Chapter50
Alcmene perched on the edge of my bed and pressed a cold poultice to my cheek. I flinched as the chill bit into the tender skin. The green scent of crushed mint mingled with lavender and willow bark, but none of it softened the sting.
“I did as you asked,” Alcmene murmured. “I sent Elias with one of the servants I trust. He’s already on the road with him to Amyklai.”
Relief stuttered through me. After leaving Theron, I had found Alcmene crying in my rooms and I’d instructed her to find the boy. The guards had already thrown him beyond the gates. She had acted at once, arranging for another servant to escort him to my village and carry a letter for Calismae. I felt guilt for putting her in danger, but it couldn’t be helped.
“You’re certain we can trust the servant?” I asked, searching her face.
She nodded, though her eyes flicked with something like worry. “Yes. I’ve known him since I got to the palace.” She blushed and looked away for a second. “I would trust him with my life.”
I nodded, realizing there was something more there but not having the energy to press. “I hope Amyklai will be better than here,” I whispered.
Alcmene smoothed a stray curl from my forehead, her gaze gentle but firm. “The people there know and love you. They know what you’ve done for them. They will do this for you.”
I swallowed hard, guilt and hope tangling like threads. “I just—” My voice faltered. “I want him to live. To have a chance.”
“And now he does,” Alcmene said softly. “Whatever else you doubt, hold on to that. You gave him a future he would never have found.”
She pressed the poultice a little firmer against my cheek, and pain flared beneath my skin. I sucked in a breath.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, and sighed. “It’s hard to believe that in the old days, a whispered word could make bruises vanish, flesh knit, pain be gone in a breath.”
“They were lucky,” I muttered.
She adjusted the poultice against my cheek, and I hissed. “Now we make do with willow bark and mint. But Theron …” Her voice dipped. “If he can melt steel, do you think he could do this too? Call back the kind of magic that mended instead of destroyed?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to think about Theron. I didn’t want to think about anymanat the moment.
The room held its silence, broken only by the crackle of the fire. Shadows crawled long across the walls.
The door creaked open, and Achilles filled the threshold.
Alcmene shifted as if to rise, but I caught her wrist, the weight of her presence the only thing keeping me steady. For the first time, I didn’t want to be alone with him. “It’s fine,” I murmured.
He stepped inside and stopped cold. His eyes went first to the poultice in Alcmene’s hand, then to my face—to the bruise spreading dark across my cheek, staining my skin like crushed violets. His mouth parted.
And then he flinched.
Not in shock … in shame.
He stepped inside, each step careful, as though the floor itself might give way. “I could kill him for that,” he said roughly.
I kept my silence. My throat locked, my voice a prisoner I couldn’t release.
Alcmene shook my hand loose and rose quietly, laying the damp cloth on the bedside table. Her hand brushed my shoulder once, and then she slipped out. The door clicked shut, leaving the room hollow with the weight of what remained.
Achilles didn’t sit. He stood rooted, every line of his body stiff, like a man staring into an abyss, knowing the next step would drag us both over the edge.
“I’m beginning to wonder if this is forever,” I murmured, my voice thinned by everything I’d held back. “You visiting me in shadows, but bent at the king’s knee by daylight.”
He swallowed hard, the muscle in his jaw flexing. “I’m coming up with a plan. But in the meantime … he is the king.”
“And I’m your queen,” I whispered.
That silenced him.
He looked down, and the firelight caught on the angles of his face. The gold of his armor was gone, replaced by a dark tunic cinched at the waist, simple and unadorned, but somehow more striking. His shoulders were drawn tight, tension radiating from him. There were lines under his eyes, not from age but from strain, and the set of his mouth looked carved from something close to breaking.
