood beside Menelaus, who held himself tall and still, his arms folded behind his back. His dark cloak stirred faintly despite the dead air, as if moved by some unseen hand. Menelaus turned to me. “You will stand at the bow, my beauty,” he said, clipped and cold.
My brow rose in confusion. “At the front?”
“Let Sidon see Sparta’s superiority. Starting with its queen,” Menelaus declared. “Let them look upon her and know the power of my crown.”
Achilles stepped forward immediately. “Your Majesty, it is unsafe. She should remain in her quarters.”
Menelaus fixed him with a hard look. “Are you questioning me?”
“She is the queen,” Achilles growled. “A symbol, yes, but not one to throw before enemy archers.”
The king’s mouth curled into something cruel. “She is mine. I will place her where I choose. Captain, once again I’m having to remind you of your place. Do not make me repeat it again. Your defiance displeases me.”
A flicker of something, rage or guilt, or both, passed over Achilles’s face. But he bowed low, every line of his body rigid with restraint as he acquiesced to the king.
My glare cut to Achilles, searing, and for the briefest moment his shoulders twitched as if struck.
Frustrated, I tore my gaze away and stepped forward. “It’s fine. I will go.”
Menelaus’s lips curved. “Of course you will. As though you had a choice.”
A truer sentence had never been spoken. For a moment, I envisioned Roz bursting from beneath my cloak, its ribbon-tail unfurling as its small muzzle split into something vast and terrible as it lunged for the king’s throat.
But Roz only pressed closer against my side, silent and content. It gave no sign of sharing my fury, no flicker of menace—only the indifference of a creature more interested in warmth than in kings or crowns.
Achilles’s head snapped up. Our eyes locked. I’m sorry, his gaze seemed to beg.
I bit down hard on the urge to answer it. His apologies were growing old.
But so was everything about Menelaus, including the fact that the king who had once supposedly cast out gods seemed satisfied to step back and have the rest of us fight his war.
The crew parted like waves as I walked to the prow. My steps lagged, heavy as lead, but I lifted my chin. If I was to be a symbol, then I would look the part.
The wind rose without warning, a chill whispering over my skin, crawling like frost up the back of my neck. It wasn’t just cold. It carried that faint tang of Theron’s magic. It felt … unnatural.
Wrong.
My breath hitched and I glanced sideways, furious. Was he really trying to use his magic on me again?
Theron stood a few paces away, his arms crossed, one sandal braced on a coil of rope. He was watching the coast with an expression that could be described as bored. Not cautious. Not tense. Just endlessly, insultingly bored.
He caught me staring and raised a brow. “Something bothering you, Your Majesty?”
“Did you do something?” I muttered, not wanting Menelaus to hear.
“Why? Do you feel something?” he said mockingly. “Maybe the sheer thrill of being objectified by a murderous monarch?”
I scoffed, wishing I’d plunged my dagger into his chest when I had the chance, and then I turned my attention back to the wall of soldiers in the distance.
Menelaus’s voice thundered across the deck.
“Look well, Sidon!” he roared, his voice carrying across the air, assisted no doubt by Theron’s power.
“Behold Sparta’s queen—fairer than your moon-born whores, brighter than anything your land possesses!
Let your soldiers see the strength of Sparta, clothed in beauty you will never match! ”
The ship creaked around us, sails groaning overhead, and the red waves slapped the hull with rhythmic finality. Behind me, the soldiers readied themselves.
A sound rose from the cliffs. Low and resonant, it was a long mournful call blown through a massive conch, its cry swelling as though the sea itself had been given a voice. When it stilled, a figure stepped forward at the crown of the wall.
His silver cloak streamed in the sea wind, light against the stone, his braids glinting. He lifted the shell once more, and when he spoke into it, his voice boomed across the water.
“Sparta,” he called, “hear me. Sidon has no quarrel with you. You strike without cause, without provocation. You bring your bloodlust to our shores, when there is no need. We have already bowed to you.”
His words rolled over the waves.
I frowned. No quarrel? No provocation? My mind snagged on the words, trying to fit them against the assassination attempt I’d seen with my own eyes. The poison I could have died from.
Menelaus scoffed and spread his arms wide, turning so every man on deck could hear.
“Do they think me a fool?” he bellowed. “They dare call us the aggressors, when it was they who tried to slay your god in his own palace? When it was they who laced our water with poison and prayed Sparta would choke?”
A current of anger moved through the soldiers, their shields rising as one, jaws set.
“We will not listen to liars!” Menelaus roared. “We will not bow to cowards who hide behind walls and silver tongues. Sidon would see us broken. So we will break them first!”
The men erupted, their shout shaking the air. The cry leapt from ship to ship, sailors and soldiers taking it up until it thundered across the fleet, rolling like a war drum over the blood-colored sea. The sound was deafening, rage and loyalty bound in one voice.
The Spartan cry still echoed over the water when movement rippled across Sidon’s walls.
My eyes widened as flames licked to life, racing along bowstrings and catching on silver-tipped arrows nocked in a hundred waiting hands.
In perfect unison, the archers raised them high, a wall of fire poised along the cliffs like a second dawn.
My throat tightened. I turned, certain Menelaus would call me back, that he would end this display before their archers loosed. But he hadn’t moved. His stance was iron, and his arms were still clasped behind him as he stared at the shore.
Cold slid into me. Was this the plan? To hold me here until they fired?
To offer me up as spectacle—or sacrifice?
My skin prickled, every breath scraping as I stared at him, willing him to release me.
My heart hammered so violently it felt as though they could see it from the walls, a pulsing beacon begging for their arrows.
I glanced back frantically toward the wall and the bows and …
The world wavered, and suddenly I was on a beach of red-streaked sand. Achilles’s body lurched forward, staggering under some unseen blow. His knees buckled, the weight of him crashing down in the surf.
His chest gaped open as his armor split like a broken shell and blood threaded out into the sand in rivulets.
His sand-brown hair clung dark with sweat and gore, his sword still in hand though his fingers slackened on the hilt.
His eyes found mine. Not the sky. Me. Reaching for me even as the light bled out of them.
The sword slipped from his grasp, sinking soundlessly into the red-soaked earth.
The vision shattered, gone in an instant, like a torch snuffed by a sudden gust … I gasped. My nails dug into the rail until my knuckles burned. I blinked, but the haze lingered, refusing to lift.
It wasn’t real.
I had to keep whispering it over and over to myself.
Achilles was there, alive, at the edge of the deck, giving orders to his closest soldiers, already in position at the longboats. The sea lapped against the wood as they prepared to row toward the beach.
My breath snagged in my throat. I couldn’t tear my gaze from him, as though if I looked away, even for a moment, the vision might return, and this time it would not dissolve. This time it would take him from me for good.
His face was half shadowed by the rising sun, brow furrowed in thought. As if he could hear the loudness of my thoughts, he turned toward the prow, his eyes meeting mine.
I must have looked pale because Achilles’s gaze lingered on me for a moment longer before he climbed into the lead boat.
A horn sounded and the longboats began to push off from the ships, slicing through bloody waves like knives through meat.
I couldn’t move as I watched him go. My vision flickered, the image of his death overlaying the living scene like a shadow refusing to fade.
Was it a vision? A trick of frayed nerves?
The question barely formed when a cry split the air.
I flinched hard, the sound lancing through me before I could even grasp its meaning. A soldier shouted behind me—I caught the word archer—but the warning came too late.