Because sin tasted sweetest when you knew it was poison—and still you drank it to the dregs.
I had taken her before his death, when she still wore his name like armor. And now, like his lands, like his legacy, she lay beneath me without protest.
Helena was not a woman who broke beneath grief.
No—she draped herself in it. Sorrow was her cloak, heavy, deliberate, theatrical. Not a burden, but a weapon. She wrapped herself in tragedy and wielded it like a blade, gleaming beneath silk and beauty.
The lamp shadows crawled across the frescoed walls, chased by firelight, while painted gods and beasts stared back at me in their eternal silence. And I marveled at the bitter truth—I was nothing more than another piece in her game.
And still, I played.
Her voice broke the hush—soft, trembling, calculated.
“Salvatore…” A croak, barely a breath. “Don’t go to war. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
Tears welled in her eyes, crystalline and perfect, clinging to her lashes until she dabbed them away with fingers as graceful as they were performed.
My heart should have cracked.
Instead, I was entertained.
I gave her what she wanted. Words as smooth as silk, as hollow as smoke.
“This war won’t take me,” I murmured, staring into her eyes with a lie. “Not like it took Julian.”
She clung to me then, shivering as though grief had just now sunk into her bones. Whether it was real or another layer of performance—I could no longer tell. Perhaps even she couldn’t.
But when she heard the emptiness in my voice—when she felt I would not surrender what she demanded—something in her shifted.
Her tears vanished. Her sorrow shed itself like a discarded mask. In its place burned anger, harsh and sudden, coloring her cheeks.
She turned from me, clutching the crimson sheet as though it were armor. Then, in one fluid motion, she slid from the bed. The silk fell around her feet like blood spilled at an altar.
Naked, unapologetic, she crossed the chamber and lowered herself onto a hassock with the ease of a queen claiming her throne. In the lamp’s golden glow, she looked carved from desire itself—dangerous, divine. Lifting a brush, she began to draw it through her long, flaxen curls, each stroke slow and deliberate, a ritual.
A woman who could shed grief as easily as silk.
And gods help me—my chest tightened, not with guilt, but hunger.
“If you loved me,” she said, not looking back, “you wouldn’t leave me.”
The brush slid through her hair in slow, practiced strokes, but her voice was the weapon.
Ah, Helena and her damn charms.
She always knew when to push—when to pull—just enough to unravel me without ever touching my skin. She had mastered the art of influence, of holding power without grasping for it. My grip on her had never been firm, but I couldn’t let her see that. Couldn’t let her know just how easily she could unmake me.
“You know why I’m going,” I said, my voice tighter than intended, rough and raw. “My father thinks I’m nothing. He always has. I need to prove I’m more than that. That I’m not just some forgotten shadow trailing behind my brother’s name.”
I hesitated, jaw clenched.
“I need to be something. For once.”
The brush caught in a tangle. She paused. Looked down. The silence she offered was calculated—a demure, intentional pause just long enough for doubt to creep in and bloom.
Then—
“My husband—your brother—was a true warrior.” Her tone was cool, unshaken. “If Julian couldn’t make it… what makes you thinkyoucan?”
