There was a moment of shock at the sound of the stranger’s voice, and then a frisson of uneasy laughter, or maybe a shiver, passed through the room. He looked straight at Menelaus, a crooked smile tugging at his mouth, as if the whole court were nothing more than a game he’d already won.
Then his gaze found mine. It caught, held, pinned me where I sat. The weight of it pressed into my skin, slid down my throat, and stole the breath from my lungs. Something in my blood twisted, and I clenched my hands into my lap to still the tremor rising in them.
Achilles’s gauntleted hand shot out, giving a hard shove between the stranger’s shoulder blades that forced him a step forward. Metal rang as the guards tightened their grip again, but it hadn’t been them who broke that stare. It had been Achilles, his jaw set, his posture rigid, as though daring the man to look at me again.
The man only laughed low in his throat, a sound threaded with dark humor. He tilted his head, eyes glinting, and looked faintly entertained … like Achilles’s aggression was a play put on for his pleasure. “Was it something I said?” he mused.
“Enough,” Menelaus growled, staring down at him with open disdain. “You—what name do you answer to?”
The man bowed. Not mockingly, but just shy of sincere. “Theron,” he said in a voice as smooth as smoke rising from temple incense. “I’m but a humble servant from the eastern islands.”
A whisper of interest moved through the gathered nobles. I looked to Mene laus, wondering if the eastern islands belonged to the same region he kept probing his advisors about in hushed, tense conversations.
“Humble?” Menelaus echoed, his lips curling. “Strange humility, arriving by sea like a god or something worse.”
Theron smiled. “I came with no weapons, no army, no demands. Only the wish to serve. That is humility enough, is it not?”
Menelaus leaned forward, his fingers tapping the armrest. “Words are worthless, stranger. Any fool can call himself humble while standing in chains.”
At that, Theron gave a quiet, amused sound in his throat. He shifted once, as easily as a man adjusting his cloak, and the guards’ grips slid uselessly from his arms as he shook off the chains. The iron restraints might as well have been cobwebs for how easily he got them off.
Gasps tore through the hall. The guards stumbled back, hands empty, faces blanching. Achilles’s face was wrapped in a scowl.
I gripped the arms of my throne until my knuckles ached. My heart lurched against my ribs, the same way it had when I first saw him walking across the sea. That impossible, unstoppable thing in him … I could feel it again, whispering against my skin like a warning.
Theron rolled his shoulders as if shaking off dust, his intense gaze never leaving the king. “Chains?” he murmured, brushing a crease from his sleeve. “You’ll have to forgive me, but I don’t wear them well.”
Menelaus gaped at him, his jaw slack, crown sliding lower on his brow. For once, the king who never faltered looked as though the ground had shifted beneath him.
Theron dropped to one knee before the throne, his cloak fanning out behind him on the marble floor. “Your name, great king, echoes farther than you know,” he said as he bowed his head. “Across the red tides and beyond the cliffs of forgotten empires, they speak of Sparta’s strength. They speak ofyou.”
His gaze lifted, violet eyes glinting. “Men call you the God-Slayer, the one who sundered the divine yoke. The king who wrested power from the heavens themselves.” He struck his fist to his chest. “And I wish to stand with power, not against it.”
It was the kind of flattery Menelaus drank like wine. His mouth twitched with pleasure, but the suspicion in his eyes didn’t fade. It shouldn’t fade.
Ididn’t believe a word of it.
Theron’s voice was too smooth. Too perfect. There was a glint behind his deference, an edge too well hidden. It wasn’t awe. It was calculation.
He was lying.
Not in words, perhaps.
But in intent.
My eyes flicked to Achilles. His jaw was tight, his arms folded across his chest like he was restraining something. Instinct, maybe. The instinct of a predator tuned to the presence of another predator moving in his space.
Theron was still kneeling, his gaze never leaving the king’s. “Allow me to serve your court,” he said softly. “To earn my place. My loyalty is yours, my strength yours to command.”
Menelaus’s eyes narrowed slightly, studying the man before him not like a petitioner, but like something he might cage. Or weaponize.
“What are you exactly?” the king asked, his voice lower now, shrewder. “A seer? A priest’s mistake? You walked out of the sea and the water bent to your will.”
“Nothing so dramatic,” Theron said lightly. “I am no god.” His fingers uncurled, and sigils along his skin stirred to life, faint at first, then brightening before fire licked awake in his palm. Not gold, not the warm blaze of hearth or torch, but a blue so strange it seemed stolen from the deepest part of night.
The flame hovered above his skin, smokeless and unscented, an impossible thing swaying gently in his hand.
Gasps tore through the hall. One woman cried out and dropped to her knees, the sound cracking against the floor. My own breath caught, refusing to move. Heat rushed through me, then vanished in an instant, leaving my skin clammy. The blue fire seared itself into my vision, unreal and terrifying, and yet I felt at the same time a creeping chill threading through my veins.
