He mocked the gods under his breath as if they were watching.
They weren’t.
Or maybe they were.
Maybe that was the worst part.
I lay silent, forcing myself to breathe, to pretend. My soul floated above, into a sky I would never reach, as a groan rumbled in his chest. Heat spilled inside me, and revulsion turned my stomach. His seed. His claim. His victory.
I had never felt so defiled.
He collapsed on top of me with a grunt, still half inside me, his breath shuddering against my neck. His weight pressed me into the mattress, heavy enough to steal air, heavy enough to make my ribs ache. Sweat slid from his chest onto mine, hot and suffocating, pinning me as neatly as a carcass laid out for a feast.
I stared up at the ceiling, numb, until he shifted, just enough that our faces aligned.
Our eyes met.
And for the first time since the ceremony, his gaze was completely … human. There was no flicker, no ancient watcher staring out through him.
Just Menelaus.
Just a man with flushed cheeks and trembling satisfaction softening the lines of his face. As if whatever lived inside him had gone quiet, sated, perhaps. As if the god had withdrawn, leaving only the vessel behind.
Relief loosened something tight and painful in my chest before I could stop it.Maybe that was how it worked, I thought dimly.The monster rises … then recedes.
And in the hollow it left, there was only him.
The realization wasn’t the most terrible thing. Because if this was Menelaus without the god pressing through him, if this mortal man was what remained, then perhaps there were moments when he would not be something to be survived. Perhaps there were moments when he would merely be someone to be endured that I could still use for my purposes.
I had to at least hope for that.
Menelaus’s lips parted, and his breath hitched into something that almost resembled awe. “You were perfect,” he murmured, brushing a damp strand of hair from my cheek with a touch that pretended gentleness. “Exactly what a god deserves.”
A minute later, he was asleep. And snoring. Loud and grotesque, like some monster settling down in its lair. His body was still pressed into mine, heavy and slick with sweat, his length still lodged inside me. And yet … he slept. He had taken what he wanted and then drifted off within me, as though my body were nothing more than a vessel to be filled.
My fingers spasmed against the sheets, my nails scraping the linen. A shiver traveled the length of my spine until my teeth ached with the force of it.
The fresco above swam in and out of focus. The crack in her painted throat fractured into two, into three, the whole ceiling tilting and reeling as though the world itself had turned against me.
I could feel the ache in my hips already. The sting between my thighs. The places on my skin where his hands had bruised me in the shape of possession.
I had to move. Had to get out from beneath him, or I would choke on my own breath.
Slowly, silently, I braced my palms against his chest—damp and heaving—andpushed.
He stirred with a rough sigh, but didn’t wake as he rolled onto his side, collapsing into a deeper snore. The sheets were tangled around his legs like vines, streaked with red paint and the darker proof of my first blood.
I slipped from the bed like a ghost. My body was trembling, slick with sweat, bruises already rising where his hands had unintentionally pressed too hard. I didn’t think he’d meant to hurt me, but gods can’t help themselves. Or at least I’m sure that’s what he would have said.
I pulled a sheet from the corner of the bed and wrapped it around myself as though it could sew me back together.
It didn’t.
I curled against the side of the bed.
And then … Ibroke.
The sob burst out of me before I could swallow it. Then another. And another. My body curled in on itself, knees drawn to my chest, and I wept the way a body does when it’s trying to survive something unspeakable.
