Theron scoffed as energy surged back into him so suddenly it left the air humming. “Oh, relax,” he finally murmured, sounding and looking newly restored. “That’s just my familiar.”
He angled a brow at me, amused by my shock.
“Surely you’ve seen Menelaus’s? I imagine it’s not nearly as impressive as mine, but what can you do?”
I shook my head, still staring at the place where the snake had vanished beneath his robe. “Familiar,” I repeated, the word tasting strange on my tongue.
Theron’s eyes narrowed with interest. “All powerful beings have them,” he said, his tone almost lecturing, almost taunting. “They have to. Power needs balance, or it eats its wielder alive.” His lips curved faintly. “Even the gods had them.”
My pulse stuttered. “Menelaus has a … creature?”
Theron tilted his head, violet eyes intent. “You really haven’t seen anything?” he pressed. “Nothing clinging to him? Nothing shadowing him? Nothing at his heel or shoulder? Nothing that looked … alive?”
I shook my head again, trying to think. “His lion, maybe?”
Theron scoffed softly, a sound full of disdain. “That?” he said. “No. It’s just an oversized pet. Loud, hungry, and entirely ordinary. You wouldn’t mistake Mene laus’s counterweight for something that purrs at his feet.”
I thought of the red smoke, the way his eyes would change. What was it that I’d seen? And what did it mean that I had never seen a creature at his side?
“Interesting,” Theron murmured after a moment, his gaze fixed on my face as if he were beginning to unravel a puzzle, thread by thread.
Before he could say more, a scream tore across the courtyard.
Theron moved instantly, up on his feet in one fluid motion, seeming to be completely renewed as he strode toward the sound. A second later his ring flared. I watched him for a moment, frozen amid the chaos. Gods, if only I had more answers. If only I knew what he truly was—and what Menelaus was not.
But another person cried out, trembling and burning, and I forced myself to move. I shoved the questions down, swallowed the fear, and returned to the work in front of me.
By dusk the garden had transformed into a ward of the broken and healing. Cots and pallets littered the paths, the air rank with the stench of charred flesh and bitter herbs.
Theron moved as if the day had only just begun. He crossed from cot to cot in a steady rhythm. He didn’t pause. Didn’t stumble. His breath never hitched, his hands never shook. Even when sweat slid down his temple, he brushed it away with the back of his wrist and kept going, lips murmuring those same strange words that throbbed through the air like a pulse.
His familiar must have been doing his job, because it was as though the endlesscries, the endless suffering, only fed him instead of draining him. Where the rest of us sagged and stumbled, he stood unshaken, his eyes gleaming with energy.
The sun had already sunk low, staining the palace in bruised light, when the thunder of hooves shook the ground. I turned as the gates flew wide and soldiers poured in, their horses lathered, eyes rolling. At their head rode Achilles, his face locked tight, unreadable as a mask.
He reined in sharply, gaping as his gaze swept the courtyard littered with bodies. His men faltered behind him, stunned into silence.
Achilles swung down from his horse before it had fully stopped, his sandals hitting the flagstones with a jolt. He shouldered through the crowd, searching, until his eyes found me. His whole body stilled, the frantic edge breaking, relief flaring raw across his face as his gaze devoured me.
From where he knelt beside a cot, Theron’s mouth curved. He rose, brushing his palms together. “How good of you to finally join us, Captain. Nothing like arriving after the screams have died down to make an entrance.”
Achilles strode toward me, ignoring Theron as though he hadn’t spoken at all. His eyes raked over me, searching for wounds. “Are you hurt?” he said urgently.
I opened my mouth, but Theron’s answer cut across mine. “She’s fine,” he said smoothly, gaze flicking between us. “Everyone is fine. Thanks tome.”
“Alcmene saved me,” I corrected him. “But he did save everyone else,” I added … reluctantly.
A muscle twitched in Achilles’s cheek, the only crack in his composure. His eyes never left mine, fierce and searching, as if he could burn through my silence to the truth.
“Iamfine,” I said quickly, forcing the words out before Theron could speak again. “But the palace’s water was poisoned. We discovered it just before my bath.”
Achilles’s jaw clenched, the tendons shifting beneath his skin.
Beside him, Theron’s smirk deepened. He stepped close, draping an easy arm across Achilles’s shoulders as though they were comrades. “You can rest easy,” he announced, “knowing I’m here to keep her safe.”
Achilles’s body went taut. He shrugged the arm off hard, his voice low and cutting. “I’d rest easier with a knife at her throat than you being anywhere near her.”
Their egos crashed around me, leaving me hemmed in with no space to breathe.
