His body twisted, spasmed … and then the blood came. Gushing from his eyes, his nose, his mouth … steaming in the morning chill.
His bones were somewhere out here.
Only King Menelaus’s palace stood untouched. Not a whisper of the Dread crossed its gates. No one knew how he’d done it … only that whatever curse had claimed the rest of Sparta ended at his walls.
It only devoured the rest of us.
The ground was littered with reminders. Most of the bodies had been carted out here from the city, but some lay where they’d dropped, visitors or passersby caught by the Dread without warning. Bodies scattered like dropped dolls, their possessions dropped beside them, others curled in on themselves, arms wrapped around nothing. Blood had leaked from their eyes and mouths, soaking into the thirsty ground. One man had fallen against a tree, face slack, jaw unhinged like he’d died mid-plea. Another was half-buried in dust, legs jutting out at an impossible angle. He hadn’t fallen there. He’d been dumped by desperate hands too afraid to keep the dead under their own roof.
The Dread had taken my father.
One moment, he was strong, laughing, tugging on my braid while we ate supper. The next, he was coughing blood into his hands, and then—
Gone.
No warning. No reason. Just a crack in the world where he used to be.
We were lucky to have been able to give him funeral rites because of our family’s status in the village. Most weren’t. What was left of them was thrown out here like trash, dumped among the rest, left to bake and bloat and split beneath the sun. That was the way of it. You died of the Dread, you didn’t get a funeral. Yougot distance. We were fortunate not to have to see his face twisted and bloated, staring up from the dirt every time we passed through.
I wondered if King Menelaus had ever ridden through his own cities. If he’d ever looked out from his blood-polished chariot and actually seen what he ruled.
I doubted it.
Even a butcher flinches when the cut’s violent enough. But he? He’d have tofeelsomething first. And based on the tales I’d heard, I doubted there was anything left in him to feel. He wouldn’t be able to pause at the hollowed cheeks. Or wince at the vacant stares or the blood-crusted mouths. He wouldn’t be able to experience grief for the silence that pressed against your ribs like it was trying to get in.
The Silent Way wasn’t just the rim of Amyklai … it was the kingdom’s spine now. A monument to abandonment. The bones of our people, picked clean and left behind. It breathed. It swallowed. It grew. And the longer it was ignored, the deeper it sank its fingers into the soil, throttling everything we were supposed to be.
It clung to your skin, your tongue, your dreams.
I guess Menelaus ruled it like he ruled the rest of Sparta … by pretending it wasn’t there.
“Cover your mouth,” my mother snapped, her voice cracking through the cold like ice splintering beneath a foot. I jerked, startled more by the sound than the words—hoarse and stilted from disuse, as if speaking cost her something.
“Helena!”
My hands flew up, yanking my linen handkerchief over my mouth and nose just as we rolled past a mound of bodies piled like broken offerings. The red mist was still thick around them, curling dense and unhurried, like breath just exhaled. It hadn’t scattered yet. That only meant one thing.
The Dread had struck … recently.
Someone had died here. Maybe an hour ago. Maybe ten minutes.
The mist shimmered in the sunlight like it had a pulse. Gorgeous. Seductive. The kind of beauty that made my gut churn.
There was no defense against the Dread. No cure. No warning. But people tried anyway … veils, charms, whispered prayers to Menelaus stitched into their sleeves. Like cloth and hope could stand against a curse that killed without reason.
We all knew better.
We just couldn’t help ourselves.
I blinked, and we were beyond it, the Dread and the Silent Way fading behind us, but their presence latched like resin on skin, sticky and stubborn, a mark you couldn’t quite scrub free.
Red dust surged up from beneath the wheels as the jergins hauled us forward, their clawed feet dragging long, sinuous trenches through the earth. The road wore the memory of others, deep gouges, clawprints stamped into the dirt like a warning:Remember what came before.
Overhead, the sky stretched, pretending innocence. But I saw the truth in the distance, past the jagged ridge of hills—the storm I’d been watching all day was crouched like a beast with a belly full of lightning. It hadn’t broken yet. It was waiting. Watching. The wind whipped harder now, slamming against theokhèmawindow like it wanted in.
Once, I would’ve taken that as a sign. Storms on the edge of the horizon had meant rain was coming. Life, even. Now all I saw was the hush before the scream.
My mother stared out the window across from me, rigid and unblinking. Her stillness made my spine itch. Shifting, I yanked the handkerchief from my mouth, the linen raking against my lip as it came free, and then I cleared my throat.
