Metal scraped against metal. I glanced back to see Achilles buckling his cuirass, his movements clipped and efficient. He glanced once toward the water, then back to me.
“You’re going out there?”
“Of course I am,” he said simply. His hand shot out, catching the back of my neck. He kissed me hard … bruising, a claim and a warning all at once. When he pulled away, my lips stung.
“Get her back safely,” he ordered Alcmene.
“Achilles—” I began, but he was already striding out the door.
He didn’t look back.
“Come, Your Majesty.” Alcmene seized my hand again, her pace brisk and silent as she led me into the narrow servant corridors that cut through the heart of the palace like veins. We slipped through shadows, past stone walls that had witnessed too many secrets and swallowed every one whole.
By the time we reached my quarters, the bells were ringing in the watchtowers. I could still feel his kiss burning on my lips though.
Alcmene closed the door softly behind us, then pressed her back against it with a shuddering exhale. “That,” she muttered, “was far too close.”
She started to say something else—a lecture, no doubt, something about how I’d lose my head or worse—but I didn’t hear it.
I was already moving.
Wind looped through the open balcony doors like a beckoning hand, the night air cool against my skin as I stepped outside. My fingers gripped the stone balustrade, and Alcmene joined me reluctantly.
She fell silent when she reached my side. Because there, below us, on the red shore where land met sea, the figure had reached the beach.
The glow around him had dimmed, but it pulsed faintly, like the heartbeat of something buried deep that was still waking. Dozens of soldiers had gathered in a wide, uncertain circle around him, torches raised, blades unsheathed … but none of them stepped closer.
They watched. Waiting. Petrified.
So did we.
The figure stood unmoving, tall and cloaked in sea mist, the hem of his garments dark with brine, his hands empty and loose at his sides, as though he knew there was nothing they could do to him.
I couldn’t see his face.
But something flickered inside me. A shift.
As if a door I had long since bricked shut cracked open, spilling light into places I thought forever sealed.
My breath caught.
This was no stranger … and yet I had never seen him before.
A strange heat stirred in my spine. Not fear. Something deeper. Wiser. It twisted beneath my ribs and whisperedpay attention.
“Do you feel that?” I whispered.
Alcmene didn’t answer right away. Her face was pale in the faint light, eyes narrowed.
“It’s like …” I struggled for the words. “Like I’ve stood on this balcony before. On this very night. And watched thisexactthing.”
Something unsettlingly familiar. Or fate. Or something far worse.
Alcmene’s fingers tightened around the balcony rail.“Sometimes doom doesn’t need a name. It just arrives.”
Her words splintered through me. And then … the man looked up as though he’d heard her, as though he’d felt the weight of my gaze. His eyes found the balcony, foundme.
My breath stuttered. The world shrank to that stare. A cold ache uncoiled in my chest, stretching, clawing, as if some hidden part of me already knew what it meant.
