“I gave everything for them!” The words shredded from me. “My freedom, my life. And they are dead! All of them dead!”
Hands seized me from behind, dragging me back though I fought them frantically. Menelaus smoothed his cloak where I had torn it, his contempt untouched, his smile curdling into something darker. “Enough of this tantrum,” he said coldly, flicking his gaze past me. “Captain, if she opens her mouth again, strike her down. I don’t care if you have to beat her unconscious. She will learn her place.”
I thrashed harder, rage tearing at my throat. “Coward! Monster!”
“Stop!” Achilles’s voice cut behind me, taut with warning. “You need to calm downnow!”
My head snapped toward him in disbelief. “Would you listen to him even about this?” I cried, the words tumbling out. “Would you strike me?”
I ignored the plea in his eyes, ignored the tremor in his hand as it rose. I screamed again, louder, my fury shattering through the air.
Then Roz leapt, a streak of gray fur. His tiny jaws sank into Achilles’s hand, drawing a hiss and a sharp pullback.
Before the chaos could break wider, a soft light flickered. Theron stepped forward, his violet gaze finding me, stripped of its usual edge. There was no mockery in it now, only a strange compassion.
“Rest,” he murmured, and his voice wrapped around me like a balm. Symbols shimmered in the air and his power slid into me not like a strike, but like hands gentling a wound. My body slackened, the fire in my throat fading.
The world dimmed, not with violence, but with mercy.
Chapter59
My cheeks were wet.
It was the first thing I noticed as I blinked awake. There were tears sliding down my face. The beams of the ceiling swam into focus above me, familiar patterns etched in wood I had traced countless times in restless nights.
Slowly, I pushed myself upright. The furs slipped to my waist, pooling heavy in my lap. My fingertips drifted to my cheeks, brushing the damp tracks there, as if touching them might explain why I had been weeping in my sleep. The silence pressed in around me. For once there were no voices or footsteps in the corridor.
My gaze moved around the chamber, taking in the gilded shutters and the bronze lamp by the door. I was back in my room in the palace.
But how?
I blinked again, and then it struck.
Sidon’s burning walls and their cry of surrender twisted into slaughter.
Menelaus’s contempt curling like smoke.
My scream tearing the air apart.
Achilles’s arms locking around me as I thrashed.
Theron’s sigils sparking, light blotting out the world until it went dark, dark enough, strong enough, to hold me senseless for the entire journey home.
And Amyklai.
I folded over and clutched at the furs until my knuckles ached. My tears were never-ending, streaming down my cheeks, dripping onto the silks, soaking them through until they clung damp against my skin. I couldn’t stop. Each breath only broke me open further, spilling more of me out into the silence.
I had given everything for them. I had bound myself to Menelaus, endured his scorn, played the queen in a court that devoured me—all for Amyklai. To shield them from Sparta’s hunger, to give them a future untouched by the king’s cruelty.And now they were gone. Wiped away in a single night, their blood soaked into the soil, their voices stilled.
Anysa’s death … pointless. Everything I had surrendered … worthless. Everything I had borne … meaningless. My crown was nothing but a hollow trinket, my sacrifices were nothing but ash.
Faces rose unbidden, one after another … but my mother’s lingered longest.
Her green eyes had been dulled by a sorrow that never lifted as she’d stared after me in the hall that last day, hoping and praying I could save our people. And now I saw her in the dust, writhing as the red mist poured through her, blood flooding her eyes, her mouth, her nose. I saw her gaze fix on me even as death claimed her, lips shaping the question I could never answer.
Why didn’t you save us?
The sobs tore from me in waves, racking me until I could hardly breathe, until I thought my chest might cave in from the weight of it. I pressed my forehead to my knees, but nothing could hold me together. Not now. Not ever again.
