Page 54 of Where Darkness Bloomed
His fingers found a tendril of hair clinging to her damp cheek, and he tucked it behind her ear with agonizing tenderness. His fingers lingered just behind her ear, then he traced the curve of her neck with the lightest caress of his knuckles. The breath left her in a quiet, shattered exhale.
His fingers trailed lower, brushing featherlight over her collarbone in a way that made her skin tighten, her pulse leap.
“But I will not force you.” The deep timbre of his voice dipped lower, a hushed promise. “I will not have you fear my touch.”
The vow stirred something deep. Like a smoldering flame, heat pooled low in her belly, spilling warmth into her limbs. She could not meet his eyes. Instead, her gaze traced the firm lines of his chest, his shoulders.
He exhaled sharply, as if he felt her gaze like a touch. His fingers slipped beneath her chin, a gentle demand for her eyes. But as her face tilted to his, he moved forward, and his lips captured hers.
There was nothing soft in it this time. Only heat. Hunger, fierce and consuming. His kiss was demanding, filled with a need that made her tremble against him. One hand slid into her hair, angling her to him. The other pressed firm at the small of her back, drawing her flush against the hardness of his body.
When his tongue stroked hers, all coherent thought left her like water slipping through cracked pottery. Her fingers curled into the hard muscle of his arms, clinging as if he were her only tether to the earth. He groaned into her mouth, a rough sound that sent a shiver through her.
When he finally lifted his head, he did not retreat. He kept her close, their breaths mingling in soft, uneven pants. His hand slid from her hair to cradle her throat, his thumb brushing tenderly across her bottom lip.
“Come to me tomorrow.” His voice curled around her like warm smoke, dark and smooth against her skin.
“I will be your husband. And you… my queen.”
Then he stepped back slowly, as if letting go of her required effort. His hand slipped from her waist, leaving her colder than she’d expected.
At the door, he paused and looked back. “Tomorrow,” he said again, low, certain. Avow spoken into the quiet.
The echo of it lingered long after he vanished, suspended in the hush like a breath half-held.
Tomorrow.
Chapter 23
“We thought it was you, my lord.” Eudorus’s head hung low with grief. “He wore your armor, carried your sword. We did not know until Hector’s spear—”
“Enough.”
Achilles’s voice cracked like a shattered amphora. His hands shook as they tore through his hair. His knees hit the sand beside the body, a hollow thud lost to the distant crash of the surf.
Patroclus lay still.
Pale. Cold. Silenced forever.
Achilles bent over him, his breath shuddering as it met flesh that no longer warmed to his touch. His fingers trembled against the cooling skin, as if he could will the heat back into it, searching for the steady heartbeat that had always been there.
He saw it all at once, flashing like lightning behind his eyes.
As boys, they had lain beneath the stars, pointing out constellations and whispering about the future—of glory, of gods. Had chased each other through the olive groves in Phthia, bare feet pounding the sunlit grass.
Patroclus had been there the day Achilles’s hands first held a blade, the first time kings and warlords watched him with awe and unease. They came to Phthia to see him, gray-haired generals and lords draped in bronze. It had been no secret even then, they were inspired by his mother’s prophecy—
He would be the greatest warrior of a generation. A life to burn fierce and bright. A flash of lightning, then gone.
Patroclus had been there as he was sent to Chiron—the famous immortal, chiefest among centaurs. Under Chiron’s care, he was tutored in war, in healing, in poetry. And death. Trained to be the finest of all Greeks.After all, what was a boy’s life when compared to how brightly he might blaze as a warrior on the killing fields?
Even then, Achilles had known: he was being shaped into something terrible. A name for songs. A name to fear.
But Patroclus had never looked at him like that. Had never cared for prophecies or politics.
Instead, he had run beside him, barefoot and laughing, sharing figs and secrets and silence—unbothered by the future carved out by the Fates. When Achilles had staggered under the weight of it, it was Patroclus who had steadied him.
Then, as men, they had fought side by side, blood drying on their skin, dust clinging to their armor. Achilles—the fury, the fire blazing across eternity. And Patroclus, the calm presence at his side.
