Page 50 of Where Darkness Bloomed (Of Stars and Salt #1)

But Achilles had refused them all. His hatred for Agamemnon was a chain of iron. His pride, the key.

Only Patroclus’s death—sudden and shattering—had drawn him back to the battlefield. Not duty. Not glory.

Grief.

But the servant girl had confirmed something else, too. Something that twisted hotly inside him like a blade drawn from the forge—

Helen of Sparta had not willingly become Helen of Troy.

She had been taken. Stolen. Torn from her homeland like a blossom ripped from the roots—beauty bruised, will crushed beneath a coward’s heel.

And Paris had done it for reasons Achilles knew too well.

War turned men into beasts. But Paris had been a beast even in peace. He hadn’t taken her for love nor devotion, as the poets now claimed. His hunger had been baser, uglier. The lust of a man grasping at something far more precious than his own skin.

He had caged her high inside the doomed city, smiling with serpentine pride while his brother bled and the world burned.

Achilles’s breath came harshly, feeding the firestorm beneath his ribs.

He had long silenced the boy he’d once been, the child who believed in heroes and noble causes. That boy was buried beneath a mountain of dead men, piled high and rotting on the plain. That boy had fallen beside Patroclus.

But now, this.

A woman carrying the weight of ten thousand graves.

Yet despite everything, the horrors she’d witnessed, the chains of captivity, the violence inflicted—Helen endured. With silent defiance, she now reached through the bars of her cage, hand outstretched toward the innocent. Even as none came to save her.

The memory of her eyes surfaced fiercely, striking like a spear.

Sapphire eyes that burned against the fabric of his nights, turning his dreams restless and black.

Eyes that had seen too much, that held tragedy beyond bearing.

Not just the brutality waged in her name, but what had been done to her.

Conquest played out nightly behind locked doors.

Something primal ripped free in Achilles’s chest. His fingers twitched, aching for the familiar weight of his spear. In the bay, the sea churned furiously, its wrath rising with his own.

Paris would answer for it, all of it. There would be no noble reckoning as there had been with Hector. No pretense of glory. Glory was a lie—a heap of mangled flesh and shit, trampled underfoot on the blood-drenched fields.

This would be vengeance. Pure, uncomplicated.

Paris’s fate was already written. His every breath was borrowed, stolen from the edge of Achilles’s blade, whetted with every vile act he’d dared commit. Against her.

The wind howled past Achilles’s ears, alive with salt and storm. And in it, a voice :

Honor is mankind’s greatest treasure.

His mother’s whisper, carried in the breath of the sea .

And the servant girl’s trembling plea— You must believe me. Helen of Sparta is honorable.

He did.

In the distance, the sky and sea were a seamless void of black. Fissures of lightning separated the heavens from the sea, illuminating the dark beach as Achilles returned to his tent.

Inside, dim firelight danced along the canvas walls. The girl watched him warily as he reached into the flames, pulling out a charred piece of kindling, ember glowing faintly. The scent of smoke filled the air as he bent over the parchment.

For a moment, he stared at Helen’s words, the quiet despair in them. Then, with bold, black strokes, he wrote his reply beneath hers.

As he handed the parchment back to the servant girl, he reached behind his tunic. His fingers hooked the leather cord he’d worn since boyhood. A coin dangled from it, smooth from years of wear, gleaming faintly in the firelight. With a sharp tug, the cord snapped.

Achilles pressed the coin into her palm. “Take it,” he ordered. “If anyone stops you, tell them you are a whore favored by Achilles, a son of Phthia.” He nodded down to the coin. “A Phthian coin to prove your word.”

The girl’s face heated at his crude phrasing. It was absurd, laughable even—this timid girl claiming to service him. But his name alone would protect her. None would dare risk his wrath on the chance the story was true.

She bowed her head once, wrapping her cloak tightly around her slight frame. “Thank you, lord.”

As she turned to go, he stopped her. “Girl.”

