Chapter 58
One moment I was fighting it, the next … I was dreaming again.
Of the red kingdom drowned in light.
The sky blazed white above me, blinding, endless, a wound in the heavens. But this time, the light wasn’t still. It wavered, unsteady, trembling like flame. Shadows tore across it like wings of ash.
The land below was crimson, yes, but not just with old memory or sacred dust. This time it bled.
Real blood, fresh and smoking, ran in thick rivulets between cracked stones and shattered bones.
It pooled in the hollows where homes had once stood.
It soaked into charred linen. It steamed where it met the fire.
The city on it burned, a ruin of blackened columns and crumbling walls. Its people were gone. No, not gone.
Fallen.
Bodies lined the streets like discarded offerings to some vengeful god. And above it all, their palace burned like a pyre, its banners whipping in the night sky like dying screams.
And still, the throne waited.
Vast. Dark. Etched with living veins of gold that pulsed with each step I took toward it. At its base stood the woman cloaked in dusk, her crown of twisted root and flame casting long shadows across the blood-soaked earth. Her face was as before, smoothed away, as if some cruel hand had erased her.
But now her hands were not empty.
Now they dripped red.
Her fingers curled around a rope of light and shadow, like she held the reins of something invisible. Something leashed. Or barely leashed.
Beside her stood the golden-winged man, unchanged in form—still beauty made wrath, light made flesh, storm and starlight and steel. Yet in his eyes burned something new … recognition, and triumph.
His wings flared wide, scattering embers like sparks from a forge. He was no longer waiting. He was summoning.
The wind rose hard around me, carrying not only fire and salt, but the stench of death, burned flesh, iron blood … sorrow thick enough to choke.
I tried to speak. To beg. To scream. To run.
But nothing came.
Because some dark part of me wanted to be with them.
The faceless queen inclined her head. The golden being lifted his hand, not in command this time, but in welcome.
And I stepped forward.
Into the blood.
Into the fire.
I jolted awake, light already searing through the canvas walls as Roz pawed insistently at my shoulder, its ribbon-tail twitching as if it had been trying to wake me for some time.
My mouth was once again dry and bitter, as if the dream had scraped its residue across my tongue.
For a moment I lay still, heart pounding, trying to separate fire from sunlight, screams from the shouts beyond the tent.
I finally turned, my hand stretching out to touch the cold furs beside me, because of course Achilles was gone.
That ever-present ache opened in my chest. A reminder of how quickly any warmth in my life vanished. How easily I could wake from one nightmare only to find another waiting.
Beneath the sound of my ragged breaths, the camp stirred in a seeming frenzy, with shouts carried on the wind, the thud of footsteps, and the crash of crates being thrown.
The tent flap stirred and Alcmene slipped inside, her movements quick and jerky, like an animal startled from cover.
She twisted at the folds of her skirts, gaze darting anywhere but mine.
Her mouth was a hard line, as if words pressed against it, desperate to break free but trapped behind her teeth.
“What is it?” I asked, frowning at her strange behavior. “Did someone see Achilles last night?”
She shook her head. “You must come at once, Your Majesty,” she said. “I was told to bring you back to the boat.”
I pushed upright. “Already?” The word rasped, confused, though my body ached with relief at the thought of leaving Sidon’s blackened ruins behind. “Why the haste?”
Her lips pressed flat. She busied herself with gathering my cloak, smoothing the hem as though fabric could explain away the panic written in her every motion.
“Alcmene.” I caught her wrist. “Why?”
Her body stiffened beneath my grip. “Because the king commands it.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Her throat worked, and silence stretched thin between us before she finally spoke. “A village was struck by the Dread the night after we left. The king has just received word of it.”
The words hit hard, sorrow lancing through me.
But then my brows lifted, confusion flickering through the ache.
The Dread had prowled our lands for years, tearing through villages, leaving bodies collapsed and bleeding in the dust. Each time, Menelaus had raised his goblet higher and looked away, not caring unless it was in the palace gates.
So why now? Why this village? What made him so suddenly desperate to rush home?
I paused, grief and confusion knotting hard beneath my ribs. “How many did it take?”
Her eyes shuttered, lashes lowering as if to bar me from what lay behind them.
The silence tarried, each heartbeat feeding the foreboding feeling building in my chest. Her breath came shallow, uneven, and she continued to pluck at the folds of her chiton as though she could unravel the fabric instead of the truth.
“Alcmene,” I pressed. “Tell me!” There was an edge of panic in my voice.
Her mouth opened and then closed again. She looked past me, toward the canvas walls, anywhere but my face.
Finally, her whisper slipped out. “All of them.”
A gasp tore from me, but Alcmene went on, her voice breaking in its steadiness. “And now hundreds from the other villages are marching on the palace, demanding answers … demanding protection.”
I saw it, the red mist sweeping through narrow streets and into doorways …
seeping over fields. Bodies convulsing in its wake, limbs jerking as if pulled by invisible strings.
Mouths foaming, eyes and ears and noses spilling rivers of blood.
Children collapsing beside their mothers, fathers writhing in the dust until the seizures stilled, their faces frozen in grotesque terror, staring wide and empty at the sky.
A whole village. I couldn’t even comprehend it.
“What village was it?” I whispered, still lost in those images.
