But there was no choice. Not with the entire hall holding its breath, not with the priestess watching, and certainly not with Menelaus waiting.
Calismae’s words rushed through my mind:We are saved, Helena.
My people fed. Thalessa free.
Thiswas the price.
I forced my trembling hand forward. His palm met mine, warm and heavy, and our blood slipped together. Something stirred through my veins, a faint rush that felt borrowed rather than mine. It moved up my arm in a single unsettling sweep … then vanished. The red drops spilled into the waiting bowl, swirling into one indistinguishable stain and making the binding complete.
I lifted my gaze.
Menelaus was already watching me.
He grinned, his eyes still holding that strange, depthless shine that made my stomach knot. The same wrongness. The same impossible shift.
As if whatever lived behind them was savoring the moment our blood became one. I yanked my gaze back to the priestess as she swirled the bowl once and raised it to the sky.
“By the decree of Menelaus, god of this realm, by the strength of Sparta, by the breath of every warrior who walks its soil,” she proclaimed, “this is the union of king and chosen, of command and future.”
The High Priestess’s voice cut through the murmurs of the crowd. “Let the bride be unveiled for the sight of Sparta’s god.”
Menelaus’s grip stayed locked around my hand as we rose. His head tilted, the faintest curl of a smile tugging at his mouth. “Finally,” he murmured, low enough for only me to hear. The relief in his voice was confusing, like he’d been thinking of this moment every second.
He stepped closer, the laurel crown catching the torchlight in its leaves. Possessive fingers found the edge of my veil and lifted it, baring my face as cool air brushed my skin. Around us, the hall seemed to lean forward, eager for the reveal.
His gaze swept up my face in a consuming drag, lingering with a hunger that had nothing to do with desire. When our eyes met, I could see that presence inside him watching me openly.
I heard some gasps from the crowd, but I didn’t think they were for my beauty this time. They were for whatever had twisted across my face, whatever terror I hadn’t been able to choke back.
“You are mine now, my beauty,” he rasped, lifting my wounded hand. His thumb grazed over the cut, smearing our mingled blood as though sealing a claim. On the last word, he leaned closer, exhaling a thin breath that carried a faint, undeniable red mist before it faded into the air.
My heart hammered and I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t speak through the scream in my throat.
A breeze suddenly stirred through the throne room.
Not the kind that slipped in from an open door or drifted from a passing servant’s steps … but something cold and strange. It wound its way through silk banners and golden laurel leaves, sweeping over the back of my neck like a breath from a forgotten god.
The roses in my hair trembled.
Above the laurel arch, the high windows shifted in my periphery. At first it seemed like nothing, just the sunlight tilting across the glass. Then the brightness dimmed twice in quick succession, as if something had passed before it.
A shape moved behind that brief distortion—too quick to catch clearly, too large to be a bird, too precise to be the wind.
A hush crept along my spine.
Menelaus squeezed my cut hand, but his gaze stayed fixed on the crowd, smug and triumphant, seemingly unaware of the movement above us or of the way my pulse stuttered beneath his touch.
The urge to run crashed into me. I scanned the hall in a desperate sweep, as if an escape route might appear in the torchlit haze.
But instead … I found Achilles.
He was half hidden beyond the line of guards, and the sight of him hit like a blow. Every muscle in his frame held taut, but it was his gaze that pinned me, unguarded and relentless. Pain lived there, spilling into me before I could look away. I didn’t see hatred or envy. I saw grief, the kind that comes when something sacred is surrendered to an altar and you are powerless to stop it.
The instant our eyes met, it felt like the floor gave way beneath me, like I was falling, pulled down by everything he wasn’t saying. By a choice I couldn’t make.
The blare of horns split the air, deep and shuddering, and Menelaus’s hand closed harder around mine. It took a beat for my breath to catch up, for the truth to land heavy in my chest. Those horns marked the start of theekdosis.
The giving away.
