Chapter 39 - Before the Doors Open
The corridor outside the grand dining hall feels longer than it should.
Perhaps it has always been this long, and I am only noticing it now because dread sharpens everything. Or perhaps fear truly does alter distance, stretching each step and each breath until a short walk begins to feel like a sentence being slowly pronounced.
My family waits behind those doors.
That knowledge sits beneath my ribs like a second heartbeat.
The palace is quieter than usual at this hour.
Evening has settled fully over the fortress, and the last of the daylight has long since given way to torchlight and shadow.
Iron sconces line the corridor walls at even intervals, their flames steady enough to cast warm gold across the stone without softening it.
The light slides over the polished black floor in ribbons, broken only by the movement of our steps as Achilles and I walk side by side through it.
The silence around us should feel peaceful.
Instead, it feels prepared.
Like the corridor itself is waiting to see what will happen when those doors open.
The walls here are carved with old victories, kings holding severed banners, queens crowned in iron and laurel, soldiers kneeling with blood still drying on their armor. Even the palace likes to remind people where they are. This is not a place built for comfort. It is a place built to survive.
And beside me walks the man who made survival into an art.
Achilles says nothing.
He rarely does when he is thinking.
But silence from him is never empty. It carries weight.
It feels deliberate, as though he could take the whole hallway into his hands and crush it quietly if it displeased him enough.
His boots strike the stone in measured rhythm, one slow step after another, his posture impossibly composed, shoulders straight, hands relaxed at his sides in the way dangerous men so often appear relaxed because they know exactly what they can do if provoked and have no need to prove it by fidgeting.
The torchlight catches the scar running across his face and sharpens it, making it more severe. It carves shadows beneath his cheekbone and along the line of his jaw, making him look less like a king carved into history and more like the sort of man history warns its children about.
People call him a tyrant.
A butcher.
A monster with a throne.
Sometimes those names feel exaggerated when it is just the two of us in a room, and he is half-amused by my complaints or half-bored by some noble's letter.
Sometimes I look at him and see the man who fixed my wrist instead of punishing me, who asked before kissing me, who let me sleep on him as if I had every right to be there.
And then there are moments like this.
Moments when he walks through torchlight, his expression gone cold and distant, and I remember exactly why men who have survived battlefields still lower their eyes when he passes.
I glance at him without meaning to.
He notices.
He always notices.
His head turns just enough to let me know he has seen the look, but he says nothing about it. He only looks ahead again, as if whatever waits behind those doors does not interest him half so much as how badly they may regret being inside when he enters.
We are almost at the end of the corridor when another set of footsteps echoes behind us.
They come quickly.
Too quickly.
And with entirely the wrong energy for the evening.
I know before I turn that something is about to annoy Achilles.
I do not, however, expect to see Elias dressed like that.
He strides toward us with all the confidence of a man who has either lost his mind or found a new form of entertainment.
In place of his usual guard uniform, he is wearing a dark formal coat tailored close to his broad frame, its buttons polished, its collar sitting properly against his throat.
His boots gleam. His hair, which usually looks as though it has had only the briefest and most hostile interaction with a comb, is actually brushed back respectably.
I stop walking.
Completely.
The sight is so wrong that for one suspended second, I stare at him.
"...why are you dressed like that?"
Elias spreads his arms slightly as he approaches, clearly pleased with the reaction.
"Because," he says, his voice far too cheerful for a dinner that may realistically end in bloodshed, "I am here for the family drama."
The grin on his face belongs on a gambler, not a guard captain.
Beside me, Achilles groans quietly.
It is not loud, but it is full of old, specific suffering.
The kind that comes only from relatives.
"Gods," he mutters. "Now I have to deal with this idiot, too."
Elias places a hand dramatically over his chest as though wounded.
Elias narrows his eyes. "You should respect your elders."
That finally makes Achilles turn his head.
The expression he gives Elias is so flat it could freeze wine.
