“Again!” Achilles called as a third soldier, broad and scarred, lunged from the right, his sword cutting low near her waist. I saw the tip of his blade pass so close it tugged the edge of her tunic.
Still, no flinch.
My fingers curled tightly and I bit the inside of my cheek, eyes locked on her.
Just a little longer …
“Strike!” Achilles swept in on her left, blade cutting high. A lock of her hair was shorn from the braid and fell to the stone.
Anysa didn’t even tense.
The courtyard held its breath, but the bell remained silent and still. The soldiers stepped back as one. The High Priestess raised her hand, her voice ringing out across the square. “She has passed.”
Anysa was practically dancing with joy as she turned and walked back toward us. I bit down on a grin and let the breath I’d been holding finally escape.
“Chloé,” the High Priestess called.
Chloé sauntered forward like she owned the courtyard, hips swaying as she walked. Anysa snorted next to me. “Does she think this is a dance?”
I watched as the soldiers surrounded her. Achilles’s first strike was a lazy pass near Chloé’s thigh.
She didn’t move.
The second brushed past her elbow. The third skimmed just below her jaw, light and restrained … unfairly so.
The soldiers had tested her with three barely there passes.
“She has passed,” the High Priestess declared.
I narrowed my eyes. They’d been almost tender with her, their strikes slowed, their posture softened, as if they’d decided she deserved mercy the rest of us hadn’t.
Before I could dwell on it— “Helena,” the High Priestess called.
My name echoed over the stones, but it felt far away, like it had been spoken underwater. I stepped forward, the bell on my wrist shaking faintly with each step, as if it already knew I was going to fail.
Achilles’s gaze was pinned on me as I stopped in front of the soldiers, the sun catching in the sweat on his collarbone, his chest rising and falling with deceptive calm.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Menelaus lean forward, his goblet forgotten, his gaze gleaming as he stared. At least in this Trial he knew for sure which one I was. Not that it would help me if the bell on my wrist chimed.
“Stillness,”I whispered to myself as my pulse thundered behind my ears.
Achilles stepped forward, the sword loose in his grip. His eyes met mine and held for a moment … before they slipped to the throne.
Menelaus was now watching us with that same unreadable amusement I’d seen during the last Trial. That calculation flickered now, a quiet challenge in the air.
Achilles didn’t look away. Neither did the king.
It felt like the same game. The same test. Menelaus pushing. Achilles holding his ground. Me caught in the space between them again. Except I wasn’t sure how I was going to use this game for my benefit this time.
When Achilles finally turned his gaze from the throne and let it settle on me, something in his eyes made the air feel thinner, hotter.
This wasn’t going to be good.
“Spread out,” one soldier whispered, exchanging looks with the others. “Is he … is he changing it?”
“He’s taking her himself?” another replied, sounding confused.
Achilles circled me once, the others holding their lines. His footfalls barely existed, a quiet glide that didn’t belong to a soldier at all, but to something patient enough to choose the perfect place to sink its teeth.