She paused at the tent’s edge, looking back.

“They have no way to breach the walls,” Achilles said, staring into the fire. “This is why Troy still stands. When the walls fall, flee north. You won’t survive otherwise.”

Her throat worked once. She nodded, then slipped into the rain.

Outside, Achilles watched her go, a small figure blending into rain-slicked shadows. She moved swiftly, her feet light on the sand as she slipped through a gap in the guards’ patrol.

As he turned back to the tent, a familiar voice cut through the night.

“I did not take you for a fool, son of Peleus. ”

Achilles cocked an eye toward the figure approaching on the beach. “You’re the one trudging through a storm, son of Laertes.”

Odysseus pushed back his hood. Rain slicked his hair, running in rivulets down his face.But his eyes were bright blue in the lightning that forked the sky.

“Should I fear a little water?” he asked mildly. Then his expression darkened. “Not as much as you should fear Agamemnon’s wrath if he finds you hosting Trojan emissaries.”

Achilles folded his arms, ignoring the rain slicing coldly against his skin. “Things are dire indeed if servant girls now pass as emissaries,” he replied dryly.

Odysseus didn’t smile. “Things became dire the moment you killed Hector.” His voice was steady, but tension lived beneath the calm. “He was reasonable, far more so than Priam or Paris. Our only chance to negotiate the war’s end, and now his body rots behind your tent.”

Achilles didn’t flinch. “I returned the body.”

Odysseus’s brows lifted, then narrowed. “Why?”

He looked out across the rain-swept camp, his mouth twisting. “Honor still breathes, if only barely. Would you have me smother it entirely?”

The king of Ithaca studied him in silence.

Achilles knew that look, knew the keen mind behind it, always watching, calculating. It was Odysseus’s mask—the easy manner, the wry blue eyes. A mask worn so well many forgot it was there at all.

But Achilles knew what lay beneath.

Cunning. Wild and razor-edged. Sharper than any blade, more dangerous than Achilles’s prowess in battle. Strength could batter down walls, but guile slipped in the cracks, unseen. And Odysseus wielded it formidably, shaping the battlefield long before swords were ever swung.

“She seeks your help—the queen of Sparta.” Odysseus tilted his head, studying him more closely. “She’s the only one in Troy who’d dare to seek you out.The only one whose servant you’d spare.”

He remained silent.

A hard exhale, then Odysseus stepped closer. “This is grave, Achilles. She’s the entire reason we are here.”

Achilles scoffed then, rain sliding down his jaw as his head tilted. “Menelaus came for his pride. Agamemnon came for Troy’s conquest. We both know this.” His eyes flicked past Odysseus to the distant city. “She’s a captive in a foreign land. Of course she seeks deliverance. ”

“And you would risk your life for hers?” Odysseus’s eyes gleamed with skepticism.

Rain pooled on the sand, carving paths back to the sea.

“Is that worse than dying for Agamemnon’s conquest?” Achilles asked. “As you said, death comes for us all. Every man here will fall for something.” He paused. “Patroclus died for glory. Hector, for his homeland. Thousands more for kings they never knew.”

The names hung in the air, shades now watching from the Underworld. But he could almost feel it again—the warm weight of Patroclus’s hand against his back. A wordless anchor. A steadying force that held him.

Achilles shook his head, a jagged breath leaving him. “The Fates do not choose gently.”

Then, meeting Odysseus’s gaze with clear eyes, he said, “My death was always here, in Troy. We both know that I walk toward it.” A pause. “Let it be for something more than ash and ruin.”

Wind and rain stole the silence between them.

Odysseus didn’t reply, didn’t dispute it. There was no need. The truth lay plainly between them. His jaw tightened, the weight of war etched in the furrow of his brow.

Finally, he shook his head, a weary motion. “The poets will call you mad when they sing of this.”

Achilles turned his gaze to the sea’s dark, endless waves. “Let them,” he murmured. “They will sing of it all the same.”