"You may be older, but you sure as hell don't act your age half the time ."
"But," Elias says brightly. " I'm still older and your loving uncle ."
Achilles studies him for a few long seconds, then says in the same quiet voice he uses for threats that always come true, "I could push you down the stairs right now."
Elias shrugs. "That would only prove my point."
I glance between them.
The absurdity of this would almost be funny if I weren't still carrying my family in my stomach like a stone.
Achilles drags one hand down his face. "Do me a favor, can you get a girlfriend so you stop appearing in my life like a plague?"
Elias grins wider. "You're just upset I'm here."
"No," Achilles says. "I'm upset you're alive."
I look at them both again.
"...wait, you two are related?" Elias waves a hand as if the entire matter is unfortunate but legally unavoidable.
"Technically."
Achilles sighs. "Unfortunately."
I frown. "You told me you didn't have family."
Elias freezes just enough that I know I have caught him in something.
Then he recovers with surprising speed.
"I said I didn't have immediate family."
"That is not what you said."
"It is what I meant."
"How is that different?"
He gestures toward Achilles. "He's overflow family."
I blink. "Overflow family?"
"Yes. The extras. The ones you get, whether you want them or not."
Achilles closes his eyes for a brief second like a man fighting the urge to commit homicide in a hallway.
"You are saying that while standing next to me."
Elias smiles innocently. "And yet I still live. Curious."
I stare at both of them.
Neither answers at once. They continue glaring.
Elias says, after a moment, "Family bonding."
Achilles mutters something under his breath that sounds suspiciously like I should have let you drown.
Then, because apparently he enjoys death, Elias throws his arm across Achilles' shoulders.
The reaction is instant.
Achilles catches his wrist and twists just enough to make Elias hiss through his teeth.
"Touch me again," Achilles says softly, "and I'll remove your arm."
Elias winces but somehow still finds the energy to grin at me. "See? Affection."
Achilles lets him go as if he has become contaminated.
"Why are you here?"
"I told you. Family drama."
Achilles rubs his temples slowly. "Tonight would be easier if I simply killed them all."
The words are delivered with such calm certainty that I know, with absolute clarity, that this is not entirely a joke. Elias waves one hand dismissively. "You say that about everyone."
"Yes."
"And yet you still permit me at dinner."
"I do not."
"You have never successfully stopped me."
Achilles looks at him for a long moment, then exhales.
"You know what you should do tonight instead of being with her?"
Elias brightens immediately. "No, but do tell."
"Ask Veronica out."
Elias nearly chokes.
The cheerful expression disappears so fast that it is almost impressive.
"What?"
"You heard me."
Achilles' tone remains completely emotionless.
"You are too old to be behaving like a coward."
Elias folds his arms. "I'm not a coward."
"You have been staring at her for five years."
"That is not true."
"It is."
Elias shifts his weight, visibly irritated. "It's been four."
I blink. Then blink again.
"...who is Veronica?"
They both freeze.
The silence that follows is magnificent.
Elias looks briefly like a man who has just realized the floor beneath him is not a floor at all but a trapdoor.
"Oh no," he mutters.
Achilles answers without the slightest hint of mercy.
"My guard captain."
I turn slowly toward him. "The woman you said Elias keeps staring at?"
"Yes."
Then I turn back to Elias.
He looks deeply betrayed by the existence of honesty.
"You are in love with your coworker?"
"I am not."
"You are."
"I am not!"
Achilles, whose sympathy in such matters appears nonexistent, says, "You are."
Elias glares at both of us in turn. "This is harassment."
"This is accurate," Achilles replies.
"You are a terrible person ."
"True," Achilles says. "But irrelevant."
I should not be smiling.
I can feel it trying to happen anyway, despite the knot still living in my stomach. Achilles glances at me then.
Only briefly.
But in that brief look, there is something warmer than the torchlight, something private and dangerous and carefully leashed.
Then it is gone.