“Undone,” he repeated, stepping closer as his eyes raked over every inch of me. “Yes. I am.” His voice dropped to something almost reverent, almost lethal. “If having you meant falling to my knees, I would beg. Every day. For the rest of my life.”
His breath brushed my cheek in a slow exhale, warm enough to raise a tremor under my skin. “But understand something, my beauty …” His fingers lifted, hovering near my throat before closing with a sudden, bruising certainty. “If I’m on my knees”—his grip tightened, dragging me closer—“you’re on your knees with me.”
I fought for air as he yanked me forward, my body stumbling against his strength, nothing but a puppet on his fist. Then the world spun, and I struck the bed hard, the frame rattling like it might collapse beneath the violence of his claim.
He stroked the line of my jaw, but it seemed like a mockery of tenderness. A promise wrapped in gentleness that felt far more dangerous than violence.
While he touched me, his eyes shifted. For a moment, they were simply Menelaus’s—dark, mortal, hungry.
Then the surface changed and once again something deeper was looking out at me. Something aware. Ancient. Intent. The two gazes flicked back and forth.
“I see it,” I whispered, the words shaking out before I could stop them. “I see what’s inside you.”
His fingertip paused at my cheekbone, tracing the ridge as though memorizing the shape of me.
“Do you?” he murmured, never sounding more intrigued.
“Who are you?” My voice was barely a breath. “Whatare you?”
This time, the smile that cut his mouth was unguarded, devastating in its honesty, chilling in its ease. It did not belong to a man. Not even a king. “I am the man who made himself into a god,” he said softly, as if bestowing a secret meant only for me. His thumb traced my cheek with another touch far too gentle for the monster beneath. “Soon, Helena … you will learn what it is to be held by the power I forged for myself—and the ancient thing that chose to share its strength with me.”
A dark understanding sank into me, deeper than fear. Whatever lived behind his eyes had chosen him, and had no intention of letting go. There was nowhere to run. No path out. Only the fate I had agreed to, thinking I understood what waited for me on the other side. Resignation tightened around my ribs, a constriction I could neither fight nor outrun.
He bent over me with the weight of a conqueror, power strung tight in every line of him, his eyes glassy with triumph. I fixed my gaze on the faded fresco above where a painted woman in flowing robes was reaching out her arms in worship, her head tilted back in ecstasy. It was supposed to be a symbol of divine union, of supposed purity.
But a crack had splintered her throat, running right through her painted skin. I fixed on it, clung to it like it was the only real thing left in the room.
Menelaus’s teeth sank into my neck, pain sparking white behind my eyes, and still I didn’t move or flinch. His hand closed around my breast, and he tried to stroke, to cup, to coax a response he wanted from me. His thumb grazed the peak in a slow circle meant to draw shivers, meant to unravel me.
But my body stayed cold beneath his touch. There was no warmth or stir of want, and nothing he sought found purchase in me. As the seconds stretched, a new terror crept in—not of what he was doing, but of what he would notice.
I should react, I thought distantly.If I want to make anything of this crown at all, I should give him something.
He had to enjoy this. He had to believe he was taking pleasure, not resistance disguised as stillness. Kings did not tolerate indifference in their beds. Gods least of all. If I wanted a chance to do anything with this crown, I had totry.
His touch lingered, patient in the way of someone who expected compliance eventually, but I was sure that would change.
So I gave him something. A breath, drawn a fraction too fast. A sound I didn’t recognize as my own. I let my head tilt, and my shoulder soften. I forced my body to shift in a way that suggested yielding instead of recoil. I shaped warmth into my voice when I gasped his name, and coaxed my muscles to loosen as if pleasure were building.
It felt like a betrayal of myself, but I held to it. And his touch became more confident, satisfaction trilling through his movements … he was believing me.
Thank gods.
Menelaus growled in my ear. “This is how a goddess is made,” he panted, his breath slick against my skin. “You’ll thank me one day.”
I let my soul slip far from my body, to a place beyond the sea, to the cliffs where the winds sang and no one could find me. My eyes stayed locked on the fresco. That crack. That broken throat. I memorized every angle of it while my body lied for me.
Because if I let myselffeelwhat was happening—I wouldn’t survive it.
His hand clamped down on my hip as his other hand freed himself, his length heavy and hot as he pressed it against me. My breath caught, a stutter of alarm surging up my throat. There was no warning, no pause, no chance to steel myself.
He surged forward, driving into me in one brutal, unrelenting thrust. The stretch was immediate, vicious—my body resisting for one searing heartbeat before it gave way with a tearing burn that ripped a cry from my throat. I felt every thick inch of him forcing past the tight, untouched barrier inside me, claiming what no one else had ever reached.
I bit the inside of my cheek until copper filled my mouth, until I tasted myself instead of him.
“Easy, my beauty,” he murmured, his tone gentling as if he thought it comfort. “So tight … you make me so proud. You’ll give Sparta fine sons.”
His hand drifted across my chest, and it was clumsy in its attempt at tenderness, like he was laying claim to territory instead of touching a living body. Moving without rhythm, he rutted like an animal, seemingly oblivious to the tears I refused to let fall. The room swam, and the colors all seemed to bleed in a dizzy haze.