Her head bowed and she didn’t answer.
A rush of heat slammed through me, scorching my chest, stealing the air from my lungs as if fire itself had ignited beneath my ribs. My vision tunneled, the edges closing in, and I grasped at Alcmene’s arm as though I might tear the truth out of her skin.
“What village?” My voice cracked, rising, breaking.
“Come, my queen,” Alcmene urged, pulling gently, trying to steer me out of the tent. “We must get you to the ship—”
“No!” The word tore from my throat, raw and wild. My breath came in gasps, near hysterical, as I wrenched against her grip. “Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare drag me away without saying it. Tell me what village!”
Her lips trembled and at last she lifted her gaze, her eyes wet … her voice soft and wrecked. “Amyklai.”
A scream ripped into the air, shrieking and twisted, so warped it hardly sounded human. For a moment, I thought it came from outside the tent … until the burn in my throat told me it was mine.
The noise shredded out of me endlessly, shaking the canvas as if the whole camp might collapse beneath the weight of it. My knees buckled, the ground tilting beneath me, but I staggered forward anyway, half blind with horror.
“Your Majesty … please,” Alcmene begged, catching at my arm, trying to steady me as if her touch could hold back the storm breaking loose.
The canvas dissolved around me, and suddenly I was outside, the blaze of daylight like a lash across my eyes. Soldiers turned, their faces stark with alarm as I lurched past them.
I could see them. Calismae’s eyes, wide and pleading. My mother’s lips, parted in a silent cry … and Elias, the boy I’d just sent away to safety, staring back at me as though I’d lied to him.
The faces of my people beat against the inside of my skull, blurred between memory and nightmare. Blood streamed from their faces, pouring from mouths that opened in soundless unison. They fell one after another, collapsing into dust that seemed to cling to my skin as I stumbled forward.
“Menelaus!” The name ripped from my throat again, higher, unsteady. “Menelaus!”
Sandals pounded behind me and I was vaguely aware of raised voices and hands reaching out to stop me, but it all blurred into nothing. There was only that name, only the ache of loss searing through me like fire.
Bronze cut into my path. Achilles’s hand shot out, catching my shoulder, steadying my wild stagger. “Helena—” he started.
“They’re gone!” The words burst from me brokenly. I seized his tunic, clutching at the front until my fists tangled in the fabric, yanking it hard enough that the stitching strained. “They’re gone—don’t you understand? Amyklai! All of them!”
His eyes darkened and grief shadowed his face as my sobs ripped free until I could hardly shape words. “The Dread—blood from their mouths, their eyes—I see them—I see them!” My nails scraped against his chest as I shook him, hysteria clawing through every nerve.
The gangplank swayed underfoot as I stumbled forward, Achilles still in my grip, and suddenly we were on the deck of the king’s ship. Soldiers pulled back, their eyes darting to Menelaus where he stood unmoving in the center of it all.
“AMYKLAI!” My voice cracked, sounding feral. “They’re gone—I have to go—I have to—”
Menelaus turned, his face flushed and drawn tight with strain.
His eyes swept over me and he grimaced. “Yes, yes,” he said, flicking his hand as if to bat away my grief.
“We all suffer for it. The whole kingdom trembles now because of this. Villages march on the palace, demanding answers, demanding protection. All because of your village!”
Something inside me snapped at the accusation in his voice.
The sound that tore from me was closer to an animal’s snarl than a queen’s words.
My vision tunneled until there was only him …
his dismissive sneer, his careless hand.
I lunged, half mad, and I scrabbled for his throat, for anything that might make him feel even a fraction of the agony ripping me apart.
Gasps rose from the soldiers crowding the deck. My nails scraped his cloak and caught on the clasp at his shoulder, but Menelaus only laughed in disbelief. I struck again, striking at his chest and his arms as my screams broke into sobs that seared my throat raw.
“I gave everything for them!” The words shredded from me. “My freedom, my life. And they are dead! All of them dead!”
Hands seized me from behind, dragging me back though I fought them frantically.
Menelaus smoothed his cloak where I had torn it, his contempt untouched, his smile curdling into something darker.
“Enough of this tantrum,” he said coldly, flicking his gaze past me.
“Captain, if she opens her mouth again, strike her down. I don’t care if you have to beat her unconscious. She will learn her place.”
I thrashed harder, rage tearing at my throat. “Coward! Monster!”
“Stop!” Achilles’s voice cut behind me, taut with warning. “You need to calm down now!”
My head snapped toward him in disbelief. “Would you listen to him even about this?” I cried, the words tumbling out. “Would you strike me?”
I ignored the plea in his eyes, ignored the tremor in his hand as it rose. I screamed again, louder, my fury shattering through the air.
Then Roz leapt, a streak of gray fur. His tiny jaws sank into Achilles’s hand, drawing a hiss and a sharp pullback.
Before the chaos could break wider, a soft light flickered. Theron stepped forward, his violet gaze finding me, stripped of its usual edge. There was no mockery in it now, only a strange compassion.
“Rest,” he murmured, and his voice wrapped around me like a balm. Symbols shimmered in the air and his power slid into me not like a strike, but like hands gentling a wound. My body slackened, the fire in my throat fading.
The world dimmed, not with violence, but with mercy.