“Yes.”
“And what if you can’t?”
He was silent again as he brushed a strand of hair behind my ear. “Then I’ll die trying.”
My breath caught.
Before I could tease him further, my fingers grazed another scar, one I hadn’t noticed before. It sat just beneath his ribs, small and oddly shaped, nothing like a blade or spearpoint.
“This doesn’t look like a blade,” I murmured.
“It wasn’t.”
I glanced up. He wasn’t smiling now.
“That one …” His breath shifted, something darker passing through his gaze. “That one was from Nemesis’s whips.”
I froze.
Nemesis.
The goddess of retribution. The one who hunted pride and punished those who strayed from the balance the gods demanded. Old stories painted her with wings as black as night and eyes that never missed a sin.
Which meant it hadn’t just been a whip.
It had been agod’swhip.
He almost never spoke of those years, of the war he and Menelaus had waged against the gods before magic had vanished from Sparta. Even when pressed, he dodged or deflected, always changing the subject with a joke or a glare.
But now … he didn’t look away.
“She caught me on the cliffs outside Delphi,” he said quietly. “Menelaus and I had tracked her priestesses for days. We thought we were prepared. We weren’t.” He huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “She moved like a shadow. I barely saw her. One strike from her lashes and I was on the ground, bones shaking like they’d splinter.”
I swallowed hard. “How did you get out?”
He hesitated, shifting on the bed. “Menelaus saved me,” he finally said.
I sat up, the sheets sliding farther down my body. “How? Achilles, how does he have that kind of power? Where did it come from?”
His jaw locked and he shook his head once. “I can’t tell you.”
“Can’t,” I echoed, studying him.
Not wouldn’t. Not didn’t want to.
Can’t.
He held my gaze, and the look in his eyes told me everything I needed to know, that something besides fear or loyalty was binding him.
Something more powerful.
Something that kept his tongue still no matter how much he might want to speak.
Menelaus had secrets carved into the spine of this kingdom, and Achilles was apparently shackled by one of them.
I sighed and sank back into my pillow, disappointment tugging at me even though I knew I had no right to aim it at him. Whatever bound Achilles’s tongue was not of his choosing, and it would be cruel to resent him for chains he couldn’t break.
Maybe I would never learn the king’s secrets.
