But I stayed where I was, clinging to the fragile, impossible now.
Chapter42
Achilles’s room smelled like us.
Sweat and salt and firelight.
His chambers were set apart from the others, tucked into the higher wing of the palace, and nearly as lavish as mine were. There were no guards posted outside his doors. Achilles did not require watching, and no one questioned who came or went from the captain’s rooms. His presence alone was considered security enough.
My skin still buzzed, aching where he’d touched and claimed me, the echoes of him pressed into every curve. Achilles lay beside me, one hand curled at my hip, the other draped over his eyes like he couldn’t bear to look at the ceiling just yet.
The sheets clung to us, damp and tangled. It was never just quiet after—we called it silence, but it always felt like defiance. Like we were two sinners worshipping in the wrong temple.
But I never stopped craving it.
I lay on my side, tracing the ridges across Achilles’s abdomen.
“Where the fuck is she?” Menelaus’s voice, slurred and violent, echoed off the stone as it howled down the corridor like a curse.
I shot upright. My breath stopped. My blood turned to ice.
“No—no, no.” I gasped in shock, scrambling up, dragging the linen sheet with me as if it could shield me from the wrath already bearing down on us.
Achilles was on his feet in an instant. The ease in his face evaporated. In its place was steel. “Get dressed,” he ordered. His voice was calm, but the edge of it was unmistakable. “He’s close.”
I could hear it too … sandals pounding the hall, shouting, servants crying out, someone fumbling with a door down the corridor.
“Helena! I swear—find her or I’ll gut every lazy bastard in this palace!”
“He knows,” I breathed, my heart slamming against my ribs. “Gods, he knows.”
I scrambled for the heap of cloth on the floor, fumbling with the folds. My fingers were shaking too hard to find the seams, to fasten anything properly. I could hear guards scurrying. The crash of something thrown.
“He’s tearing the palace apart,” I whispered as I finally got the accursed dress on. “He’s going to find me.”
Achilles turned to me, jaw clenched, hair tousled, his chest still rising from the aftermath of what we’d done.
“No,” he said flatly, already across the room, his body coiling like a war god, muscles tensing as he yanked on his tunic, reaching for the hilt of the blade resting in the shadows near the hearth, the one he never let leave his sight. “He won’t.”
“This is his palace—”
“These aremyquarters,” Achilles growled. “He doesn’t walk in these rooms without my permission.” The words were quiet and absolute … deadly.
My mouth parted. “Achilles—”
Another crash echoed from farther down the corridor.“She’s not in her rooms. WHERE THE FUCK IS SHE?!”
Achilles’s eyes didn’t waver. He looked like a lion caught mid-stalk, all tension and hunger, every breath cut to strike. And still, I saw the flicker of something else in his eyes. Somethingterrified. Not for himself.
For me.
The door creaked once and there was a knock. Achilles tensed, his sword rising.
“It’s me!” came Alcmene’s hushed voice.
Achilles crossed the room in two strides and cracked the door open. Alcmene slipped inside like a shadow, her eyes wide. She saw the state of me, the bed. Her jaw clenched. “You needed to be goneten minutes ago,” she hissed, a hint of hysteria in her voice.
The door rattled and all three of us froze.
