Page 145 of Where Darkness Bloomed
She paused, a silence heavy with the promise of retribution.
“Zeus forbids our interference for now.” A vengeful note haunted her words. “But such actions will have consequences. The scales will demand balance.”
An icy shiver skittered down Odysseus’s spine, raising the hairs on his neck.
“Goddess,” he implored, rising to his feet. “Help me to end it.”
She fixed him with a stare that pared flesh and bone, peering into his soul. He weathered it, fighting the instinct to retreat, his feet planted firmly against the ground.
At last, she spoke. “Wield my wisdom with care. When this ends, you too will be judged accordingly,” she warned.
Then she turned toward Troy, its proud walls outlined in distant torchlight. “The Trojans seek favor from amongst the gods.”
“We all do, my lady,” Odysseus replied flatly.
“Devotion can be a weapon if wielded correctly.”
He frowned. “The Trojans have long worshipped Apollo, and they thrive under his care. Thousands of men have fallen to plagues and arrows guided by his hand.”
“Yes.” Her eyes glinted silver beneath the moonlight. “But even now, Troy also prays to another. One who turned his back on the city long ago.”
Odysseus’s gaze turned to the sea, where black waves lapped restlessly against the shore.
“Poseidon.”
Athena nodded. “They watch for his sign. Their priests will be quick to see it, eager for hope. Use this.” Her voice cooled then, growing stern with warning. “But hear me, king of Ithaca—the gods do not condone butchery. If you stand among those who indulge it, you will share in their doom.”
A breath of wind passed. She was gone.
Odysseus stood alone once more beside a smoldering heap of ash, herwords still echoing in the night. Slowly, he turned and strode back toward the camp.
The fires had burned low. Only the sentries remained awake, stationed along the perimeters. One nodded as he passed—a boy, barely grown, his helmet too wide for his brow.
Odysseus said nothing, only met the boy’s eyes. Then moved on.
At the camp’s edge, he halted.
Troy loomed in the distance. Its walls were awash in firelight, every stone steeped in defiance. Those walls were as formidable now as they’d been the day he leapt from the ship, his sandals in the surf, war in his blood.
Massive. Impenetrable.
A gift from Poseidon to a long-dead king.
But the sea god’s blessings had soured the day Laomedon broke his vow to build Poseidon’s temple at the city’s heart. Instead, the foolish king had raised up a palace in his own name.
Odysseus’s eyes swept the wall’s breadth, twice the height of Ithaca’s. Thicker than anyone knew. For years now, those walls had endured every assault. No blade, no fire, no siegecraft had cracked them.
Agamemnon had tried. Again and again. Reckless, blood-drunk assaults, driven more by pride than strategy. And Troy had answered with all manner of death: boiling pitch, searing oil, showers of arrows. A lethal tide poured from the ramparts, staining the air with the stench of melted flesh.
Achilles and his Myrmidons had refused to take part in such senseless carnage. Grim and silent, they watched as the Greek host bashed itself against stone. Even then, Odysseus had seen it as they had—
Troy would not be taken by force.
The Greeks were left circling a corpse that refused to die.
With a sigh, Odysseus raked a hand through his hair, damp with sea-salt and sweat. Short of Priam himself swinging open the gates in surrender, they would never breach the city.
A flicker of motion snagged his gaze.
