“Do you know what your name means?” Achilles asked suddenly, obviously eager to change the conversation.
I blinked. “Helena. Light. Or torch, depending on the translation.”
He nodded. “That’s what you are to me. A flame that lights up the darkness of the world. The beacon that I will follow for all my days.”
“Sounds exhausting,” I murmured, nestling closer, resting my head on his shoulder. “Tell me another story about your travels, great Achilles.”
He snorted and then was quiet for a second. “Have I told you of the River Titaressus?”
“No.”
“It’s a tributary of the Peneus in Thessaly. Legend has it that it’s part of the Styx. They say if you step into it with a truth on your tongue, the water will either part for you … or drown you.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t sound very liberating.”
“It is,” he said. “Because it teaches you to only speak what your heart believes. Not what your fear commands.”
I tilted my head. “Have you ever crossed it?”
“Twice,” he said. “Once when I was a child. I told it I wanted to be the greatest warrior Sparta had ever seen.”
“And the second time?”
His voice lowered. “I told it I didn’t want to die alone.”
My heart pounded.
“Tell me about this one,” I whispered, brushing a scar that traced beneath his collarbone like a lightning strike stilled in skin.
Achilles turned his head to look at me. His hair was tousled from my hands. “A spear tip from the Aetolian border skirmishes. I was sixteen. They thought I was too young to be on the front lines.” A pause. “They were wrong.”
“Do you regret it?” I asked, pressing my palm flat against his chest, over the faintest sliver of a mark near his heart.
“Regret what?”
“Living through them all.”
His hand came up, cupping mine where it rested. His skin was calloused, rough with use, but his touch was so gentle I felt the sting of tears behind my eyes.
“Sometimes,” he said honestly. “There are days the weight of it crushes me. The friends I’ve buried. The enemies I didn’t. The decisions I’ve made in the name of a place that forgets how much I bleed for it.”
“And other days?”
“Other days,” he said, “there is you.”
He kissed the inside of my wrist, reverently. “I would earn each scar again if it brought me back to this bed. To this breath. To you.”
Gods help me.
But belief was not the same as trust. And promises, I had learned in my life, were currency made of wax, soft and melting when fire touched it.
I looked at him, and the thought clawed through me … how long would he still be mine? How many nights before the gods or fate or Menelaus ripped him away?
“I want to believe you,” I breathed, the words trembling like a confession.
His forehead pressed to mine, and his voice was urgent. “Then believe me.”
My lashes fell shut. Somewhere beyond these walls, thunder rolled, the air shifting with the promise of rain.
