One push, I told myself.One strike, and I am free.
I braced my arms and shoved downward—
And it wouldn’t move.
The blade trembled inches above his chest, but some unseen force held it there, rigid, no matter how I strained. It was like a hand pressed hard against mine, barring me from the kill.
My teeth ground together in helpless fury. I didn’t know if this resistance belonged to the king’s power, woven into the air itself … or Theron’s interference, deliberate and infuriating, choosing to stay my hand.
I pressed harder, muscles burning, desperate to drive the steel down. But the resistance didn’t give. The invisible grip was stronger than me, stronger than my wrath, and the king slept on, his breath rattling, his chest bare and vulnerable beneath the useless blade.
Disgust surged through me, at Menelaus, at myself. At the thought of Theron, hovering at the edge of it all, whether he was responsible or not. With a cry, I hurled the sword to the floor. The clang rang out, mocking me in its echo.
I stood there, chest heaving, staring at the king. For one long second, I let myself imagine it—the blood spilling, the silence that would follow. Then I bent, snatched up the weapon, and shoved it back where it belonged at the bedpost. My hands shook as I turned away.
I left the chamber without a glance back, every step lighter than the last despite my failure.
When I pushed open the door to my rooms, ready to let the night soak into me, Achilles was waiting.
He caught me before I could tell him what happened, his hands cupping my face, his mouth crashing against mine. All the hunger pent up in our week apart broke free at once, heat and need sparking between us. I melted against him, kissing him back.
“I missed you. Every second of every day,” he murmured, his lips brushing along my jaw as he guided us back step by step. My knees hit the mattress, and he lowered me onto the bed, his mouth still pressing desperate kisses against my skin.
Suddenly, his body sagged, dead weight pinning me beneath him.
“Achilles?” I whispered shakily.
No answer.
Achilles was heavy and boneless as I pushed him off. He slumped onto the mattress beside me, his breaths deep and steady. He was fast asleep.
I stared, disbelief flooding me, before fury roared up to swallow it whole. My hands clenched in the sheets as I realized …
Bastard.
Of course.
This was Theron. It reeked of his interference … his games.
I wanted to storm down the corridors, to find Theron and hurl my anger straight into his smirking face. To demand he undo it.
But the thought tangled.
What if he did more than unravel Achilles’s sleep? What if he stripped the spell away entirely … what if he took back the one small mercy I had been given?
The risk pinned me where I was.
I let out a shaky breath and lowered myself onto the mattress, curling against Achilles’s solid warmth. His chest rose and fell in an even rhythm, his arm slack against the coverlet. I pressed my face into the hollow of his shoulder, clutching the fabric of his tunic as if I could wake him by sheer desire.
But he didn’t stir.
So I shut my eyes and let exhaustion drag me under, caught between the relief that Menelaus had been silenced, if only for a night, and the bitter truth that my freedom was still bound by another man’s hand.
“You know,” Theron said, falling into step beside us with the ease of a shadow, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say Sparta was compensating for something.”
Alcmene and I had been walking the long edge of the upper courtyard, the clatter of practice blades and the roar of shouted commands filling the air around us.
Theron’s eyes swept over the yard, where soldiers hammered shields against spears, each strike louder than the last. “All these swords and swinging egos. The way they puff their chests, you’d think war was a dance and they were all desperate to be picked for it.”
