Page 35 of Where Darkness Bloomed (Of Stars and Salt #1)

Hector was dead.

Helen had known the moment Troy’s gates closed behind him.

The clash of weapons had been brief, a single heartbeat stretching across eternity for those who watched. Hector had fought with the skill of a seasoned warrior, his movements fluid and sure.

But Achilles...

He was fury incarnate, ferocity unbridled. His speed, his rage—blinding, primal, and devastating.

Within minutes, Hector faltered. A hard kick to the chest sent him reeling back, forcing him into the sweep of that deadly spearpoint.

Moments later, the killing blow was struck. The spear plunged into Hector’s throat, blood spraying, gurgling. He’d crumpled to the earth, lifeless.

Raw and heart-wrenching, Andromache’s scream rose beside her, ripping at the sky. Helen caught her as she staggered, holding her as Hector’s death dragged his widow to her knees.

Over Andromache’s cries, she heard Achilles’s voice—cold, sharp as his spear—addressing Priam. Paris stood rigidly at the king’s side, knuckles blanching bone-white on the balcony ledge.

Then, with a wrathful snarl, Paris snatched a bow from a guard, bracing it swiftly to his shoulder.

“No!” Priam’s voice cracked, strangled as he reached for his son. “It is without honor!”

But Paris wrenched free. His breath was a hiss of rage between teeth as he loosed the arrow.

Helen’s heart went silent, her eyes following its path—

It struck the earth at Achilles’s feet.

He was still for a moment. Then his hands rose, drawing off the black-crested helmet. Helen’s breath caught as he tossed it aside.

His hair was gone.

Once thick, golden as a lion’s mane—now brutally shorn. Cropped close to the scalp, severe and unceremonious. There was something terrible and sacred in it. The sacrifice of self at the altar of grief.

When Achilles’s gaze lifted to the balcony, his eyes were flat black, filled with rage that promised ruin.

“You abandon your honor, boy.” His voice carved the stillness like a sword to flesh.

He stooped, pulling the arrow from the dirt. Then his fingers twisted, snapping it cleanly in two. “Just as well. You will find none in me.”

Retrieving a length of rope from his chariot, Achilles returned to Hector’s still form.

Silent horror churned in Helen as she watched him kneel. His dagger flashed, cutting through Hector’s ankles. He worked with grim precision, binding the limbs with steady hands.

Rising again, Achilles looked to the terrace once more. Contempt radiated from the ground, his wrathful gaze sweeping from Priam to Paris. Then, his eyes slid past them, finding her.

Helen was still, stricken in the path of his black gaze. Darkened with bloodlust, the rawness in his stare carved through her, cutting down to the bone. She felt flayed, exposed—her soul laid bare to the carnage he’d wrought.

Tears were slipping down her cheeks, though she scarcely felt them.

They fell for Hector, dead for his brother’s pride. For Hector’s son, an infant who would never know his father’s arms. For Andromache, whose heart had been carved out.

Tears fell for the ruin unraveling in her name, for the endless waste reeking of burned flesh and trampled honor. For love reduced to ash. A waste so monstrously complete, it could never be undone, never be made right.

But beneath it all, deeper still, another pain smoldered, unbearable. One she had not dared to acknowledge until now.

Her tears fell for him . For Achilles, whose rage knew no end. Whose own grief had driven him to this—this desecration, this moment of sheer, wanton destruction.

The truth of it was a blade between her ribs. Too deep to pull free, too sharp to reconcile. But there it was—she grieved for him, too .

And he saw it.

Behind the fury burning in his hollowed eyes, something flickered—raw recognition. His brow furrowed. His chest lifted with a broken breath that mirrored her own, as though he, too, was splintering apart from within.

It passed between them like lightning across a storm-wracked sea. A recognition that struck too hard and too deep to speak aloud.

A woman cursed by beauty.

A man cursed by wrath.

For a breathless instant, they saw each other plainly.

But then—it vanished. The moment snapped like a bone underfoot.

Achilles stiffened, and the walls slammed down. His gaze hardened, turning empty and lifeless as Hector’s corpse.

She watched as he turned away, mounting the chariot. Blood-slick hands seized the reins and, with a sharp flick, drove the horses forward.

The body lurched behind the chariot, limbs dragging limply through the dust. A jagged smear of red trailed in its wake.

Priam’s breath broke into shuddering sobs, his thin frame trembling. Silent tears slipped into his white beard as he watched his son’s body disappear—bouncing lifelessly over the stones, swallowed by the rising storm of dust.

