Page 40 of Where Darkness Bloomed (Of Stars and Salt #1)

Helen’s cloak whispered against the stone, soft as a dying breath, as she stepped from Paris’s bedchamber.

With swift steps, she moved through the dark corridor toward the landing overlooking the gardens. At the threshold, she drew the hood up, letting darkness swallow her features.

Outside, the moon hung high, pale and indifferent, spilling silver light over the sleeping palace.

Paris’s bed had still been warm when she rose, but he was gone. No doubt he had been summoned to council with Priam and his war-weary generals. The servants had long since vanished to their quarters.

Across the unending months, she had marked the rhythm of the palace. Guards circled the lower levels, patrolling tirelessly as hounds, flanking every doorway, every gate. But the upper floor—the private sanctum of the royal household—was left untouched. No guard dared intrude here without summons.

Only here might she have a chance.

Her breath fogged faintly in the night air as she stood on the landing, listening. The crush of night pressed against her ears as they strained for any noise.

But there was nothing. The palace slept. Troy, too, had closed its eyes in a brief reprieve from bloodshed and exhaustion.

With quick, silent steps, Helen descended the staircase into the gardens. On the bottom step, she halted abruptly.

A servant girl stood before her, still as a statue, a basket of linens clutched to her hip. Moonlight spilled across her startled face, and Helen recognized her instantly. The girl who lit the morning braziers in Paris’s chamber.

A jolt of dread shot through her, frigid as ice .

Before the girl could speak, Helen stepped forward, grasping her arm urgently. “You must tell no one you saw me,” she whispered fiercely. “Swear by the gods—swear it now.”

The girl’s eyes widened, blinking rapidly, but she nodded. “I swear it, my lady.”

Helen released her and turned toward the garden gate. Time was already bleeding away. If the girl spoke a word to anyone, all of it—any remaining hope—would vanish like smoke in the breeze.

“My lady,” the girl whispered behind her. “You are a stranger in Troy. You will never make it to the gate.”

Helen stopped, then turned slowly.

“You seek to return to the Greeks,” the girl said knowingly. “But I will not tell.”

Her voice was thin, fragile and fearful. But within it, Helen heard a rare quality. Truth. Compassion even. She was faintly surprised she even recognized such things anymore.

The night air was thick with the scent of smoke from dying fires, steeped in sorrow that Helen could feel in her bones.

The women of Troy knew many songs. When Helen had first arrived in Troy so long ago as stolen cargo—a prince’s prize—she had often heard them singing. Songs of celebration, of harvest and unions, of childbirth and feasting.

But those songs had faded into memory. Now, the women of Troy sang only of mourning.

Songs for the widowed.

Songs for the bereaved and the missing.

Songs for the dead.

Helen met the girl’s gaze, her voice worn thin. “How many more will die if I do not go?”

The words were raw as the wailing songs of lamentation, laced with the same quiet despair. The place where hope had once dwelled within her was dry, cracked as a cistern in drought. Anguish had taken its place, rooting in her chest, winding deep into her heart.

When she spoke again, it was more to herself than the servant girl. “I must try.”

The dead haunted her. Soldiers from both sides, their lifeless bodies strewn thick on the battlefield. Too many to burn each day. So they lay, growing bloated, with mottled skin and distended bellies beneath the sun, before meeting the pyre’s cleansing burn.

Paris had struck the sparks. He had lit the war.

And she—she had been its first offering. Stolen. Defiled. Locked in a gilded cage while the flames spread. But she had not understood then the firestorm his actions had started.

Not truly. Not until the ships landed and the earth began to burn.

Had she known, she would have thrown herself into the sea on the voyage. Let it drag her under, fill her lungs, pull her into the deep before she ever set foot on Troy’s cursed shore.

“Even if you make it away from Troy, they will kill you,” the girl said softly, sorrowful. “The Greeks.”

Helen didn’t react.

She already knew this. Of course she knew. Menelaus’s pride would demand blood—her blood. Perhaps it was even a fitting recompense for the devastation that had occurred in her name.

Let it be her life, but hers alone. Not thousands. Not children.

She had watched the countryside burn. Fields turned to ash, black smoke twisting like mourning veils across the sky.

She had heard the whispers passed in brittle voices: villages razed to the ground, children massacred, the old cut down mid-prayer.

Woman taken—bound and defiled, their bodies passed like spoils from one pair of bloodstained hands to another. As hers was.

Those horrors lived inside her now. Silently anchored to the darkest part of her, dragging her into the crushing depths of guilt.

Her gaze drifted across the moonlit gardens, fragrant with laurel and myrrh. But her eyes were distant, hollow. “I haven’t been alive in a long time,” she said softly.

Not since her face became a banner for war, and her body a battlefield. Even before Troy. Before Paris, something within her had already been fractured by mankind’s merciless appetite.

The girl’s eyes glistened, wet and wide. “You mustn’t say such things, my lady.”

Helen’s attention shifted back. She looked at the girl, young and frightened, and she saw the shadow of herself. A girl long buried to ash and legend.

“Did you know I was taken once before?” Helen asked quietly.

The girl blinked, startled. “By whom, lady? ”

“Theseus,” Helen answered. “Son of Poseidon, hero of Athens.” Her eyes darkened as the memory rose. “I was a girl of only fifteen summers.”

Even then, the stories had followed her. Tales that named her a daughter of Zeus. Whispers that Aphrodite had blessed her at birth. Proof that not all legends were lies. Hers had been fashioned from cruel, simple truth.

