I frowned. No quarrel? No provocation? My mind snagged on the words, trying to fit them against the assassination attempt I’d seen with my own eyes. The poison I could have died from.
Menelaus scoffed and spread his arms wide, turning so every man on deck could hear. “Do they think me a fool?” he bellowed. “They dare call us the aggressors, when it wastheywho tried to slay your god in his own palace? When it wastheywho laced our water with poison and prayed Sparta would choke?”
A current of anger moved through the soldiers, their shields rising as one, jaws set.
“We will not listen to liars!” Menelaus roared. “We will not bow to cowards who hide behind walls and silver tongues. Sidon would see us broken. So we will break them first!”
The men erupted, their shout shaking the air. The cry leapt from ship to ship, sailors and soldiers taking it up until it thundered across the fleet, rolling like a war drum over the blood-colored sea. The sound was deafening, rage and loyalty bound in one voice.
The Spartan cry still echoed over the water when movement rippled across Sidon’s walls. My eyes widened as flames licked to life, racing along bowstrings and catching on silver-tipped arrows nocked in a hundred waiting hands. In perfect unison, the archers raised them high, a wall of fire poised along the cliffs like a second dawn.
My throat tightened. I turned, certain Menelaus would call me back, that he would end this display before their archers loosed. But he hadn’t moved. His stance was iron, and his arms were still clasped behind him as he stared at the shore.
Cold slid into me. Was this the plan? To hold me here until they fired? To offer me up as spectacle—or sacrifice? My skin prickled, every breath scraping as I stared at him, willing him to release me. My heart hammered so violently it felt as though they could see it from the walls, a pulsing beacon begging for their arrows.
I glanced back frantically toward the wall and the bows and …
The world wavered, and suddenly I was on a beach of red-streaked sand. Achilles’s body lurched forward, staggering under some unseen blow. His knees buckled, the weight of him crashing down in the surf.
His chest gaped open as his armor split like a broken shell and blood threaded out into the sand in rivulets. His sand-brown hair clung dark with sweat and gore, his sword still in hand though his fingers slackened on the hilt. His eyes found mine. Not the sky. Me. Reaching for me even as the light bled out of them.
The sword slipped from his grasp, sinking soundlessly into the red-soaked earth.
The vision shattered, gone in an instant, like a torch snuffed by a sudden gust … I gasped. My nails dug into the rail until my knuckles burned. I blinked, but the haze lingered, refusing to lift.
It wasn’t real.
I had to keep whispering it over and over to myself.
Achilles was there,alive, at the edge of the deck, giving orders to his closest soldiers, already in position at the longboats. The sea lapped against the wood as they prepared to row toward the beach.
My breath snagged in my throat. I couldn’t tear my gaze from him, as though if I looked away, even for a moment, the vision might return, and this time it would not dissolve. This time it would take him from me for good.
His face was half shadowed by the rising sun, brow furrowed in thought. As if he could hear the loudness of my thoughts, he turned toward the prow, his eyes meeting mine.
I must have looked pale because Achilles’s gaze lingered on me for a moment longer before he climbed into the lead boat.
A horn sounded and the longboats began to push off from the ships, slicing through bloody waves like knives through meat. I couldn’t move as I watched him go. My vision flickered, the image of his death overlaying the living scene like a shadow refusing to fade. Was it a vision? A trick of frayed nerves? The question barely formed when a cry split the air.
I flinched hard, the sound lancing through me before I could even grasp its meaning. A soldier shouted behind me—I caught the wordarcher—but the warning came too late.
The world seemed to drag, each second lengthened, as I watched an arrow, silver-fletched, loosed from Sidon’s ramparts and cut through the air with a whistle straight toward me. My breath locked and I stepped to the side.
“Don’t move!” Menelaus growled.
The command cracked across the ship and froze me mid-step, my muscles locking. My body screamed to dart away, to flinch, to cower. Instead, I forced my spine straight. My chin lifted, trembling with the weight of it, and I met the arrow’s flight head-on.
If Menelaus wanted me to die, then let everyone see me unbowed. Let Sidon look upon Sparta’s queen and know she did not fall crawling.
Somewhere I thought I heard Achilles cry out. Not in command or strategy. But in agony. “Helena!”
The name split the air just as another sound followed … the twang of a bowstring carrying over the waves. From the longboats below, an arrow shot upward. It struck the silver-fletched shaft hurtling toward my heart, jolting it just enough that the point veered wide, spinning end over end before plunging into the red-stained sea.
My gaze flew to the longboats. Achilles stood at the prow, bow still raised, his chest heaving, his eyes locked on me. Relief flared hot in my chest. He had saved me.
But it died as quickly as it came.
A hiss split the air. Five more arrows rose from Sidon’s walls, flames licking their silver heads. Achilles loosed another arrow and shattered one mid-flight, but the other four screamed toward me.