***

She could barely recall guiding Andromache back to her chambers.

Her hands had moved on instinct. She steered them, steadied the weeping widow, but her hands were numb. The hands of someone else.

Hector’s son stirred in his cradle, cooing and babbling softly, unaware of the chasm opening beneath them. Andromache sat unmoving, arms folded around herself like a fortress, her eyes wide and vacant, staring into that abyss.

Servants hovered in the periphery, quiet and quick-footed, shadows flitting at the edges of Helen’s vision.

Time unraveled, becoming broken and disjointed. Finally, a guard appeared, summoning her back to Paris’s chambers.

He was waiting.

Paris’s hand clamped around her wrist like a shackle, jerking her to him with force that made her stumble.

“Out,” he barked at the servants, who scattered without hesitation.

He hauled her to the bed, moving with mechanical purpose.

No guise of tenderness or affection, just an empty ritual of ownership fueled by rage and possession.

He didn’t bother undressing her, jerking her skirts aside.

And then he was on her, moving hard and fast, fury and lust tangling like snakes.

Her body endured, but her spirit drifted away.

She slipped free of herself, leaving him and the stifling room, the heat of his panting breath at her neck. Away from the ache in her body, the burn of hatred inside.

She drifted far—far enough to hear Andromache’s soul screaming from her chambers, to feel the weight of Hector’s broken body as it fell to the earth.

Far enough to see the sunlight catching the shorn hair of Achilles’s scalp.

Far enough to feel the grief that had bent him low over Patroclus’s corpse.

When it was over, Paris rose and adjusted his tunic briskly. Helen lay still, fingers tangled in the wrinkled bedclothes, her cheek against the fabric. Even her hatred, hot and thick in her gut, felt too tired to rouse.

The silence was oppressive, until Paris’s voice broke it, low and dark—

“He watches you.”

Her breath hitched softly against the blanket. She didn’t need to ask who.

Schooling her expression into calm indifference, Helen pushed herself upright on the bed. “He watches everyone,” she replied mildly.

Paris’s face twisted, darkening with suspicion. “Not like he watches you,” he spat accusingly. “He wants to take you from me. He wants you for himself.”

Helen said nothing, not trusting her voice.

. . . take you from me.

. . . wants you for himself.

She was a possession, spoils of war. A body to be claimed, fought over and desecrated—not a soul to be seen. Only flesh to covet.

Paris stepped closer, menace bleeding from his every movement. “He thinks you’ll warm his bed once he’s dragged my corpse through the dust. He stares like he owns you already.”

His eyes glittered, fever-bright.

“They say he fucks men and women alike. Did you know that?”

She didn’t flinch, keeping her face blank, calm. Stillness was her shield, silence her weapon.

Paris’s expression turned lupine, vicious, and the words flung like spears. “They say he wept like a widow for his dead companion, refusing the pyre. Achilles, the mighty son of Thetis, lying beside a bloated corpse like a mongrel beside a carcass.”

Something quietly broke inside her. A thorn of pain, sharp and clean, piercing deep into her chest.

Her voice emerged suddenly, before she could bite it back.

“Then he must have loved fiercely.”

The words dropped between them like a stone into deep water— heavy, swallowed by the stillness.

Paris’s eyes widened, surprise flaring, then curdling into something darker. His hand lashed out, fingers iron-strong as they gripped her arm, bruising deep.

A wild gleam lit his eyes. “You are mine ,” he hissed.

She said nothing. Hatred simmered under her skin, searing her insides. But her survival instinct was stronger, carefully honed. As it had been since her earliest brush with men.

So she let the fury sink beneath the surface. Let it drown in ice. She smoothed her face into gentle lines, softened her lips into a bland smile—a mask of docility worn like armor. And she nodded, a practiced motion. A lie, beautifully told.

The black ire in Paris’s gaze didn’t fade, it transformed. It sank inward, malevolence coiling around itself like a creature of scales and venom. His mouth curved like a serpent’s, a smile that hid fangs.

She stood still as he lifted a hand, dragging a finger along her jaw—slow, too gently. There was a tremble of something unstable beneath his touch. A blade pressed flat to skin, but ready to turn.

“You will be there when I kill him.”

The words came quiet. Intimate. A lover’s vow spoken through gritted teeth.

“And when he falls,” Paris breathed, his lips at her ear, “broken and bloody— you will be the last thing his eyes ever see.”