He didn’t move. Not a step … as if my words had never been spoken.
“Achilles.” My voice cracked. “Do you hear me? You can’t stay!”
Still nothing. Only that stare, like a storm was held behind his eyes.
The linen slipped in my grip and something in me snapped. “What do you want?” I hissed.
His breath flared. “You ask me that?” His voice was a growl, like it had been ripped from the bottom of his chest. “Gods, Helena, I want to rip him apart for laying a hand on you. I want to drag him into the dirt until he never touches you again.” He broke off, his hand flexing at his side, knuckles cracking as his stare locked on me, blazing and dangerous. “What I want is for you not to look like this.”
His shadow loomed, and then … he dropped, falling to his knees. He was beside the bath in an instant, one hand braced against the rim, the other reaching, trembling, until his calloused palm framed my wet face.
“I can’t watch this anymore,” Achilles murmured, his voice torn open. His forehead hovered a breath from mine, his breath ragged with forlornness and grief. “I can’t watch him touch you and pretend I am nothing to you. I have followed him into every war. I have bled for him. I have called him brother.” His voice cracked on the word. “And still … he takes from me without even seeing what he breaks.”
The water shifted with my shiver, rippling over bruises that already ached. I bit back a sob. “You think I want him to?” I cried. “You think I don’t die a little every time he—”
“Helena.” His thumb pressed against my cheeks as his eyes burned into mine, desperate. “I know,” he said, breaking on the words. “I know.”
My breath hitched, my chest hollowing. “I hate this,” I whispered, the truth spilling into the steam.
He didn’t answer. He only bent his head and pressed his forehead to mine as if he could hold me together by sheer will alone. The silence trembled with everything neither of us could speak.
Achilles slid his arms beneath me, lifting me from the bath as if I weighed nothing. Water streamed off my body, running over his shoulders, soaking into the linen at his chest. He carried me without pause, leaving a trail that glittered in the firelight.
At the bed, he set me down with a gentleness that made my throat ache, his hands trembling though he tried to steady them.
His mouth descended in a rush, a kiss meant to reclaim, to brand. Pain seared through the bruises, white-hot. I flinched, a strangled cry breaking from my throat before I could stop it, my hands jerking against his chest as if to push him away.
He stopped at once. His lips hovered above mine, his chest heaving. His dark blue eyes searched my face, stricken, as if my sound had cut deeper than any spear could.
“Someday it will just be you and me,” he whispered.
The vow lingered like fire in the air. Then he gathered me against him, holding me close, his forehead buried in my damp hair. He didn’t try again. He only held me, desperately, as if he could bind my fractures back together by sheer will.
And in that silence, I clung to him, knowing we were already too far gone.
The world was still dark when I woke, though the marble columns beyond the bed glowed faintly with the coming dawn. The silk sheets tangled at my waist, and warmth pressed along my back, solid, steady. Achilles.
He was breathing deep and even, one arm heavy around my hips, his chest rising and falling with the kind of sleep I could never seem to claim for myself.
He was beautiful like this. Softened. Mortal. His light brown hair mussed by sleep. No armor, no grim command on his face. Just a man. Just … mine.
I turned slowly, careful not to wake him, until I was facing him fully. The moonlight, faint and fading, highlighted the edges of him. Bronze skin dusted with old wounds and new. He had so many scars.
Some were jagged, like a blade had been wrested through him in fury. Others looked like burns faded to a dull silver. One near his hip curved like the crescent moon, and another slashed across his shoulder in a raised white knot.
My fingers drifted toward the one just beneath his collarbone, white and thin like a whip of lightning. I skimmed the edge of it, and his lashes stirred. A faint twitch. His eyes finally lifted to mine, blue and endless, catching me in the act.
“You didn’t sleep long,” he murmured, his voice rough with sleep and something else. Something tender.
“No,” I whispered. “I never do.”
He shifted onto his back, one arm still behind my head, letting me curl against his side. I pressed a kiss to his shoulder.
“I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” he said. “But if you had, I wouldn’t have minded.”
I smiled against his skin. Then let my fingers glide down the next scar, one that sliced across his shoulder.
