Page 23 of Where Darkness Bloomed (Of Stars and Salt #1)

“He is not a warrior. Not like you and I.”

The words struck like a spear—sudden, precise. Aimed perfectly at Patroclus’s chest.

From behind a tent’s weathered canvas, just out of sight, he grew still. The sea was suddenly too loud in his ears. The sun too harsh against his skin.

Not a warrior.

Patroclus closed his eyes. A jagged breath blew out of him.

As if he hadn’t stood beside Achilles on the practice fields since boyhood—shoulder to shoulder beneath the punishing sun, breathless from sparring, his limbs streaked with dust and blood.

As if he hadn’t borne every bruise with quiet resolve, enduring the sting of failure again and again, under the gaze of his father who saw only lacking.

Not fast enough. Not fierce enough. Not Achilles.

Achilles had been there for all of it, had seen all of it—Patroclus’s humiliation, his shame. Achilles had seen him, becoming his refuge in those earliest days of shared breath and bruised knuckles.

He could still remember the first time Achilles’s gaze had grown warm with a heat that surpassed friendship, brotherhood. It was on a day when his father’s shame in him had been a burden too heavy for Patroclus’s young shoulders.

But Achilles’s calloused hand had grasped his own, steadying him as he whispered, “He does not matter. You are here, with me.”

But now—now that same voice was cold and hard as iron. Jarring as a slap, final as the slice of his sword.

The words landed not only as a refusal of the armor, but of everything. Of the war that raged, devouring years and men like fire in dry fields. Of the cause that bound them to this blood-soaked shore. Of him .

Patroclus gripped the tent’s edge, his knuckles white against the canvas.They were still speaking, and he faintly heard Odysseus argue in his defense.

But Achilles’s voice cut across the distance again.

“If I send him in my place, I may as well slit his throat myself.”

Patroclus jerked as if the blade had already found him. His breath caught, shallow and uneven, and he turned away, willing himself not to hear. Not to feel the merciless sting of Achilles’s words.

Familiar grief swelled in him, low and vast, crushing. A tide he’d come to know well in the endless days since they had first landed in Troy.

Always, Achilles had burned too bright. A sun others could not help but orbit.

And Patroclus—he had done so willingly, drawn not just by the brilliance but by the warmth.

By the golden-haired boy who had once seized his hand like an oath, an anchor in a world that had offered Patroclus nothing else.

That tether had grown with them. Had held through boyhood and battle, had seen them become men bound together not just in body and breath, but in soul.

Once, it had been enough.

But that boy, that man—so full of light and laughter and fierce, shining certainty—was gone. In his place stood a figure carved of wrath and silence. Unwilling to bend, even to save what had not yet been lost. A man Patroclus could scarcely recognize.

The realization had first struck months ago, quiet but devastating, as he watched Achilles return to their tent bathed in the red from the battlefield, his gaze utterly hollow—

He is slipping away from me. And I do not know how to call him back.

That night, his hands had trembled as he rinsed the blood from Achilles’s hair.

Now, their tent stood empty and still around Patroclus. The morning’s heat pressed close, thick with the scent of oil, leather, and sweat.

Achilles’s shield rested against the timber post, its polished surface catching a shard of sunlight. His sword lay beside the rest of the armor on its stand, silent. Waiting.

Patroclus stood before it, unmoving.

Outside, the cries of the wounded were already rising from the plain nearby, indistinguishable from the moans of the dying.

Among the Greek ranks, many were barely more than boys, trembling in armor stripped from the dead, clutching swords with untrained hands.

He had seen Nestor’s grandson standing among those headed toward the front.

Barely sixteen summers, a spear clutched in his shaking fist.

Every day, the ranks returned thinner. With Achilles gone and the Myrmidons standing aside, the army staggered.

The dead grew so numerous there were not enough pyres to hold them, enough hands to collect them daily.

Corpses sat beneath the blistering sun, skin growing mottled and foul. An abomination.

His father’s parting words rang in Patroclus’s ears—

My son walks beside the greatest of all the Greeks.

The only praise Patroclus had ever heard fall from his father’s lips. And it hadn’t even been meant for him.

Achilles’s face burned behind his eyes, impassive, hard as granite. Even as the dead burned and hope crumbled. If even Odysseus, silver-tongued and clever beyond reckoning, could not sway Achilles to rejoin the battle, no one could.

Patroclus sank onto the low cot, his body heavy as the agony crushing against his heart. His head bowed into his hands, breath harsh, throat raw.

He had followed Achilles into exile. Into war.

Into legend. He had stayed, even as Achilles turned inward, pride closing like a bitter fist around his heart.

He had tried to hold the thread between them—tried to speak when Achilles would not, to be his voice when silence pressed in too tightly, when the world turned to ash around them.

But now—now there was nothing left to say. Only silence, heavy as the air inside a tomb.

Slowly, Patroclus rose.

His hands moved reverently as he reached for the breastplate, lifting it as he had watched Achilles do countless times. It was heavier than he expected, like taking up the mantle of a god. He bound the straps tightly across his chest.

Greaves. Bracers. Each piece was strapped into place like a sacred rite, like an offering. His hands shook as he reached for Achilles’s black-crested helmet.

“Forgive me,” Patroclus whispered.

To the boy he remembered.

To the man who no longer looked back.

To whatever gods still listened.

Taking up the helm, he slid it on and stepped from the tent—into light, toward the sound of war.