Chapter 57 #2
Soldiers amused themselves, not with concubines but with the Sidonian women they’d pressed into service. One knelt beside a warrior, her hair tangled and her hands trembling as she lifted a goblet to his mouth.
“Careful, girl,” he sneered as the wine sloshed down his beard. “Waste my drink, and you’ll lick it from the sand.”
The men around him roared with laughter. He caught her chin in his calloused grip, forcing her face up. “Smile.”
Her lips pulled back, brittle and false, and when he shoved a strip of meat between her teeth, she let him tear the other half with his mouth, laughter scraping out of her like a cracked instrument.
Before I knew I was moving, I stepped forward, far enough that the firelight caught the gold of my diadem, far enough that every soldier in the circle quieted.
“Enough,” I hissed, hoping that the word landed like a command they would respect.
The warrior’s fingers froze on the girl’s jaw. He looked up at me, uncertainty flickering beneath the wine haze.
“Release her,” I demanded.
A long beat passed, tense as a drawn bowstring, then, reluctantly, he let her go. The girl jerked back, scrambling away on her hands and knees with shuddering breaths, her eyes wide with disbelief.
“My queen.” Two guards appeared at my sides so quickly it nearly jolted me. Their armor brushed my sleeves as they formed a wall, angled subtly but unmistakably between me and the soldiers.
“Please come back to your tent,” one murmured, trying to sound deferential.
It wasn’t.
Heat climbed up my neck, humiliation pricking beneath my skin. They weren’t protecting me. They were reminding every man watching that I could step forward, speak, command …
… but nothing I said carried the weight of the king.
The soldiers understood it instantly. Their tension snapped and someone barked a laugh. Another lifted a goblet and the moment shattered.
By the time the guards steered me two steps back from the firelight, the celebrating was already roaring to life again—cheers rising, meat tearing, the girl’s terror swallowed whole by wine and war cries as though I had never spoken at all.
I looked down at the cup in my hands, the wine dark and heavy, and I couldn’t help but think of Anysa again, and what she would have thought.
She would have been so disappointed in me.
The flames spat fat into the air, and I glanced up, my gaze catching on where Theron sat apart from the worst of it, stretched long on a rough bench with a cup dangling loosely in his hand.
He wasn’t laughing, wasn’t jeering like the others.
His eyes moved instead—steady and watchful—tracking each soldier, each bark of laughter, every cruel tug at the Sidonian women as though he were mapping the shape of the men who claimed to rule this war.
I found myself staring at him, trying to read what game he played, when his gaze slid to mine. A knowing smile curved his mouth and he winked again.
Heat rose in my cheeks and my lips hitched upward into a snarl as I tore my eyes away.
A shout snapped my attention back to the fire.
One of the Sidonian women tried to pull free from a soldier’s grip, her arm jerking like a trapped bird.
Laughter roared as he hauled her onto his lap, his hand clamping hard around her throat as he tipped his cup to her mouth.
She choked on the wine he forced between her lips, red liquid cascading down her chin and staining her dress as his companions erupted in cruel delight.
The cup slipped from my hand. I took a step forward, my voice already rising, the words burning in my throat like the lesson I’d just learned hadn’t happened.
Before I could yell out again, a hand seized my arm.
In a rush I was yanked back, the canvas of the tent closing over me, the firelight vanishing.
I turned, a scream balanced on the edge of my tongue …
only to find Achilles. His chest heaved like a man still in the grip of battle, and his eyes were wild …
bright with a ruthless exhilaration forged from blood and hard-won victory.
I parted my lips to speak, but the words never made it past my throat. His mouth claimed mine with bruising insistence, as though he were still on the sand conquering. The taste of wine and salt pressed into me, his hands locking at my waist, pulling me against the heat of his body.
I gasped against him, my fingers clutching at the hard planes of his shoulders.
His tongue pushed past my lips, stealing the air from my lungs.
A low groan rumbled from his chest, vibrating through me, as if the taste of me only stoked the fire raging in his blood.
The world tilted with it—soldiers shouting outside, the stench of smoke and roasted flesh—all of it drowned beneath the heat of him, the sheer want pressing against me.
His hand slid higher, tangling in the fabric of my cloak, fist tightening until the cloth strained.
