I rose from my seat, instinct dragging me toward her, toward the only piece of humanity left in the room. Menelaus’s hand closed around my wrist again before I’d taken a full step. “Helena,” he said sympathetically. “Leave her.”
His grip tightened, not enough to bruise, but enough to remind me who held the power here.
“The dead are beyond your reach,” he murmured. “Stay with the living, Helena. Stay with Sparta.”
Slowly, with no real choice left to claim, I sank back into my chair. My hands trembled against my lap. I watched them go. Watched her go. My only friend. And I stayed there … locked in the gilded throne beside a man whose fingers still hooked loosely around my wrist like he owned the marrow beneath my skin.
Every muscle in my body drew tight, straining as if the smallest movement might splinter me apart. The paint on my arms cracked with each shallow breath, the sacred symbols smeared by my sweat and his touch. Heat burned under my skin, scalding, unrelenting … like my own blood was trying to sear its way out.
Around us, the revelry swelled and spun.
Laughter echoed beneath the vaulted ceiling. Dancers spun across the marble, their sandals slicking red through the corners of the room where Anysa’s blood had not yet been cleaned. Golden trays passed through the crowd, piled high with figs and lamb. It all stank of opulence and death.
I sat, a statue carved from rage and silence and sorrow. And somewhere deep within me, beneath the paint and the weight of the crown not yet on my head, something colder began to stir.
It did not come clawing or screaming to the surface. It slid upward like a shadow through water, silent and certain, arching close to my ribs until I could feel its breath against my heart.
Not a battle cry, but a shiver.
A whisper that after this night, I would never be the same.
The marble was loud under my sandaled feet, each step sending a thin tremor up my calves. I kept moving because the guards at my sides moved, because their hands stayed just close enough to my arms to make stopping feel impossible.
The corridor stretched ahead, long and narrow. My reflection wavered on the polished floor … white silk, red paint, and a face I barely recognized. I stumbled once. My palm caught the wall, the cool stone biting into my skin, and for a moment the torchlight ahead flickered red—not gold—and I saw Anysa again.
Her eyes locked on mine as a desperate scream filled my ears that she’d never given voice to. I blinked, but the vision stayed, clinging to the inside of my skull until it hurt to keep my head upright.
When we reached my door, the hinges groaned like something in pain. They left me in my room without a word, the latch falling into place with a dull finality.
I sat alone on my bed, still in the dress I’d been so carefully put into. The fabric reeked of incense, and the black sigils painted on my skin had dried into tight, cracked ridges. The oil lamps flickered low, casting soft light across the walls, but it didn’t feel warm.
It feltclaustrophobic.
The wind, always howling outside like a restless god, had stilled. Not even the red sand stirred against the glass panes of the window. It was too quiet. Like the world was holding its breath.
The room seemed to be closing in.
I rose without thinking, slipping off my sandals as I walked toward the heavy doors of the balcony. I pushed them open, savoring the gust of cooler air that brushed my skin as I stepped into the night.
The moon sat bloated above the gardens. The manicured rosebushes stretched out before me, stone paths painted in ghostlight, and beyond them, the land fell away toward the sea.
My gaze drifted over the garden’s manicured angles, the silvered leaves trembling in the faintest breeze. I followed the curve of the central fountain, the dark spill of shadow where the water should have caught the light—and my breath hitched.
A shape stood there, tall and unmoving, his face turned toward the balcony. The moon bled pale light across his features, and my fingers curled against the railing, the cool marble biting into my skin as the rest of me went still.
We stared at each other across the stretch of darkness. I didn’t know him, but something about the shape of him felt … intentional. As if he hadn’t just wandered there but had come for a reason.
A thin, dark line welled at the corner of one eye and slid down his cheek, another following on the other side, not tears but something thicker, redder.
My breath caught, trapped high in my chest, as the trickle quickened. Blood spilled in two steady rivulets, catching the moonlight before dripping to the stones at his feet. His mouth opened, wide, straining, as if to scream, but no sound reached me. Only the ghastly silent gape of it. His knees buckled and he crumpled without grace, folding in on himself as the dark pool spread beneath him.
“The Dread!”someone cried, panicked and hoarse.“The Dread has struck him!”
A flurry of guards spilled into the gardens, their torches flaring like angry stars in the dark, and their faces covered by bronze masks etched with the sigils of the king’s house. They looked like spirits of war—hollow-eyed, breathless,afraid.
The guards ran with swords half drawn, not in attack, but in confusion, shouting over one another as they reached the crumpled figure on the ground.
“Cover his mouth!”