Her mother, Leda, had been bathing when the swan approached, majestic and unafraid. As it drew near, its form shifted, feathers smoothing into flesh, burning with divinity.

Zeus, radiant and ruinous.

From that strange and brutal union, Helen had been born.

“At my birth, Aphrodite gifted me with beauty. Though it became a curse.” The words tumbled out listlessly.

“A daughter like me is a valuable prize.” Another truth, heavy and bitter.

“King Tyndareus, my mother’s husband, spread tales of my beauty across the lands, luring suitors in droves to Sparta.

He held tournaments for my hand, and Sparta flourished greatly. ”

Her gaze drifted, past the palace walls, past the olive trees and hedgerows, into the shadows of memory.

“Then Theseus came,” she said, softer. “The hero of the labyrinth. The Minotaur’s slayer. But he had no patience for games or court rules. That night, he scaled the palace walls and took me from my bedchamber.”

She could still him clearly. Her young heart had quickened at the sight—his dark hair, sharp eyes, already the swagger of legend in his bearing. The Minotaur’s horn had swung from his belt, grim and triumphant.

But not all monsters bore claws and ate flesh. Some harbored their monstrosity within, beneath smiles and charm.

So it had been with Theseus. Her first lesson in the treachery of men.

“We rode through the night to Attica, stopping only once. A cave, just beyond the Spartan border. There, he robbed me of my innocence.” Her voice was flat, but the memory was etched into her bones. “I was left with his mother as he sailed away to chase another glory.”

The servant girl stared at her, stricken. But Helen didn’t notice. The words were pouring out, unspooling from deep within, like water spilling from a cracked vessel.

“In time, I was returned to Sparta. While I was gone, Menelaus won the contest for my hand, and we were wed the day I returned. He was so drunk, he never noticed. The blood on the sheets came from a prick to my heel.”

It had been a ruthless beginning to a marriage that had remained brutal.

Silence fell, heavy and complete .

Helen looked up, meeting the girl’s tear-bright eyes. “They will try to kill me,” she agreed softly. “But now you understand—Helen of Sparta died long ago.”

The girl’s face crumpled, and she sank to her knees. Grasping Helen’s hand, she pressed it to her forehead. “Do not go to them. I beg you, my lady.”

Helen’s fingers brushed the girl’s hair gently, a blessing or a farewell. “I cannot stay here. Not while so many die. There is none other to help, and I must try.”

The girl’s face turned up, her voice shaking. “What of the great warrior? The one in bronze.”

For a heartbeat, the night fell still.

“Achilles.” The name snagged in Helen’s throat, tasting of fire and iron.

“He hates the Greek king,” the girl whispered. “It is known. They say he fights only because Hector killed his beloved.”

Achilles, the firestorm. The fury no man could match, and none could survive.

Helen shook her head. “No one is safe from his wrath.”

“You are.”

The words struck her like a stone.

The girl leaned forward, voice hushed. “He watches you. Every day. There is no hatred in his eyes—I’ve seen it. He would not harm you.”

Helen said nothing. The silence between them deepened, filled with the weight of a truth she could barely force herself to admit.

She no longer believed in the sincerity of men. Tyndareus. Theseus. Menelaus. Paris. Each one had possessed, used, and betrayed her. Each one had proven to her that treachery was the only certainty among men.

Yet... Achilles remained apart.

In truth, she had never known of another like him. It was difficult to doubt his sincerity when he made no effort to conceal his contempt. Pride, rage, defiance—he wore them like his armor, blazing brightly as the bronze on his back. His scorn for both Greeks and Trojans was open, unapologetic.

He had turned from the war once before in defiance of Agamemnon, and the Greek army had descended into turmoil. Trojan forces had surged forward then, nearly driving them into the sea. Many of their ships had burned, blazing bright on the sea.

All because of one man.

Across the long months of siege, she and Achilles had faced each other, separated by a battlefield. He had no reason to care for her plight. Yet when his eyes found hers, the fire in them had flickered. Not quenched but tempered.

Then, Patroclus.

Achilles’s grief had been wild, unrestrained. Fury had carved the hard lines of his face, hollowed out his eyes, sang through the spear he hurled into Hector’s body.

But afterward, when Hector lay dead on the ground at his feet, Achilles’s eyes had risen to hers once more. The bloodlust in them changed. Not with triumph, not even rage. His gaze was raw then, stripped bare and bloodsick.

In that moment—grief sang to grief. Like called to like.

Across the chasm of the battlefield, his sorrow had reached for hers. Only a moment, but his gaze had burned a mark deep beneath her skin. She’d felt no fear then. And in him, she’d seen no fury.

Now, doubt stirred. And with it—a fragile, trembling thought. Reckless, perhaps even mad.

The Greeks revered Achilles more than their high king. They feared his wrath, admired his ferocity, obeyed his command. But Achilles had nothing to gain by staying in Troy.

And, more importantly—nothing to lose by leaving.

Hadn’t he begun to leave once before? Before Hector’s spear found Patroclus, dragging him back from the sea’s edge.

The thought that rooted in her mind was impossible. But that hardly mattered anymore. Not when the walls were closing in. Not when so much else had already been stripped away.

This was the last chance. The only path left unburnt. The last fragile thread of hope for the Trojans, the Greeks.

For her.

Helen drew a breath, willing iron into her heart, smoothing calm over the chaos clawing in her chest. Her voice, when it came, rang soft like a blade drawn from its sheath.

“I need parchment.”