He wrenched me closer, crushing me against the line of his body, like he could fuse us together, burn away the distance with his hunger.
His mouth moved harder against mine, feverish, desperate, as though he’d claim me the way he had claimed the battlefield. Utterly and without question.
Suddenly, his body shuddered. His breath faltered and his lips slackened against mine as the firm grip on my waist loosened.
“Achilles?” I whispered, trying to hold him upright as he sagged into me.
He slumped harder, dragging me back a step, his head lolling against my shoulder. I staggered beneath him, my cloak slipping from my shoulders as I strained to catch him. He was all muscle and bronze, his bulk pressing the air from my chest.
“Gods,” I muttered through clenched teeth, though it was to myself as much as to him. Inch by inch, I lowered him down, easing his body until his back met the sand-strewn furs. Strands of hair slipped over his brow, his lips parted like they had been left mid-breath on my name.
Theron had struck again, his spell catching Achilles in the grip of his hunger and pulling him under.
Rage burned through me and my hands balled into fists. How dare he? How dare he use his power on Achilles as though he were a pawn, a beast to be muzzled?
How dare this stranger try and control my life like this … and for what? His own amusement?
I shot to my feet and the tent poles shook as I shoved past the heavy flap and came to an abrupt stop. Theron stood at the threshold, as though he had been waiting for the exact second I emerged.
He leaned against the post, arms folded, the faint glow of sigils still clinging to his skin. His eyes slid lazily to mine, a grin spreading across his mouth. “Looking for someone, Your Majesty?”
“You,” I snarled.
His grin widened, quick and feral, toying with me as much as it threatened.
His gaze flicked past me through the crack in the cover, and I didn’t need to turn to know what he saw, Achilles sprawled in the tent’s shadows, unmoving.
When his eyes returned to mine, they glittered dangerously, as if he’d thrown the last die and fate had landed squarely in his favor.
“I really don’t see the appeal,” he said, wrinkling his nose like Achilles’s entire existence offended his senses. “So serious. So … noble. It’s exhausting just watching him.”
My teeth ground together. “Better noble than whatever you are.”
“I mean,” Theron continued as if I hadn’t actually said anything, leaning forward and lowering his voice like we were sharing a secret, “don’t mistake me—he’s built like a statue someone very inspired once carved.
But statues don’t laugh. Or flirt. Or whisper wicked things into your ear just to see if you’ll blush, Your Majesty. ”
I narrowed my eyes, ignoring the strange twitch in my gut. “Do you ever stop talking?”
Another grin cut across his face, bright with charm and danger. “Not when I’m having this much fun.”
I studied him in the dying firelight, searching past the grin. It always looked effortless, tossed on like a mask. His body slouched, his tone all idle drawl, but his eyes … they were never still. They always were watching and measuring, noting every movement, every weakness.
Menelaus had asked far too few questions of this man, and nothing that Theron did could make me think otherwise. There was nothing that powerful creatures liked less than cages. And I was never going to believe that Theron had stepped willingly into one.
I drew myself taller. “You’re playing a game,” I hissed. “And I’m tired of not knowing the rules. Why are you here?” His grin twitched, but I pressed on. “What do you want in Sparta?”
His gaze dipped, not lewdly, but deliberately enough to make heat crawl up the back of my neck. It wasn’t the searing, burning fire Achilles stirred … but something lighter. Quicker. A flame made of friction.
He was infuriating.
“I’m here because of your company, of course,” Theron said, pushing off the post with an easy stretch that reminded me of Menelaus’s lion stretching after a nap.
“Don’t toy with me,” I growled. “Enough lies. Enough smirks. Tell me why you’re here!”
For the first time, his grin faltered. His eyes, usually glinting with that maddening amusement, softened at the edges. “I haven’t been lying,” he said, and the words carried none of his usual play. “I am here for Menelaus.”
The breath rattled in my throat. “What do you want with him? I know it’s not to be his toy.”
That grin returned, faint but sly. “I want what everyone wants, my queen. To know how your husband cast out the gods.”
The admission caught me off guard.
“Have you come any closer to figuring that out?” I asked after a moment, trying for sarcasm. It fell flat, because the question was real, and I wanted the answer just as much.
Theron’s mouth twitched, though his eyes stayed dark. “Some days,” he murmured, his voice low. “Some days I think I have.”