“Well done,” he murmured, the praise sounding more like a warning. His fingers brushed mine as he stepped closer, the touch deceptively gentle. “But be wise when you use me, my queen.” His mouth dipped toward my ear, the air between us tightening. “Power borrowed is a dangerous thing. Power owed is worse.”
He straightened, studying my face as if trying to decide whether I’d meant to unleash Achilles like a blade from my own hand.
Before I could speak, the suspicion in his eyes thinned, replaced by the returningflareof hunger. “And now,” he murmured, “we’ll finish what you’ve begun.” His hand closed around my wrist and he began to lead me through the still stunned, gasping hall, toward a side door that led to his rooms.
My heart hammered at the thought of where he was taking me, cold apprehension filling each step I took.
But before the doorway swallowed us, I looked back.
Achilles stood amid the carnage, his chest rising in slow, controlled breaths, his sword still dripping red. His eyes were locked on me as I walked away.
His stare was a promise, a question, a warning—all tangled, all burning.
And beneath the rush of fear flooding my veins, something else stirred. Satisfaction.
Nikandros was dead.
Dead.
And it was by my will as much as Achilles’s blade.
Revenge, swift and merciless and absolute, glowed warm in my chest.
Whatever waited for me in the dark with Menelaus …
It was worth it.
Chapter37
The emissaries from Sidon swept in just before dusk, their cloaks the color of storm clouds, their skin pale as shrouds, with silver dusted across their cheekbones and along their arms. They carried gifts wrapped in dark blue paper, a tribute summoned by the king himself. Menelaus had demanded it, had called upon his vassals to honor not only Sparta’s crown, but its queen.His queen.
Sidon was the empire of obsidian ships, where Selene’s moon magic had once ruled before Menelaus had cast her out. Even here, far from their coasts, the air seemed to chill around them, as if they carried their night with them.
Their leader, a tall man with black braids and a face chiseled with the precision of a master’s hand, wore a robe embroidered with phases of the moon. His eyes, silver gray and merciless, swept across the room like a predator scenting the air. I felt them pass over me once, measured and assessing, before sliding away.
I sat to the right of the king, as tradition dictated, dressed in a sheer white gown that hid little. My skin was still painted, though tonight would be the last of it; a month had passed, and with it the rituals that marked me as a bride were at their end. Relief unfurled quietly in my chest at the thought.
Menelaus’s fingers drummed against the arm of his throne, his impatience barely concealed. I had heard him earlier as he’d conferred with Achilles, complaining how Sidon had grown careless, how they were not showing him the deference he expected.Not enough respect for their god, he’d growled, the words sharp with offense. Tribute, he’d decided, and forcing them to endure the long journey from Sidon to Sparta, would remind them who ruled them.
My skin prickled under every gaze, especially our guests. They didn’t speak much, these men from Sidon. But they watched. And they noticed everything.
Other high-ranking nobles filled the room: bronze-cuffed warlords speaking too loudly, foreign merchants hoping to trade secrets for land. I spotted the High Priestess seated near the hearth, her crimson robes glowing in the firelight, her eyes hooded beneath a heavy gold circlet.
Seeing her made my stomach knot. Her vision had been all wrong.Iwasn’t going to be the ruin of Sparta.
Sparta was going to be the ruin of me.
Menelaus drained his goblet. He slammed the cup down hard enough on the arm of his throne to make a passing servant stumble, then thrust it out again.
“More,” he barked. He was in a foul temper tonight, every motion abrupt, every breath furious. Despite the fact that I’d heard his hunt had been successful this morning, whatever meeting he’d had with Achilles earlier—about those same “disturbances in the East” he’d referenced last night—had soured him long before the emissaries arrived.
Now the Sidonian’s cool composure only provoked it. His gaze kept cutting toward them, jaw set as if their restraint were a personal affront, another slight layered atop the last.
I’d tried to listen to his conversation with Achilles this time, to catch more than the scraps they allowed in front of me, but Menelaus’s questions had been intentionally vague, half-formed things wrapped in careful phrasing. Almost as though he didn’t want anyone else in the room to understand what he was really asking.
And Achilles … He’d been even vaguer.
Their exchange had felt like two men circling the edges of a secret they refused to name.
