I’d known that when I’d refused him the night before the Trial, but the truth hit harder with the crown looming over me. I had shattered the future we might have had, and the soundless crack of it echoed between us still.
He stood there, pretending the truth wasn’t bleeding from his eyes, and I sat frozen, pretending I didn’t feel it. There was no mending something that had never been allowed to exist.
Anysa blinked at him, then turned her wide, delighted stare on me, her eyebrows climbing with gleeful mischief. I ignored her.
“Well,” I said, shrugging as if my hands weren’t shaking, “Thank you, Captain, for your …relief.”
“Yes,” Achilles murmured. And in that single word, I heard all of his pain.
He took a small step back, but his gaze didn’t follow his body. It stayed fixed on me, lingering, unspoken and screaming.
“Rest … Your Majesty,” he said softly, and I immediately mourned the way he used to say my name. “I—I still see you.”
Those words landed exactly the way they had that night in the garden, gentle and ardent, like he was peeling back every layer I hid behind and was choosing me anyway.
And gods, it hurt.
Because as the words settled in the space between us, something inside me pulled tight to the point of pain. What if he was the only man who ever would?
I held his gaze, because looking away would’ve been its own confession, and let the ache continue to take root where no one would ever see it.
He nodded once and left, closing the door behind him like it hurt.
“Queen of Sparta’s Heart indeed,” Anysa murmured.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. The title rang in my ears like a fate I’d fought tooth and bone to reach. Yet hearing it aloud felt heavier than I’d ever imagined.
It settled over me not as triumph … but as consequence.
Gazing into the mirror against the wall, I tried to imagine a crown on my head. It didn’t look like it belonged there.
Not yet.
But it would.
Let them whisper. Let them kneel.
Sparta had a queen now.
And she would not be silent.
Chapter28
Anysa was mid-giggle, halfway through an over-the-top reenactment of a nobleman swooning alongside me—her voice lilting, arms flung wide—when the air changed.
Her breath hitched and the words died in her throat. She snapped upright so fast her heel slipped on the rug.
I followed her gaze … and felt my own lungs forget how to work.
The king stood in the doorway.
But not the monstrous god I remembered from the throne, swathed in red and lounging like the world bored him, issuing commands as if life itself were a tiresome game. This man entered with his edges blunted, as if he’d rehearsed every movement to take up less space. His cloak was trimmed in gold, understated rather than regal, his expression open in a way I hadn’t expected, almost … gentle.
“Your Majesty,” Anysa murmured, bowing so fast she almost fell over the chair she’d been sitting in.
He held up a hand. “No need for that,” he said, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it, more wind-stirred coals than thunder. “I didn’t come for ceremony.”
I blinked. I wasn’t sure what I’d been bracing for—command, dismissiveness, perhaps even congratulations spoken like a threat. But I’d certainly not been expecting this.
