I didn’t look at him.
He cupped my face anyway and turned me back to him.
“Whatever you’re thinking, whatever shadow just took hold of you … I willvanquishit.”
I blinked, startled by the force in his voice.
“You hear me?” he whispered. “Whatever haunts you, I’ll destroy it. If it lives in your mind, I’ll burn it from your thoughts. If it walks in flesh, I’ll put a blade through its heart. But I won’t let it steal this moment from you. From us.”
His mouth was on mine before I could answer.
Devouring. Desperate. Divine.
“I love you,” he said, and the world seemed to still, to breathe in those words.
I couldn’t speak. I could only kiss him, pouring everything into the press of my mouth, hoping he felt what I couldn’t say aloud.
Outside, the wind howled, rattling the balcony doors.
It felt as though the heavens themselves had heard him, and for a moment, I swore the absence of the gods wasn’t absence at all, but somethinglistening.
Their silence pressed heavy, a witness I could not see but felt, as though the air itself bent to hold its breath.
But in that breath, in that room, there was nothing, nothing but him, and me.
The sea burned, flames rolling across the waves in trembling sheets of gold and red. From the heart of that impossible fire, a figure stepped forward, striding through the heat as though it were nothing. Violet eyes followed me, bright through the smoke and dream-dark.
Heat flickered, dimmed … shifted.
I blinked, the fire dissolving to a blur of brightness. Morning light spilled across the room like molten gold, catching on the sheer curtains and the smears of red paint still streaked across the sheets. My body stirred, sore and marked, tangled in linen as the last traces of the dream slipped away.
Beside me, the bed was empty.
My hand reached across instinctively, fingers brushing only cool fabric where his body should have been. The silence pressed in. There was no steady breath, no weight of him anchoring me, just my skin still humming with where he’d touched.
I pushed up, the ache between my thighs proof that he had been here. Proof that we had burned like fire in the night, daring the gods themselves to drag us apart.
Now all that remained was absence.
A faint scent clung to the air, cedar, leather, and salt, and at the foot of the bed, the linen sheets dipped, as though he had knelt there before leaving. My gaze snagged on something resting where his shadow might have fallen.
A chain.
Delicate and bronze, my breath caught as I lifted it into the light. At its end hung a small gold ring, plain but heavy, tied through with a strand of hair the color of honey, a shade that looked spun from the morning itself. Achilles’s hair.
My throat tightened, vision blurring.
This was no trinket. No careless token. In my village, women wove the hair of their beloved into talismans, threads to keep them safe in battle. To cut a piece from oneself, to tie it to gold, was to give not just devotion but destiny.
The ring pressed cool against my palm, the hair rough as thread between my fingers. I held it to my lips, eyes closing as exquisite pain shuddered through me. Menelaus had given me bruises, a crown, and a prison. Achilles had given me this. Not a promise spoken aloud, but something deeper. A tether, invisible and unbreakable, binding me to him even when he was gone.
Tears stung my lashes. I curled over the chain, clutching it tight to my chest. For one heartbeat, it felt as though I could still hear Achilles’s voice threading through me. Not a goodbye. Not an end.
But something meant to last.
A knock at the door jolted me upright, the chain sliding through my fingers, the ring and coiled strand of his hair catching the light as if alive.
The door creaked open, and Alcmene stepped inside, her eyes tight with concern, disapproval flickering in its depths.
