I let my gaze drift over the banquet tables, to the jeweled cups and overflowing platters, to the nobles whispering behind their hands. My mother sat among them, still veiled, her shoulders stiff as marble. Even from here, I could feel her worry, her confusion, her fear of why I was in this room already.
I tilted my head slightly, letting a soft smile ghost over my lips as if to reassure her, though it wasn’t meant for her at all.
My hand drifted to the nearest platter. I selected a single grape and lifted it with unhurried care. I pressed it to my lips and bit down slowly, the skin giving way with a soft burst. Sweetness spread across my tongue as I lowered my lashes, chewing as though the world beyond that taste had briefly lost its claim on me.
The room seemed to lean toward me then, breath held, voices dimmed … And that was when I looked up.
Across the marble expanse, at the head of it all, he sat, the King of Sparta, the god who had cast out all other gods. Menelaus. His gaze was already waiting for mine, heavy and hot, a weight that pinned me where I stood.
He lounged atop a throne made from solid red-veined marble, more altar than chair. A lion’s pelt was draped across one shoulder, and rings glinted on his fingers. His robe was crimson and threaded with gold tailored to his powerful frame, not a seam out of place. Beneath it, his chest was bare, the muscle cut and golden, like a hero from an old war hymn brought to life. Scars traced his skin like a forgotten map, some, no doubt, earned against the gods.
He was the kind of man who filled a room without needing to rise. Power radiated from him, coiling through the air until it brushed the edge of my breath. And he was looking at me. Not as a stranger or a supplicant … but as a man looks when he’s already imagined his hands where eyes should not linger.
Two concubines lay draped across him like offerings, their oiled skin glimmering with gold dust. One leaned close, her hand resting against his chest while the other’s fingers slipped beneath the crimson edge of his robe, sliding toward his groin. Menelaus caught her wrist and set it aside, his gaze never leaving mine.
They might as well have not existed.
The air between us thinned, humming with a strange awareness that felt almost alive. I tilted my chin just enough for him to see the curve of my throat,the rise and fall of my breath. His gaze lingered there before climbing upward again, tracing every inch I allowed him to claim. His lips curved, faintly, as though my beauty were already his.
Something in me answered. A spark under my skin. I could feel the court around us, people watching, whispering, waiting, but none of it reached me. There was only this silent exchange, this draw between predator and prey, though I wasn’t sure which of us was which.
He wanted me. I could see it in the set of his jaw, the hunger etched behind his eyes.
This was what I had been made for.
To hold a god’s attention.
I met his gaze, unblinking, a faint pull touching my own mouth, not a smile, but something shrewder. Something that said I understood exactly what kind of game had just begun.
Someone coughed nearby, a nervous sound swallowed quickly by the hush. The scrape of a sandal echoed faintly against the marble, and I felt, rather than saw, someone step closer behind me, close enough that their presence brushed the edge of my awareness.
“You’re staring at our king like you want to kill … or perhaps eat him. Should I be worried?” an amused voice sliced through the din, smooth as honey, with the bite of cold steel drawn across skin.
I yanked my gaze away from Menelaus … and nearly forgot how to breathe.
The man in front of me stood with a goblet dangling from his fingers, utterly at ease amidst the chaos of the room. His hair was light brown with sun-kissed strands, tousled and windswept, like he’d just come off a battlefield—or out of a dream. Tan skin stretched over a frame that would be easily worshipped, broad-shouldered and sculpted, the kind of body poets tried and failed to describe properly.
It was his eyes that held me though. Dark blue and deep as the Aegean Sea before it had been cursed.
The man wasn’t just handsome. He was ruinously, unfairly beautiful. The sort of man who didn’t enter a room so much as claim it. There was a quiet arrogance in the way he stood, like the gods had created him with intent and he’d known it every day of his life.
His eyes were steady, unblinking, his expression edged with something dangerous … amused as he stared at my face.
A crimson cloak hung from one shoulder, clasped with a bronze pin shaped like a spearhead. The fabric shifted as he moved, revealing a leather baldric across his chest, the straps cracked and dark with sweat and time. His bronze greaves bore the scrapes of battle, each mark a story no blacksmith would have dared to smooth away. This was armor that had seen blood.
He was a soldier.
I wondered how many villagers he’d killed for sport.
My spine went rigid. I stepped back before I realized I was moving, as if my body recognized the threat before my mind had fully caught up.
A bitter taste flooded my mouth. There was little I hated more than soldiers.
Even the beautiful ones.Especiallythe beautiful ones. They made you forget. Made you look past the blood on their hands.
His voice was a rich, low baritone that pulled at something in my spine, like a call I hadn’t meant to follow. I looked away, heat rising in my cheeks. I didn’t like the way that sound made me feel. Not at all.
“Are you able to speak, my lady?” he asked, tilting his head. “Or are you struck dumb in the face of my good looks?”
